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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.
