by Lara Adrian
She glanced away from him, her eyes straying back to the table where she sat, at the plates and silverware in front of her. She saw the unused knife lying there, the polished blade gleaming.
She couldn’t hold him back with words, but there was something else…
She pushed back the long sleeve of her robe. Very calmly, with the same fearless resolve that had served her a hundred times before, Gabrielle picked up the knife and pressed the edge of it to the fleshy part of her forearm. A small pressure, the barest slice of the blade through her skin.
She didn’t know which of Lucan’s senses responded first, but the roar he let loose when his head came up and he saw what she had done rattled every piece of furniture in the room.
“Goddamn it—Gabrielle!”
The blade flew out of her grasp and across the length of the bedroom, embedding to the hilt in the far wall.
Lucan moved so fast she could hardly track him. One second he was standing several feet away at the foot of the bed, the next he had his large hand clamped down hard around her fingers, hauling her up to her feet. Blood rose from the thin line of her cut, juicy, deep crimson, trickling down her arm. Her hand was still caught in Lucan’s crushing grip.
He towered over her, a wall of dark, seething fury.
His chest was heaving, the nostrils flaring as his breath sawed in and out of his lungs. His handsome face was contorted with anguish and outrage, and his eyes burned with the unmistakable heat of his hunger. Not a trace of gray remained, his pupils narrowed down to the barest slivers of black. His fangs were stretched long, their sharp white tips gleaming behind the vicious curl of his lip.
“Now, try to tell me that you don’t need what I’m offering,” she whispered fiercely.
Sweat glistened on his brow as he stared at her fresh, bleeding wound. He licked his lips and ground out a word from another language.
It didn’t sound friendly.
“Why?” he demanded, accusing. “Why would you do this to me?”
“You really don’t know?” She held his feral gaze, weathering his anger as droplets of blood splattered a crimson trail across the snowy white of her robe. “Because I love you, Lucan. And this is all I have to give you.”
CHAPTER Twenty-nine
Lucan thought he knew hunger. He thought he knew fury and desperation—desire, too—but every paltry emotion he’d ever felt in all his ageless life fell away like dust as he stared into Gabrielle’s defiant brown eyes.
His senses were swamped, drowning in the sweet jasmine scent of her blood, its source so dangerously close to his mouth. Glossy red, thick as honey, the crimson rivulet pulsed from the small wound she had inflicted on herself.
“I love you, Lucan.” Her soft voice broke through the pounding of his own heart and the driving need that now engulfed him. “With or without blood to bind us, I love you.”
He couldn’t speak, didn’t even know what he might have said if his parched throat could form words. With a vicious growl, he thrust her away from him, too weak to be near her when all the darkness in him urged him to make her his in this final irrevocable way.
Gabrielle fell back onto the bed, the loosely tied robe barely covering her nakedness. Bright stains dotted the white sleeve and lapel. There was a red smear on her bare thigh, vivid scarlet on peaches-and-cream skin.
God, how he wanted to put his mouth on that silky wedge of flesh, all over her. Only her.
“No.”
The command came out of him, dry as ash. His gut was clenched in a vise of pain, knotted and twisting. It pulled him down. His knees collapsed beneath him when he tried to turn away from the tempting sight of her, sprawled and bleeding like a sacrifice laid out before him.
He dropped to the carpeted floor in a slump of bone and muscle, fighting back a need like he had never known before. She was killing him. This yearning for her—the shattering in his chest when he thought of her ever being with another male.
And then there was his hunger.
Never more intense than when Gabrielle was near, now that his lungs were filled with the perfume of her blood, he was ravenous.
“Lucan…”
He sensed her moving off the bed. Her feet crushed softly on the carpet and then came slowly into his view, pink-lacquered toenails like smooth little shells. She knelt down next to him. Gentle hands sank into his hair, then cupped his tense jaw as she slowly brought his head up to face her.
“Drink from me.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, but it was a weak attempt to deny what she was saying. He didn’t have the strength to fight the tender, yet unrelenting pull of her arms as she lifted him toward her.
He could smell the blood on her wrist; this close it sent a furious rush of adrenaline coursing through him. His mouth watered, fangs stretched longer, tearing his gums. She coaxed him higher, bringing his torso up off the floor. With one hand, she moved aside her long hair, baring her neck to him.
He flinched, but she held him firmly. Guided him closer.
“Drink, Lucan. Take what you need.”
She leaned forward until there was only a breath of space between his slack mouth and the delicate pulse that fluttered beneath the pale skin below her ear.
“Do it,” she whispered, and brought him to her.
Pressed his lips forcibly against her neck.
She held him there for an anguished eternity. Then again, maybe it took only a slim fraction of a second for the hook to set. Lucan couldn’t be sure. All he knew was the warm crush of her skin against his tongue, the beat of her heart, the rapid panting of her breath. All he knew was the longing he felt for her.
No more denial.
He wanted her—all of her—and the beast was too far gone to be merciful now.
He opened his mouth… and sank his fangs into the yielding flesh of her throat.
She gasped at the sudden penetration of his bite, but she didn’t release her hold on him, not even when he gulped in the first greedy pull from her open vein.
Blood rushed into his mouth, hot and earthy-sweet, exquisite. Beyond anything he could ever have imagined.
After nine hundred years of living, he was finally tasting heaven.
He drank urgently, deeply, need overwhelming him as Gabrielle’s quenching blood surged down his throat, into flesh and bone and cell. His pulse hammered with renewal, pumping blood into fatigued limbs and healing his recent wounds.
His sex had come alive with the first taste; now it throbbed heavy and hard between his legs. Demanding even more possession.
Gabrielle was stroking his hair, holding him close as he drank from her. She moaned with each hard tug of his mouth, her body melting, her scent going dark and humid with desire.
“Lucan,” she gasped, shuddering around him. “Oh, God…”
With a wordless snarl, he pressed her down beneath him on the floor. He drank deeper, losing himself to the erotic heat of the moment and to a frantic desperation that terrified him.
Mine, he thought, selfish and utterly savage with the idea.
It was too late to stop now.
This kiss had damned them both.
While the initial bite had been a shock, the sharp nick of pain had quickly dissipated into something lush and intoxicating. Pleasure bloomed all over her body from the inside out, as if each long pull of Lucan’s mouth at her neck sent a shaft of warm light back into her, reaching down through her core to stroke her soul.
He covered her with his naked weight, their robes askew as he took her to the floor with him. His hands were rough as they sank into her hair, holding her head to the side as he drank from her. Heedless of any pain his injuries might be causing him, he pressed his bare chest against her breasts. His lips never broke contact with her neck even for a second. She could feel the intensity of his need in every hard draw.
But she felt his strength, too. It was coming back, bit by bit, renewing because of her.
“Don’t stop,” she murmured, speech slowed for the mountin
g ecstasy that was building in her with each pulsating movement of his mouth. “You won’t hurt me, Lucan. I trust you.”
The wet, succulent sounds of his hunger was the most erotic thing she’d ever heard. She loved the heat of his lips on her skin. The ungentle graze of his fangs as he drew her blood into his mouth was a sensation that was both dangerous and exciting.
She was already soaring toward a splintering orgasm when she felt the thick head of Lucan’s erection nudging against her sex. She was wet, aching for him. He drove in deep with one thrust, filling her completely with rigid, volcanic heat. Detonating her in an instant. Gabrielle cried out as he plunged hard and fast, his arms like a cage around her, clutching her tightly. He was mindless in his rhythm, a force of raw, magnificent desire.
And still he remained fastened at her neck, pulling her into a blissful, creamy darkness.
She closed her eyes and let herself float away, toward a beautiful obsidian fog.
From someplace distant, she felt Lucan buck and pound above her, his strokes urgent, his large body vibrating with the power of his own release. He shouted something harsh and went completely still.
The delicious pressure at her neck abruptly eased, then vanished, leaving coldness in its wake.
Still drifting, still awash in the heady feel of Lucan sheathed inside her, Gabrielle lifted her heavy lids. Lucan was poised over her on his knees, staring down at her as though frozen. His lips were bright red, his hair wild around his head. His feral eyes were throwing off amber sparks, they were so bright. His skin color was healthier, the network of markings on his shoulders and torso glowing a deep crimson-black.
“What is it?” she asked him, worried. “Are you okay?”
He didn’t speak for a long moment.
“Jesus Christ.” The rough growl of his voice was tremulous, a pitch she’d never heard in him before. His chest was heaving. “I thought you were… I thought I had—”
“No,” she said, giving a lazy, sated shake of her head. “No, Lucan. I’m fine.”
She couldn’t read his intense expression, but then he didn’t give her a chance. He recoiled, sliding out of her. There was a stricken look in his transformed eyes.
Her body felt cold and empty without his warmth. She sat up, rubbing off her sudden chill. “It’s okay,” she assured him. “Everything’s okay.”
“No.” He shook his head and vaulted to his feet. “No. This was a mistake.”
“Lucan…”
“I never should have let this happen!” he bellowed.
With a furious roar, he stalked to the foot of the bed to retrieve his clothes. He yanked the black camo pants and nylon shirt on, then grabbed his weapons and boots, and left the room in a tempest of seething rage.
Lucan could hardly catch his breath for the way his heart was banging in his chest.
When he’d felt Gabrielle go slack beneath him as he drank from her, a stark fear had torn through him, shredding him from the inside out.
She trusted him, she had said while he had been drinking feverishly at her neck. He’d felt the spurs of Bloodlust jabbing into him as Gabrielle’s blood flowed into him. Her voice had eased some of the pain. She was tender and caring, her touch, her naked emotion—her presence itself—grounding him when the animal part of him might have slipped its reins.
She trusted him not to harm her, and that trust gave him strength.
But then he’d felt her drifting away from him and he feared… God, in that instant, how he’d feared.
It still gripped him, the black, cold terror that he might have harmed her—could have killed her—if he’d let things go any further than they had.
Because, for all his pushing her away, all his denial, he belonged to her. Gabrielle owned him, down to his soul, and not simply for the fact that her blood was nourishing him now, healing his wounds and strengthening his body. He had bonded to her, long before now. But the irrefutable proof of it had come in that bleak instant a moment ago when he feared he might have lost her.
He loved her.
Down to the darkest, loneliest part of him, he loved Gabrielle.
And he wanted her in his life. Selfishly, dangerously, he wanted nothing more than to keep her with him for all the rest of his days.
The realization made him weave in the corridor outside the tech lab. In truth, it nearly sent him to his knees.
“Whoa, easy there.” Dante came up to Lucan almost without warning and grabbed him under the arm. “Damn. You look like holy hell.”
Lucan couldn’t speak. Words were beyond him.
But Dante didn’t need an explanation. He took one look at Lucan’s face and fangs and Dante’s nostrils flared as they picked up the obvious scents of blood and sex. He blew out a low whistle, a gleam of wry amusement flashing in the warrior’s eyes.
“You gotta be kidding me—a Breedmate, Lucan?” He chuckled, shaking his head as he clapped Lucan on the shoulder. “Shit. Better you than me, brother. Better you than me.”
CHAPTER Thirty
Three hours later, with night full upon them, Lucan and the other warriors were geared up and sitting in a black SUV parked about a half mile down the road from the old asylum.
Gabrielle’s photographs had proven extremely useful in planning the hit on the Rogue lair. In addition to several exterior and ground-level, entry-point photos, she’d taken interior shots of the boiler room, various corridors, stairwells, and even a few containing inadvertent images of mounted security cameras that would need to be disabled once the warriors gained access to the place.
“Getting in’s going to be the easy part,” Gideon said, as the group of them began the final review of the operation. “I’ll interrupt the security signal on the ground-level cameras, but once we’re inside, planting those two dozen bars of C4 in critical areas without alerting the entire colony of suckheads will prove a little trickier.”
“Not to mention the added problem of unwanted publicity with the humans,” Dante said. “What the hell’s taking Niko so long to locate that gas main?”
“Here he comes,” Lucan said, spotting the vampire’s dark shape nearing the SUV from the ridge of trees outside.
Nikolai opened the back door and climbed in next to Tegan. He pulled off his black head covering, wintry blue eyes alive with excitement. “Piece of cake. The main line is in a lockbox on the west end of the complex. The suckheads may not need heat, but public service has plenty of gas running to the buildings.”
Lucan met the warrior’s eager look. “So, we get in, set up our party favors, clear the location—”
Niko nodded. “Signal me when the shit’s in place. I’ll flip the main line, then detonate the C4 once we all rendezvous back here. On the surface, it’ll look like a gas leak caused the explosion. And if Homeland Security wants to get involved, I’m sure some of Gabrielle’s photos of gangbanger graffiti will send the humans sniffing around in circles for a while.”
Meanwhile, the warriors would be sending a big message to their enemies, particularly the Gen One vampire who Lucan suspected was at the helm of this new Rogue insurgency. Blowing their headquarters into the next century ought to be a sufficient invitation for the bastard to come out into the open and dance.
Lucan was anxious to get started. Even more anxious to finish the night’s mission because he had his own unfinished business back at the compound. He hated leaving Gabrielle like he had, knowing she had to be confused and probably more than a little upset.
There were things to be said, certainly, things he hadn’t even been prepared to think about much less discuss with her in that moment when the stunning reality of his feelings for her had hit him.
Now, his head was full of plans.
Reckless, stupid, hopeful plans, all of them centered on her.
Around him in the vehicle, the other warriors were checking their gear, loading up the bars of C4 into zippered duffel bags and making final adjustments to the earpieces and mics that would keep them in contact with one anot
her once they breached the asylum perimeter and split up to place the explosives.
“Tonight, we do this for Con and Rio,” Dante said, flipping one of his curved blades with nimble, black-gloved fingers and stabbing it into the sheath on his hip. “Vengeance time.”
“Hell, yeah,” Niko replied, a sentiment echoed swiftly by the others.
When they started to go for the doors, Lucan lifted his hand.
“Hold up.” His grim voice stilled them all. “There’s something you need to know. Since we’re about to go in there and possibly get our asses handed to us, I suppose now’s as good a time as any to be straight with you about a couple of things… and I need a promise from each of you.”
He met the faces of his brethren, warriors who’d been fighting beside him, as tight as kin, for what seemed like forever. They had always looked to him to lead, trusting him to make the hard calls, certain he would never be at a loss for strategy or decision.
Now he wavered, hesitant, unsure of where to begin. He raked a hand over his jaw, blew out a sharp sigh.
Gideon frowned at him, concerned. “Everything good, Lucan? You took a pretty massive hit in the ambush last night. If you want to sit this out—”
“No. No, that’s not it. I’m fine. My injuries are healed… thanks to Gabrielle,” he said. “Earlier today, she and I…”
“No shit,” Gideon replied when Lucan’s explanation trailed off. Damn the vampire, but he was actually grinning about it.
“You drank from her?” Niko asked.
Tegan grunted in the backseat. “That female’s a Breedmate.”
“Yes,” Lucan said, answering with serious calm. “And if she’ll have me, I mean to ask Gabrielle to take me as her mate.”
Dante smirked at him, rolling his eyes. “Congrats, man. Seriously.”
Gideon and Niko offered similar responses, clapping Lucan on the shoulder.
“That’s not all.”
Four pairs of eyes fixed on him, everyone but Tegan looking at him with grim expectation.