“For crissakes, Talia,” Adam rumbled at her neck. “Let it come. I’m not afraid of the dark.”
He found her breast with his hot palm, a thumb flicking over her nipple, and then he pushed. Her weight and his thrust shred her innocence and the last of her control.
The black storm of the city flooded the room. Its undeniable pulse of power and vitality fired her nerves. The acuity of her senses redoubled, but she squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to see with her death-bred eyes, she only wanted to feel the brilliant, molten heat of Adam inside her. He worked his hips in a single deep stroke and she split with pleasure. Her body contracted in exquisite near-pain and she wrapped herself around him, a shock wave rippling out from her core.
“Talia,” he breathed. He shifted his hips back slightly, and then forcefully reseated himself inside her.
Talia’s breath caught and she tightened against his assault. He drove into her again, touched her deep enough to stir the shadows into a frenzy around their joined bodies. She clutched him as he made every last dormant nerve in her body wake, aware and reaching for fulfillment. And then he delivered with a primitive growl, stretching her to the limit and shocking her again with intense ecstasy that rippled out from him and through her in an explosion of fierce bliss.
Adam panted against her, his head resting on the glass above her shoulder. His emotions were shredded, a near blackout of the worries that followed him. Now a strange peace dominated.
Her own storm mellowed into eddies of shadow.
Talia cracked her eyes to see him. To see how handsome he looked with his inner demons silenced. Her dark vision pierced the surface of his skin and bone, the mortal layers of his body. She found that she embraced a column of light and condensed will, undeniable and beautiful beyond imagination. She regarded the pale gleam of her arms wrapped around his shoulders.
Different. She looked different from Adam.
She’d always known that she was unlike anyone else, but she had never considered that she was actually made of different stuff.
Talia went as cold as her shadows.
How could she be so connected and yet alone at the same time?
Adam chuckled, planting a hand on the glass and pushing his bulk up to gaze at her face. “If we live through tomorrow, I’ll make sure next time is better. You’re so damn sexy, I just couldn’t think. I should have been slower, more careful. Did I hurt you?”
A sob gathered in her throat, but she shook her head. No.
He slid out and lifted her to cradle in his arms. She huddled against him, hiding from the knowledge that they could never really be together. She was too different, too alien, too strange to ever really belong to him.
He brought her through a doorway and into a masculine bathroom of sleek grays and set her on her feet. He reached into a recessed room of smoky green, set with multiple jets, and turned on the nozzle. The space was large enough for two, and when steam began to fog the mirror he pulled her inside with him. He soaped up a washcloth and had just put the sudsy softness to her shoulder when an electronic warble reached them.
Adam paused, midstroke. The phone rang again. “Damn it, Talia, I have to get it. I’m sorry.”
Yeah, she was sorry, too.
FOURTEEN
“YES?” Adam said, phone gripped between ear and shoulder as he secured the towel around his waist. Shower drops ran down his back and chest in chilling rivulets—but he welcomed the cold against his overheated skin. Behind him, the shower softly hissed in the bathroom as Talia finished cleaning up. In a perfect world, he’d be in there with her, wet skin on wet skin, taking his time with her now that the bite of his desire had mellowed slightly.
“Staff from Segue is secure,” Custo reported. “I have them all waiting for instructions in various inconspicuous locations. That is, all but Gillian, who opted to take her chances on her own.”
“Excellent. Where are they and how long can they last?” Adam walked to the modern desk situated in an alcove off the kitchen, grabbed a pad of paper, and took the lid off a pen with his teeth. As Custo ran down a list of locations, Adam jotted notes. Seemed like everyone could hold out for a couple days before they’d have to move again. By that time, he hoped this would all be over, one way or another.
The shower cut off. Adam imagined Talia stepping out of the steam, eyes big and beautiful in her thin face. Her sweet, pale curves would be rosy and fragrant, hair slicked sinuously down the slope of her spine to reach the twin dimples at the base of her back where her hips flared and her ass deliciously rounded.
His gaze shot to the scatter of their clothes in front of the big windows.
“Just a sec,” Adam said to Custo—he muted the phone, strode down the short hall, and knocked on the bathroom door. “Talia, the bedroom will have some clean things to wear. Take whatever you like. Take whatever works for you.”
He waited in silence for her to answer. “Talia?”
“Okay, thanks.” Her voice was moderate, but her tone was slightly off.
Ah, hell. Adam rested his forehead against the door. This was not the way it was supposed to go. He’d managed not to touch her for nearly a week, had only slipped that one time—okay, twice—to kiss her. And who could blame him? She was brilliant and gorgeous. Some things were just inevitable. He wanted her. He’d known that truth back in that stinking alley in Arizona, holding her overheated body. The way she fit the curve of his arm. How he could just rest his chin on the top of her head. Her soft voice whispering a warning. She made him aware of what living could be without this war on his head. Yeah, he was good and screwed.
“Adam?” Custo’s voice brought Adam’s attention back to the call.
Adam unmuted the phone. “I’m here.”
He stalked back to the desk and his laptop. He scraped a chair back and sat at the desk, forcing his concentration into the monitor.
Work. Focus. Jacob.
The thought of Jacob snaked around Adam’s neck and tightened in a noose, cutting off the flow of blood from his heart to his head. Jacob, who started this nightmare. Jacob, who killed Mom and Dad. Jacob, who very badly needed to die. After that, maybe Adam could get his own life, but not until then.
“So when I get there do we move our base of operations to the New York office?” At least Custo had his head on straight.
“No,” Adam answered. He touched the monitor screen and selected the tab that revealed his remote connections to the Segue offices around the world. The hub at the New York office had timed out, as had the one in San Francisco and Atlanta.
“Our U.S. satellite offices’ systems are down,” Adam informed him. “What happened in West Virginia most likely happened here, too. If anyone survived, they are in hiding. Any intel stored at those facilities is compromised. No point in going there now and risking our own exposure.”
How could he have forgotten, even for a moment, the people who labored on his behalf? He’d handpicked each staff member of the New York branch—the thought that they were dead or worse made him ache with frustration. Twenty-six employees, all dedicated to his cause, lost or worse. They depended on him to keep them safe. And what was he doing? Screwing their only hope of survival.
Idiotic. Especially when he was so close to the end.
All he needed was one well-placed, well-timed scream. Nothing short of witnessing the swift strike of Shadowman’s curved blade cutting down an army of wraiths would ease the grip of anger on him.
“I thought The Collective was just after Talia. You think they decided to take out all of Segue?”
“Yes.” Adam understood The Collective’s strategy. To achieve their ends, destroying Segue was the smart thing to do—limiting Adam’s resources, scattering his personnel, and confusing his strategy by changing The Collective’s MO. As matters stood, the Segue staff, Adam and Talia included, had been reduced to underground renegades in a matter of hours.