Sloane swallowed hard. His fingers trembled as he slowly pressed their pads against the silken skin of her knuckles.
Sheburned.
Like he’d stuck his fingers into the heart of a plasma charge, the smallest contact seared him to the bone. Sloane gasped, shocked by the instant pleasure-pain that came with the touch. He panted as he followed the lines of her tendons beneath her paper-thin skin and fine webbing of veins.
A flush of heat suffused his body, starting from his fingertips and traveling up his arm to infect every cell. A popping, tingling sensation came with it, like there was some sort of chemical agent in her flesh that was rapidly spreading through his system.
Alerts continued to pop on his visor’s screen. A warning about his heart rate. Abnormal vital signs. Blood oxygen exceeding normal levels. Perspiration increasing. None of it made him pull away.
He couldn’t. Not even the concrete ceiling and cliff caving in on top of them would’ve made him move from that spot, or stopped him from tracing his way up her wrist toward the soft curve of her inner elbow.
“Cecilia,” he mouthed, daring to draw the tip of his tingling claw over a dark freckle.
Her arm jerked. Sloane reared back and leapt away from the bed as she drew her limb in toward her chest, her head turning restlessly on the plain white pillowcase.
Away from him.
A flash of shame burned almost as hot as the feeling that came when he touched her. Snatching his glove from where he’d discarded it on the bed, Sloane swallowed the bitter taste of want and fled, locking the door behind him.
CHAPTER
SIX
The bodies wereeasy enough to dispose of. The car was even easier.
Corpses were simple to handle when one had the right tools and a strong stomach. The vampires were stuffed into three barrels of lye he kept ready, and the car was stripped of all identification before it was plunged unceremoniously into the heart of a junkyard two hundred miles from where he’d stolen it.
The most difficult part of the day was, unfortunately, returning to the barracks.
Unlike the rest of Patrol, Fracture’s headquarters was located in Stern Grove, a small, forested corner of the city blocked by a tall gate. Towering Blue Gum eucalyptus and native redwoods ringed the barracks and trapped a nearly perpetual ghostly fog. The area was chosen by Thaddeus II himself, who wanted them isolated in every possible way — even from their fellow soldiers.
Normally, Sloane was good at acting like he hadn’t done anything wrong when he walked through the barracks. That was mostly because he never felt any guilt when he did. This time was different.
Tension was a live wire between his powerful shoulders as he strode through the door. He rapidly ran through everyonehe knew to be on an assignment and those who might be off-duty. They’d all been relatively local since they’d been “benched for deliberate, if creative, disobedience” by the sovereign, which made things trickier than usual.
He wasn’t normally in the mood to socialize, if one could even call what the members of Fracture did such a thing, but he was even less so knowing that his charge was back in his bed. If any of them knew, they’d try and take her away from him. They might even try and steal her for themselves.
Who wouldn’t?Sloane’s breathing deepened as he passed into the mess hall, his focus on the entrance to their private quarters.She’s perfect. And they’d all be better at keeping her safe. They’d take one look at her and snatch her away.
“Are you all right?”
His back stiffened. A bright pop of fury erupted inside his chest. It wasn’t aimed at the empath who so casually curled up on one of the arm chairs in the lounge, a tablet in her hands and a blanket thrown over her legs. It was aimed at himself for failing to notice her.
Gods, where is my fucking head?
The answer was simple enough, he supposed. His head was back at the Battery, in bed with the woman he’d vowed to protect.
Sloane flexed his claws when he flatly replied, “Yes.”
“Are you sure… Sorry, I still have trouble figuring out which of you is which with your helmets on.”
He forced himself to turn slightly toward his captain’s mate. Not that getting a better look at his visor would help her. They were designed to keep team members anonymous. If no one ever saw their faces, it helped Thaddeus perpetuate the myth that he had a secret army of hundreds of shadow soldiers rather than a handful of broken elves too good at killing.
But Atria had other ways of figuring out their identities.
The instant the air began to buzz around him, full of the strange kind of static all witches seemed to carry with them, Sloane’s skin crawled.
“Ah, Sloane.” A smile stretched across Atria’s face. It wasn’t the same as Cecilia’s smile. Atria’s was… patient. Like she did it to manage him rather than because she felt any true warmth toward him. Which didn’t really make any sense, because Atria had known him longer and Cecilia had only smiled at him that one time.
