Midnight Rising (Midnight Breed 4)

He raked his hand through his dark hair, staring at her with those blazing amber eyes. "This would have been a terrible mistake for both of us," he said after a long moment. "Ah, fuck. It already is a terrible mistake."

Before she could say anything, Rio simply turned around and left. As the apartment door closed behind him, Dylan pulled her tee-shirt back down and adjusted her skewed boxers. In the quiet he left her with, she pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her shins, then reached over and clicked off the lamp.

Chapter Nineteen

Rio lifted a 9mm pistol and aimed it toward a target at the end of the compound's firing range. The gun felt foreign as hell in his hand despite that it was his own weapon, one he'd carried on him for years and had been lethally proficient with...before.

Before the warehouse explosion.

Before the injuries that had taken him out of combat and dropped him into a sickbed, broken in mind and body.

Before his blindness to Eva's duplicity had made him question everything he was and ever could be again.

A sheen of sweat broke out on Rio's lip as he held his target in his sights. His trigger finger was shaky, and it took all his concentration to focus in on the small head-and-shoulders silhouette printed on the paper target some twenty yards down the range.

But that was exactly the point of his coming here.

After what had happened with Dylan a few minutes ago, Rio needed a distraction in a major way. Something that would command all of his focus, cool him out. Hopefully dull the edge of the carnal hunger that gnawed at him even now. He wanted Dylan with a need that was still pounding through his veins in a deep, primal beat.

He could still feel her body moving beneath his, so soft and welcoming. So passionately responsive. So accepting of him, even though he was fit only to play Beast to her Beauty.

It was a fantasy he'd let himself indulge in as he'd kissed Dylan, as he pressed her down beneath him and wondered if the intense attraction he felt for her might actually be mutual. No one was that good an actor. Eva had claimed to love him once. The depth of her betrayal had been a shock, but in the back of his mind, he'd known she wasn't happy with him the way he was, in the life he'd chosen as a warrior.

She hadn't wanted him to join in the first place. She'd never understood his need to do some good, his need to be useful. More than once, she'd asked him why she wasn't enough for him. Why loving her, making her happy, couldn't be enough. He had wanted both, but even she had been able to see that he wanted the Order more.

Rio could still recall one night, strolling in a city park with Eva, taking pictures of her on a little bridge over the river. She'd told him that night how she wanted him to leave the Order and give her a baby. Demands he couldn't - or, rather, wouldn't - comply with.

Give it time, he'd told her. The warriors had been putting out fires with a small surge in Rogue activity in the region, so he'd told her to be patient. Once things settled down, maybe they could think about a family.

Looking back, he wasn't sure he'd meant it. Eva hadn't believed him; he'd seen that in her eyes, even then. Hell, maybe it had been at that very moment she'd decided to take matters into her own hands.

He had let Eva down and he knew it. But she had paid him back in spades. Her betrayal had rattled him on a soul-deep level. It had made him question everything, including why the hell he should be taking up precious space in this world.

When Dylan kissed him - when she looked at him full in the face and her eyes reflected back only honesty - Rio could believe, at least for a moment, that he wasn't just a pitiful waste of air and space. When he'd looked into Dylan's eyes and felt her hand cradling his scars, he could believe life might actually be worth living after all.

And he was a selfish bastard for thinking that he had anything to offer a woman like her. He'd already destroyed one woman's life, and nearly his own; he wasn't about to take a second chance with Dylan's life.

Rio narrowed his gaze on the target down the way and forced an iron steadiness into his hold on the gun. He pulled the trigger, felt the familiar kick of his weapon as the Beretta discharged and a bullet went blasting into the smallest center ring of the target's bull's-eye.

"Good to see you haven't lost a bit of your aim. Still dead-on like always."

Rio set the weapon down on the shelf in front of him. When he turned around it was to find Nikolai standing behind him, his broad back leaned up against the wall. Rio had known he wasn't alone here; he'd heard Niko and the three other unmated warriors talking on the far end of the facility as they cleaned their weapons and rehashed their late-night prowl of the human after-hours club.

"How was the hunting topside?"

Niko shrugged. "A lot of the usual."

"Hot babes without enough sense to run when they see you coming?" Rio asked, a tentative stab at breaking the ice that was present between them since his arrival at the compound.

To his relief, Niko chuckled. "Nothing wrong with loose and easy when it comes to women, my man. Maybe next time you should hang with us. I can hook you up with something sweet and nasty." Twin dimples notched his lean cheeks. "You know, if you're not planning to off yourself or anything in the meantime. You dumb bastard."

It was said without venom, only the solemn knowledge of a friend concerned about one of his own.

"I'll let you know," Rio said, and he could tell by Nikolai's narrowed look that the warrior understood he wasn't talking about the prospect of getting a little action topside.

Niko's voice dropped to a confidential tone. "You can't let her win, you know? 'Cause that's what giving up is. Yeah, she screwed you over, and I'm not saying you need to forgive and forget because frankly I don't think I could if I were you. But you're still here. So fuck her ," Niko said harshly. "Fuck Eva. And fuck the bomb that went off in that warehouse. Because you, my friend, are still here."

Rio scoffed, but it was a weak sound in his tight throat. He tried to clear the obstruction, feeling awkward as hell for caring that someone cared about him. "Damn, amigo. Just how much Oprah have you been watching since I've been gone? Because coming from you, that was really touching."