If he lost her—
God help them both if they lost her.
CHAPTER 10
Liza had learned years before exactly how to avoid the facts of life.
Stepping into the hotel room and seeing the two beds separated by a small table, she sighed heavily.
“Really?” She turned back to him in disbelief. “They didn’t have a larger room? A suite, perhaps?”
His shoulders lifted, a rakish smile curling his lips despite the somberness in his dark eyes. “Hotel’s all booked up, sweetheart.”
Of course it was.
“You have a few of your sleep shirts in the wardrobe.” He indicated the tall entertainment center with its four drawers beneath the screen. “Isabelle had one of the officers who followed us to the hotel go back for them. There are clothes in there as well.”
“Great, some guy pawing through my clothes.” It was all she could do to hold back a shudder at the thought.
“It wasn’t like that, Liza.” The frustration in his voice only seemed to infuriate her further.
Turning on him, she crossed her arms beneath her br**sts and confronted him with all the anger she couldn’t seem to bury. “It wasn’t like what, Stygian? Like some ass**le pawing through my silk panties and bras? Do you think they didn’t snicker as they chose the gowns? That they didn’t imagine me naked or wearing one of the silk camisoles I sleep in? Since when are Breeds any better than any other man when it comes to lust?”
Dropping her arms, she turned to stalk to the bathroom, to get away from him. To strangle the fury tearing through her before she choked them both with it.
Before she was entirely certain what was happening, Liza found herself being pulled around and hauled against Stygian’s chest, his large hand still holding the arm he had gripped to pull her to him.
“Do you really believe I would allow another man to do something so damned intimate?” he growled, shocking her.
That was possessiveness in his voice. That low, primal growl held a vein of pure, determined ownership that at once pricked her independence and pulled at the woman who longed to belong—
To something. To someone.
“I don’t really know what you would do, do I, Stygian?” Her breathing was suddenly rough, heavy.
The need to know if Isabelle had been right about a Breed’s kiss being addictive was suddenly overwhelming. If not addictive, then what about the aphrodisiac it was supposed to contain?
She licked her lips, suddenly desperate for the answer.
“No male Breed pawed through your clothing, your silk, or your gowns,” he snarled down at her. “Ashley chose each piece and she alone packed it before the Breed who drove her back to the house returned her to the hotel. Never, ever, Liza”—his lips were so close to hers now that she swore she could almost feel them against hers—“would I allow another man to touch what you would wear so intimately against your flesh.”
Breathing was a chore. Her chest was so tight with the need to hold back the moan rising inside it that she felt light-headed from the battle. Every second that she felt the heat of his chest sinking past their clothing to the sensitive, peaked hardness of her ni**les, she could feel the flesh between her thighs growing wetter.
She wanted him.
She had never wanted a man in her life. She had thought that part of herself must have surely died in the wreck when she was fifteen. Before then, there had been very little interest in the opposite sex. Afterward, there had been none.
Until Stygian.
“I hate this,” she suddenly whispered as her fingers curled against the powerful muscles of his chest, desperate to keep herself from ripping at his body.
“Hate what?” His free hand cupped her face, his thumb brushing against the plump curve of her lower lip then.
Oh, he knew what. She could see it in the sudden intensity of his gaze, feel it whipping through the air between them and torturing them both with the hungry need for it.
As her tongue swiped over the painful dryness of her lips, it licked over the tip of his thumb. The sudden, explosive taste of salty male flesh rushed through her senses, overtaking them for one destructive second.
“I’ve never wanted—” Her breathing hitched painfully. “I never wanted this, Stygian. I didn’t want to be torn apart like this. To be destroyed by something I couldn’t control or teased by a man who’s far too aware of my weaknesses.”
She couldn’t bear it. To be played with. To ache and to want, to hunger for something and have no name to give to what she hungered for.
To her, it was the worst possible tease.
“Tease you?” His voice was suddenly rougher, grating as he wrapped one arm around her back and pulled her closer. “I’d never tease you, Liza. I promise, I’m entirely, wholeheartedly serious about this. About you.”
His head lowered and his lips touched hers.
She was shaking. Like a leaf in the storm and any other cliché that slipped through her suddenly too-alert brain.
Shudders of reaction began tearing through her as her lips parted and his settled more firmly against them, opening them, owning them.
His tongue swiped over her lips, flicked past them and licked over her tongue.
Suddenly, she knew what Isabelle had meant. His kiss was like a summer rainstorm, lightning and thunder chaos clamoring through her system as the taste of summer heat rushed through her senses.
His lips slanted over hers, his hands pulling her closer as the feel of his erection pressing against her stomach had her tilting her hips and arching to meet him.
Blood thundered through her veins, the fiery need spreading through her body, clamoring for more, burning away any objections she could have made.
Desire burned through her in ways she couldn’t have anticipated. It sizzled across her flesh, sensitizing it, creating a receptive base for each touch he should deign to stroke across it.
And she wanted each touch.
His tongue flicked across her lips, teasing and heating them. She licked against it, loving that wild, stormy taste. Then it sank between her lips once again, giving her only seconds to close her lips over it, to contain the taste filling her system before it retreated once again.
Oh God, the pleasure was exquisite.
Her ni**les hardened furiously. The pressure of her bra against the sensitive tips was almost agony, so she took it off.
It wasn’t the fabric she wanted touching her. It was his hands, his fingers. She wanted the feel of his flesh against hers creating that roughened, electric pulse of sensations that raced across her skin.