Melena exhaled a short sigh. “I’m not trying to minimize the importance of this meeting. I understand what’s at stake—”
“No. You couldn’t possibly,” he replied, finally swiveling his head to look askance at her.
And oh, Lord. If she thought Lazaro Archer was intimidating from across the room, up close he was terrifying. His midnight-blue eyes glittered as dark as obsidian in the moonlight, ruthless under the ebony slashes of his brows. His strong nose and sharp cheekbones gave him a ferocity no human face could carry off, and his squared, rigid jawline seemed hewn of granite.
Only his mouth had an element of softness to it, though right now, as he looked at her, his broad, sensual lips were flattened in an irritated scowl.
“How old are you?” he demanded.
“Twenty-nine.”
He scoffed, his dark gaze giving her a brief once-over. Based on the fierce ticking of a tendon in his already ironclad jaw, she guessed he didn’t particularly like what he saw. “You’ve barely been out of diapers long enough to understand how important it is to have peace between the Breed and humankind. You were only a child when the veil between our world and theirs was torn away. You didn’t wade through the blood in the streets. You didn’t see the death, the brutality inflicted on so many innocents by both sides of this war.” He blew out a curse and shook his head slowly back and forth. “You can’t possibly comprehend how thin the thread is that holds back an even uglier war now. Nor can you know the lengths to which some people will go to rip that thread to tatters.”
“You’re talking about Opus Nostrum,” Melena said quietly. A flicker of surprise in those narrowing indigo eyes now. “As my father’s personal assistant, he trusts me completely with all of his GNC business. I collect data for him. I summarize reports. I attend most of his meetings, as well as compose the majority of his speeches. I’m also his daughter, so of course, I’m well aware of the attempted bombing at the summit he attended a couple of weeks ago. I know Opus wanted to take a lot of lives at that event—Breed and human. I also know the Order’s primary objective now is to unmask the members of Opus’s secret cabal and take the terror group down.”
Lazaro grunted but seemed less than impressed. “If you came out here to recite your credentials, Miss Walsh, let me spare you the effort.”
“You all but challenged me to tell you,” she pointed out.
“And all you’ve done is confirm what I already knew about you. I have a job to do here too, and you’ve been standing in my way all night.” He glanced back out at the water. “I’m sure your ample charms will find a far more receptive audience back in the salon.”
Ample charms? Was that a cut on the fact that she actually had curves and a figure, or could he possibly mean he found her even a little bit interesting?
“I didn’t come out here to...Jesus, never mind,” she stammered. “Forgive me for disturbing you.” Frustrated, Melena pushed back from the railing. She started to pivot away, then paused. Glanced over at him one last time, her own anger spiking. “We’ve met, you know. You don’t remember me.”
Why she felt stung by that she really didn’t want to consider. When he didn’t respond after a long moment, she decided it was probably for the best. God knew, she would be better off forgetting the night she nearly died too.
She turned and headed back across the deck.
“I remember a reckless child doing something stupid,” he muttered from behind her. “A silly little girl, being somewhere she damned well didn’t belong.”
Rather like the way he seemed to regard her now, she thought, bristling at the comment.
“I was seven,” Melena replied, swinging a look over her shoulder at him. Lazaro hadn’t moved from his position, was still staring out at the black water. “I was seven years old, and you saved my life. I’d be dead if not for you.”
“Saved you? Christ.” He exhaled sharply, as if the idea annoyed him. “I’m not in the habit of saving anyone.”
Something about the way he said that, the quieting of his tone, and the almost raw edge to his words made her drift back toward him. She rubbed a chill from her arms as the recollection of her accident washed over her with fresh terror.
“Well, you did save me. You pulled me out of that frozen pond and you saved my life.” He didn’t look her way at all, hardly acknowledged she had returned. “My family was in Boston, visiting at your Darkhaven. A bunch of us kids were playing outside that night, mostly boys—your grandsons and young nephews and my older brother, Derek. Unlike me, they were all Breed, and as the only girl with them besides, it took all I had to keep up.”
Sometimes she felt as though she were still competing, still struggling to prove her worth in everything she did. She realized she held others up to her same impossible standards too. Her parents had pointed it out to her on numerous occasions. So had more than a few of her exes.
Now here she was, making a point to remind this arrogant man of the stupidest thing she’d ever done in her life.
Melena let out a soft sigh as she stood next to Lazaro once more. “The boys didn’t want me there with them at the pond, but I followed them anyway. They started daring each other to walk farther and farther out onto the ice.”
“Idiots, all of them,” Lazaro grumbled. “Winter came late that year. The pond hadn’t yet frozen toward the center.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “And it was very dark that night. I didn’t realize the ice wouldn’t hold me until I was already too far out. I stepped onto a thin section, and it broke away underneath me.”
The curse Lazaro uttered was ripe, violent. But the look he finally swung on her was oddly tender, haunted. To her complete shock, he reached out and grazed the pad of his thumb over her scarred eyebrow. “You’d hit your head on something.”
“The edge of the ice was jagged,” she murmured, her throat going a bit dry for the mere second his touch had lingered on her face. When his hand was gone, she shivered, though not from anything close to a chill. “I went down very quickly. God, the water was so cold. I could hardly move my limbs. I panicked. I couldn’t see anything. When I tried to swim back up, I realized I was trapped under the ice.”
Lazaro was listening intently now, his expression impossible to read. His aura forbid her too, the dull gray haze blurring the edges of his broad shoulders and strong arms, haloing his dangerously handsome face like a brooding cloud against the darkness of the night that surrounded him.
“I remember everything started to go black,” Melena said. “And then...there you were. In the water with me, pulling me to the surface. You dived into that frigid pond and searched until you found me. Then you brought me back to your Darkhaven.”