He gave her no quarter. Elijah f**ked her like the animal he was, rutting into her with unmitigated ferocity. She climaxed in a helpless rush, screaming his name because he didn’t relent, didn’t falter. He kept driving the ecstasy into her, making her take it. Al that he was. Everything.
Beyond what she could handle, what she’d tried to limit herself to.
He fol owed her down when she melted into the mattress, her head and shoulders hanging off the edge. “You’l take me as I am,” he snarled.
“You’l want me as I am. Or you won’t have me at al .”
His knee shoved her legs wider; his big c**k sank a fraction deeper. His grip on her hair pul ed her head down toward the floor, forcing her into the most submissive of poses. She felt his teeth sink into the nape of her neck, his canines inhumanly long, his bite firm enough to break the skin but not tear it.
Subdued, mounted, and dominated in every way, Vashti came again and again, sobbing her pleasure, shame, and guilt. Begging him to forgive her. To finish her. To fil her.
Which he did, hours later, pumping his lust and fury into the greedy depths of her body, emptying himself with a serrated groan that sounded like the sweetest agony.
CHAPTER 7
From his vantage point high on a rocky hil, Adrian Mitchel surveyed the blond fledgling vampire attempting to sneak up on three of the most fearsome angels ever created, one of whom was his lieutenant. They stood with their winged backs to her, their focus on the papers spread out on the teakwood patio table in front of them.
Dawn had passed and now the morning sun rose in the east. The soft pinkish golden glow that would have fried any other minion caressed her pale limbs and austerely beautiful face just as his lips had done mere hours ago. Behind her, their house clung to the hil with the appearance of defying gravity, its three tiers jutting out from the craggy rock, its weathered wood and rock exterior making it seem a natural part of the native Southern California landscape.
He watched and waited, his crimson-tipped wings tucked close to his back to avoid catching drag in the wind. He admired the vampress’s bravado, even as he acknowledged the futility of it. She couldn’t take on even one of his Sentinels; three was impossible.
Crouching, she slunk across his wide deck with a slender blade in her hand. When she pounced, he appreciated her grace and agility, which nearly matched Damien’s when he turned at the last possible moment and caught the business end of her blade in his hand, proving he’d sensed her coming.
One might have thought that would be the end of it, but she surprised them al by using the Sentinel’s grip to support her weight as she kicked out spread-eagled and knocked the two Sentinels flanking Damien into the table like fal ing chess pieces, sending papers flying.
Adrian leaped from his perch, his wings extending to their ful thirty-foot span to catch an updraft. He soared, then dove, spiraling downward, relishing the rush of air through his hair and over his feathers. He skimmed the wide deck, the tips of his wings touching the planks, before he darted upward again, using the pul of gravity to slow his momentum and pul him back to the earth.
Lowering with effortless strength, he settled into place beside his mischievous mate, landing on the bal s of his feet without a sound.
She caught his wrist and squeezed, opening her mind so that her thoughts became his. Watching you fly makes me so hot.
“Watching you hunt is similarly affecting.” His face and tone of voice revealed nothing of his feelings for her, out of deference for his men, but the way her fingertips slid across his palm told him she knew.
Malachai and Geoffrey straightened from their ignoble sprawls.
“That’s cheating,” Malachai said, stretching and flexing wings that were the color of sunset—pale yel ow that darkened into deep orange tips.
Lindsay’s smile was bril iant. “One-on-one I get my ass kicked, but I think I might be able to work with a group. Using one to distract the others.”
“That’s insane,” Geoffrey scoffed, looking disgruntled. He’d recently likened Lindsay to a troublesome cat, one who crouched under couches and swiped at anyone hapless enough to walk by. But in truth, he appreciated her ceaseless efforts to hone herself so that she wasn’t as much of a liability. While Lindsay was an expert marksman and bladesman and was working hard on her hand-to-hand combat skil s, she was stil a fledgling vampire newly Changed. She hadn’t yet achieved the power and resilience that would eventual y come with age. In the interim, she was unbearably vulnerable and easily broken.
Damien sighed. “No, that’s Lindsay. It’s our fault we weren’t ready for her.”
The lieutenant was wary of Lindsay’s impact on Adrian and the Sentinels’ mission, but he admired her as a warrior. While Adrian’s original second and beloved friend, Phineas, had been a strategist and Phineas’s replacement, Jason, had been good for morale, Damien’s strengths were found in battle and those were the same strengths he most appreciated in others.
Lindsay slid her blade into the sheath strapped to her thigh. “I touched base with al the international packs overnight. The communication blackout is working—you stil have one hundred percent containment of the overseas lycan outposts. They have no idea the North American packs revolted.”
“Thank the Creator for smal favors,” Malachai muttered.
“But we can’t risk using those lycans to contain their rogue brethren,” Geoffrey said. “Even though some of them wil do so wil ingly.”
Adrian’s gaze lifted to the building set a half mile away—the lycan barracks. Once home to his pack and now home to a mere dozen lycans who’d straggled in over the last week and a half since the outposts had begun fal ing like a chain of dominos. More lycans returned to him every day, and when he touched their minds, as he did Lindsay’s, he felt their fear and confusion—and their loyalty, which humbled him.
The crumbling of the order he’d worked so hard for was part of his punishment for loving Lindsay, he knew—the loss of the lycans, the guilt of knowing others were paying for his mistakes, the strain of holding on to the tenuous balance between vampires and mortals by his fingernails.
Although he’d committed the same offense as the Fal en, his penalty was different; he suspected that was because he was too useful to throw away. But he was paying in other ways, every day of his endless life. He’d paid for centuries watching Shadoe die over and over again, and he would continue to pay mental y and emotional y for an indefinite time to come. “We need to reinforce the Sentinels stil holding on to their outposts, which leaves us with only a handful here in the States to pul everything back together.”
They were outnumbered by a fatalistic margin. He had a firm hold on the Jasper and Juarez outposts, but the others were lost. He looked at the beautiful vampress beside him, once the vessel that carried Shadoe’s soul and now the woman who carried his heart in her hands. Her vampirism offered her a better chance of survival than she’d had as a mere mortal, but she was stil weak and in need of frequent feeding. And Adrian’s powerful Sentinel blood was al she would drink, which afforded her the ability to withstand sunlight but also meant he couldn’t be separated from her for too long. As fragile as she yet was, that made her a terrible disadvantage for him.