Midnight Rising (Midnight Breed 4)

"Never? Not even...before, with Eva?" Dylan hated asking him to compare them, yet she really needed to know the answer. When Rio was quiet for a moment, her heart began to sink. "I'm sorry. You don't have to tell me. I don't mean to make this awkward for you."

He shook his head, brows pinched together. "Eva was sultry and flirtatious. She was a very beautiful woman. Every male who saw her wanted her - Breed and human alike. I was astonished that she noticed me. Even more so when she made it clear that she wanted to be my mate. She pursued me like she did anything else she set her sights on, and my ego knew no bounds. Things cooled between us a bit after I joined the Order. Eva resented sharing me with my calling as a warrior."

Dylan listened, awash in a very unpleasant state of jealousy for what she was hearing, and regret that she had brought this feeling on herself by forcing him to talk about the woman he'd loved before.

"After the disaster of what happened with Eva, I wasn't looking to open myself up to another woman. But you, Dylan..." He picked up a strand of her hair, following the golden-red light in it as the silky wave curled around his finger. "You are pure flame. I touch you and I ignite. I kiss you and I burn to have more. You consume me...like no other woman before you, and, I am certain, like no other ever could again."

She rose up and kissed him, holding his face in her hands. When she drew back, she couldn't keep from blurting out just how much he meant to her. "I love you, Rio. It scares me to death to say it out loud, but I do. I love you."

"Ah, Dios, " he whispered roughly. "Dylan...I have been falling in love with you since the very beginning. How you could love me, the way I am now, I don't know..."

"The way you are now," Dylan said, slowly shaking her head in wonder, "the way you look at me, the way you touch me, how could I not love you? You, Rio. Just as you are now."

She caressed him with all the emotion she felt for him, letting her fingers skate gently down the rugged left side of the handsome face she would never tire of seeing.

She hardly noticed the scars now. Oh, tragically, there was no reversing what he'd been through. The evidence of the hell he'd survived would always be there, on his face and on his body. But when Dylan looked at Rio, she saw his courage, his strength.

She saw his honor, and to her eyes, he was the most beautiful man she'd ever seen.

"I love you, Eleuterio de la Noche Atanacio. With all my heart."

Something fiercely tender flashed across his features. With a tight sound caught in his throat, he crushed her against him and simply held her there.

"More than anything, I want your happiness," he murmured beside her ear. "I know that your family - your mother's well-being - means the world to you. I know that you need to be with her."

"Yes," Dylan whispered. She drew out of his embrace and met his gaze. "I can't leave her now, Rio. I just...I can't."

He nodded. "I know. I understand that you need to be there for her, Dylan. But there is a selfish part of me that would try to convince you that this is where you belong now. With me, bonded in blood, as my mate."

Oh, she liked the sound of that. She recalled quite vividly how incredible it had been to have Rio feed from her vein. She wanted that again...now, when the love she felt for him was overflowing her heart.>Dylan was seeing all of that ugliness now.

He waited for her eyes to lift.

He waited to see pity in her face, dreaded that he might see revulsion.

"Rio," she murmured thickly.

Her head came up slowly and her eyes met his. Her peridot gaze was the color of a night-dark forest now, her pupils large beneath the heavy fall of her lashes. There was no pity there, nothing but dusky, feminine desire.

Rio wanted to throw his head back and shout his relief, but the sight of Dylan's parted lips, her hungry eyes drinking him in so wantonly, robbed him of his voice.

She opened the glass door of the shower. "Get in here," she demanded, her mouth curling into the most incredibly sexy smile. "Get in here...right now."

He grinned and stepped inside, joining her under the warm spray.

"That's better," Dylan purred as she wrapped her arms around him and pulled him down into a deep, wet kiss.

She felt so good against him, all that slick, hot skin, all those exquisite curves. Rio held her close, burrowing his fingers into her wet hair, feeling the warm beat of her pulse against his wrist where it rested at the side of her neck.

"I want to taste you," she said, already breaking away from his mouth to kiss a slow trail down his throat, to the hollow at its base, then along the line of his shoulder. She sank lower still, playing her tongue over the muscled slabs of his chest, teasing his male nipples into tight little buds. "You taste good, Rio. I could eat you up."

He groaned as she let her mouth travel down his sternum, nipping at him as she went along. Her kiss got less playful as she moved toward his scarred left side.

Rio sucked in his breath. "Don't," he rasped, awkward panic seizing him when he thought of her getting anywhere near those hideous marks. She glanced up at him in question and he wanted to die from shame. "It's all right. You don't have to..."

"Will it hurt you if I touch you there?" she asked gently, her fingers skating so carefully over the ruined skin. "Does that hurt at all, Rio?"

He managed a weak shake of his head.