“Do you know what I can smell, Liza?” The sound of his voice was definitely a growl.
She shook her head slowly.
His head lowered until his lips were caressing her ear. “If the scent of summer heat was addictive, I’d be worshipping at your pussy for life.”
She jerked away from him, breaking from his hold with an ease that assured her he had simply let her go.
Staring up at him, Liza told herself she was certainly insulted at the crude language, though she couldn’t make such an asinine statement pass her lips.
“I refuse to become a summer fuck for you,” she informed him, wondering exactly how much trouble that particular falsehood would get her into if she ever had to face her sins. “So you may as well leave now and stop harassing me. I assure you, I’m not enjoying it.”
He chuckled at the so-obvious lie. And she knew he could sense it as easily as he could sense the building arousal coursing through her body.
“You’re as beautiful lying as you are telling the truth,” he told her, amused. “But, in this case, I could definitely satisfy the truth if you were of a mind to face it.”
Liza tugged at the hem of her blouse before crossing her arms beneath her breasts and attempting to glare at him.
“This is not a complication that I need in my life,” she finally told him as she tried to inject some semblance of determination into her tone. “You are not a complication I need in my life.”
“Thankfully, life enjoys throwing us a few curveballs then,” he stated, a hint of laughter urging her to meet his gaze once again. “Because I think I’m definitely enjoying the complication I know you’re going to be. Come on, Liza, give me a try. You might enjoy me. It’s just a ride on the back of my motorcycle. Nothing more.”
At least he hadn’t come right out and asked her to ride him.
She didn’t dare allow herself to consider that. She was too weak in the face of his flirting, in the certainty that he would rock her little world.
There was nothing more certain to undermine her determination than allowing herself to admit any weakness at all to him. He was a Breed, and she was certain all that Breed-driven testosterone and dominance would be sure to test her will.
From what she’d seen between her friend Isabelle and her new lover, Malachi, Breeds enjoyed nothing better than pushing the women they called their “mates” into fits of anger or arousal.
As though it were some prerogative they had invented themselves.
“I don’t need this particular curveball either,” she assured him as she moved to leave the kitchen.
Instead, she found her arm gripped by his big hand as she was swung around and once again pressed against the cabinet.
Held there, captured between his hard body and the wood cabinet behind her, there was really no true escape.
No escape from him, or from the arousal burning through her vagina and clenching her womb.
“This curveball is going to be unavoidable,” he assured her as she stared up at him, feeling the blood rushing to her nipples, her clitoris, and then surging in excitement back to her overworked heart.
“Few things are unavoidable, Stygian,” she assured him, thought it was all she could do to keep her tone even and confident.
The even part, she was a little weak on. Come to think of it, she might have been a little lax in the confidence department as well. She was getting really good at the resigned part, though.
Resigned to the fact that the need was growing.
Resigned to the fact that there was no avoiding it.
Hell, resigned to the fact that soon, very soon, she would be begging him to fuck her.
Watching, her heart racing, her breathing uneven, Liza parted her lips as his head lowered, his lips almost touching hers, so close she swore she could feel the warmth of them caressing her softer curves.
“I don’t want your kiss until I’m certain the sheer anticipation of it will make me crazy.”
“Breeds are already crazy,” she promised him, her voice weak enough now that she was mentally cursing herself for it. “So don’t try to blame that one on me. And you can just keep anticipating, because I’m rather inclined to keep my kisses to myself.”
Yet she was tilting her head to the side to give him greater access to the lobe of her ear as she felt his lips brush against it.
“You don’t know what you’re tempting.” The rough, primal sound of his voice had her heart skipping a beat before racing double time.
“Let me go and it won’t be a problem,” she promised him, even though she knew from the bottom of her soul that the last thing she wanted was for him to release her.
The last thing she should do was remain there in his arms—not when she wanted his touch like she had wanted nothing in her life.
And that thought, so shocking, so terrifying, had her forcing her hands to push at him rather than simply absorbing the heat through his shirt, into her flesh.
“Letting you go isn’t so easy, Liza.” His lips moved lower, brushing against her neck, intensifying that arc of sizzling sensation from her neck straight to her nipples, then to her clit.
Liza forced herself to drag in a deep breath, only to find her senses infused with the scent of midnight and forests. And there wasn’t a single damned forest anywhere close. Which meant it was the scent of the Breed holding her that was tempting her with the lush, sensual scent.
“Make it easy.” Forcing the words to her lips was harder than she had ever imagined it would be. “Let me go, Stygian, because this isn’t what I want.”
He stiffened against her.
Oh God, if he didn’t listen to her soon, she was going to be begging him to kiss her, to touch her, to fuck her right there against the kitchen cabinet where her friends could walk in at any moment.
“Liza, there’s a strange cycle in the driveway. Do you think it’s—Oh—” Chelsea’s voice dwindled to nothing as Liza jumped in guilt and tried, once again unsuccessfully, to push Stygian’s broad form away from her.
Her head turned, catching her friend’s shocked expression as she stood frozen in the patio doorway. It was as though she was unable to tear her gaze from the sight of Liza held so close to Stygian’s much larger body.
“Close your mouth, Chelsea,” Liza ordered irritably as she pushed at Stygian again. “He’ll let me go or I’m going to see how much damage I can do when I start driving my knee into certain parts of his body.” She shot him a decidedly threatening look with a tight smile as she tensed her knee in preparation.
His lashes lowered again, that wicked “fuck you” look spearing straight to her core and clenching her womb in an exquisite need that nearly stole her breath.
She was going to leave with him. Liza knew she was.
She was simply too weak, and she wanted to be close to him, wanted to tempt her own destruction too desperately.
Emotional suicide.
That was what it was, emotional suicide, and she was helpless against the voice whispering inside herself to just go for it. To take it. To tempt fate. To tempt destruction.
To tempt a Breed.
“I’m going out for the morning, Chel,” she told her friend as her gaze locked with Stygian’s once again. “I’ll have my phone on me if you need me.”
If Cullen called and plans changed or if Ashley, Emma, Chimera and Shiloh decided to arrive earlier than normal.
But would either of those things really matter?
Because it was the job of the Navajo Breed Underground Network to find her first, and to offer her asylum.
That was her job, and if this Breed had information about how to find the two women and the Bengal Breed they were searching for, then perhaps it would help her to find them first.