Chapter 15
Fresh from a shower, Lindsay tightened the belt of her floor-length satin robe and went downstairs in search of Adrian. It was barely dawn, and she knew just where to find him. She moved swiftly and quietly, not wanting to wake the two lycan guards in the guestrooms.
It was time for her to get Adrian to talk.
Being here, in Helena’s former home, was difficult for him, but he wasn’t sharing his pain.
And working without Phineas—his second-in-command, whose death had brought them together—was like working without his right hand.
Yet he remained reserved and contained, rigidly so.
It was the way he needed to be to hold his command, she knew.
It was the way he’d been created. But it wasn’t healthy for him.
He was adrift and hiding it, shielding her and everyone around him.
Lindsay didn’t fully understand how Adrian had come to be. Unlike her, he hadn’t been born or raised. He’d been brought into existence just as he was—a fully mature male angel with a single purpose: to serve as an implement of punishment against other angels.
She couldn’t begin to grasp what that would feel like. She’d been raised by adoring parents. She had been hugged a lot. She’d laughed a lot. Not a day went by that she hadn’t heard “I love you.”
In contrast, Adrian had been created to be void of emotion.
In time, surrounded by mortals, he’d learned to covet and desire.
As a creature built to be hard and merciless, it was the edgier feelings that had manifested first. Later, he’d learned to feel loyalty and respect. He had established friendships.
Now he was learning how to love her, learning how to give. But the guilt and remorse he was feeling over Phineas’s and Helena’s deaths were beyond his experience. He didn’t know how to express his turmoil, and bottling it up was hurting him more than she could bear.
“My wounded angel,” she murmured, her heart aching for him.
She’d fallen in love with a killing machine, one who was slowly but surely becoming a warmhearted, red-blooded man. There were bound to be trials and growing pains in the process, and she would help him as much as she could. But she needed him to open up to her to do so.
He’d lost so much in such a short time. He felt that he’d betrayed Helena’s trust, that he hadn’t been there for her as he should have been. Not as a commanding officer, but as a friend. Just as Phineas had been a friend, the closest one he’d had, someone dear and precious to him.
She exited through the kitchen door out to the backyard patio.
The enclosed space was small, no more than a postage stamp really, with a circle of mosaic tiles in the center of the rectangle of grass.
For some people, the spot would have been perfect for a birdbath or a couple of lawn chairs.
Here, she knew it was a landing pad, a place from which angels could lift to the sky and return to the earth.
The air crackled with the electric energy of an approaching desert storm, the one brewing inside Adrian that he was keeping at bay by sheer will alone. And it was costing him. Greatly.
Tilting her head back, she spoke softly into the dawn breeze. “Adrian, my love. I need you.”
A moment later, he appeared, his brilliantly white wings with their crimson tips a shock of shimmering alabaster against the pinkish gray heavens.
She’d known he would be close, never too far away to be there for her should she need him.
His landing was impossibly graceful, the tips of his extended wings nearly touching the stucco walls that separated the yard from their neighbors.
The ball of one foot touched the tile first; then the full weight of his body settled firmly onto the ground.
As was his custom, he wore only loose linen pants.
His powerful chest and arms were bare and beautiful, his caramel-hued skin stretched over lean, rippling muscle.
His black hair was tousled by the wind, framing his gorgeous face.
And his eyes, with those gorgeous flame-blue irises, slid over her face with love and tender passion.
Her heart sighed at the sight of him. Her blood heated, flushing her skin.
And he knew, of course. His mouth curved in a sensual smile. “You could have called me from the bed, neshama. I would’ve heard you and come to you there.”
“That’s not why I need you.”
“Oh? Are you sure about that?”
She sucked in a deep breath. “I always want your body, but there’s something else.”
His wings dissipated like mist as she closed the distance between them. She walked right up to him, pressing her face into his chest and wrapping her arms tightly around him.
“Lindsay.” His resonant voice was threaded with concern. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Do you know how much I need you, Adrian? How dependent I’ve become on having you near? Not for blood or sex, although I won’t deny that I need both of those things from you. It’s like you’re the force that makes my heart beat and, when we’re apart, it forgets how to function.”
He crushed her so tightly against him that she couldn’t breathe. She was grateful her vampire lungs didn’t really need to because she didn’t want to pull away.
One of his hands fisted in the curls of her hair. The other arm banded around her waist, ensuring that every inch of her was pressed tightly to him. “Neshama sheli. You destroy me.”
“I love you. So much that I feel your pain as if it were my own.”
His chest expanded beneath her cheek. “I would never hurt you.”
“Is that why you’re bottling it up?” Lindsay pulled back to look up at him. “Is that why you’re not letting me in? You should know I didn’t shield you.”
He pulled her head back and looked at her.
“You’re torturing yourself over letting me go with Vash,” she said softly.
“You’re wondering what that says about your love for me.
But what are you comparing it to? What we have is something no one else will have.
Not just because of who we are as individuals, but because of the obstacles we’re facing together.
We’re going to have to take risks—with ourselves and with each other. ”
His irises were flickering blue flames, alien and ancient.
Tormented. She wondered how he carried all that roiling emotion inside him, how he hid it behind the smiles he gave her and the stoicism he gave to his Sentinels, how he leashed it when he made love to her and fought battles with clearheaded precision.
And how she could inspire him to let it out.
“I manipulated you, Adrian.”
He stiffened.
“I know you’re feeling guilty about Helena.” She tightened her embrace when he jerked against her. “I used it against you to get you to put your Sentinels first and let me go with Vashti to help Elijah.”
A long moment passed. “The weakness was mine to exploit. I made it possible.”
“There’s no excuse for what I did, only for why I did it.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I have to,” she said simply, lifting her hand to push his hair back from his forehead.
“Because we’re strongest when we’re one unit.
I’m trying to remember that this is all new to you.
That you’re trying and you’ve come really far from the man I met in the Phoenix airport.
But I need you to come farther, step closer, let me in. You’re keeping me out.”
“I don’t…” He frowned. “I don’t know how to do what you’re asking.”
“Think out loud. When the thoughts are swirling around in your head, give them a voice. Let me hear them. Let me be your sounding board.”
“Why?”
“Because you love me and you need me. I know you have to be strong for the other Sentinels. They lean on you, and if you fall, they fall. But you need to lean on someone, too. That’s where I come in, if you’ll let me.”
“I’m fine.”
“Physically, yes. Damn fine. Emotionally, you’re a wreck.” With her hand at his nape, Lindsay pulled his mouth down to hers and brushed her lips across his. “You couldn’t have done things differently with Helena, Adrian.”
His hands flexed convulsively against her. “She came to me for help.”
“No. She came to you for permission. And you told her the truth—you weren’t the guy to ask for it. You broke the law by falling in love with Shadoe, then me. Helena wanted you to say it was okay for her to break the law, too, and you couldn’t do that. Honestly, it wasn’t fair for her to ask you.”
“She was in love, Lindsay. I know how irrational that makes us. I should’ve been more sympathetic.”
“You can’t tell me you weren’t. I know you. It broke your heart when she told you that she’d fallen in love with a lycan. I heard your voice when you called me, and later, when you told me what happened.”
“I was going to separate them. Break them apart.”
“That was the plan,” she agreed. “But you might’ve changed your mind once you saw them together.
Or you might have gone through with it. We’ll never know.
She’ll never know, because she took the option away from you.
That was her decision. You can’t go around regretting the actions of someone else. ”
“Even if I forced her hand with my actions?” he shot back, his voice clipped and icy.
“What did you do, Adrian? She asked you for permission to have a romantic relationship with one of her guards, and you told her to ask the Big Guy Upstairs. Then she ran away, and they killed themselves. Where in that series of events are you guilty of forcing her hand?”
“She knew me. She knew what I’d do.”
“Bullshit. You didn’t even know what you were going to do. No… Hang on… Hear me out. You took your time getting to her. You were thinking. Debating. Reasoning with yourself. It’s not your fault that we’ll never know what could’ve happened if you’d had a choice.”
She cupped his face in her hands. “It’s not your fault. And if Phineas were here, I’m sure he’d be telling you the exact same thing.”