A Taste of Midnight (Midnight Breed 9.5)

Thane started walking toward him. "I'll go with you."

Bran scoffed. "You've helped me enough for one night, don't you think? Why don't you do something useful and send a few of the girls up to the boss for a while, tell them to take good care of him, make him real happy. Pick the best ones too, the ones with the most skilled mouths. Maybe if we keep him busy, he'll lay off the rest of us for the night."

Thane stared at him, unsmiling. "All right, Bran. You do what you have to. I'll handle things with Mr. Reiver.">She didn't think so, despite the forbidding glower he pinned on her. "Brannoc what?" When he didn't answer, she tried a different tack. "Reiver called you Brandogge last night. Is that what you are to him, his personal watchdog?"

"When need be." He took a step forward, the bulk of his huge body crowding her back against the door. The roll of his Scottish accent deepened with each syllable. "It was unwise of you to come here. You're trespassing, and my employer does not tolerate intruders in his place of business."

The closer he got to her, the more the air seemed sucked from the room. He was heat and danger and dark menace, a storm pushing her to retreat. Danika held his simmering gaze, mere inches between them now. "Just what kind of business goes on in here?"

He didn't answer, merely took more space from her, his gunmetal gray eyes throwing off sparks through the tendrils of dark hair that hung into them.

"Reiver's running a blood club, isn't he." Not a question, because her eso,ecause arlier suspicion had now hardened into a cold certainty that settled like ice in her stomach. "You know this, and yet you can serve him? What kind of man could willingly protect someone like Reiver and turn a blind eye to the way he makes his living?"

"We all make choices in life. We do what we have to."

"At the expense of your honor?" she challenged hotly. "Even at the cost of your own soul?"

He stared at her for the longest moment. Then the lock on the door behind her sprang free with a sharp metallic snick that made her flinch. "Go back where you belong, lass."

She didn't move. She didn't care now whether she knew him or if he was simply the hired guard dog of a skin-trading thug. Contempt for what he stood for-for what he was able to condone-put a defiant spark in her veins. "If you think I'll walk away without doing something about this, you're wrong. I won't be silent knowing innocent people are being hurt-"

His answering snarl cut her words short. "Yes, you bloody will be."

Suddenly she was pressed flat against the carved wood panels of the door, his body scorching hers everywhere they made contact. Which was too many places to count. She felt each contour and muscled bulk, from the unyielding planes of his naked chest and iron-clad abdomen, to the blatantly sexual heat of his pelvis and thick-hewn thighs.

"You will be silent," he commanded her tightly, full lips drawn back off his teeth and fangs. Fire crackled in his eyes now, but there was more than fury or threat in his wild gaze. There was concern in that hard look. A concern that bordered on desperation. "You'll say nothing to anyone, Danika. Do you understand?"

She gaped at him as the realization of how she knew him finally settled on her. It was an old memory-as old as her love for Conlan. Older, still, for she'd known this man even longer. Might have been tempted at one time to give him her heart, if she hadn't feared he'd leave it crushed under his boot heels one day. "Oh, my God," she murmured, reaching up to touch the grizzled, battle-worn face that had once been so handsome and bold. "It really is you ..."

He didn't let her fingers light for more than an instant on his cheek. His grasp was firm, his mouth grim as he gave a slight shake of his head. Danika couldn't breathe. She felt as if she'd been knocked to the ground and lifted high aloft, all at the same time. A tangle of emotion swamped her as she struggled to accept what she was seeing, what she was feeling in that moment.

But where she was awash in confusion and a hopeful sense of relief, the man she knew to be Malcolm MacBain projected utter control. Cool and deliberate, devoid of any tenderness, he guided her hand back down to her side and held it there. "Forget what you heard. Forget Reiver." He let go of her, but his eyes still trapped her in their penetrating stare. "Forget me too."

He reached past her then and freed the latch on the club's front door. A gust of cold, damphe f cold, December wind sifted in around them. Street noise intruded, an unwelcome savior that jolted Danika out of the stupor that gripped her as she stared up into the face of someone she'd once considered a beloved friend but who was now worse than a stranger.

"Go," he said, and stepped back to give her space and keep himself out of the wan daylight that was reaching into the vestibule.

Danika looked at him one last time, searching for words that wouldn't come. Then she turned around and numbly walked back into the bustle of the street outside.

Chapter Three

"Boss wants to see you in his office, Bran. Doesn't look happy."

Another of Reiver's personal security detail, Thane, leaned against the doorjamb of Bran's quarters at the club. The vampire was built like a tank, tall and immense, his massive shoulders and arms straining the fabric of his dark suit, the muscled bulk of him filling the doorway. Tonight, his shoulder-length black hair was pulled back in a short queue, the vee of his sharp widow's peak and slashing ebony brows giving his cool green eyes a hawkish quality as he watched Bran finish cleaning his pair of Glock 20s. The guns didn't need the attention, but after the day he'd had, if Bran didn't keep his hands busy, he was liable to punch someone. Starting with the bastard he worked for.

Taking his time on the weapons, he angled a scowl in Thane's direction as he reassembled the second of the pistols. "Tell the boss I'll be up in a minute."

"And tempt him to shoot the messenger?" Although he gave a low chuckle as he said it, Thane's shrewd eyes showed no humor. "You got a problem with Mr. Reiver, you take it up with him yourself, man."

Bran casually inspected both of his service weapons, then shoved them into the cross-body holsters that rode over the top of his graphite-gray shirt. "I've got no problems with him."

"You sure about that?" Thane stared, letting the question hang between them.

In the seven months since Bran had entered Reiver's employ, Thane had proven the hardest of the other guards to read. Tough, smart, hardcore when needed, if anyone were to suspect Bran's true motives where Reiver was concerned, it would without a doubt be Thane.

Bran stood up and crossed the small room to retrieve his black suit coat from the back of the wooden chair where it hung. He felt Thane's eyes on him as he shrugged into the coat, completing his thug's uniform, and prepared to face his boss.

"I don't know how you do it, man. Living here at the club, day in day out." Thane studied him. "Don't you have a place of your own, or kin somewhere to take you in?"