Текст книги "Taken by Midnight"
Автор книги: Lara Adrian
Соавторы: Lara Adrian
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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 22 страниц)
CHAPTER
Twenty-two
Lucan and Gideon were waiting for them as soon as Brock came off the elevator with Jenna and Chase.
“Hell of a goddamned day,” Lucan muttered, taking them in with a glance. “You both all right?”
Brock stole a look at Jenna, who stood calm and steady beside him. She was a little scraped up and bruised, but thankfully she was whole. “Could’ve been worse.”
Lucan raked a hand through his dark hair. “Dragos is getting bolder all the time. Minions in the fucking FBI, for crissake.”
“What the hell?” Chase frowned, shooting an incredulous look between Brock and Jenna. “You mean the Fed you met with today—”
“He belonged to Dragos,” Brock replied. “He and another of Dragos’s mind slaves grabbed her inside the building and took off with her. I pursued the vehicle but wasn’t able to catch up to them until they crashed on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge.”
Chase exhaled a low curse. “You two are lucky to be alive.”
“Yeah,” Brock agreed. “Thanks to Jenna. She took out both Minions, then saved my bacon from going crispy, as well.”
“No shit?” Some of the edge left Chase’s hard blue gaze as he looked at her. “Not bad for a human. I’m impressed.”
She shrugged off the compliment. “I should have known something wasn’t right with the agent I met with. I did know, actually. I had a certain … sense, I guess you could say. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but all through the meeting I kept thinking something was odd about him.”
“What do you mean?” Gideon asked.
She frowned, considering. “I don’t know exactly. It was just something instinctual. His eyes made me uncomfortable, and I kept getting a weird feeling that he wasn’t quite … normal.”
“You knew he wasn’t quite human,” Brock suggested, as surprised as the rest of the warriors to hear her admission. “You sensed he was a Minion?”
“I suppose I did.” She nodded. “But I didn’t know to call him that at the time. All I knew was he made my skin crawl the longer I was near him.”
Brock didn’t miss the silent glance that passed between Gideon and Lucan.
Neither did Jenna. “What is it? Tell me why you’re so quiet all of a sudden.”
“Human beings don’t have the ability to detect Minions,” Brock answered. “Homo sapiens senses aren’t acute enough to pick up on the difference between a mortal and someone whose will belongs to a Breed master.”
She arched her brows. “You think this is also related to the implant, don’t you? The alien gift that keeps on giving.” She huffed out a sharp laugh. “Just how crazy have I become, that this can all just seem par for the course now?”
Brock narrowly resisted the urge to wrap his arm around her. Instead he turned a serious look on Gideon. “Have you found anything more in the blood work results?”
“Nothing significant beyond the anomalies we’ve already discovered. But I would like to run a few more samples, as well as conduct another stress test and further strength and endurance measurements.”
Jenna nodded in agreement. “Whenever you’re ready, I’m in. Since it appears there’s no way to get rid of the damned thing, I guess I’d better start trying to understand it.”
“The tests are going to have to wait a while,” Lucan interjected. “I want everyone gathered in the tech lab in ten minutes. A lot of shit went down today, and I need to make sure we’re all up to speed before our Darkhaven guests arrive.”
The Order’s leader slid an approving look toward Jenna, then Brock. “Glad to have you back in one piece. Both of you.”
Jenna murmured her thanks, but her expression was pinched with disappointment. “Unfortunately, since the meeting was a setup, we didn’t come away with any information on TerraGlobal.”
Lucan grunted. “Maybe not, but finding out that Dragos has Minions embedded in human government could prove to be even more valuable to us in the long run. It’s sure as hell not good news, but it’s something we needed to be aware of.”
“He’s stepping things up big-time,” Gideon added. “Between this discovery today and now the kidnapping of Lazaro Archer’s grandson, it’s pretty clear that Dragos isn’t about to give up.”
“And nothing is beneath him,” Brock remarked, grave with the possibilities. “That makes him more dangerous than ever. We’d better be prepared for the worst when it comes to this bastard.”
Lucan nodded, his gaze sober, reflective. “For now, we’ll take it one crisis at a time. Chase, come with me. I want you to ride shotgun with Tegan when he goes topside to collect the Archers. Everyone else, tech lab in ten.”
Lazaro Archer was rumored to be close to a thousand years old, but like any other Breed male, outwardly the jet-haired Gen One looked to be no more than thirty. The lines around his stern mouth and the shadows under his dark blue eyes, although pronounced, were just evidence of his distress over the abduction of his young grandson. Those shrewd but weary eyes scanned the faces of everyone who was gathered in the tech lab—the warriors and their mates, and Jenna at Brock’s side, as well—all of them watching and waiting as Lucan and Gabrielle escorted the Breed elder and his grim-faced son, Christophe, into the room.
Quick, courteous introductions circled the large conference table, but everyone there understood the meeting was hardly a social call. Brock couldn’t remember the last time a Breed civilian was admitted into the compound. Few in the vampire nation even knew where the Order’s headquarters were located, let alone stepped inside.
Neither of the Archers looked comfortable being there, either, particularly the abducted boy’s father. Brock didn’t miss the slightly superior tilt of the younger male’s chin as he scanned the tech lab and each of the warriors seated at the table, most of whom were still dressed in night patrol gear, weapons and all. Christophe Archer seemed reluctant, if not resistant, to be offered an empty chair among the heathens of the Order.
Desperate times, Brock thought gravely, inclining his head in greeting as the second-generation Breed civilian in his long cashmere coat and impeccably tailored shirt and pants settled carefully into the seat next to him.
Lucan cleared his throat, his deep voice taking instant command of the room as he glanced at the two newcomers. “First, I want to assure you both that everyone in this room shares your concern for Kellan’s safety. As I told you when we spoke earlier, Lazaro, you have the full commitment of the Order in seeing that the boy is found and brought home.”
“That all sounds very reassuring,” Christophe Archer said from beside Brock, a tense edge to his voice. “The Enforcement Agency has vowed the same thing, and as much as I want to believe it, the fact is we don’t even know where to begin searching for my son. Can anyone tell me who would do this? What kind of gutless criminals would break in to our home while we were away and take my boy?”
After speaking again with Mathias Rowan of the Enforcement Agency, Chase had briefed them all on the troubling details of the abduction before the Archers had arrived. Three immense, heavily armed Breed males had apparently invaded the Darkhaven estate where Lazaro and Christophe Archer lived with their families. The elder Archers and their Breedmates had gone to a charity fund-raiser that evening, leaving teenage Kellan home alone.
By the sound of it, the kidnapping had been as stealthy as it was precise—all of it hinged on a very specific target. In a span of what could have only been mere minutes, the intruders entered the Darkhaven through a back window, killed two of Christophe’s security personnel, then snatched the youth from his upstairs bedroom and drove away with him.
The sole witness to the abduction was a cousin, several years younger than Kellan, who’d hidden in a closet as the invasion took place. Understandably afraid and upset, he could hardly describe the abductors, except to say that they’d been dressed from head to toe in black, with masked faces that obscured everything but their eyes. The boy had also noted that the three males each wore a strange, thick black collar around their necks.
While the Enforcement Agent hadn’t fully understood the ramifications of that one crucial detail, every member of the Order did. They had suspected Dragos was at the heart of this, but hearing that a trio of his homegrown assassins—Gen Ones bred and trained to serve him, their loyalty ensured by the lethal UV collars each was forced to wear—had confirmed their suspicions were correct.
“I simply cannot comprehend this kind of madness,” Christophe said, leaning his elbows on the table, his features stricken, eyes pleading. “I mean, why? Certainly our race is not so crude as the humans who would grapple and connive over money, so what could anyone possibly have to gain by stealing my only child?”
“No,” Lucan replied, the word as grim as his expression. “We do not believe this has anything to do with a potential financial gain.”
“Then what could they possibly want with Kellan? What can they gain by taking him away?”
Lucan glanced briefly at Lazaro Archer. “Leverage. The individual who ordered this abduction will, no doubt, issue a demand before too long.”
“A demand for what?”
“For me,” Lazaro said quietly. When his son’s gaze slid to him in question, the Gen One looked at him in frank remorse. “Christophe is not aware of the conversation we had nearly a year ago, Lucan. I never told him about the warning you gave me and the other few remaining Gen Ones that someone was seeking to erase us from existence. He doesn’t know about the other killings among our generation.”
Christophe Archer’s face went a bit pale. “Father, what are you talking about? Who is seeking to harm you?”
“His name is Dragos,” Lucan replied. “The Order has been waging a private war with him for some time now. But not before he had the chance to spend several decades—centuries, in fact—building his secret empire. He has already killed several other Gen Ones in the past year alone, and that, unfortunately, is only scratching the surface of his madness. All he knows is power, and the need to claim it. He will stop at nothing to get what he wants, and no life is sacred.”
“Jesus Christ. You’re telling me this sick bastard is the one who took Kellan?”
Lucan nodded. “I’m sorry.”
Christophe vaulted to his feet and began pacing back and forth behind the table. “We have to get him back. Damn it, we have to bring my son home, no matter what it takes.”
“We are all agreed on that,” Lucan said, speaking for everyone gathered in solemn silence in the tech lab. “But you have to understand that no matter how this unfolds, there will be risks—”
“Damn the risks!” Christophe shouted. “We’re talking about my son, my only child. My beloved, innocent boy. Don’t tell me about risks, Lucan. I will gladly trade my own life for Kellan.”
“As will I,” Lazaro put in soberly. “Anything for my kin.”
Brock watched the emotional exchange, knowing what it felt like to be helpless in the face of such a loss. But even more than he was moved by the Archers’ pain, he was struck by how raw Jenna looked beside him.
Although she held her jaw still, tension bracketed her mouth. Her lips quivered slightly, and her hazel eyes were moist with unshed tears. Whether in sympathy for what the two Breed males were going through or remembrance of her own anguish at having a loved one yanked away so abruptly, he wasn’t sure. But the tenderness he saw in her touched him deeply.
Beneath the table, her hand slid over to reach for his. He gathered her slender fingers in his grasp and she glanced to him, smiling faintly as their fingers twined together in silent reassurance. Something deeper passed between them in that moment—an unspoken acknowledgment of the growing bond they shared.
He knew she was strong. He knew she was a courageous, resilient woman who had taken more than her fair share of hits in her lifetime and still came up swinging. But seeing her now, gripped in a moment of quiet vulnerability, made his heart crack just a little.
He loved that she wasn’t some delicate flower that wilted under the smallest bit of heat. But he loved this glimpse of softness in her, too.
God, there was so much to love about her.
If not for the slight problem that she hadn’t been born a Breedmate, Jenna Darrow was a woman he could easily envision at his side—a true partner, in life and in all things. But she was mortal, and falling for her would inevitably mean losing her. What happened in New York earlier today—seeing her in the hands of Dragos’s Minions—had only driven that point home with sharper clarity.
Corinne’s death had been a blow he hadn’t been prepared for, but he’d managed to go on. Losing Jenna, whether to the age that would eventually take her or by any other means, had somehow become impossible even to imagine.
As he held her hand in his, he knew that he could no longer pretend that she was simply another mission, or that protecting her was merely his duty to the Order. He’d fallen too far and too fast to deny just how much she meant to him.
He was still turning that troubling realization over in his mind as Lucan rose from the table and went to stand near Christophe Archer. Lucan put his hand on the other male’s shoulder, his dark brows knitted together in a solemn look. “We won’t rest until we find your son and bring him home. You have my word, and you have the word of my brethren here in this room.”
At his pledge, Brock and the other warriors also rose from their seats around the table in a show of solidarity. Even Hunter, the Gen One who knew firsthand how ruthless Dragos and his assassins truly were, stood in support of their new mission.
Christophe turned a hard gaze on the Order’s leader. “Thank you. There is nothing more I can ask.”
“And there is nothing I won’t give,” Lazaro said, joining his son and Lucan near the back of the room. “The Order has my faith and my full trust. I cannot forgive myself for ignoring your advice a year ago, Lucan. Just look what it’s costing me now.” He shook his head sadly. “Perhaps I have lived too long, if an evil individual like Dragos can exist among us. Is this what is to become of the Breed? Making war on one another, letting greed and power corrupt us, just like humankind. Perhaps we’re not so different from them, after all. For that matter, are we any different from the savage otherworlders who spawned us?”
Lucan’s steel gray gaze had never looked more resolute. “I’m counting on it.”
Lazaro Archer nodded. “And I am counting on you,” he said, sweeping a look over each warrior and the females who now stood with them. “I am counting on all of you.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-three
The Order continued the meeting for another couple of hours after Lazaro and Christophe Archer left. Sometime earlier, Jenna and the rest of the women had gone to have their dinner elsewhere in the compound, leaving the warriors to discuss their limited options and tactics for how they might go about searching for the abducted boy.
Although Brock listened and offered suggestions when he had them, his mind—and his heart—was distracted. A lot of his focus had walked out of the room when Jenna left, and since then, he’d been counting down the minutes until he could be with her again. As soon as the meeting in the tech lab broke up, he headed out to the corridor to find her.
Alex was coming out of his quarters, closing the door behind her as he approached. She smiled knowingly when she saw him.
“How is she doing?” he asked.
“A lot better than I would be after what she went through today. She’s dead on her feet, but you know Jen. She would never say as much.”
“Yeah,” he said, returning Alex’s smile. “I do know that.”
“She’s more concerned about you, I think. She told me what you did, Brock. How you came after her, driving into the full light of day.”
He shrugged, uncomfortable with the praise. “I had the proper gear. My burns were minimal. They were healed by the time we got back to the compound.”
“That’s not the point.” Alex’s mouth curved warmly. Then she abruptly went up on her toes and placed a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you for saving my friend.”
When he stood there, unsure how to respond, Alex rolled her eyes. “What are you waiting for? Go on in and see her for yourself.”
He waited until Kade’s mate had gone before he rapped his knuckles on the door. It took a few moments before Jenna opened it. She was barefoot, dressed in his white terry bathrobe, he was guessing, with little to nothing more beneath it.
“Hi,” she said, giving him a welcoming smile that made his blood fire to life in his veins. “I was just about to get in the shower.”
Oh, he definitely didn’t need that tempting mental image to make his body burn any hotter.
“I wanted to come by and check on you,” he murmured, a thick rasp in his voice as he recalled the feminine curves and long, luscious limbs that were hiding under the oversize robe. A robe fastened only by the loosely tied sash around her slender waist. He cleared his throat. “But if you’re tired—”
“I’m not.” She pivoted away from the door, leaving it open behind her in unspoken invitation.
Brock stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
He hadn’t gone there with ideas about seducing her, but he had to admit it seemed like a really stellar idea now that he was close enough to touch her. Close enough to sense that she felt the same way.
Before he could stop himself, he reached out for her hand and brought her back toward him. She didn’t resist. Her hazel eyes were wide and welcoming as he cupped his hand around the back of her head and drew her against him. He caught her mouth in a deep, hungered kiss. She sucked his lower lip hard between her teeth, and all of his good intentions, few though they were, went up in flames.
“God, Jenna,” he rasped against her mouth. “I can’t stay away from you.”
Her answer was a throaty moan, the slow feminine purr vibrating through his body and straight into his cock. He was hard as steel, his skin tight and overheated, every nerve ending throbbing in time with the roar of his pulse.
He peeled the loose terry cloth off Jenna’s luscious body, revealing her to his thirsting gaze inch by inch, curve by delectable curve. He smoothed his hands over her soft skin, reveling in the velvety feel of her under his rough fingertips. Her breasts filled his palms, a perfect swell of creamy flesh capped with small pink nipples that begged him to taste them. He dipped his head down and lavished her with his tongue, suckling the tight little buds and growling with pleasure as she moaned and sighed above him.
The sweet scent of her arousal slammed into him, making his already emerged fangs punch out of his gums in primal, urgent response. He reached down between her legs, cleaving his fingers into the slick seam of her body. “So soft,” he murmured, teasing the petals of her body and reveling in the way she blossomed even fuller under his touch. “So hot and wet. You are so fucking sexy, Jenna.”
“Oh, God,” she gasped, her fingers digging into his shoulders as he slowly penetrated her with first one finger, then a second. “More,” she whispered. “Don’t stop.”
With a growl, he rocked his palm against her and took her mouth in a hard, possessive kiss, tongue and fingers delving deep, giving and taking until he felt her body quake with the first tremors of release. She let out a sharp, shuddery sigh but he didn’t let up until she shattered against him, crying out his name in release.
She was still panting, still holding onto his shoulders as he slowly caressed her sex, and bent to kiss the tight little buds of her nipples.
“You’re way overdressed,” she murmured, her heavy-lidded eyes dark and demanding, though no more than the hands that were now drifting down his arms and heading on a direct course for the massive bulge below the waistband of his fatigues. She stroked him over the fabric, her unbashful handling of him making his cock surge tighter, fuller, straining to be freed. “Take these off. Now.”
“Bossy as ever,” he said, grinning as he rushed to comply to her lusty demands.
She laughed, running her hands all over his body as he shucked his clothes. When he was naked, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him until her curves melded with his hard planes and muscles. She was no fragile waif, and he loved that about her. He loved her strength. There was so much he loved about this woman, he realized, standing there skin to skin with her, staring into her eyes.
Oh, yeah … he was in big trouble right here.
“You said something about a shower,” he murmured, trying to pretend he wasn’t falling in love right that very second. Trying to convince himself that he hadn’t fallen for her much earlier than this—as early as the moment he’d first seen her, terrorized but unbroken, in the dark of her Alaska cabin.
She smiled up at him, oblivious to the wash of revelation pouring over him. “I did say something about a shower, actually. But it’s way over there in the bathroom, and we’re out here.”
“Easy enough to take care of that.” He scooped her up into his arms and used the inhuman speed he’d been born with to carry her into the adjacent bathroom before she could even yelp for him to put her down.
“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed, laughing around the words as he set her feet down on the marble floor. “Neat trick.”
“Baby, stick around. I’ve got plenty more where that came from.”
She arched a slim brow. “Is that an invitation?”
“Do you want it to be?”
Instead of shooting back with something teasing or suggestive, she got quiet suddenly. Glanced away for a second. When she looked back up at him, her face was as serious as he’d ever seen it. “I don’t know what I want … other than more of this. More of you.”
Brock lifted her beautiful face on the edge of his hand. “Take all you want.”
She brought her arms around the back of his neck and kissed him like she meant to never let go. He held her, mouths joined and needy, as he walked them both into the large shower and turned on the spray. Warm water coursed all around them, drenching them as they continued to touch and stroke and kiss.
Jenna set their pace and he gladly submitted to her, leaning back against the cold marble tile of the shower when she broke away from his mouth and slowly sank down before him. She ran her mouth over his chest and stomach, her tongue following the patterns of his glyphs while her wet hands slid up and down his stiff shaft. He nearly lost it when her lips closed around the head of his cock. She sucked him deep, rendering him mindless after just a few moments of her sweet, wet torture.
“Ah, Christ,” he hissed, so very close to the edge already. “Come up here now.”
He pulled her up against his hard body and kissed her hungrily, thrusting his tongue into the hot sheath of her mouth the way he was dying to be inside her sex. He reached down and parted her legs from behind, spreading the firm, wet mounds of her pretty ass. He hauled her against him and brought his hand around to the slick, hot core of her body.
“I need to be inside you,” he growled, hunger ratcheting so tight he felt ready to explode.
Bracing his feet on the floor of the shower, his spine pressed to the wall, he lifted her up onto him. Slowly, hissing with the pure white-hot pleasure of it, he guided her down the full length of his cock.
She moaned, burying her face in his shoulder as he rocked her in an unhurried tempo, relishing every sigh and gasp of bliss she gave him. She came on a shivery cry, her sheath milking him, tiny pulsations running up and down his shaft.
His own need for release was roaring up on him. He turned her around and splayed her legs in front of him. She leaned forward, palms against the marble wall, water streaming down the valley of her spine and into the crack of her pretty ass. He slid back home, hooking his arm around her waist as he thrust into her, too far gone to take things slowly.
He’d never known sex this intense. He’d never known the depth of need he felt for this woman. The urge to possess slammed into him, just as it had the first time he’d made love with Jenna. The scorching desire to claim her, to mark her as his alone and hold her away from any other male forever, was something he’d never expected to feel.
But it was alive in him now. As he pumped into the soft, wet heat of her body, his gums ached with the hunger to taste her. To bind her to him, regardless of the impossibility of ever truly taking this female—a mortal woman—as his blood-bonded mate.
He snarled with the force of that desire, unable to keep from pressing his mouth to the supple curve of her neck and shoulder as he drove deeper into her with each hard thrust. All the while, the points of his fangs rested against her tender skin. Teasing … testing.
“Do it,” she whispered. “Oh, God, Brock … I want to feel it. I want to feel all of you.”
He growled low in his throat, letting the sharp tips sink in a little more, just a breath away from breaking the surface. “It won’t mean anything,” he rasped harshly, unsure if it was anger or regret that made his voice so raw. His orgasm was coiling tightly, on the verge of exploding. “I just … ah, fuck … I need to taste you, Jenna.”
She reached out and put her palm against the back of his head, ready to force him. “Do it.”
He bit down, penetrating the soft flesh at the same instant he buried himself to the hilt and spilled deep within her. Jenna’s blood was hot on his tongue, a thick, coppery blast of human red cells, but he’d never tasted anything so sweet. He drank from her as she climaxed again, taking care not to hurt her, wanting to give her only pleasure. When she relaxed again, coming down off the crest of her release, he gently stroked his tongue over the twin punctures to seal them.
He turned her around to face him, both of them soaking under the warm deluge of the shower. He had no words, only reverence and wonder for this human female who had somehow stolen his heart. She glanced up at him from under the dark spikes of her lashes, her cheeks pink, mouth still swollen from his kisses.
Brock caressed her jaw, that stubborn, beautiful jaw. She smiled, a sexy curve of her lips, and then suddenly they were kissing all over again. His sex responded instantly, and the fire in his blood stoked back up to a rapid boil. Jenna reached down to touch him, at the same time her tongue slid into his mouth to play along the length of his fangs.
Oh, yeah.
It was going to be a long night.
