Defy the Dawn

by Lara Adrian

  She came violently, scoring Zael’s back with her fingernails as white-hot pleasure detonated inside her. And he kept moving, relentless in his tempo as he chased his own release now.

  Brynne held on, her legs still wrapped around him, her hands gripping his shoulders as another hard orgasm began to build in the aftershocks of the one that still owned her. Behind her closed eyelids, her head thundered with the pound of blood rushing through her veins.

  The drumming filled her ears, her mind—all of her senses.

  It called to her…and when she dragged her lids open as Zael drove harder, deeper into her body, she realized that it wasn’t her pulse beating like a hammer in her blood.

  It was his.

  Mere inches from her mouth, the thick line of his carotid throbbed.

  Her mouth watered, saliva surging as her fangs ripped even farther out of her gums. Hunger clenched her in a tight fist as she watched Zael powering above her. So strong. So alive.

  So dangerously tempting.

  She couldn’t pull her gaze away from his throat.

  Nor from the pulsing beat of his blood, coursing so tantalizingly near her fangs.

  The sound overwhelmed her, commanded all of her control….

  Hunger raked her, and she cursed herself for how long she’d denied her body the nourishment it demanded. She licked her lips, trying not to imagine what it would be like to sink into that potent vein and take her fill.

  “Zael,” she murmured, though whether in warning or apology, she wasn’t sure.

  But in that next moment, he spared her from deciding. His big body tensed as he drove deep one last time, then on a low shout, he reared back as his release overtook him.

  Safely out of her reach, at least for now.

  And as she reveled in the feel of him lost to his desire for her, there was a part of her that knew no matter how good they felt together, it wasn’t meant to last.

  It couldn’t.

  Nor could she wish for it to last—not longer than this moment, if she were being honest with herself. Not if she was ever brave enough to be honest with Zael.

  Forcing her gaze away from him, Brynne stared at the window across the room where dusk was still hours away. The darkness inside of her was much closer, and it beckoned.

  Soon she would have to answer her hunger’s call, and face the monster clawing to get out.

  CHAPTER 13

  The smell of spilled blood was overwhelming.

  Lucan’s heightened Gen One senses had locked on to the coppery scent of human red cells as soon as he and his team of warriors had exited the Order’s ultraviolet-shielded SUV at the front entrance of the GNC building.

  Now, nearly an hour later, with the last ambulance having carried off the wounded and the dead, Lucan stood in the middle of a blood-soaked office in a state of barely restrained fury. Outside the building, sirens wailed. Inside, there was only silence.

  And death.

  Fifteen people killed in a hellish spray of gunfire, more than twice that number injured by three guards sworn to protect them.

  “You know, I might be able to understand this better if these three assholes were new recruits,” Chase said, his fangs extended in the midst of so much blood.

  Lucan grunted. “They weren’t new. They’d all been on the security detail for years with highest clearance levels. Two of them were family men, for crissake.”

  When Dante glanced up, his fangs were bared too. “Which means no one can be trusted. Not when we have no idea how far Opus’s reach extends.”

  “Or who’s the one calling the shots,” Tegan added gravely.

  Lucan nodded, well aware that everything his comrades said was true. “Opus has had their pieces in place for a very long time, waiting for their chance to make a move. Now they’re starting to play us like fucking pawns. They’re setting us up for something big. I feel it in my bones.”

  And he could see from the sober expressions of his comrades that they also dreaded what might be coming next.

  Heavy boot falls in the hallway drew the team’s attention. Brock walked in, his UV helmet clipped to a tab on his weapons belt. He and Kade had been tasked with guarding access to the building after the dead and injured had been taken away.

  The massive black warrior’s mouth pressed flat as he paused in the open doorway. “We’ve got company outside. Whole damned fleet of press with cameras and satellite trucks.”

  Lucan cursed. “Haven’t we already got enough footage of this slaughter circulating as it is? Keep the vultures away from the building. No one gets inside.”

  “Yeah, that’s not the problem,” Brock said. “The cameras and reporters aren’t the only ones who just rolled up. The D.C. arm of JUSTIS is out there too. Looks like they’re setting up for a press conference.”

  Lucan’s outrage spiked. “Like hell they are.”

  Stalking out with the other warriors, he headed down to the glass-fronted lobby entrance of the GNC building at a hard, furious clip. Just as Brock had described, the scene on the steps outside was pandemonium. Scores of news crews and Internet entertainment site trucks lined the street in both directions. A growing sea of humans crowded on to the broad marble stairs, most with microphones or tablets in their hands. Everywhere Lucan looked, camera lenses and video screens were trained on the building’s entrance like a thousand gaping eyes.

  And at the focal point of the attention was a small company of JUSTIS officials and public relations types, all getting into position just outside the GNC’s glass doors.

  “Jesus Christ,” Lucan muttered under his breath.

  The press started shouting questions as soon as the JUSTIS officer in charge stepped up to the front of the crowd. A clamor of competing voices filtered through the glass where Lucan and his men stood.

  “Have the three shooters been identified?”

  “How long do you suspect the killers had been planning today’s assault?”

  “Was there anything in their backgrounds that might have been a red flag linking them to Opus Nostrum before today?”

  “After the bombing in London and now this attack, is it reasonable to say that Opus Nostrum is targeting government and law enforcement?”

  “Ladies and gentleman, a moment if you please.” At the front of the gathered throng, the human JUSTIS official raised his hands in a gesture calling for calm.

  It didn’t work. The questions kept coming, voices rising in demand.

  “How much do we know about the assailants?”

  “How can we be certain no other GNC security personnel have ties to Opus?”

  “Can anyone assure the public that they are safe?”

  Lucan ground his molars together. The people had a right to be anxious. Hell, they had a right to be terrified. And they also had a right to the truth.

  As the JUSTIS official withdrew a prepared statement from the breast pocket of his suit, Lucan stepped out of the building. He saw the startled faces, heard the gasps of shock as he strode into the afternoon light with his head and face deliberately uncovered, his UV helmet tucked under his arm.

  His name traveled the crowd of reporters in a buzz of wariness and surprise, a few uttering it with outright disdain. He didn’t care if they liked him or the message he came to deliver. He’d never been interested in playing the role of diplomat, and he didn’t intend to start now.

  His fangs had not yet receded. He stared at the gaping crowd with amber-tinged vision and knew that his irises were still narrowed in reaction to the extended time he and his team had spent around the spilled blood of the victims.

  He looked unmistakably Breed now, and he wanted every human gathered—and every camera’s eye trained on him—to see that fact as he addressed them.

  “You all have questions that need to be answered. You have fears—all of them justifiable—that you want someone to allay for you. You’re looking for reassurances that what happened here today and in London two nights ago is not the portent of worse things still to
come.”

  Murmurs of agreement rumbled through the crowd. Lucan looked at the uncertain faces and slowly shook his head.

  “No one can make you those promises. Not me, not the Order. Not the allied heads of state represented by the Global Nations Council. And sure as hell not a bunch of JUSTIS stiffs reading off prepared remarks stamped and approved by some useless PR firm.”

  The group of suits he’d just upstaged started grumbling at his back. Lucan ignored them, just as he ignored the faint sting of his exposed skin as he stood beneath the sun’s harsh rays and continued his message to the press and public who would see the day’s coverage.

  “These recent attacks and the one the Order thwarted at the GNC peace summit a few weeks ago have a single purpose. To instill fear and seed mistrust. Opus would like nothing better than to see us at war against each other.”

  One of the JUSTIS officials scoffed. “Our problems with Opus didn’t start escalating until the Order got involved. Maybe these are retaliative strikes against you, not us.”

  Lucan turned to face the human male. “Yes, I have no doubt the attacks are meant to punish me and my warriors as well. Would you prefer the Order sat with our thumbs up our asses instead? Let Opus rip our world apart or watch all of us do it for them?”

  The young man at least had the good sense to shrink back a bit under the withering blast of Lucan’s anger and his amber-lit glare. The rest of the warriors had since come out to join Lucan in front of the building, solidarity in their presence and their uncovered faces as they met the apprehensive crowd and the bristling JUSTIS representatives.

  “Opus wants us at war with each other,” Lucan warned them all. “We’ve already been down that road once in our recent history. It’s taken twenty years to come out of those dark days. We can’t let anyone push us backward.”

  “No, we can’t,” replied the suit in charge of the PR brigade. “That’s why JUSTIS will be replacing all security personnel in public and government facilities with our own officers, effective immediately.”

  Lucan barked out a curse as he rounded on the man. “Not if I have anything to say about that.”

  “I suppose you want to replace them with Order warriors instead?”

  “You know, that’s a damned good idea.”

  The official practically choked. “Try it and you’ll have a battle on your hands, Thorne.”

  Lucan bared his teeth at the asshole, flashing more than a little fang. “I’ve got nothing but battles on my hands, so get in line. This press conference is over.”

  A glance at his comrades put the group of immense Breed warriors into motion behind him.

  Securing their UV helmets on their heads, Lucan and his men stalked down the stairs, through the gathered press corps. En masse, the reporters hurried along after them, shouting more questions and leaving the befuddled group of JUSTIS public relations officials standing outside the building, forgotten and ignored.

  CHAPTER 14

  Zael had imagined sex with Brynne would be amazing, but damn… He hadn’t been prepared. After a mind-blowing orgasm that practically turned him inside out, his appetite had only intensified rather than subsided.

  Holding her against the front of his hard and ready body, he rocked his hips against the firm curves of her ass and moaned as his cock leaped with interest. There was no mistaking Brynne’s lean, powerful body for a human’s. There was a dangerously coiled strength about her that no Atlantean female could compete with either.

  Brynne was utterly unique.

  And a short time ago, when she was crying his name in the midst of her own shattering release, she had belonged only to him.

  Zael didn’t want to consider how deeply that thought pleased him. At the moment, all he wanted was to be inside her again.

  “You feel so good, I want to keep you here all night,” he murmured, nipping at the tender crook of her neck and shoulder.

  Instead of sinking into his embrace the way he expected her to, Brynne tensed palpably. She moved out of his arms. Sliding to the edge of the bed, she swung her long legs off the mattress and sat up.

  Zael frowned. “Where are you going?”

  “I need a shower.”

  Without looking at him, she spoke to the empty space on the other side of the room, her body language as distant as her voice. When she got up off the bed, Zael followed.

  Before she could make a hasty retreat into the adjacent bathroom, he reached out to grasp her hand. “What’s going on?”

  Given little choice, she slowly pivoted to face him. It was startling to see the crackle of fire still glowing in her eyes. Her fangs were arresting as well, larger than he’d ever seen them. The sharp white points glittered diamond-bright in the tense line of her mouth.

  There was an odd, unspoken misery in her expression in the instant their gazes met, but she shuttered it from him with a slow blink and a downward glance.

  “I need to clean up and get dressed. I’m sure I’ve missed Mathias and that flight back to London tonight, but I still intend to go home.”

  “Back to London?” Zael took her reply as the slap to the face she intended it to be. When she seemed adamant to avoid looking at him, he lifted her chin on the edge of his fingers. “What the hell just happened between us in that bed over there?”

  Her eyes flicked up to meet his, her dark brows drawn together. “What happened was a mistake, Zael. I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “Then try me.”

  She stared at him for a long moment. In her tormented eyes he saw a thousand different emotions, but the only thing she seemed willing to give him right now was indifference. “I’m not saying the sex wasn’t great. It was. But that’s all it was, right?”

  He didn’t reply. If that’s really what she thought, he’d be damned if he admitted to feeling anything more.

  And Brynne wasn’t finished. “I’ll be the first to say that I’m not built for relationships. I never have been. And I think we both know that you aren’t either.”

  “That’s right,” he replied tightly, although hearing her say it like that—like an indictment, a condemnation—gave him more shame than he’d ever managed to heap on himself personally.

  She stepped out of his reach, folding her arms over her like a shield. “The sex was…more than great, Zael. But now that we’ve gotten it out of our systems, I hope we can be adults about this whole thing. I hope we can be friends and move on.”

  Damn. Was this how cold he came off to the women he seduced over the years?

  No. He knew better than to give himself that much credit.

  He never explained anything. His M.O. was to vanish when things got too real.

  “Can we do that, Zael? Will you try to understand how I feel and not make things any more awkward than they already are?”

  “Awkward,” he muttered, then chuckled mirthlessly. “That’s not the word I’d use, Brynne. The only word I’d use for what you’re telling me right now is bullshit.”

  Her look said it all. He’d hit the mark, but the mutinous set of her lips showed no sign of softening.

  “I thought I did a fairly decent job demonstrating to you that you don’t have to run away from me,” he told her, more gently than he felt himself capable for the disbelief and outrage coursing through him. “I thought I made it clear to you that I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Her soft laugh had a bitter edge to it. “I’m not afraid of you hurting me, Zael. Can’t you just try to respect my feelings and stay away from me now?”

  “That’s really what you want?”

  “Yes.” She swallowed hard, and he could see how she fought to hold his gaze as she worked the lie to her tongue. “You and I—everything that’s happened between us, Zael—it’s been a mistake. Let’s not make any more.”

  He listened in stony silence, weighing her words against what the hauntedness in her face was telling him, and what her body communicated to his when they were making love.

  “All right, Br
ynne.” He nodded slowly, then walked over to retrieve his clothing. He slipped his pants on, then pulled his linen tunic over his head. “You’re right, I do have to respect your feelings. Even if I don’t believe you for one damned second.”

  CHAPTER 15

  “Redhead, blonde, or brunette?”

  Rafe glanced over at Aric, who was riding shotgun in the Order-issued SUV Mathias Rowan had arranged for them to pick up in Dublin after they arrived from London.

  For most of the drive to Finglas on their fetch assignment for the Order, they had been shooting the shit, something the two friends fell into easily enough whenever they were together.

  Now that they were closing in on the address Gideon had given them for Iona Lynch’s apartment, Aric had begun passing the time by speculating on the woman’s various attributes. He’d already given his unsolicited guesses to a host of other topics where Crowe’s potential mistress was concerned, so by comparison, hair color was about as innocuous a question as could be expected.

  “Gotta go with blonde,” Rafe said. “Crowe’s definitely got a type, at least when it comes to his ex-wives.”

  “Can’t argue that,” Aric replied. “Then again, there’s something to be said for variety, right? Miss Iona Lynch of Finglas, County Dublin, could be a saucy little redhead. Or maybe a smoking hot brunette with a fine ass and legs that go on forever.”

  Chuckling, Rafe shook his head. “You describing Crowe’s taste in women, or your own?”

  “I apply few conditions to my tastes in women.” Aric’s grin was shameless. “Why put limits on something you enjoy?”

  “Spoken like a true manwhore.”

  Aric shrugged, unfazed. “You should try it sometime.”

  “You mean like the time you talked me into playing wingman for you with those twin strippers down in Southie? I spent half the night with their drunk friend’s tongue in my ear.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”