Lazaro held her close at his side as he paddled the last few hundred yards with his free arm. As soon as his bare feet were able to touch ground, he repositioned Melena in both arms and ran her toward the empty, moonlit beach.
The bulky cliffs that lined the shore loomed just ahead. Several large caves were burrowed into the rock—black, yawning mouths that had once been part of an ancient Roman emperor’s crumbled stone villa that was a thousand years in ruin. Lazaro carried Melena inside one of the caves, past a littering of rough rocks and pools of tidal water, to a spot where the sand was soft and dry underfoot.
As he set her down, he couldn’t help revisiting the night he’d carried a lifeless little girl into his Darkhaven in Boston. He’d remembered every minute of it, despite the indifference he’d feigned with Melena earlier on the yacht. She had been a seven-year-old child that first, and last, time he saw her before tonight. Back then, she had been as helpless and fragile as a baby bird to his mind. He’d rescued her the same way he would have done for any innocent child.
But now...
Now, Melena Walsh was a grown woman. She was as enticing a woman as he’d ever seen—even more so, with her lovely face and thick red hair, and all of her soft, feminine curves that drew his eye even as he carefully arranged her unresponsive, alarmingly chilled body on the sand.
And as fiercely as he’d wanted to save her life in Boston, he wanted to save her now.
Not the least of his reasons being his need to know what secret she was keeping from him. She’d been on the verge of telling him in the seconds before the yacht was blown to pieces. If that secret had anything to do with the attack tonight, he was going to see that Melena answered for it.
Lazaro felt in his bones that Opus Nostrum was behind the brazen act. Whoever did it knew just who and where to strike. But how did they know? Both parties were meticulously screened by the Order. Lazaro had personally vetted everyone in attendance, right down to the last man on the vessel’s crew tonight. He’d approved them all.
Except Melena Walsh.
He gazed at her in the cave’s darkness, his Breed eyes seeing her as clearly as if it were midday. She was beautiful, stunningly so. She was poised, intelligent, erudite. And he’d seen her wield her charm without effort over Turati and the rest of the men at the meeting.
Lazaro couldn’t deny he’d been equally affected. More than affected, despite his unwillingness to give it reins. A woman like Melena would make a deadly asset, if allied with the wrong people.
He didn’t want to think she might be his enemy, intentional or otherwise.
The fact that she’d nearly gotten killed tonight along with everyone else made it impossible to imagine her presence on the yacht could have had anything to do with the catastrophe that followed.
She would give him the truth, but first he had to make sure she stayed alive to do so.
Lazaro scowled at her sodden, bruised condition. Her skirt was shredded, her shoes lost like his somewhere between the yacht and the shore. Her blouse was in tatters, the burgundy colored silk dark with seawater...and blood. Fortunately, most of it was his.
Her hair drooped lifelessly into her face. Lazaro smoothed away some of the drenched red tangles, letting out a low curse when he saw how white her skin was. Her lips were slack, turned an alarming shade of blue. She had contusions on her forehead and chin. Blood from a scalp wound trailed in a bright red rivulet down her temple.
Fuck.
His vision honed in on that thin scarlet ribbon, everything Breed in him responding with keen, inhuman interest. The fact that she was a Breedmate made her blood an exponentially greater temptation to one of his kind.
Melena’s blood carried the subtle fragrance of caramel and something sweeter still...dark cherries, Lazaro decided, his lungs soaking in a deeper breath even though it was torment to his senses.
His fangs punched out of his gums, throbbing against the firmly closed line of his lips. His vision sharpened some more, his irises throwing off a rising amber glow that bathed her paleness in warmer light. His own skin prickled with the sudden surge of heat in his veins.
If Melena opened her eyes now, she’d see him fully transformed to the bloodthirsty, otherworldly being he truly was.
If she opened her pretty, bright green eyes, she would know that his desire for her didn’t stop at just her blood. He didn’t want to think what kind of base creature he was that he could feel lust and hunger for a bruised, bloodied woman who’d just lost her father and nearly her own life too.
The truth was, he’d felt these same urges back on the yacht too. He hadn’t wanted to admit it then either.
For all he knew, she could belong to another Breed male. Hell, she could already be blood-bonded to someone, a thought that should’ve relieved him rather than put a rankle in his brow. It would be pointless to let himself wonder, then or now. He wasn’t about to act on either of his unwanted needs. Least of all with a woman bearing the Breedmate mark.
Since Ellie’s death, he’d found other women to service him when required. Humans who understood the limits of his interest. More importantly, humans he could feed from without the shackle of a blood bond.
Instead here he was, shackled to the rescue and safekeeping of a woman he didn’t fully trust and had no right to desire.
On a rough curse, ignoring the pounding demands of his veins, he stripped off his ragged black combat shirt and hunkered down in the sand alongside Melena. She moaned softly as he wrapped his arms around her. Her raspy sigh as she instinctively settled into his heat was an added torment he sure as hell didn’t need.
Jaw clamped tight, pulse hammering with thinly bridled hunger, Lazaro gathered Melena to his na**d chest to give her body the warmth it needed.
CHAPTER 4
She woke from an endless, cold nightmare, a scream lodged in her throat. She couldn’t force out any sound, and when she dragged in a sudden gasp of air, her lungs felt shredded in her breast.