Oh, he could show her a stalemate.
Stygian stood slowly, straightening before moving toward her.
“Just because you’re not lying doesn’t mean I can’t smell the deception beneath your words.”
He faced her as the primal hunger tearing through him fought for dominance. Keeping his hands off her was possibly the hardest battle of his life.
“Just because I’m human doesn’t mean I can’t sense your deception,” she informed him defiantly as she stared back at him with narrowed eyes. “And don’t think you can intimidate me so easily.”
She straightened, anger flaring to meet the irritation she could see brewing inside him.
“It’s a damned dangerous game you and your friends are playing, Liza.” Raking his fingers through his hair, Stygian clenched his jaw and fought to deny the animal instinct that he bind her to him immediately. That he turn her need to fight against the Genetics Council and their soldiers to a hunger so hot it would blister both their senses.
“Me and my friends?” She propped slender fingers over the curve of her hips, facing him with innate feminine defiance. “Excuse me, Mr. Black, but the Navajo did not come on your land demanding your most precious treasures, nor did we lie to you to search for ghosts that may or may not exist. You and yours came to us.” Her stubborn chin lifted stubbornly. “You’ve all but taken over our capital. You attempt to force our president to bend to your will and you take advantage of an agreement the Navajo made in good faith to aid the Breeds in their battle for freedom. You”—one delicate finger was suddenly pushed with feminine arrogance into the center of his chest—“have done all that and more. If a foreign country attempted this with the U.S. president, then war would have been declared.”
Her finger retreated.
The delicate hand returned to her hip, fingers spread, legs braced slightly apart in an unconscious fighting stance.
“And you think withholding information to punish Jonas is somehow justified because we didn’t come to you begging?” he bit out between clenched teeth.
“And you believe because we do not know where three tortured victims of the Genetics Council are hiding that you can attempt to poke and prod and demand access to every part of our lives?” she questioned incredulously. “We owe you nothing, Mr. Black. But for more than a century, each time a Breed has come to the Navajo for help, we’ve given it. If we could help that poor little baby, then have no doubt every Breed in the Navajo Nation would be on Jonas Wyatt’s doorstep attempting to do just that.”
“Until now, the Navajo have always extended the information Breeds have needed.” Until the information they needed possibly imposed on a promise to another.
“Listen to you,” she snapped. “What promise was made and to whom? Do you think I lied to Jonas when he all but kidnapped me to question me about people I’ve never seen in my entire life?”
“You came into that hotel with a live link, possibly to an enemy, and didn’t even attempt to inform us,” he growled back at her. “You and your underground organization deliberately deceived us for your own agenda.”
Disbelief filled her expression and turned the soft scent of summer to one infused with flashes of heat as she glared back at him.
“I am an undercover agent for the Navajo Law Enforcement Agency,” she gritted out. “The op I was a part of to draw in the Coyote Breeds watching me for the past weeks had nothing to do with the Bureau of Breed Affairs, Jonas Wyatt or any Breed outside those currently stalking me. That was none of your business, nor was it any of Wyatt’s or anyone else’s, thank you very much.”
It wasn’t a lie. She was an agent for the covert division of the Navajo Law Enforcement Office. The operation was conducted by several of the agents of that office, and the Breeds would have been turned over to the proper authorities if caught, Liza knew.
If Stygian, Jonas or anyone from the Breed communities did as she and Cullen expected them to do and hacked the Law Enforcement Offices computers, then they would find that same information.
Stygian stared back at her, his lips pressed tightly together as he held back the curse that would have slipped past his lips.
An undercover agent? His mate was an investigator attempting to draw out Coyote soldiers so merciless that even their own Breed refused to claim them?
“There is no record of you working with the Law Enforcement Agency.” One more second, one more confrontational remark and he was going to kiss her.
The need was pounding through him. It was racing through his blood veins and pounding hard and heavy through his dick.
“Well, now, if that information was so easy to find, then the undercover part would be rather useless, wouldn’t it?” The question was heavily laced with sarcasm. “What was I supposed to do, Stygian? Take out an ad in the paper first, just for you?”
If she didn’t stop, the tenuous grip he had on his control would be shot. The defiance and sheer stubborn will was awakening a part of him he had no idea how to force back.
Before Stygian realized he was moving, before he could stop himself, he had his hands on her.
Gripping a hip with one hand, he pulled her to him. The fingers of the other threading through her hair, he drew her head back for his kiss as his lowered.
“Mate me, bind me to you without my knowledge of what you’re doing or how it will affect my life, and I promise you, I’ll make your life a hell you will never forget.”
His lips were almost on hers.
The glands beneath his tongue were swollen and throbbing, aching for the heat of her kiss.