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.
“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.