Lora Leigh - Stygian's Honor

The mess being the less-than-bloodthirsty Coyotes ranged around her. They looked mean enough, heartless enough, yet Liza detected the flash of laughter in Dog’s gaze once again as she met his eyes.

Liza stared at the tableau around her, wondering just how often Breeds turned danger into a joke.

She didn’t particularly like it.

Dog’s smiled was clearly anticipatory, but he nodded easily. “Whip his ass and you walk. He whips yours—you run. How’s that?”

Diane gave a sharp, firm nod as she smiled at Malcolm. “It’s a bet.”

As Diane accepted the terms, the enforcers for the Bureau of Breed Affairs stepped from the cover of the trees and surrounded them.

Liza was still trying to get a head count when one of the few couples she knew, Megan Fields Arness and her husband, Braden Arness, stepped up to her and gripped her arm.

Megan muttered, “Let’s go,” at her ear.

She didn’t want to leave.

Liza had to force herself to hold back the involuntary protest. She wanted to stay. She needed to stay. The fight that was about to commence would no doubt display a variety of skillful moves she had yet to learn by attempting to watch the agents from the Bureau spar from a distance.

Grimacing, she followed Megan, knowing that convincing the other woman and her mate to allow her to stay wasn’t going to happen.

The link in her ear was silent, which was standard operating procedure whenever Control knew another Breed was within hearing distance.

The acute hearing and exceptional sense of smell were only two of the extraordinary senses they possessed. So much as a sizzle of static and any Breed within feet of her would sense it.

“Well, look who’s joining the party, boys,” Dog drawled as Megan and Braden hurried her away. “Looks like the bet’s off.”

“The hell it is.” The last thing she heard was Diane’s lover stepping into the fray, his voice a hard, animalistic growl.

That growl, its raw fury, brought on a flash of another memory threatening to intrude, to overcome reality as Liza was hustled quickly to safety.

They were occurring more frequently since the Breeds had arrived in Window Rock, bringing with them a disconcerting fear that Liza hurriedly pushed back.

Show no weakness.

Show no fear.

Show no mercy.

Show no remorse.

Those were the first things they were taught when they were accepted into the Navajo’s Breed Underground Network.

A Breed’s ability to sense those specific emotions was too well honed to allow any of those working with the network to go out without first being trained—rigorously—to hide them.

And now, that training was coming in damned handy.

Hell, it had been coming in handy for nearly two months now.

And now, Liza was nearly accosted by Breeds on a morning run designed to learn exactly why the Genetics Council had arrived on the tail of the Bureau of Breed Affairs.

The Bureau wasn’t telling the truth about what they were after; the deception had been detected and confirmed by its own sources. Unfortunately, those sources had no idea exactly what the Breeds were after either.

Watching Diane Broen entering into a fight while the Breeds around her were taking bets on who would win, who would lose and how many blows it would take to do them in seemed fascinating. Still, Megan and Braden were forcing her away from the fray.

Actually, it was insanity.

The very Breeds who at first appeared intent on abducting her and the human enforcer, Diane Broen, now seemed to be working on the Bureau Breeds’ side. They had even encouraged the betting with the promise that if Diane won, they would walk away without the prize they had been paid to collect.

Namely, Liza herself.

She watched until she was pushed into a Dragoon and couldn’t see anything more. Damn them, she wasn’t a child anymore, yet that was exactly how she was being treated.

As the scene vanished from view, she turned and faced forward, her arms crossed beneath her breasts as she remained silent.

The earbud, all but hidden in her ear canal, was silent, deactivated at Cullen’s end. It wouldn’t be activated again until they arrived wherever she was being taken, or until the network’s agents following her lost sight of her.

Until then, she was on her own.

Swallowing tightly, she tried to put another inch of distance between herself and the big Breed sitting next to her.

Stygian Black. He was a bit of a lone Wolf according to the information Cullen had managed to acquire. A Wolf Breed who worked exclusively on missing cases that involved hidden Breed labs and/or missing Breeds or their mates.

He wasn’t a Breed who worked well with others, the report said. And he was one that would just as soon kill a man, or a Breed, who got in his way as he was to look at him. Yet, he’d been working with the Bureau of Breed Affairs for years, and he did so without killing anyone.

Was it a testament to Jonas Wyatt’s skill as a commander or simply his control over the animal genetics that were so much a part of the Breeds he commanded? Whichever it was, she could do nothing but admire his ability to work with a man whose animal was as close to the surface as this one’s was.

His gaze turned on her every few seconds as though to be certain she was still sitting there. Black eyes gleamed with amusement each time she caught him watching her. Each time she caught him, he would deliberately allow his eyes to flick to the upper mounds of her breasts where they rose above the exercise bra.

As she felt his gaze pin her once again, she turned her head and glared up at him through the veil of her lashes. The fact that she could tell when he was staring down at her, and all that had moved were his eyes, was distinctly disconcerting. Bothering her even more was the fact that her nipples were hardening further with each look. Having such a response to a man, any man, wasn’t a situation she wanted to deal with, especially with a Breed.

“Are you comfortable?” his voice rumbled with a primal, erotic rasp that sent a shiver of sensation racing up her spine.

“Not really,” she muttered.

She was distinctly uncomfortable with the warmth traveling across her nerve endings as the sensitive flesh of her clit tingled in interest.

As far as she was concerned, this was the wrong man, or Breed, and the wrong time for such an attraction.

“You could sit on my lap,” he suggested with a slow smile as he patted a hard, well-muscled thigh. “There’s plenty of room.”

Oh, hell—

The real problem where that question was concerned was that she was way, way too tempted.

“No, thank you.” Jerking her head forward, she stared between the front seats to the road beyond.

“I’d be more than happy to accommodate you.” Leaning closer, he all but whispered the words in her ear.

Oh, she just bet he would.

“No.” She didn’t have the breath to put that “thank you” in there a second time.

Chills were racing over her skin, tearing up her spine and, she swore, sizzling in her lower stomach. Her flesh was warming, her nipples sensitive and the need for touch was like an ache just under her flesh. An ache she had no idea how to assuage because she was damned if she thought it was completely advisable to sleep with him.

But, yes, she did want to sleep with him. She wanted him to touch her, to hold her, to give her what she had so far managed to deny herself. To share a bed with a man, or with a Breed, and to learn all the things sexually that she hadn’t really had an interest in until now.

And why now?

Never had she ever had a reaction like this to any man, let alone a Breed.

As he sat back in his seat, she peeked up at him, swallowing deeply at the impression of pure raw power that surrounded him like an invisible mantle.