Break the Day - Lara Adrian Page 0,29

even one of Opus’s inner circle, I am damn well going to do it.”

Devony couldn’t help but sympathize with what he’d been through. Their lives had both been irrevocably altered because of Opus Nostrum’s evil. Now, she understood they also shared a similar goal.

Maybe they would both stand a better chance of seeing those goals through to fruition if they joined forces.

“I need to show you something, Rafe.”

She moved past him and entered the study.

Running her hand under her father’s desk, she found the hidden button and pressed it. The bookcase silently unlatched, and Devony opened it wider, revealing all of the dossiers, photographs, maps, and scribbled notes of the private war she’d been waging alone for the past five months.

Rafe stared for a long moment. When he finally turned his head to look at her, his handsome face was slack with incredulity and awe.

“Holy shit,” he said, a slight grin tugging at his lips.

Then he walked inside.

CHAPTER 10

Rafe didn’t know whether to feel impressed or a bit occupationally threatened by the depth and quality of Devony’s work.

It had been more than a couple of hours since she showed him her private war room. With each passing minute he had only become more fascinated with what he saw. Not only the notes and photographs and handwritten theories she had shared with him, but with the woman herself.

Especially her.

“Ah. Here it is,” she said, pulling a photograph out of a file folder stuffed with other images and documents. “This is the one I wanted to show you. I took it during a party on LaSalle’s yacht a couple of weeks ago.”

Rafe sat on the floor of the large study with her, surrounded by other piles of intelligence Devony had amassed in the handful of months since she set out on her quest to avenge her family by bringing down Opus Nostrum. It would take him days to study it all. Maybe a lot longer than that, if he allowed himself to be continually distracted by the incredible woman responsible for putting it together.

She had gone upstairs a while ago and changed clothes, trading her museum heist attire for a loose, gray V-neck sweater and black yoga pants. Her long brown hair was twisted haphazardly into a knot on top of her head. A few escaped tendrils curled at her nape, repeatedly drawing his eye to the delicate dermaglyphs that tracked onto her shoulders and neck.

He couldn’t keep from imagining what the rest of her Breed skin markings might look like beneath her clothes. Rafe could barely stifle the urge to reach out and trace the intricate swirls and arches of her glyphs with his fingers . . . or with his mouth.

As a daywalker female, she would also have the Breedmate mark somewhere on her luscious body. Against his will, he imagined slowly peeling away the soft knit top and pants until he uncovered the tiny scarlet birthmark’s hiding place.

Fuck.

Kissing her for a second time was just about the worst thing he could have done, because now all he could think about was doing it again. The way he’d felt after the first time should have been warning enough. All he’d done now was pour gasoline on the fire.

Devony wouldn’t need to ash him for overstepping his bounds. He was burning up just fine on his own.

He had used the spare moments while she was changing clothes to send a message to the Order, alerting them to corral Nathan until Rafe had a chance to report in and explain the situation. He wasn’t entirely sure how he was going to explain Devony Winters to his commanders.

But that was a problem he would have to deal with later.

Right now, it was all he could do to deal with the more immediate problem—namely, his intense, inconvenient attraction to her and his want to know more about her. He wanted to know everything, and not just because his mission could benefit from it.

Handing the printed photograph to him, she leaned against his shoulder and looked at the image along with him.

“It’s too blurry to make everyone out,” she said, apparently unaware of the effect her nearness was having on him. “It was the best I could manage without getting caught taking it.”

Steeling himself to the warmth of her body, he scanned the snapshot of dozens of well-dressed, obviously wealthy people who had gathered in the salon of LaSalle’s enormous boat.

When he spoke, his voice sounded rusty and thick. “Do you have the digital file