Breeds: Stygian's Honour Part 29

"I just need to think for a while."

"You're not thinking, you're hiding," he ac- cused her again. "You're hiding so well that 409/862.

even my animal senses can't seem to find you."

As though that was a bad thing. She was thankful for it.

The rough quality of his voice, slightly de- manding and dominant, had the power to make her nervous though, to a.s.sure her he intended to drag her back from wherever she had gone to hide.

"I'm going in." She felt a hundred years old as she gripped the door handle and moved to release it.

"No." Just that easy, he stopped her as his fingers curled around her upper arm. "Let's take a ride instead."

"Where?" She didn't really care where. It didn't matter if she went inside. It didn't matter if she didn't.

"Where you and Claire were in that acci- dent when you were fifteen."

Panic stole her breath as it slammed into her stomach with a punch of horror. No, she 410/862.

couldn't return there. She had never re- turned to the actual site where the accident occurred and she wasn't going to do it now.

"No." Shaking off the loose grip, she was out of the SUV and striding quickly to the house as she pulled her bag from her shoulder, opened it, and dug the house key from inside.

She never had a chance to use it.

The front door swung open and that d.a.m.ned cigar-smoking Coyote with the smug smile and knowing gray eyes leaned against her door frame with arrogant confidence.

"h.e.l.lo, kids." He grinned around the cigar clamped between his teeth before reaching up to grip it in his fingers and lower it from his lips.

"What is he doing in my house?" Turning to Stygian, Liza found herself jerked back to reality with a suddenness that had her breath heaving.

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The distance was gone. The inability to feel the panic, fear, but especially the overriding hunger and desperate need for something she had no idea how to describe, came crash- ing inside her as the abrupt appearance of the Coyote sent a rush of adrenaline cras.h.i.+ng through her.

Dog straightened from the door frame, his expression morphing from the smug arrog- ance to complete business.

"He's merely helping his men complete the security system the Bureau ordered for backup in the house," he told them. "I apolo- gize for the inconvenience, ma'am."

"Don't call me ma'am and please get the h.e.l.l out of my way." Brus.h.i.+ng past him, Liza entered the living room to find Chelsea, a suitcase sitting beside her as she stared around the house with a frown.

"You're leaving?" Liza came to a stop, her emotions, already thrown into chaos with too 412/862.

many sensations and suspicions, rife with confusion.

"I think you know we can't stay here, Liza."

Chelsea sighed, her brown eyes somber.

"Malachi and Isabelle have offered their spare room until this is over." Her lips tilted at the corner. "Besides, there are a few too many Breeds lounging around here." Her eyes slid to the Breed stretched back at the bottom of the stairs, propped on his elbows and watching them with mocking silence.

Loki. He pretended and played at charm and sensual abandon, but there was something tormented and angry that drove that Breed.

She barely held back the agonized cry trapped in her throat as fear slammed inside her. How did she know that? How could she sense those emotions churning inside the Breed? And why had she sensed her father's lies and deceits at the office? Sensed them with such strength that it was like staring 413/862.

inside him and seeing his hatred for Stygian and his fears for her.

"I understand." Forcing herself to nod as though she did understand, Liza admitted she didn't understand a d.a.m.ned thing any- more. "Hopefully this will all be over soon."

"That's what we hoped when Malachi's crew showed up. You know, I like Ashley and the girls who visit, but these male Breeds are p.r.i.c.ks." Chelsea shrugged as she glanced around the room at the Coyote Breeds work- ing there. "Oh well. I guess we have to take the good with the bad, right?"

"So we were taught," Liza agreed, aching with the loss tearing through her.

She hated this. She hated everything she was losing and everything she could feel threatening to come alive inside her. And for a moment, she hated herself for the weak- ness she could feel. Fear. Panic. It was all there.

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The knowledge that there was something at the edge of her mind waiting to destroy her tormented her.

The aching arousal and burning need for Stygian's touch only seemed to make it worse. Whatever was awakening within her, it had begun with this hunger for a Breed.

"Come on, Liza, we knew this was coming when Isabelle was nearly taken." Chelsea sighed as Liza watched her painfully. "We've just been fighting it, hating the fact that we've had to give up our freedom for a while."

Perhaps all Chelsea was giving up was her freedom, Liza thought. Liza could sense los- ing so much more than her freedom though.

"Maybe." Liza shrugged. "Tell Isabelle and Malachi I said hi."

What more could she say? She couldn't beg Chelsea not to leave when she knew her- self that even she couldn't stay. Not right now. Perhaps not ever.

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Striding to her, Chelsea gave her a tight hug. "It won't be too long, Liza," she prom- ised. "And you know we're going to invade that hotel they've stuck you in and have a total girls'-night-out s.h.i.+ndig."

"I'll hold you to that." A tight, brief hug and Liza released her friend before stepping back.

"Well, come on, Loki." Chelsea gave the Breed one of those superior, you-are-my-ser- vant looks that she was so well known for.

Loki eased from the stairs with a lazy smile and amus.e.m.e.nt gleaming in his dark gray eyes. "'Please' not in your vocabulary, sweetheart?"

"Neither is 'sweetheart,'" she a.s.sured him.

"So let's get moving. Isabelle promised me lunch."

"Lunch sounds good." Loki seemed a bit more energetic at the mention of food.

"You weren't invited," Chelsea informed him.

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To that, the Breed only laughed as he picked up her suitcase and followed her to the front door as Dog, Mongrel and Mutt bid Stygian good-bye and left as well.

The house was empty but for her and Sty- gian now.

Turning to him, her gaze went instantly to his, the glints of blue in the night-black background more intense than before.

"You always know, don't you?" She had to draw in a hard, deep breath at that realiza- tion. "No matter what I'm feeling. No matter how aroused or how angry I am."

"Or how distant you are." He inclined his head in agreement.

"Can you sense it with everyone?" Wrap- ping her arms across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, she con- sidered how she would feel if he could sense every woman's arousal for him.

Because no doubt, there were quite a few women more than interested in taking him to their bed.

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His lips pursed thoughtfully. "In some situations," he finally admitted. "But our senses in regard to our mates are incredibly heightened, Liza. That's how I know when you've retreated to the point that you're barely on the same plane with the rest of us mortals."

She flinched, jerking her gaze from his and looking away as he moved closer to her.

"It's how I knew the second that distance began easing and your need for me kicked in with a vengeance. The mating heat may ease when you do that, but it will also bring you back to me. You may have found a way to delay it at times, in ways no one else can, but you'll pay for it when you return."

"So you admit it exists?" Why wasn't she even surprised? Or angry? "So you have to wait until you kiss your mate before you can tell them about it?"

He shook his head. "No, I have to wait to be certain you won't reveal it to anyone, even 418/862 friends or family. Because the news stories are partially true. Mating heat has the poten- tial to destroy us, because we don't com- pletely understand it ourselves. How do you a.s.sure others it's not something they should fear if you can't explain exactly what it is?"

"So why tell me now?"

He stared back at her, his gaze somber, in- tense. "Because we both know where it's go- ing. You've known what was coming and you've still come to me. You know where it's going. Why fight it any longer?"

"Why me?" Turning back to him, she asked the question that had plagued her since the moment she realized something wasn't exactly right with the attraction she felt for him. That it was more intense, more primal.

"If I knew that, then I would have the single secret that could possibly save the Breeds from extinction should the world ever learn of the mating heat, Liza." His fingers 419/862.

curled around her upper arm as he pulled her closer.

The heat of his body met the chill in hers before it sank to that core of lava-hot arousal simmering and growing inside her.

A hard, involuntary breath pushed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s against his chest while he pulled her even closer with a hand at her hip. When she was flush against his body, the length of his erection imprinting itself against her lower stomach sent a wave of furious heat was.h.i.+ng through her.

"See?" he murmured as he laid his lips against her temple. "It's like fire and gas.

One touch is all it takes to make the arousal burn brighter, make it torment and ache un- til nothing helps but another, deeper touch."

His touch firmed, gripping the silk of her s.h.i.+rt and pulling it from the belted band of her skirt. Pressing his hand beneath the ma- terial, the calloused palm stroked up her spine, sending a s.h.i.+ver raging across her 420/862.

flesh as pleasure flared from each point of contact.

"And it doesn't stop?" Could that be pos- sible? Could the tabloids have that much right? That the Breeds, like some of their an- imal cousins, mated for life?

"It doesn't stop." His breathing was heav- ier now, his tone rougher, rasping as his head lowered, his lips brus.h.i.+ng down her neck, the wet heat of his tongue licking against her flesh.

Tilting her head to the side, Liza all but begged for more. Just that one careless caress against her neck was enough to send a spike of sensation racing through her nerve endings and peaking in her swollen c.l.i.t and the clenched, saturated depths of her p.u.s.s.y.

Her hips moved involuntarily, rubbing the sensitive nub of her c.l.i.t against the hard muscle of his thigh as his lips lingered at the base of her neck, his cheek rubbing against the sensitive flesh of her inner shoulder.

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Each stroke of the wet heat of his tongue against her skin had her body tightening fur- ther. Pleasure and a violent need for more began to ama.s.s in her system.

"The night Isabelle met Malachi," she whispered, the words tearing from her as her fingers moved restlessly over his shoulders, "I watched you in that bar."

"I could smell your heat," he growled as his teeth raked across tender nerve endings at the curve between neck and shoulder. "I waited for you, Liza. Until well after the bar had closed, still I lingered, certain you would return."

Liza felt a rush of regret and hunger as it tore through her. Lifting his head, he met her gaze with his, the blue in his eyes like dark stars on a midnight background.

"I won't wait any longer." He gripping the hem of her blouse and yanked it up.

Lifting her arms, Liza forced back a whim- per as the erotic intensity began to build, the 422/862 heat charging nerve endings she hadn't known her body possessed.

The blouse fluttered to the floor as his hand moved to the small b.u.t.ton and zipper at the side of her skirt. Within seconds, it too slid to the floor, leaving her clad only in the lacy white bra, matching lace thong and nude stockings she'd worn beneath along with black, three-inch heels that she'd seen Stygi- an sneaking glances at earlier.

"G.o.d have mercy," he whispered as though tortured. He stripped his s.h.i.+rt, his gaze nev- er leaving the sight of her.

As he jerked the s.h.i.+rt over his lean, well- muscled stomach, Liza's hands went to the belt of his jeans, fumbling, shaking as she released it and pushed it aside from the metal tab.

She felt like a schoolgirl. G.o.d, how she had longed for this feeling over the years: the excitement and fear, the antic.i.p.ation and the trepidation caused by the unknown.

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As the metal tab and zipper gave way be- neath her fingers, Liza breathed out in shock at the heavy width and weight of the erec- tion. Lifting her gaze to Stygian's face, she slowly shook her head.

"There's no way." She had to swallow past the dryness that attacked her mouth, but her lips still twitched in a vein of amus.e.m.e.nt.

"My G.o.d, Stygian, that's simply not going to fit." And that was not her virginity speaking.

"Oh, I don't think we're going to have a problem with the fit," he a.s.sured her. "The problem will be stopping once I get inside you." His expression was so tight, so intense that once more she felt that punch of reac- tion to her stomach. A tightening of her womb, the clench of her p.u.s.s.y and heated throb of her c.l.i.t just before he swung her up into his arms.

"What are you doing?" Surprise had her locking her arms around his neck.

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"You're killing me here," he growled as he strode to the bedroom. "If I don't get you to the bedroom, I'm going to end up f.u.c.king you on the living room floor."

Oh G.o.d.

She held her breath, forcing herself to hold on to her control.

But G.o.d, how she wanted him.