Not Elijah. The tone wasn’t deep enough. Jesus. The room was spinning around her in her panic.
She hauled another wraith back and saw Elijah in the space she’d opened up. The wraith’s body went limp in her grasp, then began to convulse. Another wraith jerked away. Then another.
Suddenly what was left of the bloodpack fell away from the downed lycan. Flopping on their backs like fish out of water, they writhed, foam pouring from their mouths and their eyes rolling back. The one who’d spoken clutched his head, wailing. Abruptly, he ceased, crashing to the ground in a dead faint.
Or just dead, period.
When nothing moved in the lake of blood, Vash dropped her blade and sank to her knees beside Elijah, who lay panting on his side, his fur matted and his flesh torn away in deep gouges. She reached out, wanting to comfort but unsure of how she could.
“Don’t touch him!” Salem kicked bodies out of the way as he approached.
Elijah gave a low warning growl.
“He’s a wounded animal, Vash. You know better.”
Yes, she knew. Lycans were at their fiercest when they were most vulnerable. But as she looked into the green eyes of the wolf, she saw the man. The man who’d mastered her during the long night, then surrendered to her touch in the morning.
“Can you shift?” she asked softly, knowing that the process of shifting forms would knit some of his injuries and staunch the copious amounts of blood draining from his body.
His eyes closed on a shuddering breath. He was still for so long she feared she’d lost him.
“Elijah!” The urgency in her voice made it harsh. Uncaring of the danger, she gingerly touched his head, stroking it. His eyelids lifted slowly, revealing unfocused irises. “Shift. Now. You can do it, you arrogant
son of a bitch. You’re too fucking stubborn to let a couple of diseased vamps get the best of you.”
His rumbling growl was stronger than before, giving her wild hope.
“Vash—” Salem set his hand on her shoulder.
Elijah lifted his head and bared his teeth, snarling.
Salem yanked his hand back. “Crazy assed dog.”
“Salem will have to take care of me if you can’t do it,” Vash goaded, fighting off another spurt of panic. “Raze, too. Maybe even that pretty pincushion I almost sucked on last night—”
Fire lit Elijah’s eyes. He began to shimmer, like heat waves rising from sun-scorched asphalt. For a breathless moment he hovered in that in-between state, flickering between human and lupine form. Then, with a rattling exhale, he settled before her as a nude, severely wounded man.
“Get the car,” she ordered over her shoulder, pulling Elijah close to cradle his head in her lap.
Salem left so fast, he caused a draft. Around her, the wraith bodies began to gurgle and shake. She watched, horrified, as they disintegrated into puddles of a thick tarlike substance. “Eww.”
“Hey. I’m not…as bad off as I look,” Elijah whispered, his eyes still closed.
“Of course not.” But the blood that wasn’t his was now clearly demarked by its obsidian coloring, leaving far too much crimson on his ravaged skin. It ran in thin rivulets over her lap and eroded canyons in the black ooze. “You damned heroic idiot. Stop protecting me. I can take care of myself.”
“And let you have all the fun?”
Pain twisted in her chest. Lifting her wrist to her mouth, Vash pierced the vein with her fangs and pressed the gushing wound to his mouth. He gagged, then struggled weakly, but she held fast, pinching his nose so that he was forced to swallow. One gulp. Two. Three. His protests gained strength and she ceased, licking her wound closed.
“Turn me into a vampire,” he said hoarsely, “and you’ll be the first I suck dry.”
“You’d have to take me down first.” She brushed his sweat and blood-soaked hair away from his forehead. His heart beat too strongly to slip into the Change, but if she’d waited another few minutes…? She pushed the thought away.
“This babying you’re doing…as good as a verbal admission that you like me.”
“Ha!” Her eyes stung, but she told herself that was from the blood spatter on her face. She couldn’t stop touching him, running her fingertips over his face and stroking through his hair to his scalp. “You pulled this little stunt just to play on my sympathy.”
“Not my fault you’d look hot in one of those naughty nurse’s outfits.” His chest lifted and fell with a sharp breath.
Their banter was breaking her heart, knowing how much the effort was costing him. But she didn’t relent. As bad as it sucked, his pain was keeping his heartbeat elevated, which was helping to pump her healing blood through his veins. It was nowhere near as
powerful as a seraph’s pure blood, but it would nevertheless speed his healing.
“Who knew I was so damn popular?” he groused. “Must be you, sweetheart. You want a piece of me…now they all do.”
The one wraith with some active brain cells had baited Elijah. She’d bet her ass on it. He’d goaded the chase that led to this ambush and then provoked Elijah by attacking the woman covered in his scent.
Higher brain function is subverted by pure instinct,
Grace had said.
“I wasn’t imagining it, was I?” she asked, noting that the brainy wraith’s puddle had some shape to it, unlike the others. As if he was deteriorating more slowly. “He did talk, didn’t he?”
“Yeah. Fucker.”
“I was told their brains are mush. Lights not on and no one home.”
“Your friend…Nikki…she talked.”
Vash stiffened. “What did she say?”
“Nothing worth remembering, but it was English.”
“Oh.” She jerked in surprise when her cell phone rang.
“Your tit’s ringing.”
Pulling her phone out, she saw Syre’s name on the caller ID. She activated video. “Syre.”
His handsome visage appeared, scowling. Then he paled. “My god…what’s happened to you? Where are you? That lycan is
dead
, Vashti. I’ll shred him.”
“Take a number,” Elijah muttered.
Realizing how she must look with blood all over her, she spoke quickly. “We ran into some wraith action in Vegas and it got messy, but I’m fine.”
“Tell me where you are and I’ll be there in less than thirty minutes. I’ve got a helicopter on standby now.”
“Where are you?”
“McCarran. I just landed.”
“Thank god.” She exhaled in relief. “Wait there. I’ll send Salem to you with Elijah and you can take them to the warehouse. He needs medical treatment and we’re set up for it there.”
Syre’s gaze narrowed. “The Alpha?”
“Yes.”
“Where will you be?”
Vash didn’t say her intentions aloud, unwilling to jinx her plans. “I’ve got something to take care of.”
“Me,” Elijah said, his eyes open and staring into hers.
Yes,
she thought.
You.
L
indsay woke when the steady hum of the car’s engine and air-conditioning ceased. Lifting her head from the seat back, she blinked at Adrian, who sat behind the wheel. “I fell asleep.”
“You did,” he agreed, his blue eyes warm and soft. He reached for her hand and linked their fingers together.
“I’m sorry.” She straightened and looked around, noting that they were in the driveway of a two-story peach stucco home in a quiet residential neighborhood. In lieu of grass, white gravel covered the yard, which wasn’t unusual in Las Vegas. “Oh man…and you drove because you wanted to talk.”
Needing to utilize every minute of his endless time, Adrian was usually chauffeured from one place to another, allowing him to work even when he was on the road. In addition to his duties as leader of the Sentinels, he owned Mitchell Aeronautics, effectively giving him
two full-time endeavors to manage. It was fortunate that he didn’t require sleep, or he’d never get anything finished.
She shoved her free hand through her short blond curls and looked at her lover contritely. Sentinels had astonishingly acute hearing. There was no privacy to be found at Angels’ Point. Every word and sound could be picked up by any Sentinel within a mile radius. When Adrian wished to speak to her privately, he took her away, flying her to remote hills surrounding the Point so that eavesdropping would be impossible. He’d suggested they make the five-hour drive to Vegas alone, shunning both a driver and the use of any of his many privately owned aircraft so they could chat at length as they so rarely had the opportunity to do.
He hummed softly and reached out to stroke a fingertip down the side of her face. “Watching you sleep was a joy as well,
neshama
.”
My soul.
The endearment still astonished and awed her. How could she be the soul of this man…this
angel
? Her eyes swept over his beloved features, his dark and seductive beauty tightening her chest. His inky black hair framed a face so savagely masculine just looking at him turned her on. Winged brows and thick lashes framed eyes of a preternatural cerulean—the pristine blue found at the heart of a flame.
Too often she forgot what he was, a powerful winged being not of this world. When her hands and mouth stroked over his impossibly perfect body, worshipping warm olive skin stretched taut over rippling muscles, his abandoned and feverish response made him all too
human. His voice when he spoke to her privately, in the flesh and in her mind. The way he touched her…nuzzled against her…wrapped himself around her when they took to their bed…He was simply a man to her. Earthy, sultry, and achingly fervent.
Adrian, my love,
she thought, guilt and sorrow tainting the edges of her happiness. He was the greatest gift she’d ever received in her life, her solace and dearest pleasure. And she returned that joy by being a tragedy in his life, a weakness and a sin she feared he would one day pay too steep a price for.
“Stop it.” It was the nature of what he was that his voice could be so mesmerizingly resonant while also sharp and furious.
Embarrassed that he’d heard her maudlin internal pity party, Lindsay tried to tug her hand out of his and break the connection. He held fast, his seductively curved mouth thinned into a determined line. “Perhaps I should demonstrate how much solace and pleasure you give me in return. Maybe the memory has faded in the hours since you last wrang me dry. If so, I’ll need to work harder to leave a more indelible recollection.”
A shiver moved through her and her eyes slid helplessly to the thick vein pumping strong and steady along his throat. She licked her lips, her own blood hot and thick with wanting him. She’d fed from his wrist just before she slept, but her hunger was acute, both for his blood and his rockin’ body.
“Sex,” she breathed, overwhelmed by her sudden need for it. For him. The rapidly heating interior of the
car only increased her desire. The continuing evolution of her Change made her a tactile creature, one who responded swiftly, and often unexpectedly, to external stimuli. Once she matured past the fledgling stage, she’d be impervious to such things as external temperature, but for now everything seemed capable of setting her off.
“Love,” he corrected, cupping her cheek with his free hand and leaning toward her. “Expressed physically.”
“Repeatedly.”
“Oh, yes,” he purred, sliding his mouth softly across hers. “You’re teaching me every day, in so many ways, how to love. I thought I knew, but I was wrong.”
She fought off a twinge of jealousy over Shadoe, the naphil daughter of Syre whom Adrian had loved for ages. Over many reincarnations. The last one being Lindsay herself. And yet faced with the culmination of his endless quest to possess Shadoe, he’d chosen her—Lindsay—instead. She wondered if she would ever truly understand why.
His lips moved against hers. “Because you showed me what love truly is just by giving yours so selflessly. I wasn’t made for love. It wasn’t weaved into the fabric of my being. I didn’t know what it was, what I was looking for, what I needed. I had no point of reference, no examples, nothing. Until you.”
Adrian took her mouth in a lush, deep kiss, his tongue stroking along hers, the leisurely rhythm and his total control a blatantly erotic promise of things to come.
She moaned, the sound both a plea and a surrender.
Lifting his head, Adrian watched her with heavy-lidded eyes, his thumb brushing over her swollen mouth and peeping fangs. “Shadoe possessed me. I was consumed by her hunger and her conviction that I was meant to be hers. I was a void,
neshama
. An emotionless being. When you bring something into nothing, it’s impossible to know if it’s good or bad for you. You know only that losing what you have would leave you with nothing again. She brought me emotional pain and physical pleasure, and I clung to those things even as I wanted nothing so much as to go back and make a different choice.”
“Don’t say any more.” The torment in his voice made her heartsick.
“But you, Lindsay my love, delight me. You fill the hole in me I didn’t know was there. The pleasure of your touch is the sweetest agony, because it’s never enough. I’ll never have enough. As many times as I have you, I always want more. What I feel for you consumes me. I couldn’t live without it. Couldn’t live without you.”
Lindsay pressed her forehead to his. “I’m learning, too. Slower than you, but I’m getting there.”
“She made me a man,” Adrian whispered, his tongue tracing the curve of her bottom lip. “You’ve made me human.”
She cried at that, tears slipping free. That’s what she feared most—that she’d irrevocably damaged something irreplaceable.
You make me stronger than I’ve ever been. She broke me
down; you built me up. Why don’t you know this
, neshama?
Tell me how to show you.
“You do. Beautifully. It’s the Change, Adrian. It’s like premenstrual syndrome times a thousand. I’m having mood swings. Cravings. My sex drive is out of control. God, how do you put up with me?”
“With pleasure.” His clever fingertips stroked a circular pattern over the tender flesh behind her ear. “I wouldn’t change a thing about you.”
She met his fierce gaze and held it. “I love you.”
“I know.” Adrian’s smile was so potently sexual and warmly tender that she grew slick between the thighs.