Page 82 of A Touch of Crimson
“I have?—”
“—no idea what it did to me to see you putting that in your car.” Catching her hand, he stroked his thumb over the back of it. “Leave it here.”
“Fine.” She squeezed his fingers, a faint echo of the constriction around her heart.
She couldn’t say the words, but she could show him.
That would have to be enough for both of them.
19
“I knew they were going to have a hard time with this,” Lindsay muttered to Elijah, watching as more and more Sentinels began to land in the field by the training warehouse.
The sun had just risen. Adrian had insisted Elijah drive Lindsay back to the hotel the night before, arguing that she was too tired to be behind the wheel. Since her Prius was a bit small for a large lycan, they’d taken one of the Point’s Jeeps. She thought leaving her car behind might have been another way for Adrian to keep something of hers with him, something she’d have to come back for, so she’d refrained from arguing.
“Things have been the same for the Sentinels for a long time,” Elijah said. “It’s probably been a while since anything threw them a curveball.”
She pivoted to face him. “Are you going to be all right, El? With the whole Alpha business and now the blood thing yesterday… Is there something I can do?”
He looked down at her. With his green eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, she couldn’t get a read on what he might be thinking. “Just stick close to me. I’m supposed to keep you safe. If I fuck that up, I’m toast.”
“I can’t imagine you fucking anything up.”
He snorted.
“Wanna talk about it?” she offered.
“Don’t even want to think about it.”
“Okay. I’m here if you need me.”
Damien approached. While the morning was chilly and fog hugged the ground, he was dressed like the other Sentinels on the field: in loose pants and leather sandals. The women wore sports bras, but otherwise everyone sported bare torsos. Just looking at them made Lindsay shiver. She was wearing a lined jogging suit, but she was still just short of having chattering teeth.
“I’ve seen you with knives and a shotgun.” The Sentinel raked her with a clinical glance. “You were fairly skilled with both. How are you in hand-to-hand combat?”
Her brow lifted. “Seriously? I’m human. That’s what the knives and guns are for: to keep the inhumans from getting close enough to tear me to shreds. Plus, knife throwing and marksmanship are solitary activities, so I taught myself— Whoa!”
Lindsay arched back and away from Damien’s fist flying toward her face. The smack of flesh meeting flesh rent the air. She hit the dirt on her ass and stared up with wide eyes.
Elijah had blocked Damien’s blow with the palm of his hand. The two men were in a standoff, their arms shaking with the force each exerted in a brutal sort of strong-arm competition.
“What the fuck?” she snapped.
The two men pushed away from each other, each taking a step back. They turned to her in unison, both extending a hand to help her up. She grabbed them both and let them haul her to her feet.
“Adrian said you were quick,” Damien said calmly, as if he hadn’t just struck out at her with a blow that would have shattered bone. “I didn’t get a chance to see you move in Hurricane, so I had to gauge your speed.”
Lindsay gaped at him, then shot a look at Elijah. A muscle was ticcing in the lycan’s jaw. Maybe the test hadn’t been just for her. Maybe they’d been testing him as well.
The rest of the Sentinels, about ten evenly divided between men and women, dotted the field around them, sizing her up. She felt like a raw slab of meat tossed to voracious raptors.
She rolled her shoulders back.
“If you get me squared away,” she said to Damien, “Adrian will worry less about me and more about the shit you’re dealing with. We all want that.”
The Sentinel held still for a moment, staring her down. She didn’t flinch.
Finally, he nodded. They might all want a pound of her flesh, but Damien would keep them focused on the big picture. Hopefully.
