“No. That’s not something I could detect with my gift.” She met his gaze solemnly. “I don’t know any of those answers, I swear to you.”
“And the scarab, Nova?”
“What about it?”
“What does the mark mean? There’s no gang known to law enforcement that uses that symbol, so who does it belong to?”
She shook her head mutely, pivoting from him to pace a few steps away. “It’s not a gang. It’s a family symbol. My family.”
He walked up behind her. Gently rested his palms on her shoulders. “Tell me their name, Nova.”
“Now, you ask too much,” she murmured. “I ran away from them a long time ago, for good reason. I won’t speak the name and let that evil touch me again.”
Mathias wanted to press the issue, persuade her to give up the rest of her secrets. But she was trembling under his light touch. The tough-talking, hard-looking woman was shaking like a fragile leaf.
He coaxed her around to face him. “It’s okay. We’ll figure it out.”
“I’d like to believe that,” she whispered. “But I just don’t see how.”
Mathias brushed his thumb over her lips, silencing her worries. For now, at least--for a moment--he didn’t want her to be afraid. She stared up into his eyes, and he knew there was nothing he wouldn’t do to keep this woman safe.
“We’ll figure it out,” he told her again, softer this time.
Then he bent his head down to hers and kissed her.
She didn’t resist him, didn’t push him away with defensive words or protesting hands. No, she wrapped her arms around him as he drew her deeper into his embrace. She kissed him back, with the same heat and need that was coursing through his own veins.
Mathias stroked his hand up the inked sleeve of her arm, then caught her nape in his palm while his tongue tested the giving seam of her lips. She parted for him, took him in on a quiet gasp.
He didn’t know how he’d managed to let the moment go from one of confrontation and mistrust to one of fierce, undeniable desire.
The comfort he’d meant to offer had incinerated, melted into something powerful. Something he wasn’t noble enough to resist.
He only knew that he wanted her.
And if he didn’t find the will to put the brakes on soon, there would be no turning back.
~ ~ ~
She wanted to push him away.
She wanted to tear her mouth from his, retreat to the other side of the room, out of his arms.
She wanted to scream, but it wasn’t terror or panic making her senses explode with the need to escape. It was desire.
Raw, hungry, impossible desire.
Something she had never known, had never expected to feel so powerfully. She could hardly contain it, the need Mathias’s kiss stirred inside her.
She could hardly breathe, hardly think straight, for the way it coiled around her, stripping away her defenses. Removing each carefully placed brick in the wall she’d built around herself ages ago.>Sloane chuckled. “We’ll find her. The employee who let her in isn’t cooperating, but we saw the woman’s hands on the feed. She’s got tats all over her. Won’t take long to ID the bitch just based on the markings we recovered from the video. Already got some of my men working on that. I’ll be joining up with them as soon as the sun sets. You and your team care to lend a hand on this tonight?”
“Can’t,” he blurted. “We’ve got a...got a lead on another Rogue’s nest down in Lambeth that bears looking into. Once my squad wraps up, I can send them your way.”
“Nah, don’t worry about it. We’ve got this one covered.” Sloane chuckled. “I can think of worse things than conducting body scans of the females working the area tattoo shops. You go have fun with your Rogue hunt. I’ll be in touch if we shake anything loose tonight.”
Sloane hung up, and Mathias stood there for a long moment, staring at the reflection of his scowling face in the mirror.
The face of a man who had just lied to an old friend, and who was about to defy his pledge to the Order by sending his team of warriors on a wild goose chase down in Lambeth, if only to give Mathias time enough to warn Nova that whatever her secrets were, they were about to catch up with her.