When they dropped softly onto the ground on the other side, Aric found it difficult to let her go. Their hearts were racing in similar tempo, a heavy throb that couldn’t be blamed entirely on adrenaline. He could feel her blood rushing through her veins as he held her. Everything Breed in him responded to that steady drum of her pulse.
Everything male in him was painfully, rigidly aware of the abundance of lush curves and firm muscle now pressed deliciously against the length of him.
Kaya stared at him, the darkening of her deep brown eyes making her face look even softer, less the courageous, capable partner and more the strong, beautiful woman he was doing his damnedest to resist.
He cleared his throat around the emerging tips of his fangs. “You can thank me now,” he murmured, unable to resist the sardonic jab.
If he didn’t make a joke guaranteed to piss her off, he was probably going to kiss her right then and there.
She backed out of his loose hold and crossed her arms, though not quite fast enough to conceal the way her pebbled nipples pressed against the snug bodice of her dress. “Now that we’re half a mile in the woods, got any brilliant plans for how we’re going get back to the command center?”
“Only thing we can do. Hike another couple of miles inland. There’s an old logging road that cuts into the forest up there.” He fetched his phone from the pocket of his suit pants. “I’m calling in to base to send someone to meet us there for an evac. Then you and I are going to have to face Lucan Thorne and Niko to explain why we’re coming back from this mission empty-handed.”
“We’re not.”
“What do you mean?” He frowned at her, already holding the device to his ear. “We’re not, what?”
“Returning empty-handed. I got what the Order wanted from Mercier. Not only that, I got a partial visual on an Opus member. He was here at the reception. I was chasing him down just before that guard confronted me.”
“Holy shit.” Aric raked a hand over his head. “You serious?”
She nodded. “We’ve got enough on Mercier to satisfy headquarters, and we have a new lead on Opus Nostrum right here in Montreal.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I just did.” She gave him a wry look over her shoulder as she started walking ahead of him, the tilt of her mouth smug. “You can thank me now.”
CHAPTER 8
Four hours later, Kaya’s bravado had evaporated as she stepped out of the shower in her private quarters back at the command center and wrapped herself in a thick terry robe. The soles of her feet were a bruised, abraded mess after the narrow escape through the woods outside the Rousseau estate, but it was her pride that stung the most after enduring a long debriefing session upon her return to base with Aric.
The two of them had been interviewed separately by Nikolai in the war room and Lucan Thorne reporting in via video from D.C. Kaya had done her best to give a thorough, honest account of the operation that had started out so well, then ended in gunfire, death, and chaos.
All because of her.
She could only imagine what Aric told the Order commanders in his recount of their mission. He’d been summoned first, and had been dismissed from the meeting room before she’d been brought in to tell her side of the story. Not that she would blame him if he threw her under the bus. She couldn’t have foreseen her unexpected confrontation by the guard, but she damn well could have handled it better than she had. Now, instead of a surgical mission to extract intel and cover their tracks afterward, they’d been the cause of a spectacle making headlines all over the world.
Kaya groaned. Her humiliation only deepened when she thought of the awful news coverage Niko and Lucan had played for her during her debriefing. Multiple phone cameras had captured the pandemonium. Reception guests screaming in terror. Tables and chairs toppled over as if a tornado had swept through the garden. Uniformed security officers brandishing weapons as they corralled elegantly dressed attendees like cattle while still other guards combed the grounds for an unknown killer at large.
It was only by some miracle--and Aric’s shadow-bending--that they managed to avoid being detected, or worse, taken into custody.
Although the two grim Order leaders had been impossible to read during their questioning of her, Kaya had been preparing herself for the worst. Her duffel bag was already packed with her few personal belongings. On her bed was a thin sweater and pair of jeans she planned to wear for the moment when someone eventually came to escort her off the property.
She flinched when a knock sounded on her door not even five minutes after she’d slipped into her clothes. Apparently, they weren’t going to waste any time cutting her loose.
“It’s open,” she said, walking gingerly on her bare feet to the closet to retrieve her boots.
She’d been hoping Nikolai might send Mira to deliver the bad news, but when she turned around to see who’d come in, her stomach did a little flip to find Aric standing there.
“Thought I’d come by and see how it went for you with Niko and Lucan.”
He looked incredible, freshly showered and dressed in a muscle-hugging black T-shirt and workout pants that rode enticingly low on his trim hips. His golden-brown hair was still damp, the ends of the thick waves curling at his nape and over his arresting leaf-green eyes.
If he’d come out of his meeting with the same feeling of discouragement that she had, he certainly didn’t show it. Cool and calm as ever, he leaned one bulky shoulder against the door jamb as he studied her.
When she didn’t immediately answer his question about her debriefing, his glance
