Break the Day - Lara Adrian Page 0,16
on Brinks didn’t mean anything. He sure as hell hadn’t intended it to mean anything. Just a tactic to throw her off guard, force her to let go of the fierce hold she seemed to maintain on her Breed nature.
He’d needed a weapon to combat her stubborn denial and he had reached for the first one that came to mind.
Now, it was all he could do to sit beside her in the back of the delivery van and pretend that kiss hadn’t short-circuited his brain along with the rest of his anatomy.
He wanted her.
Fuck, he’d wanted her the moment he walked into Asylum the other night and saw her running the pool table over Cruz and the others. Those luscious curves and long, lean legs. That cascade of silken, dark hair framing those big bourbon-colored eyes that made him hard no matter if she looked at him in fury or in tormented desire.
Shit. Thinking about what she did to him only made the problem worse.
And he’d be damned before he’d let himself walk right into a seductress’s trap.
Though to be fair, Brinks—or whatever her true name was—behaved less like a seductress than a combatant. He didn’t doubt for a second that she meant it when she threatened to ash him.
He would trust that more than sweetness and honey any day.
Especially after he’d barely survived the trap the Opus bitch had set for him in Montreal.
Yet as the van left Roxbury heading north onto Columbus Avenue, Rafe couldn’t help but wonder if he was being led into a different sort of trap tonight.
He leaned forward to get a better look at Cruz in the passenger seat. “You mentioned logistics back at the garage. What’s going on?”
A few moments of odd silence fell over everyone on the heels of his question. Rafe flicked a glance at Brinks, but she turned her head to stare at nothing.
“You like art, vampire?” Cruz asked, nonchalant.
Rafe grunted. “Sure. Depends what kind.”
“Fine art,” Fish said from across from him. “Monet, Renoir. Classic shit like that.”
Behind the wheel up front, Ocho snickered and shook his head. “You wouldn’t know a fucking Monet or a Renoir from an Elvis on black velvet.”
“Who cares, asshole?” Fish scowled. “I’m not planning to hang one on my wall.”
Rafe’s hackles were already up on instinct, so the idiotic back-and-forth only increased his impatience. “You told me we were going to discuss business tonight, Cruz. Lucrative business, you said. So, what is it?”
Instead of answering, he reached back to hand him a flyer for an art museum exhibit that would be opening in a couple of days in Boston.
Son of a bitch. Rafe’s veins tightened as he realized what he was seeing. “This is from the Museum of Fine Art.”
Cruz stared at him. “So, you’re familiar with the place? That’s good.”
He knew damn well Rafe was familiar. No doubt, that was the whole point of the conversation. The whole point of this entire exercise.
Ah, Christ. That explained the route Ocho was on. The MFA couldn’t be more than another five minutes across town.
“Yeah, I imagine you might’ve been there a time or two,” Cruz remarked, hardly masking his smugness. “Didn’t I read somewhere that the bitch of one of your old buddies from the Order is the curator for that place? Could swear I also heard that the daughter of the Boston commander works there on occasion too. That hot piece of daywalking ass, am I right?”
Rafe nodded tightly, his teeth set on edge at the disrespect this bastard was showing not only toward Nathan’s blood-bonded mate, Jordana, but Aric Chase’s twin sister, Carys, as well.
Beside him, he noticed Brinks had gone stock-still at the mention of daywalkers and members of the Order. Yet she didn’t seem shocked at all by the subject of the museum and its on-loan exhibit of priceless art.
If Rafe was being tested—and he was damn sure he was—then it appeared he was the only one in the vehicle who hadn’t been aware of that fact until now.
He grunted, unsure why Brinks’s participation should bother him as much as it did.
“Why don’t you just get to the fucking point, Cruz.”
The human’s grin split the center of his dark goatee. “Someone I know wants to add those paintings to his private collection. And he’s willing to pay big for them. So, we’re going to get them for him. Right now.”
Rafe didn’t have to guess where their bankroll would be coming from. Evidently, this was the business Cruz and Judah LaSalle had