Turning on her heel, she stalked across the gym as she attempted to push back her own responding hunger.
She couldn’t go there right now. She couldn’t deal with the need that existed between them, with the hunger that tormented her whenever she allowed herself to forget the fact that she wasn’t who she had believed she was for so many years.
She was accepting it, but it wasn’t easy. She should have been suspicious before the Breeds ever arrived, and she probably would have been if it hadn’t been for the dreams that had pulled her back from those realizations.
Dreams she had allowed…no, dreams she had forced herself to push to the back of her mind when she awoke. Dreams she refused to allow herself to dwell on. Dreams that existed to fill her with fear and dread and caused her to follow the path to that other place, just outside reality, where no emotion, no dread and no fear and certainly no truth, could touch her.
A path she had found in a dream.
A dream where she had shown herself a way to escape.
I go here, she had told herself in the dream. I hide here, because I don’t like the world. Because it’s frightening and harsh and I just want to get away from it. You can go there too. You can hide in my place, because I don’t need it any longer.
Why had it taken her so long to remember?
Moving into the small partitioned area set up evidently for those not interested in partaking of the men’s antics, Liza sat down slowly on the surprisingly comfortable sofa that faced the gym.
Placing the laptop on the coffee table, she wiped her hands over her face before pushing her fingers through her hair and breathing out roughly.
That path to that non-real place was closed to her now. It had been closed to her since the night Stygian had made love to her.
Or mated her.
But the dreams were still there, and this time, the dreams weren’t evading her memory once she awoke.
“God, this is so crazy.”
Lifting her head, she stared out at the gym, watching with a sense of envy as the four men were indeed pounding each other into the mats.
Hell, she hadn’t even known this room was here. If she had, she would have called Claire and asked her to join her. They could have invited Ashley and Emma—.
Her lips twisted mockingly. Perhaps she wouldn’t have. They obviously knew the room existed and hadn’t suggested it the few times she had talked to them.
But, if she had, maybe she wouldn’t have had the chance to watch the spectacle she was watching now.
Flint came at Stygian with a hard flying kick, catching his powerful shoulder and doing no more than kicking him back. Gripping Flint’s ankle, Stygian twisted it, hard. The other man flipped midair, following the direction that could have twisted his ankle from his leg before jerking free.
Coming to a crouch, Flint barely managed to jump out of the way as Stygian threw a hard side kick his way. Without giving the other Breed a chance to recover, Stygian was at him again.
A hard jab to the jaw jerked Flint’s head back even as he delivered another into the younger Breed’s hard, muscle-packed abdomen.
Flint went back. Barely catching himself, he managed to recover and send a hard jab to the side of Stygian’s face.
The sound of fist meeting flesh and bone caused Liza to wince despite the fascination she was feeling.
The fascination as well as the arousal beginning to build between her thighs. Her clit was so swollen she was suddenly, heatedly, all too aware of the fact that it had been more than forty-eight hours since he had last touched her.
Since he had last kissed her.
And his kiss was simply…delicious.
It tasted just a little bit like cinnamon candy, coffee and chocolate. She loved cinnamon candy, coffee and chocolate, especially when she tasted it in his kiss.
Pressing her thighs together, she reminded herself she really didn’t have time to consider his kiss right now. Or his touch. Or the way the tip of his tongue did that little swirly thing around her clit.
She couldn’t consider the pleasure right now, or how much she had missed it. She definitely didn’t want to consider how good it would feel to have him moving over her, moving inside her.
The feel of her vagina clenching, the moisture spilling to the folds beyond was so sensual, so incredibly erotic when combined with the memory of his kiss that she swore the hunger clenching her womb would make her crazy.
She wanted him now.
Ached for him now.
And he was too busy sparring with his buddies to even care.
She was ready to roll her eyes at herself at this point.
Jerking the laptop open and pulling up the Navajo Remote Database, Liza reminded herself that she was the one that couldn’t handle her own life at the moment. Stygian hadn’t asked her to allow the confusion and fear building inside her to come between them.
She had done that herself.
Opening the Community Center file, she tried to concentrate on the plans to renovate and add the nursery wing to the new center that had been built on the western edge of town a few years before. She’d been in charge of raising the money, and they’d completed raising the funds several months before for the expansion as well as additional computers for the after-school tutoring program.
She was halfway through the file when the odd flick of the screen she’d been experiencing for the past several weeks happened again. Frowning, she scrolled lower, wondering why her father hadn’t been able to fix it while he’d had the laptop the week before. As it flickered again, she made the ultimate mistake of lifting her gaze and allowing the sparring session in the gym to catch her attention again.
For the past two days she’d fought with herself, forced herself to piece together fragments of memories, to find a resolution inside herself. To accept what she knew, who she knew she was. The need for him had been beneath the surface, the hunger for him had always been there, at the edge of her thoughts and her need. But the need to know who she was, and why she believed she was Liza Johnson, had taken so much of her that she’d had no choice but to step back and piece together the bits she knew, the fragments of dreams, the memories that hadn’t really seemed like memories.
She wasn’t who she thought she was, but there was no way to prove it to herself. There wasn’t a single memory, a single dream or instance that she could use to pinpoint that she was Honor Roberts or Fawn Corrigan. There were no memories of either that she could pull free.
As she watched the Breeds sparring, she suddenly stiffened as Flint’s fist went for her mate’s face.