as in, no matter how much he wanted to.
“I won’t let them hurt you,” he promised her, and in his eyes she saw his determination to ensure her safety.
“Tell me,” she demanded hoarsely. “Did you see Amber?”
From her peripheral vision she saw Rachel’s gaze jerk to her as Jonas’s eyes narrowed on her.
Regret and guilt flickered in his expression as he looked away from her.
“I bet Jonas swore he would never let anyone or anything hurt Amber again after he got her away from Brandenmore.” Tears burned her eyes as one slipped her control and eased down her cheek. “And now, she’s still suffering because of something he can’t control. Something he’s being given no help, or even the slightest honesty to combat.”
Audi’s jaw clenched spasmodically as his gaze swung back to her. “I don’t have what he’s here for,” he bit out angrily.
“Then it won’t hurt you to see the child none of us can help, will it? To understand, Dad, rather than meeting him in antagonism. The Navajo made the Breeds a vow. That vow was to extend to them all that was needed to aid their battle for freedom, safety and welfare that they could provide. There was no addendum that excluded anything, at any time. It was all they could do, when they could do it. And perhaps that’s something both you and Ray are forgetting.”
When her father said nothing more, Liza could only shake her head. Turning and walking to the door, she paused as Stygian opened it and stepped out ahead of her. She turned back to Claire’s parents slowly. “I used to think you were so funny and so kind, Ray. Claire used to laugh all the time, and she knew how to have fun. And you knew how to be a father, but now, you just want to push her and the danger she’s in aside. I guess politics really doesn’t know any other loyalty or love besides itself.”
Ray only glared back at her.
“Liza, that’s not true,” Maria Martinez protested softly. “It’s not politics.”
“Then perhaps you should explain to Claire one of these days exactly what it is, Mari. Because right now, I can’t think of any other reason for the two of you to turn your backs on her,” Liza suggested bitterly. “And that’s exactly how it feels to her I bet. As though the two people who should be willing to fight for her, to protect her, act as though they don’t even know her.”
“Enough, Liza.” Claire’s voice was firm, unaffected, despite the glitter of pain in her eyes as Liza turned to glance at her. “I’m tired, and I’m certain you are as well. I’m leaving now.”
“You’re leaving with us,” Ray stepped forward, only to stop as Cavalier moved to block his path. “You’ll leave with us or you and Liza can both forget about coming back to work until this situation is entirely resolved. I won’t allow you to risk yourself so easily nor do I believe we should place the Nation in such jeopardy as well.”
He was lying.
Neither the Nation headquarters nor the Nation itself was in any danger, Liza and Claire were. Taking their jobs seemed more to be his way of punishing them for refusing to obey him.
“I’ve already e-mailed my resignation,” Claire surprised her with her answer. “And I’m sorry, Father, for all the trouble you’ve been caused.”
There were no tears, her voice wasn’t husky, but Liza swore she could feel the pain tearing at her friend. That she could feel the gut-wrenching pain as well as the sense of complete abandonment that filled her as she left the room, Dog ahead of her, as Mutt and Mongrel followed behind.
“Why do I have a feeling neither of us will be returning when this is over?” Liza asked of the two men.
Audi was staring at his friend as though he didn’t know him, while Maria had stepped away from him, turned her back on him and was obviously drying her eyes. Ray himself watched her, dry eyed, but his expression pulled in lines of doubt and uncertainty. Unlike the others watching him, Liza could see the torment raging through him.
What was driving these two men? What fears and emotions had caused each of them to come here, one to attempt to protect his daughter, the other who appeared intent on driving her away?
“When it’s over, the jobs will be there if you want them.” Ray shrugged as though it didn’t matter, but his dark eyes glittered with torment.
“No wonder Jonas questions the honesty to be found between the two of you where this situation is concerned,” Liza whispered painfully. “I question it myself.”
Casting the Martinezes one last glare, Liza turned and moved to the door as well.
“Stygian, after getting Ms. Johnson and Ms. Martinez settled, I’d like a moment of your time to discuss a few things,” Jonas requested.
Stygian nodded shortly before opening the door and stepping from the suite. After a quick look along the hall, he turned back and nodded to her and Claire before he and Dog’s team escorted them from Jonas’s suite.
There was something surreal about the trip to the luxurious suite they had been given this time. As hard as Liza tried, once again her attempts to hide within herself were foiled, and with each step her confusion grew.
See, she told herself, this was why she had panicked earlier. Why the fear had taken such a hold of her once she learned Gideon was in town and asking about her and Claire. At any other time she would have allowed herself to pull back, to step behind a veil of emotionlessness, fearlessness. It made it easier to fight when there was no fear of the consequences. No fear of dying.
“Are you okay?” Stygian asked after the room had been thoroughly checked and Claire escorted to her room by Dog and his team.
She didn’t like the look on Claire’s face or the bitter knowledge in her friend’s gaze. It was as though she had been looking at a stranger.
She turned back to Stygian, the man who assured her he was her mate, taking in the jeans, dark T-shirt and sober expression as he stood silently and watched her. His expression was uncompromising, his gaze flickering with blue demand. There was no give in him, but he wasn’t taking either.
He was demanding a partner. He was demanding a woman that she wasn’t certain existed.
The long, soft strands of black hair were tied back at the nape of his neck, revealing the powerful, savage features of his face that only amplified the glitter of blue in his gaze. He looked like a warrior. Her warrior.
“Answer me, Liza,” he demanded. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” What more could she say? What more could she feel?
“Don’t lie to me.” Before she could turn away, he had her chin in his hand, forcing her head back, catching her gaze and holding it with his. “Something’s wrong, I can feel it. Something more than Gideon, your parents, Claire’s or Jonas’s suspicions.”
“You can smell it?” She snorted. “And don’t you think that would be enough to ruin any girl’s day?”
“No, I can feel it,” he repeated, ignoring the latter. “I don’t have to smell your emotions. You’re my mate, I’ll always sense them.”
This was impossible to believe, yet she knew he wasn’t lying. She could see the truth of the statement in his gaze.
“I needed this, didn’t I? This mating stuff?” she asked, resigned, almost amused at the lack of anger she felt. She should have been furious with him. “What have you done to me, Stygian? Why did you do it?”
She couldn’t escape. There was no way to retreat any longer. And as much as she had hated that distance as a child, as a teenager, she’d found she’d learned to rely on it as an adult. She wished, at this moment, that she could still access it. Because it would have made this Gideon situation a hell of a lot easier to deal with.
“What have I done to you?” There was that primal growl in his voice as his head dipped, his gaze becoming intent as he stalked around her in a tight circle. “Have I harmed you, mate? Have I stolen from you or somehow marred you?”
Pausing, his chest at her back, his hand at her hip, Stygian brushed her hair back from the nape of her neck as a shiver raced over her flesh. The heated warmth of his breath stroked
her nape a second before she felt the rasp of his incisors against the sensitized skin.
A shudder of near-exquisite pleasure sizzled down her spine. Her nipples hardened to painful tenderness, her clitoris swelled and throbbed with rising demand while her vagina clenched at the aching emptiness between her thighs.
There was nothing benign or sedate about Stygian, just as her response to him wasn’t in the least muted. It was hot, demanding, explosive. All those things she’d never allowed herself to feel with anyone else.
“I mated you, Liza,” he whispered at her ear. “You were meant to be my mate, my woman. Of all the women in the world, only you could ever be mine, now. Just as I’ll now always belong to you. Nature ensured you can’t run, you can’t hide and you can’t deny what we have.”
“I didn’t ask to run, or to hide,” she informed him as her lashes drifted closed, the feel of his lips barely a breath from her neck, sending chills racing through her.
“But you would deny me if you could,” he stated.
Would she deny him? If she could walk away from him, would she do it?
She wouldn’t.
Locked within the suddenly sensually charged atmosphere, Liza knew she had no desire to leave.
“I wouldn’t deny you, Stygian, even if I were able to.” She wasn’t going to lie to him at this point. She wasn’t going to lie to herself.
She couldn’t, even if she wanted to, because he would know the lie for what it was. And there was no way to deny the fact that if she could have chosen an adventure to destroy her life, this would have been the one she would have chosen, and the man she would have chosen to have it with.
As though to reward her for not denying it, his lips settled against her nape, taking small, leisurely kisses along the column of her neck.
The velvet-rough texture of his lips, the heated lap of his tongue against her flesh was incredibly sensual. It added fuel to the latent flames simmering between her thighs and heating her clitoris.
What he did to her should be illegal. What he made her body feel, made her heart race for, should have been outlawed long ago by the United Nations and entered into the Geneva Convention. Or something.
As his hands smoothed from her hips, running up, his large hands cupping her swollen breasts, Liza knew he was destroying the woman she had fought to be for so many years.
He was destroying the security she had built for herself and the safety she had fought so hard to attain.
She rested her head against his shoulder, feeling her hair trailing down her bare arm, the skin revealed by the sleeveless summer blouse she’d hurriedly dressed in earlier.
“Let me hide,” she whispered as he began pulling the light shirt up, over her breasts, then taking her wrists in a gentle grip, lifted her arms to allow him to remove it altogether.
“Why hide?” His teeth grazed her earlobe, sending erotic shudders racing down her back then back up again. “Come out and play, Liza,” he dared her. “Live for me.” He nipped at her earlobe before blazing a path of pleasure down her neck as his hands returned to her breasts.
Her arms curved back, holding on to his neck as his fingers plucked at her nipples, the tender buds so swollen, so responsive to his touch that the pleasure was excruciating.
Live for him?
She was living just fine for herself. She was doing fine hiding. She just needed to hide a little while longer.
But hiding wasn’t going to happen when he touched her.
When she could feel the strength of his erection at her back. When she could feel his fingers plumping and caressing her nipples as his teeth raked her neck and his tongue licked a fiery path of pleasure along it.
“You’re destroying me, Stygian,” she whispered as the fingers of one hand released the small catch of the skirt he’d already removed from her body once.
“You complete me, Liza,” he swore as the material pooled at her feet, leaving her clad only in the thong panties she wore and a matching white lace bra.
How could she complete him when she wasn’t even certain she herself was whole?
One broad, calloused palm slid from her breast to travel down her midriff, over her stomach to the low, elastic band of her panties.
Sliding beneath the band, his hold tightened as her breath caught, her thighs parting as his fingers found the saturated folds of her sex.
“Again?” Shock and bemusement filled her voice. “It’s only been a few hours.”
She hadn’t expected him to want her now, not after Jonas had all but ordered his quick return to the suite. “Always,” he groaned as the pad of his finger found the tight, clenched entrance to her pussy. “I would want you on my deathbed.”
“Jonas will be pissed you didn’t come right back to his suite,” she reminded him as she tilted her head to the side to give him greater access to the back of her neck.
“Jonas will just have to deal.” His hands clenched on her hips, drawing her tighter against his hips and the hardened erection beneath his jeans. “I have more important matters to see to first.”
Her lashes drifted closed as she caught her breath at the feel of his fingers pressing between her thighs and finding the saturated slit of her pussy. They raked over her swollen clit, slid further between the swollen flesh then found the clenched entrance of her pussy.
The rasp of his fingertips against the sensitive opening to her inner core had her hips tilting out as her head fell back against his shoulder.
“It’s a mating thing, right?” Breathless, she parted her thighs further, desperate to feel those wicked, knowing fingers pressing inside the slick, heated depths of her pussy.
“I doubt it.” He breathed out roughly. “God, Liza, I wanted you twenty-four-seven before the mating heat even began.”
“You didn’t know me twenty-four-seven,” she protested, barely able to speak or to think as she felt him rubbing inside her with each shallow stroke of his finger.
“I watched you from the moment your friend Isabelle walked across the bar to claim Malachi,” he told her, his voice rough, filled with lust. “I watched and followed you to work and back home every evening. I watched you as the sun worshipped your body out by the pool and as you slipped out at night to swim naked.”
She would have blushed if the thought of him watching her from the darkness hadn’t been so damned arousing. Because it had been him she had thought about as the water caressed her naked body.
Moaning in rising pleasure as another finger joined the first to stretch her inner muscles with delicious heat, Liza tightened her grip on his neck, barely recognizing the strain in her arms from the position. All she knew was the incredibly sensual feel of his fingers stroking inside her, the pad of his palm rubbing against her clit and sending a thousand heated sensations rushing through her system.
“So good,” she whispered, unable to hold back the words as the pleasure became so rich, so intense it nearly stole her breath. “Oh God, Stygian, it’s so good.”
His fingers thrust deeper inside her, sending her senses racing with the steady climb to ecstasy as the words tore past her lips.
Pushing past the delicate, tender tissue, his fingers scissored inside her, stretching the taut muscles and sending flares of exquisite heat wrapping around her clit, tightening the little bud with tormenting need.
“I need you, Liza.” He groaned at her ear, the roughened rasp of his voice sending a surge of pleasure racing to her womb and clenching it with furious heat.
Her panties were pushed the rest of the way past her hips with his free hand as her pussy clenched and tightened on the fingers filling it.
“Oh yes.” The words slipped past her lips as eroticism wrapped around her senses, his hunger amplifying hers.
As her panties cleared her thighs, a cry vibrated from her chest as his fingers slid free of the sensual grip she had on them.
She found herself bent over the couch.
Lifting her leg at the knee, Stygian bent it against the cushions as he
pressed her shoulders to the thick pillows.
Liza gripped the heavy couch back beneath the pillows, fighting for breath, feeling her senses reeling as she wondered if she would ever have control of herself again.
She could have, she assured herself, given another minute.
Perhaps a few years.
As that thought drifted through her mind, it was quickly erased by the heat and iron-hot width of the head of his cock tucking against the slick entrance to her sex.
She was so wet her thighs were damp. The slick warmth spread over the swollen folds and the sensitive bud of her clit. Pulses of intense sensation swept through the little bud, echoed in her pussy and sent more of the slick response spilling from her vagina.
“So pretty.” He groaned, his hands bracketing her hips as he held her in place. “Sweet, sweet baby. I can’t think of anything but this.” His hips shifted, pressing the thick head into the clenched entrance of her pussy as the heated spurt of pre-cum ejaculated inside her.
She was figuring that part out. The heated fluid enabled the tense, clenched muscles inside to adapt to the overly thick width of the erection beginning to fill her.
With each spurt, it eased her further, heated her inner tissue further, and intensified the need for his cock surging deep and hard.
She rolled her hips against the penetration, allowing the hard, heated flesh to begin pushing inside her.
Each shallow thrust opened her further, made her burn brighter, hotter than before.
Hoarse cries tore from her lips, falling into the pillows as he continued to push inside her, in and out, working each inch inside her with a patience that was killing her.
She wanted him pushing inside her, thrusting with hard, long strokes, fucking her with the hunger she could feel raging inside him.
With each spurt of the heated fluid inside her, the desperation for it grew. The need to have him pounding inside her built with a vengeance.
“More.” The smothered moan was involuntary, a cry tearing from her lust-ridden senses as he pushed fully inside her, burying his cock to the hilt in the tight depths of her pussy. “Please, Stygian, please.”
The heavy flesh throbbed inside her, the blood pounding through the heavy veins and vibrating against the inner walls tightening around it.
“Please what, baby?” He groaned, coming over her, his knee braced beside hers as he gripped her thigh and ground his hips against her rear.
“Yes. Oh God, yes,” The shattered cry felt torn from her as bursts of ecstasy raced through her body.
His cock stretched her until she was certain she couldn’t take more. Until she knew that without the addition of the mating knot becoming erect along the shaft there was no way she could accept the additional width.
Another heated spurt of pre-cum filled her, the Breed hormonal fluid sinking into the sensitive flesh, tightening it even as it enhanced the ability of the tender tissue to accept the width it was taking.
However it did it, each spurt made her hotter, made the need to experience the hard, driving strokes inside her more brutal.
“Damn. Ah hell, baby. Keep doing that.” Stygian groaned at her ear. “Keep stroking my dick with that sweet, tight little pussy.”
Her pussy tightened further. The involuntary clench of the muscles surrounding his flesh dragged a harsh cry from both of them.
“So fucking good,” he whispered, his lips moving to her neck, his tongue taking small tastes of her flesh as his teeth raked it. “Ah, baby, you’re so fucking hot, so sweet and good, I could stay like this forever.”
But his hips were moving, grinding against her, his cock flexing inside her, the pre-cum shooting harder, hotter against her inner walls as the hunger rose with each second he lingered inside her.
“Please.” Her ragged moan was almost impossible to utter as pleasure sent jagged forks of sensation tearing through her womb and across her clit. “Please, Stygian.”
“Tell me, mate.” He nipped her neck erotically. “Tell me what you want. How do you want me to please you?”
The long, midnight dark strands of his hair fell around his face to caress her arms, the tops of her breasts. The soft warmth, so at odds with the hard flesh and powerful muscle of the man taking her was a stimulus that nearly pitched her into complete rapture.
The need for orgasm was overriding. It was in every throb of her heart and every rapid pulse of blood through her veins. It was in every moan, every cry, and every breath she drew.
“Fuck me,” she cried, the desperate, ragged sob tearing from her chest as hunger reached a fever pitch. “Please, Stygian, please fuck me, hard—Oh God…”
Moving, pulling back then lunging forward, Stygian set a hard, fast rhythm that had her crying, begging, pushing back into him with each forceful, shocking thrust inside her pussy.
Each hard, heated stroke inside the overheated depths of her cunt had her back arching, her hips lifting and incoherent pleas falling from her lips.
Yet he was in no hurry to find his release. He was in no hurry to push her into orgasm.
As the wide shaft delved repeatedly into the saturated depths of her sex, his large hands roved from her hips, up her stomach and to her breasts.
Cupping the swollen globes as he pushed inside the aching depths of her pussy, he growled at her ear, his thumbs tweaking her nipples, sending rioting fingers of electric sensation pulsing through her body.
When she swore she could take no more, that the pleasure would destroy her, his hands moved from her breasts, making the return path to her hips. There, one hand gripped the quivering flesh as the other slid caressingly over the curve of her rear.
Pulling back, forcing her to release the sensual clamp on his cock, his fingers slid between the cheeks of her rear. Returning in a hard, bold thrust, a calloused fingertip pressed against the forbidden entrance he found there.
Instinct had her stilling. Pleasure had her shuddering as she waited.
Stygian never paused. Moving against her, filling her, retreating, shafting inside her with increasingly hard strokes as the pleasure built with brutal intensity. At the same time, the hand at her hip moved lower and with the other, spread the curves, sending a prickling sensation pulling at the hidden entrance.
With each hard thrust inside her, the sensations at her rear increased. The parting of her flesh, the tip of his finger rubbing against the puckered entrance, sliding lower to gather her juices and ease them back, rubbing, pressing, sliding. Pleasure built to a golden haze that obliterated everything but the driving, uncontrolled race to release. To that moment when ecstasy slammed through her body and, somehow, Stygian pierced her soul.
Liza dug her nails into the cushions of the couch, panting for air as the overwhelming pleasure suffused every particle of her being.
The feel of Stygian against her back, surrounding her, holding her, taking her with a desperation and hunger that wrapped around her with such heat she felt seared by it, wrapped around her senses.
Heavily lubricated with her juices, the tip of his finger slid inside the snug entrance of her rear, adding to the fury of sensations spiraling through her body.
Her hips arched, driving the thick width of his cock deeper, lodging his fingertip further inside her as she relished eac