She’d outrun lycans before; she could do it again.
Ears flat to his head and teeth bared, Elijah slinked forward, owning the center of the highway. Vash swal owed hard, as riveted by his lupine beauty as she was by his human form. He was stunningly majestic, his thick fur as glossy and rich as his human hair, his movements lethal y graceful. His growl was a deep warning, a rumbling sound of danger that made the hair on her nape stand on end.
Something perverse inside her burst free, fueled by her simmering fury and pain. She’d chased him across the country, then chased him down at breakfast. By god, it was time for him to see what it felt like to pursue. She’d been too damn easy. Just like al the other bitches that fel al over him.
With her eyes on his, her mouth curved in a slow, taunting smile. One of her upraised hands lowered to intersect their line of sight. Al of her fingers curved into her palm except for the middle one. “Fuck you.”
Vash leaped over the hood of the SUV and darted into the woods.
CHAPTER 15
Fresh from a shower, Lindsay tightened the belt of her floor-length satin robe and went downstairs in search of Adrian. It was barely dawn and she knew just where to find him. She moved swiftly and quietly, not wanting to wake the two lycan guards in the guest rooms.
It was time for her to get Adrian to talk.
Being here, in Helena’s former home, was difficult for him, but he wasn’t sharing his pain. And working without Phineas—his second-in- command, whose death had brought them together—was like working without his right hand. Yet he remained reserved and contained, rigidly so. It was the way he needed to be to hold his command, she knew. It was the way he’d been created. But it wasn’t healthy for him. He was adrift and hiding it, shielding her and everyone around him.
Lindsay didn’t ful y understand how Adrian had come to be. Unlike her, he hadn’t been born or raised. He’d been brought into existence just as he was—a ful y mature male angel with a single purpose: to serve as an implement of punishment against other angels.
She couldn’t begin to grasp what that would feel like. She’d been raised by adoring parents. She had been hugged a lot. She’d laughed a lot. Not a day went by when she hadn’t heard “I love you.” In contrast, Adrian had been created to be void of emotion. In time, surrounded by mortals, he’d learned to covet and desire. As a creature built to be hard and merciless, it was the edgier feelings that had manifested first. Later he’d learned to feel loyalty and respect. He had established friendships. Now he was learning how to love her, learning how to give. But the guilt and remorse he was feeling over Phineas’s and Helena’s deaths were beyond his experience. He didn’t know how to express his turmoil, and bottling it up was hurting him more than she could bear.
“My wounded angel,” she murmured, her heart aching for him.
She’d fal en in love with a kil ing machine, one who was slowly but surely becoming a warmhearted, red-blooded man. There were bound to be trials and growing pains in the process, and she would help him as much as she could. But she needed him to open up to her to do so.
He’d lost so much in such a short time. He felt that he’d betrayed Helena’s trust, that he hadn’t been there for her as he should have been. Not as a commanding officer, but as a friend. Just as Phineas had been a friend, the closest one he’d had, someone dear and precious to him.
She exited through the kitchen door out to the backyard patio. The enclosed space was smal , no more than a postage stamp real y, with a circle of mosaic tiles in the center of the rectangle of grass. For some people, the spot would have been perfect for a birdbath or a couple of lawn chairs.
Here, she knew it was a landing pad, a place from which angels could lift to the sky and return to the earth.
The air crackled with the electric energy of an approaching desert storm, a storm that was brewing inside Adrian. One he was keeping at bay by sheer wil alone. And it was costing him. Greatly.
Tilting her head back, she spoke softly into the dawn breeze. “Adrian, my love. I need you.”
A moment later he appeared, his bril iantly white wings with their crimson tips a shock of shimmering alabaster against the pinkish gray heavens.
She’d known he would be close, never too far away to be there for her should she need him. His landing was impossibly graceful, the tips of his extended wings nearly touching the stucco wal s that separated the yard from their neighbors. The bal of one foot touched the tile first; then the ful weight of his body settled firmly onto the ground.
As was his custom, he wore only loose linen pants. His powerful chest and arms were bare and beautiful, his caramel-hued skin stretched over lean, rippling muscle. His black hair was tousled by the wind, framing his gorgeous face. And his eyes, with those gorgeous flame-blue irises, slid over her face with love and tender passion.
Her heart sighed at the sight of him. Her blood heated and flushed her skin.
And he knew, of course. His mouth curved in a sensual smile. “You could have cal ed me from the bed, neshama. I would’ve heard you and come to you there.”
“That’s not why I need you.”
“Oh? Are you sure about that?”
She sucked in a deep breath. “I always want that, but there’s something else.”
His wings dissipated like mist as she closed the distance between them. She walked right in to him, pressing her face in to his chest and wrapping her arms tightly around him.
“Lindsay.” His resonant voice was threaded with concern. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Do you know how much I need you, Adrian? How dependent I’ve become on having you near? Not for blood or sex, although I won’t deny that I need both of those things from you. It’s like you’re the force that makes my heart beat and, when we’re apart, it forgets how to function.”
He crushed her so tightly against him, she couldn’t breathe. She was grateful her vampire lungs didn’t real y need to because she didn’t want to pul away. One of his hands fisted in the curls of her hair. The other arm banded around her waist, ensuring that every inch of her was pressed tightly to him. “Neshama sheli. You destroy me.”