"On it," he replied, hitting the keyboard and firing off what appeared to be multiple searches on multiple computers.
The warrior at the conference table who looked like something out of Soldier of Fortune , spoke up next. "Well, nothing short of a miracle, but the Enforcement Agency's Regional Director has actually agreed to a meeting tonight. You want me to mention this newsflash from the dead Breedmate to Director Starkn?"
Lucan seemed to ponder the idea, then he gave a vague shake of his head. "Let's hold off on that for now, Chase. We're not sure precisely what we're looking for yet, and we'll be upsetting the Agency's apple cart bad enough when we tell them we think the population's few remaining Gen Ones are being targeted for assassination."
Chase nodded in agreement.
As the group began talking amongst themselves, Lucan walked over to speak with Rio and Dylan privately.
"I appreciate the information," he told her. "But as valuable as it may prove to be, this compound is no place for a civilian." He glanced at Rio, those silvery eyes studying him closely. "She was given a choice and she made it. You know we can't permit her to stay. Not as a civilian."
"Yeah," Rio said. "I know that."
Lucan waited, obviously tuned in to the fact that something intimate had passed between Dylan and Rio. He cleared his throat. "So, if you've got something to tell me, my man..."
Through the lengthy silence that answered, Dylan unconsciously held her breath. She didn't know what she was waiting for Rio to say: That he was prepared to challenge Lucan's rule? That he loved her and would fight to keep her at his side, no matter what the rest of the Order thought of her?
But he didn't say anything like that.
"I need to talk to Dante," he told Lucan. "And I need to talk to Tess. There's something important I need to ask her."
Lucan considered him through narrowed eyes. "You know what I expect, Rio. You let me know if anything changes."
"Yeah," Rio replied.
When Lucan turned and strode back to converse with Gideon, Rio lifted Dylan's chin on the edge of his hand. "I promised you that I was going to try to help your mother," he reminded her gently. At her nod, he went on. "I don't know if it can be done, but before we can talk about you and I, that question needs to be answered. I know I can't ask you to stay with me when you're hurting to be near your family. I wouldn't ask that of you."
Hope flickered in her chest. "But do you...want to ask me to stay with you?"
He caressed her cheek, smoothing her hair back behind her ear. "God, yes. I want that, Dylan, very much."
Rio bent his head down and kissed her, right there in front of the other warriors. It was brief but so, so sweet. When he drew back, Dylan felt the eyes of the Order on her - on both of them. But it was Rio's eyes that held her spellbound. They were heated with desire and tender affection, the huge irises flashing with sparks of amber light.
"Let me take you back to my quarters and get you something to eat. I have to talk to Dante and Tess, but I won't be long."
Chapter Twenty-nine
Rio's quarters were quiet when he returned to them a short while later. He could smell the trace scents of the other Breedmates who'd been there not long ago to bring her food and keep her company, but it was Dylan's juniper and honey essence that drew him through the empty rooms toward the bedroom suite. The shower was running in the adjacent bathroom, and it didn't take much for him to imagine a lot of rolling steam and sudsy hot water licking her beautiful body.
He approached the partially open door and discovered that the reality was even better than his imagination.
Dylan stood beneath the double heads of the huge walk-in shower, her hands braced on the tiles, spine arched in a graceful curve that caught the drenching blasts of the sprays. Her chin was tilted back, eyes closed. Her fiery hair was soaked to a dark copper shot with gold, clinging to her like wet silk as she rinsed the shampoo from its length.
Frothy white suds ran over the round cheeks of her backside...Cristo, down between them too, into the tight cleft of her ass and onto her long, slender thighs.
Rio licked his lips, his mouth gone suddenly dry. He felt the ache of his emerging fangs, and the answering throb of his c**k as hunger rose within him for this female.
His female, answered an impulse that was purely male, purely Breed.
He wanted her. Wanted her wet and warm beneath him, and he didn't think he could wait too long to have her.
He must have made some kind of noise because Dylan's head came down sharply and turned toward him. Her eyes snapped open, then she smiled at him through the glass...a slow, seductive smile that made him wish he was na**d right now, climbing under the water with her.
But making love in the darkness of a small church alcove was a far different thing than doing it face-to-face, body to body, in the bright yellow light and mirrored expanse of where they were now. In here, he had nowhere to hide. Dylan would see him - all of him, all of the scars she may not have noticed when they were making love in the dark several hours ago.
Shame made him want to douse the dozen recessed lights overhead. He flicked an irritated glance upward, but Dylan's voice distracted him from the thought.
"Rio...join me."
Madre de Dios, but the sound of that husky invitation was almost enough to distract him from all thought completely...except for the one that urged him to take his clothes off and do as she was asking him to.
He met her eyes through the glass of the shower door, his own heavy-lidded and sharp with the flood of swamping amber that was surely turning his pupils into thinnest slivers of black.