Page 6 of Pride
Before he alighted, he sent his senses outward, testing for sin. Pride wasn’t always an accurate sin for which to locate bodies, not like he assumed envy was. Some people never felt pride a day in their lives, but almost always someone was envious. Even a little. Based on the tiny squirm in his gut, there were few people in the building and they were feeling good about their work. Some were floors up, and some were down, but only a handful of workers in the entire building. None on this level.
Finding computer parts was quick and easy. He put them into a backpack he carried over his good shoulder and then left a note for the administrator that he’d taken them for a new classified project he was working on. That’s all they needed to know.
Then he headed up to the top executive floor. May as well see how his assistant had handled things in his absence. As the elevator rose, he took the opportunity to fine tune his new abilities and stretched his hearing.
The door opened with a hushed whoosh and he stepped out slowly, allowing his senses to adjust. He picked apart the sounds coming to him. The cranking of the elevator. A ticking from a machine. The whirr of the servers on the level below. Footsteps. And a woman humming. He froze. The backpack slipped from his fingers as his every instinct stilled and he focused on the voice. It was deep, throaty, and controlled. Jazzy. To hold a perfect beat like that, and for him to recognize the style intonations, she was good. Maybe she could sing, too.
That husky tone traveled straight to his cock, stirring it to life.Need more of her.His head canted to the side. The humming came from his office. The only woman who frequented there was Alice, the dowdy, freckle-faced redhead who wore big round spectacles and giggle-snorted at ill-timed moments.
He took a step. Stopped. Listened. Then took another step. This floor was made up of multiple executive offices and the sound echoed.
The tune was light, fun, and spellbinding, yet toward the end a haunting tone took over. He used to frequent jazz clubs a few years back when beginning his vigilante cover as a playboy philanthropist. Eventually he graduated to more high-profile clubs in order to appear in the society pages before sneaking out the back door, dressing in his Deadly Seven battle gear and hitting the streets as Pride. He smiled at those early days. Taking down cocky, self-assured criminals had been so satisfying. But those first clubs… they would always hold a special place in his heart. They were the places he’d chosen because he liked them, not because it suited his cover.
The humming stopped.
Moving on quiet feet, drawn like a magnet, Parker came to his open office door. The lights were on. Walking around the room was Alice dressed in skintight yoga attire. His assistant. Curves. Lots of them. It was all he could see. And not just the type of feminine curves from sitting in an office all day, but the kind from working out at the gym. Relentlessly. Her long locks were swept back from her face into a tousled knot. Her cheeks were flushed. No spectacles in sight. Suddenly she laughed at something, probably a thought, and a smile brightened her face into something so extraordinary he almost thought she was someone else. He’d never seen her like this. His mind couldn’t compute.
There she was filing away a stack of papers, and there he was standing in the doorway, his jaw on the floor.
I should say something.But then she started wiggling her rear in time to the tune and his pulse quickened, tightening his skin in all the wrong places.
There was only Alice until the last note died, she closed the filing cabinet, and limped down the length of his long marble desk to collect a cleaning cloth.
Limped.
The breath knocked out of him.
Limped. The word bounced around in his head. Limped, limped,limped.Just like someone else had. Just like the Sinner he’d fought on the roof. Just like… his mate. Out of habit, he checked the yin-yang tattoo on his inner wrist—the one created in bio-indicated ink. Too much sin in his body and it would turn all black. Not enough sin, and it would go all white. Both unbalanced states could mean disaster for his control. If he touched his mate, his balance would reset instantly.
But he had no wrist. He had no arm. It had been pulverized. Because ofher.
“You.”The word barked out of his mouth.
Alice didn’t jolt or startle like a normal person. She behaved exactly like one trained as an assassin would. She stilled completely. He could virtually see her deciding whether to fight or flee. But she surprised him again. She did neither. Her smile brightened.
“Mr. Lazarus,” she laughed, her hand fluttering to her throat. “You surprised me. I didn’t expect you in at this hour.”
The woman lied so seamlessly, no wonder she’d crept under his radar for—he cast his mind back to when he’d employed Alice—almost two years ago. Fury heated his face, and he took another step closer.
“Mr. Lazarus?”
“Cut the shit, Alice. I know who you are. Who you really are.”
4
Parker Lazarus was here,in his office, after midnight. Alice stared at the man, her feet frozen to the floor. He hadn’t been in for months, and even though she’d wanted him in, she hadn’t really expected it. She’d been fully prepared to go back to the Sisterhood, ending her mission. Her Sinner unit waited right now in a cathedral in Cardinal City, deciding the timeframe for their retreat.
They stared at each other, both stunned into silence. No matter how long it went between seeing him, or even when she saw him daily, the full effect of his presence never dimmed. Tall, muscular, imposing. His existence sucked the air from the room and stole her breath. His beard was trimmed to perfection and accentuated a jaw cut from steel. Imperious golden eyes seemed to know everything. Not a wrinkle on his suit. Not a strand of long auburn hair flying out of place. It was as though the very air was afraid of disturbing him.
Before the Sisterhood assigned Alice this mission, she had done her due diligence on the man.Know thy enemy and know thyself,or so one of her old martial arts teachers had told her. Basically, to know what tactic would work best on him, she had to know him inside out. Knowing him meant she knew her own limits facing him. She’d dug deeper than the society pages and found a man who worked relentlessly, who rarely dated beyond one-night stands, and who was caught partying or feeding his adrenaline habit, but never captured out of control. She’d known from the very first moment she’d met him that seduction wouldn’t work on him.
Maybe that was when she’d first started to fall in love with him.
Parker wasn’t an easy target. She could have picked any of the other Deadly Seven to get close to, but they all respected him and followed his lead. If she decided they were a threat, she had to take him out first. And if she decided they could be trusted, he was the first port of call for an alliance. But she had to gain his trust, and to do that, she had to work just as hard as he did.
For two years her plan had worked. She’d simultaneously flown under the radar and gathered intel on his family from the inside. She knew what kind of flowers his mother liked. She knew what kind of income his youngest brother made at his tattoo business. She knew that his sister Sloan didn’t like pineapple on her pizza. Alice knew the Parker Lazarus the world loved was not the man who used to walk into this office every day. The minute he thought no one was watching, he dispensed with showmanship. He loosened his tie.
Under increasing pressure from the Sisterhood, Alice had gone out on a limb and took a few Sinners to help the Deadly Seven when they’d needed backup the most. She’d made the best of a bad situation and passed Parker the olive branch. But he’d thrown it back in her face. Her intention had always been to reveal her identity on top of that warehouse roof, but the moment he saw her masked Sinner uniform, he’d tried to kill her.
