The expert penetration of her rear went deeper, stroking, caressing naked nerve endings and finally sending her hurtling into the cataclysm of release.
The first white-hot flare of sensation erupted around her clit before striking the depths of her pu**y. A long, shattered wail of pleasure left her lips, smothered with breathlessness, trapped against the cushions she buried her head in.
Stygian’s incisors clamped on the bend of her shoulder, piercing the wound already there as his c**k sank inside her again.
The first spurt of se**n was followed by the intense swelling of his erection inside the heavy muscles clamped on it.
Spreading her flesh apart, pushing into it and locking his erection inside her, the force of the mating knot ensured there was no escaping his release as it filled her.
There was no escaping the man.
There was no escaping the emotions suddenly racing through her with the same force of his se**n 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.”
Liza stared up at the ceiling miserably, uncertain what to feel or how to deal with the suspicions rising within her mind.
She couldn’t ignore them, nor could she avoid the truth any longer.
“What were the experiments Honor Roberts was a part of?” Her throat was so tight with fear she could barely swallow.
“The Omega Projects were research into using the unique development of age reduction and disease resistance and a cure that’s been found in those couples who had mated.”
Age reduction? Disease resistance and a cure?
Fear, panic, a certainty that this information would destroy her, began to invade her.
“And mating heat does that?” she whispered painfully.
His arms tightened around her. “Callan and Merinus Lyons have aged physically by one full year since their mating more than fourteen years prior. Her father, John Tyler, was dying of heart disease until he mated one of our female enforcers last year. His body has actually begun repairing itself. In the space of the time he’s been mated, his organs have returned to prime condition, and his skin has lost ten percent of the aging damage.”