Dark and Dangerous: Six-in-One Hot Paranormal Romances

by Jennifer Ashley

  She spread her arms wide on the clear, cold surface to block the imminent, encroaching darkness, to hold it back, shaking with effort.

  “For crissakes, Talia,” Adam rumbled at her neck. “Let it come. I’m not afraid of the dark.”

  He found her breast with his hot palm, a thumb flicking over her nipple, and then he pushed. Her weight and his thrust shred her innocence and the last of her control.

  The black storm of the city flooded the room. Its undeniable pulse of power and vitality fired her nerves. The acuity of her senses redoubled, but she squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to see with her death-bred eyes, she only wanted to feel the brilliant, molten heat of Adam inside her. He worked his hips in a single deep stroke and she split with pleasure. Her body contracted in exquisite near-pain and she wrapped herself around him, a shock wave rippling out from her core.

  “Talia,” he breathed. He shifted his hips back slightly, and then forcefully reseated himself inside her.

  Talia’s breath caught and she tightened against his assault. He drove into her again, touched her deep enough to stir the shadows into a frenzy around their joined bodies. She clutched him as he made every last dormant nerve in her body wake, aware and reaching for fulfillment. And then he delivered with a primitive growl, stretching her to the limit and shocking her again with intense ecstasy that rippled out from him and through her in an explosion of fierce bliss.

  Adam panted against her, his head resting on the glass above her shoulder. His emotions were shredded, a near blackout of the worries that followed him. Now a strange peace dominated.

  Her own storm mellowed into eddies of shadow.

  Talia cracked her eyes to see him. To see how handsome he looked with his inner demons silenced. Her dark vision pierced the surface of his skin and bone, the mortal layers of his body. She found that she embraced a column of light and condensed will, undeniable and beautiful beyond imagination. She regarded the pale gleam of her arms wrapped around his shoulders.

  Different. She looked different from Adam.

  She’d always known that she was unlike anyone else, but she had never considered that she was actually made of different stuff.

  Talia went as cold as her shadows.

  How could she be so connected and yet alone at the same time?

  Adam chuckled, planting a hand on the glass and pushing his bulk up to gaze at her face. “If we live through tomorrow, I’ll make sure next time is better. You’re so damn sexy, I just couldn’t think. I should have been slower, more careful. Did I hurt you?”

  A sob gathered in her throat, but she shook her head. No.

  He slid out and lifted her to cradle in his arms. She huddled against him, hiding from the knowledge that they could never really be together. She was too different, too alien, too strange to ever really belong to him.

  He brought her through a doorway and into a masculine bathroom of sleek grays and set her on her feet. He reached into a recessed room of smoky green, set with multiple jets, and turned on the nozzle. The space was large enough for two, and when steam began to fog the mirror he pulled her inside with him. He soaped up a washcloth and had just put the sudsy softness to her shoulder when an electronic warble reached them.

  Adam paused, midstroke. The phone rang again. “Damn it, Talia, I have to get it. I’m sorry.”

  Yeah, she was sorry, too.

  CHAPTER 14

  “Yes?” Adam said, phone gripped between ear and shoulder as he secured the towel around his waist. Shower drops ran down his back and chest in chilling rivulets—but he welcomed the cold against his overheated skin. Behind him, the shower softly hissed in the bathroom as Talia finished cleaning up. In a perfect world, he’d be in there with her, wet skin on wet skin, taking his time with her now that the bite of his desire had mellowed slightly.

  “Staff from Segue is secure,” Custo reported. “I have them all waiting for instructions in various inconspicuous locations. That is, all but Gillian, who opted to take her chances on her own.”

  “Excellent. Where are they and how long can they last?” Adam walked to the modern desk situated in an alcove off the kitchen, grabbed a pad of paper, and took the lid off a pen with his teeth. As Custo ran down a list of locations, Adam jotted notes. Seemed like everyone could hold out for a couple days before they’d have to move again. By that time, he hoped this would all be over, one way or another.

  The shower cut off. Adam imagined Talia stepping out of the steam, eyes big and beautiful in her thin face. Her sweet, pale curves would be rosy and fragrant, hair slicked sinuously down the slope of her spine to reach the twin dimples at the base of her back where her hips flared and her ass deliciously rounded.

  His gaze shot to the scatter of their clothes in front of the big windows.

  “Just a sec,” Adam said to Custo—he muted the phone, strode down the short hall, and knocked on the bathroom door. “Talia, the bedroom will have some clean things to wear. Take whatever you like. Take whatever works for you.”

  He waited in silence for her to answer. “Talia?”

  “Okay, thanks.” Her voice was moderate, but her tone was slightly off.

  Ah, hell. Adam rested his forehead against the door. This was not the way it was supposed to go. He’d managed not to touch her for nearly a week, had only slipped that one time—okay, twice—to kiss her. And who could blame him? She was brilliant and gorgeous. Some things were just inevitable. He wanted her. He’d known that truth back in that stinking alley in Arizona, holding her overheated body. The way she fit the curve of his arm. How he could just rest his chin on the top of her head. Her soft voice whispering a warning. She made him aware of what living could be without this war on his head. Yeah, he was good and screwed.

  “Adam?” Custo’s voice brought Adam’s attention back to the call.

  Adam unmuted the phone. “I’m here.”

  He stalked back to the desk and his laptop. He scraped a chair back and sat at the desk, forcing his concentration into the monitor.

  Work. Focus. Jacob.

  The thought of Jacob snaked around Adam’s neck and tightened in a noose, cutting off the flow of blood from his heart to his head. Jacob, who started this nightmare. Jacob, who killed Mom and Dad. Jacob, who very badly needed to die. After that, maybe Adam could get his own life, but not until then.

  “So when I get there do we move our base of operations to the New York office?” At least Custo had his head on straight.

  “No,” Adam answered. He touched the monitor screen and selected the tab that revealed his remote connections to the Segue offices around the world. The hub at the New York office had timed out, as had the one in San Francisco and Atlanta.

  “Our U.S. satellite offices’ systems are down,” Adam informed him. “What happened in West Virginia most likely happened here, too. If anyone survived, they are in hiding. Any intel stored at those facilities is compromised. No point in going there now and risking our own exposure.”

  How could he have forgotten, even for a moment, the people who labored on his behalf? He’d handpicked each staff member of the New York branch—the thought that they were dead or worse made him ache with frustration. Twenty-six employees, all dedicated to his cause, lost or worse. They depended on him to keep them safe. And what was he doing? Screwing their only hope of survival.

  Idiotic. Especially when he was so close to the end.

  All he needed was one well-placed, well-timed scream. Nothing short of witnessing the swift strike of Shadowman’s curved blade cutting down an army of wraiths would ease the grip of anger on him.

  “I thought The Collective was just after Talia. You think they decided to take out all of Segue?”

  “Yes.” Adam understood The Collective’s strategy. To achieve their ends, destroying Segue was the smart thing to do—limiting Adam’s resources, scattering his personnel, and confusing his strategy by changing The Collective’s MO. As matters stood, the Segue staff, Adam and Talia included, had been reduc
ed to underground renegades in a matter of hours.

  But as long as Adam had that scream, he could win the war. Victory and vengeance were as easy as one breath of air.

  “Why? Why risk that kind of exposure?”

  “Talia is the only thing they want. She’s the only one who can make a difference.”

  “I still don’t understand. Why don’t the wraiths just kill her and be done with it?”

  “Good question.” Why not just silence the voice that can call Death? There had to be a damn good reason or things would have played out differently in West Virginia. They wanted her for something.

  A soft sound behind Adam had his head whipping around.

  Talia padded into the room on bare feet. She wore an oversize black T-shirt, braless judging by the twin tips peaking the front, and baggy gray sweatpants she’d rolled up to her ankles. His socks covered her slender feet, which he found both adorable and intimate. She shoved her feet back into her shoes. Two months on the run had obviously taught her a thing or two about being ready at all times. Habits die hard.

  She fished the flash drive Adam had given her back at Segue out of her pants pocket and collected the discarded clothes on the floor. He caught her glancing at him from beneath the cover of her wet hair, but she shifted her gaze away again when she met his eyes, pretending to ignore his conversation with Custo. The woman wouldn’t win any Oscars.

  “When you get here we will assess our available resources and locate the demon’s base of operations.” Then move in fast and strike.

  Talia passed him again and found the stacked laundry/dryer unit behind a folding closet door in the hall to run a load. She returned to the room and rummaged in his backpack. After finding a book—where had that come from?—she set herself up on the sofa to read.

  “How do you plan to do that with the New York office out of commission?”

  “I have other sources.” Ghosts. Talia could call on the ghosts tied to New York and have them locate the demon for him. Witnesses everywhere, and they had to answer to her. Damn, it was almost too easy.

  “I know all your sources,” Custo argued.

  “Not these ones. Trust me. How long will it be ’til you get here?” Adam checked his watch. 2:23 A.M.

  “Hour and a half, two hours, maybe.”

  “I’ll be ready.” Adam ended the call and glanced at Talia.

  No need to interrupt her reading just yet. She seemed engrossed, and well, he had no idea what to say to her anyway. We made a mistake warred with We have just enough time for another good go. Experience told him both approaches were very wrong.

  Adam discarded both, electing instead to keep his mouth shut like a coward for the time being. He went to the bedroom, dressed, and then returned to the desk. He worked on his simulation, adding the unexpected support of SPCI to The Collective’s already worrisome resources. The projections the program generated made him sweat. In an abundance of numbers divided by geographic and industry-specific percentages, the computer was certain there was no hope.

  He looked at Talia and knew different.

  Still, he didn’t like putting a woman in harm’s way if he could help it. He’d have to be very certain of Talia’s safety.

  She sat on the sofa facing the sprawl of the darkened city beyond the window, feet tucked under her, nose in a book. Her hair had partly dried in the time he’d been working, slowly brightening and coiling into loose curls over her shoulders. She’d scarcely lifted her nose since sitting down.

  Book must be damn fascinating reading, because she hadn’t so much as glanced his way.

  Better to do damage control now, before Custo arrived.

  Adam stood and, twisting, cracked the strain out of his back and neck. As gritty as his eyes were, his body hummed as he took a seat opposite Talia.

  “What’re you reading?” he asked in lieu of Are you okay?

  Talia snapped the book shut and let it rest on her thighs. Lucky book.

  “Jim gave it to me right before he asked me to call Lady Amunsdale. It’s a sort of encyclopedia of mythical figures, including an entry on banshees.”

  Adam leaned forward in his chair. He caught the bright smell of shampoo and soap, still fresh on her skin. The sweet scent was probably thicker at her neck, just behind her ear, and darker still between her legs. He sat back again, scrubbing his scalp with his hands to get the flow of blood back up to where he needed it most. “What does it say?”

  “Not surprisingly, the word banshee is Irish. The ban part means woman. And the shee part refers to fairy mounds, or the Otherworld.”

  Talia’s tone conveyed an academic distance from the information she related, as if learning about her birthright were an intellectual exercise and not the personal discovery she’d been searching for all her life. Her act didn’t fool him. Adam knew that birthrights were a bitch—either you shouldered the burden until you passed it along to someone else, most often your children, or you were crushed beneath the weight of it. If Adam’s burden sat heavy, hers must be near intolerable about now.

  She continued in her dry tone. “A banshee’s cry precedes death. Heralds death, in fact, which is in keeping with how it worked for me and Shadowman. One point of difference, however, is that banshees are associated with royal Irish families, which I am not.” She pressed her lips together, closed the cover, and tossed the book aside.

  “Your mother was Irish. Perhaps her people can be traced back to royalty. Perhaps you’re a fairy princess.” Of course she was. He’d known it all along.

  “Can I abdicate?” she laughed harshly, eyes finally watering. She blinked rapidly to clear them.

  “Not just yet,” Adam answered. “I need you.”

  Talia went so still that he reviewed his last words in his mind. I need you. What kind of a thing to say was that? It begged a follow-up question—needed her for what? Weapon or lover?

  He cleared his voice, dodged the deeper question, and went for the obvious. “I think that becoming a wraith severs a person’s connection to Death. Your scream reinstitutes it.”

  Talia shook her head. “I’m sure I screamed as a kid. Temper tantrums, roller-coaster rides, scary movies. Shadowman didn’t appear then.”

  “I don’t think you were in the presence of a wraith, of death. I’ll bet you were surrounded by life.”

  Her chin quivered. “I screamed when I got in that car wreck with Aunt Maggie. I saw Shadowman, my father, then. I have spent a long time wondering why I lived while everyone I’ve loved died.”

  The reason seemed obvious, but Adam voiced it. “You had something important to do with your life. It wasn’t your time.”

  “So what now? You take me to Times Square and I let it rip?” She laughed bitterly.

  Reading the naked pain in her eyes, Adam filled with regret—not for the sex, not anymore—but for everything else. Everything that she’d endured, and yet she remained bright, intelligent, and strong. The woman was remarkable. She’d handled her burdens far better than he had handled his.

  There was no way to spin what had happened between them. He owed her the truth.

  She must have seen the shift in his eyes because she reached for her book again, opening it to a random page and tensing her forehead in deep concentration. “There are actually some very interesting folk tales recorded here...”

  “Talia.” When she didn’t lift her head, Adam grabbed the book and dropped it on the floor. Her hands, now empty and open, trembled. He filled them with his own and gripped.

  “Talia, listen to me. In another world, another time, we could have been something to each other. But it’s impossible now—I know you understand that. I should’ve never allowed it to go as far as it has. I’m so sorry...”

  Her head snapped up, eyes flashing. “I’m not. I’m the child of Death, and this war is probably going to kill us both. I’m not sorry for one minute of it that I choose to live. I know what I am now, and I’ve got a general idea of what I am supposed to do. I could’ve, should’ve
, been living all along.”

  He stroked his thumbs across her palms—she was silky soft, warm. It would be so easy to run his hands up her smooth arm, to gather her onto his lap and follow the softness of her skin to warmer places on her body. To use sex to forget everything. If Custo weren’t going to be here any minute, he just might have.

  He forced himself to cease stroking her. “We’ve got a tough road ahead of us, and I don’t want to confuse the situation.”

  She pulled her hands free. “Don’t patronize me. I’m not confused. It’s not so very difficult what I have to do.”

  Talia stood and walked to the windows overlooking the sharp lights of the city.

  “I didn’t mean it that way.” He followed her, gaze meeting hers in the night-darkened glass. And just like that they were back to where they started an hour before. His body remembered and stirred against his will.

  “It’s fine. I’m fine. I’ll do what needs to be done. I’ve been searching my whole life for a reason I’m so different. Now I have it. Ending the wraith war is the reason I was born.” In the reflection, her face was composed. Too composed. Stony.

  Adam dropped his gaze to the floor. If he continued to look at her, he was going to do something that messed with their heads even more.

  But she was right. She had something to do. Jacob was still out there. He and his maker had to die.

  Adam raised his head. “Custo’s going to be here soon. I’ve got to get some things together, inventory the supplies we have here.”

  Talia watched Adam retreat into a back room, presumably to check supplies, but more likely to get away from her. The distance between them was both a relief and a disappointment. If the conversation had gone another way, and it could have if she’d let it, there would be no distance between them right now at all. None whatsoever. Her core contracted at his absence, fisting with an ache in her abdomen that echoed in her heart.