by Adrian, Lara
He couldn’t open that up. He’d buried that part of him in the past where it belonged. And where he planned to keep it.
“You know more than anyone else, Carys.” He rubbed a hand over the tight tendons that started to ache in his jaw. “Christ, woman. You know more than you should.”
“It’s not enough. I can’t do this with you anymore. It hurts too much.”
“Carys . . .” He moved toward her and she dodged him, using her Breed genetics to elude him in a flash of motion.
She started for the corridor across the arena toward the staff entrance at the back of the building. Rune fell in behind her, but she was already at the door.
“Carys, for fuck’s sake. Wait a minute—”
She paused only long enough to throw a searing glare over her shoulder. “Congrats on the club, Rune.”
She pushed the door open. The battered metal panel swung wide, into the blinding blast of midday sunlight. Hot rays poured inside the corridor, pushing Rune back into the shadows on a hiss.
He brought his arm up to shield his eyes and saw her stride into the broad daylight, where she knew he couldn’t follow her. She was unreachable now. Gone.
He told himself he should be relieved.
He kept telling himself that, even as he stormed back into the arena bar and smashed the bottle of whiskey into the nearest wall.
CHAPTER 14
After a long day of talks in the command center with D.C. on conference call and his own team in Boston, Sterling Chase still had hours of work ahead of him that evening. But as he strolled back up to the Darkhaven with Tavia, he could think of nothing more pressing than taking a long moment to appreciate his mate’s perfect backside as she walked ahead of him in the corridor leading into the mansion.
He fell back another pace or two, watching her hips sway with each long-legged stride. Her firm, fine ass never failed to captivate him. Wrapped in gray tailored pants as it was now, or gloriously bared for his every wicked pleasure. Preferably the latter. As soon as possible, if he had anything to say about it.
“Stare any longer, vampire, and my cheeks are going to be scorched from the heat your irises are throwing off.”
He chuckled, but didn’t take his eyes off her for a second. “I know another way to pinken those pretty cheeks.”
“Promises, promises.”
Tavia’s stride turned into a teasing strut that made his veins thrum and his cock ache with hunger. He caught up to her in a flash of motion, spinning her around on her heels and taking her into his arms. She gasped in surprise as she crashed into his chest, but her eyes were dancing with bright sparks of desire as he kissed her.
Their mouths joined in a tangling of tongues, mingling breaths and rushing pulses. When he drew back from her lips a long moment later, every cell in his body was pounding with the need for more. The need for her—his female. His beloved, eternal mate. “You do it to me every time, you know that?”
Tavia’s mouth broke into a grin that revealed the pretty tips of her fangs. “Do what?”
“Stop me in my tracks whenever I see you. Make me think about what a lucky son of a bitch I am that an extraordinary woman like you decided to hang your heart on me.”
She made a throaty sound that sent a jolt of lust straight to his shaft. “Maybe we should discuss this in further detail later tonight.”
He slowly shook his head. “Not sure I can wait that long, darlin’.”
“You’ll have to. We do have guests, Sterling. You told Mathias and Brynne you wanted to meet with him twenty minutes ago.”
“I don’t care. They won’t care. Mathias will certainly understand that I needed time alone with my mate.” He caressed her face, then skimmed his hands onto the sweet ass he’d been drooling over a moment ago. He brought her against him, against the hard ridge of his erection. “I want you now. And I don’t care who knows it.”
She giggled and nipped his lip. “You’re terrible.”
“You’re delicious.”
He took her mouth in another deep kiss, then pulled her under the shelter of his arm as they headed for the privacy of his open study down the nearby hall.
Which turned out to be not-so-private.
Mathias was seated in one of the guest chairs on the other side of the large desk. Brynne sat in the other one. Their eyebrows quirked at the sight of Chase and Tavia, both sporting amber-lit eyes and emerging fangs.
Mathias cleared his throat and started to get up from his chair. “Apologies. I thought we were supposed to meet and discuss the situation in London—”
“Yes, you are.” Tavia disengaged herself from Chase’s hold, ignoring the possessive growl of protest he made. “I’m sorry we kept you waiting.”
“Not at all.” Mathias still looked uncomfortable at the inopportune intrusion. “If you’d rather—”
“I would,” Chase grumbled.
But since Tavia was already perched on the far edge of his desk, all he could do was drop into his chair and hope it didn’t take too long for his raging hard-on to subside. He rallied his thoughts—and wrestled his focus—onto the business at hand.
“Any word from your team on the ground in Dublin tonight, Mathias?”
He shook his head. “Not since the op rolled out a few hours ago. They should be in the city and heading for Ivers’s residence as we speak. My captain, Thane, will call in the status as soon as there’s news.”
“Good.” Chase glanced at Tavia’s sister. “I appreciate your discretion with this, Brynne. All of the Order appreciates that we have your trust. Not only with the mission under way in Dublin tonight, but the one concerning Neville Fielding as well.”
“Nothing I’ve heard will go any further, I assure you,” she said, but there was a hedging quality to her answer. She gave a vague shake of her head. “And I hope the Order can appreciate what both my discretion and trust—not to mention my active cooperation—may cost me, if things go wrong and JUSTIS were to find out I’m privy to any of this.”
“No one wants that to happen,” Tavia interjected.
Chase agreed. “The Order will tread carefully with Fielding, Brynne.”
“I hope so. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that willfully withholding information from my superiors at JUSTIS about possible GNC corruption could have career-wrecking consequences. If JUSTIS were to find out I’d confided in the Order instead of my own organization? I don’t even want to think what that could mean. It won’t be merely my career on the line.”
Chase could hardly argue any of that. “And if it turns out the London GNC director is dirty—if it turns out that he leads us to within striking distance of Opus and the rest of that sick cabal—then you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that you helped bring down a terror group feared around the world. A victory like that could catapult you to the top of the heap at JUSTIS.”
She blew out a dismissive breath. “I’m not aiming for a higher office in the organization. I just want to do what’s right. And that means ridding the world of cancerous groups like Opus and all who serve them.”
“We appreciate that, Brynne. And your concerns are ours as well.”
She glanced between Mathias and him. “How soon do you anticipate Lucan will want to begin his reconnaissance on the director?”
“Soon,” Chase said. “Days at most. Right now, Fielding has no idea we’ll be watching. We want him to stay that way. We want him comfortable until the moment we’re ready to strike.”
Brynne nodded. “He won’t be paying much attention to anything this week. Fielding’s daughter got engaged. The director and his wife are hosting a party for her this weekend at their new home.”
Tavia arched a brow. “Their expensive new home they shouldn’t be able to afford?”
“That’s the one,” Brynne replied. “They’ve invited half of London, including many of us in JUSTIS.”
Mathias sent a sardonic look at Chase. “Nothing in my mailbox. I feel slighted.”
Chase smirked.
“You should be getting used to it. The Order is never on the invitation list for these things.”
“More’s the pity,” Mathias drawled, chuckling. His phone chirped with an incoming call. “It’s Thane.”
Everyone fell silent as Mathias took the call from his operation’s team captain. He mostly listened, and from the expression on the London commander’s face, the news wasn’t good.
“What do you mean, he’s dead? Ah, fuck. Jesus Christ.” Mathias went silent again, then a violent curse exploded out of him. “No records at all? Damn it. Any idea where the box might be located?”
Chase didn’t like what he was hearing either. It sounded like the simple data recovery mission in Dublin had gone totally off the rails.
“All right, take what you’ve got and clear out of there,” Mathias ordered. “Leave the body. Let the damn place burn.”
Mathias ended the call and looked up grimly. “Hayden Ivers is dead. He popped some kind of poison pill just as my guys arrived and set his damn house on fire.”
CHAPTER 15
Some unlucky lady was having a loud, ugly cry in the Darkhaven’s media room.
Since misery loved company, Carys left the kitchen and wandered that way, wearing an oversized T-shirt, baggy pajama bottoms and fluffy socks—the wardrobe of a woman in the midst of a good sulk.
She shuffled inside the room and found Jordana and Nova seated on the enormous sectional inside. Both women were riveted to the sappy sob-fest taking place on the large movie screen on the opposite wall.
Carys plopped down with them. “Who died?”
“No one,” Jordana answered without looking away from the screen. “Those are tears of joy. She just found out she’s pregnant with twins after years of trying, and her husband surprised her with a nursery he’d been building for her in secret with his own hands.”
Carys rolled her eyes. “In other words, total fantasy.”
“Totally romantic,” Jordana countered. “I like my happy endings. Since when don’t you?”
Carys blew out a short sigh and dug her spoon into the fresh pint of ice cream she’d confiscated from the freezer.
Now Jordana looked at her. “Is that chocolate?”
“Chocolate with fudge,” Carys said around a mouthful of it. “Plus more fudge. And caramel.”
Her friend made grabby hands for the container. When she took it from Carys, she peered inside and frowned. “It’s almost gone.”
Carys shrugged. “I’m using it for medicinal purposes.”
Jordana offered it to Nova, who declined with an emphatic toss of her blue-and-black hair. “Ordinarily, I’d be all over that. Right now, just the smell of it is enough for me, thanks.”
After Jordana took a big spoonful, she passed the pint back to Carys. “You’re not out with Rune tonight.”
“Nope. I’m not.” Carys stared into the container. “We had an argument today. I think I broke up with him.”
“What?” Jordana stared at her, confused and aghast. “No wonder you’re medicating with double fudge and caramel. What happened?”
“The thing everyone warned me about—that I was being a fool letting myself get tangled up with him. That I was going to get hurt.”
Jordana frowned. “This morning everything seemed fined between you two. What did he do, Car? Wait a minute. Does this have something to do with the club? You didn’t know he wanted to buy it, did you?”
Carys shook her head. “It’s not about the club itself. It’s the fact that he won’t let me into his life. Not all of it, anyway.” She looked around Jordana to include Nova in the conversation. “I’ve been seeing this guy for a while now. A Breed fighter in one of the cage arenas in the city. Of course, my family doesn’t approve.”
“Those are dangerous places,” Nova remarked. “A lot of dangerous people there.”
“Rune’s not one of them,” Carys said, feeling the need to defend him. A little. “I mean, he’s definitely dangerous, but only in the cage. Outside of it, with me, he is . . . amazing. He’s tender and kind and exciting. We’ve been practically inseparable these past several weeks. I’ve never felt more wanted, more alive, than when I’m with him.”
Nova listened, a smile at the edges of her mouth. “Doesn’t sound like a problem to me so far.”
No, it didn’t to Carys either. But that was part of the problem. “Everything is great between us, except he’s holding back. He’s been keeping me at arm’s length and I never saw that until today. I fell so fast and so deep for him, maybe I didn’t want to let myself see it.”
“It sounds like he cares about you,” Nova pointed out.
Carys nodded, but it was a weak effort. “I want to believe he does, but there’s a steep wall between us and I can’t reach him. I can’t help feeling that if I try to scale it, he might be the one waiting to push me off once I reach the top.”
Jordana reached over and squeezed her hand. There was a gentle understanding in her best friend’s eyes. “Everyone’s afraid of what’s waiting at the bottom of the fall, Car. Someone once told me that the safest path isn’t necessarily the best one. That sometimes you have to be willing to leap into the unknown. Into the storm.”
Carys recalled that conversation she’d had with Jordana. It had been only a couple of weeks ago, when Jordana was having doubts about risking her heart on Nathan.
“Do you love this male?” Nova asked.
“Yes.” The truth jumped easily to her tongue, in spite of her misgivings about where things were heading with Rune. But she couldn’t deny what she felt for him. Not to her best friend, nor to the new friend she felt she had in Nova. “I love him with all my heart.”
“Then you have no choice but to try to reach him.”
Carys nodded, less certain now. She knew Nova’s advice was sound, but the sting from her argument with Rune was still fresh. So was the fear. If she gave him any more of her heart and he broke it, would she ever be able to piece it back together again?
She wasn’t sure she was ready to take that chance.
“Is this how it was with you and Mathias?” she asked Nova.
The tough-looking Breedmate held Carys in a tender, vulnerable gaze. “Yeah, it was like this for us too. But I was the one surrounded by high walls. Mathias showed me that the only thing strong enough to tear them down was love. I’m grateful every day that he was stubborn enough not to give up.”
CHAPTER 16
For the third time in the past hour, Carys went back to her exhibit design diagram and reversed the placements of a pair of John Singer Sargent paintings. She drew back from the virtual reality monitor to see how the change would look from the exhibit room floor.
Yes, that works better. Or not.
Dammit, maybe their placements had been right the first time . . .
She moved them back with a huffed sigh. Normally, she wasn’t so indecisive, but too many things on her mind had made it difficult to focus on her work at the museum.
The late-night news from Mathias Rowan’s warrior team about the mission that had ended so badly in Dublin had cast a grim mood over everyone at the Darkhaven. As she’d left for work, the command center had been abuzz with activity and back-and-forth communications with the D.C. headquarters, and more than once during the day Carys had to stifle the urge to call home and find out what was going on.
That was, when she wasn’t even more distracted thinking about Rune.
Thinking about the fact that he hadn’t tried to call or message her since she’d left him at La Notte yesterday.
It should have been a small relief, that he had apparently decided to let her go. If it truly was over between them, she would rather it be now than down the road—after she let herself fall any deeper in love with him.
She was still hurting from their argument, still trying to tell herself that she’d done the right thing in walking away.
Work helped. She focused on that with renewed resolve, determined to have the exhibit plan finalized and ready for a
pproval before she quit for the day. Half the department was working into the evening with her on the special project. They were getting closer to wrapping it up, but Carys still had a few items on her list that she needed to handle.
She was on the phone checking in with a colleague about one of her key pieces when her department assistant knocked on the door. Carys waved the young woman in.
“Someone’s downstairs in the lobby for you.”
She covered the phone and murmured, “Great. It’s probably the lighting fixtures I ordered for the exhibit. Will you please sign for them, Andrea?”
“It’s not the lighting order,” the assistant said. “And I don’t think there is anything I can sign for . . .”
“Then what is it?”
“Not what,” Andrea said. “It’s a who. A very large, hot-looking who. I can’t say for certain, but I think he’s one of those Breed fighters from down at that club, La Notte.”
Rune. He was here? He’d never come to the museum before. He’d always been so careful to keep their worlds separate. Just one more way he’d been holding her at arm’s length.
What was he doing here now?
Adrenaline surged into her veins—along with a shot of hope that sent her heartbeat racing.
Carys held her expression neutral as she made her excuses to her colleague on the phone and ended the call. She smiled politely at the department assistant. “Thank you, Andrea. I’ll be right down.”
After the woman left, Carys grabbed her mirrored compact out of her purse and checked her appearance. Ugh, not good. She hadn’t touched her makeup or hair since she’d arrived at work that morning. She looked wilted at best, except for the flush of color filling her cheeks from the news of Rune’s arrival.
On a resigned sigh, she snapped the compact closed and tossed it back into her purse. He’d seen her looking more disheveled than this before, and she wasn’t about to race to the restroom to freshen up for him before finding out what he wanted. No matter how tempting the idea was.
Walking out of the office at an unrushed pace, she headed for the open central staircase that led down to the museum lobby.
