Stroke of Midnight (Midnight Breed 13.5)

Leila. Damn that girl.

Sera shot a narrowed glare at her exuberant sibling but her grin showed no remorse.

“Kiss her!” she shouted again.

And then across the room, Marcel called for the kiss too. Someone else picked up the chant, then another. Before long, the entire place was applauding and thundering with the command. “Kiss her! Kiss her! Kiss her!”

Sera turned a miserable look on Jehan. “We don’t really have t—”

Before she could finish, he moved closer and his mouth slanted over hers in a blast of heat. His lips caressed hers, impossibly soft, achingly sensual. His hands held her face, and yes, they were gentle. His kiss was too, but beneath its tenderness was a possessiveness—a raw power—that rocked her.

He mastered her mouth in an instant, and every brush of his lips had her aching to be claimed by him.

Her thoughts scattered. Her knees went a little boneless.

Even worse, the coil of warmth that had gathered between her thighs a few moments ago blazed molten and wild now.

Sera raised her hands to grip his shoulders, if only to keep from sagging against him in front of a hundred onlookers. All the reassurances of their private agreement to spend the next week in separate corners flew away like leaves on the wind as Jehan kissed her. She couldn’t help it. She moaned against his mouth, her pulse quickening, hammering even louder than the cheers of the gathering around them.

Jehan released her abruptly. His blue eyes glittered with sparks of amber heat, their transformation making his desire all too clear. He ran his tongue over his wet lips and she saw the points of his fangs, now gleaming in his mouth like razor-sharp diamonds. His breath rasped out of him, rough and raw.

“Let’s go,” he growled for her ears only. “The sooner we get this damned farce over with, the better.”

Then he took her by the hand and stalked away from the table with her in tow.

CHAPTER 6

Jehan’s body was still rock hard and vibrating with lust more than an hour after he and Seraphina were delivered to the oasis retreat.

Holy hell. That kiss...

As short-lived and chaste as it had been, it had gripped him in a way that staggered him.

He hadn’t been able to deny how attracted he was to Seraphina from the instant he laid eyes on her. Now he knew she wanted him too. Her response to their kiss had left no question about that. The color that had rushed up her throat and into her cheeks couldn’t be blamed on anything else, nor could her soft little moans. He’d felt her desire for him. He’d breathed in the sweet scent of her arousal, felt it drumming in her blood.

His own blood had answered, and now that his mouth had sampled a taste of Seraphina’s kiss, everything primal and male in him—everything Breed—pounded with a dark¸ dangerous need for more.

Somehow, he’d managed to rein it in back at the Darkhaven celebration.

Now, he just had to make sure to keep his desire in check for the duration of their confinement at the private villa.

Eight nights, that’s all, he reassured himself.

One hundred and ninety-two hours, give or take the few that had already passed tonight.

Which meant somewhere around eleven thousand minutes. All of them to be spent in too-close quarters with a woman who lit up every nerve ending in his body like a flame set to dry tinder.

Yeah, the math wasn’t helping.

Everything they might need had been provided for by their families. Clothing, toiletries, a fully stocked kitchen for Seraphina. They would want for nothing from the outside world, and no one would interrupt their time together until the handfasting had ended.

They’d divvied up the place as soon as they’d been dropped off, negotiating territory and establishing boundaries where neither of them would cross. It only seemed right to give her the privacy of the massive bedroom. As for Jehan, he would inhabit the general living quarters, and use the big nest of cushions in the main room as his bed for the next week.

With Seraphina settling into the sole bedroom suite on her own, Jehan prowled the open space of the villa like a caged cat, taking stock of the unfamiliar surroundings. He strode across richly dyed rugs spread over terra cotta tiled floors. Above his head, the high, domed ceiling glowed with soft golden lights that glinted off a mosaic of gem-colored glass embedded into the white stucco plaster.

Down the wing of the hallway opposite the bedroom where Seraphina had sequestered herself was a traditional bathing room with a steaming, spring-fed pool surrounded by silk-draped columns and fat pillar candles.

In the adjacent, open-concept chamber, more beds of cushions and pillows were arranged around the room, some steeped in shadows, others strategically placed in front of tall, ornately framed mirrors. Erotic statuary and tables holding bottles of perfumed oils and incense jars completed the pleasure den.