Page 72 of A Touch of Crimson
“No.”
“Watch your back. Blood… It’s yours.”
Elijah looked at Rachel hovering in the doorway. She nodded grimly. His blood. At an abduction scene in a town he’d never visited.
A high-pitched wheeze from the bed drew his attention back to Micah.
“I’ll be all right,” Elijah said gruffly. “Don’t worry about me. Worry about getting better.”
Micah’s hand tightened on Elijah’s with surprising force, his claws extending enough to break the skin of his own palm and Elijah’s. Blood, hot and slippery, pooled between their joined grips. “Listen. You’re the one. Hear me? It’s you. Get Rachel out… Get them all out.”
Elijah jerked backward.“Don’t put that on me, Micah.”
“She trusts you—” The redhead erupted into violent, hacking coughing that left flecks of blood on both his lips and the pristine whiteness of his sheets. “Rachel will be fine. I promise you that.”
“Not Rach—” He gasped. “Adrian’s woman…trusts you. You can abduct her… Leverage.”
Elijah pulled free of Micah’s grip, furious and sick that his best friend would dump this shit on him now. On his fucking deathbed. “Don’t do this,” he hissed. “Don’t ask me this. She risked her life for me.”
Micah’s head lifted from the pillow, his gaze an echo of its former fierceness. “Adrian will bend for her. Promise me. Step up. Make it happen. You can free them all. Only you.”
Lurching to his feet, Elijah stumbled out of the room.
“Blood oath, El,” Micah whispered, holding up his bloodied hand. Then he deflated into the bed, his chest rattling with every labored breath.
Elijah cleared the threshold. He looked at the lycans waiting outside the room. There were more of them now. A dozen familiar faces, all looking at him with somber, unwavering expectancy.
“You all put him up to this,” he accused. “You told him where I’ve been these past couple of weeks.”
Esther stepped forward. “Elijah?—”
“You selfish fucking bastards.”
He looked at his hand and the already-healing punctures marring it. With a roar, he shifted. Bursting free of his clothes, he vaulted forward in a powerful lunge that took him almost to the end of the building.
He rammed through the door to the outside and ran.
Lindsay was still gasping, trying to regain the breath Adrian had knocked from her, when he landed on the other side of the house. She heard the slide of a glass door behind her; then she was carried through it and into a room with a massive desk and a wall of overflowing bookshelves.
Leaning back in his embrace, she looked at his face. His features were stark, the skin stretched taut with fierce determination. Another door closed behind her, an interior one, and she was pushed up against it, pinned by Adrian’s hot, hard body. The drapes began their automated glide shut along with the sliding glass door, plunging the room into silence and darkness.
“Adrian…”
His mouth sealed over hers. He caught her wrists in his hands and pulled them above her head, one after the other. His tongue thrust into her mouth, a swift plunge that turned her on instantly. The warm, vibrant scent of his skin filled her nostrils, wilder today than she’d remembered. Sexier.
She struggled against his grip and found her wrists tied to a coat hook on the back of the door. As his hands slid down her arms, she tugged to no avail, then grasped frantically with her fingers. Feeling lace, she realized he’d done that undressing thing with his thoughts and secured her to the hook with her own panties. A tentative squirm confirmed she was now commando in her jeans. “Let me go.”
“You’re not leaving me.” His voice was low and deceptively even, but the rigidness behind it was as tangible as the thong around her wrists.
Lindsay tugged again. The lace tore, and immediately something stronger bound her to the door. When Adrian’s hands pushed up beneath her T-shirt and cupped her bare breasts, she realized it was her bra. A shiver moved through her. The only time she’d ever been held against her will was the day her mother had been killed. “Cut me loose, Adrian.”
His mouth latched on to the side of her neck. His fingers tugged her nipples into hard, tight points. “No.”
Without volition, she arched into his hands, her breasts growing heavy and tender. “You’re upset. We should t-talk. We need to talk.”
“Not now.” He gripped her hips, making her aware that she was now completely nude. When a hair-dusted thigh pushed between her own, she realized he was naked, too.
Her breathing was loud in the otherwise quiet room. Her heart raced with a potent mixture of fear and forbidden desire. If it had been anyone else restraining her, she would’ve lost it. But it was Adrian, and the feel of his hands against her skin kept the terror she might have felt at bay.
