Sin and Sacrifice (17 page)

“
It's hard to say, but
Rhett's instincts are pretty good. Likely, he saw the same face too
many times in a row too close to your position.” Straightening,
Christian reached for his phone when it beeped.

“
Is that Rhett? Why isn't
he here yet?” she asked. Evelyn stood near the door so she could
open it again once Rhett got there. She had the key card—he had no
other way to get in.

“
He's making a circuit
downstairs, just sent me a text. Said the foyer and all that looks
all right.” Christian pecked out a brief reply and put his phone
back in his pocket. “We might have to change hotels or
something.”

“
Whatever we have to do. I
don't know how they could have found us already though.” A hard rap
of knuckles on the door a few minutes later startled her even
though she was expecting it. Undoing the latch, she swung it open
to admit a just as out of breath and sweat sheened
Rhett.

“
You didn't use the phone
or anything in here, did you?” Rhett asked right off, without even
greeting her first.

“
I haven't touched
anything.” She held up her hands after closing and locking the door
again. The situation unnerved her a little. The brief respite
they'd had from the Templars seemed to be over. Evelyn just didn't
understand how the knights could be breathing down their necks
again. Like they had some sort of sixth sense.

“
It could be they're
making methodical checks of every port—or maybe it was someone else
to do with something else altogether,” Christian said. “There's
more going on in this town than just what we're doing.”

“
Could be, but I won't
take any chances.” Rhett drug a hand back through his hair and went
into the kitchenette to grab a bottle of water out of the
cooler.

“
So what do we do now?”
Frustration ran keen that she couldn't take more control of her
immediate destiny. The Knights had too many aces in the hole, had
too much access to technology and resources that they'd
systematically denied her. Although who was she kidding? Even if
she had it, she wouldn't know what to do with it. Hacking into
satellites, breaking into private databases, commandeering street
cameras—she wouldn't know the first place to start to do any of
that. Tracking devices, bank account freezing, hunting.

She was no good at any of
it.

Alexandra's voice, so many
years ago, sounding the alarm over RFID chipping and facial
recognition, echoed through her mind. They'd all known they were on
limited time before finding a new way to outsmart the system. The
noose had grown tighter and tighter around their collective
throats.

Ruminating, she studied
Christian and Rhett. They'd both put their lives at risk to save
her, were even now plotting ways to keep her out of the Templar's
reach. But what would their reaction be if she blurted out that she
was a daughter of Eve? It would be impossible for them to believe.
A far out tale that might bring her sanity into question. There was
nothing about her that suggested she was any different than any
other woman and in truth, there wasn't except for her lineage, her
immortality, and her ability to heal at a faster rate than most
people. She had no special magic to prove herself, nothing but a
mark on her wrist that could be explained away as a scar or a
tattoo.

Simply waltzing them into
the Garden of Eden was against the rules. She recalled a scroll,
passed down through the centuries, that could validate her
existence. Could prove she was who she said she was. Except, if she
was correct, that scroll and the box it was contained in should be
located in the vault below the Vatican. The very people who had the
proof to save her were the same ones trying to kill her.

“
What's on your mind,
Evelyn?” Rhett asked.

Yanked out of her reverie,
she made eye contact with him. He was looking at her in that
incisive way again, as if he sensed there was more here that she
wasn't telling him.

“
I'm just concerned,
that's all. Wouldn't you be? It seems like everywhere we go they're
right on our tail.” It was the truth, it just wasn't the whole
truth.

Rhett didn't look like he
believed her. His expression seemed slightly accusing.

“
I told her that we might
have to move hotels,” Christian said, interrupting the stare down.
He stepped past Rhett for the cooler, snagged his own bottle of
water and reduced it to half in three long swallows.

“
Will that really help
anything, though?” she asked. “They seem relentless, ruthless, not
to be put off just because they've lost track for a
second.”

Evelyn knew that was the
truth of it. As long as they breathed, she and her sisters would
never be rid of the threat. Rubbing her brow, she paced through the
living area.

“
It just depends how close
we think they're getting. It'd be better if we knew who 'they'
were, or what we're dealing with here.” Rhett finished off the
water at the same time as Christian and both men tossed the empty
bottles in the trash.

There was that edge to his
voice again. Hinting. Luring. Suggesting that he knew she had more
information. Grouchy and bitter at being forced to hold her tongue,
she avoided eye contact.

“
I'll take first shift
downstairs,” Christian, said, glancing at his watch.

“
Thanks for your help,
Christian.” As irritable as she was, she didn't forget her
manners.

“
I'll relieve you at
two-thirty,” Rhett said on his way to the balcony doors. There, he
double checked the lock and yanked the sheers over the
panes.

Christian made his quiet
goodbyes and departed.

On her way to the door to
engage the second bolt and the chain, Evelyn turned her mind from
the Templars with determination. Instead, she mentally went over
the lessons of the day in explicit detail. Once she'd gotten
somewhat comfortable with the weapon, she'd managed to hit her
target better than ninety percent of the time. Not bad for someone
who loathed pulling the trigger. Rhett had remained patient if
commanding and lavished praise on her for a job well
done.

“
Thanks, I was coming to
do that,” Rhett said somewhere behind her.

“
Better to be safe than
sorry.” She squeezed past him and went into the kitchenette for
something to drink. Food wasn't an option until she felt more
settled and her stomach worked out of the knots the tension had
tied it into. Opening the cooler, she stared at bottles of juice,
tea, soda and water.

Hyper aware of Rhett and
his presence, she felt him close the distance. The kitchenette was
so small that he seemed to obliterate the entire space. She
couldn't really see past him and certainly couldn't get past unless
he let her.

“
You all right?” he asked,
reaching past her to grab an apple. He snapped off a bite and
crunched it between his teeth.

The light bump of their
bodies sent a jolt through her. She closed the cooler door,
forgetting to snag a drink.

“
Of course, why wouldn't I
be?”

“
Because you won't look me
in the eye. If I've learned anything about women in my time on
earth, it's that a woman is not telling you something when she
can't even look at your face.”

She scoffed. The toes of
her dusty shoes became intensely interesting. “I'm just trying to
decide if I want to get some sleep now or wait another hour. If I
go too early, I'll be up in the middle of the night.”

Rhett cracked off another
bite of apple. He stood so close she could smell the sweet scent
mingling with his masculine one.

“
You know what I think
already. Get the rest while you can.”

“
Yes, because we never
know when the—those men might find us.” Evelyn cursed her wayward
tongue. Rhett made her forget herself.

Rhett's few seconds of
silence assured her that he'd caught on to her slip. “That's right.
I've got things out here. Why don't you go sleep.”

Because I can't get past
without touching you, you ox.
Evelyn
curtailed the mental rant. It wasn't his fault she was so aware of
him.

Well, actually...yes. Yes
it was.

When she glanced up, she
found him studying her in that way that unnerved her.

“
What?”

“
Just trying to figure you
out, Miss Grant.”

“
Why was I Evelyn earlier
and now I'm Miss Grant again?” she demanded, suddenly irritated.
The rakish smile he flashed annoyed her.

“
Are you saying you prefer
me calling you Evelyn?” he asked in a far too silky
tone.

“
I am
not.”

“
Then why are you
bristling?”

“
I'm not bristling. You're
just being brutish--” Unprepared for the way he snagged her around
the waist with one arm, she whuffed a breath when he brought her
flush against him.

Without looking, he set the
half finished apple on the counter and stared down at
her.

Evelyn couldn't accurately
describe his expression; searching, scrutinizing, calculating. None
of the above. All of the above.

“
If I was being
brutish,
Miss Grant,
you'd know it. Why don't you just say what you mean? You've
stopped or stalled yourself several times.”

“
Does it annoy you?”
Breathless, she planted a hand against his chest. She wasn't sure
if it was to push him away or to feel the solid muscle under the
shirt and vest.

“
Not half as much as it
makes me curious over what you're
not
saying.” He let the suggestion
sit between them, a blatant invitation for her to clear the
air.

“
I just want to know why
sometimes you call me Evelyn, and other times you call me Miss
Grant.”

“
There's a lot of things I
want to know that I'm not getting the answers for.” He arched a
brow pointedly.

Had he guessed she was
keeping secrets, or did he mean generally, in regard to the men
who'd abducted her? Even as her spine stiffened she saw his eyes
narrow. Rhett was trained to pick up on the smallest cues, she
reminded herself. He probably knew the whole time that she'd been
keeping vital information back.

And yet there they stood,
staring into each others eyes in a way that had nothing to do with
his being an agent or her being a victim of a brutal assault.
Tension thick enough to cut filled the space between
them.

Bringing his other hand up,
he covered hers over his chest. Trapping it there. Beneath her
palm, she felt the steady thud of his heartbeat.

Get ahold of yourself,
Evelyn. This won't work. It can't. In a day or two, once the girls
are safe, he'll be out of your life forever.

The pep talk didn't work
well when he bent his head, watching her eyes the whole time, and
kissed her. A brush of lips, warm and apple scented. Almost like he
was testing her resolve, or asking permission. Maybe he wanted to
see if she could resist him.

She couldn't. Ignoring the
inner warning bells, she opened her mouth under him.

That was all the invitation
he needed. Plundering her with suggestive strokes of his tongue, he
deepened the kiss until she was dizzy. Under her hand, she felt his
heart rate speed up. Her own raced, making the blood rush in her
ears.

With a low sound that
reminded her of a growl, he broke the kiss apart.

Close range, she stared at
his face, drawn to the longing he exuded that was like a silent
clarion call. Reaching up, she brushed her fingers across the
texture of his whiskers, curious and unable to help herself.
Prickly and rough, they rasped against her skin and left a tingle
in the wake. His eyes darkened when she dared to initiate the
touch.

Evelyn lost interest in
being confrontational and irritated. He seemed to sense it, drawing
his hand through her hair to cup the nape of her neck.

The next kiss started out
hot, and grew hotter by the second. There was something desperate
and needy about it, a sensation she derived from them both, like
they knew they were on limited time. And there were a thousand
reasons to just let
go.
Give in to the desire and the passion. The most
prominent one was that they might be parted tomorrow and Evelyn
knew she would regret it for the rest of her life if she didn't
have this memory to take with her when they split. She didn't just
need to take a part of him with her, she
wanted
to. This was different than
every other interaction she'd had with any man and it seared her to
the core.

Pulling her harder against
him, he drove his tongue into her mouth with hungry swipes. Molding
her to the strength of his frame, Rhett seemed to want to burn the
memory of her against his body. She reveled in the hard plane of
his stomach and the breadth of his chest. Sweeping her into his
arms, he kissed her all the way into the bedroom—not hers, but
his—and laid her on the covers. Coming over her like a dark shadow
in the gloom, he pressed her into the mattress, made of rough
groans and determined hands and a grinding pelvis that quickly
drove her wild. It escalated from there to the impatient tug and
yank of clothing, stripping each other until it was only her skin
and his.