by Lora Leigh
h flash of pleasure/pain, each ecstatic stroke of blinding ecstasy. The sensations wrapped around her, burned over and through her nerve endings with each inward thrust, each pulse of the pre-cum that filled her and each touch of Stygian’s caressing hands.
With his cock burrowing inside her pussy, his fingers, timing each stroke in rhythm with the other, the pleasure began to ride her with hard, electric pulses as a rising tension spiraled through her body.
With each hard stroke, she was pushed higher, thrown closer to the burning center of release.
It was building in her clit, in the depths of her pussy. It was tightening in her muscles, sending chills and waves of heat racing across her flesh.
His teeth raked the bend of her shoulder, scraping over sensitive flesh as her nails unlocked from the back of the couch and reached back, latching onto his hair and holding tight.
She needed him closer. So close their flesh felt connected. So close that she knew she would never be without him, no matter the distance that separated them.
“Yes,” she panted. “Oh God, Stygian, yes. Right there. Don’t stop—Don’t stop—”
He didn’t stop.
The thrusts increased in power.
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 pussy. 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 cock sank inside her again.
The first spurt of semen 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 semen 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.”
Chills were racing over her flesh. The implications of what others would consider miracles began racing through
her mind. Because what some would consider miracles, others would consider a sign of evil instead.
“That’s what will happen to me?” she whispered.
“It already has if, somehow, you’re Honor Roberts. The research notes we found suggest that aging retards at twenty-five without mating in subjects that were given the serum as children suffering from fatal diseases. Unfortunately, Brandenmore had those subjects terminated before we could find them. Only Honor and Fawn were thought to have survived.”
Her fingers ached from being clenched on the comforter that covered them.
“Blood tests—” she began.
“Blood tests wouldn’t work,” Stygian injected. “The nature of the project changes not just blood type, but also genetics. Acts kind of like mating heat, which appears like a genetic virus to the body. The only way to prove inconclusively that you’re not Honor Roberts is a deep-level core genetic test on both you and your father for a match.”
“Why not just a DNA swab?” She couldn’t lie any longer. She felt as though she couldn’t breathe.
Sitting up, Liza clenched the blankets at her breasts and stared down at him.
“Because, with medical advances, even ten years ago, surface DNA could have been changed. All you would need is a scientist familiar with Clean Slate DNA, which is what Honor Roberts would have had at the time.”
“Clean Slate,” she murmured. “The Omega Project changed her genetic makeup to the point that it could have been so easily reprogrammed?”
Clean Slate DNA was a complicated process. It literally changed a person’s genetic typing from one type to another and allowed for scientists and doctors to identify key components of the genetic strands that could be altered. It required another subject, a Beta, whose blood or genetic makeup didn’t allow for certain diseases or health complications. So far, it had only actually been done on animals, as far as the world knew.
“The Omega Project simplified Clean Slate DNA,” he told her heavily. “But once the project phase ended, Brandenmore decided it was time to terminate Faith, Judd and Gideon. Honor’s father was part of the Genetics Council, which kept her out of the termination selection. Instead, once the other three disappeared and they learned there was more to the serum as the children matured, they decided to begin researching once again. Only Honor was left, and her father’s influence wasn’t great enough to save her from it. It was then her parents elected to aid her in disappearing.”
“Elected to aid her?” she asked as she imagined what it would have been like for the parents.
Honor’s father was military, he wouldn’t have cried, she thought. He would have kept his head held high, but his gaze would have been damp. His expression would have been laced with misery.
“Her father gambled to save her life when she was less than two years old, fighting against it until only weeks before she would have died. He joined the Genetics Council, contributed to it. Lied for them, cheated for them and watched the slaughter of innocent Breeds so she would live,” he stated, his voice filled with regret, but still the words sliced deep, their cruel imagery causing her to flinch. “It was nearly too late, but the scientists pulled it off. Ten years later she was home with her parents, happy, free of the leukemia and bargaining to get rid of the nanny she’d had in the labs.
“Her father thought the nanny was under his control only, but later learned that it was the Council that commanded her loyalty. She reported the signs of anomalies Honor was showing, that the girl was unable to hide, and the scientists were desperate to reacquire her.”
Liza stilled, her gaze on her hands as she picked at the comforter as it lay over her legs. “What sort of anomalies?”
Because she had anomalies as well, ones she and Claire both had been taught to keep hidden, to never reveal lest they endanger them. This explained why their families felt it would cause their lives to be so irrevocably damaged in an age when unique abilities were prized.
“Honor had a photographic memory, but the nanny noticed the girl could watch movements, in either dance or fight, and within days she could execute them perfectly. She didn’t just remember it perfectly, but how to apply it and when. Rather as Shiloh stated you were able to do the night Claire was attacked.”
Liza didn’t lift her gaze, but kept it on her hands, her nails, the quilt. Anything but Stygian, anywhere but on the fact that she was dying inside.
“And Fawn?” she asked.
“They weren’t certain about Fawn.” Reaching out, he pushed back the nearly hip-long wave of hair that had fallen over her face. “She showed signs of advanced code deciphering, even before the termination order went out. We need that ability to crack the code on the files Brandenmore had hidden. So far, even our best code breakers have only managed to decode a very minute amount of the files we found.”
“Then you think there’s something in the files there that will help Amber?” she asked quietly.
“At this point, we’re willing to try anything,” he admitted. “The few codes we’ve managed to break lead us to believe it’s possible. It’s very possible.”
Liza had a photographic memory. She could watch certain moves, not so much dancing, which had interested her as a young girl, but in fighting, it was as though her brain could telegraph the moves from her sight to her actions.
And Claire, oh God help them, Claire could figure out a puzzle in seconds. Jigsaw puzzles, even the most difficult, were child’s play for her.
She could feel herself trembling, shaking from the inside out.
Shaking her head, she looked up at him, uncertain, forcing back the fear. She had to force it back to be able to think, to make sense of everything.
“I can’t be either of them,” she whispered. “How could I be, Stygian? It’s not possible.”
But it was possible. It was possible enough that dreams, nightmares and memories that weren’t exactly memories, that weren’t exactly clear, came together in her mind.
Lifting his hand again, he brushed the backs of his fingers over her cheek as he watched her with a quiet confidence she would do anything to be able to attain.
“I read an article before the rescues,” he said then. “Rumors of Breed creation had begun leaking, and some enterprising young reporter had written of the possibility. He stated unequivocally that the manipulation of human and animal genetics could never result in a living, breathing, intelligent being. Some things he stated seemed highly possible, but when in practical application, highly impossible. And I had to smile, because it was that very creature he had deemed impossible who was reading the article.”
“A deep-level core genetic test could reveal the truth,” she whispered. “The Clean Slate DNA manipulation can’t get past that.”
“Proving the truth won’t reveal the secrets,” he stated then. “And it’s the secrets Jonas needs to save Amber.”
It was the secrets they needed.
She stared back at him, seeing the long, ribbon-straight, soft strands of midnight black hair as they trailed around his strong face, the muscular column of his neck, the broad, broad shoulders and powerful chest. He was savagely handsome, and staring back at her with an intensity that made her feel as though she were the only woman in the world.
To him, she was the only woman in the world, she thought, astounded. Yet, she wondered how she could be so surprised.
She had waited for him.
She had waited for him to touch her, to bring her to life, to awaken her.
“We’ll go to the desert at daylight,” he told her then. “Just you and I, with Dog’s team watching over us. We’ll go to the crash site before going to the area where the sweat lodge was erected. Let’s go back, Liza. Let’s see if we can find anything you may have lost.”
“What if I don’t come back, Stygian?” Her lips trembled as tears darkened her soft gray eyes. Did she fear she would get sucked back into some never-ending reality where she could only watch the world go by, rather than experiencing it?
; “I won’t let you go.” Tightening his fingers in her hair, he pulled her head back, staring through the darkness to the glitter of her gaze. “Never, Liza. You will never again be on the outside looking in. You’ll always be a part of me, and I’ll never let you go.”
She didn’t speak. As he loosened his grip on her hair, she laid her head on his chest again and, he knew, stared into the darkness.
“I couldn’t feel anything when I was there,” she said softly. “No remorse, no love or hate. No fear.”
“And now?” God, she was killing him. The emotions building inside her were like a blow to his heart.
If only he had been here to save her, to pull her from the darkness she’d been held in for so long.
“Now, I feel too much,” she said faintly. “I don’t know what I’m feeling, and I don’t know how to handle what I am feeling. I just wish, when I was younger, that I had known how to hold on to myself rather than allowing myself to fade.”
He would have held her to him, just as he was holding her now, until she was old enough to be his reality.
Or, would he have held the wrong girl, and eventually, the wrong woman?
The question raged in his mind as she fell silent and eventually fell asleep against his chest.
That wreck; everything had changed the night Claire Martinez had taken her father’s sports car, Liza with her, flying over a canyon and somehow missing the other side.
The two girls hadn’t been found for hours, and when they had been located, their fathers hadn’t called the EMS immediately. Instead, they had called together the chiefs of the Six Tribes, the medicine men of the Nation. Only after they had treated the girls had an ambulance been called and they had been taken to the hospital.
The accident report had been accessed by Diane Broen before she had arrived in Window Rock. Her suspicious nature had read something into those events that even the Breeds had been unable to decipher. Something even Stygian had been unable to figure out.
According to the blood tests and surface-level genetic testing, Liza wasn’t Honor Roberts. Her DNA was different, but the DNA used for those tests had been collected before the experiments conducted in the Brandenmore labs. The blood and tissue samples were those collected when she was a young girl, hospitalized for the wasting disease that had slowly been killing her.
Had a full-level DNA analysis been done? One that went to the very center of the genome, such as those done to detect recessive Breed genetics? After all, the serum used on the two girls had been derived from Breed hormones, while that used on the Breeds had been derived from both Breed and human hormones.
Barring that, had their DNA been compared to their parents’?
As he felt her slip into sleep, Stygian found his mind racing. There were too many questions, and far too many mysteries surrounding his mate and her friend Claire Martinez.
The fact, though, was that there was no evidence to even raise suspicion that Liza and Claire weren’t exactly who they claimed to be. Nothing but the fact that since they were children, no blood, tissue or saliva samples had been taken from either girl, even during their stay in the hospital after the wreck.
From the moment they left the hospital, their personalities had been different. Their looks had been altered from the plastic surgeries needed, supposedly because of damage caused from the vehicle crashing into the canyon.
The fact that no blood and tissue samples had been taken then was highly suspicious and riding the cusp of being illegal.
There were Diane Broen’s suspicions, there were Jonas’s suspicions and his own, but that wasn’t proof. There was no proof at all that she was anyone other than who she was supposed to be.
As he glared at the ceiling, he heard the faint hum of his sat-phone, which he’d set on the bedside table. Glancing over, the text message had him closing his eyes briefly.
Five minutes. Connecting suite.
The message was from Jonas.
Fuck, he didn’t need this.
Dealing with Jonas wasn’t something he wanted to do tonight, not while his own emotions were in such turmoil. Not while he was still trying to process the fact that his mate likely had no idea who she really was.
Not while he was still trying to get a grip on the suspicion that, somehow, the real Liza Johnson had ceased to exist somewhere around the time of that car accident.
In her place was Honor Roberts—but without Honor’s memories, or the knowledge of who she was or who she had been. And if Liza Johnson was actually Honor Roberts, then that meant Claire Martinez would most likely be Fawn Corrigan, the target Gideon Cross was rumored to be determined to kill.
With a tight grimace, he eased himself from the bed.
Liza was sleeping. Stygian tucked the blankets about her shoulders to ensure she didn’t get chilled.
Gathering his clothes, Stygian made his way to the connecting sitting room to dress quickly.
Once he pulled the low boots on and jerked the hem of his jeans over them, Stygian made his way to the door across the room, activated the digital keypad then punched in the code to disengage the locks.
Closing the door carefully behind him, he moved across the room to the entrance and opened the door to admit Jonas, Rule, Lawe and Mordecai.
Lawe Justice’s rumored recent refusal of the position of assistant director of the Bureau of Breed Affairs hadn’t changed the fact that he was still one of Jonas’s most trusted advisors. The fact that he was there for the meeting Jonas had demanded proved it.
“What do you want, Wyatt?” Stygian breathed out wearily as he closed the door quietly. “Liza’s asleep, but she may not be for long. So whatever you have to say that you don’t want her to hear, now’s the time to do it.”
He had no idea what the director wanted, but he could sense the fact that whatever it was, Liza would be offended by it. The fact that the director insisted on meeting after she would most likely have been asleep was the first indication.
The look on Jonas’s face wasn’t comforting either.
Looking around the room, the director turned back to him slowly. “You’re a lousy host, Stygian. There’s not a damned thing here to drink.”
“Yeah, well, I guess you taught me well then.” He snorted. “There hasn’t been a time I’ve come to the office that you’ve shared with me any of that whisky you’re so proud of.”
Jonas’s lips kicked up at one corner as he inclined his head in acknowledgment. “Perhaps I made a mistake there,” he stated, his voice remaining low. “I can get a drink when I return to my suite
