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There was no escaping the emotions suddenly racing through her with the same force of his semen spilling into her.
Fear.
Hope.
Love.
She didn’t want to feel any of the emotions she couldn’t seem to hold back any longer.
Shuddering beneath him, her arm bent to maintain the hold she had on his hair as he covered her from behind, the feel of his teeth locked in her shoulder, the certainty that more than mating held them together, overwhelmed her. The well of emotion burning inside her now held her to him, opened a part of her she hadn’t known she possessed, and she felt him move right in.
He was locked to her body.
He was locked to her heart.
He had invaded her soul.
And Liza knew she would never be free of him.
CHAPTER 15
Stygian’s arms surrounded her, holding her close to his chest, the even beat of his heart a comforting sound beneath her ear after he’d carried her to the bed and tucked her in against him.
With her hand resting against the hard, corded strength of his abdomen, Liza tried to force her emotions, her need to be a part of him, at bay.
It had started the moment she had met him, she realized. This need to share every part of herself, to be with him what she had never been with anyone else.
No one knew her, not even Claire or Chelsea or Isabelle—not fully. She’d never wanted anyone to know her either, until now.
Until Stygian.
Oh, she had friends. Friends who knew parts of her, who cared for her, those who trusted her with their lives. The person they saw was a far cry from the person she was inside. The person she was, inside, seemed to come together in ways it never had, right here, in Stygian’s arms.
“Sometimes, I feel as though I’ve never been real,” she whispered, unable to still the need to share what she had never shared with anyone else. “It wasn’t so bad before the wreck Claire and I were in. When it began, I thought it was involuntary, because I couldn’t make it stop. But, in the past week, I’ve realized that maybe it wasn’t involuntary, that maybe it was me all along.” And the knowledge of that weighed on her heart like a massive stone, threatening to crush it.
“You’re very real, Liza. Warm, living, breathing. How could you not feel real?” he asked her, his fingers caressing her bare shoulder, brushing against the mating mark and reminding her in a way nothing else could that she finally belonged somewhere.
She belonged to somebody.
“Am I? Was I?” Tilting her head back, she stared up at him, feeling the misery welling inside her. “Sometimes, it’s like there’s this other person that’s just waiting inside me, biding her time, knowing she’ll be free.” Her eyes filled with tears as she admitted to him what she knew she could never admit to anyone else. And there was so much more. So many secrets she felt waiting to be free, and a knowledge that she could be—
“Trust me, baby,” he whispered, the blue of his eyes holding her gaze, binding her to him as she swore she could feel him even into her soul. “I wouldn’t betray you. Not for anyone. Not for anything. You understand that, don’t you?”
Did he suspect what she suspected herself? What she was beginning to believe? That somehow the impossible had happened.
“I remember when I was five,” she cried out, misery echoing in the low tone of her voice “I remember Dad teaching me to ride my bike. I remember my first day of third grade. I remember always being friends with Isabelle, Chelsea and Claire. I remember it, Stygian.”
Those memories were so much a part of her that she knew those events had occurred.
Stygian tensed beneath her, his fingers pausing in their caressing motions for just a moment as Liza silently prayed for an answer. Any answer other than the one she knew they had to begin discussing.
A subject that had her chest tightening in such panic that she felt as though she had to struggle to breathe, to live, because the dark terror rising in her mind was something she feared more than she feared the truth.
“I’ll protect you,” he swore quietly, his tone rumbling with sincerity and his belief that he could do so.
“At what cost?” A bitter laugh escaped her. “What if there is no protection, Stygian? What if I’m really not who you and Jonas hope I am, but I’m just crazy instead? That’s always a possibility. That’s more a possibility than some miracle that I suddenly acquired a dead girl’s memories and her life. Don’t you see that?”
“I see a lot of possibilities, sweetheart.” He sighed. “But your insanity, or any possibility of it, is not an option. If that were true, the animal instincts I possess would already have warned me of the possibility.”
