He probably shouldn’t have been surprised when her ride turned in front of the very place he intended to go tonight.
But yet he was surprised. Confused too.
More to the point, he was pissed.
When she got out of the taxi in front of the JUSTIS building, Trygg killed the engine of the SUV and climbed out. He was in her face before she took the first step toward the station’s entrance.
Her light-blue eyes widened. “Trygg.”
“Yeah. Me.” His own eyes felt molten with his anger. “You lost or something, Sia? Because I thought I made it pretty fucking clear that I didn’t want to see you anywhere near this operation.”
At least she had the good sense to look nervous as he slowly drank her in, giving her an unrushed head-to-toe appraisal. He couldn’t decide if she was dressed for a date or an after-hours deposition with law enforcement. Neither idea sat well with him.
And he damn sure didn’t want to acknowledge the jab of possessiveness that made his blood race through his veins. She’d been awakening this uninvited need in him since the night before. Longer, if he had the balls to admit it to himself.
This beautiful, headstrong Atlantean female had put him in a twist from the moment she’d arrived in Rome.
“Come with me.”
He didn’t give her the chance to refuse. Taking hold of her by the arm, he steered her back to the SUV and into the passenger seat. He got in on the other side and slammed the door behind him.
“Talk, Sia. Right now. What are you doing here?”
He was furious, but she was far from flinching. She held his accusing gaze. “I came here to get some answers. I have a feeling I might find them in some of Rosa’s personal effects, but they were collected by the officers last night. I can’t rest until I know for sure.”
Her boldness was a striking reminder that he was dealing with a preternatural being whose fury could easily match his own. That Sia was as lovely to look at as her power was formidable only made his arousal spike even stronger.
“What did you intend to do, stroll inside JUSTIS’s evidence room and take them back?” That essentially summed up his own plan, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to cop to that now. “You agreed to stay out of my way, Sia. I thought you understood the seriousness of this situation with Santino.”
“Yes, I do understand.”
She leaned forward as if she expected to do real battle with him—as if she welcomed it. And damn if that didn’t make his fangs throb in his gums with a hunger that went deeper than blood or sustenance.
“But you need to understand something too, Trygg. I don’t answer to you. I don’t answer to the Order, either. You have a mission to carry out. I respect that. After what you told me about this criminal, Santino, I truly hope you succeed. But that doesn’t mean you or anyone else is going to dictate what I can or cannot do. And if I decide to bend to your commands of me, don’t think I do it simply because you will it.”
Trygg relented with a nod. He wasn’t sure if all of this anger and defiance was directed at him or at some other male who had manipulated her to do his bidding. He recalled some talk about her banishment from the colony. Whispers that she had put her faith in someone who had his own treasonous agenda. Sia had been deemed complicit, but it was her affection for the male that had blinded her to the fact that she was being used.
Trygg had some experience with being used too. He had the scars to prove it.
“Those men killed Rosa, Trygg. I want to know why.” Sia reached out, putting her hand on his for the briefest moment, her gaze imploring. “I think you owe me that much. Especially when neither you nor anyone else from the Order can guarantee the shelter is safe so long as Santino and his men are still searching for whatever they think Rosa had. So, don’t ask me to stand by and let the Order handle a problem that’s every bit as much mine as it is yours.”
Fuck. She had a point. Not one he was eager to indulge, but he didn’t think arguing was going to get them anywhere at the moment.
And he didn’t have the time to waste on bickering with her.
If the dead woman had something of worth to Santino—something worth killing for—the Order needed to intercept it. Even if that meant Sia was along for the ride tonight.
He scrubbed his hand over his face. “I pulled the building schematics off the JUSTIS servers this morning. I’ve got the whole place committed to memory, including the layout of the evidence cages.”
Her brows rose. “So, you also intended to come for Rosa’s things tonight? What was your brilliant plan for retrieving them? I can hardly wait to hear it.”
Her lofty tone should have grated, but instead it only made him want to bait her. “I’m a man of action. I prefer to stay fluid when it comes to plans of attack.”
“Ah. I see. Meaning you didn’t actually have a plan in mind, either.”
He shrugged and she let go of a laugh, the first he’d ever heard from her. With her head smugly tilted and her pretty pink lips parted on a smile, she was a temptation. Trygg had an almost irresistible urge to touch her. To kiss her. The soft fall of her platinum hair around her face made him long to feel it between his fingers. Or draped across his bare skin.
Christ.
