Текст книги "Taken by Midnight"

Автор книги: Lara Adrian

Соавторы: Lara Adrian
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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

Now he leaned back and closed his eyes, letting the hum of the road lull him as he savored the buzz of power still swimming in his veins.

CHAPTER

Twenty-eight

Jenna had never seen Brock so quiet.

He and the other warriors had returned a short time ago, accompanied by Lazaro Archer and his grandson. The relief surrounding the boy’s rescue was severely dampened by the cost at which it had come. While arrangements were made to accommodate the new arrivals at the compound and get them cleaned up and settled, Brock and the other warriors on tonight’s mission had dispersed to their own quarters.

Brock had hardly uttered a word since he’d returned. He’d been covered in blood and grime, his face drawn taut with tension and not a little horror for what he and his brethren had witnessed during the recovery of the boy. Jenna had walked with him back to the room they now shared and had since been sitting on the edge of the bed alone, staring at the closed bathroom door while he ran the shower on the other side.

She didn’t know if he’d welcome company or preferred his solitude, but after hearing about what had occurred on his patrol, she found she couldn’t sit idle when he might be hurting on the other side of the closed door.

She walked over and tested the latch. It wasn’t locked, so she cracked it open and peered inside.

Brock was naked under the steaming spray, his glyph-covered back toward the door, hands fisted and pressed against the shower wall in front of him. Although she didn’t see any wounds on him, the water ran in red trails down his dark skin before swirling into the drain at his feet.

“May I come in?” she asked softly.

He didn’t reply, but he didn’t tell her to leave him alone, either. She entered, shutting the door behind her. She didn’t need to ask him if he was all right. Despite that he seemed physically unharmed, every thick muscle in his broad back was bunched with tension. His arms were trembling, his head bent low against his chest.

“An entire family was blown to bits tonight,” he murmured, his voice rough and raw with restrained emotion. “That kid’s life is never gonna be the same.”

“I know,” she whispered, drawing nearer.

He lifted his face into the hot cascade of water, then slicked a hand over the top of his head. “I tell you, there are times when I don’t think I can handle all of the goddamned pain and death.”

“That’s what makes you human,” she said, then laughed quietly to herself at how easy it was to think of him as a man—her man—despite all the things that made him something more than that.

Hell, it was getting hard to think of herself as being purely human anymore. She was morphing into something she didn’t quite understand—more and more every day—but she was growing less afraid of the changes taking place within her. They were making her stronger, giving her a renewed sense of purpose … a rebirth.

She found herself looking forward to the chance to have a different life. A new life, perhaps right here in this place. Perhaps with Brock at her side.

After the last time she’d been in his arms, she realized she was less afraid of the feelings she had for him, too.

It was that lack of fear that prompted her to take off her top and step out of her loose yoga pants. Her bra and panties went next, discarded on the floor as she walked into the shower with Brock and wrapped her arms around his strong back.

He tensed at the contact, drawing in a sharp breath. But then his arms came down over hers and he held her there, his big hands warm and soothing as he caressed her. “I’m filthy from the mission, Jenna.”

“I don’t care,” she said, pressing a trail of kisses to the smooth, muscled arch of his spine. His dermaglyphs pulsed with deepening color. “Let me take care of you for a change.”

She pulled her arms from around him and took the bar of soap from the shower shelf. He stayed unmoving as she filled her hands with lather, then began to gently smooth the suds over his immense shoulders and bulky biceps. She washed his strong back, then slowly let her hands drift down, past his tight waist, to the sides of his lean hips.

She felt the powerful twitch of his body as she reached around to the front of him, her soap-slicked hands skirting the edge of his groin. He was erect even before she got there, moaning as she splayed her fingers around the base of his cock, teasing but not yet touching. She brought her hands around and gathered more lather, then crouched down behind him to wash the lengths of his legs.

He shuddered as she dragged her soapy fingers back up his thighs, pressing her body flush against him as she rose, slippery from the suds that still lingered on his skin. She wrapped one arm around the front of his waist, her other hand reaching down to stroke his hard shaft. He growled a dark curse as she caressed him, his sex swelling even greater in her grasp.

She found a rhythm that seemed to please him, and she worked it mercilessly, delighting in the feel of his body’s response to her touch. With a low moan, he leaned forward to brace one elbow against the shower wall in front of him. “Ah, fuck, Jenna … I love your hands on me.”

She smiled at his praise, losing herself in his pleasure as she stroked him harder, more intensely. He grunted, his sex kicking in the tight hold of her pistoning fist. Then, before she could make him lose all control, he hissed a raw curse from between his gritted teeth and fangs.

He flipped around to face her. His erect cock rose up past his navel, hard as steel but hot as a flame when he dragged her against him, his big hands firm on her upper arms, his hold possessive and fierce. His handsome face was drawn in sharper angles in the throes of his passion, his eyes as bright as glowing coals, his fangs stark white and enormous, deadly sharp.

Jenna licked her lips, her throat suddenly gone dry with need.

He knew what she wanted. She could read his understanding as surely as he’d read the hungered look in her own eyes.

He lifted her off her feet, guiding her legs around his waist as he carried her out of the bathroom and toward the big bed in the other room. Their bodies were wet, still slick in places from errant suds as they flopped onto the mattress together in an intimate tangle.

He kept her thighs wrapped around him as he rolled onto his back, settling her on top of him. He thrust inside her, filling her up so perfectly. She tipped her head back and exhaled a slow, pleasured sigh as he seated himself to the hilt beneath her.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured, his touch roaming all over her sensitive flesh.

She opened her eyes and stared down at him. “I want to be beautiful to you. That’s how you make me feel.” She held his unwavering amber-flecked gaze, forcing herself to not shy away from the emotion that was swamping her. She felt safe with him. Safe enough to tell him what was in her heart. “I feel happy, Brock, for the first time in a very long time. Because of you, I’m feeling so many things …”

“Jenna,” he murmured, frowning now, his expression turning very serious.

She forged on, having already stepped past the edge of this cliff and determined to take it all the way down. “I know you said you don’t like complications or long-term relationships. I know you said you don’t want to get involved—”

“I am involved,” he said, running his hands down her sides, resting them on her hips where their bodies were intimately joined. He rocked into her slowly. “It doesn’t get more involved than this. God, I never planned on you, Jenna. I thought I was playing it safe, but you’ve changed everything.” His touch was light as he caressed her cheek and jawline. “I don’t have the answers when it comes to you … to us … and what we have together.”

She swallowed, shaking her head in mute denial.

“I didn’t want to fall in love,” she whispered. “I didn’t think I could ever again.”

He held her in a tender gaze. “And I told myself I wouldn’t.”

Jenna parted her lips, uncertain what she meant to say. An instant later, it didn’t matter. Brock drew her down to him and kissed her, wrapping her in his arms. His mouth pressed hers, his tongue pushing past her lips and driving her mad with the need for more. She ground against his hips, heat flaring brighter in her core and flowing out to her every nerve ending.

She rose up, panting now, unable to keep from moving on him as her need swelled to a fever pitch.

“You’re in control, baby,” he said, his voice thick and raspy. “Take whatever you want.”

She eyed his throat, watching the vein that pulsed so strongly at the side of his neck. Hunger kicked deep inside her, startling her with its ferocity. She pulled her gaze away and met the glittering heat of his transformed eyes.

“Anything,” he said, looking more than eager for her to have her way with him.

She rocked on him, savoring the feel of their joined bodies, and half dizzy from arousal already. Her orgasm roared up on her quickly. She tried to stave it off, but sensation flooded her as she rode the heat and power of Brock’s sex.

He watched her with avid interest, his lips pulled back off his fangs, the ropelike tendons in his neck strung tight as he arched his shoulders up off the bed. Jenna couldn’t keep her eyes from the frantic beat of his pulse. It echoed in her bones, in her own veins. In the impatient rhythm of her body as she shuddered with the sudden detonation of her release.

“Yeah,” he groaned, splaying his hands at her back and not letting her draw away when the hunger bore down on her like a tidal wave. “Let it go, Jenna. Anything you want.”

With a snarled cry she couldn’t hold back, she buried her face in the side of his neck and bit down hard. Blood surged into her mouth, hot and thick and spicy-sweet.

Brock hissed a rough curse that sounded anything but sorry. His body shook as he drove deeper inside her, every hard thrust increasing her pleasure, driving her hunger to even greater heights. He shouted as his orgasm racked him, his strong pulse drumming against the tip of her tongue as Jenna closed her lips around his open vein and began to drink.

CHAPTER

Twenty-nine

Two days had passed since the attack on Lazaro Archer’s family and the rescue mission that saved young Kellan. The boy was recovering physically from his capture and mistreatment, but Jenna knew as well as anyone that his emotional scars—the reality of all he’d lost in one hellish moment—would be with him long after the cuts and bruises had healed. She only hoped he’d find a means of coping with them in less time and self-defeating agony than it had taken her to deal with her own.

She wished the same for his Gen One grandfather, too, although Lazaro Archer hardly seemed the kind to need anyone’s sympathy. Once the funeral ceremony for his son, Christophe, had taken place at the compound, Lazaro had refused to so much as speak of that violent night. In the time since, he’d devoted himself to working closely with the Order. The Gen One civilian now appeared as determined as any of the warriors to see Dragos and his entire operation destroyed.

Jenna knew that feeling. It was maddening to think that evil like Dragos was loose in the world. He was stepping up his operation, which meant the Order could not afford to let any opportunity to gain an upper hand slip away. After what he’d been willing to do to Lazaro Archer and his family, Jenna couldn’t help worrying even more about the group of Breedmates known to be kept under his control.

At least on that front, there was a glimmer of hope. Dylan had gotten a call that morning from the administrator at Sister Margaret Howland’s retirement home in Gloucester. The elderly nun had been told about Dylan’s request for a visit, and she was excited for a little company and conversation.

Jenna had been first to volunteer when Dylan announced the afternoon excursion. Renata and Alex had also offered to ride along, everyone eager to see if Claire Reichen’s sketches of the captive Breedmates would bear fruit.

Now, as the four women drove into Gloucester in a black Rover from the Order’s fleet, all they had to hope for was a few moments of mental clarity from the aging sister.

Even Lucan had agreed that if they could get just so much as one female’s name, it would make the entire mission worthwhile.

Brock hadn’t been thrilled about the prospect of Jenna leaving the compound, particularly so soon after the violence perpetrated on Lazaro Archer and his kin. He worried, as always, and where it used to rankle, now his concern warmed her.

He cared about her, and she had to admit, it felt very good to know that she had someone guarding her back. More than that, she believed Brock was a man who would guard her heart every bit as carefully as he did her safety and well-being.

She hoped he would, because over the past few days—and incredible nights—she had laid her heart openly in his hands.

“Here we are,” Dylan said from the front passenger seat of the Rover as Renata turned into the retirement home driveway. “The administrator told me that Sister Margaret takes her afternoon tea around this time in the library. She said we could just go on in.”

“There it is.” Alex pointed toward a bronze sign sticking out of a snowbank in front of a modest little clapboard cottage.

Renata parked in the half-empty lot and killed the engine. “Here goes nothing, eh? Jenna, will you grab that leather tote bag from the back?”

She pivoted to pull the collection of file folders and notepads out of the cargo area, then climbed out of the vehicle with her friends.

As Jenna came around the front of the Rover, Dylan took the tote bag from her and held it against her chest. Pursing her lips, she blew out a heavy sigh.

Alex paused next to her. “What’s wrong?”

“All my research the past few months is coming down to this moment. If this turns out to be a dead end, you guys, then I don’t have a clue where to begin to looking next.”

“Relax,” Renata said, taking Dylan’s shoulders in a sisterly hold. “You’ve been busting your ass on this investigation. We wouldn’t even be this far without you. You and Claire both.”

Dylan nodded, although not quite buoyed by the pep talk. “We just really need a decent lead. I don’t think I could handle it if we end up back at square one.”

“If we have to start all over,” Jenna said, “then we just work harder. Together.”

Renata smiled, her pale green eyes twinkling as she buttoned up her leather duster to conceal the blades and gun belt that studded her fatigues-clad hips. “Come on. Let’s go have tea with the nice old ladies.”

Jenna thought it wise to zip up her own coat, too, since Brock insisted she carry a weapon whenever she left the compound. It felt strange to wear a firearm again, but it was a different kind of strange from the way she’d felt back in Alaska.

Everything about her felt different now.

She was different, and she liked the person she was becoming.

More important, she was learning to forgive the person she’d been in Alaska.

She’d left a part of herself back in Harmony, a part she could never get back, but as she stepped into the warm cottage library with Renata and Dylan and Alex, she couldn’t imagine returning to the woman she’d been before. She had friends here now, and important work that needed to be done.

Best of all, she had Brock.

It was that thought that made her smile a little brighter as Dylan brought them over to a frail elderly woman who sat quietly on a rose-patterned sofa near the library’s fireplace. Cloudy blue eyes blinked a couple of times from beneath a fluffy crown of white curly hair. Jenna could still see the kind expression of the nun in the shelter photograph in the lined face that peered up at the Order’s women.

“Sister Margaret?” Dylan said, holding out her hand. “I’m Sharon Alexander’s daughter, Dylan. And these are my friends.”

“Oh, my goodness,” exclaimed the sweet old nun. “They told me I was having company for tea today. Please, sit down, girls. I so rarely have guests.”

Dylan took a seat on the sofa next to the sister. Jenna and Alex sat on either side of the coffee table, in a pair of worn wingback chairs. Renata positioned herself with her back to a wall, her eyes on the door—a trained warrior, ever on guard.

Never mind that the only people in the room besides the four of them and Sister Margaret were a couple of cotton-topped ladies hobbling behind metal walkers and wearing emergency call necklaces along with their rosary beads.

Jenna listened idly as Dylan attempted a bit of small talk with Sister Margaret, then delved into the purpose of their visit. She pulled out a handful of sketches, trying desperately to jump-start the aging nun’s failing memory. It didn’t appear to be going very well.

“Are you sure you don’t remember any of these girls being clients of the shelter?” Dylan slid a couple more sketches in front of the old woman. The sister peered at the hand-rendered faces, but there was no glint of recognition in the kind blue eyes. “Please try, Sister Margaret. Anything you recall could be very helpful to us.”

“I am sorry, my dear. I’m afraid my memory isn’t what it used to be.” She picked up her teacup and took a sip. “But then, I never was any good with names and faces. God saw fit to give me enough other blessings, I suppose.” Jenna watched Dylan deflate as she reluctantly began to gather up her materials. “That’s all right, Sister Margaret. I appreciate that you were willing to see us.”

“Oh, my word,” the sister blurted, putting her cup back down on the saucer. “What a terrible hostess I am! I forgot to make you girls some tea.”

Dylan reached for her tote bag. “It’s not necessary. We shouldn’t take up any more of your time.”

“Nonsense. You came for tea.”

As she got up from the sofa and shuffled into the cottage’s little kitchenette, Dylan sent an apologetic look at Jenna and the others. As the sister rummaged around in the other room, putting on the water and rattling cups, Dylan swept up all of the sketches and photographs. She stuffed everything back in the tote bag and placed it next to her on the floor.

After a few minutes, Sister Margaret’s reedy voice filtered out to them. “Was Sister Grace able to help you at all, dear?”

Dylan glanced up, frowning. “Sister Grace?”

“Yes. Sister Grace Gilhooley. She and I volunteered at the shelter together. We both were part of the same convent here in Boston.”

“Holy shit,” Dylan mouthed silently, excitement glittering in her eyes. She got up off the sofa and walked into the kitchenette. “I would love to talk to Sister Grace. You don’t happen to know how we can find her, do you?”

Sister Margaret nodded proudly. “Why, of course, I do. She lives not even five minutes from here, along the coast. Her father was a sea captain. Or a fisherman. Well, I don’t quite recall, to tell you the truth.”

“That’s okay,” Dylan said. “Can you give us her phone number or address, so we can contact her?”

“I’ll do better than that, dear. I’ll call her myself and let her know you’d like to ask her about some of those shelter girls.” Behind Sister Margaret, the teakettle began to whistle. She smiled, as pleasant as a sweet little granny. “First, we’re going to have that cup of tea together.”

They’d gulped their tea as quickly as they could without seeming completely rude.

Even so, it had taken more than twenty minutes to get away from sweet Sister Margaret Mary Howland. Fortunately, her offer to phone Sister Grace had proven useful.

The other retired nun was apparently in better health than her friend, living without assistance, and, from the one-sided conversation Jenna and the others had been privy to, it sounded like Sister Grace Gilhooley was willing and able to provide whatever information they needed about her work in the New York shelter.

“Nice place,” Jenna remarked as Renata wheeled the Rover along a stretch of shoreline road that led to a cheery yellow Victorian secluded on a jutting peninsula of rocky land.

The big house sat on about two acres of land, a postage stamp compared to home sites in Alaska, but clearly a luxury setting here on the coast of Cape Cod. With snow filling the yard and clinging to the rocks, the steel blue ocean sprawling out to the horizon, the bright canary Victorian looked as wholesome and inviting as a spot of warm sunshine in the midst of so much cold and winter.

“I hope we have better luck here,” Alex said from beside Jenna in the backseat, peering out at the impressive estate as they followed the white picket fence in front, then turned into the narrow driveway.

As Renata parked the Rover near the house, Dylan pivoted around from next to her up front. “If she can’t help identify some of the missing women from the New York shelter, maybe she’ll be able to tell us the names of the Breedmates in the two new sketches Claire Reichen has given us.”

Jenna got out of the back with Alex, both of them coming around to the front of the Rover, where Renata and Dylan now stood. “I didn’t realize we had new sketches.”

“Elise picked them up from her Darkhaven friend yesterday.”

Dylan handed Jenna a manila file folder as they walked toward the gingerbread-style veranda and front porch of the house. Jenna opened the folder as she followed her companions up the creaky wooden steps to the front door. She glanced inside at the artist’s renderings, which were based on Claire’s recollections of faces she saw some months ago, when her talent for dreamwalking had given her unexpected access to one of Dragos’s hidden labs.

Dylan rang the doorbell. “Cross your fingers. Hell, say a prayer while you’re at it.”

A housekeeper appeared a moment later and politely informed them that they were expected. Meanwhile, Jenna studied the two sketches a bit closer … and her heart dropped like a stone into her stomach.

An image of a young woman with sleek dark hair and almond-shaped eyes stared back at her. The delicate face was familiar, even in the pencil drawing that didn’t quite capture the full impact of her exotic beauty.

Corinne.

Brock’s Corinne.

Could it really be her? If so, how? He had been so certain she was dead. He’d told Jenna he’d seen the Breedmate’s body after she had been recovered from the river. Then again, he’d also mentioned that it had been months since she’d vanished before her remains had been found, and that all they had to identify her was her clothing and the necklace she’d been wearing when she disappeared.

Oh, God … could she actually be alive? Had she somehow ended up in Dragos’s hands and been held captive by him for all this time?

Jenna was too astonished to speak, too numb to do anything more than follow her friends into the house after the housekeeper invited them inside. One part of her was squeezed tight with the hope that a young woman presumed to be dead might, in fact, be alive.

Yet another part of her was gripped with a dark, shameful fear—the fear that this new knowledge might cost her the man she loved.

She had to tell Brock as soon as possible. It was the right thing to do—he had to know the truth. He had to see the sketch for himself and determine if Jenna’s suspicions might be correct.

“Please, make yourselves comfortable. I’ll go tell Sister Grace that you’re here,” said the pleasant little woman as she left Jenna and the others alone in the front parlor.

“Alex,” she murmured, giving a little tug of her coat sleeve. “I need to call the compound.”

Alex frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“This sketch,” she said, glancing at it once more and feeling utterly certain now that Claire Reichen had seen Corinne during her dreamwalk into Dragos’s lair. “I recognize this woman’s face. I’ve seen it before.”

“What?” Alex replied, taking the folder to look at it herself. “Jen, are you sure?”

Renata and Dylan moved closer, as well, all three of Jenna’s companions huddling around her in the quiet front room of the house. She pointed to the delicate face of the dark-haired young woman in the sketch. “I think I know who this Breedmate is.”

“By all means, dear,” said a cool, female voice. “Do tell.”

Jenna’s gaze snapped up and clashed across the room with a pair of calm gray eyes that stared back at her from a lined, outwardly kind-looking face. With her long silver hair caught in a loose chignon, Sister Grace Gilhooley’s pale blue floral housedress and white cardigan made her seem like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

But it was those eyes that gave her away.

Those dullish eyes, and the prickling of Jenna’s new senses, which lit up like a Christmas tree as soon as the woman entered the room.

Jenna held the sharklike stare, realizing in an instant just what the good sister was.

“Holy shit,” she said, recalling the same peculiar look in the eyes of the FBI men who’d tried to kill her and Brock in New York just days before. Jenna glanced over at Renata. “She’s a fucking Minion.”