Page 31 of Crimson Mate
Flashes of tracking Conrad through the beautiful city makes my chest tight. “I missed him there too,” I say, unable to keep the disappointment from my tone. “I’d been so close, too. He actually waved to me with a smile on his face like this was all a fun game to him.” I lean farther back in my chair, raking my fingers through my hair.
“This isn't your fault,” Zachariah says, looking at me with sympathetic eyes.
“Well, from where I’m sitting, it sounds like I'm the shittiest huntress that's ever existed.” I shake my head, anger over taking the guilt offering a momentary relief. Anger I’m used to dealing with, guilt not so much. “I just don't knowhow,” I say, more to myself than to Zachariah, but he listens nonetheless. “I've never had a target evade me for so long. Especially when I catch his scent. I don't know how to explain it. It's like I'll see him, then I'll blink and he's gone. No trace of his scent, no trace of his face, no trace of anything. Almost like I'm chasing a ghost.”
“It doesn't help that you’ve been working alone,” he says.
“While the huntresses have thinned out over the centuries, there are only a handful of us left. You know what that's like.”
“I know,” he says. “But now you're not alone. Now you have the hunters on your side, and the king and everyone at his disposal. We’re going to catch him and we are going to stop all this nonsense.”
He’s so confident in the way he says it, I almost believe him.
“Ever the optimistic leader,” I say without a hint of sharpness. “Some things haven't changed.”
“And some things have,” he says cocking a brow, his eyes dancing in a way that says his mind is on anythingbutthe mission.
A flush races over my skin, and my eyes betray me as they dart to the right where I can all too well practicallytastewhat he'd done to me against those books.
I shift in my chair, forcing myself to concentrate on the task at hand. I glance down at my list, and then back at him. “Is someone researching the Tanaka bloodline in Kyoto?”
“Ajax and Dagon are on it.”
“And the Hassans of Cairo?” I ask, eyes flaring slightly as Zachariah shifts from his seat, coming around the table to lean and look down at me. “Talon and Cassandra.”
“What about the Lowes out of London?” I asked, shuddering as his fingers graze down my arm. “The king's highlander and his mate, Valor.” He gently tugs me out of the chair, bringing me flush against him, his hands cupping either side of my face.
“That leaves Edgemont,” I say, doing my best to stay focused. “There are at least four ancient bloodlines with homesteads here,” I continue, my eyes fluttering closed for a moment as he gently kisses my cheek, then the other, his fingers gliding into my hair at the base of my neck.
“Yes,” he says, his lips grazing down the side of my neck and then over my collarbone.
The sensation is like liquid fire, igniting every single one of my senses, prickling my instincts at the same time. My heart picks up speed in my chest, my hands automatically splaying against his body.
“Edgemont will be our best chance to lay a trap,” I continue. “We should send recon teams out to each location.”
“Already done,” he says, his lips making his way back up to the underside of my jaw, and then to the spot just beneath my ear that has me arching against him.
“We should be working,” I say, but even I know it sounds like a weak argument.
“We are,” Zachariah says, repeating the same process on the other side, completely turning me liquid. “We have been for the past nine hours,” he says. “We’re allowed to take a break.”
“Easy for you to say when you're not the one who’s been epically failing at this mission for the last six months,” I say, still arching to give him better access to my neck.
He draws back, catching my gaze. “It isn't your fault and you haven't been failing. He's evading all of us, just as Samuel has been. It only further makes me believe they're working together and trust me, Iunderstandthat guilt and that responsibility, but you no longer have to bear any of it alone.”
My heart fills with something like hope at his words, and I swallow the tangle of emotion in my throat.
I want to believe him so badly.
I want to fall into the fantasy he's spinning where we get to live happily ever after, but it's hard to believe when I've lived with a broken heart for so damn long.
No. Believing in anything involving a future with Zachariah can only lead to heartbreak. I need to stick to the present, to what feels good rightnow.
“So about that break,” I say, not acknowledging the monumental show of emotion he just gave me. I trail one finger down the center of his chest, arching against him again to show him exactly what kind of break I'm referring to.
A low growl rumbles in his chest and he clings to me tighter.
“Tell me where you want go, and I'll take you there,” he says.