by Adrian, Lara
She recalled the few details he had given her about the woman. “You told me you met her while she was on holiday in Greece.”
He nodded. “Mykonos.”
“You also told me she was married. Unhappily, you said.”
“Yes, she was.”
Brynne tried to guess at the cause of his guilt. “Did she go back to her husband?”
“She did.”
His wooden tone conveyed more depth of emotion than if he’d shouted the words. He had loved this woman, and he had lost her. “I’m sorry.”
He expelled a sharp breath. “Don’t feel sorry for me. I don’t deserve it. I’m the one who pushed her back to him. Because of my cowardice.”
Brynne touched his rigid jaw. Although it hurt to see that he’d once loved this woman a great deal, it pained her even more to see the torment in his eyes.
She had given him numerous opportunities to explain what had happened, especially on those times when she’d suggested he was an irresponsible libertine with a possible slew of fatherless daughters around the world.
And yet, he’d preferred that she believe that, rather than share the truth about the woman who’d borne his child.
Brynne drew him down onto the sand with her. They sat together for a long moment, just looking at the waves in silence.
“What was her name?” She prompted him gently, giving him somewhere to start again.
“Sharon.” He stared out at the water. “She was a sweet girl, the most open-hearted woman I’d ever met. Once we ran into each other on that beach in Mykonos, I pursued her relentlessly. Finally, she gave in. It wasn’t until we slept together—when I had the chance to lay my hands on her mortal skin—that I realized she was very ill.”
Brynne glanced at him, confused. “What was wrong with her?”
“Cancer. It was everywhere, small enough to escape detection for many years, yet already terminal. There was no mistaking it.”
“You could feel all of that with your hands?”
He nodded soberly.
“And you didn’t tell her?” Brynne’s heart climbed into her throat. “Oh, Zael…”
“I didn’t tell her because there was nothing that could be done. The cancer would kill her, even if it was treated. There wasn’t going to be a miracle.”
“But you kept the truth from her.”
“Yes. Because I didn’t want to see her spirit crushed. I didn’t want to be the one to crush it.” He tipped his head back, silent for a long moment. When he looked at Brynne now, she saw the full depth of his self-hatred. “I didn’t want to be with her, knowing I was holding that secret. So I left. I didn’t tell her I was going. I didn’t tell her anything. I just…left.”
Brynne didn’t say anything. She knew he didn’t want sympathy, but she felt it for him anyway. It had been many years since he met Dylan’s mother, but he still carried the pain. And the guilt.
“You want to know the ironic thing?”
She gave him a wobbly nod, still trying to process everything she’d heard so far.
“In the end, it wasn’t the cancer that killed Sharon. Dylan told me that just a few days ago.” He turned a stark look on Brynne. “It was Dragos who killed her.”
“How?”
“Sharon was dying from the disease, but during that same time Dylan and her warrior mate, Rio, were just getting to know each other. It’s a long story, but Sharon became entangled in some of Dragos’s schemes and when he attempted to use her to get close enough to hurt Dylan, Sharon sacrificed herself to save her daughter. My daughter.”
“Oh, my God.” Brynne blew out a heavy sigh, her heart breaking for Zael and for Dylan. And for the special woman who had meant a great deal to both of them. “I’m so sorry.”
“Now you know,” he said, his deep voice solemn, yet still burdened. “I’m not a good man, Brynne. I’ve taken my pleasure wherever I’ve wanted, with little thought for the consequences. What I’ve never taken well is responsibility. I’ve never been steady or reliable. I’ve never been committed to anything but myself. You need to know that. You needed to know it a lot sooner than now.”
“No, Zael. You’re wrong.” She combed her fingers through his hair as he stared out at the horizon, her eyes tender on the tormented, beautiful face of the man she had somehow come to care for so deeply. “That’s not what I see in you at all. It’s not what I saw here at the colony today. It’s not what I saw in you with the Order.” She put her fingers beneath his chin to bring his troubled gaze to hers. “It’s not what I see when you’re with me.”
He cupped her face in his palm, his thumb lightly stroking her lips. “After Sharon, I never allowed myself to feel that deeply again. I didn’t let myself feel love because I never wanted to feel pain or loss. But with you… Everything changed when I saw you, Brynne.”
She wanted to believe him, but there was a part of her that was still afraid. Still certain the day would come when he rejected what she really was inside—or when he would regret that he hadn’t rejected her.
“I’ve been alone all my life, Zael. It’s where I feel safe.” She turned her face into the cradle of his palm. “But you were right when you said I was lonely. I never realized how empty my life was. I didn’t realize it could be any different. But now…”
“Now, what?”
She took a breath, needing to say the words before she let herself fall any deeper. “I’m afraid that I’ll wake up one day and my life will be empty again. I’m afraid of what I am—what Dragos made me—and I’m afraid of what I may still become.”
“None of that scares me.” Zael’s touch was tender as he reached out to trace the faint pattern of a glyph that was awakening on her chest. When he glanced to her eyes, his gaze was resolute. “We’ll get through it together. My light helped you through the worst of it once; it can do it again.”
She laughed sadly. “For how long, Zael?”
“As long as you want me.”
“What if that’s forever?”
The question fell from her lips before she could stop it.
He didn’t say anything for a moment, and she closed her eyes, praying the beach beneath her would open up and drag her down.
But then Zael’s lips were brushing against hers. She melted into him on a moan, her fangs tingling in her gums. His tongue teased the seam of her mouth, then slipped inside on her hushed sigh.
He moved over her, pressing her down onto the sand as his hungered kiss devoured all of her doubts and fears.
CHAPTER 31
He didn’t want to let go of her.
She felt too good, her soft body moving beneath him on the sand, holding him close as their mouths joined in a desperate tangling of lips and tongues and panting, fevered breaths. Although this stretch of the beach was secluded, kissing her like this was going to get out of hand quickly.
Hell, who was he kidding?
What he shared with Brynne had been out of his control from the start. He meant it when he said it didn’t matter that she was Breed or something darker. He craved her, cared for her. Felt more deeply for her than he ever had for another person in his life.
Holy fuck.
As the understanding settled on him, he drew back on a low growl and stared down into her beautiful, transformed face.
He was in love with her.
He wasn’t going to deny it anymore. Not to himself, at least. He couldn’t. Not the way his chest throbbed simply to be near her, to be touching her. To know that she was his.
After how she had looked at him here today—after all of the tender things she’d said—there was a part of him that believed she might love him too.
Forever, she’d said.
His heart had answered without hesitation.
Yes. Forever.
But the words stayed jammed in his throat. They were still there now, along with all of the promises he couldn’t make her until he was certain the target Selene had put on his back wouldn’t someday land on Brynne’s as well.
And the idea that his people and hers might one day be at war if Selene had anything to say about it?
That was a prospect he refused to consider, especially when Brynne was wrapped around him so deliciously, her hands tunneling into his hair to drag him down for another searing kiss.
He gave her what she demanded, then broke away on a hungered growl. “Give me your hand, love. I’m taking you to bed.”
Her eyes flashing with amber light, she smiled and placed her fingers in his palm. Zael hauled her up from the sand with him, unable to resist another kiss as he dragged her up against his rigid length. Her hand found his erection, but it was only a wicked tease before she danced out of his embrace and started jogging back toward the cottage.
Zael met her inside, flashing there in less than an instant.
She yelped as he caught her, caging her in his arms. “Cheat!”
“Never,” he swore solemnly, then lowered his head to kiss her again.
He didn’t need to feel the scrape of her fangs across his tongue or feel the heat of her amber irises radiating from behind her closed lids to know that she wanted him inside her as badly as he needed to be there. The sweet scent of her arousal jacked his pulse into a fevered tempo that made his cock surge heavy and rigid against her hip.
She arched into him as his mouth licked a trail from below her ear to the sensual curve of her neck and shoulder. He nipped at her tender skin, spurred on by her raspy cries of pleasure as his lips and tongue savored her heated response.
They undressed each other quickly, their need too urgent for patience.
Zael backed her toward the bed, his mouth still roaming her soft, naked skin and supple lips. She was panting and pliant in his arms, her curves crushed against the hard slabs of his body as he guided her over to the mattress and eased her down beneath him.
She spread her legs to receive him, her sex glistening and ready for him, so pink and pretty and perfect. He sank between her thighs on a low groan, wanting to savor every sensation yet knowing he was too far gone to be gentle.
His cock nestled into the hot, wet cleft of her body. His groan was ragged, his curse reverent, as he pushed inside and felt her tight walls stretch to accommodate his size. Brynne sighed as he drove deep, all the way to the hilt. Her spine arched up to meet his thrust, her small cry of pleasure gusting against his ear as he dropped his head and began a firm and steady rhythm.
Her ecstasy was a drug to him as he rocked in and out of her. He watched it play across her features, which were now fully, gloriously Breed. Amber light swallowed all the green of her irises as she stared up at him, her pupils narrow slivers amid all of that smoldering fire. With each blissful moan, every escalating sigh, the tips of her fangs surged longer, diamond-sharp and deadly, erotic as hell.
Bracing himself on one elbow while he rolled his hips into hers, he reached out to caress her transformed face. Only his touch was gentle, his need too urgent as he watched her cheeks flush with rising color and her mouth dropped open on a sigh of imminent release.
“Oh,” she moaned thickly, clutching him as a hard shudder washed over her. “Zael… Oh, God… I can’t hold it back.”
“That’s good,” he murmured, almost beyond the capability of words as the sheath of her sex began to tighten and contract around his cock. “Oh, yeah. That’s it, love. Let it go. Never hold back with me.”
He bent his head and kissed her, drawing her plump lower lip between his teeth for a moment before burying his face into the tender crook of her neck and shoulder. Caging her between his forearms, he thrust deeper, faster, giving her what she needed to push her over the edge. Her long legs came around him as he rode her, her crossed ankles clamped down on his ass like a vise, holding him close, her arching body demanding as much as he had to give.
And he wanted to give her everything.
Not just now, like this, but in every way.
He wanted to hear her tell him that she could never have this with another male. That she was his, as he knew with a soul-shaking certainty that he belonged to her.
Forever.
The thought became a vow as her firelit gaze locked on his and she surrendered to the tremendous force of her climax. Her cry boiled out of her, throaty and wild. Sharp fingernails scored his back, searing lashes that made him roar with satisfaction as she broke apart beneath him in wave after wave of powerful release.
His own orgasm was rolling up hard on him too. But before he gave himself over to it, he wanted to witness Brynne coming again.
Hell, he would never have his fill of that beautiful sight.
Not even if they had as long as forever to be together.
He grasped her hands and started to drag them above her head so he could send her off the cliff of another climax, but she evidently had other plans.
On a sexy, animalistic snarl, she flipped him onto his back. Her long sable waves tossed around her shoulders as she straddled him, their bodies still intimately joined. His cock heartily approved of the change in position, and so did he.
Brynne sat atop him, her body on full display as her hips rocked and undulated, her wet core grinding against him as she took him impossibly deeper with each merciless slide of her body over his. The arcing twists and spirals of her dermaglyphs were flushed with deep colors, playing across her smooth skin like a living work of art. He reached up to touch the lacy patterns that adorned her breasts and belly, his gaze and fingers worshipping every extraordinary inch of her.
“So lovely,” he murmured, sliding his hands down to her hips as she settled into her own fevered tempo. “I may never let you out of this bed.”
Her answer was a low, pleasured moan. A sensual shudder slid through her body. Her breath turned ragged, a sexy panting that made his arousal coil tighter at the base of his spine. Fuck. He was trying to keep a leash on his orgasm, but she wasn’t making it easy for him.
Arching as she pistoned on his shaft, her breasts jutted out, nipples as dark and plump as little berries. He reached up to touch them, rolling the pebbled peaks under his palms and fingers, reveling in the frantic little sounds she made as her climax started to overwhelm her.
“Zael…” His name was little more than a gasp as she bowed sharply and lost herself to her release.
She closed her eyes, tipping her head back on another shivery cry. Her sex gripped him like a sleek, velvet glove. Each tremor that shook her sent vibrations rippling along his shaft.
He kept moving beneath her, taking control of their tempo in order to prolong her pleasure. And his own.
He growled with satisfaction as she came again. But the sudden explosion of hot, liquid heat on his cock was more than he could handle. Snarling with the ferocious need that owned him now, he pumped into her one last time and his orgasm boiled out of him in a scalding rush.
She collapsed atop him, a warm and pleasant weight on his chest as his body shuddered with aftershocks. He was still hard inside her, even after the staggering blast of his release.
Her fingers lightly caressed his bare chest, tracing the contours of his muscles. He sucked in a slow breath when he felt her lips press warm and wet at the base of his throat. His cock twitched reflexively, along with every nerve ending in his body.
He wanted to feel more than her kiss at his throat.
Holy fuck, he wanted it with a certainty he could not deny.
Brynne went utterly still now.
He knew she must sense the change in his body. Hell, she had to be able to hear the sudden throb of his pulse, hammering in anticipation—in need of what only she could give him.
She reared back, silent. Barely breathing.
Her hot amber gaze was filled with deep affection as she stared down at him. But he saw anguish there, too. And when her eyes drifted away from his face and down to the exposed column of his throat, he saw a longing in her that rattled him to the core.
She wanted this too.
She wanted him, in the same irrevocable way that he wanted her.<
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As a mate.
Bound together by blood.
When she would have retreated even further, Zael slowly shook his head. He reached up, sliding his palm to the back of her neck. Her pulse was racing, throbbing as heavily as his.
“Don’t run away from me now, Brynne. Come back here where you belong.”
She didn’t resist him as he pulled her to him and swallowed her broken moan with his kiss. Her fingers delved into his hair, clutching at him as their mouths came together in a heated, hungry joining.
The slight abrasion of her fangs against his tongue sent a current of white-hot need licking through every fiber of his being. He dragged her deeper, thrusting into her mouth as his cock began to thrust inside her sex.
She moved with him in an increasingly urgent rhythm, until they both were lost to the frenzy of their desire for each other.
And the deeper need that refused to be denied.
Brynne tore away from his kiss, breathless and panting, her eyes shining more fiercely than stars. Behind her parted lips, her fangs gleamed.
He smoothed his hands over her beautiful, transformed face. “You’re mine, Brynne. My blood already knows it. So does my heart.”
He tugged her down to him, and this time when their kiss ended, instead of pulling back, Brynne lowered her head to the side of his throat. Her tongue brushed like silk across his carotid.
Zael growled in response, his pulse hammering in permission and demand.
She answered with a pretty moan that vibrated straight into his marrow.
And then she closed her mouth over his vein and sank her fangs into his flesh.
CHAPTER 32
Brynne moaned as the first taste of Zael’s blood rushed into her mouth.
Quicksilver and exotic, it was nothing like the pungent copper red cells of the humans she had fed from all her life. But then, she should have known Zael’s blood would be a powerful, intoxicating force. Like the male himself, his blood dominated her senses, owning her from the very first taste.