Stygian's Honor (7 page)

“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.”