Securing their UV helmets on their heads, Lucan and his men stalked down the stairs, through the gathered press corps. En masse, the reporters hurried along after them, shouting more questions and leaving the befuddled group of JUSTIS public relations officials standing outside the building, forgotten and ignored.

 

 

CHAPTER 14

 

Zael had imagined sex with Brynne would be amazing, but damn… He hadn’t been prepared. After a mind-blowing orgasm that practically turned him inside out, his appetite had only intensified rather than subsided.

Holding her against the front of his hard and ready body, he rocked his hips against the firm curves of her ass and moaned as his cock leaped with interest. There was no mistaking Brynne’s lean, powerful body for a human’s. There was a dangerously coiled strength about her that no Atlantean female could compete with either.

Brynne was utterly unique.

And a short time ago, when she was crying his name in the midst of her own shattering release, she had belonged only to him.

Zael didn’t want to consider how deeply that thought pleased him. At the moment, all he wanted was to be inside her again.

“You feel so good, I want to keep you here all night,” he murmured, nipping at the tender crook of her neck and shoulder.

Instead of sinking into his embrace the way he expected her to, Brynne tensed palpably. She moved out of his arms. Sliding to the edge of the bed, she swung her long legs off the mattress and sat up.

Zael frowned. “Where are you going?”

“I need a shower.”

Without looking at him, she spoke to the empty space on the other side of the room, her body language as distant as her voice. When she got up off the bed, Zael followed.

Before she could make a hasty retreat into the adjacent bathroom, he reached out to grasp her hand. “What’s going on?”

Given little choice, she slowly pivoted to face him. It was startling to see the crackle of fire still glowing in her eyes. Her fangs were arresting as well, larger than he’d ever seen them. The sharp white points glittered diamond-bright in the tense line of her mouth.

There was an odd, unspoken misery in her expression in the instant their gazes met, but she shuttered it from him with a slow blink and a downward glance.

“I need to clean up and get dressed. I’m sure I’ve missed Mathias and that flight back to London tonight, but I still intend to go home.”

“Back to London?” Zael took her reply as the slap to the face she intended it to be. When she seemed adamant to avoid looking at him, he lifted her chin on the edge of his fingers. “What the hell just happened between us in that bed over there?”

Her eyes flicked up to meet his, her dark brows drawn together. “What happened was a mistake, Zael. I don’t expect you to understand.”

“Then try me.”

She stared at him for a long moment. In her tormented eyes he saw a thousand different emotions, but the only thing she seemed willing to give him right now was indifference. “I’m not saying the sex wasn’t great. It was. But that’s all it was, right?”

He didn’t reply. If that’s really what she thought, he’d be damned if he admitted to feeling anything more.

And Brynne wasn’t finished. “I’ll be the first to say that I’m not built for relationships. I never have been. And I think we both know that you aren’t either.”

“That’s right,” he replied tightly, although hearing her say it like that—like an indictment, a condemnation—gave him more shame than he’d ever managed to heap on himself personally.

She stepped out of his reach, folding her arms over her like a shield. “The sex was…more than great, Zael. But now that we’ve gotten it out of our systems, I hope we can be adults about this whole thing. I hope we can be friends and move on.”

Damn. Was this how cold he came off to the women he seduced over the years?

No. He knew better than to give himself that much credit.

He never explained anything. His M.O. was to vanish when things got too real.

“Can we do that, Zael? Will you try to understand how I feel and not make things any more awkward than they already are?”

“Awkward,” he muttered, then chuckled mirthlessly. “That’s not the word I’d use, Brynne. The only word I’d use for what you’re telling me right now is bullshit.”

Her look said it all. He’d hit the mark, but the mutinous set of her lips showed no sign of softening.

“I thought I did a fairly decent job demonstrating to you that you don’t have to run away from me,” he told her, more gently than he felt himself capable for the disbelief and outrage coursing through him. “I thought I made it clear to you that I’m not going to hurt you.”

Her soft laugh had a bitter edge to it. “I’m not afraid of you hurting me, Zael. Can’t you just try to respect my feelings and stay away from me now?”

“That’s really what you want?”

“Yes.” She swallowed hard, and he could see how she fought to hold his gaze as she worked the lie to her tongue. “You and I—everything that’s happened between us, Zael—it’s been a mistake. Let’s not make any more.”

He listened in stony silence, weighing her words against what the hauntedness in her face was telling him, and what her body communicated to his when they were making love.

“All right, Brynne.” He nodded slowly, then walked over to retrieve his clothing. He slipped his pants on, then pulled his linen tunic over his head. “You’re right, I do have to respect your feelings. Even if I don’t believe you for one damned second.”

 

 

CHAPTER 15

 

“Redhead, blonde, or brunette?”

Rafe glanced over at Aric, who was riding shotgun in the Order-issued SUV Mathias Rowan had arranged for them to pick up in Dublin after they arrived from London.

For most of the drive to Finglas on their fetch assignment for the Order, they had been shooting the shit, something the two friends fell into easily enough whenever they were together.

Now that they were closing in on the address Gideon had given them for Iona Lynch’s apartment, Aric had begun passing the time by speculating on the woman’s various attributes. He’d already given his unsolicited guesses to a host of other topics where Crowe’s potential mistress was concerned, so by comparison, hair color was about as innocuous a question as could be expected.