by Adrian, Lara
Holding his gaze, Brynne licked her lips and the truth boiled out of her in a single word. “Yes.”
CHAPTER 12
Everything he’d said was true.
She was trying to run away. From him, from what he made her feel.
From what he’d made her want.
After witnessing the latest attack by Opus Nostrum, a surge of panic had gripped her. She couldn’t get out of that room fast enough. The world was on fire, under siege from so many new and deadly terrors. She had watched the fresh footage and felt swamped with shame that her biggest personal problem was an unwanted attraction to a male she shouldn’t desire and who would probably only break her heart.
She ran because she realized that she needed to get her priorities straight—something she seemed unable to do whenever Zael was near.
It wasn’t because she felt there was nothing between them.
It was because, sooner or later, she knew she’d be unable to deny him.
And now that her admission had left her lips, there could be no turning back.
She wanted him.
She had been trying to convince herself otherwise since that morning she saw him standing in the thin light of dawn—inhumanly handsome, gilded in sunshine like some strange, golden angel.
She had wanted him then.
She had wanted him the other night too.
“It wasn’t the whisky,” she murmured now, captivated by his hungry stare as he held her close, his fingers stroking her sex in exquisite torment. Her breath was shallow from desire, every nerve ending in her body lit up with need for this man. She shook her head, sending her loose sable waves shifting around her shoulders. “When I said I wanted to be with you last night in London…that I wanted you to take me home and to bed with you… Zael, it wasn’t because I’d been drinking. It was the truth.”
His low reply was less a word than a masculine growl of satisfaction.
Of triumph.
Taking her mouth in another searing kiss, he began unfastening the buttons of her shirt. When he tore his lips away from hers, his breath was sawing out of him, his blue eyes darkened with desire.
“Do you have any idea how hard it was to say no to you last night?” He grinned, but it was a hungered smile. “I wanted to bite these buttons loose with my teeth on that dance floor.”
With that, he took off her blouse, then slid her undone bra off her arms as well. Brynne watched his gaze drink in the sight of her glyphs. Being something even purer than Gen One, her skin markings arced and twisted all over her torso and onto her limbs. Smaller flourishes danced along the undersides of her breasts and around her erect nipples.
Ordinarily, the glyphs were just a shade darker than her own pale skin, but with the intensity of her desire for Zael now, hers were awash in variegated hues of deep indigo, wine, and burnished gold. He traced some of them with his fingers, then bent his head to follow the looping line of one pattern with his tongue.
She hissed at the sensation of it. The warm, wet trail felt like fire on her skin. His touch inflamed her too. Caressing and stroking her breasts, he lifted his mouth to hers again and captured her bottom lip between his teeth. Brynne moaned, pleasure arrowing through her when she felt his tongue teasing the lethal points of her fangs.
It was a brazen thing to do—not only because she was Breed, but because he had no idea how sharp her hunger truly was.
She hadn’t fed in nearly a week. That was skating a thin enough edge in her day to day life, but now, with sexual need coiling around her as well, she was treading dangerous ground.
Zael wasn’t Breed, but he wasn’t human either. Nathan and Jordana had already proven that a blood bond was possible between Breed and Atlantean. The last thing Brynne wanted was to shackle herself to anyone in a bond that could never be broken—and that went double for Zael.
Especially when seeing her feed would show him the hideous secret she kept.
She rocked back on a snarl, tearing her mouth away from his.
Zael must have seen the misery in her eyes. He saw her torment, but he must have mistaken it as doubt. Doubt for what she wanted. Doubt for what she felt about him.
Frowning, he gave a rough shake of his head and took a step back from her.
“If you’re going to say no, Brynne, do it now.” His deep voice rasped, as raw and on edge as she felt. “Because if you let me take this any further with you—”
She didn’t give him the chance to finish. Before he could think for another second that she wanted anything other than the pleasure he was giving her, Brynne closed the scant distance between them. Zael caught her in his arms, and their mouths crashed together in a kiss that obliterated all words and doubts and pretenses.
She wanted him so fiercely, she could hardly stand it. And she needed him inside her.
Her fingers speared into his silky hair, she backed toward the bed and brought him down onto the mattress with her. She was no seductress—far from it—but with Zael she felt powerful, sexy . . . more wanted than she ever had before in her life.
Wanted by an immortal male whose race had despised the forbears of hers for thousands of years.
She and Zael couldn’t have been more different. He was born of light, and she was bred from a terrible darkness. But none of that mattered when Zael was caressing her naked breasts and kissing her as if he wouldn’t ever get enough.
His desire for her didn’t blaze from his irises the way hers did. His smooth, bronzed skin didn’t churn with color-drenched dermaglyphs to betray the depth of his need for her. When his mouth suckled and licked at hers, she didn’t feel the sharp abrasion of fangs.
But Zael was formidable in his need. His large, muscled body pressed her to the mattress beneath him. His fingers slid inside her panties as if he already owned every inch of her. His strokes were possessive, merciless. His thick moan rumbled against her mouth as he delved into her drenched cleft to roll the rough pad of his thumb over her aching clit in a teasing tempo that drove her wild.
Brynne arched her spine and ground her hips shamelessly, helplessly, against the wicked pleasure of his touch on her sensitive flesh. She couldn’t bite back her strangled cry as heat began to coil and spiral through her core.
“You like that,” Zael said. Not a question, but a confident statement of fact. “Tell me you don’t want me to stop, Brynne.”
“Don’t stop.” The words leaked out of her on panted breaths between kisses. It had been so long since she’d known a man’s touch on her. And never with the same need for it that she felt for this man’s touch. “Please, Zael… Don’t stop.”
He gritted a curse against her mouth and yanked her panties off in his fist. Cool air skated across her wet folds, only to be replaced by Zael’s mouth a moment later when he slid down her body and buried his face between her parted thighs.
She had no words now. Only breathless gasps and raw, carnal sounds that should have embarrassed her but only amplified the intensity of her desire.
There was no more teasing in his touch, nor in his kiss.
With long strokes of his tongue and deftly moving fingers, he didn’t ask for her surrender—he demanded it. God help her, but she had to admit here and now that this wanton part of her had been his all along.
Writhing and bucking, she clutched at the coverlet as Zael sucked her clit deeper into his mouth. Pleasure swamped every cell in her body, sending her senses reeling, higher and higher still. She shuddered as the first shockwave of release broke over her.
Brilliant and jagged, her climax tore through her like lightning. She couldn’t stop it, couldn’t hold back her sharp cry of Zael’s name as she bowed up off the mattress with the intensity of her orgasm.
Her hands sought him out blindly, latching onto his hair when he refused to show her any mercy. His mouth and tongue moved over her quivering flesh with ruthless purpose, while his fingers invaded the molten and aching core of her body.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured, glancing up an
d catching her watching him between her spread thighs. “I’ve never seen anything as lovely as you, Brynne.”
His praise warmed her, even if she didn’t believe him.
She knew how she must look to him. Her eyes burning hot as coals, pupils as thin as a cat’s. Her glyphs were livid with color now, pulsing like living rivers of changeable, unearthly ink all over her skin. And with every breath that panted in and out of her, she knew there could be no hiding the long white points of her fangs. Fully extended now, they filled her mouth, sharp tips sinking into the flesh of her tongue.
“Beautiful,” he said again, as if he knew she doubted him.
And maybe to prove it—to her or to himself, she wasn’t sure—Zael rose from between her parted legs and slowly pulled off his clothing.
She had seen him half-dressed more than once, enough to be prepared for the naked splendor of his broad shoulders and the sculpted muscles of his chest and abdomen. But he still took her breath away as he stood before her next to the bed, his golden skin looking as smooth and soft as velvet over the sinewy ropes and lean planes of his body.
His cock stood long and erect, a thick spear of hard flesh. The sight of him so fully aroused made her blood thrum heavily in her veins. It made her mouth water for the taste of him.
To her, Zael always looked something slightly more than human. No mere mortal genetics could produce his heartbreakingly sculpted features and cerulean blue eyes, or the copper-threaded, golden mane that crowned his handsome face. Human men could spend their lifetimes at the gym and never emerge with the flawlessly honed muscles that wrapped every inch of Zael’s powerful physique.
“You’re the beautiful one.” She couldn’t hide her awe. “You look like a fallen angel. That’s what I thought when I saw you that first morning.”
“Is that so?” He smirked as he moved onto the bed with her. “I promise there was nothing angelic about the things I thought about you then. Or now.”
Brynne’s quiet laugh dissolved into a sigh as he levered himself over her, brushing the head of his heavy cock against the sensitive skin of her inner thigh. “Mmm,” he groaned. “Definitely not now.”
She bit her lower lip, every nerve ending tingling with awareness as Zael stroked her wet clit with his fingers. She was still electric with desire for him, even though her orgasm had given her some relief. Her body undulated beneath his touch, aching for more.
“Tell me what you want, Brynne.” His rough whisper nearly undid her. Yes, he was golden and beautiful, but he was also strong and commanding, formidably male. He nudged at the slick entrance of her body, his erection feeling immense and hot as fire-forged steel. “You want this?”
“I want you.” She arched her hips in invitation… In surrender.
Zael claimed her in a slow, breath-stealing thrust that seemed to go on forever.
He was large and thick, stretching her as he seated himself to the hilt inside her. Brynne wrapped her legs around him, angling to accommodate more of him as he began to rock in and out of her.
Each stroke went deeper, every thrust held more ferocity, until the need and rhythm of their bodies was no longer either of theirs to control.
Brynne cried out as he pushed her to the limit—not only her body’s, but the limit of her sanity. Bliss and need twined together in a coil that twisted tighter, hotter…beyond anything she knew before.
She came violently, scoring Zael’s back with her fingernails as white-hot pleasure detonated inside her. And he kept moving, relentless in his tempo as he chased his own release now.
Brynne held on, her legs still wrapped around him, her hands gripping his shoulders as another hard orgasm began to build in the aftershocks of the one that still owned her. Behind her closed eyelids, her head thundered with the pound of blood rushing through her veins.
The drumming filled her ears, her mind—all of her senses.
It called to her…and when she dragged her lids open as Zael drove harder, deeper into her body, she realized that it wasn’t her pulse beating like a hammer in her blood.
It was his.
Mere inches from her mouth, the thick line of his carotid throbbed.
Her mouth watered, saliva surging as her fangs ripped even farther out of her gums. Hunger clenched her in a tight fist as she watched Zael powering above her. So strong. So alive.
So dangerously tempting.
She couldn’t pull her gaze away from his throat.
Nor from the pulsing beat of his blood, coursing so tantalizingly near her fangs.
The sound overwhelmed her, commanded all of her control….
Hunger raked her, and she cursed herself for how long she’d denied her body the nourishment it demanded. She licked her lips, trying not to imagine what it would be like to sink into that potent vein and take her fill.
“Zael,” she murmured, though whether in warning or apology, she wasn’t sure.
But in that next moment, he spared her from deciding. His big body tensed as he drove deep one last time, then on a low shout, he reared back as his release overtook him.
Safely out of her reach, at least for now.
And as she reveled in the feel of him lost to his desire for her, there was a part of her that knew no matter how good they felt together, it wasn’t meant to last.
It couldn’t.
Nor could she wish for it to last—not longer than this moment, if she were being honest with herself. Not if she was ever brave enough to be honest with Zael.
Forcing her gaze away from him, Brynne stared at the window across the room where dusk was still hours away. The darkness inside of her was much closer, and it beckoned.
Soon she would have to answer her hunger’s call, and face the monster clawing to get out.
CHAPTER 13
The smell of spilled blood was overwhelming.
Lucan’s heightened Gen One senses had locked on to the coppery scent of human red cells as soon as he and his team of warriors had exited the Order’s ultraviolet-shielded SUV at the front entrance of the GNC building.
Now, nearly an hour later, with the last ambulance having carried off the wounded and the dead, Lucan stood in the middle of a blood-soaked office in a state of barely restrained fury. Outside the building, sirens wailed. Inside, there was only silence.
And death.
Fifteen people killed in a hellish spray of gunfire, more than twice that number injured by three guards sworn to protect them.
“You know, I might be able to understand this better if these three assholes were new recruits,” Chase said, his fangs extended in the midst of so much blood.
Lucan grunted. “They weren’t new. They’d all been on the security detail for years with highest clearance levels. Two of them were family men, for crissake.”
When Dante glanced up, his fangs were bared too. “Which means no one can be trusted. Not when we have no idea how far Opus’s reach extends.”
“Or who’s the one calling the shots,” Tegan added gravely.
Lucan nodded, well aware that everything his comrades said was true. “Opus has had their pieces in place for a very long time, waiting for their chance to make a move. Now they’re starting to play us like fucking pawns. They’re setting us up for something big. I feel it in my bones.”
And he could see from the sober expressions of his comrades that they also dreaded what might be coming next.
Heavy boot falls in the hallway drew the team’s attention. Brock walked in, his UV helmet clipped to a tab on his weapons belt. He and Kade had been tasked with guarding access to the building after the dead and injured had been taken away.
The massive black warrior’s mouth pressed flat as he paused in the open doorway. “We’ve got company outside. Whole damned fleet of press with cameras and satellite trucks.”
Lucan cursed. “Haven’t we already got enough footage of this slaughter circulating as it is? Keep the vultures away from the building. No one gets inside.”
“Yeah, that’s not th
e problem,” Brock said. “The cameras and reporters aren’t the only ones who just rolled up. The D.C. arm of JUSTIS is out there too. Looks like they’re setting up for a press conference.”
Lucan’s outrage spiked. “Like hell they are.”
Stalking out with the other warriors, he headed down to the glass-fronted lobby entrance of the GNC building at a hard, furious clip. Just as Brock had described, the scene on the steps outside was pandemonium. Scores of news crews and Internet entertainment site trucks lined the street in both directions. A growing sea of humans crowded on to the broad marble stairs, most with microphones or tablets in their hands. Everywhere Lucan looked, camera lenses and video screens were trained on the building’s entrance like a thousand gaping eyes.
And at the focal point of the attention was a small company of JUSTIS officials and public relations types, all getting into position just outside the GNC’s glass doors.
“Jesus Christ,” Lucan muttered under his breath.
The press started shouting questions as soon as the JUSTIS officer in charge stepped up to the front of the crowd. A clamor of competing voices filtered through the glass where Lucan and his men stood.
“Have the three shooters been identified?”
“How long do you suspect the killers had been planning today’s assault?”
“Was there anything in their backgrounds that might have been a red flag linking them to Opus Nostrum before today?”
“After the bombing in London and now this attack, is it reasonable to say that Opus Nostrum is targeting government and law enforcement?”
“Ladies and gentleman, a moment if you please.” At the front of the gathered throng, the human JUSTIS official raised his hands in a gesture calling for calm.
It didn’t work. The questions kept coming, voices rising in demand.
“How much do we know about the assailants?”
“How can we be certain no other GNC security personnel have ties to Opus?”
“Can anyone assure the public that they are safe?”