She stared up at him, refusing to back down despite the trepidation she could feel tightening her stomach.
“Can I leave now?” she asked.
“Stygian.” Jonas’s voice was low as Liza looked over his shoulder once again only to have her gaze caught and held by the Breed watching her from behind the director.
“Director,” he answered Wyatt.
“Would you please escort Ms. Johnson home?”
“With pleasure.”
“Thank you.” Jonas was smirking now, and the sight of it had an edge of panic tightening her throat rather than generating trepidation in her stomach.
Her gaze narrowed on him. He was up to something. She could just feel it.
“Ms. Johnson.” Stygian stepped around Jonas, his powerful arm reaching out to indicate the door. “This way.”
With pleasure.
With one last wary glance at the supremely confident, satisfied look on the director’s face, Liza turned and made her way to the door.
She could feel the big Breed behind her as she walked. Another Breed—this one she knew by the name of Rule Breaker—opened the door and stepped back.
Nodding to him, she left quickly, eager to put this particular experience behind her, get home and figure out what the hell was going on.
She couldn’t help but think of those pictures: the images of the two girls, so obviously in pain and filled with fear.
Especially the girl with her parents.
What kind of parents could turn their child over to monsters like the Genetics Council and just leave her with them? Alone? In pain?
Surely, those parents had to be just as cruel.
Just as monstrous.
Except, it wasn’t cruelty she had seen in the eyes of the mother and father in the picture with their child.
It had been agony.
Megan stared at the door, her senses penetrating it, following the young woman as she made her way to the elevator with Stygian.
She closed her eyes slowly, let her senses ease gently into Liza Johnson’s emotions and searched for any hint of Honor Roberts, Fawn Corrigan, a Bengal named Judd or one named Gideon.
The only hint she found of them was a deep compassion and a sense of unease and disbelief that Honor Roberts’s parents had left their child with monsters.
There was no sense of the girl, Honor, though, nor of Fawn.
As Liza entered the elevator with Stygian, Megan quickly retreated from the girl’s senses, a flush stealing up her face as the sudden images that flashed through Liza’s mind began to enflame her senses.
Some things were just invasive, and remaining with the girl’s mind at that moment was just that.
Opening her eyes to find everyone watching her only increased the color in her cheeks. Clearing her throat, she glanced at her mate with a suggestive look. “Perhaps we do have things to learn.” She laughed, thinking of the mental images that had raced through Liza’s mind the second she and Stygian were alone.
And Stygian’s reaction was so strong Megan had sensed it as well.
Braden gave her one of those slow, drowsy-eyed looks that never failed to make her body heat and her pu**y tingle.
He just had that way about him.
“You two can get a bedroom after this meeting is over,” Jonas growled, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring back at them.
He had a right to glower.
Megan sobered instantly, the knowledge that time was running out for his mate’s child was at the top of his mind.
“She doesn’t know anything about them.” She sighed, shaking her head. “She doesn’t know of them, or have any of their memories. It’s another dead end.”
“That’s impossible.” Diane Broen stepped forward.
Diane was an enforcer, a lethal weapon, just as her mate was. And just as Megan and her mate were, Diane was an enforcer desperate to save the child they all loved.
“There’s no way she could have hidden it from me, Diane,” Megan told the other woman gently. “Her mind and emotions weren’t closed at all. She was an open book all the way to her lust for Stygian, who is her mate by the way. You can’t hide only certain parts of yourself psychically like that. An empath can either read all of you, or none of you.”
“An empath can only read what is a part of you,” Jonas stated cryptically, immediately sending warning flares through her empathic senses. “Not what has perhaps been misplaced.”
CHAPTER 3
The elevator door slid closed with a soft swish of air, leaving Liza enclosed in a space that seemed far too small with Stygian beside her.
“These women you’re looking for have nothing to do with me,” she stated as a wave of heated arousal swept through her.
No sooner had she experienced that sensation of flooding warmth, than Liza found herself lifted, pressed against the elevator wall and the iron-hot length of Stygian’s erection lodged between her thighs, tormenting her through the layers of their clothing.
The tight running pants and thin exercise bra were little protection against the burning heat of his body—and his hunger.
“What—?” Lips parting, for breath or for his kiss?
Liza wasn’t certain, but she knew she needed both—ached for both to the point that it took several heartbeats to realize she was holding her breath.
And that her hands were gripping the hard width of his shoulders.
“What?” he growled. “What are you questioning, Liza? My hunger—or yours?”
Her stomach tightened, rippling in response to the hunger in his voice as a growl rumbled beneath the word.
“Let me go.” The demand was undermined by the whimpering need in her body.
Hell, she may as well be begging him to continue for all the denial that wasn’t in her voice.
“Let you go?” He pressed tighter into the cradle of her thighs as his hands parted them further. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”
The black in his eyes flickered with blue, fascinating her with the sparkle of color.
Her br**sts trembled against the hard width of his chest as her breathing accelerated. Heat flushed her face, spreading through her body as she fought to keep her lashes from drifting closed.
As she stared up at him, she felt one hand move from her hips a second before his palm slapped against the elevator control panel. The cubicle came to a stop, lights flashing before they dimmed and remained steady. The electronic voice warned: “Please be patient, we are working to reset operation.”