Shades of Midnight (Midnight Breed 7)

"You're leaving already?"

He sat down on the edge of the bed. Beads of water glistened on his shoulders and chest, a few of them sliding down his smooth skin and glyphs in thin rivulets. He looked and smelled delicious, and Alex had the strongest urge to lick him dry.

He smiled as if he sensed the lusty direction of her thoughts. "I have to go. My brothers-in-arms from Boston will be flying into Fairbanks in a couple of hours. We'll be rendezvousing at an old truck stop from Boston will be flying into Fairbanks in a couple of hours. We'll be rendezvousing at an old truck stop midway between there and the mining company. We can't risk giving Dragos or his men the chance to know we're on to them, so we're going to hit the mine without delay."

He spoke so casually about the danger that awaited him and his friends. All Alex could think of was the very real possibility that he might be hurt. Or worse, something she didn't even want to imagine. Just the thought of Kade walking into that mine--potentially into the hands of Dragos, or an even larger evil, should they cross paths with the creature they suspected had been transported to the area--made Alex quake inside with a raw, marrow-deep dread. "I don't want you to go. I'm afraid if you do, I might never see you again."

"Don't worry," he said, and something dark, something ironic, traveled over his handsome face. "You aren't going to get rid of me that easily, Alex. Not now."

He placed his palm along her cheek, then leaned down and kissed her, his mouth so tender on hers it opened up an ache in the center of her chest.

She ached in a number of places, all the right places.

By the time his lips left hers, each of her pulse points were lit up as though they'd been touched by lightning. Lower still, a heavy throb in her core sent heat pooling between her legs. After the hours of passion they'd enjoyed, she still burned for him as though she'd had only the smallest taste. She sighed with the remembered pleasure of all they'd done together. "Last night was ..."

"Yeah. It was." He smiled, but there was a hesitation in his voice. Something haunted about his eyes. He caressed her bare shoulder, then let his fingers travel up along the side of her neck, the only part of her that felt more alive and heated than the slick cleft of her thighs. Alex nestled into his feather-light strokes, shivering with a growing hunger for him as he ran his thumb across the vein that fluttered more frantically in response to his touch.

"You bit me," she whispered, feeling an odd thrill just to say the words. He inclined his head in a grim nod. "I did. I shouldn't have. I didn't have the right to take that from you."

Did he mean her blood? "It's all right, Kade."

"No," he said gravely. "It's not all right. You deserve more than that."

"I ... liked it," she told him, meaning it with a sincerity that shocked even her. "What you did, it felt good. It still does. Everywhere you touched me last night feels very good." He exhaled slowly, his breath hot as it fanned her brow. He hadn't stopped petting her throat. She could have enjoyed his soothing touch for hours more.

"What I did last night has changed everything, Alex. I drank from you. I bonded myself to you, and I can't take it back. Not even if you hate me for it."

She tilted her head up and kissed the stern line of his mouth. "Why would I hate you?" He stared at her for the longest time, as though weighing the impact of what he wanted to tell her. "I drank from you, Alex, knowing full well that you are a Breedmate. Knowing that once your blood was in my body, there would be no going back. I'm connected to you now, and it's unbreakable. It's forever. I knew what it meant, but I just ... wanted you so badly, I couldn't stop. I should have, but I didn't." Alex listened, seeing the torment in his eyes. She could see the regret, too, and it twisted her heart like a vise.>She was his. And although it would take a mutual exchange of blood to bond them together as mates, his link to her now was unbreakable. It was a visceral bond, one that could be broken only by death. And he had just forced it on her.

The thought shamed him, but it was difficult to feel remorse when Alex was clutching at him with greedy hands, panting and writhing against him as another orgasm rocked her. She moaned hotly under the hypnotic spell of his bite, her hips rising up to take him deeper inside her as he drew the honeyed sweetness of her blood into his mouth.

If she'd been merely Homo sapiens, she would have felt comfort, even pleasure, as he fed from her. But because she was a Breedmate, and because of the passion that was still coursing through both of them now, Alex's response was exponentially more intense. Her ecstasy was his now, a part of him through her blood he'd taken inside him. Now every intense feeling she experienced would be his, as well, from joy to pain.

As he drank more of her, he felt her desire rising, ratcheting to a fevered yearning she struggled to bear. His thirst had not ebbed, but it was her need that moved him now. With a careful sweep of his tongue over the twin punctures, he sealed the bite closed.

"Come on," he murmured, gathering her up into his arms. "I'm taking you to bed now." Drowsy and boneless, she rested lightly against his bare chest as he carried her down the hallway and into her bedroom. He placed her on the quilted comforter, kissing her as he settled in next to her on the bed. He caressed every silken inch of her, every curve and muscle imprinting itself on his touch.

"Look at me, Alexandra," he said when she closed her eyes in pleasure. His voice was rough and dark, almost unrecognizable to his own ears. "I need to know that you see me now, as I am. This is what I am."

She lifted her lids and gazed up at him. He waited to see her revulsion, for he would never have looked more feral--more inhuman--than he did at that moment. His glyphs pulsed with shifting colors, hues of desire and passion melding with those of his lingering hunger and the torment he felt for everything that had happened here with Alex tonight. Not the least of which being the blood bond he'd initiated and could had happened here with Alex tonight. Not the least of which being the blood bond he'd initiated and could not sever, even if she despised him for it.

He watched her study him, afraid to speak. Fearful that she would hate him now, or look away, repulsed by what he had become. "This is me, Alex," he said quietly. "This is all of me." Her light brown eyes drank him in, unfaltering. She stroked the mutating glyphs on his chest, following the pattern with a light, learning touch. She reached down farther, smoothing her palm over his thigh, then back to the erect length of his cock. He exhaled a wordless growl of pleasure as her fingers lovingly caressed him.

Through her blood, the precious part of her that swam inside him, feeding his cells, he read the depth of her desire for him. There was no fear or uncertainty in her as she gazed at him. There was only a soft but fevered demand as she reached up to grip the nape of his neck and guide him back down to her mouth.

"Make love to me again," she whispered against his lips. It was a command that Kade was more than willing to oblige. He gently rolled over her as she parted her legs to welcome him once more. He entered her slowly and tenderly as he brought her into his arms. Their kiss was long, passionate, fevered as she traced her tongue over his fangs and his sex erupted deep inside her. Kade shouted with his release and crushed her to him.

God help him, he knew now what the other mated warriors had said about the pleasure--the humbling rapture--of the blood bond. With Alex, with this woman who had awakened feelings in him he'd never wanted to risk before, now Kade knew what forever could be. He craved it, with a ferocity that stunned him.

In that moment, with Alex wrapped around him so warm and content and open to him, he wanted to hold the feeling close ... even if the wildness within him whispered insidiously that it couldn't last. The fire that had been slowly dying on the grate a few hours ago had long since gone cold. Jenna Tucker-Darrow lay tightly curled on her side on the floor of the cabin's main room, shivering as she roused from the depths of a dreamless, unnaturally heavy sleep. Her limbs were listless, uncooperative, her neck too weak and tender to let her lift her head.

With some effort, she managed to crack her eyelids open and peer into the darkness of her cabin. Dread crawled up her spine on talons made of ice.

The intruder was still there.

He sat on the floor across the room from her, his head tipped down. He was a massive, menacing presence, even at rest.

He wasn't human.