by Lara Adrian
Sia was loath to imagine what a drug like that could do if it penetrated the Breed the way some others had ruined human lives. “It sounds awful.”
“It is. That’s why Santino needs to be stopped, and quick. The Order’s been after him for weeks, but he’s a cagey bastard, elusive as hell. Every time we think we’ve got a bead on the son of a bitch he manages to dodge us. We know he’s got friends in law enforcement, so we’ve been keeping our intel-gathering covert, our operations as far off the radar as possible.”
Sia thought back to Trygg’s reaction when he learned the police had been called to the shelter. “Do you think any of the JUSTIS officers who came here tonight are connected to him?”
He shrugged. “Possibly. Hell, it’s damn probable.”
“I’m sorry,” Sia murmured. “I’m sorry that Rosa is dead and I wasn’t able to save her. But I’m sorry if my actions tonight have gotten in the way of your mission. Sometimes it feels like everything I touch, I ruin.”
Trygg’s scowl deepened. “You did what you had to, Tamisia. No one can fault you for that.”
“Not even you?”
His brows rose, but he didn’t take the bait. “Go inside now. You shouldn’t be out here.”
Whether he meant outside in general or specifically with him, she wasn’t certain. He stepped back from her, putting more than an arm’s length between them. Sia told herself the chill she felt was merely the night air, not the forbidding nature of the man whose haunted gaze refused to leave hers.
She waited for him to say something, to tell her good night or to growl that he hoped their paths never crossed again.
But Trygg said nothing.
Aloof and impossible to read, he merely turned and walked away without looking back.
Sia watched him until the inky darkness had swallowed him up.
Chapter 4
As soon as the sun set the next night, Trygg hit the pavement on another solo patrol. He’d been twitchy as hell to get back in the city, not only because Lazaro Archer and Lucan Thorne had both taken a bite out of his ass after the debacle at the shelter last night, but also because Trygg hated the knowledge that every hour Santino was allowed to breathe was another chance for the bastard to peddle more Red Dragon and enslave more members of the Breed population.
Trygg was back at square one on his hunt for Santino’s lair, and he had a lot of ground to make up fast.
So why the fuck was he parked in one of the Order’s black SUVs down the street from the women’s shelter again instead of working new leads?
In a word, Tamisia.
His encounter with her last night continued to nag at him for a host of reasons he had no desire to analyze. Chief among them—or so he told himself—was the fact that Franco and his human cohort had been convinced the dead woman, Rosa, had possessed something they wanted.
Ergo, something Santino wanted.
Trygg didn’t think anyone else at the shelter was in any danger from the kingpin or whoever might be tapped to replace Franco in the organization, but that didn’t mean he wanted to leave Tamisia and the other females unprotected. The Atlantean could handle herself, he had no doubt. But for the time being, Trygg would make a point of keeping a personal watch on the house and its residents.
Besides, it was only sound reconnaissance to want to know if Santino or his men had any reason to come sniffing around the place again.
Odds were whatever they’d been looking for had likely been picked up by JUSTIS in their processing sweep of Rosa’s room and was locked in an evidence hold somewhere at the main station in the city. Santino surely realized that himself by now as well. And if the bastard had his hooks in anyone at the station, he either had access to the items already or would be making his own plans to get his hands on them soon.
Trygg needed to get there first. Which meant it was time to end this little side trip and start putting his last several hours of research to the test. He’d hacked in and downloaded the building schematics of the station. Unless there had been a major renovation in the past six months, the evidence room was on the basement floor in the northwest corner of the building. All he needed to do was determine the best infiltration plan.
The fastest way would be to go in stealth through a window or a portal on the roof, but that meant having to traverse the whole station from inside in order to get to the evidence cages below ground level. Flashing past the humans with his unearthly speed would be cake, but there was no hope of avoiding being spotted by any one of JUSTIS’s Breed officers.
As much as he disliked the risk of walking through the front door, it could be the only way. Hiding in plain sight might be his best method of cover. Unless he could create some kind of diversion big enough to allow him to skate past unnoticed.
He was running various options in his head when he spied Tamisia exiting the shelter. He scowled, every bit of his focus now trained on the woman who’d been on his mind too damn much already.
She stepped out to the street in front of the house where a taxi had rolled to a stop to meet her. Her platinum hair was gathered loosely in a twist at her nape. A creamy silk blouse clung enticingly to her breasts, unbuttoned just far enough to give a tantalizing glimpse of the valley between them. Faded jeans hugged her endless legs and long, lean curves.
Taken at a whole, the look was casual, even unremarkable, yet sexy as hell on Sia.
Trygg’s cock more than approved. Arousal stirred like a lick of wildfire, all but trumping his dark and growing curiosity.
What the hell was she up to?
She climbed into the taxi and the car took off. Trygg followed at a covert distance, his veins crackling with suspicion.
He probably shouldn’t have been surprised when her ride turned in front of the very place he intended to go tonight.
But yet he was surprised. Confused too.
More to the point, he was pissed.
When she got out of the taxi in front of the JUSTIS building, Trygg killed the engine of the SUV and climbed out. He was in her face before she took the first step toward the station’s entrance.
Her light-blue eyes widened. “Trygg.”
“Yeah. Me.” His own eyes felt molten with his anger. “You lost or something, Sia? Because I thought I made it pretty fucking clear that I didn’t want to see you anywhere near this operation.”
At least she had the good sense to look nervous as he slowly drank her in, giving her an unrushed head-to-toe appraisal. He couldn’t decide if she was dressed for a date or an after-hours deposition with law enforcement. Neither idea sat well with him.
And he damn sure didn’t want to acknowledge the jab of possessiveness that made his blood race through his veins. She’d been awakening this uninvited need in him since the night before. Longer, if he had the balls to admit it to himself.
This beautiful, headstrong Atlantean female had put him in a twist from the moment she’d arrived in Rome.
“Come with me.”
He didn’t give her the chance to refuse. Taking hold of her by the arm, he steered her back to the SUV and into the passenger seat. He got in on the other side and slammed the door behind him.
“Talk, Sia. Right now. What are you doing here?”
He was furious, but she was far from flinching. She held his accusing gaze. “I came here to get some answers. I have a feeling I might find them in some of Rosa’s personal effects, but they were collected by the officers last night. I can’t rest until I know for sure.”
Her boldness was a striking reminder that he was dealing with a preternatural being whose fury could easily match his own. That Sia was as lovely to look at as her power was formidable only made his arousal spike even stronger.
“What did you intend to do, stroll inside JUSTIS’s evidence room and take them back?” That essentially summed up his own plan, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to cop to that now. “You agreed to stay out of my way, Sia. I thought you understood the seriousness of this situation with Santino.”
She leaned forward as if she expected to do real battle with him—as if she welcomed it. And damn if that didn’t make his fangs throb in his gums with a hunger that went deeper than blood or sustenance.
“But you need to understand something too, Trygg. I don’t answer to you. I don’t answer to the Order, either. You have a mission to carry out. I respect that. After what you told me about this criminal, Santino, I truly hope you succeed. But that doesn’t mean you or anyone else is going to dictate what I can or cannot do. And if I decide to bend to your commands of me, don’t think I do it simply because you will it.”
Trygg relented with a nod. He wasn’t sure if all of this anger and defiance was directed at him or at some other male who had manipulated her to do his bidding. He recalled some talk about her banishment from the colony. Whispers that she had put her faith in someone who had his own treasonous agenda. Sia had been deemed complicit, but it was her affection for the male that had blinded her to the fact that she was being used.
Trygg had some experience with being used too. He had the scars to prove it.
“Those men killed Rosa, Trygg. I want to know why.” Sia reached out, putting her hand on his for the briefest moment, her gaze imploring. “I think you owe me that much. Especially when neither you nor anyone else from the Order can guarantee the shelter is safe so long as Santino and his men are still searching for whatever they think Rosa had. So, don’t ask me to stand by and let the Order handle a problem that’s every bit as much mine as it is yours.”
Fuck. She had a point. Not one he was eager to indulge, but he didn’t think arguing was going to get them anywhere at the moment.
And he didn’t have the time to waste on bickering with her.
If the dead woman had something of worth to Santino—something worth killing for—the Order needed to intercept it. Even if that meant Sia was along for the ride tonight.
He scrubbed his hand over his face. “I pulled the building schematics off the JUSTIS servers this morning. I’ve got the whole place committed to memory, including the layout of the evidence cages.”
Her brows rose. “So, you also intended to come for Rosa’s things tonight? What was your brilliant plan for retrieving them? I can hardly wait to hear it.”
Her lofty tone should have grated, but instead it only made him want to bait her. “I’m a man of action. I prefer to stay fluid when it comes to plans of attack.”
“Ah. I see. Meaning you didn’t actually have a plan in mind, either.”
He shrugged and she let go of a laugh, the first he’d ever heard from her. With her head smugly tilted and her pretty pink lips parted on a smile, she was a temptation. Trygg had an almost irresistible urge to touch her. To kiss her. The soft fall of her platinum hair around her face made him long to feel it between his fingers. Or draped across his bare skin.
Christ.
Hell, yes, he had a plan in mind. Looking at Sia, he had more plans in mind than he had a right to—most of them centering on her being naked and spread out beneath him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in such tight quarters with a female, mainly because he made a point to avoid them except on occasions when he needed an open vein to feed from or a fast, anonymous fuck to take the edge off.
Sitting with Sia in the close confines of the vehicle was wreaking bloody havoc on his senses, to say nothing of his concentration. The best thing he could do for both of them was to get his hands on whatever Santino was after from the dead woman, then get on with the business of hunting down his target. Anything to put a lot of space between himself and Sia.
And the sooner the better.
He pulled a black skullcap out of his jacket pocket and plugged his head into it, pulling the knit hat low onto his brow. “I’m going in. And you’re not going anywhere near that building. Understood?”
She started to balk, but his dark glower seemed to actually give her pause. “What are you going to do, Trygg?”
“My fucking job.”
She watched him pull the collar of his leather jacket up to cover the Breed dermaglyphs that tracked up his neck. When he checked the pair of sheathed daggers that he wore strapped around his torso beneath the jacket, Sia swallowed.
“Do you think you’re going to need those?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Trygg, there must be close to a hundred officers in there—many of them Breed. If you get caught, you won’t be able to take them all.”
His grin felt more like a sneer. “Don’t be so sure. You have no idea what I’m capable of. And trust me, Sia, you wouldn’t want to know.”
She sat back at that bleak admission, dark questions swirling in her uneasy gaze. “It’s a busy night at the station. There have been people coming and going the entire time we’ve been here. So, how do you expect to get inside?”
“Right through the front door.” He grunted, closing up his jacket. “Be a hell of a lot easier if I didn’t have this face. It tends to get noticed. And not easily forgotten.”
Sia didn’t laugh at his joke. He wished he hadn’t said it now, feeling her studying him, knowing he must seem beastly to a beauty like her. Ordinarily, he’d find solace in his monstrous looks. Caught in Sia’s unflinching gaze, he felt exposed. Cut open all over again.
Before he realized what she was doing, she lifted her hand and brushed her fingertips over his scarred cheek. “Promise me you’ll be careful, Trygg.”
No one had ever asked that of him before. No one had ever cared. Not unless they wanted something in return.
But Sia’s eyes were tender on him, her voice sincere. And as unexpected as her touch was against his riddled cheek, he barely held back his groan of pleasure in the instant before she drew her hand away.
Emotions churned, mixing with the desire that was becoming increasingly difficult to contain. He clenched his fists, if only to keep from taking hold of her and dragging her into his arms.
He didn’t quite know how to process any of what Sia made him feel, other than to shut it down hard.
“I have a job to do.” Opening the driver’s side door, he threw her a cold look. “Do us both a favor, Sia. Don’t be here when I get back.”
Chapter 5
Sia sat in the dark vehicle for only a moment. She watched Trygg stroll casually toward the entrance of the station, her irritation growing with each passing second.
What just happened?
She’d felt the sizzle of awareness that had ignited between them when she touched him, and she knew he had too.
Yet Trygg, a behemoth of a male whose lethal glower and deep, gravel-rough voice made even the warriors of the Rome command center stand a little straighter when he was around, had practically scrambled to get away from her.
Right after ordering her to be gone when he got back.
She knew if she left she would never see him again. He would make sure of that now.
Because somehow, in spite of the fact they couldn’t seem to avoid locking horns or struggling for the upper hand, she and Trygg had connected. And it had scared him.
It scared her, too, especially when she was still licking her wounds from the last time she’d allowed herself to get close to a man.
But Sia wasn’t the type to run.
She preferred to face her problems head on.
And the biggest problem she had right now was the stubborn, overbearing Breed male who seemed to think he had to take on the world and all of its troubles single-handedly.
Sia stared daggers into the back of his covered head as he fell in behind a cluster of bikers who were just entering the station. Even with his shoulders hunched and his hands shoved into his pockets, he stood out like a tree among shrubs.
Not that he couldn’t handle whatever happened once he got inside. She trusted his skills were every bit as stealthy and lethal as his reputation proclaimed them to be. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t anxious.
He’d been gone only a few
seconds and the wait was already killing her.
“Dammit.”
She shook her head on another exhaled curse, then hopped out of the vehicle. Her plan for how she might help him took shape in her mind as she walked the first few steps over the dark pavement. Reaching up, she vigorously mussed her hair, then tore her sleeve loose at the shoulder. For good measure, she also ripped one side of her blouse wide open, exposing her lace bra and a fair amount of bare skin.
By the time she neared the station in her disheveled state, she had managed to make tears well in her eyes and force her breathing into a panicked, rapid pant.
“Aiutami! Aiutami! Per favore!”
Every head turned as she rushed inside, screaming for help in fluent Italian.
Every head, including the dark one that towered over most of the others in the busy lobby.
She didn’t dare look directly in Trygg’s direction as she carried on about being attacked just outside the station, but she felt his hard eyes boring into her in the second before she collapsed dramatically on the floor. No less than a dozen officers—Breed and human alike—hurried over to assist her.
She kept up her ruse, using all of the Atlantean allure at her disposal. Just to be safe, she also made sure to show just enough skin to keep her male audience’s attention riveted while several officers ran outside to look for her assailant and still more crowded around to offer her water and comfort while she pretended to fade in and out of consciousness.
She didn’t know how long to continue with the act. She’d lost sight of Trygg almost immediately and could only hope he’d had enough time to locate the evidence room and retrieve Rosa’s belongings as a couple of kind JUSTIS officers helped show her to the ladies’ room so she could compose herself enough to file a report of the “assault.”
Sia waited in the restroom for several long minutes before peering around the door to find the corridor quieted and empty. Ducking out, she hurried to the nearest side door and made her escape into the adjacent alley.