After the warriors went off to carry out their orders from Lucan, Zael found himself pulled into a conversation with Dylan and Jenna. As much as he wanted to give both women his full attention, there was another female who was currently driving him to distraction.
It didn’t help matters that she was gone.
Brynne left the room as soon as the meeting had ended. Left it as abruptly as if her hair was on fire, to be more precise. No explanation. Not even a glance in his direction before she slipped away and didn’t return.
Was something wrong?
Where the hell was she?
Finally, he couldn’t take not having those answers. With vaguely murmured excuses, he slipped out of the room and headed into the corridor at a determined pace. Maybe she was with Tavia and the other women. Then again, headstrong investigator Brynne might just as likely be in the technology center with Gideon, persuading him to brief her on all of the intel he was gathering on Opus.
“If you’re looking for Brynne, she’s not down here.” Carys came out of another room up ahead in the corridor, accompanied by a dark-haired, hard-looking Breed male. The immense vampire held her hand possessively, yet tenderly, leaving no question that this was Rune, the cage-fighting nightmare she had recently taken as her mate.
“Did you see where she went?” Zael didn’t even attempt to dodge the truth. It wouldn’t have done much good with Carys anyway, considering what she’d walked in on a short while ago.
More accurately, what she had almost walked in on.
She pointed to the elevator that went to the residential areas upstairs.
“Thanks, Carys.”
“Good luck,” she called after him with a giggle as he all but sprinted in that direction.
Zael didn’t bother waiting for the lift. Using the small bit of crystal on the thong at his wrist, he closed his eyes and pictured the third floor corridor. Light flashed behind his closed lids.
When he opened them a moment later, he was standing in front of the door to Brynne’s suite. He knocked on the panel and waited.
And waited some more….
“Brynne?” He knocked harder now, his preternatural hearing picking up the sounds of quiet movement inside. He tried the knob and swore when he found it locked from inside. “Brynne, is everything okay? Open up.”
“Go away, Zael.”
His concern for her well-being lessened somewhat when he registered the note of annoyance in her voice. “Open the door and tell me that. Talk to me.”
“I don’t want to talk you. I’m leaving. I’m going back to London.”
Like hell she was. Zael gave the doorknob a light twist and the lock tumbled open.
Brynne gasped when she glanced up in midstride and saw him enter the room uninvited. Her look of outrage turned to fury as he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
“How dare you! How did you—”
He held up his wrist, the one with the Atlantean bracelet on it. “Your kind isn’t the only one with its special skills.”
“What do you want, Zael?” She frowned, folding her arms militantly across her chest. “And just what the fuck do you think you’re doing, barging into my private quarters like this?”
At the moment, the only thing he was doing was staring at her, slack-jawed and instantly aroused. She stood in front of him half-dressed in just her white button-down shirt she’d worn that night in London. Her long legs were bare, exposing the delicate swirls and flourishes of her Breed dermaglyphs that tracked down her slender thighs. The silky stems with those pretty, feminine glyphs seemed to go on forever.
Beneath the loose hem of her blouse, he caught a tantalizing glimpse of skimpy black panties and more creamy skin. God, she was beautiful. Exotic and strong and exquisitely female.
She was also visibly pissed off. At him?
“What’s going on here, Brynne?”
She stood her ground, glowering at him. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m getting dressed.”
From where he was standing, it looked like she was getting undressed. And there were certain parts of his anatomy that approved of that idea very enthusiastically.