His hands tightened at her hips again before sliding to her rear. Holding her still, he allowed a growl to erupt from his throat a second before he surged upward, shafting inside her in one full stroke.
Liza tipped her head back, a keening cry escaping her throat as pleasure and pain combined to send her senses spinning in a winding spiral.
Once he was fully embedded inside her, she couldn’t remain still. She needed those long, hard strokes. She needed the fiery, pleasure/pain of the heavy thrusts fucking inside her, driving her insane with an ecstasy she couldn’t have anticipated.
She wanted all of him.
His hard possession.
His arms surrounding her.
And his kiss.
“Oh God, kiss me,” she whispered, the need for his taste riding her as hard as he was with the heavy width of his cock.
His hand cupped the back of her neck, pulling her forward with a move so powerfully dominant it sent a surge of pure sensation tearing across her nerve endings.
Hungry and filled with lust, his tongue slipped past her lips, licked at her tongue and gave her the taste she was craving.
Flames licked at her insides. Perspiration dewed their skin, making their bodies slicker, hotter as Stygian’s thrusts became more powerful.
Each driving stroke inside the tender depths of her sex dragged a near-startled cry from her lips, the sound vibrating into their kiss as Stygian gave a harsh, primal growl.
In the next second, he was no longer propped against the pillows but lying flat as his hips drove upward, burying his cock to the very heart of her.
Explosions began detonating inside her as that hard, fierce stroke seemed to connect with every live nerve ending brought to painful awareness.
She wanted to scream; instead, she lost her breath. The power, the sheer depth of sensation allowed for no other response, no other function. She was trembling, ecstatic, hurled from reality to a place so brilliant, so filled with light, sensation and ecstasy that even breathing couldn’t be allowed to interfere.
Stygian’s release felt just as powerful. The jetting spurts of his release, the strength of the swelling in his cock as it locked them together, the fierce growl that broke from his lips, assured her he was there with her. Spiraling into flames so brilliant, so white-hot that she knew a part of her—an important, intrinsic part—had just been lost to him.
And it would have been terrifying. It should have been terrifying. But even as she lost that part of herself, she could have sworn she felt a part of him slipping into her soul as well.
There would be no more distance, not from this man, from this Breed she had allowed to mate her.
What had she been thinking?
Lying against his chest, fighting to catch her breath, to still the tremors still racing through her, Liza couldn’t explain, even to herself, why she had taken that step to test the tabloid rumors.
Ashley had warned them years ago to tread carefully when dealing with Breed males and their sexuality. She had told Chelsea, Liza, Claire and Isabelle there were hazards they could never imagine.
Well, she could imagine them now.
Now that he was lifting his lips from her neck, laying a gentle kiss to the tender flesh where he had bitten her once again.
Slowly, she could feel the easing of the iron-hard knot that had filled her,
They were both exhausted, and she was starving. Too hungry to sleep, and too damned tired to get up and cook.
“I could have Jonas send us some food from the hotel,” he said as though reading her thoughts.
Her thoughts, or the growling of her belly.
“’Kay,” she mumbled.
“You have to move, mate.” He chuckled beneath her.
“Why? Phone’s by the bed. Use it.”
“Sorry, baby, that line’s not near secure enough to suit me.” A quick kiss to her lips and he was rolling with her.
Depositing her to her back, Stygian lifted himself from the bed and padded naked into the other room.
Liza stayed where she was. Her legs were still jelly. She swore she’d fall flat on her face if she had to actually walk.
“We have to return to the hotel.”
It was the harshness in Stygian’s voice that had her turning to her back and staring up at him with a frown.
“What?”
“Get dressed. Gideon Cross was sighted at a service station just outside Window Rock an hour ago and he was asking about you and Claire. There’s no time left, Liza. We have to move.”
“How do you know that?” Gripping the quilt to her breasts, she stared back at him, apprehension beginning to churn through her. “Why would he let himself be seen?”
“I don’t know why,” he growled. “Ashley and Emma sighted him and called in. By the time they turned around, he was speeding away on a trail bike and hit the desert. They lost him from there.”
He was asking about her and Claire?
Liza could feel herself shaking from the inside out. Feel a sudden terror racing through her.
She could feel, sense some knowledge rising inside her. There was something she needed to tell him, but as quickly as the thought flashed across her mind, it was gone again.
Where was that internal distance that had been so easy to find earlier?
Where was that ability to retreat? To hide from the sudden, bone-chilling fear and the flash of a face?
But it wasn’t a mature male with a Bengal’s slash across his face. It wasn’t demonic yellow eyes glistening with rage as in the pictures Jonas Wyatt had shown her.
No. It was a young man. In such pain, so fierce and so determined to help them—
Liza stumbled from the bed, suddenly sick to her stomach, capping her hand over her mouth, terrified she would lose her pride and the lunch she had eaten earlier right there on the floor.
She wanted to hide.
She wanted to go away.
Oh God.
Oh God, she had to go away.
She had to escape and there was only one way to do it. There was only one place to hide. There was only that place so deep within herself that there was no chance of danger—
“Liza, stop. You’re safe. Listen to me, baby, you’re safe.”
Stygian had her. His hands were wrapped around her upper arms, holding her to her feet, his voice was calm, firm, insistent, holding her to the present when all she wanted to do was sink as deep inside herself as possible.
“You’re safe,” he said again. “You have time for a quick shower. Dog and his team are moving in and they’ll escort us to the hotel, along with Flint and Rule, where Claire and the team sent to collect her will meet us. Everything’s fine.”
She nodded slowly.
Everything was fine.
Everything but Liza. Because, in a few short minutes she had managed to lose her sense of her training, her independence and her certainty that not just Stygian but also Cullen and the team would be there to support her. For one horrifyingly dark moment, she was alone and facing almost certain death.
She couldn’t let this happen to her. She couldn’t lose herself this way every time something happened. She couldn’t let those dark, hidden memories that weren’t exactly memories, that she knew couldn’t belong to her, erode her control.
And she wouldn’t allow it to, she promised herself, not ever again.
Never would she be weak again.
CHAPTER 14
Claire was waiting with her parents, as well as Liza’s, in the Presidential Suite, sitting still and silent, her hands folded in her lap as she stared down at them.
Entering the room, Liza stared at the assembled Breeds and parents, their expressions quiet, savage or just emotionless.