by Lora Leigh
or nothing?
Liza felt her breath catch as she fought to hide the shock and fear that nearly overcame her. Clenching her fingers into fists and tucking them beneath the fold of her arms, she kept her gaze centered on the corner of the photos until the wave of disorientation receded.
But she couldn’t keep her eyes from them for long.
There were pictures of the two girls together; then, there were pictures of the hairless girl with two adults Liza assumed were her parents.
The tall, broad male had a haunted look in his gaze, while the mother’s face was filled with pain and love. They weren’t staring at the camera; rather they were standing next to the hospital bed where their child lay sleeping.
Sleeping?
Or dead?
There were other pictures.
The two girls with two Breeds. It was obvious because they were displaying their incisors in the pictures. In their eyes though, Liza could glimpse the hell all four were clearly enduring.
Compassion filled her, as well as a sense of sorrow.
“Who are they?” Looking up at the director, she had to refrain from rubbing at the chill that suddenly raced over her arms. “Will they be okay?”
Jonas gathered the photos together before replacing them in the file.
“They grew up,” he stated. “The one with her parents is Honor Roberts. The leukemia she had was diagnosed as a particularly fast-growing and fatal illness. There is no known cure or procedure for remission, even now.”
“The other girl was Fawn Corrigan. At two months of age she was near death, diagnosed with infant AIDS and given only weeks to live. As you saw in the photo, at age ten, she was still alive.”
“But still ill,” she stated.
“Not necessarily,” he said. “Did you recognize any of them?”
“Why would I?” Her gaze jerked back to his with a hard frown. “The two girls were with two immature Breed males. There are no Breed males of that age in Window Rock that I’m aware of.”
Tightening her stomach, she refused to allow herself to think about them—or her reaction to the photos.
“Those pictures were taken more than a decade ago.” The obvious impatience in his voice was reflected in the darkening swirls of gray in his eyes.
“Then why would I know them?” She glanced around the room at the Breeds gathered there before turning her gaze back to the director. “Why don’t you just tell me what the hell is going on here, Director Wyatt? That would be a hell of a lot easier than the games you seem to so enjoy.”
If she wasn’t mistaken, he didn’t particularly care for the fact that she called him on his habit of deliberately manipulating anyone and everyone he came in contact with.
Megan Fields Arness stepped forward. “Liza, the point is that we’re searching for the two girls. Finding them is of the highest importance to the Breeds, to ensure the Genetics Council doesn’t acquire them for whatever research purposes they have in mind. There’s nothing nefarious in the least in the Breeds’ wish to find them.”
The knowledge that Megan would lie to her—probably was lying to her—had her fighting back the sting of tears.
She had known Megan most of her life.
Megan’s grandfather and Isabelle, Chelsea, and Claire’s were both part of the chiefs of the Six Tribes. Besides that, the Martinez family was a very close unit and socialized together often.
They were friends—or so she had thought. Friends weren’t supposed to lie to each other to this extent.
“Well, there’s nothing nefarious in the least about the fact that I haven’t seen or heard of them. But I would like to know what the hell they have to do with me?” Liza stared back at Megan, meeting her gaze and wishing she could find that sense of calm that Megan seemed to hold in her dark brown eyes.
“Those girls are currently the focus of a search by the Genetics Council as well as the Breeds,” Megan told her. “They were part of an experiment that lasted for more than a decade. The two girls and the two Breeds all survived but disappeared about ten years ago. We have to find them before the Genetics Council does.”
And if the four had disappeared and never come forward, then it was apparent they didn’t want to be found.
“Why?” Liza questioned her. “Why would you believe you have the right either to find them or to acquire them?”
Damn, she felt sorry for the former kids now being hunted by two such powerful, merciless forces.
“If we don’t,” Stygian said, stepping forward, his voice dark and rough, rasping over her senses like velvet, “then trust me, Ms. Johnson, the Genetics Council will make damned sure they regret the fact that the Council found them rather than the Breeds.”
She had to physically restrain the shiver that wanted to race across her flesh at the sound of his voice caressing her senses. It reminded her of dark, wicked sex.
Of sinning in the most pleasurable of ways.
Every cell in her body tingled at the sound. Her breasts became swollen and heavy, her nipples taut and eager for touch. And between her thighs, her clit throbbed in heightened alert as she suddenly became aware of the emptiness in her vagina.
Damn.
No man had the right to make a woman so aware of the fact that a male wasn’t possessing her.
“Well, if I could help you, I would,” she assured, stepping back carefully as he moved just behind Jonas Wyatt. “The fact is, though, that I can’t. As I stated, I don’t know them, nor do I know who they are.”
Jonas pulled another file free.
Opening it, he drew two photos free. The first was of one of the Breed boys in the former pictures. The second was obviously an “after” version.
Nothing could hold back the shudder that rushed up her spine at the changes in the boy to the man.
Stone-cold eyes the color of living amber stared out from the photo paper with a brilliance that was almost terrifying when added to the Bengal stripes that crossed his face from his forehead, across his right eye, over the bridge of his nose and across his left cheek, over his jaw then around to the nape of his neck.
Where it went from there she wasn’t certain.
The savagery of the mark, the primal quality of his gaze and the inherent predatory intent would have been terrifying if it were in person rather than in a photo.
“What does he have to do with this now?”
“Gideon Cross is searching for those women the two girls became. His intent isn’t to stop by and say hello, Ms. Johnson,” Jonas warned her. “If you’ve followed the stories of Breed creation and their weaknesses, then I’m certain you’ve heard of psychotic emergent feral fever.”
Liza nodded slowly.
“Gideon is suspected of having been thrown into level-five feral fever by the Genetics Council’s experiments. And he’s searching for those two women because he believes one of them is responsible for it. He won’t bother questioning them. He’ll strike out at both. He will kill them. And he won’t care that they had nothing to do with his illness.”
“Does one of them have anything to do with it?” she asked, her gaze lifting—not to Jonas but to the Breed behind him.
“Stygian?” Jonas spoke softly.
“Director?”
“Do you want to answer Ms. Johnson’s question?”
“She had nothing to do with it, Ms. Johnson,” Stygian answered. “Once feral fever has gone that far, nothing has any logic to it. She was there at the wrong place, at the wrong time, so he blames her for it. It’s that simple.”
She wanted him to keep talking. The sound of his voice was a caress to her senses, and she didn’t want it to stop.
Still, she shook her head, forcing her gaze back to Wyatt’s. “It doesn’t change the fact that I don’t know the girls, who they grew up to be or where they are. Neither do I have any information on the Breeds in those pictures. And even if I did, I doubt I would tell you, Mr. Wyatt.”
She made certain the smile she gave him was just as mocking
and confident as she could possibly make it.
She didn’t trust him. She had no intention of attempting to trust him. She’d heard far too many stories of Wyatt’s games and attempts to interfere in the lives of those who came in contact with him.
“I can see your popularity precedes you, Jonas.” Megan gave a light, easy laugh as Jonas pinned her with that odd, silvery gaze.
“So it would seem,” Jonas drawled before turning back to Liza.
She stared up at him, refusing to back down despite the trepidation she could feel tightening her stomach.
“Can I leave now?” she asked.
“Stygian.” Jonas’s voice was low as Liza looked over his shoulder once again only to have her gaze caught and held by the Breed watching her from behind the director.
“Director,” he answered Wyatt.
“Would you please escort Ms. Johnson home?”
“With pleasure.”
“Thank you.” Jonas was smirking now, and the sight of it had an edge of panic tightening her throat rather than generating trepidation in her stomach.
Her gaze narrowed on him. He was up to something. She could just feel it.
“Ms. Johnson.” Stygian stepped around Jonas, his powerful arm reaching out to indicate the door. “This way.”
With pleasure.
With one last wary glance at the supremely confident, satisfied look on the director’s face, Liza turned and made her way to the door.
She could feel the big Breed behind her as she walked. Another Breed—this one she knew by the name of Rule Breaker—opened the door and stepped back.
Nodding to him, she left quickly, eager to put this particular experience behind her, get home and figure out what the hell was going on.
She couldn’t help but think of those pictures: the images of the two girls, so obviously in pain and filled with fear.
Especially the girl with her parents.
What kind of parents could turn their child over to monsters like the Genetics Council and just leave her with them? Alone? In pain?
Surely, those parents had to be just as cruel.
Just as monstrous.
Except, it wasn’t cruelty she had seen in the eyes of the mother and father in the picture with their child.
It had been agony.
Megan stared at the door, her senses penetrating it, following the young woman as she made her way to the elevator with Stygian.
She closed her eyes slowly, let her senses ease gently into Liza Johnson’s emotions and searched for any hint of Honor Roberts, Fawn Corrigan, a Bengal named Judd or one named Gideon.
The only hint she found of them was a deep compassion and a sense of unease and disbelief that Honor Roberts’s parents had left their child with monsters.
There was no sense of the girl, Honor, though, nor of Fawn.
As Liza entered the elevator with Stygian, Megan quickly retreated from the girl’s senses, a flush stealing up her face as the sudden images that flashed through Liza’s mind began to enflame her senses.
Some things were just invasive, and remaining with the girl’s mind at that moment was just that.
Opening her eyes to find everyone watching her only increased the color in her cheeks. Clearing her throat, she glanced at her mate with a suggestive look. “Perhaps we do have things to learn.” She laughed, thinking of the mental images that had raced through Liza’s mind the second she and Stygian were alone.
And Stygian’s reaction was so strong Megan had sensed it as well.
Braden gave her one of those slow, drowsy-eyed looks that never failed to make her body heat and her pussy tingle.
He just had that way about him.
“You two can get a bedroom after this meeting is over,” Jonas growled, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring back at them.
He had a right to glower.
Megan sobered instantly, the knowledge that time was running out for his mate’s child was at the top of his mind.
“She doesn’t know anything about them.” She sighed, shaking her head. “She doesn’t know of them, or have any of their memories. It’s another dead end.”
“That’s impossible.” Diane Broen stepped forward.
Diane was an enforcer, a lethal weapon, just as her mate was. And just as Megan and her mate were, Diane was an enforcer desperate to save the child they all loved.
“There’s no way she could have hidden it from me, Diane,” Megan told the other woman gently. “Her mind and emotions weren’t closed at all. She was an open book all the way to her lust for Stygian, who is her mate by the way. You can’t hide only certain parts of yourself psychically like that. An empath can either read all of you, or none of you.”
“An empath can only read what is a part of you,” Jonas stated cryptically, immediately sending warning flares through her empathic senses. “Not what has perhaps been misplaced.”
CHAPTER 3
The elevator door slid closed with a soft swish of air, leaving Liza enclosed in a space that seemed far too small with Stygian beside her.
“These women you’re looking for have nothing to do with me,” she stated as a wave of heated arousal swept through her.
No sooner had she experienced that sensation of flooding warmth, than Liza found herself lifted, pressed against the elevator wall and the iron-hot length of Stygian’s erection lodged between her thighs, tormenting her through the layers of their clothing.
The tight running pants and thin exercise bra were little protection against the burning heat of his body—and his hunger.
“What—?” Lips parting, for breath or for his kiss?
Liza wasn’t certain, but she knew she needed both—ached for both to the point that it took several heartbeats to realize she was holding her breath.
And that her hands were gripping the hard width of his shoulders.
“What?” he growled. “What are you questioning, Liza? My hunger—or yours?”
Her stomach tightened, rippling in response to the hunger in his voice as a growl rumbled beneath the word.
“Let me go.” The demand was undermined by the whimpering need in her body.
Hell, she may as well be begging him to continue for all the denial that wasn’t in her voice.
“Let you go?” He pressed tighter into the cradle of her thighs as his hands parted them further. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”
The black in his eyes flickered with blue, fascinating her with the sparkle of color.
Her breasts trembled against the hard width of his chest as her breathing accelerated. Heat flushed her face, spreading through her body as she fought to keep her lashes from drifting closed.
As she stared up at him, she felt one hand move from her hips a second before his palm slapped against the elevator control panel. The cubicle came to a stop, lights flashing before they dimmed and remained steady. The electronic voice warned: “Please be patient, we are working to reset operation.”
Liza’s eyes widened.
“Don’t leave the hotel.” He lowered his head and the rasp of the day-old beard against the sensitive shell of her ear had her eyes closing in desperate need.
“I can’t stay here. Why would I want to?”
“To stay with me?” he suggested, his lips touching just beneath her ear, sending tingles of incredible sensation rushing along her nerve endings.
To stay with him?
God, she wanted to stay with him.
She didn’t know him, she only knew of him. She’d watched him for weeks as he moved about the periphery of her life, always surprised when she saw him though always expecting his presence.
“This won’t work.”
“Won’t it?” As he nuzzled against her ear, heat and searing need flashed through her senses. “Then why are you holding on to me as though you’ll never let go?”
Her nails were biting into the fabric of his shirt as though desperate to reach his flesh.
The sensual side of her was desperat
e to get to bare skin, to feel him against her, the warmth of him, the pleasure of him stroking her.
“Why did you manhandle me against the wall?” she accused back, but once again there was no anger to her tone, nothing to really impress him with the fact that she meant it.
If she did mean it.
“I want you, Liza,” he rasped at her ear then. “From the moment I saw you the night your friend approached Malachi, I’ve wanted you. I’ve wanted you bad.”
The words affected her more for the sheer simplicity of the statement than the roughness of his tone.
“You want to draw me in.” That was her fear, her certainty. “Whatever Wyatt thinks he can use me for, you want to convince me to allow.”
The knowledge of that hurt.
It ached deep inside her but did nothing to change the power of the arousal building between her thighs.
“Is that what you really think?” Anger colored his tone as his head lifted, the blue in his eyes brighter, nearly overtaking the black as he glared down at her.
The anger couldn’t overshadow the hunger in his gaze. It was there: clear, bright and unapologetic.
“Don’t do this to me, Stygian,” she whispered rather than answering the question. “Don’t destroy my life.”
“I could complete it.”
But something warned her that completing it could also destroy it, and that destruction terrified a dark, hidden core of her that she rarely allowed herself to dwell upon.
She was certain she would have had an argument, that she could have come up with one if the elevator hadn’t given a small jerk and resumed its journey downward.
Her feet were settling on the floor and Stygian stepping back from her as the doors slid open to the hotel lobby. A half dozen Breeds were waiting to step inside.
They moved back, their expressions inscrutable, gazes shuttered as they flicked between her and Stygian.
“Excuse me.” Ducking her head, Liza rushed from the elevator and headed for the exit.
“Slow down,” Stygian murmured as he came to her side, keeping pace with her as he placed his palm at the middle of her bare back.
“Why?” Pushing through the doors and striding to the side of the entrance patio, she turned in frustration as she planted her hands on her hips and confronted him. “Why should I? They all knew,” she bit out between clenched teeth. “They all knew we were—” Her lips clamped shut.
Stygian’s lips quirked into a half smile of pure male appreciation as he stared down at her.
“That we wanted each other? Honey, it wouldn’t take Breed senses to figure that out when those doors opened. Anyone with a knowledge of lust would have known it in a microsecond.”
Just what she needed. A reaction to a man that anyone could see in a microsecond.
“Take me home, now.” She had to get away from him.
Oh God, had the link been active?
She hadn’t heard it disconnect after it had reactivated in the suite, seconds after the mass of Breeds had moved away from her.
She didn’t need this.
Raking the fringes of hair that had fallen forward across her face, she turned and stared around the entrance to the hotel.
“Do you have a ride here, or am I walking?” Turning back to him, she swore she could feel the caress of his gaze as it touched her breasts before sliding slowly back to her face.
“We have a ride.” He shrugged before lifting his hand, never taking his eyes off her, and giving a quick backward wave of his fingers.
She couldn’t tear her gaze from his.
She didn’t want to.
As his hand lowered, Liza realized there was something unsettling, yet something so secure in the depths of those black-and-blue eyes.
She was all too aware of the vehicle moving up beside them though and coming to a slow stop.
“Our ride.” Opening the back passenger door, he watched her expectantly.
The SUV was all luxury: black, pure leather seats and a gentle rush of cool air.
Taking the hand he extended her, Liza stepped into the vehicle, settled into the seat and gave a small flinch as the door closed gently.
A second later Stygian was slidin