She shifted her gaze to Adam’s reflection in front of her, superimposed on the city vista. He was bent over a desk, jotting something down while speaking on the phone, his voice a gruff rumble. His shirt took its shape from the lines of his muscled back. When he stood, the hard plane of his chest and broad bunch of his shoulders had heat washing over her, her pulse quickening, a spark firing in her belly.
Her gaze met his in the glass. His expression was sober and serious, eyes hot and piercing. She’d run from him twice, rejecting the turmoil under his controlled surface. Shuttering herself against the burn of his intensity. That was just dumb and weak. And she was sick of running.
They were at the brink of destruction, a precipice at the edge of the abyss; there was no going back. No time left to grasp at life. She wanted him.
He continued his call, giving short, clipped instructions, but still his gaze was fixed on her. Holding her in place. She couldn’t have broken the connection if she tried. Adam was the city, dangerous with power and his own brand of menace.
He hung up and slowly came to stand behind her. He didn’t touch her, but the warmth of his breath stirred the hair at her nape. His nearness had her responding to phantom touches, her body aching to arch against him, to tilt her head and give him access to her neck. She could almost feel the scorch of his mouth, just there, again.
“Is everyone okay?” she asked instead. Her voice was too thin.
“So far so good,” Adam answered, distracted as his gaze slid down the reflection of her body in the window. “Custo is getting the last of them safely settled. Then he’ll join us here.”
“So that’s good. Everything’s good,” she said carefully. Her nerves buzzed, willing him to touch. To take.
“Yeah.” He brought his eyes back to hers.
Adam’s jaw tightened, twitched, and he stepped back. Then he stepped back again.
Talia dropped her gaze to the floor, her face heating in embarrassment.
He cleared his throat. “Have you made up your mind, Talia?”
Her brain fumbled. “What do you mean?” Was he actually asking permission to touch her this time? That would be a first.
“This war, Talia, have you thought about what it entails? Can you handle it? I need you to commit to it. You’re the only weapon that we have.”
A weapon. The blood in her veins was hot before, but now it scalded. “You mean that you’re going to aim me at the wraiths and say, ‘Scream.’ Yes, I kinda got that part.”
“Not just the wraiths, the demon Death Collector, with SPCI on his side.”
“I said I got it.” Talia’s words were all edge as she turned to him. One all-consuming need had ruled Adam’s life for the last six years. To kill his brother. Adam wouldn’t be satisfied until Jacob was in pieces, his stinking husk rotting on the ground.
“Fine,” Adam growled. “I needed to make sure you knew what you were in for. What’s at stake. Why we can’t do anything to screw this up.”
“Your priority is the war,” Talia repeated. Her needs were secondary.
“Our priority,” he said.
“You’ve been more than clear. And I am not an idiot. I’m capable of comprehending the implications of our situation.” The situation was simple. She was the daughter of Death, destined to live alone, die in a war she didn’t understand, and never to experience life as normal people knew it.
“I never said you were an idiot,” he shot back.
“Do you see any wraiths here?” Talia gestured wildly around the loft. “You said the loft is secure. Is it?” She was never to fall in love, buy a house, and start a family of her own.
His eyes narrowed. “Yes.”
“And your war business is on hold for the moment?” Never to share her deepest secrets or desires.
His face darkened at her sarcasm. “For the moment.”
“No other life-and-death situations to tend to?” Never to know passion and be fulfilled.
“Not at present.” He clipped his words with visible anger.
“Fine.” Talia stalked across the room, closing the distance between them. It was past time she took what she wanted.
His reach was longer. He crushed her against his body as her arms circled his neck. She slid one hand up to grip his hair by the roots. His breath was warm on her face before he possessed her lips, his beard a gorgeous rough scrub against her skin.
Raw desire clouded her senses, his mixing with hers in an ominous collision that could only result in a violent storm. Whatever else he felt, or darkness he harbored, she didn’t care.
His mouth finally dropped to her neck. His chin scraped there, too, and his teeth nipped at her skin down to her collarbones, coaxing her nerves to spark with hot, dangerous pops.
His hands were everywhere. One bound her to him at her waist. The other roamed over her ass, pressing into the junction of her legs, and lifted her weight with his hand there. His touch burned, a hungry fire licking up her core, melting her. He must have felt the heat of her arousal, because he growled again. And he wanted her just as badly—the proof of it pressed into her belly.
Talia dropped her hand to the rounded, hard muscle of his arm, reveling in the ease with which he assumed her weight. He backed them to the window and pressed her against its smooth, cold surface. Her hand slapped at the cold glass at her sides, desperate for a grip, but found none. She had only Adam to keep her from falling as they hovered at the edge of night.
“Last chance to run,” he murmured in her ear. He set her on her feet, but pinned her body against the glass, his weight a delicious pressure that radiated pleasure. She couldn’t get away if she wanted to.
And she didn’t want to. She needed to feel this. She wanted one mystery of life revealed at the brink of death. Wanted him to change her, burn her, sear all thought from her mind with pain and pleasure. Wanted.
She dropped her head to his chest. He smelled spicy, dark, but good. Her fingers fluttered under his shirt where his skin was just slightly damp to the touch, each rise in his six-pack well-defined. Touching him had her nerves crying to feel more, quivering in anticipation.
The shadows in the deepest corners of the room stirred, whipped by the exquisite, demanding sensations coursing through her. She couldn’t help it, and hoped he wouldn’t notice. She couldn’t stop now.
Her fingertips explored his heated skin, working his shirt up until she felt the separation of his pecs. He groaned, voice rumbling against her, and released her long enough to yank the T-shirt over his head, then pulled hers off in an extension of the same movement. He pushed her bra over her breasts so that it banded high across her chest, her nipples peaked. Then he pulled her body to him again.
The ecstatic synergy of skin on skin went through Talia like a bolt of lightning, a branding shock that stripped her control and stole the breath from her lungs.
She sensed his hunger grow fiercer, sharper, more determined. One goal ruled his actions. And she shared it. Yes. Now. Everything.
The darkness of the city throbbed behind her, roiling in a threatening storm of shadow. She searched for restraint—please!—but Adam eased her pants off her hips, fragmenting her ability to hold the seethe at bay. Her heart pounded, lungs labored, as Adam dropped his own pants and boxers and kicked them behind him. He stripped off her underwear, revealing her entirely, and lifted her weight again, pressing her into the glass.
She spread her arms wide on the clear, cold surface to block the imminent, encroaching darkness, to hold it back, shaking with effort.