Which kind of made a player like Zael the perfect sexual outlet she was looking for tonight.
Hell, she was almost halfway there with him already.
Her veins felt like rivers of fire under her skin. The low hum of her need was rising swiftly in her temples, building with each heavy pound of her heart.
Panting as she tore her mouth away from his, Brynne stared up into his heavy-lidded, darkened blue eyes. “Let’s get out of here. My flat is just across the river.” She licked her lips, no easy feat when her fangs were fully extended and filling her mouth. “I want to go. Right now. With you.”
It was intended as a command, which should have been clear enough to him. But he stood unmoving. His handsome face was taut with desire, his mouth wet and slack from their kissing. Sexual interest radiated off every hard, golden inch of him. Most obviously in the rigid length of the erection that pressed against her hip.
Yet he slowly shook his head in denial.
“What are you trying to do here, Brynne? You’ve had too much to drink. I doubt you even know what you’re saying.”
She reached up, grabbing a fist full of the front of his shirt. “I’m saying I want to have sex with you, Zael. No strings attached, no need to call me in the morning. We don’t ever have to see each other again. In fact, I’d prefer that we don’t.”
She fully expected him to jump on the offer. At the very least, she expected she’d have to endure the Atlantean’s self-satisfied grin as he tossed off one of his snappy, arrogant comebacks before dragging her out of the club like the caveman she was certain he was.
Instead, he held her slightly unsteady gaze. His square jaw remained firm, unyielding.
When he spoke, his voice was low, utterly serious. “I should take you to bed, if only because you strike me as a woman who’s never been properly fucked in your life. But I won’t. Not like this.”
He pried her fingers from his shirt and took a step back from her.
Good lord, was he . . . offended?
Brynne scowled, weaving slightly on her feet. Her body vibrated with stalled need. “Aren’t you the one who’s been putting the full court press on me every time I’ve seen you? I thought you wanted me. It sure as hell felt like you did just now.”
His answering grunt was sharp, caustic. “I can have any woman under the terms you just described. And I have.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
He didn’t answer, just started walking away from her. Brynne fell in behind him, hurrying to catch up as he sliced through the crowd. She didn’t reach him until they were through the bar and heading for the exit.
“Zael, wait. Please.”
He paused just inside the club’s vestibule.
“I shouldn’t have come.” He stared at her as if he was going to say something more, then changed his mind. He shook his head. “You want to go home, I’ll take you home. I’ll even put you to bed, Brynne. But I won’t fuck you. Not like this. No matter how much I want to.”
His toneless reply took her so aback, he might as well have slapped her.
She swallowed back her humiliation, but it sat at the back of her throat, bitter as acid.
“Come on,” he said tightly. “I’ll hail us a taxi.”
As they stepped outside the building, Brynne’s apology sat on the very tip of her tongue. All of the alcohol in her bloodstream seemed to dissolve under the weight of her embarrassment, leaving her feeling cold and foolish.
And never more alone.
“Zael, I—”
She didn’t know what she could say to fix things. She wasn’t even sure she knew how.
But then something bright in the starlit distance caught her eye—something disturbing, setting the skyline across the Thames aglow.
A fire.
No, it was more than a fire. It was a churning, massive plume of flames and roiling, thick gray smoke. Outside the club, a crowd was gathering to look at the spectacle.
As they all watched in silent horror, a low rumble sounded across the water…followed by the unspeakable crash and roar of crumbling metal, glass, and mortar.
“Oh, my God,” Brynne murmured. She glanced over at Zael, feeling all of the blood drain from her face. “That’s the government block at Vauxhall Cross. That building that just went down? Zael…It was JUSTIS headquarters.”
CHAPTER 4
Order Headquarters
Washington, D.C.
Lucan Thorne had been a warrior far too long and seen too damned much for anything to take him by surprise anymore. Yet as he stood in front of a wall of video monitors in the Order’s war room at headquarters, watching with most of his lieutenants and their mates as the heart of London’s government district burned, he couldn’t deny the cold sense of disbelief that gripped him.
The iconic white building that once housed the famed British MI6, and, for the past twenty years, the global operations headquarters for JUSTIS…gone.
Nothing but rubble. The highly secured, impenetrable modern fortress and all who’d been inside it tonight, consumed by the massive cloud of dark ash and searing fire that lit up the London skyline like a volcano.
“Opus Nostrum wasted no time claiming responsibility,” Gideon said grimly from beside Lucan. “It’s all over the Internet now.”
The Order’s technology expert had a tablet in hand, scanning underground sites where hackers and other society misfits liked to boast and preen for one another. Gideon was as much a warrior as any of his comrades, but he also had skills that would leave any black hat computer genius in his wake.
Lucan ground out a tight curse. “We should’ve seen this coming.”
“No one saw this coming,” Gideon said. “There was no chatter, no posturing. No threats. Nothing but silence leading up to this attack.”
“Even so, we should have known they wouldn’t let us take out two of their key players without some kind of response.”
Sterling Chase, head of the Boston command center, shook his head as he considered. “This kind of assault takes time. It takes planning and coordination. You don’t just roll up to a high-security government facility with enough firepower to raze the place.”
Dante, another of the longtime Order members, grunted in agreement. “Not without getting your own ass blown to pieces as soon as your toe crosses the property line.”