A Touch of Crimson

by Sylvia Day

  “Yep.”

  Which reminded her why they were driving to the Point to begin with. “Do you know what happened to your friend? Why he was missing?”

  “He was ambushed and left for dead. It took him a couple days to make it to the highway, where he was found.”

  “Jesus,” she breathed. “Was it vamps?”

  Elijah gave a curt nod and gestured for her to turn left up ahead.

  “Fuckers. I want to kill them all.” Even as Lindsay said the words, the depth of hatred in them surprised her. Her life had changed so much in the last couple of weeks. Vampires were now hurting her friends, and they were responsible for making it impossible for her to have Adrian. She couldn’t think of one good reason for them to exist. They were like fleas or mosquitoes—disgusting, worthless, bloodsucking parasites that were better off extinct.

  She pulled up to the wrought-iron gate and gatehouse that protected the Point. The guard took one look at Elijah and let them in. It was midafternoon. The sun was still high in the sky, affording her the opportunity to check out all she’d missed the first time she’d driven through the elegant gate. The wolves stayed on the other side of a rise in the road, keeping themselves hidden from public view. When she crested the top, she saw them dotting the native landscape. So many of them. So majestic and imminently dangerous.

  Pulling around the circular driveway, she parked. She tried to expel some of her tension with a swift, audible exhalation.

  Elijah was out of the car in a controlled yet powerful rush of movement, opening her door before she had released her seatbelt. He waited until she climbed out, then pointed to a large hangarlike building set atop a hill about a half mile away. “I’ll be there. You can come up when you’re done grabbing your things, or wait for me here. If I’ll be more than an hour, I’ll send word.”

  Lindsay caught his arm before he turned away.

  He stared down at her hand, which she pulled back quickly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to put my scent on you. I just—I’m sorry about your friend, Elijah.”

  His gaze lifted to hers and his features softened. “I know you are. Thank you.”

  “If you need anything, I’m here for you.” She offered a commiserating smile, then headed toward the double-door entrance. She’d just lifted her hand to knock when the door opened.

  “Ms. Gibson.”

  A tall, sinewy redhead filled the doorway. His hair was long, hanging past his shoulders, but there was nothing effeminate about him. He brought to mind a Viking warrior of old, grim faced and resolute.

  Lindsay hesitated. “Hi. I just need to grab my stuff; then I’ll get out of your way.”

  He stared at her for a moment, assessing her in a way that suggested he found her lacking. Then he gestured her in.

  She knew he was an angel. All the Sentinels had the same flame blue eyes, although only Adrian’s ever gave off heat. The Sentinels were works of art, really. It was rather intimidating being surrounded by dozens of perfect, gorgeous beings.

  Since the redhead declined to say anything further, Lindsay headed straight for the bedroom she’d used when she’d spent the night. Everything looked the way she had left it—the bed was made and her toiletries were neatly arranged on the bathroom counter. When she’d last walked out of the room, almost two weeks earlier, she had expected to be back that night. The loss of what she might have had if she could’ve joined Adrian’s world tightened her throat and made it hard to swallow.

  In hindsight, the plans she’d made to live in this sumptuous space, with its balcony that led to a deck where she could watch angels take flight with the sunrise, and its owner, who was the most magnificent creature on earth, seemed preposterous. But she had held the dream for a moment, and she missed it terribly.

  Lindsay looked at the bed as she moved past it, remembering how she’d fantasized about seducing Adrian there. Her imagination in that regard had been especially vivid, yet nowhere near as raw and searing as the real deal had turned out to be.

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” she muttered, fighting the fierce desire to stay—forever. Fighting the aching longing to embrace the angel, his life, and the possible friends—like Elijah—who would understand what drove her.

  Packing in record time, Lindsay grabbed the handle of her suitcase and wheeled it out of the house. She had to pass a large number of Sentinels who’d crawled out of the woodwork to get a look at her. She now understood why they eyed her the way they did. She was the interloping human who was fucking with their leader’s head. Despite their palpable animosity, she paused on the threshold of the open front door and faced them.

  “I’m rooting for you guys,” she said. She wanted to ask them to take care of Adrian for her, but she didn’t have the right to do so. He belonged to them, not her.

  The front door shut behind her with a soft click of finality. She didn’t cry; she refused. She would not feel sorry for herself for doing the right thing for Adrian. For the world, actually, which was dependent on him but didn’t know it.

  Popping open her trunk, she collapsed the telescoping handle of her suitcase and lifted the carry-on from the ground. The wind kicked up, swirling in a funnel that encompassed only her. She was held motionless in the churning embrace.

  Stay, stay, stay, it crooned.

  “I’ve caused enough trouble,” she shot back.

  Don’t go, Lindsay. Lindsay . . . Lindsay . . . The wind ceased abruptly, leaving a vacuum in which her name cracked like a whip.

  “Lindsay.”

  Her head turned. Adrian stood beside the open rear door of the Maybach, which sat idling at the start of the circular part of the driveway. The wind was all over him like a lover, riffling through his dark hair, which had grown at least a half inch since she’d last seen him. He looked rakish and beautiful in a black long-sleeved henley and dark blue tailored slacks. His face was serenely composed and his posture relaxed, but she sensed the raging turmoil in him. His gaze dropped to the suitcase in her hands and an icy surge of desolation washed over her, making her shiver. She’d never felt such hopeless despair, such heartrending guilt and pain. His and hers.

  Tears stung her eyes. She could scarcely catch her breath.

  God. Of all the things she had to give up, why did it have to be him? She’d give up food. Chocolate. Water. Air. If it meant she could have him without restriction for any amount of time.

  He shattered his stillness by lunging toward her and breaking into a dead run.

  The carry-on fell from her slackened grip and hit the gravel drive. “Adrian.”

  She’d barely taken a few steps when he snatched her up, tackling the breath from her lungs.

  His wings burst free in an eruption of crimson-stained alabaster, and they surged into the air.

  CHAPTER 17

  Elijah entered the lycan barracks and was met with chilling silence weighted by the expectation of imminent death. The rows of neatly made bunk beds stretched on endlessly, the far side of the room extending away from him even as he traversed its length.

  He followed the sound of a beeping heart monitor, but he knew where he was going without that guide. Micah had one of the private rooms at the end, those that were set aside for the mated pairs. The door was open and a handful of lycans, including Esther and Jonas, formed a gauntlet to the threshold.

  They watched him with haunted and beseeching eyes. He looked away from their crushing expectations, hating their belief that he was some kind of messiah. Just because he held absolute control over his beast didn’t mean he exerted a similar level of control over other lycans’ fates and circumstances, but that’s what so many hoped for and believed.

  Entering the room, he found Micah in bed, stuck with multiple intravenous lines and tended to by Rachel. She stood when Elijah approached and met him partway, looking as pale and thin as her mate.

  Swallowing past the tightness in his throat, Elijah asked, “How is he?”

  She ran a shaking hand through her dark hair and jerked he
r chin in a silent gesture for him to step outside. Back in the barracks’ great room, she said, “He’s dying, El. It’s a miracle he’s even alive now.”

  He scrubbed at his eyes with his fists, trying to rub out the sting of grief.

  “He’s been waiting for you,” she went on. “Honestly, I think that’s all he’s been waiting for.”

  Elijah looked at her helplessly.

  She swiped tears from her cheeks. “He really loves you.”

  Pushing past her in a desperate rush, he reentered the room and took the seat she’d vacated. He scooched it closer to the bed, then reached out and gripped his friend’s cold hand.

  Micah’s eyes slitted open. Turning his head, he met Elijah’s gaze. “Hey,” he whispered. “You made it.”

  “That’s my line.”

  A slow smile briefly transformed the lycan’s features, but was quickly gone. “Had to tell you . . . Vash—”

  “Vash did this to you?”

  “She’s looking . . . for you.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “A vamp in Shreveport . . . missing. Your blood was there.”

  “I’ve never been to Shreveport.”

  A violent shiver racked Micah’s emaciated frame. “Yeah, well . . . your blood was.”

  “Stop talking. Get some rest. We’ll catch up later.”

  Micah’s once clear green eyes were cloudy with pain and weariness. “No time. I’m going, Alpha. This is it.”

  “No.”

  “Watch your back. Blood . . . It’s yours.”

  Elijah looked at Rachel hovering in the doorway. She nodded grimly. His blood. At an abduction scene in a town he’d never visited.

  A high-pitched wheeze from the bed drew his attention back to Micah.

  “I’ll be all right,” Elijah said gruffly. “Don’t worry about me. Worry about getting better.”

  Micah’s hand tightened on Elijah’s with surprising force, his claws extending enough to break the skin of his own palm and Elijah’s. Blood, hot and slippery, pooled between their joined grips. “Listen. You’re the one. Hear me? It’s you. Get Rachel out . . . Get them all out.”

  Elijah jerked backward. “Don’t put that on me, Micah.”

  “She trusts you—” The redhead erupted into violent, hacking coughing that left flecks of blood on both his lips and the pristine whiteness of his sheets.

  “Rachel will be fine. I promise you that.”

  “Not Rach—” He gasped. “Adrian’s woman . . . trusts you. You can abduct her . . . Leverage.”

  Elijah pulled free of Micah’s grip, furious and sick that his best friend would dump this shit on him now. On his fucking deathbed. “Don’t do this,” he hissed. “Don’t ask me this. She risked her life for me.”

  Micah’s head lifted from the pillow, his gaze an echo of its former fierceness. “Adrian will bend for her. Promise me. Step up. Make it happen. You can free them all. Only you.”

  Lurching to his feet, Elijah stumbled out of the room.

  “Blood oath, El,” Micah whispered, holding up his bloodied hand. Then he deflated into the bed, his chest rattling with every labored breath.

  Elijah cleared the threshold. He looked at the lycans waiting outside the room. There were more of them now. A dozen familiar faces, all looking at him with somber, unwavering expectancy.

  “You all put him up to this,” he accused. “You told him where I’ve been these last couple of weeks.”

  Esther stepped forward. “Elijah—”

  “You selfish fucking bastards.”

  He looked at his hand and the already healing punctures marring it. With a roar, he shifted. Bursting free of his clothes, he vaulted forward in a powerful lunge that took him almost to the end of the building.

  He rammed through the door to the outside and ran.

  Lindsay was still gasping, trying to regain the breath Adrian had knocked from her, when he landed on the other side of the house. She heard the slide of a glass door at her back; then she was being carried through it and into a room containing a massive desk and a wall of overflowing bookshelves.

  Leaning back in his embrace, she looked at his face. His features were stark, the skin stretched taut with fierce determination. Another door closed behind her, this one an interior door, and she was pushed up against it, pinned by Adrian’s hot, hard body. The drapes began their automated glide shut along with the sliding glass door, plunging the room into silence and darkness.

  “Adrian . . .”

  His mouth sealed over hers. He caught her wrists in his hands and pulled them above her head, one after the other. His tongue thrust into her mouth, a swift plunge that turned her on instantly.

  The warm, vibrant scent of his skin filled her nostrils, wilder today than she’d remembered. Sexier.

  She struggled against his grip and found her wrists tied to a coat hook on the back of the door. As his hands slid down her arms, she tugged to no avail, then grasped frantically with her fingers. Feeling lace, she realized he’d done that undressing thing with his thoughts and secured her to the hook with her own panties. A tentative squirm confirmed she was now commando in her jeans. “Let me go.”

  “You’re not leaving me.” His voice was low and deceptively even, but the rigidness behind it was as tangible as the thong around her wrists.

  Lindsay tugged again. The lace tore and immediately something stronger bound her to the door. When Adrian’s hands pushed up beneath her T-shirt and cupped her bare breasts, she realized it was her bra. A shiver moved through her. The only time she’d ever been held against her will was the day her mother had been killed. “Cut me loose, Adrian.”

  His mouth latched on to the side of her neck. His fingers tugged her nipples into hard tight points. “No.”

  Without volition, she arched into his hands, her breasts growing heavy and tender. “You’re upset. We should t-talk. We need to talk.”

  “Not now.” He gripped her hips, making her aware that she was now completely nude. When a hair-dusted thigh pushed between her own, she realized he was naked, too.

  Her breathing was loud in the otherwise quiet room. Her heart raced with a potent mixture of fear and forbidden desire. If it had been anyone else restraining her, she would’ve lost it. But it was Adrian, and the feel of his hands against her skin kept the terror she might have felt at bay.

  “You should think about this.” She panted, attempting to wriggle away from his inflaming touch. “You don’t want this. You don’t want what’s going to happen to you if you do this.”

  His cock glided between the slick lips of her sex. Lindsay froze. He was hot and hard, delectably long and thick.

  “Does this feel,” he purred, “as if I don’t want this?”

  She bucked when his lips wrapped around her nipple. The coat hook creaked in protest but held fast. Adrian didn’t have the hollow particleboard doors that would have given her a chance to escape. The solid wood his architect had used was more than strong enough to take her weight and abuse.

  He drew on her breast with long, deep pulls of his wicked mouth. Her good intentions started to melt away.

  “I’m afraid—” She spoke the lie, hoping it would deter him.

  “I know. You’re on fire with it.” He parted the lips of her sex and stroked a fingertip through the silken liquid of her desire. “You’re always so fearless, but you trust me enough to be afraid.”

  Her moan echoed through the room. She was achingly aware that the hallway must be on the other side of the door behind her, along with a dozen or more angels who disliked and distrusted her for this very reason—she reduced their leader to a mere man, with all the weaknesses and lusts and desire for comfort that came with that mortal state. “Stop this.”

  “I can’t.” He kissed her again. A hot, wet, lush kiss that spoke of a man who’d crossed his limits at some point in the days they’d been apart. “I won’t.”

  “God, Adrian.” She writhed in his grip as he captured her neglected nipple in his mout
h, his tongue licking and worrying the rigid peak. “Why won’t you let me save you?”

  He released her with a soft pop, then straightened to rub his temple against hers. “There’s nothing to save. It’s all falling apart.”

  The painful emotion in his words broke her heart. She longed to pull him close and embrace him, to soothe his torment. But she couldn’t move, had only her voice with which to comfort him. “Tell me what happened.”

  “Later.” He slid down her body. His lips brushed between her cleavage; then his tongue darted into her navel. When he nuzzled between her legs, Lindsay bit her lower lip to keep from crying out. Beneath her distress at being immobilized in the dark and her worry over Adrian’s volatile mood, she was ferociously aroused. In an untenable situation. She couldn’t forget how exposed they were and how many people—angels—were nearby.

  “Don’t do this. You’ll regret it.”

  “I regret not doing it.” He held her open with his thumbs. The tip of his tongue fluttered maddeningly over her clitoris. As her sex clenched in greedy hunger, a rough noise escaped him. “I should have finished what we started in Vegas. I should have ignored the damn door and fucked you until you’d never even think about leaving me.”

  His serrated voice revealed his anguish and cut her deeply. She wanted to push her fingers into his hair and hold him close. She wanted to gentle him with soft strokes of her hands down his back. She wanted to give him the freedom to put down his burdens in total safety, away from the eyes of those who needed him to be strong all the time. But doing so would make him confront what ate at him, when what he wanted now was the oblivion he could find in her body.

  Oblivion she couldn’t offer him. Not at the price he would pay for it.

  Adrian caught her right leg behind the knee. He lifted it over his shoulder, opening her to the sudden thrust of his tongue. Her back arched and her head hit the door, the thud reverberating through the room and surely out into the hallway as well. He either didn’t hear or didn’t care. His mouth was buried in the slick folds of her sex, his tongue shoved as deep into her as he could go. He worked her tender flesh with rapacious hunger, as if he could drink her in. Consume her. Brand her body with his scorching, intimate kiss. She trembled and gasped, her toes curling so tightly they began to cramp. She hung on to that twinge of pain, fighting the orgasm he was determined to force on her.