by Sylvia Day
The lycan visibly bristled. “Now, just a minute—”
“Himeko.” Elijah’s calm, quiet voice settled the matter. “Please excuse us.”
Himeko looked at him, searching his face for something. With a jerky nod, she grabbed her plate and shot Vash a look of pure unadulterated malice.
And they were supposed to fight alongside each other today. Terrific.
Vash settled onto the vacated bench seat and kept her clawed hands clasped under the table.
“That was rude,” he said, slicing into a slab of ham and shoving it into his mouth. “They want to kill you enough as it is. Stop making it worse.”
“She wants you.”
He swallowed. “She’s had me.”
Jealousy dug its green talons into her, shortening her breath.
“Not recently,” he qualified, “and not seriously.”
“It wasn’t enough for her.”
“It was for me. We had a mutual itch and we scratched it. End of story.” He dumped a pat of butter onto his hash browns and mashed it around. When she didn’t say anything else, he asked, “Was there something you wanted?”
“You look tired.” His eyes were dark and shadowed, his sexy mouth bracketed with deep grooves.
“Do I? You look drop-dead gorgeous, as always.” He delivered the compliment in so dry a tone she couldn’t take it seriously.
“I’m sorry.”
He looked at her then, arching a brow when she didn’t elaborate.
She exhaled in a rush. “I should’ve made a greater effort to tell you about the plan to pair you with Raze. I didn’t think you’d like it, and I chickened out instead of arguing with you. Later, when the plans changed, I avoided the argument altogether by burying it. Trying to bury it. I apologize. I’m not proud that I was a coward about it.”
Elijah studied her, his gaze so intense she nearly squirmed in her seat. It was driving her crazy to sit so close to him with such a yawning gap between them. Every inhale brought his scent into her nostrils, making her heart pound. She knew he heard it, knew he’d sense her hunger just as he had when they’d first met in the Bryce Canyon cave.
He resumed eating, his gaze on his plate. “Apology accepted.”
Relief filled her so quickly she got dizzy. That was probably why it took her a heartbeat or two to realize she wasn’t going to get any more from him.
“That’s it?” she demanded when it settled in. “That’s all you’re going to give me?”
“What more did you want?” he asked coolly, scooping his sunny-side-up fried egg onto a triangle of buttered toast. “You apologized. I accepted.”
Her eyes burned. Coming so swiftly on the heels of relief, her disappointment blew the lid off her already volatile mood. “I think I hate you.”
His knuckles whitened on his utensils. “Tread carefully, Vashti.”
“What the fuck do you care? No, don’t answer. You already have, loud and clear.” She slid out of the booth and walked away.
There was a moment of terrible silence.
“Damn it, Vashti.” His silverware clattered onto his plate behind her. “God-fucking-damn it.”
She raced the distance to the Explorer, desperate to get away before he saw her crying. God…she really was a hot mess. And for what? A sexy lycan who strung legions of panting women along for kicks? Stupid. The whole thing was stupid. She’d been way better off with a dormant sex drive and the lycan working for the Sentinels.
He reached the driver’s-side door just as she locked it with her safely inside.
“Vashti.” He’d never looked more furious. His eyes were wild and glowing, his voice guttural. “Open the door.”
Flipping him the bird with her left hand, she turned the ignition with her right. “Enjoy your breakfast, asshat. I’m going to grab a bite to eat myself. Fuck if I’ll starve myself for you.”
His palm slapped against the window, sending hairline fractures exploding through the safety glass. “Vashti. Don’t run. I won’t be able to control myself if you run.”
She gunned the vehicle into reverse, sending gravel flying from behind the tires. She was on the road a second later, having no idea where she was going and grateful that there wasn’t another soul on the winding rural road.
Pine trees crowded thickly against the serpentine ribbon of asphalt, casting shadows over the highway that perfectly suited her mood. Tears coursed down her face. So many goddamn tears. She’d thought she cried herself dry during the night. It infuriated her that there were more yet to be spilled.
Gripping the steering wheel in both hands, she screamed to purge the sick, roiling tension inside her. Then she screamed again as she hugged a curve in the road and came face-to-face with a massive chocolate-colored wolf. In the split second it took her to realize she was going to barrel right through him, her world ground to a shuddering halt. She stood on the brakes, distantly felt the antilock system vibrating the pedal madly beneath her feet. The wheels didn’t lock. The car didn’t slow nearly fast enough.
Bracing for the impact, she stiffened into a board…
…and nearly lost her sanity when Elijah leaped onto the hood, scrambled over the roof, and jumped off the back.
The Explorer slid into a cutout on the side of the road and came to a jerking stop. Vash slammed the transmission into park and hopped out.
“Are you fucking insane?” she screamed with fists clenched at her sides.
His wild green irises were aglow above a vicious snarl. All animal, with none of the man in them. He was absolutely crazy.
And she was in big trouble. Huge.
She was faced with the choice of fighting or fleeing. Holding up both hands, she forced her restless body not to move. She debated her options—tearing into him with teeth and claws, ripping him to pieces physically as he’d done to her emotionally, or just running as far and fast as she could. She’d outrun lycans before; she could do it again.
Ears flat to his head and teeth bared, Elijah slinked forward, owning the center of the highway. Vash swallowed hard, as riveted by his lupine beauty as she was by his human form. He was stunningly majestic, his thick fur as glossy and rich as his human hair, his movements lethally graceful. His growl was a deep warning, a rumbling sound of danger that made the hair on her nape stand on end.
Something perverse inside her burst free, fueled by her simmering fury and pain. She’d chased him across the country, then chased him down at breakfast. By god, it was time for him to see what it felt like to pursue. She’d been too damn easy. Just like all the other bitches that fell all over him.
With her eyes on his, her mouth curved in a slow, taunting smile. One of her upraised hands lowered to intersect their line of sight. All of her fingers curved into her palm except for the middle one. “Fuck you.”
Vash leaped over the hood of the SUV and darted into the woods.
CHAPTER 15
Fresh from a shower, Lindsay tightened the belt of her floor-length satin robe and went downstairs in search of Adrian. It was barely dawn and she knew just where to find him. She moved swiftly and quietly, not wanting to wake the two lycan guards in the guest rooms.
It was time for her to get Adrian to talk.
Being here, in Helena’s former home, was difficult for him, but he wasn’t sharing his pain. And working without Phineas—his second-in-command, whose death had brought them together—was like working without his right hand. Yet he remained reserved and contained, rigidly so. It was the way he needed to be to hold his command, she knew. It was the way he’d been created. But it wasn’t healthy for him. He was adrift and hiding it, shielding her and everyone around him.
Lindsay didn’t fully understand how Adrian had come to be. Unlike her, he hadn’t been born or raised. He’d been brought into existence just as he was—a fully mature male angel with a single purpose: to serve as an implement of punishment against other angels.
She couldn’t begin to grasp what that would feel like. She’d been raised by ador
ing parents. She had been hugged a lot. She’d laughed a lot. Not a day went by when she hadn’t heard “I love you.” In contrast, Adrian had been created to be void of emotion. In time, surrounded by mortals, he’d learned to covet and desire. As a creature built to be hard and merciless, it was the edgier feelings that had manifested first. Later he’d learned to feel loyalty and respect. He had established friendships. Now he was learning how to love her, learning how to give. But the guilt and remorse he was feeling over Phineas’s and Helena’s deaths were beyond his experience. He didn’t know how to express his turmoil, and bottling it up was hurting him more than she could bear.
“My wounded angel,” she murmured, her heart aching for him.
She’d fallen in love with a killing machine, one who was slowly but surely becoming a warmhearted, red-blooded man. There were bound to be trials and growing pains in the process, and she would help him as much as she could. But she needed him to open up to her to do so.
He’d lost so much in such a short time. He felt that he’d betrayed Helena’s trust, that he hadn’t been there for her as he should have been. Not as a commanding officer, but as a friend. Just as Phineas had been a friend, the closest one he’d had, someone dear and precious to him.
She exited through the kitchen door out to the backyard patio. The enclosed space was small, no more than a postage stamp really, with a circle of mosaic tiles in the center of the rectangle of grass. For some people, the spot would have been perfect for a birdbath or a couple of lawn chairs. Here, she knew it was a landing pad, a place from which angels could lift to the sky and return to the earth.
The air crackled with the electric energy of an approaching desert storm, a storm that was brewing inside Adrian. One he was keeping at bay by sheer will alone. And it was costing him. Greatly.
Tilting her head back, she spoke softly into the dawn breeze. “Adrian, my love. I need you.”
A moment later he appeared, his brilliantly white wings with their crimson tips a shock of shimmering alabaster against the pinkish gray heavens. She’d known he would be close, never too far away to be there for her should she need him. His landing was impossibly graceful, the tips of his extended wings nearly touching the stucco walls that separated the yard from their neighbors. The ball of one foot touched the tile first; then the full weight of his body settled firmly onto the ground.
As was his custom, he wore only loose linen pants. His powerful chest and arms were bare and beautiful, his caramel-hued skin stretched over lean, rippling muscle. His black hair was tousled by the wind, framing his gorgeous face. And his eyes, with those gorgeous flame-blue irises, slid over her face with love and tender passion.
Her heart sighed at the sight of him. Her blood heated and flushed her skin.
And he knew, of course. His mouth curved in a sensual smile. “You could have called me from the bed, neshama. I would’ve heard you and come to you there.”
“That’s not why I need you.”
“Oh? Are you sure about that?”
She sucked in a deep breath. “I always want that, but there’s something else.”
His wings dissipated like mist as she closed the distance between them. She walked right in to him, pressing her face in to his chest and wrapping her arms tightly around him.
“Lindsay.” His resonant voice was threaded with concern. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Do you know how much I need you, Adrian? How dependent I’ve become on having you near? Not for blood or sex, although I won’t deny that I need both of those things from you. It’s like you’re the force that makes my heart beat and, when we’re apart, it forgets how to function.”
He crushed her so tightly against him, she couldn’t breathe. She was grateful her vampire lungs didn’t really need to because she didn’t want to pull away. One of his hands fisted in the curls of her hair. The other arm banded around her waist, ensuring that every inch of her was pressed tightly to him. “Neshama sheli. You destroy me.”
“I love you. So much that I feel your pain as if it were my own.”
His chest expanded beneath her cheek. “I would never hurt you.”
“Is that why you’re bottling it up?” Lindsay pulled back to look up at him. “Is that why you’re not letting me in? You should know I didn’t shield you.”
He pulled her head back and looked at her.
“You’re torturing yourself over letting me go with Vash,” she said softly. “You’re wondering what that says about your love for me. But what are you comparing it to? What we have is something no one else will have. Not just because of who we are as individuals, but because of the obstacles we’re facing together. We’re going to have to take risks—with ourselves and with each other.”
His irises were flickering blue flames, alien and ancient. Tormented. She wondered how he carried all that roiling emotion inside him, how he hid it behind the smiles he gave her and the stoicism he gave to his Sentinels, how he leashed it when he made love to her and fought battles with clearheaded precision. How she could get him to let it out.
“I manipulated you, Adrian.”
He stiffened.
“I know you’re feeling guilty about Helena.” She tightened her embrace when he jerked against her. “I used it against you to get you to put your Sentinels first and let me go with Vashti to help Elijah.”
A long moment passed. “The weakness was mine to exploit. I made it possible.”
“There’s no excuse for what I did, only for why I did it.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I have to,” she said simply, lifting her hand to push his hair back from his forehead. “Because we’re strongest when we’re one unit. I’m trying to remember that this is all new to you. That you’re trying and you’ve come really far from the man I met in the Phoenix airport. But I need you to come farther, step closer, let me in. You’re keeping me out.”
“I don’t…” He frowned. “I don’t know how to do what you’re asking.”
“Think out loud. When the thoughts are swirling around in your head, give them a voice. Let me hear them. Let me be your sounding board.”
“Why?”
“Because you love me and you need me. I know you have to be strong for the other Sentinels. They lean on you, and if you fall, they fall. But you need to lean on someone, too. That’s where I come in, if you’ll let me.”
“I’m fine.”
“Physically, yes. Damn fine. Emotionally, you’re a wreck.” With her hand at his nape, Lindsay pulled his mouth down to hers and brushed her lips across his. “You couldn’t have done things differently with Helena, Adrian.”
His hands flexed convulsively against her. “She came to me for help.”
“No. She came to you for permission. And you told her the truth—you weren’t the guy to ask for it. You broke a law by falling in love with Shadoe, then me. Helena wanted you to say it was okay for her to break the law, too, and you couldn’t do that. Honestly, it wasn’t fair for her to ask you.”
“She was in love, Lindsay. I know how irrational that makes us. I should’ve been more sympathetic.”
“You can’t tell me you weren’t. I know you. It broke your heart when she told you that she’d fallen in love with a lycan. I heard your voice when you called me and, later, when you told me what happened.”
“I was going to separate them. Break them apart.”
“That was the plan,” she agreed. “But you might’ve changed your mind once you saw them together. Or you might have gone through with it. We’ll never know. She’ll never know, because she took the option away from you. That was her decision. You can’t go around regretting the actions of someone else.”
“Even if I forced her hand with my actions?” he shot back, his voice clipped and icy.
“What did you do, Adrian? She asked you for permission to have a romantic relationship with one of her guards and you told her to ask the Big Guy Upstairs. Then she ran away and they killed t
hemselves. Where in that series of events are you guilty of forcing her hand?”
“She knew me. She knew what I’d do.”
“Bullshit. You didn’t even know what you were going to do. No…Hang on…Hear me out. You took your time getting to her. You were thinking. Debating. Reasoning with yourself. It’s not your fault that we’ll never know what could’ve happened if you’d had a choice.” She cupped his face in her hands. “It’s not your fault. And if Phineas were here, I’m sure he’d be telling you the exact same thing.”
A tear clung to his thick bottom lashes. It slipped free. He swiped angrily at it, then stared at his glistening finger with something akin to horror. Another tear fell. He whispered brokenly in a language she didn’t understand. When his gaze met hers, Lindsay saw shock. And fear.
She wondered if he knew that he’d cried the first time they’d made love.
“Neshama,” she breathed, hugging him tightly. “It’s okay. Let it out.”
“I—” He swallowed hard.
“You miss them. I know. You miss them and it hurts.”
“I failed her.”
“No. Shit. No, you didn’t. The system failed. The stupid rules and laws. And your Creator, who’s left you all on your own down here for too long without any guidance or reinforcements.”
A drop of hot rain splattered on her cheek, another sign of his breaking control.
He pressed his face into her throat. “Hold on to me, Lindsay.”
“Always,” she vowed. “Forever.”
Adrian’s wings snapped open and they surged into the air, his powerful body flexing against hers as he forced their combined weight into a steep vertical ascent. The effort was nothing for him, no strain at all for muscles he religiously honed for battle. From the cloudless sky, fat drops of sizzling rain struck her like tiny needles, drenching her in seconds.
Terrified of heights, she buried her face in his chest and hung on, clinging to him so tightly she couldn’t miss that he was sobbing silently. Her heart broke for him, even though she knew he needed to purge in this way. His grief had been pent up inside him, festering, weakening him. She twined her legs with his, clutching at his back beneath his wings and licking the raindrops from his throat and jaw. She murmured nonsensical words of comfort, soothing him as best she could.