by Lara Adrian
His answer was a feral-sounding snarl. He needed her too. He needed everything with her.
“Turn around,” he uttered, his voice rough and raw.
He swiveled her in front of him, bending her forward with his palm against her clothed back. She held on to the sink, her sweet ass thrust toward him in invitation. He caressed the round swells, using both hands to spread her wide. Her body glistened, flushed dark pink and so pretty.
He teased her silky seam with the head of his cock, then sank inside on a long, slow thrust that had his molars clenched so tight it was a wonder they didn’t shatter.
She moaned and moved against him, spurring him into a wilder tempo. They crashed together, surrendered to the heat and force of their desire. Rafe needed his hands on her skin, needed to see the play of color in her glyphs as he drove into her. He smoothed his palms under the back of her turtleneck, baring her pretty back to his glowing gaze. Her skin undulated with living colors. He traced his fingers over the flourishes, then up to the diminutive teardrop-and-crescent-moon birthmark that rode her right shoulder blade.
His fangs throbbed with the need to take hold of her as she rocked beneath him. He wanted to mark her, claim her, bind her to him as his.
Fuck.
The thought alone should have shaken him. It damn well shouldn’t have made his blood race faster, harder through his veins. It shouldn’t have intensified his want of her. Shouldn’t have made him hunger for something he didn’t deserve—and wouldn’t—so long as his life belonged to his mission for the Order.
Rafe met her molten gaze in the dingy mirror. God help him, but he saw some of the same forbidden hunger in her eyes. Her fangs were long and sharp behind her parted lips, her eyes flicking to where his own pulse hammered visibly in his throat.
He hardly recognized the possessive snarl that vibrated through him in that moment. He didn’t want to acknowledge what he was feeling.
Not simply lust and overwhelming pleasure, although he felt that all the way to his marrow. No, what he felt was even more powerful than that as he watched Devony’s beautiful face and felt her body shatter around him in a fierce orgasm.
Mine.
The word slammed through him as he exploded deep inside her.
Mine.
It was a dangerous word. One that stayed with him, as constant as his own heartbeat, even after they hastily put themselves back together and he sent Devony out ahead of him.
With the tranced woman awakened and her pliable human mind filled with the suggestion that he’d just shown her the time of her life, Rafe returned to the crowded tavern and dropped the blonde at the table with her giggling friends.
Then he headed for the back of Asylum where the gang, and the reality of his mission, awaited.
CHAPTER 16
The private warehouse near Conley Terminal looked like it had been a relic about twenty years ago. Rust-streaked, dilapidated, the steel-and-brick structure might have seemed abandoned among its neighbors if not for the obvious security presence just inside the front door.
Rafe and the rest of the gang sat a couple of blocks away in an unmarked delivery truck Ocho had obtained from one of his many questionable colleagues. Fish and Axel were dressed in stolen port authority uniforms. All of the gang were armed with semiautomatics, Rafe included.
Cruz held a pair of compact binoculars in front of his face as he peered out at the warehouse. “There’s the midnight shift reporting for duty. You all know what to do. As soon as the other guards are gone, we’re going in.”
They had reviewed the plan earlier tonight at Ocho’s. According to Cruz, LaSalle had assured him the job was expected to be a simple one. Gain access to the warehouse. Grab the crates of newly arrived merchandise from overseas. Deliver them to the drop location. Collect the fat payout.
Rafe had run enough cleanup patrols with his Order teammates to know that greedy criminals like these tended to get sloppy when someone waved enough dollar signs in front of them. He didn’t expect the job tonight to be as simple as Cruz claimed. And although Devony was still angry to be excluded, he was glad he didn’t have to dread anything happening to her during this sketchy undertaking.
They had agreed to keep their distance after their restroom rendezvous at Asylum last night. Rafe went home to his place in Southie and stayed there until meeting up with the gang. She had agreed to stay put at her Darkhaven and await word from him once the job was over.
As promised, he’d sent her what details he knew, including the warehouse location and the drop site. If things went as he planned, he hoped to get close enough to Judah LaSalle to trance the bastard and squeeze him for everything he might know about Opus Nostrum.
The sooner he had that intel, the sooner he could get on with the task of wiping the organization off the map.
Then he would have time to consider what Devony Winters was coming to mean to him, and whether those feelings stood any chance of being reciprocated.
“Okay,” Cruz announced. “New guards are inside . . . and there go the old ones around the corner. Time to move. Hit it, Ocho.”
The truck lurched into gear. Ocho drove it in front of the warehouse, and Rafe hopped out behind Fish and Axel. As they had done at the MFA, the two men provided a momentary distraction while Rafe leapt to action putting the lights out on the guards.
Cruz and Ocho moved in behind them, crowbars in hand. They located the sealed crates they were after and made quick work cracking them open. One by one, the men began unloading smaller crates onto a wheeled dolly.
Rafe hadn’t been tasked with handling the merchandise, not that he cared. Tonight, he’d been relegated to lookout and problem-solver. He stood watch as the men alternated between loading the dolly and moving it out to the waiting truck.
“Faster,” Cruz ordered the others, patrolling around like a general. “Come on, let’s go! Look alive.”
Rafe caught up with Fish on the side. “Hey, talk to me. Whose shit are we stealing tonight?”
“I don’t know, man,” Fish answered in a low whisper. “Some kinda arms dealer, according to Ocho. LaSalle’s got friends who’re willing to pay about anything to get their hands on whatever’s in those crates.”
Cruz eyed Rafe cautiously, a strangely smug look in his eyes as Fish and Axel came back for another load. Rafe didn’t like the look the gang leader had on his face. He didn’t like the feeling that he was somehow the brunt of an unspoken joke.
“Something funny, Cruz?”
He shrugged. “I’m not laughing, man.”
“Neither am I,” Rafe said. “What the fuck’s going on? What are we hauling out of he—”
The sound of a vehicle approaching outside the warehouse snagged his attention. A car door opened. A pair of boots slapped against concrete.
The guards who’d left a few minutes ago had circled back unexpectedly. One of them double-timed it inside the warehouse. “Yo, Jansen. It’s just me. Forgot that damn birthday card for my wife.”
He walked in farther. “Hey, you know there’s a rental truck sitting outside? Meeks and I just texted the boss to see if he might’a sent someone over for that new shipment. . . . Jansen?”
Rafe stood in front of him now, moving through the warehouse in the blink of an eye. Palming the man’s balding forehead before he had a chance to voice his surprise, Rafe dropped the guard into an immediate trance.
But he wasn’t the last of their problems.
The guard’s partner had circled around to the back of the warehouse for a sneak attack. His command to Cruz and the other men to freeze was answered by a hail of gunshots from the gang. He howled sharply and returned fire. The scent of blood filled the air.
Son of a bitch.
Rafe flashed into the fray and found Axel dead on the floor of the warehouse, the back of his skull blown out. The guard was dead too. He lay in a growing pool of blood a few yards from where Cruz continued to bark orders to his men.
“Forget about loading the dolly. No time
now.” The gang leader grabbed one of the crates and started to hurry away with it. “All of you grab what you can and let’s get the fuck out of here!”
Rafe wheeled on him, blocking his path. His eyes burned like coals, glowing against the blanched whiteness of Cruz’s face. The spilled blood would have been enough to bring Rafe’s fangs out, but it was fury and suspicion for this man that made the sharp points erupt from his gums.
“What the hell are you and LaSalle up to here? What the fuck is in these crates? Tell me before I decide to tear out your damn throat.”
Cruz didn’t look scared. He looked . . . triumphant.
He let go of the crate he was holding.
It hit the floor between them, the crash echoing like cannon fire. Rafe felt a sudden heat gathering beneath him. He glanced down, shocked to see luminescent, milky blue rivulets leaking out of the broken slats.
Holy hell.
Liquidized ultraviolet light.
He’d known the advanced technology existed. It was one of Opus’s favorite new developments—and something they had been attempting to weaponize on a large scale for some time. In the past few months, the Order had destroyed other caches of the Breed-killing rounds of UV light. Evidently, not all of them.
And Rafe had never seen the shit up close and personal like this before.
It seared his eyes. He staggered back, shielding his face with his arm.
It wasn’t enough to stop the burn that washed over him as the streams of pure light surrounded him.
He reached for Cruz on a bellowed roar, but the gang leader danced out of his reach on a low chuckle.
“Get your asses moving,” he shouted to Fish and Ocho. “LaSalle is waiting for us at the drop.”
CHAPTER 17
She couldn’t stand the waiting.
After pacing in her brownstone Darkhaven for the past couple of hours, Devony had finally given in to her impatience and hopped on her motorcycle. Rafe’s promise to update her once the job was over should have been reassurance enough, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.
She headed past the drop location near Atlantic Wharf, but saw no sign of the men anywhere near the marina. They were late, which only deepened her sense of dread.
Gunning her bike, she sped for the industrial park near the shipping terminal. The sick feeling in her stomach eased a bit when she spotted the gang’s vehicle parked out front, Ocho jogging around from the back to hop into the driver’s seat. Cruz and Fish each carried a bulky crate out from the warehouse and loaded them into the truck.
Thank God. It appeared they were preparing to roll out right now.
Maybe that visual confirmation should have been enough to appease her. After all, she wasn’t even supposed to know about the gig tonight, let alone be there.
But one thing she didn’t see was Rafe.
The stench of gunfire hung in the air. And the closer she got to the warehouse, the more certain she was that she smelled blood.
Human blood, not Breed.
Yet that did nothing for the gnawing alarm that was building inside her chest.
She sped for the idling truck, practically leaping off her motorcycle once she reached it. Cruz was still at the rear of the vehicle with Fish. He rolled the door down and slammed the lock tight as Devony ran up to them.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Tell me what happened,” she said, panic climbing up her throat. “Where’s Rafe? Is he here with you?”
Cruz didn’t answer. He jerked his goateed chin at Fish. “Get your ass in the cab. Now!”
Fish hesitated only for a second, his face uncertain as he glanced at Devony. Then he hurried away as ordered.
On a snarl, Devony grabbed a fistful of the gang leader’s shirt. She didn’t have the patience to pretend she wasn’t prepared to do him serious harm. “Damn you, Cruz. Tell me what the hell is going—”
He shoved her hard, tearing out of her grasp. As she staggered back, he darted around to the other side of the open cab. “Ocho! Let’s go!”
The truck lurched forward in a scream of spinning tires and smoking rubber.
Devony’s vision flooded with fire. Every particle of her being that was otherworldly, ferociously Breed, exploded to life inside her.
She leapt into the air, landing like a cat on the roof of the speeding truck.
Another leap and an airborne twist brought her boots down onto the hood of the vehicle, facing Ocho and Cruz’s stunned expressions on the other side of the windshield.
She smashed her fist through the glass and grabbed Cruz by the throat. “Where. The. Fuck. Is. Rafe?”
Cruz sputtered and choked, clawing at her fingers. “Fuck you, bitch!”
“Holy shit!” Ocho’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull behind the wheel. “She’s a damn Breed!”
The truck swerved, but Devony rode it out. As she held Cruz in her punishing grip, she noticed something odd about his clothes. Bright blue, strangely illuminated paint splattered the front of his shirt and jeans. He had some on his hands too.
No, not paint.
What the fuck?
In the midst of the jostling and chaos up front, Fish crept forward from the back of the truck. “He’s in the warehouse, Brinks.” He swallowed hard, gave a halting shake of his head. “The liquid UV from the crates . . .”
Oh, shit.
Oh, no.
Devony bellowed her fury. She wanted nothing more than to unleash hell on Cruz, but concern for Rafe overruled everything else.
She vaulted off the vehicle. It careened away into the night while she all but flew back to the warehouse.
An unconscious security guard lay in a slump inside the entrance. Two more had been tranced nearby. They were all starting to rouse. Which meant Rafe’s hold on their minds was beginning to slip away.
“Rafe!”
Devony ran farther inside, her senses overcome with the scent of spilled blood. So much blood. Death, too. Axel’s body lay not far from another guard’s bullet-riddled corpse.
And there was Rafe.
Writhing on the floor next to a broken crate that was still oozing shimmery, luminescent blue liquid from inside it. Rafe lay in a growing pool of the stuff. Everywhere the concentrated, ultraviolet material touched his bare skin was hideous with burns. Even his handsome face.
“Oh, my God. Rafe.”
The sound of her voice seemed to rouse him. He lifted his head but his swollen eyelids didn’t, or couldn’t, open. “Devony,” he rasped. “What the hell are you doing? Go. Cruz and the others—”
“They’re gone,” she told him, already crouched at his side. “They drove off in the truck.”
“Liquid UV.”
“I know. Fish told me.” Her boots slipped in the mercury-like puddles as she struggled to pull Rafe out of the spill. “We need to get you out of here.”
He groaned in agony as she dragged him up onto his feet, wedging her shoulder beneath his arm to support him. She didn’t know where he got the strength to move in his horrific condition, but he staggered out of the warehouse with her into the cool night.
“We can’t take my bike. You won’t be able to ride.”
“The guards’ car.” Rafe pointed to the unmarked sedan parked in the side lot.
Devony started the engine with her mind while they hurried toward the vehicle. She carefully helped Rafe into the passenger seat, wincing at the agonizing pain he clearly suffered.
“I’m good,” he said. “Just drive, baby.”
“Okay.” She jumped in behind the wheel and hit the gas.
She drove deeper into the city, unsure where she was going. Her gaze strayed repeatedly to Rafe, her heart squeezing with deepening concern. He was in worse condition than she first realized. His lungs wheezed. His hands were blistered, pulpy masses. UV burns scorched his forehead, eyelids, and cheeks. Even his lips were singed. The peeling, white skin cracked and bled with the slightest movement of his mouth.
&nb
sp; He needed help desperately.
What he needed was healing, and from the look of him, there was no time to waste.
She spotted a bridge underpass ahead. The exit ramp beneath it was partially blocked by construction cones and barriers, the entire area cordoned off for repairs. It looked quiet and pitch dark, the nearest place she could see where they could pull over for a while and catch their breath.
“What are you doing?” he rasped from beside her. “We’re slowing down. Why?”
“It’s all right.” God, she hated to let him hear the jagged sound of her voice. She wanted to be strong, but she could hardly contain the emotion that had been lodged in her throat from the moment she saw him back in that warehouse. “I’m pulling over somewhere safe that you can rest.”
“No. Can’t slow down.” Agitated, he shifted abruptly. His wounded hands moved aimlessly in front of him because he couldn’t see. He groaned, a sound of frustration and agony. “I need to stop Cruz. Those crates . . . gotta be stealing that shit for Opus.”
“You’re not going anywhere right now. You need rest. You need healing.”
Against his growled protest, she parked the sedan under the flapping plastic sheet that draped down from the top of the repaired bridge. Swiveling toward him, she drew in a shallow, worry-filled breath. His pain terrified her. It shattered her.
But if she lost him now, because of Cruz and LaSalle?
If she lost him because of Opus Nostrum . . .
No. She refused to think it.
She refused to allow even the possibility that they could take him from her too.
“Let me help you.” She reached over to him, laying her hands gingerly on his chest.
She had barely begun to pull his healing ability into herself when she realized it wasn’t going to work. His body was depleted, rallying all of its energy into combatting the damage from the ultraviolet exposure. He was fading in and out of consciousness already. She could siphon his psychic ability, but it would mean draining him of the last of his strength. She wasn’t sure she could push it back into him fast enough to save him.
