A Touch of Crimson

She felt Adrian come up beside her. The scent of his skin teased her with her next inhalation. He’s an angel. And he hunts vampires . . .



“I know you’re hungry,” he murmured. “Let’s get you settled, so you can come talk to me while I make dinner.”



The thought of a celestial winged being slaving over a hot stove for her was bizarre, yet there was an eerie sense of rightness in being with Adrian this way, as if the intimacy of him preparing a meal for her was recognizable.



God, she had to get a grip. She had to figure out the new rules and how to either deal with them or circumvent them. She couldn’t afford to be ignorant, and she certainly wouldn’t have anyone dictating where she would stay and when she could go. Somewhere out there, the vampires who’d killed her mother were certainly terrorizing someone else. They’d taken such pleasure from the pain and fear they had wrought; she couldn’t see them quitting until someone put them down. She wanted to be the one to do it, and she wasn’t going to stop hunting until she knew for sure they would never destroy another child’s innocence the way they had hers.



“Okay,” she agreed. “But, like I said, you’re the one doing the talking.”



“Who is she?”



“I don’t know.” Elijah leaned his forearm against a top bunk in the lycan barracks and looked at the men and women gathered around him. “I don’t see how Adrian knows. She just showed up in the airport and he’s been all over her ever since. I’ve never seen him glance twice at a woman, but he can’t take his eyes off her.”



“Maybe she’s just his type,” Jonas said, showing the limits of his sixteen years with his naïveté.



“Seraphim don’t have a type. They don’t have emotions like we do. They don’t lust or hunger or crave.” At least that’s what Elijah had been taught as a pup, and what he’d observed with his own eyes. But tonight, during the ride home from the grocery store, he’d felt a raw energy radiating from Adrian that betrayed an emotional response to the threat Lindsay Gibson had faced in the dragon. And there was a sharp, intensely possessive edge to the way Adrian managed her. He acted as if she meant something to him, while she clearly had never met him before in her life.



“Still, she’s hot.” Jonas shrugged. “I’d do her.”



“Don’t even joke about that,” Elijah snapped. “He’d shred you. He was ready to take down a demon, in public, just for looking at her wrong.”



“Which would’ve ticked off Raguel,” Micah pointed out, rubbing his hand over his jaw thoughtfully. “You know how pissy the archangels get over their territory, especially with the seraphim. Not to mention the possibility of irritating the demon’s liege. Adrian would have stirred up a lot of trouble for a woman he supposedly just met.”



“Why her? She’s human.” Esther’s tone was scathing, inciting the other females to nod.



“She slew a dragon like she was swatting a fly.” Elijah met the multitude of verdant gazes aimed at him. “She moved faster than I’ve ever seen a mortal move, but you’re right, Esther. She’s human. I can’t smell anything else in her.”



“But there has to be,” Micah guessed, catching on to what was left unsaid.



“Yes,” Elijah agreed. “I overheard her tell Adrian she can sense demons and vampires, and she’s been hunting them for ten years.”



A rumble of disbelief moved through the pack.



His mouth curved wryly. “Adrian was showing her his wings when I walked into the house. There’s a story there. It would be good to know what it is.”



“What should we do?” Jonas asked, looking to Elijah for the answer, as all the lycans in the room did.



The others turned to him too often. It was a burden Elijah didn’t want, one he couldn’t afford to bear. Everyone seemed to forget that he’d been transferred to Adrian’s pack for observation. He told himself they were simply used to him being bullheaded. He just needed to break them of the habit of letting him do things his way all the time. But even that implied a power he shouldn’t be capable of wielding.



“Keep your heads down,” he answered finally. “Keep your noses clean. Jason made the suggestion that Phineas’s death might have been lycan related. We don’t want to give them any excuse to keep thinking that way.”



Esther snorted. “Jason’s never trusted us”



“And he’s second-in-command now,” Elijah reminded. “His opinion matters.”



He looked down the length of the long, narrow room. It was a utilitarian space, filled with rows of olive green metal bunk beds and matching footlockers. Of all the packs, Adrian’s was the least comfortable. Most of the others were in the remote areas where the Sentinels kept the vampires contained, locations where a lycan could run and hunt and pretend to be free. But Adrian’s pack was considered the most prestigious. The Sentinel captain paid and fed his lycans well, but, more important, he hunted only the most egregious offenders, the most vicious, cunning, and dangerous vampires. And any lycan worth a shit hungered for worthy, challenging prey.



Elijah rolled his shoulders back. “My advice: listen carefully to everything said around you. Nothing is too unimportant to take note of. And, please, think twice before you do anything that attracts attention to you.”



Growling their assent, the group dispersed before they were discovered. Collusion and mutiny were serious charges none of them wanted to face.



Micah stayed behind, running a hand through the striking red hair that carried over to his wolf pelt. Before speaking, he glanced over each of his powerful shoulders to search for eavesdroppers. Then, he leaned in and whispered, “She could be our ticket to freedom.”



Elijah stiffened. “Don’t say another word.”



“Someone has to say it! We shouldn’t have to live like this—fighting against our very natures and repressing our instincts. I saw you carrying Adrian’s fucking groceries . You’re better than that. Better than him!”



“Stop.” Elijah turned away. There was nothing he could do. An uprising would lead only to the deaths of everyone he cared about. “He saved my life today.”



“He’d take it just as easily.”



“I know. But right now I’m indebted to him.”



“I can’t not try, and we can’t succeed without you. I know you see what an opportunity this woman is. If Adrian is attached to her, who knows what he might give up to see her returned to him safely.”



“He wouldn’t give up his control over lycans!” Elijah sank heavily onto a bottom bunk. “If you think our protection has made the Sentinels weak, you’re delusional. They’re seraphim trained to overpower other seraphim, the most powerful celestial beings aside from the Creator. Adrian lives and breathes his mission. The Sentinels train every day as if Armageddon is tomorrow. They would slaughter us all.”



“Better to die as lycans than to cower as dogs.”



Elijah knew Micah wasn’t the only lycan feeling reckless. Many believed the power struggle between the angels and vampires was no longer a lycan problem, and that a revolution was in order to secure the freedom they felt was their due. Elijah didn’t disagree, but he also didn’t have a mate or pups to fight for. He had only himself, and hunting vampires was what he lived for. Working for Adrian gave him the intel and resources to do what he did best.



“We’re not cowering,” he said quietly. “We’re responsible for containing former seraphim. That’s huge.”



“It’s servitude.”



“What would we do with ourselves if we didn’t have that? Where would we go? You gonna take a desk job? Have a commute? Have human toddlers over to your house for playdates with your pups?”



“Maybe. I’d be free. I could do anything I wanted.”



“We’d be hunted. Every day we’d be looking over our shoulders, waiting for Adrian to walk in the door and put us down. Running isn’t freedom.”



The redhead sat on the bed opposite him. “You’ve thought about this—a lot, it sounds like. Unfortunately, I have to pack—I’m heading back to Louisiana on a hunt—but we’ll talk more when I’m home again.”



“There’s nothing to talk about. Escape would be futile. Stop pushing.”



“I’m your Beta, El.” Micah grinned. “It’s my job.”



“I don’t need a Beta. I don’t have a pack.”



“Keep telling yourself that. Still won’t make it true. You control your beast, and somehow, that makes it strong enough to dominate the rest of us. I know you feel it, too, the way every lycan instinctively looks to you. We can’t help it. That makes you boss whether you like it or not. We can stir shit up on our own, but when it comes down to it, we need a leader, and you’re the only one who exerts the force necessary to become one.”



Elijah stood. His uniqueness might be their one saving grace. If they couldn’t band together cohesively without him, that might just save their lives. He knew what was said about him: his ability to rein his beast in at all times was an anomaly among lycans. Fear, anger, pain—they could all trigger an unwanted shift, but he never altered unless he chose to. As far as he was concerned, that might make him a mutant, but it didn’t make him an Alpha. It sure as hell didn’t make it acceptable to lead his kind to slaughter.



“You’re asking me to lead a charge into a bloodbath,” he said, “knowing it’s pointless. Not gonna happen. Ever.”



“It’s too late to avoid, El. Centuries too late.”



CHAPTER 6



As Lindsay licked a crumb from her lower lip, the thoughts sweeping through Adrian’s mind were unrepentantly sexual. She was a beautiful woman—a tigress with her golden hair and dark, watchful eyes—but what roused him at that moment was the gusto with which she ate. She alternated between using chopsticks with skill and eating with her fingers, her enjoyment evident in her soft hums of appreciation and hearty appetite.



“This is really good,” she praised.



Her fervency made him smile inwardly.



Sentinels were created to be too neutral to relish anything with such passion. The highs and lows of human emotion weren’t meant for them. They were the weights that balanced the scales, the sword that leveled the field.



She held a shrimp up by the tail. “My dad took my grandma out to a teppanyaki restaurant for dinner once. She totally dug the flames and flying spatulas until the chef did this fancy maneuver that ended with a shrimp flicked onto her plate. I thought it was awesome. The guy had mad skills But my granny just stared at the shrimp for a long minute—the stare of death, I’m telling you—then she tossed it back. She was so insulted. To her mind, the chef should have learned some manners before working in a nice establishment.”



Adrian’s brows rose.



Lindsay rocked back on the bar stool, laughing. “You should have seen the guy’s face. My dad bought him a couple shots of sake just to soothe his pride.”



Her laughter was infectious. The sound was so open and free he couldn’t fight a smile any longer. His mouth curved for the first time in centuries. He liked her. He wanted to get to know her better.



But he had to maintain the appearance of a calm, unaffected host. Both for her sake and for the benefit of his Sentinels. He could feel their wariness and distrust. Although they would never voice the accusation, they knew Shadoe weakened him. Their concern for his well-being could foster a dangerous resentment if he wasn’t cautious. His unit was comprised of seraphim who were better than him, angels who didn’t suffer the same emotional frailties he did. They didn’t fully understand what a vulnerability Shadoe was to him, because they couldn’t grasp the mortal love he felt. If a Sentinel came to believe their mission had been overly compromised by Lindsay, they’d kill her and be justified in doing so.



Focusing on deep-frying the vegetable tempura,Adrian resisted glancing at Lindsay too often. She sat on a stool on the opposite side of his granite-topped kitchen island, nursing her third glass of water. He found himself aroused by the way she swallowed. Two hundred years of celibacy had taken their toll. During Shadoe’s dormancy, he craved no woman’s touch. But when her soul returned, his repressed need and hunger surged to the fore, all the more voracious for having been contained for so long. He was aching to taste her, push inside her, make her writhe beneath relentless thrusts of his cock.



But that would have to wait. Lindsay needed to trust him first, then want him as much as he wanted her. When he finally had her, there would be no restraint. And he didn’t expect she would allow him any. Not as fierce as she was. When she gave herself, it would be with abandon, he suspected. This woman with the heart of a warrior and a soul radiating such pain.



He would simply have to be patient through the necessary prerequisite steps: keep her safe, make her strong, win her trust.



“You’re not eating,” she noted.



“I am, actually. Just not in the same manner as you do.”



“Oh?” Her tone was deceptively neutral. “What’s your way?”



Her grip on her lacquered chopsticks changed, became lethal. He could snap her spine with the slightest touch, yet her sense of right and wrong coupled with her need to protect others goaded her to prepare for an offensive move in a no-win scenario. He admired that fighting spirit and strength of conviction.



Adrian considered his answer carefully. It would do him no favors to have her see him as a parasite like the vampires. “I absorb energy.”



“From what? How?”



“There’s energy all around us—in the air, the water, the earth. The same energy harnessed by wind turbines and hydroelectric plants like the Hoover Dam.”