Kellan rubbed his injured throat. Summoned his voice past the acid burn of his humiliation in front of Mira and looked up at the boy who dealt so efficiently in death. "Teach me everything you know."
TAVIA LAY in a pleasure-drowned daze, her limbs tangled with Chase's in the middle of the king- size bed in their room at the Order's compound. She'd lost track of how many times they'd made love. They'd started after the snowball fight of the night before, then picked up again after spending most of the day apart - Tavia with Elise and some of the other Breedmates, sharing meals and pleasant conversation; Chase sequestered in private meetings with Lucan, Gideon, Tegan, and the rest of the warriors.
Now another night was inching toward dawn on the other side of the shuttered windows and Tavia was blissfully, thoroughly spent.
Eyes closed, caught in a lazy, sated doze, she felt him shift slightly beside her on the bed. He kissed her eyelids, one then the other, his lips gentle even as his arousal nudged her hip in blatant demand.
"Mmm," she moaned, her mouth curving as she lifted her heavy lids. "Good morning. You're up early."
"If you're anywhere near me, guaranteed, I'm always going to be up."
She looked into his dark blue gaze and smiled. "Good thing I have Breed genetics too. Otherwise I'd never be able to keep up with you."
"Yeah, but I'd make sure you had fun trying." He kissed her, long and slow, rousing her senses into a heated rush of wakefulness. "Merry Christmas, beauty."
"Christmas?" She thought back on the days and realized it really was. "Never in a million years could I have guessed I'd wake up naked in a vampire's arms on Christmas morning." He grinned. "Santa Claus has already been here and everything. Want to see what he brought for you?"
She laughed. "Is it a big present?"
His eyes gleamed devilishly, lit with amber sparks. "Very big." "With a big red bow on it?"
He glanced down and shrugged, his mouth quirked in a sardonic smile that showed just the barest tips of his fangs. "How about a jaunty cap instead?"
She was still giggling as he kissed her again. When he slid into the wet cleft of her body, her giggles turned to sighs and then to moans of pleasure. He'd learned how to play every inch of her by now, and he was ruthless in his seduction. She surrendered to him wholly, crying out as he brought her to a swift, fevered orgasm.
"My God," she panted, her own fangs filling her mouth as he stoked her toward another shattering release. "Merry Christmas to me."
His answering growl was one of pure masculine pride. "You should see what I do for birthdays."
She laughed drowsily and gazed up at him. The sight of him this close and intimate felt so familiar now, so right. The feel of his naked body pressed against hers was as natural to her as her own breath, her own heartbeat.
And the warm knot that squeezed so tightly in her breast, and traveled lower still, into her very core, was an ache she hoped never to lose.
Deep down, she wondered if she should be afraid.
Because somehow, she realized she had fallen in love with Sterling Chase.
CHAPTER THIRTY
THE DREAM ROARED UP on Jenna from out of nowhere.
Asleep in Brock's arms, she'd been in and out of awareness, drifting from one fragile dreamscape to another.
Then came the blanket of dark gray fog. It swept her away without warning, taking her far from her conscious mind, into that of another being.
The Ancient.
The alien part of her that was merging with her humanity, strengthening the part of her that had once been mortal. Creating something ... other.
It was this part of her that commanded her mind's eye now, as the thick fog carried her deeper into the realm of his memories. She rode it into the twilit shade of a dense primeval forest surrounded by jagged pinnacles of soaring sandstone rock. In the distance, great fires burned, choking the landscape with smoke and swirling ash.
She ran toward it, metal armor strapped to her glyph-covered chest and thighs, jangling with every long stride of her bare, blood-spattered feet. Clutched in her hand was a long sword, a crude implement of mankind's world, with its hammered iron blade and leather-wrapped hilt. But it would suffice. It had bitten off more than one enemy's head tonight.
In a few moments, it would feed again.
Loose earth crunched beneath her feet as she ran toward the smoke of a burning encampment. Some of her brethren were there already, locked in combat with the legion they'd been hunting across continents and many long centuries.
Jenna's unearthly battle cry shook the spindly pines and basalt towers as she charged forward, through the curtain of thick black smoke and the bloodied carnage scattered on the ground.