A Touch of Crimson (12 page)
God . . . What would it be like to work alongside others who fought the same fight she did, to not feel so utterly alone in this vicious, lethal world she’d been initiated into with her mother’s death?
Reaching up, Lindsay rubbed the back of her neck. “This decision should really be much harder to make— for both of us. I’m going to slow you down and be a liability.”
“Agreed,” Damien said.
Adrian lifted one shoulder in an artlessly elegant shrug. “There’s a use for every talent.”
“I need income,” she pointed out. “Regardless of choosing one life over the other, I won’t accept a free ride.”
“Mortals,” Damien drawled, “are so obsessed with material wealth.”
Adrian’s mouth curved in a ghost of a smile. “Every day, I’m sending teams all over the world. The duty of making those flight and hotel reservations falls to whoever is unfortunate enough to be near me in the morning; I can’t assign it to my office staff at Mitchell Aeronautics without rousing suspicions. Today, that individual will be you. Barring complete ineptitude or profound dislike, we’ll keep you busy with that task indefinitely. We can negotiate your salary and rent. I provide cell phones, expense accounts, and transportation to all of the Sentinels. You can choose to maintain your own cellular service, but you’ll be carrying two phones.”
“Sentinels?”
“All the angels you see around us.”
Lindsay’s gaze swept over the wide deck. “How many of you are there?”
“One hundred and sixty-two, as of yesterday.”
“Total?”
He nodded.
A short laugh escaped her. “No wonder you’re willing to put up with me. You need all the help you can get.”
“We have the lycans,” Damien rumbled.
She looked at the guards dotting the perimeter of the deck. The disparity in their physical build compared to the angels helped to distinguish them. The angels were lithe and lean, which probably helped them aerodynamically, while the lycans were thicker and more muscular.
Adrian glanced at Damien. “I want to search the area around where Phineas was attacked, and I think it’s time for me to visit the Navajo Lake pack again.”
Damien nodded and stood. “I’ll send a reconnaissance team ahead to secure the base.”
“No. That would allude to fear and distrust, which isn’t a message I want to send.”
“Send a different message then,” Lindsay suggested. “A real one, letting them know you’re coming.”
Both angels looked at her.
She waved one hand in a careless gesture. “I don’t know what’s going on, so maybe I’m off base, but it sounds like you’re going someplace that poses a risk and you don’t want the people you’re visiting to know you consider it risky. So . . . let ’em see you coming. Announce it. That shows fearlessness—you’re handing them the opportunity to do whatever it is you’re worried about. But first, run with Damien’s reconnaissance idea, but on the down low. Canvass the area without them knowing. Put some people around to scope the place out before you send the message that you’re coming. Then watch what they do when they get it.”
Damien’s gaze narrowed. “Lycans have a strong sense of smell. They would know they were being watched.”
“So send some lycans you trust to do the job.” When she was met with heavy silence, her brows rose. “You don’t have any lycans you trust? Then why are they your bodyguards? Keeping your enemies close?”
Adrian gestured for Damien to leave with a jerk of his chin.
Lindsay watched the angel depart. “Alrighty then. Teaches me to speak out of turn.”
Unfolding from his chair, Adrian stood. “It’s a sound, intelligent plan. I look forward to utilizing your input today and in the future.”
“Flatterer.” She wondered where he was going and what she was expected to do in his absence. She needed to call her father, then take some time to figure out what she was going to do about her job.
He came around the table. “Would you come with me for a few moments?”
“Yes.”
He pulled the chair out for her, then set his hand at her lower back. The heat of his palm soaked through her thin tank top, perversely sending goose bumps spreading across her skin. He led her to the railing, away from the others. She was highly aware of his shoulder pressing against the back of hers, and of his scent, which was absolutely delicious. If she could, she’d press her nose into the crook of his neck and inhale deep into her lungs. The fragrance of his skin was addictive, intoxicating . . . Familiar.
“Do you trust me?” he asked softly, his breath gusting softly over the shell of her ear.
“I don’t know you,” she whispered back, racked by a shiver of delight.
They stopped at the end of the deck.
“Okay then.” There was amusement in his low tone. “Will you give me the benefit of the doubt?”
Lindsay faced him. He stepped closer, into her personal space. Close enough that only an inch separated them, and she had to tilt her head back to look into his face. His wings materialized, shielding them from prying eyes. Her gaze slid over him, drinking in the leanly muscled expanse of his torso. The tight lacing of his abs stirred a deep, raw hunger to see them tighten in pleasure as he thrust into her. Sexual awareness sizzled across her skin, tightening her body. She licked dry lips and his eyes followed the movement. She nodded.
“Good.” He caught her close, one arm banding around her shoulder blades, the other hitching beneath the curve of her ass.
Every hard inch of him was pressed up tight against her. She felt his cock stir against her lower belly, inciting an answering ache between her thighs.
Her arms went around his neck.
“Adrian—”
“Adrian—”
“Hold that thought,” he murmured. “And hold on to me.”
He leaped over the railing.
CHAPTER 8
Lindsay screamed as they plummeted. She scrambled to wrap herself around Adrian’s lean frame, her legs flailing. His lips pressed to her temple and she fell silent, the terror draining out of her, rushing from her body at the point where he kissed her. His wings spread and they caught air, soaring.
“Aerodynamically,” he said calmly, “I need you not to wiggle.”
Ticked off that he’d given her no warning, she nipped at his neck with her teeth. “You scared the shit out of me!”
“Why?”
“I’m afraid of heights!” Her legs pretzeled around his.
“You’re afraid of falling,” he corrected, nuzzling his lips against her cheek. “I would never let you fall.”
Bullshit
. She was falling for him already. Lindsay wondered if he had any idea how annihilating his occasional displays of tenderness were. They knocked her on her ass every time. She might have some defense against the searing intimacy if she thought it was a seduction tactic, but his behavior seemed devoid of ulterior motive. His actions seemed innate . . . or irresistible. The thought that he couldn’t help but be tender with her scared her more than flying without a plane. Fear and arousal created a potent mixture.
. She was falling for him already. Lindsay wondered if he had any idea how annihilating his occasional displays of tenderness were. They knocked her on her ass every time. She might have some defense against the searing intimacy if she thought it was a seduction tactic, but his behavior seemed devoid of ulterior motive. His actions seemed innate . . . or irresistible. The thought that he couldn’t help but be tender with her scared her more than flying without a plane. Fear and arousal created a potent mixture.
Burying her face deeper into his neck, she clung to his powerful body, feeling every contraction of muscle as he climbed over a rocky hillside. He held her securely, so tightly no air passed between them, with a surety and confidence that soothed her anxiety. Flushed by surging adrenaline, she grew hotter by the moment despite the chill of the morning and her bare arms. Her breasts grew heavy and her nipples puckered into tight, hard tips.
As they banked to the right, her shirt rode up. Her breath caught at the feel of his bare flesh touching hers. His skin was hot, the hard muscles beneath it flexing as he beat his massive wings. Her hair whipped the sides of her face and her eyes closed. The wind sang with something akin to joy.
The rippling of his washboard abs against her flat stomach was undeniably sensual, the rhythmic clenching perfectly mimicking how he’d feel while fucking her. The hard length of his erection was a demanding pressure, making it impossible to ignore her own growing arousal.
She writhed, rubbing against the thick rigidness of his cock.
They dropped several feet. She screeched. He muttered something foreign with the vehemence of an expletive.
“Behave,” he admonished, tightening his hold to the point of immobilizing her.
“You’re the one with the hard-on.”
He tugged her chest even closer, crushing her breasts against him. “Your nipples prove I’m not the only one.”
They crested another hill, then swooped downward, landing neatly in a small clearing on the far side. Lindsay didn’t let go right away. Instead, she did what she’d wanted to do earlier: she pressed her nose against his skin and inhaled. His fingers shoved into her hair, his palm cupping her scalp and holding her near.
He breathed roughly. “How you tempt me,
tzel
.”
tzel
.”
“Should I be insulted or turned on when you call me things I don’t understand?” Her tongue fluttered over his throbbing pulse; then she scraped her teeth gently across it.
Adrian groaned. “Do that again and I won’t be responsible for the gravel you may later find embedded in your back.”
“Ouch.” She stepped back. Glancing around, she realized he hadn’t brought her here for an isolated tryst. The dry brush and rocky ground wasn’t at all conducive to taking their clothes off.
“Sentinels and lycans have very keen hearing,” he explained, restoring his immaculate appearance with a single swipe of his hand through his hair. “If I want to speak to you privately, I need to do so away from the house.”
“What do you have to say that you don’t want them to hear?”
His wings dissipated. “It isn’t what I have to say, but the manner in which I say it. And how I look at you when I say it.”
Her brows rose questioningly.
His brilliant blue gaze swept over her, lingering on the hardened points of her nipples. She pulled her shoulders back and let him look.
Adrian’s expression softened. “I don’t bring women to the house. The lycans don’t know what to make of your presence and they’re paying close attention to me, looking for cues.”
Lindsay tamped down the warmth wanting to spread through her. After a lifetime of feeling out of sync with the world, she was now somewhere she felt comfortable, a place she alone fit into. Was it possible her square peg had finally found a square hole? “Of course you don’t bring women here. How could you explain a legion living under your roof and a pack of wolves prowling the perimeter? Unless there are others out there like me . . . ?”
“No,” he said softly. “I can safely say that you are unique in the entire world.”
“But you’d invited me over for dinner before I killed the dragon.”
His arms crossed, which tightened his biceps and made her hot for him all over again. “Some things you just know. I knew when I saw you that bringing you into my life was inevitable.”
“Even as a human with nothing special about her.”
“There was always something special about you, even then.”
She turned her back to him. Her affection for him was building irrationally fast and she couldn’t seem to stop it. “I can’t see how I’ll be more than a pain in the ass for you.”
“As you said, they don’t see you coming. You can be a lure for vampires, and I can use you to my advantage. Is that answer acceptable?”
Lindsay looked over her shoulder at him. Mercenary and ruthless: she didn’t begrudge him that. She understood the need to be that way. If using her to draw in vampires was the way she could be helpful, she’d go along with it. Innocent people were dying. Victims with families, including little children like she’d once been. She wished someone had been mercenary and ruthless in saving her mother. “An artery to use for bait? Yes, that would be acceptable to me. But I want to know more about the whole angel-turned-vampire thing. And the angel-turned-lycan thing. Knowledge is power and all that.”
“Agreed.” He waited until she faced him. “Shortly after Man was created, two hundred seraphim were sent to earth to observe and report on their progress. These angels were known as the Watchers. They were a scholarly caste and they were given strict orders not to interfere with the natural progression of Man’s evolution.”
“They were only supposed to ‘watch.’ I get it.”
“They didn’t obey.”
She smiled wryly. “I figured.”
“The Watchers began to fraternize with mortals, teaching them things they shouldn’t know.”
“Such as . . . ?”
“The creation of weapons, warfare, science . . .” He waved one hand in a markedly casual gesture. “Among many other skills.”
“I’m following.”
“A warrior caste known as the Sentinels was created to enforce the laws the Watchers were breaking.”
“And you lead these Sentinels?”
“Yes.”
“So you’re the one responsible for turning the fallen angels into vampires,” she accused, her heartbeat quickening with anger and horror.
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