by Adrian, Lara
Now, her smoldering gaze and awakening glyphs told him something different.
“Yes, I want you, Brynne.” He kissed her again, reaching down to stroke her naked breasts. “Nothing you said tonight diminishes that.”
She swallowed hard. “But you saw—”
“Yes, I saw. But when I look at you now, I see a woman who’s been through hell and back and hasn’t broken. What I see when I look at you is the woman I crave more than any other.” He caressed her cheek, brushing his thumb over her parted lips, noting the bright glint of her emerging fangs. “I see you, Brynne. And, hell yes, I want you.”
His name was a jagged sigh on her lips as he reached out and framed her lovely face in his palms. He drew her toward him for a deeper claiming of her mouth. Their tongues tangled, breaths mingling in hot gusts. Her hands roamed his body, tracing the droplets of water that still clung to him from the shower. Her fingernails raked over his skin, turning his already rigid cock to heat-forged steel.
Their mouths still joined in a fevered kiss, he reached down to caress her, too, hungry to feel her naked flesh in his hands. Her nipples were pebbled and hot as he rolled and tweaked them between his fingers. Her belly was firm and smooth like velvet under his palms as he skimmed lower, nudging her thighs apart when he reached the silkiness of her sex.
She moaned as he delved into the wet cleft of her body. She moved in soft undulations as he stroked her, his fingers slipping between her satiny folds. Her clit was ripe and swollen, a temptation he could not resist. She writhed as he teased and caressed her, her spine arching when he entered her with one finger, then another.
“Zael,” she whispered breathlessly against his mouth as he thrust in and out, his thumb working her clit in a relentless rhythm. “Oh, God.”
He didn’t let up until she came. And when she shuddered and broke with her release, he swallowed her sharp cry with a possessive, claiming kiss.
He wanted to be inside her. His cock was more than eager, engorged and dripping with need for her.
But Brynne had other plans.
Still panting from her climax, she reached down to grasp his heavy shaft. Her fingers slid up and down his length, over the broad crown that was slick with his juices. He hissed with the pleasure of her touch, the firm and steady power of her strokes.
She moved in closer to him, taking one of his nipples into her mouth as she continued to torment him with her hands on him. And then she moved lower, her pink little tongue lapping at stray water droplets on his abdomen and hip before her mouth closed around the head of his cock.
Her lips held him firmly as her tongue flicked along the underside of his shaft with each deep stroke of her mouth. “Fuck, that feels good,” he groaned, coiling her hair around his fist like a rope because he needed something to ground him as she licked and sucked every hard inch of him.
He moaned sharply at the light graze of her teeth and fangs against his flesh—not because it startled him, but because of how badly he wanted to know her bite. Anywhere. Everywhere. He just didn’t want her to stop.
When she glanced up at him, her eyes glowed with hot amber sparks. She was beautiful, even like this. Hell, especially like this.
Fierce.
Carnal.
His.
He held her transformed gaze, needing her to see that he was still with her. Ready to take her as far as she wanted to go.
It stunned him how deeply he felt it.
From the flicker of understanding in her eyes, he saw that it stunned her too.
But while he wasn’t uncertain, she drew back from him, averting her gaze. He refused to let her retreat. And he needed to be inside her.
Catching her shoulders in his hands, he eased her back onto the bed and followed her down, spreading her legs as he positioned himself between them. She closed her eyes as he settled atop her.
“No, Brynne.” He stroked her cheek. “Look at me, love. See me now.”
Her lids flicked open, the glow of her transformed eyes radiating otherworldly heat.
And desire.
Those amber coals surged brighter as he entered her with a slow, filling thrust. He refused to let her look away, holding her gaze as he rocked in and out of her, one arm propped beside her, his free hand stroking the elegant patterns and changeable colors of her dermaglyphs.
God, had he actually been idiot enough to suggest that she take another male as her mate? The idea of her bonding with someone else, in blood or affection, raked at him like daggers.
“You’re mine,” he growled as he drove into her. “Look at me and know it’s true, Brynne.”
A defeated sound slipped past her lips. But she held his gaze with a ferocity that shook him. She knew. Even if she wasn’t prepared to say the words, she knew it in her heart.
She belonged to him.
Zael didn’t know where they were heading together.
Their worlds had never seemed further apart than they had earlier tonight. Now, with their eyes locked on each other as they both tumbled into a staggering release, their lives had never seemed so impossibly entwined.
CHAPTER 24
It had taken several hours to clear the city and put down all of the Rogues. With dawn soon to break, Lucan and the patrol teams had returned to headquarters. He’d barely had a chance to clean his weapons and wash away the grit and filth of combat when Gideon excitedly summoned him down to the command center’s tech lab.
Lucan entered the room filled with computer equipment. Monitors were mounted on nearly every square inch of wall space, all of them busy with scrolling data and images. “I hope you’ve got good news.”
“I think we could be only minutes away from something,” Gideon said, giving him a distracted glance over his shoulder as he continued typing on a keyboard with one hand, while the other swiped through data on a tablet.
Darion was in the room, too, seated in front of one of the large monitors. “He broke through a second layer of encryption. This machine is running a series of decryption key programs and looking for vulnerabilities in the network security.”
Dare must have come straight from his post-patrol shower to the tech lab. His dark chestnut hair was still damp above the collar of his black T-shirt as he avidly studied Gideon’s work.
Lucan’s son had always been possessed of a curious mind in addition to his shrewd tactical skills and dauntless courage in the field. Gabrielle liked to say their son was a born leader, like his father. As much as Lucan was inclined to agree—and as much as the commander in him valued Dare as a warrior and comrade—he much preferred to see his son pursuing enemies in the virtual realm, as he was now with Gideon.
“How many layers of encryption are we looking at?” Lucan asked, glancing at Gideon.
“I’ve detected five, but I could be wrong.”
“Meaning there could be less than that?”
Gideon’s dubious look wasn’t promising. “I told you, man, whoever’s working Opus’s communications knows their shit. And then some. Brick wall after dead end after quicksand trap. But we’re getting there. All I need is one little piece of luck with this decryption key sequence, and I’ll have—”
As Gideon spoke, the monitor in front of him went dark.
Then another one went black.
“What the fuck?” Gideon vaulted to his feet and hurried to a different computer.
One by one, every screen in the room blinked from buzzing activity to full-stop, nothing.
“It’s not the power,” Darion said, gesturing to the lights that hadn’t so much as flickered.
“The entire command center is on private underground generators,” Gideon murmured distractedly. “We can run for a full year without power. He tried another workstation without success, swearing harshly.
Lucan scowled. “Then what the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know. Fuck.” Gideon raked both hands through his spiky blond hair, disheveling it. “This shouldn’t be happening. It’s completely impossible, and
yet it’s as if something has interrupted our…”
His words trailed off as each monitor abruptly came back online.
Not with Gideon’s data or program feeds filling the screens.
But the face of a woman.
An incredibly beautiful woman with long, platinum hair and eyes the color of Arctic ice. Those frigid eyes stared out of a heart-shaped face with high, sharp cheekbones and pale, milky skin that glowed with the luminescence of a pearl. Her beauty was too menacing to be called angelic. Too ageless and unearthly to be confined to any description at all.
There was no need for introductions.
This woman could be none other than the Atlanteans’ queen.
“Holy shit,” Gideon whispered.
Darion’s response was a low hiss. “Selene.”
Both Breed males moved in to flank Lucan in front of the largest of the monitors.
Selene’s gaze traveled deliberately over each of them before settling on Lucan.
“Lucan Thorne,” she said, her voice clear and unrushed. The voice of a being accustomed to reigning over all others. The voice of a disapproving goddess. “This conversation is long overdue.”
“Not to mention unexpected.” He didn’t as much as blink as he spoke. “Of course, the way things have been going lately, I shouldn’t be surprised that you’d choose to make your appearance now.”
Her brows arched, as if their troubles amused her. “Don’t tell me the mighty Order is being pushed to their limits by a gang of violent opportunists?”
“Do we have you to thank for that?”
“Me?”
He grunted at her noncommittal reply. “Someone’s calling the shots for Opus Nostrum. Is it you?”
She smiled now, a cold smile full of disdain. “Don’t be absurd. Opus is nothing to me. Their trivial efforts are nothing compared to what I am capable of on my own.”
Darion exhaled a sharp breath. “That’s what Reginald Crowe said about you too. Right after he tried to detonate a UV bomb in the middle of a Breed peace summit. He lost his head to the Order for that.”
Selene’s narrowed glower slid to Dare. “When the time comes to wipe out your kind, Darion Thorne, I won’t need someone like Reginald Crowe to do it. Or Opus Nostrum.”
Lucan’s blood spiked to hear the Atlantean queen speak his son’s name. As leader of the Order, to hear her confirm what Crowe had asserted—that Selene was plotting war against the Breed—only added more fury to the fire that flared in him.
“What do you want, Selene?”
“To start with, the traitor, Ekizael. He is one of my subjects and I will see him stand trial for his defection.”
Lucan kept his expression neutral. “Why do you expect that I can help with that?”
“Don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m a fool,” she replied, her smile cold. “Zael is in your city. Unless I miss my guess, he has allied with you against me.”
“If he has, you’ve certainly given him ample reason,” Lucan parried back. “You had his comrade, Cass, struck down in the street like an animal by your guards. Then you sent more guards after Zael when he tried to protect Cass’s daughter from being captured by you.”
Selene’s rage flashed across her ethereal features. “Jordana is my daughter’s child. My last living kin. But then I’m sure the Order is aware of that too.”
“Yes. There’s a lot we’ve heard about you, Selene. Not a very flattering picture.”
Her chin rose imperiously. “You know nothing of me or my people. Tell me, Lucan Thorne, what do you truly know of yours?”
Reflections of all the violence and bloodshed his otherworldly forebears had delivered during their time on this planet filled his head. They’d been a terror worse than anything that had been seen before or since. And although the Ancients had been ruthless in their dealings with mankind and even with their own sons among the Breed, it could not compare to the decimation they visited on Atlantis.
“I know my race’s fathers attacked you without provocation,” Lucan said soberly. “I know they killed thousands of innocent people among your population and drove you into exile.”
“They annihilated us,” she corrected sharply. “But that was then. It only served to make us stronger. It made me stronger.”
Although her fury obviously still boiled, her tone was too brittle to be simply anger. Lucan had not forgotten that Selene was betrayed by someone she once loved, and that the betrayal was the spark that lit her destruction. She was still nursing old wounds. Wounds that had festered, making her dangerous, a viper cornered and coiled, ready to strike.
“Your own people seem to think the attack all those centuries ago made you unstable,” Lucan pointed out. “There are many who think it made you dangerous, unfit to rule.”
She barked out a caustic laugh. “Did Zael tell you that? Or was it Cassianus? Be careful what you believe when you listen to men with flimsy honor.”
Lucan had learned enough about the honor of both Atlantean males to trust what he’d been told. If Selene had been a good and just queen once, as Lucan understood to be true, that benevolent ruler bore no resemblance to the scorned Valkyrie in front of him now.
“Cass believed it enough to take Jordana away from you,” he reminded her. “And that’s not all he took when he fled your realm.”
The decision to play his strongest card now produced the effect he’d hoped for. Selene was visibly taken aback at the news. Her eyes widened in surprise, in accusation. “You have the crystal. Cass gave it to you?”
“Does it matter how we obtained it?”
She smiled, but it was a tight expression. “You have no idea what to do with that kind of power. It is beyond your limited capability or your unsophisticated, Earth-bound technology.”
Lucan shrugged. “We know that two crystals can be used as a weapon, as the Ancients used against Atlantis. We know you have only one in your possession. The one currently protecting you and your realm.”
“How clever you must think you are,” she replied, acid in her chilly tone.
Darion scoffed. “Call it whatever you want. Just know that you’re never going to have another crystal. You’ll never be trusted with that kind of power.”
“I suppose you think the Order can stand in my way?” she countered, zeroing all of her outrage on Dare again. “The Breed is hardly more than mortal, as far as I’m concerned. You are practically human, and just as offensive to me.”
Dare smirked, too bold for his own good. “Are you forgetting, Selene? There’s Atlantean in our blood too.”
“Only the foulest blood from our most faithless,” she shot back. “I could erase you all from the face of the Earth. Don’t think I’m not tempted to do it right now.”
“But you can’t,” Dare said, speaking despite Lucan’s low growl of warning that he tread carefully with this volatile new opponent. “The biggest fool is the one who thinks that he—or she—has no weaknesses.”
Selene’s glower should have withered Darion, but he didn’t as much as flinch. Lucan agreed with everything his son said, but there was no mistaking that the young warrior was making a very dangerous and personal enemy here today.
The Atlantean queen’s eyes flashed as she glared at Darion. “You wish to test me? Do it at your own peril. I warn you, you do not want to stand against me.”
Lucan moved closer to the monitor. “There’s not a man or woman among the Order who will bow to you either. I promise you that.”
She smiled as if he had just invited her out for tea. “I don’t intend to make the Order bow, Lucan. I mean to make you break. And that is my promise to you.” Her gaze slid to Darion. “To all of you.”
The monitors abruptly went black.
Selene was gone.
As if no interruption had occurred, all of Gideon’s machines came back online, programs churning data as they had been before, screens filled with scrolling code and images.
Gideon ran a hand over his scalp. “Holy. Fucking. He
ll.”
Lucan cursed roundly, his pulse hammering in his temples and behind his sternum.
“How the fuck did she do that?” Darion demanded. “What the hell happened that she would choose to confront us now?”
“It’s my fault.” Zael’s deep voice was contrite, coming from where he now stood in the open entryway of the tech lab. “I opened the door. I led her to you tonight.”
CHAPTER 25
Zael could not have been more stunned than when he approached the command center’s tech lab just in time to see Selene deliver her threat to the Order before vanishing off the monitors.
Although it had been hard to leave Brynne sleeping naked and peaceful in her guest room upstairs, he had been interested to meet with the warriors and discuss the outcome of the night’s patrols.
Now, as he stepped inside the tech lab, the three warriors in the room all stared at him expectantly.
“What do you mean this is your fault, Zael?” Lucan’s brow was deeply furrowed, his tone guarded. “How did you open the door to Selene? What the fuck is going on here?”
“Tonight, in Georgetown,” he explained, sober with remorse. “After I left here to look for Brynne, I found her in an alleyway. She’d been in an…altercation with a Rogue.” He kept his disclosure purposely vague, still mindful of Brynne’s trust and confidence in him. “I used my powers—the light in my palms—to calm her, to help her. An Atlantean’s light is a powerful thing. None of us can discharge it without the rest of our kind feeling the ripple of energy. I’m sorry. I understood the risk, and I made the choice anyway.”
Gideon studied him. “Are you saying Selene triangulated your location based on that?”
Zael nodded. “She knows I’m here.”
“No shit, she knows you’re here,” Darion interjected. “She just demanded we turn you over to her to stand trial as a traitor.”