by Sylvia Day
Vash loved a healthy man’s body as much as the next woman, but Elijah’s was a work of art, his powerful frame covered in mouthwatering ridges of muscle she wanted to trace with her tongue and hands and—
“These are all warehouses,” Elijah muttered, looking over the property listings she’d printed out.
“Warehouses with plenty of parking, room for a helipad, top-of-the-line electrical systems, and air-conditioning.” She glanced at him. “I know how touchy you lycans get when you’re overheated.”
“It’s not easy being furry.”
It took a moment for the levity of his dry statement to sink in. Looking out the windshield, she felt her lips curve. He was feeling more himself, it seemed, and she was relieved. His pain yesterday had moved her, made her see him in a far more personal way than she would’ve wished. His sincere grief proved his strength of character in many ways—he’d taken an action he knew would cost him personally to benefit the many. She respected both that toughness and his willingness to shed tears without shame.
“These properties are expensive,” he said bluntly. “Syre’s making a hell of an investment in an alliance that hasn’t been tested.”
“I’ll kill you if you double-cross me. Stake your head on a pike for other lycans to see.”
“You’re expecting me to screw you over.”
“Your breed’s track record isn’t so hot. Your ancestors ditched us for Adrian to save their hides and you just ditched Adrian, once again to save your ass.”
His gaze seared her profile. “You’re skipping over millennia and multiple generations. With the average lycan lifespan being two hundred and thirty years, there’s not a single lycan in existence who’s been touched by what happened to the Watchers. Most of them couldn’t even tell you which angel they’re descended from.”
Yet the memory of her fall was as fresh to her as if it had occurred mere weeks ago instead of lifetimes. “So if you forget an obligation, it doesn’t count?”
“Not what I meant. It’s just a tough sell enforcing promises made on behalf of someone who’s centuries away from being born.”
“Your great-great-grandwolfies made that decision for you. A shame you can’t ask them about it.” Familiar bitterness coated her tongue. “I expected fidelity from the angels who served beside me. We made our beds—it’s not a tough sell thinking they’d be honorable for lying in them.”
“I was told the Fallen who became lycans hadn’t broken the laws the rest of you did,” Elijah said.
Vash shot him a scathing glance and became even more irritated by how delicious he looked. She would’ve thought that after seeing how impressive he was naked, seeing him dressed would be no big deal. But he managed to make the casual attire of wide-legged jeans and plain black T-shirt look stunning. He was a big, brawny hunk of a male, capable of taking on a woman of her strength and force of will in a way very few men could. That got to her. Made her hot and hungry for the greedy touch of a passionate man’s hands. His hands. The hands she’d watched stroke over his bare skin in deliberate provocation.
Of course, she wasn’t even sure she remembered how to have sex anymore…
She looked away. “That’s a cop-out. We all lost our way in some manner or another. We were tasked with observing and reporting. Any sort of contact with mortals was outside our scope as Watchers—seeing, talking, hearing, touching, teaching. But we were scholars. We thirsted for knowledge, the giving and receiving of it. We couldn’t resist the desire to interact.”
He tucked the property spec sheets back in the file. “But you didn’t. Not like the others did.”
“I took a mate.”
“Charron. Another Watcher like you. Not a mortal.”
“I know what they say about me, that I martyred myself out of a twisted sense of loyalty to the others, that I wasn’t as guilty because I mated with another angel. But I fraternized in nonsexual ways. I taught what I knew, gave man knowledge they weren’t ready for yet. So when I walked up to a Sentinel with my head held high and accepted my punishment without a fight, it’s because I deserved it. I also thought His fury was just a test of our resolve. The Creator had never allowed the shedding of an angel’s blood before. I thought if we showed our remorse and repentance that we’d be forgiven our trespasses.” She blew out her breath in a rush. “And then the Sentinels were created.”
Her eyes lost their focus on the road, her mind rewinding to that bleak, heartrending time of her life. She would never forget looking down from her hidden vantage, seeing Adrian and Syre battling in the field below while Sentinels rimmed one side and the soon-to-be-Fallen Watchers the other. The deadly dance had been terrifyingly beautiful. Adrian with his alabaster wings and Syre with wings of iridescent blue. Both men tall and dark. Works of art lovingly crafted by the Creator. The best and most favored of their respective castes.
Their fists had pummeled each other viciously; tenderizing flesh and rippling muscle. Twisting and lunging, their wings had swirled fluidly around them like massive capes.
But Syre had been no match for the honed instrument of punishment that was Adrian. Syre was a scholar; Adrian a warrior. Syre had been softened by the humanity that seeped into him via his love for his mortal mate. Adrian was too new to the earth; his control and purpose had yet to be eroded by emotion of any kind. And his entire body was lethal. Unlike the Watchers, the Sentinels were weaponized from head to toe. The tips of their feathers sliced like knives, and their hands and feet clawed with talons that shredded through skin and bone.
Syre had been vulnerable; Adrian inviolate.
In the moment after the Sentinel leader had severed the wings from Syre’s back, his head had lifted and his flame-blue gaze had locked with hers. There had been nothing in the cerulean depths but angelfire, the scorching vengeance of the Creator from which he’d been forged. Over time Vashti would watch those eyes change, as the Sentinel leader settled into his life on earth and fell prey to Shadoe’s erotic hunger.
“Hey.” Elijah’s voice broke into her reverie. “Where’d you go?”
“Adrian’s getting a taste of his own medicine now,” she said hoarsely, thinking of the Sentinel’s beautiful crimson-tipped wings. Those ruby bands of honor were the bloodstains that marked him as the first being ever to draw the blood of an angel. “I hope it goes down like acid.”
He withdrew the aviator shades he had slung over his collar and put them on. “There are very few people I admire more than Adrian.”
“He’s a hypocritical asshat. A total douche for breaking the very rules he busted our asses over.”
“Wasn’t his decision to punish you, and it isn’t his decision to not be punished himself. That order has to come from the Creator, right? If you break a law in front of a cop and the cop doesn’t arrest you, whose fault is it that you don’t get punished?”
“So? He could at least show a little remorse. A little guilt. Something. He’s completely unrepentant.”
“Something I admire him for.”
“You would.”
“To me an asshat is a guy who’d fuck around, angst about it, then fuck around again as if angsting about it absolved him in some twisted way. Adrian owns his mistakes and he owns his feelings for Lindsay, which is just what you did when you gave up your wings without a fight. I think he’d do the same thing, if the punishment comes his way. He certainly wouldn’t make excuses, because he’s not making any now.”
Frowning, Vash stared across the hood at the expanse of flat nothingness that hugged the stretch of Nevada highway they traveled on. Resenting Adrian was one of her tenets. She wasn’t prepared to lose it alongside losing her hatred of every single lycan in existence. One truce was enough for now. “Shut up.”
She didn’t look at him, but she suspected he was smiling. Smug bastard.
“Our exit,” he said, and she pulled off.
“This works.”
Vash looked at him. “Just like that? First place we see and you’re done.”
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nbsp; He glanced around the vast open space again and shrugged. It had been the distribution center for a small import company that hadn’t survived the economic downturn. The exterior was marked by loading bay doors and the interior by soaring ceilings that suspended moving cranes on elaborate tracks. Skylights flooded the space with illumination, dissipating any possibility of feeling closed in. “It has everything you say it needs. No point in wasting the day looking at more of the same. Besides, you liked this one best, and it’s your dime we’re dropping.”
It didn’t bother him to take the handout and it didn’t shake his confidence, which she grudgingly admired. “I didn’t say I liked this one best.”
He shot her a look.
“Okay, then.” She pulled out her iPhone and called Syre’s assistant, Raven, to complete the sale. Then she speed dialed Raze. “Hey,” she said when he answered. “You win. And…I didn’t cheat.”
“Ha! Be there in ten.”
She ended the call and met Elijah’s gaze, explaining, “He was sure you’d go with my choice.”
Amusement warmed his eyes. There’d be no repudiations from him, no defensiveness, even though it could be easy for her to say he was so used to following commands that he was easily led. His poise and self-possession stirred her admiration. And her desire. There was nothing so attractive as a powerful, handsome, and self-assured man.
God. What the hell was the matter with her?
She needed to eat. That was it. She hadn’t fed in days, and hunger was making her vulnerable to Elijah’s appeal and making it too easy to forget what he was.
Trying to get her mind off it, she texted Salem to make sure he was en route with the busload of lycans Stephan had been tasked with rounding up. Assured that everything was on track, she took a moment to make sure the Alpha was on track, too.
“Are you all right?” she asked him. “About yesterday.”
“No.” His face shuttered. “But I’ll survive.”
“You handled the announcement well last night. I meant to tell you that.” But she had been distracted by aggravation with the fawning lycan who’d patched him up. Not that she’d ever admit it.
He stared at her a minute. “Thanks. And thanks for the pep talk.”
“No problem.” Suddenly feeling awkward, she gestured toward her Jeep. “Help me unload before Raze arrives.”
They were just finishing up when the sound of a helicopter approaching signaled Raze’s arrival. He landed smoothly in the empty parking lot and cut the engine. The remote location of the property spoke to the ambition of the previous owners—they could’ve expanded indefinitely as business grew. Instead, the rising cost of fuel and weak retail traffic in stores had led to a short sale. Their loss was now her gain.
The heavily muscled vampire, one of the Fallen like her, climbed out of the aircraft with a grin, his eyes hidden behind wraparound sunglasses, his shaved head shining under the desert sun. He sized up Elijah with a long, sweeping glance. Then he looked at Vash. “I’ll have to make another trip, at least. Maybe two more.”
She nodded. “Let’s get you unloaded, then.”
It took all day to move the necessary supplies into the building, even with the help of the four dozen lycans they’d brought in via bus. In addition to the electronic equipment, which took priority, they set up rows of bunk beds that drew groans from the lycans, because they were identical to the ones they’d been provided while indentured to Adrian. Cameras were set up on the roof, since any angelic incursion would come from the air, and the windows were covered with UV-blocking film, to create a safe haven for the minions that would join them in a few hours under cover of darkness.
The most important thing for Vash, however, was the van-sized map that showed the pattern of contagion around the country. She stood in front of it with her hands on her hips, knowing the radiuses had extended in the last few days she’d spent setting up the lycan/vampire alliance.
Turning her head, she watched as the lycans worked alongside her most trusted captains, Raze and Salem. Lycans and vampires working together. It was insane, really, considering the seething hostility that weighted the air, like flammable gas awaiting the strike of a match. She was restless in anticipation of a sparking event, knowing it wouldn’t take much to set off an explosion that could devolve into a bloodbath.
It didn’t escape her attention that Elijah was the force keeping it all together. As the temperature rose, he took most of the outside shifts, hefting the heavy equipment and carrying it into the loading bays without a word of complaint. She knew how lycans hated the heat; she’d exploited how testy they became when uncomfortable countless times on hunts. But Elijah was such a powerful example of grace under pressure that the others were shamed into good behavior—lycan and vampire alike.
Although sweat poured down the lycans’ laboring bodies and their chests heaved, they worked quickly and efficiently. And the vampires gave the Alpha only a token amount of flak when he directed their efforts with firm, unwavering command. They didn’t trust him, but they couldn’t fault his leadership style. It was impossible to do so. There was something inherently majestic about Elijah, a core strength of will that was unshakable. And he was compassionate. He took the time to speak to each lycan individually, putting a hand on their shoulders and gifting personal words of thanks and praise.
More than once she found herself staring at and admiring him. We’re equals or we’re nothing, he’d said, referring to vampires and lycans as a whole. But it was true for them as individuals, too.
No, she corrected herself. He outranks me. His equals were Syre and Adrian. For the first time, she was confronted with an attraction to a man who wasn’t beneath her in rank. She was startled at how much that changed the dynamic.
“If this alliance sticks,” Elijah said at the end of the day, “it’ll take me years to get used to.”
“How many of these lycans can you trust to have your back?”
One slashing brow rose. His hair was damp from a recent shower, inciting a mental picture him of standing beneath a spray of water, naked and wet and irresistibly sexy…
“Hell if I know,” he said without heat.
Honest to a fault. She liked that about him, among too many other things. He was a goddamned lycan, a race of beings that couldn’t be trusted—
His other brow rose to match the first. “Problem?”
“No problem.” She brushed past him on her way out, her nostrils filled with the wildly clean fragrance of his skin mixed with the earthy pheromones he exuded as a matter of course…pheromones her senses soaked up as if starved for them. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
She didn’t hear him come up on her, but she felt him. Was overly attuned to him. Damn it all to hell. “Don’t nip at my heels, puppy,” she snapped.
“You’re charming when sexually frustrated.”
Her fists clenched. “I’m hungry for food, not you.”
“I am your food. We discussed this.”
“You discussed it.” She stepped outside into the chilly desert night and took a deep breath of air untainted by the primal scent of hardworking lycans. As she walked, her head began to clear…Then Elijah cut her off by stepping in front of her, fogging her mind with the exotic scent that was unique to him, a fragrance reminiscent of cinnamon and cloves. It was delicious, as everything about him was.
“You stay with me,” he said. “That part of the deal was mutually agreed to.”
“I’ll be back. I need to take care of something.” She needed blood, and—for the first time in damn near sixty years—sex. Then she could deal with him without tripping over how scorchingly beautiful he was.
Sidestepping him, she reached into her cleavage for her Jeep key.
He caught her wrist before she passed him. “How much shit have you got in there? Cell phones, jump drives, keys.”
Yanking her hand free, she gestured at the skintight, sleeveless black catsuit she wore. “Where the hell else am I going to carry things?�
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His hand, however, didn’t budge, despite the ferocity of her movement. It remained suspended by her shoulder, close enough that she tensed in expectation of his touch. Slowly, as if she might yet bolt, he adjusted his position to bring them face-to-face again and reached for the exposed zipper that was nestled between her breasts. Breasts that swelled and began to ache, growing heavy in anticipation of his touch.
She’d forgotten what it felt like to be physically aroused, forgotten how intoxicating it was, how it impeded the ability to think rationally and act with common sense.
“Keep your paws to yourself,” she bit out, stepping back.
“What are you afraid of?”
“Not wanting to be mauled doesn’t make me scared, asshole.”
Emerald eyes glittering with challenge in the moonlight, he held up both hands. “I promise to keep my paws to myself. I just want to see what else you’ve got in there. Cash? ATM cards? Spare tire?”
“None of your business.”
“I’ve shown you mine,” he taunted softly, goading her with a lycan’s overt sexuality. Vampires were sexual creatures, too, but lycans were pagans, their demon-tainted blood spurring wild natures. Elijah was more brutally sexual than any other lycan she’d ever met, his confidence and quiet command stemming from his comfort with himself, his luscious body, and his awareness of his virility and strength.
She couldn’t get the image of him out of her head—naked, bloody, his big hand stroking his big cock, his eyes dark and hot with wanting her. The memory had haunted her all night while he slept soundly. Fucker.
Pissed at the imbalance in the attraction between them, Vash yanked her zipper to her navel and pulled the separated halves aside. Her breasts bounced free, the tips hardening as a cool breeze slid across them. She was braless due to the natural constriction of the suit, which hugged her so tightly any underwear would have marred the sleek lines. The garment was comfortable, affording her full range of movement, and it distracted her opponents—win/win all around.