The question threw her off guard but not enough to eliminate the mental and emotional distance between them.
A brief shrug was all the answer she could come up with.
To be honest, she didn’t know herself where she was at the moment. Was she hiding? Or was she finding something she only found in her nightmares?
Strangely enough, though, she did feel something: the swollen sensitivity of her clit, the engorged readiness of her ni**les, the ache just beneath her skin for his touch. The need for his kiss.
That was odd. She’d never felt such arousal for a man, especially not at a time when whatever emotions caused this distance pulled her back from reality.
Hell, she’d never ached like this for a man period.
“You won’t do this.” There was no anger in his tone.
That too was odd. Even her housemates were known to become angry when Liza let herself become lost, as Claire called it.
And what was it that he wasn’t going to let her do?
She stared at the house. The pretty green, well-watered lawn. The blooms that sprang in abandon through the small flower beds and abundance of shrubs.
The single-story adobe ranch house looked bright, welcoming. The windows and curtains thrown open, the sheers giving her house a slightly hazy, serene look.
She’d worked hard to make the rental a home. Of course, the owner, a good friend of her father’s, had already told her the house was hers whenever she was ready to buy.
She hadn’t bought but perhaps she should have.
“Liza.” He touched her.
The touch was as simple as the calloused pads of his fingers stroking down her arm.
A shudder rippled over her flesh, then, as she fought to steel herself against the consequences, it began to quake through her inner, hidden emotions.
“I don’t want to talk.” Maintaining the shield around her sensitive soul wasn’t easy. “I just need to think for a while.”
“You’re not thinking, you’re hiding,” he accused her again. “You’re hiding so well that even my animal senses can’t seem to find you.”
As though that was a bad thing. She was thankful for it.
The rough quality of his voice, slightly demanding and dominant, had the power to make her nervous though, to assure her he intended to drag her back from wherever she had gone to hide.
“I’m going in.” She felt a hundred years old as she gripped the door handle and moved to release it.
“No.” Just that easy, he stopped her as his fingers curled around her upper arm. “Let’s take a ride instead.”
“Where?” She didn’t really care where. It didn’t matter if she went inside. It didn’t matter if she didn’t.
“Where you and Claire were in that accident when you were fifteen.”
Panic stole her breath as it slammed into her stomach with a punch of horror. No, she couldn’t return there. She had never returned to the actual site where the accident occurred and she wasn’t going to do it now.
“No.” Shaking off the loose grip, she was out of the SUV and striding quickly to the house as she pulled her bag from her shoulder, opened it, and dug the house key from inside.
She never had a chance to use it.
The front door swung open and that damned cigar-smoking Coyote with the smug smile and knowing gray eyes leaned against her door frame with arrogant confidence.
“Hello, kids.” He grinned around the cigar clamped between his teeth before reaching up to grip it in his fingers and lower it from his lips.
“What is he doing in my house?” Turning to Stygian, Liza found herself jerked back to reality with a suddenness that had her breath heaving.