A brief shrug was all the answer she could come up with.
To be honest, she didn’t know herself where she was at the moment. Was she hiding? Or was she finding something she only found in her nightmares?
Strangely enough, though, she did feel something: the swollen sensitivity of her clit, the engorged readiness of her ni**les, the ache just beneath her skin for his touch. The need for his kiss.
That was odd. She’d never felt such arousal for a man, especially not at a time when whatever emotions caused this distance pulled her back from reality.
Hell, she’d never ached like this for a man period.
“You won’t do this.” There was no anger in his tone.
That too was odd. Even her housemates were known to become angry when Liza let herself become lost, as Claire called it.
And what was it that he wasn’t going to let her do?
She stared at the house. The pretty green, well-watered lawn. The blooms that sprang in abandon through the small flower beds and abundance of shrubs.
The single-story adobe ranch house looked bright, welcoming. The windows and curtains thrown open, the sheers giving her house a slightly hazy, serene look.
She’d worked hard to make the rental a home. Of course, the owner, a good friend of her father’s, had already told her the house was hers whenever she was ready to buy.
She hadn’t bought but perhaps she should have.
“Liza.” He touched her.
The touch was as simple as the calloused pads of his fingers stroking down her arm.
A shudder rippled over her flesh, then, as she fought to steel herself against the consequences, it began to quake through her inner, hidden emotions.
“I don’t want to talk.” Maintaining the shield around her sensitive soul wasn’t easy. “I just need to think for a while.”
“You’re not thinking, you’re hiding,” he accused her again. “You’re hiding so well that even my animal senses can’t seem to find you.”
As though that was a bad thing. She was thankful for it.
The rough quality of his voice, slightly demanding and dominant, had the power to make her nervous though, to assure her he intended to drag her back from wherever she had gone to hide.
“I’m going in.” She felt a hundred years old as she gripped the door handle and moved to release it.
“No.” Just that easy, he stopped her as his fingers curled around her upper arm. “Let’s take a ride instead.”
“Where?” She didn’t really care where. It didn’t matter if she went inside. It didn’t matter if she didn’t.
“Where you and Claire were in that accident when you were fifteen.”
Panic stole her breath as it slammed into her stomach with a punch of horror. No, she couldn’t return there. She had never returned to the actual site where the accident occurred and she wasn’t going to do it now.
“No.” Shaking off the loose grip, she was out of the SUV and striding quickly to the house as she pulled her bag from her shoulder, opened it, and dug the house key from inside.
She never had a chance to use it.
The front door swung open and that damned cigar-smoking Coyote with the smug smile and knowing gray eyes leaned against her door frame with arrogant confidence.
“Hello, kids.” He grinned around the cigar clamped between his teeth before reaching up to grip it in his fingers and lower it from his lips.
“What is he doing in my house?” Turning to Stygian, Liza found herself jerked back to reality with a suddenness that had her breath heaving.
The distance was gone. The inability to feel the panic, fear, but especially the overriding hunger and desperate need for something she had no idea how to describe, came crashing inside her as the abrupt appearance of the Coyote sent a rush of adrenaline crashing through her.
Dog straightened from the door frame, his expression morphing from the smug arrogance to complete business.
“He’s merely helping his men complete the security system the Bureau ordered for backup in the house,” he told them. “I apologize for the inconvenience, ma’am.”
“Don’t call me ma’am and please get the hell out of my way.” Brushing past him, Liza entered the living room to find Chelsea, a suitcase sitting beside her as she stared around the house with a frown.
“You’re leaving?” Liza came to a stop, her emotions, already thrown into chaos with too many sensations and suspicions, rife with confusion.
“I think you know we can’t stay here, Liza.” Chelsea sighed, her brown eyes somber. “Malachi and Isabelle have offered their spare room until this is over.” Her lips tilted at the corner. “Besides, there are a few too many Breeds lounging around here.” Her eyes slid to the Breed stretched back at the bottom of the stairs, propped on his elbows and watching them with mocking silence.
Loki. He pretended and played at charm and sensual abandon, but there was something tormented and angry that drove that Breed.
She barely held back the agonized cry trapped in her throat as fear slammed inside her. How did she know that? How could she sense those emotions churning inside the Breed? And why had she sensed her father’s lies and deceits at the office? Sensed them with such strength that it was like staring inside him and seeing his hatred for Stygian and his fears for her.
“I understand.” Forcing herself to nod as though she did understand, Liza admitted she didn’t understand a damned thing anymore. “Hopefully this will all be over soon.”
“That’s what we hoped when Malachi’s crew showed up. You know, I like Ashley and the girls who visit, but these male Breeds are pricks.” Chelsea shrugged as she glanced around the room at the Coyote Breeds working there. “Oh well. I guess we have to take the good with the bad, right?”
“So we were taught,” Liza agreed, aching with the loss tearing through her.
She hated this. She hated everything she was losing and everything she could feel threatening to come alive inside her. And for a moment, she hated herself for the weakness she could feel. Fear. Panic. It was all there.
The knowledge that there was something at the edge of her mind waiting to destroy her tormented her.
The aching arousal and burning need for Stygian’s touch only seemed to make it worse. Whatever was awakening within her, it had begun with this hunger for a Breed.
“Come on, Liza, we knew this was coming when Isabelle was nearly taken.” Chelsea sighed as Liza watched her painfully. “We’ve just been fighting it, hating the fact that we’ve had to give up our freedom for a while.”