Aria reached for Lucas, but stopped when he again flinched away from her hand.
“Hey,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.” All she wanted to do was follow Nikolai, but if that wasn’t in the cards, she didn’t want to stay here.
Lucas pushed off the wall and headed farther into the apartment. “I just have to grab a few things. Then we’re out of here for good.”
He hugged the living room’s periphery, avoiding the gruesome remains. With her mind spinning and her thoughts centered on Nikolai, Aria followed him into the bedroom.
As Lucas grabbed a rucksack and started packing, she stroked Mai, who had moved up beneath her hair. Aria’s eyes fell on the bed, with its rumpled sheets. And an image of Lucas lying tangled among them, smooth brown skin over taut muscles, flashed through her brain.
It zinged through her, leaving her heart pounding and her knees weak. Naked. Tantalizing. But also vulnerable? Why did she think that? Lucas was one of the most capable people she knew.
She took a shaky breath and wrenched her gaze away to scan the remainder of the room. It was bare of the things most people cluttered their personal spaces with. How much time had Lucas spent here? She itched to ask...
He dug around in drawers as she debated. Her eyes, as restless as her thoughts, drifted to the heavy-duty hasp and lock on the door, and past it to the picture on the wall—then they snapped back to the lock. Her brain ticked over as she stared. It was on theinside. Her eyes dropped to the knob—the wood of the frame had splintered, as though it had been forced open.
A frisson of ice traveled down her spine. She stared at the lock, and the damage, as all the sensible and safe explanations fizzled and died.
So far as she could see, the only thing of value here was Lucas himself.
The room grew quiet, and she tore her gaze from the hasp. His hands frozen amid his clothing in a dresser drawer, Lucas stared at her. His eyes flared emerald, and his lean body vibrated with barely leashed tension.
Aria lost the ability to breathe. The stance, and the wary expression—he was a wild creature, this Morph, beautiful, untamed. And untouchable, no matter how much her fingers itched to do so.
Her skin flushed.Dammit.Where was her stoic inner warrior, now? She cleared her throat and made the attempt. “Ready to go?”
The elusive eyes skittered away from her. “Yep. Never been more so.”
Aria turned to leave, and he followed. They walked past the Sabres, busy at their grisly task, and out the door.
27
As he followed Aria into the hall, Lucas fought for calm.
His body was a mess, but it was what he’d picked up from Nikolai that had his mind spinning. Lucas had thought he was going to die, and Aria with him, as the big Liberi lost all control. If the Watchers hadn’t intervened...
If he’d required any more proof that Nikolai needed to be locked up, that would have been it. The Liberi was even more dangerous than Lucas had imagined.
But lying there on the floor, he’d suddenly been transported inside the big guy’s mind. He’d witnessed the desperate struggle for control. The despair and loathing for the damage he’d done. And the terror of what the Watchers had planned for him.
Nikolai had contemplated fighting his way free. But then, he’d rejected it, based not only on the devastation he would wreak by doing so—but also because of what he’d felt for Aria.
It all provided unwelcome insight into the psyche of a man Lucas didn’t want to empathize with. He was terrified of Nikolai, and jealous of Aria’s attraction to him.
The last thing he wanted was to admire him.
Yet he couldn’t help himself. Because Nikolai had gone with the Watchers willingly, knowing they were going to lock him up. Would Lucas have done the same, in his shoes?
He didn’t know.
Lucas sighed as he slung his bag of stuff over his shoulder and gritted his teeth when it brushed over the spine hairs. Unfortunately, once triggered, his body didn’t relax again. Every one of his sensory hairs stood as fully erect as the rest of him, continually funneling lightning zings of sensory electricity through his entire body and elevating him to an excruciating level of heightened awareness.
As he and Aria took to the stairs, his eyes kept riveting with single-minded fascination on the roll of Aria’s hips. Without her cloak, she was a tantalizing vision—the scales hugged her curves like sin. At least the sensory overload distracted him from Nikolai, but it also fed into his general state of mental chaos as they left the building.
A small crowd had gathered outside. Curious eyes rotated their way. Aria pushed right past them as though they didn’t exist, and the crowd, sensing the determined predator within her, parted.
Ducking through the humans, Lucas gaped at the trees that lined the boulevard. It was fall, and the leaves lay thick against the buildings. But the tree branches nearest to the apartment building were now blasted bare, the tips blackened and contorted.
They were dead, or dying, just like Sadie was dead. Ripped apart before his eyes. He honestly didn’t know how he should feel about that. She’d raised him. And betrayed him, in pretty much every way one person could betray another.
