A Touch of Crimson

“For how long?” she challenged.

“As long as we can beg, borrow, and steal. Don’t deny me. I need you. I need this—your touch, your pleasure, your love. I can’t think without you, can’t feel anything. And I need to do both of those things to get through the shit I’m wading through right now. If you want to save me, you have to be with me.”

“What about the other Sentinels?”

“What about them? There’s not a one of them out there who doesn’t know I just nailed you to my office door.”

“Oh god . . .” Embarrassment flushed her skin.

“I wanted them to hear,” he said vehemently. “I could have taken you miles away, but you and me . . . it needs to be out in the open. I’m not ashamed of how I feel about you. I’m not ashamed that I can’t stop wanting you. It is what it is.”

“They already hated me.” She dreaded leaving the room and facing all those accusing cerulean eyes. “Now—”

“They heard you say no. They can’t hold this against you.”

Lindsay cupped his face in her hands. “I’m not worth all this. I’m not. I’m just a crazy mortal who has no self-preservation instincts.”

“And I’m an angel who’d die for you. See? We’re a perfect match.”

Her heart fell into her stomach. “Adrian.”

He caught her wrists, his face revealing so much emotion she wept at the beauty of it. “Stay with me, Lindsay. Be with me.”

“How can I say yes, knowing what it’ll do to you?”

“Just say it.”

They were too stubborn, both of them. She’d gotten what she wished for. And again, she regretted it. She couldn’t say yes, and he wouldn’t hear no. “I don’t belong anywhere else, you know. I’ve never fit in with ‘normal’ people. I don’t fit in with your people. But I fit with you. I know it. I feel it. None of that matters, though, because it’s forbidden. I’ll be damned if I’m the reason you fall and lose your wings. I’d rather die than see you turned into a soulless, bloodsucking vampire.”

He nuzzled his nose against hers. “Ani ohev otach, Lindsay.”

Oh god . . . Now that she knew what that meant . . .

“Make love to me,” he whispered, pulling her mouth down to his and teasing the seam of her lips with the tip of his tongue. “Show me you want this as much as I do.”

Her hands gripped the back of the love seat.

“Take me, neshama sheli,” he coaxed, flexing his still hard cock inside her. Sprawled beneath her in all his gorgeous magnificence and purring an erotic invitation, he looked every inch the sinful, decadent, unabashedly wicked fallen angel. “I’m yours.”

Lindsay shook her head. “No.”

Adrian’s features lit with a glorious smile. He twisted swiftly and she found herself beneath him, filled with him.

“I know what it means when you say that,” he murmured, hooking his arm beneath her leg and drawing it up, opening her so completely he hit the end of her.

Panting in exquisite torture, she managed, “It means run. Save yourself.”

“All of which says, ‘I’m falling for you, Adrian.’ ”

His tongue traced leisurely along his lower lip before he caught the firm curve in his teeth. He watched her with heavy-lidded eyes, gauging her reaction as he gave a practiced roll of his hips. The thick crown of his penis rubbed against all the deliciously tender erogenous zones inside her—a deliberate sensual assault.

She whimpered as he withdrew slowly, then thrust home deeply. Smooth and easy. He’d taken the edge off and was now settling in for what she knew would be a long, unhurried ride. Her fingernails dug into his tapered hips. “Adrian.”

He bent his head and groaned into her mouth. “I’m falling for you, too, Lindsay.”

CHAPTER 18

“It has to be her.”

Syre pushed aside the slender female arms crossing his chest and slid from his bed. He exhaled harshly, fighting the growing hope that so often led to disappointment. “You’re certain?”

“I wasn’t at first,” Torque said. “Even after meeting with her, I couldn’t say absolutely. She’s different this time.”

“In what way?”

“In a lot of ways. For one, I’m pretty sure I got to her. There were a couple times when she looked at me funny, like she might know me but couldn’t quite place me.”

“That’s not proof.”

“No, but two hours after I met with her, she headed up to Angels’ Point. Adrian returned shortly afterward.”

Restless with excitement, Syre paced the length of his bedroom. “How will you get to her?”

“She has to come down into the city to go to work.” There was a smile in his son’s voice. “And she hired me, so I have an excuse to be in the hotel most nights of the week. It won’t be long before the perfect opportunity presents itself.”

“Sounds too good to be true.”

“It’s the best opportunity we’ve ever had.”

Syre rubbed at the ache in his chest. “I should come to you.”

“No.” Torque’s voice was sharp, his tone implacable. “Vash is here now, with Raze and Salem. I’ve got all the backup I need. Your coming here will only give Adrian the opportunity to take you out. You need to stay in Raceport and out of sight as much as possible for the time being.”

“I won’t hide.”

“But you love Shadoe, and you want to see her again. I can’t imagine it’ll be more than a couple weeks before that happens.”

Syre looked out the window at the moon, a sight he’d seen too many times to count. Too many times without Shadoe. Grieving parents didn’t get opportunities to be reunited with the children that were lost to them, but his curse was also his blessing. He’d fallen from grace for siring Torque and Shadoe. Nephalim, they were called. Angel halflings. Yet it was that specialized hybridization that had spared her soul when he’d begun the Change to save her life. All of the nephalim vampires were unique in that way. Their souls survived the Change because they were as strong as an angel’s, without the vulnerability of wings.

“Take as long as you need, son,” he said quietly, stepping farther away from the bed as one of the two women occupying it rolled to the side with a disgruntled sigh. “It does me no good to lose one child while trying to recover the other. I need both of you.”

“Dad.” Torque laughed softly. “I didn’t reach this age by making stupid mistakes. Don’t worry. Just make arrangements for Shadoe’s return. Before you know it, we’ll all be together again.”

“Micah says Vash had a rag or cloth . . . some bit of material with my blood on it.”

From Adrian’s elevated position on the stairs leading down into the sunken living room, he studied Elijah, who looked unusually agitated. “And she claims it came from the scene of an abduction in Shreveport?”

The lycan nodded. His arms were crossed and his stance was wide, as if anchoring himself for an expected blow. “The airport there. But I was with you in Phoenix then. The vamp was snatched a couple days before the chopper crash.”

“How is that possible?” Jason asked from his position by the fireplace. “How would your blood end up states away from where you were?”

“Hell if I know,” the lycan said. “In order to have been that readily identifiable, it couldn’t have been more than a month old. Prior to hitting the nest in Utah, I haven’t lost enough blood on any hunt in the last thirty days to leave some behind for someone to jack.”

“Excuse me . . .” Lindsay began, drawing Adrian’s attention. She sat on one of the sofas, looking petite and fragile in the massive room.

She’d been silent since she emerged from his bedroom, fresh from a shower and smelling like his soap and shampoo. Neither did anything to disguise the scent of sex with him, which was skin deep. Still, she’d been so embarrassed by the thought of everyone being able to smell his lust on her that he’d tried to comfort her the only way he could think of—he’d told her it would make perfect sense to smell like him if she used his toiletries.

“Yes, neshama?” he coaxed. Power was thrumming through him, his soul recharged by its growing attachment to hers. Added to the more primitive rush he felt from having made love to her for hours, he felt ready to take on anything. The Sentinels thought his love for a mortal made him weak, when the opposite was true. Lindsay gave him strength in ways he couldn’t explain to anyone else.

“I’m sure figuring out how is important,” she began. “But I’m curious as to why. Why would anyone want to set up Elijah? What do they get out of it?”

She looked at the lycan and offered him a brief, supportive smile. She seemed to have a fondness for him, which made Adrian determined to keep the beast close and safe for her sake. Whatever stability and grounding he could offer her in their present tenuous circumstances, he would.

“Maybe it’s not him in particular,” Jason suggested. “Maybe any lycan would have served the purpose. Anything they do reflects on Adrian.”

Her lips twisted thoughtfully. “So someone sets it up to look like the vamp was snatched by Adrian . . . ? Why is that news? That’s what he does. It’s what you all do, lycans and angels alike.”

Adrian relished an inner smile, pleased with her participation and clever mind. She enhanced him. Lindsay was a warrior, just like he was. Just as Shadoe had been. But Lindsay was cerebral about it, analytical, while Shadoe had used her sexuality as a weapon.

“Vash wouldn’t retaliate for just anyone,” he said. “Did she say who was abducted?”

A shadow passed over Elijah’s face. “No name. Just that the vamp was a woman. A pilot and a friend of Vash’s.”

“A female pilot.” Adrian looked at Jason, wondering if his second was reaching the same conclusion he was.

Jason whistled. “Can’t say for sure, Captain. I didn’t get a good look at her.”

“She was diseased and unrecognizable. Sick like the vamp we caught in Hurricane.”

Aaron entered the room. The recently returned Sentinel had already made his desire for retribution clear. In addition to Micah’s deteriorating health, he’d lost his other lycan guard in Vash’s attack. “Vash had Salem and Raze with her. They hit us in full daylight.”

Three Fallen on the hunt together. Not unheard of, but rare. They didn’t have many occasions to exert that much force at once.

Adrian remembered his conversation with Syre. Nikki had one of the kindest hearts among us . . .

Shit. He looked at Damien, who stood behind the sofa Lindsay was occupying. “Torque’s wife. Nicole, right?”

The Sentinel nodded. “That sounds right. And she’s a former Army pilot.”

“Who’s Torque?” Lindsay asked, her gaze darting from one face to another.

Your brother. Your twin.

Adrian looked at Jason, whose brows were raised in a look that asked, How much are you going to tell her?

Elijah replied. “Syre’s son.”

“And Syre is . . . ?” she prodded.

“The leader of the vampires,” Adrian said, with an evenness that belied the twisting of his gut. She wasn’t ready to hear everything yet. He would prefer that she never hear it. If the Creator was kind, Adrian would succeed in killing Syre. Then Lindsay would be freed from Shadoe’s naphil gifts, Shadoe’s soul would be freed from purgatory, and Adrian would be recalled for disobeying the standing order to keep the Fallen alive. It was the closest he could come to rectifying his mistake.

“The Watcher whose fall got you those crimson tips on your wings?” Lindsay asked.

He gave a brisk nod.

“All right. Before we move on . . . What’s up with the superhero names? Syre, Torque, Vash, Raze . . .”

“Most of the Fallen gave up their angelic names when they fell. Syre was once known as Samyaza. Raze was once Ertael. As vampires, they have a proliferation of legal names they switch out every now and then as time passes, so they’ve established a culture in which there’s almost a competition for the most outrageous handles.”

“O-kay . . . To be clear,Vash—an important vampire—is involved because the gal who was abducted was important, because she’s related by marriage to the leader of the vampires. Am I following so far?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t they just call you and ask what the ransom terms are? It’s not like they can’t find you.”

“They did.”

“And they didn’t believe you’re innocent?”

“I killed her. I told Syre that.” Adrian met her gaze unflinchingly, knowing she would understand such a brutal admission of murder.

Lindsay blinked in surprise. “When?”

He descended into the living room. “When did I tell him? In Phoenix. In the airport, right after I met you.”

“So Vash knows this isn’t a rescue mission. She’s out for blood in retaliation for a death. She managed to corner Aaron and his two lycans. But instead of holding Aaron for ransom or targeting him because he’s higher up the food chain than the lycans, she lets him go. I’m confused as to why a vamp who usually only hunts big fish would toss the biggest fish back.” She looked at Elijah. “No offense to your friend.”

The lycan met her gaze. “None taken.”

Jason crossed his arms. “Killing a Sentinel would escalate the situation beyond what Syre would condone.”

“His son’s wife is dead, thanks to Adrian, but he balks at taking out one of the Sentinels?”

Damien looked at Adrian. “Go on, Lindsay. This is getting interesting.”