Page 7 of A Touch of Crimson
That would never fucking happen as long as Adrian was breathing.
“Hotels,” she answered, returning to his question. “I love the energy. They never sleep, never close. The endless flow of travelers ensures there’s always another challenge to tackle.”
“Which property?”
“The Belladonna. It’s a new resort near Disneyland.”
“Owned by Gadara Enterprises.” It wasn’t a question.
Raguel Gadara was a real estate mogul. All of his new developments were heavily advertised, but even without the publicity, Adrian knew Raguel well. Not just through their secular lives, but also through their celestial ones. Raguel was one of the seven earthbound archangels, falling several rungs below Adrian’s rank of seraph in the angelic hierarchy.
Lindsay’s dark eyes brightened. “You’ve heard of it.”
“Raguel is an old acquaintance.”
He began planning the steps required to research her history from birth until this moment. There were no coincidences in his world. He found Shadoe in every reincarnation not due to chance, but because they were destined to cross paths. But to move so near to his headquarters and end up in an angel’s employ…? Raguel owned properties all over the world, including resorts closer to her home on the East Coast. It could not be accidental that circumstances contrived to bring her to Orange County.
Adrian needed to know the opportunities and decisions that led her so directly into his life. The discovery process was one he undertook whenever she returned. He looked for routines or patterns applicable to her former lives. He gained knowledge used to build her trust and affection. And he searched for any sign that they were being manipulated, because the time was fast approaching when he would have to pay for his hubris.
He had committed the transgression he’d censured others for: he had fallen in love with Shadoe—a naphil, the child of a mortal woman and the angel her father had once been—and he’d succumbed, countless times, to the decadent sins of her flesh.
He had personally punished her father for the same offense. He’d severed the wings from the fallen angel, an act that took Syre’s soul and made him the first of the vampires.
The consequences of Adrian’s hypocrisy would eventually catch up with him; it was an inevitability he’d accepted long ago. If Raguel was the Creator’s instrument to rebuke him, Adrian needed to know and be prepared. He had to ensure that Shadoe would be cared for when his time came.
His gaze met those of his lycan guards, who were sitting a few rows away on either side. They were observant, curious. They couldn’t help but notice that he was reacting differently to Lindsay than to other women. The last time Shadoe’s soul had been with him, neither of the two lycans had been born yet, but they knew his personal life. They knew how little attention he paid to the opposite sex.
He would need more than two guards now that he could resume his hunt for Syre, and Lindsay would need her own dedicated protection. Adrian knew he’d have to manipulate that carefully. She was young—twenty-five at most—and starting out on her own in a new place. Now was the time for her to broaden her horizons, not find out that her new lover was micromanaging her life.
Lindsay rolled her straw between her fingers, her soft pink lips hovering over the tip before parting for a sip.
A wash of heat swept over him. Even the knowledge that he would lose her again, that he was forsaking his duty once again, couldn’t dampen the rush of desire quickening his blood. He wanted those lips on his skin, needed to feel them sliding across his flesh, whispering both raw and tender words as they teased him mercilessly.
Although the Sentinels had been forbidden to love and mate with mortals, nothing could convince Adrian that Shadoe hadn’t been born to belong to him.
She’d talked to her dad on the phone… He grew very still.
Adrian kept his face impassive, but he was intensely alert. Shadoe’s various incarnations had always been raised by a single-parent mother, never by a father. It was as if Syre had marked her soul when he’d begun the Change that would have transformed her into a vampire, ensuring that no other man would ever take his paternal role in her life. “Are your parents in Raleigh?”
A shadow passed over her features. “My dad is. My mother died when I was five.”
His fingers flexed restlessly. The order of her parents’ deaths had never been mutable.
His long-stable world had canted that morning, and Lindsay Gibson continued to challenge his balance, causing the objects around him to begin a slow slide away from their predetermined place. The lycans had been growing more agitated by the day, the vampires had crossed a precipitous line with the death of Phineas and the attack in the helicopter, and now Shadoe had returned after an interminable absence yet with the most basic pattern of her reincarnations altered.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he murmured, adopting the customary remark offered to grieving mortals who so often viewed death as a sorrowful ending.
“Thank you. How about your family? Big or small?”
“Big. Lots of siblings.”
“I envy you. I don’t have any brothers or sisters. My dad didn’t remarry. He never got over my mom.”
Adrian had become adept at winning over her mothers. Men, however, tended to give him a wide berth regardless of any efforts he made to put them at ease. They instinctively sensed the power in him. There could be only one Alpha in a designated space, and he was it.
Gaining her father’s acceptance might take some work, but it would be worth the time and investment. Familial support was just one of the many avenues he utilized to gain her complete and total surrender, which was the only way he could bear to have her—no holds barred.
He touched the back of her hand where it rested lightly on the armrest, relishing the charge he got from the simple contact. He heard the elevated beat of her heart as if his ear was pressed to her chest. Over the paging of flight information, boarding calls, and gate changes, the strong and steady rhythm of her heartbeat was crystal clear and deeply beloved. “Some women are unforgettable.”
