by Lea Griffith
“Thirty seconds, Arrow,” Bullet said in a flat voice.
Bone stepped back and so did Arrow. She notched her arrow on the bow’s rest and readied herself.
“And do you know who his mother is, Damon?” Arrow asked letting death’s promise echo.
Damon opened his mouth as a crazy light entered his eyes. “You know her, Arrow. After all you were there when the child was born.”
Darkness threatened to drown her, pulling her under in currents so black she would never know the light again. She was in the well again, drowning in the black. She did know her, but not by name, only by scent and sound, by feel.
Bone stepped into the circle of light thrown by the bulb. “Let me do this thing, sister. You cannot carry more.”
“Her name, Damon. Give me her name so I can send you on your way, brother.”
“Nik—”
The door crashed inward just as Arrow’s ya ripped through Damon’s mouth, ending the name before it was fully voiced. It wasn’t possible, she was dead.
She turned then, pulling another ya from the quiver at her back and leveling it at the men who burst through the door.
Bone and Bullet were both at her side immediately. Damon’s lifeless body fell to the floor between First Team and the men of Trident Corporation.
“Goddamn it, Bullet!” Rand was the first to speak. There was a look on his face that promised retribution and Arrow aimed at him specifically.
“You will not, Arrow,” Bullet’s voice was horrible.
“If he thinks to harm you I will cut his life short without hesitation, sister,” Arrow responded in a cold voice.
Rand took a step back, lowering his weapon. “I would never hurt her.”
“I know, I would kill you first,” Arrow said.
“Saya, lower the weapon.”
She responded to his voice like a dog to the dinner bell.
Arrow stiffened her spine. “You do not command me, Mr. Collins.”
A sigh sounded loud in room. “I’m asking you to lower the weapon.”
“Allow us to leave and I will do so,” she responded.
The temperature in the room seemed to drop. “Leave?” His voice was a whisper that caressed her skin, promising something she could not grasp.
“The building, not the property,” Bullet said into the tension.
A man stepped out of the shadows. Dmitry. “What of your other sister?”
“I am not your concern, Dmitry Asinimov.”
Arrow wondered at the threat of violence in Bone’s words but dismissed it as another person stepped into the building and laughed. She leveled her arrow on Ken Nodachi.
“If you pull back on that arrow I will shoot you where you stand,” he said in a hard voice.
Adam stepped forward, effectively blocking any shot Nodachi would have at her but also blocking her shot at Nodachi.
“You’ll go through me first,” Adam said in a mean voice.
Ken cocked his head. “If I have to, so be it.”
“Ladies,” Rand’s voice was wry as he looked not at First Team but at his own men. “Back away from each other and set your weapons down.” He turned his gaze to Bullet and his face tightened. “Allow them to leave the building. I trust they won’t disappear entirely.”
Bullet nodded at him. “I made a promise, Rand Beckett.” The tension riding the man’s shoulders disappeared.
“I will not set my weapon down, Mr. Beckett,” Arrow whispered.
“But she will lower it,” Adam said firmly.
Amazingly, she found herself doing just that.
The men moved to the other side of the room and she, Bone, and Bullet sidled to the door.
“If the men outside this door attack, I will be forced to kill, Rand,” Bullet said between clenched teeth.
“I know, Bullet. They have orders to stand down.”
Her sister nodded and they left the building, stepping to the edge of the woods.
“I must leave. You know now who’s out there riding our asses?” Bone asked.
“Yes, but there is nothing to be done until she acts. I had thought her dead.” Arrow sighed as she struggled to let the past stay where it belonged. “Where is Blade?”
“Searching for the boy. She’s heading to Sydney,” Bone answered.
Bullet’s head lifted. “Why?”
Bone sighed. “Blade did not say and I did not ask. I must go to Russia, but first I will take care of Donner. I caught up with Rajathan Badami a week ago. He was so kind to inform me that Donner was headed to the United States. Virginia, specifically.”
Arrow sniffed delicately. “That was very kind of Mr. Badami. Did you have something he wanted in return for this information?”
Bone shrugged, her delicate shoulders capable of carrying much more than anyone knew. “I had his throat.” She smiled and it was both beautiful and sad. “I came as soon as I could. Bullet, it is good to see you whole, sister.”
Bullet nodded and her eyes drifted to the men pouring out of the building.
Bone chuckled. “Your Mr. Beckett is protective. This is good considering you almost gave your life for him. And Mr. Collins seems to be incredibly defensive of you, Arrow. Interesting.” Bone sliced a glance at Arrow. “Tell me, sister, are things still moving as we planned?”
She ground her teeth at Bone’s implication. “Yes, but now, more than ever, I need to get to China.”
Joseph on the move didn’t bode well for First Team. He would seek to hide and that couldn’t be allowed. She needed to eliminate the President of China and force Joseph to hole up in Arequipa.
“You are recovering. Are you sure this is something you can handle?” Bone asked.
Arrow curled her nails into her palms and squeezed. “Yes.”
Bone nodded, and in the blink of an eye was gone.
“I must go soothe Rand. Arrow, what I saw earlier? Are you compromised?”
Bullet’s question brought the phantom touch of Adam’s mouth on hers. “No.”
“When you’re ready, let me know. If a diversion is required, we need to formulate a plan.”
“When I’m ready to leave, I will, sister. Do not cause problems with your man. You will be needed when the time is right and you won’t want to be under lock and key when that time comes. Hurting him will only hurt you.”
Bullet nodded and then headed toward Rand Beckett.
Arrow watched them approach one another and wondered why fate fucked with people the way it did. Love was a weakness. Death was the only absolute. Better she remember that than the taste of one Adam Collins.
Chapter Thirteen
Adam followed Saya to her room, waiting until he heard the sound of water running in the bathroom before he entered. She hadn’t locked it and he wanted to rail against the injustice of that. That she’d been trained so completely to deal death she didn’t fear it herself tugged at his heart.
The heart that belonged to Aziveh. He shook his head. Logically, he knew he was fighting a losing battle, but there was nothing to be done for it. His body owned his mind and heart right now, and Adam took some consolation in that. Maybe he hadn’t betrayed the love he had for Aziveh totally, completely.
Liar, his heart mocked him. Her scent saturated the steam wafting under the door to the bathroom and his body tightened in automatic response. He was slowly being conditioned. Slowly losing who he’d been when he’d loved Aziveh to someone he didn’t want to be and didn’t recognize.
He sat down at the small desk beside the window and flipped the lamp off. Part of him wanted to see her body silhouetted by the bathroom light, and another part wanted to watch that uncanny stillness come over her body when she realized he was in the room.
His mind wandered to the scene he’d just come from. Death courted every move Saya made. It surrounded her in shades of black so the only light emanating out of her came from those amazing eyes.
When the camera feed was cut, Adam had been speaking with Raines in the control room. Neit
her man noticed until Rand walked in and wondered at the black on monitors twelve through twenty. Each man looked up at the same time and cursed. Dmitry joined them as they’d made their way to the shed, an old barn converted for the sole purpose of housing prisoners. Before, they questioned enemies in Rand’s basement. Cleanup had been easy but when they’d brought back the children from Arequipa, they decided to use that space for something clean…something better.
The necessity for a prisoner hold hadn’t gone away, but the location had. The barn served as an adequate structure. They’d reinforced it and their first visitor had been Damon Hunstall. He’d been there for four days with just enough water to keep him alive. They’d not tended his wounds but were ready for interrogation tonight once Arrow and Bullet slept.
Adam shook his head ruefully. He and Rand should have known, should have at least guessed. But they hadn’t and their inattention cost them valuable intel. First Team left no one alive, and Damon Hunstall fell like all the ones before.
First Team still had an agenda and trusting them was like walking a tightrope. Ultimately, their plans may include the same outcome, but the getting there was proving to be the most difficult part. Trident was still blind on so many levels and the women, even Bullet, refused to give them everything they knew.
His heart thudded heavily as he recalled the sense of potent urgency he’d felt when they’d realized the women barred the door. Rand was desperate, a madman even going so far as to beat against the steel door with his shoulder. In the end, they’d blown it out of its frame to enter, and the scene that met them had been surreal.
Three women, trained assassins, killers, against a lone unarmed man had been almost frightening to behold. No mercy had been demonstrated in that barn tonight. Of course, none had been requested. Hunstall died silently, his mouth impaled by a titanium-tipped, peacock-feathered arrow courtesy of the woman Adam now waited on. In the air had been the fierce intent of Arrow, Bullet, and a new arrival, Bone. The slight middle-eastern woman, exotically luscious in looks, had the same air of death surrounding her as Bullet and Arrow, only tingeing the air around Bone was a lust to kill.
Adam’s attention though, had been harnessed on Saya. Her eyes glowed in the twilight thrown by the single bulb. She’d met his gaze and he burned for her. Even amidst death, his heart smoldered. His breath caught and he’d rubbed his chest, wanting nothing more than to grab her up and take her away from that place of death. The reaction had been unsettling. His need to protect had never been in doubt, but that his body demanded he go to her and soothe her was so uncomfortable he’d been forced to ignore it.
And now here he was, waiting on her to shower away the death that clung to her like a second skin.
“Why are you here?”
Her voice cut into him and his gaze found her just as he’d secretly wanted, naked and silhouetted by the bathroom light. Her curves were slight but all the more exciting for it. Her gorgeous black hair was unbound and he hissed in a breath.
Adam had never seen her with her hair unbound and the black, sleek curtain of it made his hands itch. He clenched them tight, wanting to swear when his cock rose beneath the material of his cargo pants.
Saya walked slowly toward the bed, a hesitant deer in the presence of a hunter.
If you only knew, Saya, the things I want from you.
He barely broke the words off before they escaped, instead drawing in a deep breath and exhaling slowly. Control was elusive, as fleeting as his ability to stop his body from hardening at mere thoughts of her.
She pulled on a pair of white cotton panties, the cut of them highlighting her slender frame while outlining her magnificent ass. For all of her slenderness, her ass was amazing. He grimaced. It spoke volumes that nudity meant absolutely nothing to her. Joseph raised them to be beasts of burden and beasts had no thoughts of nakedness.
“I came to see how you were doing.” Great job, Collins.
She sniffed slightly, as if his concern were a pile of smelly shit on the floor. “I am the same as I was when I left the barn.”
He stood then, her obvious desire to see him gone from her space like a burr in his saddle. Two steps brought him in front of her so only inches separated them. Adam lifted a hand and touched her hair, lingering at the ends of the strands. Like wet silk, it clung to him and he smiled.
Saya retreated a single step and pulled her hair from his grasp. “What do you want, Mr. Collins?”
He would have laughed. Her question was one he’d been asking himself for over a month now. Since he’d watched her walk out of the fog in Arequipa.
“You say truth is your only virtue, so I will practice it now in deference to your sensibilities,” he murmured as he advanced the step she retreated.
Her eyes were wide in her heart-shaped face and she licked her lips. “I have no sensibilities you need concern yourself with.” She took another step back.
He gained it back. “Then I will practice the truth for truth’s sake. Is that allowable in your rules, Saya?”
“This isn’t a game, Mr. Collins. I believe we had this discussion in Mexico.”
She’d backed herself to the wall and he crowded her against it, caging the beautiful beast before him between his arms. He placed his hands palm-flat on the wall behind her and leaned down, bringing their heads closer together. “Look at me.”
Saya lifted her chin stubbornly but once again licked her lips. Goddamn, she’d undo him with a flick of her tongue.
“The truth, Saya. Can you handle my truth?” He pushed her, guilt and need riding him in equal amounts.
He’d come into this room for resolution but realized it was as lost to him as Aziveh.
“I can handle whatever you choose to dish out, Mr. Collins. I will not break,” she whispered, but in the silence of the room it was a scream.
“You asked me what I wanted, Saya. I would tell you the truth that in this moment, right now, I want you.”
For a heartbeat, her eyes shone with a queer light. Hope? Adam didn’t know, and at the moment didn’t really care.
“I am not on the menu, Mr. Collins,” she said with a wry twist of her lips. “Pick again.”
He leaned in further, allowing his body to sink into her nearly unclothed one. There was a simple pair of cotton panties between them. It wasn’t enough yet it was too much.
She hissed in a breath at the contact and Adam wanted to shout in victory.
“Do not do this, Mr. Collins.”
His mouth was at the shell of her ear. “I’m simply giving you the truth you covet so much. I am doing nothing that your body does not desire of me.”
She struck then. Her hands came up, locking together behind his head, pulling him to her even as she lifted her knee to drive into his sternum. He blocked her knee and turned but she caught him from behind with a punch to the side that made him wince. The woman could punch like a prize-fighter.
He turned, grabbing the leg she was in the process of kicking toward him and he caught it in midair. She stopped, now hopping on one leg as he held the other one close to his side.
“Do not do this, Adam.”
His name on her lips was the hottest foreplay he’d ever engaged in. He was so hard his head spun. All the blood vacated south, straight to his dick.
“You want me, Saya. I can smell the scent of your arousal. The heat of your pussy against my hip is like a brand. Tell me you do not want this,” he demanded.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” She was pleading and a part of Adam crumbled at her feet.
She was taking him apart a piece at a time.
No! He wouldn’t allow it.
He leaned toward her once more, still holding her leg, and let his rage flow free.
“You could never hurt me. You are a killer, everything I hate and nothing I could love. Could you kill me? Oh, I’m sure; after all, it’s what you do best.” Acid dropped from his words and her face closed off in reaction. “But hurt me? You could never get close enough to do tha
t, Arrow.”
He dropped her leg and stepped back. She veiled her eyes and Adam wanted to yell at her to look at him, but he’d done enough damage with words he never should have voiced.
“I want you so much I can’t breathe for it and you are everything I’ve worked against. You take life as if you’ve granted it. No, Arrow, the only hurt being dispensed will be by me if you continue down the path you’re on.”
He turned as self-disgust curled through his gut. Her voice stopped him at the door.
“You have given me your truth, now let me give you mine,” she said softly. “My body wants yours but my wants will not kill me. I have taken life and will continue to do so, but if you ever touch me again, I will set my arrow against your chest and rip your heart from it.”
He opened the door but turned before he left. The sight of her naked body in the weak light from the bathroom nearly unmanned him. The truth beat at him and before he could stop it, flowed from his mouth. “I will touch you again, Saya. I will have you. And you’ll beg me for it. That’s a reality we both need to come to grips with.”
Adam closed the door behind him, knowing he’d set the course for a string of events that would change his life. There was nothing to be done for it, so he made his way to the library for a stiff drink. Anything to take away the sting of what just happened.
•●•
Arrow dressed slowly, the scene from moments ago weighing down her movements but drawing her spine straighter with every breath she took. He’d been there when she’d stepped from the bathroom. So large and still in the shadows of her bedroom, she’d smelled him before she saw him.
She recognized she was attuned to him in ways she’d never been to anyone else. It was an anathema to her yet one she couldn’t control or fight. His words reverberated through her mind, pinching and pulling, stinging and heating.
She wasn’t alone in her desire and yet never had she been so very…alone. He wanted her body but hated her for it. She did too. But hate was a defeatist emotion and one she wouldn’t allow herself.
Arrow wanted to run, workout, train, but in the end she turned off the bathroom light and sank to the floor of her room, retreating into her mind. It was by far the safest place. The darkness called to her and she answered. Though it smothered her, she let it flow over, around, and in because Arrow was the darkness. And darkness was all she would ever know.