Talia didn’t want to spend another second with the old man. She started across the dark, empty space. She was going to go back to her room and think things through. Things were getting too complicated. Out of control. Better to pull back.
She hit the button on the elevator and waited in the marble atrium, but the double doors of the terrace beckoned. A man stood on the other side, grappling with an unknown, but certainly horrible, destiny. If anyone could possibly relate, she could.
At least that’s the excuse she gave herself as she coded out onto the terrace.
The night air was bursting with scent. Sharp grasses and pine dominated, but the broader fragrance of undergrowth underscored each breath. Stars glittered piteously above. Segue’s paltry lights offered feeble competition. The contrast suggested another hard truth, comforting in its own way: No matter what havoc wraiths or humankind wreaked on earth, those stars would keep on shining. Everything good or evil would eventually be scorched from the earth by the inexorable domination of the universe.
“For someone with such an overdeveloped sense of self-preservation, it was damn foolish of you to come out here after me. Go to bed, Talia.” Adam angled his face toward her, his expression unguarded. He probably thought the darkness would obscure the pain in his eyes, but Talia could see just fine. Too well, in fact. The man was confused and exhausted with his ongoing burden. His already busted-up soul had taken yet another beating today.
“You wouldn’t hurt me,” she said, stepping up beside him. She sounded more certain than she felt.
“Honestly, I don’t know if that’s true,” he sighed. “Right now I feel just as monstrous as what is locked up beneath us.”
“I’ll risk it.” She looked across the roll of the fields toward the mountains, willing her rapid heartbeat to peace. But standing beside him, the organ only doubled its rhythm. She babbled, “Besides, I can see better in the dark than you can. The world fairly throbs with details, color, and sensation. It’s too intense for me really, so much to take in, but I’m pretty sure I have the advantage over you out here.”
A corner of his mouth tugged upward, though his eyes remained dull and heavy, trained through the dark on her. “You see so much, but you can’t see what I see. Only an artist could capture you.”
Relief flooded her as a deep ache coiled gorgeously in her abdomen. He didn’t think her a joke. After everything she’d revealed, he still desired her. The knowledge rooted her to her spot, in the path of certain danger.
Besides, she needed something, anything, to escape her own discovery today. Death was her father. No one would want her if that bitter truth became known.
She saw him move in her peripheral vision, was expecting it. A small rush of air brushed by her body just before his arms came around her waist, one shifting upward to the space between her shoulders.
He’d warned her. She’d had every opportunity to run back inside.
Instead, she tilted her head up to meet his.
His mouth came down hard. Pressed more deeply than she imagined. Raw heat coursed through her, demanding without thought or reason. Just need, his knotting with hers. Her mind fragmented. A strange, tight pressure set her blood thudding in her head.
The kiss burned, his tongue parting her lips to taste her. He smelled good: masculine, sharp, and dark. The combination was potent, his touch, a catalyst to change her. Like a drug once tested, she knew she’d crave it for the rest of her life.
His body shifted, taking more of her weight. She reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck and shoulder so that she wouldn’t fall. He was tall, all firm planes and unyielding strength, wonderfully painful in his embrace.
She gripped his shirt and arched her back so her breasts pressed more firmly against him. Felt the drum of his heart against hers, the flex of his muscle, and needed more.
He groaned low against her lips, and when she broke the kiss to gasp for air, he settled his blistering mouth into the bend of her neck.
“Oh, God,” she breathed. Never in the many sleepless nights she’d spent fantasizing about a man like Adam had she imagined this.
“There is no God,” he answered, voice ragged. His teeth worried her shirt at her collar to find her skin. Where his hot mouth branded, her nerves sang, her body begging please, yes, more.
He dragged up her shirt and thrust a hand up her bare back to twist the band of her bra around his grasp. He scorched his other palm around her hip, to the juncture of her legs, where he pinned her hard against him.
Talia squeezed her eyes shut against the pulse of shadow across the valley, against the gathering darkness that her blood and bone summoned. She reached out to him from her core.
A great wave of want swamped her inner senses in answer. A soul-deep hunger born of long deprivation.
But…not for her. Not really.