Even if no one but Robert dared ask her directly what the Protector wanted from her, they all seemed to have a good idea. Even the initiates, mostly kept out of the loop of Temple politics until they were sworn in as acolytes, fluttered nervously around her. Eventually she’d been forced to give them extra craft study — the worship of Glory through artistic pursuit — in order to get them out of her hair once and for all.
Through all of this, Silas lingered in the back of her mind, his presence there its own type of specter. That wasn’t helped by theconstant reminder of their time together: the soreness between her thighs.
Despite the fact that there’d been no penetrative sex, technically speaking, every step sent a little twinge up her spine, an echo of every tiny, stinging slap he’d given her until he forced not one, but two orgasms just before her back-up alarm rang.
On any other day in her previous life, she might have found that satisfying, but in this one, it only reminded her of what she would no longer have.
By the time the Protector’s entourage was due to arrive, Petra had a tension headache, she never wanted to hear the words‘do you think we need a…’again, and she really, really wanted to know where Silas was.
Every hour that passed without a snide comment, a proprietary touch, or the weight of his shadows doing something they shouldn’t made her nerves ratchet up another notch.
No, his presence wasn’t what she would call traditionally reassuring, but he was the only one who knew what was really going on, and he was the only who knewher,and?—
Damn, I just want to see his smug face.
Something about him not being by her side as she faced the predator from her nightmares made her feel deeply unmoored. Not because she worried about what he was up to unsupervised, but because she’d come to actually like the man. He made her feel safe.
Good gods.
It was very much against her will, but it was there: a thread of something warm and a little prickly tying them together.
There was no time left to examine that, nor the curdled feeling that settled in her gut at the thought that the thread would never have a chance to grow into something stronger, warmer, fiercer.
It’s for the best,she thought as she took her place by the grand bronze doors of the cathedral’s entrance.We would have been a disaster, anyway.
Her staff fanned out around her as three sleek black town cars pulled into the courtyard. Normally no one was allowed to park there, but nothing was off-limits to the Protector. Certainly not the landscaping.
Robert nearly vibrated with tension from his place beside her as he watched one of the cars swing a little too close to the large, extremely expensive marble fountain in the center of the courtyard.
Petra didn’t bother sending him a reassuring look. They all knew that the Protector would do exactly as he wanted. If that meant taking out a million dollar water fixture donated by a long-deceased worshipper, then he would do so and there was absolutely nothing any of them could say about it.
This was her cathedral, but they all understood that as of this moment, she didn’t have the power to protect them from anything, let alone the entourage’s carelessness.
That’s not entirely true.
In one secret way, she had power. She had Silas.
Petra had to believe that things would work out — even if she didn’t live long enough to see it.
Drawing her shoulders back, she watched the middle vehicle come to a slow stop in front of the stone steps. A cool breeze, a summer in San Francisco specialty, threatened to tear her hair from its carefully crafted chignon and sent her robes of office fluttering around her legs.
Silas’s necklace hung heavy and warm between her breasts, tucked safely beneath her silk blouse. Not too far away, a cable car rumbled along its track and dinged its bell as it passed between the cathedral and the stately mansion grounds on the other side of the street.
Breathe. You’ve got this.
A man she didn’t recognize left the front passenger’s seat to open the back door of the car. He wore a sleek, wine-red uniform and was clearly a member of Antonin’s entourage, but she didn’t recall seeing him during the last visit.
Not that it meant much. She’d been flying by the seat of her pants and surviving off of pure adrenaline last time, so there was every chance that she simply didn’t recall every member of the Protector’s personal security unit as well as she thought.
There was no forgetting the man himself, though.
When Antonin Vanderpoel climbed out of the car, one shiny designer shoe at a time, it was as if the world around her held its breath.
He was slight of build, handsome in a finely aged, old money way, and wore an expression that could only be described as benign. His three-piece suit was perfectly pressed, the fabric a dark charcoal with barely visible pinstripes. A deep crimson tie and simple gold chain were the only pops of color on his person.
Antonin’s hair, once dark, was streaked with more salt than pepper and swept back into a classic style. Not a single strand was out of place. His beard was similarly well kept and colored, giving him a mature attractiveness that might have been devastating on any other man.
The smile that creased his cheeks when he locked eyes with her was blinding. Bile crawled up her esophagus.
