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He let his gaze rove over her, taking in the sheet that barely covered her breasts, the long, dark blond hair that fell around her face and shoulders, a few heavy strands falling over her breasts, before he answered with a small smile. “No. And I didn’t expect her to.”
He could feel her sadness reaching him. It wasn’t pity, something he wouldn’t have tolerated; rather, it was a sincere sorrow that such a choice had been demanded.
“I’ve watched all the documentaries on the Breeds,” she said softly. “The scientists and soldiers were monsters in their treatment. To take something so essential as parents and family and make a crime of wanting or needing them was inhumane.”
“That was the point,” he reminded her. “We were led to believe we weren’t human, Liza. That emotions, family, love, they were all things we had no capacity to feel, let alone ache for or hunger for. As though they could force us to be as unemotional and uncaring as the robots they wanted us to be.”
It was no longer enraging.
At one time, talk of those dark, horrifying years would have led him quickly down a path of rage that would inevitably lead to snarling fury.
To allow such emotions to rip through him now would mean releasing the hold he had on the gentle warmth that filled his arms at the moment. It simply wasn’t worth it. They were now days long gone, and if the Breeds were diligent, if Stygian was extremely careful, then they were days he would never be forced to repeat.
“I remember watching the video cast when Callan Lyons revealed the existence of the Breeds,” Liza said then. “It was as though the world was holding its breath, certain it had to be some horrible farce. That there was no way humans could be so inhuman. That such monsters could exist. Only to learn it was much worse than we had ever imagined.”
“Worse, yes,” he agreed as he let his fingers thread into the heavy length of her hair. “But freedom was much sweeter, the realizations of the gifts that were actually given became more cherished. I would not trade who and what I am, because in doing so, I would have missed this night, and I would have missed loving you.”
She was retreating.
Stygian felt it with a sense of shock.
Her reaction was so swift, so instantaneous he nearly missed that critical point in pulling her back.
A snarl pulled at his lips as his hand wrapped around her neck, jerking her to him with a swiftness that had that internal attempt to disappear from him emotionally pausing.
“You will not,” he snarled, his lips nearly touching hers, his gaze holding hers, shock filling it as her lips parted on a gasp. “You will not go away from me in such a way, Liza. Never again. Do you understand me?”
“Don’t.” Her fingers curled against his chest, as though she could force him to release her with such a paltry resistance. “Let me go.”
“Little coward,” he bit out, feeling the strike of her anger as it began to burn inside her mind. “You run and hide like a child, terrified of the responsibility of being an adult. Have I mated a woman or a child in a woman’s body?”
“You didn’t even warn me of what was coming,” she accused him roughly. “I didn’t accept this.”
“The hell you didn’t.” His laughter was rough, bitter. “You knew, Liza. Deny it all you wish. You watched Isabelle and Malachi for weeks, you knew there was more than just the love you could see in their expressions for each other. Such a deep, fierce emotion is more than humans experience without something paranormal fueling it. Admit it: You knew. And I told you before I brought you to this bed that you were my mate. That mating heat bound us.”
She tried to shake her head, to jerk from the grip of his fingers around the back of her neck.
“Lie to my face,” he growled. “Go ah
ead, mate. Say the fucking words, I dare you.”
“Stop pushing me!” The cry was torn from her heart. “You didn’t tell me you loved me.”
Stygian felt her pain, felt something tearing at her, some knowledge rising inside her that terrified her. That terrified him. God above knew what he suspected it was. Such fear was more than simply a woman’s fear of the unknown, of a broken heart, or a male whose dominance was unlike any she had known before.
No, this fear was pure self-defense.
“I won’t let you go.” Nipping at her lips, he lifted her to him, one hand jerking the sheet from her body, leaving her lying against his chest, naked and warm and filled with such emotion that he swore his heart would break from her pain. “You knew where this was going. Did you think nature and God would have bound us so tightly together without love being at the core of those bonds?”
“Stop this, Stygian,” she tried to demand, but he had heard enough.
Lowering his head, he caught her lips in a kiss that he feared would steal the soul from his body.
The glands beneath his tongue were pounding with a sudden infusion of hormones. The spicy taste that filled his mouth was richer, more heated than before, the hormone strengthening in response to her denial of him, her denial of the mating that had already been established.
The animal genetics that drove him would never allow him to walk away, nor would it allow her to retreat.
His tongue pushed past her lips, stroked against hers and gave her the taste of pure lust. An ambrosia created to bind the perfect heart to his Breed soul.
