Darker After Midnight: A Midnight Breed Novel

by Lara Adrian

  “How many boys like Nathan do you think there are?” Gabrielle asked.

  Lucan shook his head. “Too many. Dragos has been breeding his assassins for decades, beginning with Hunter, fifty-odd years ago.”

  “And I suppose we shouldn’t expect that Dragos’s experiments were limited to his breeding labs,” she added, her tone grave. “God only knows the extent of his sick work.”

  “With any luck,” Lucan said, “the lab intel that Hunter’s bringing back with him from New Orleans will give us some idea about that.”

  Gabrielle’s mouth curved. “I’m sure Gideon can’t wait to get his hands on the computer files. Not to mention the genetic samples Dragos had been keeping in cold storage.”

  Lucan nodded. “I’ve been hearing about it from Gideon ever since Hunter first contacted us, saying he had the cryo tanks and lab records and would soon be heading our way.”

  The recovery of the laboratory intel was only the latest blow the Order had dealt Dragos’s operation. It was also very likely the thing that had pushed him to the edge, made him desperate enough to pull the trigger on the bombing of the building in Boston and deliver human law enforcement right to the Order’s front door.

  “This thing with Dragos is far from over,” Lucan said, sharing his troubling thoughts with Gabrielle. “He’s not finished, not by a long shot. He’s going to do something that can’t be fixed. I can feel it in my bones. We’re never going to be able to go back to the way things were.”

  Gabrielle stepped toward him. She wrapped her arms around his naked waist, her cheek coming to rest warmly against his chest. “You’re doing all you can. We all are, Lucan. Put Dragos out of your head for now.”

  He ground his molars together, ready to tell her there was no way to put the bastard out of his mind. Dragos lived inside him like a ghost now, mocking and foul, oily with menace.

  Gabrielle reached up and took his tense jaw in her tender hands. She brought his mouth down to hers, pressing a slow kiss to his lips. “Try to forget him for a little while,” she said. Her eyes shone up at him with a hint of mischief. “It is your birthday, after all. Or did you forget?”

  He grunted, surprised at the reminder. “I never give the day much thought,” he said as he stroked his fingertips along the graceful line of her throat.

  “Well, I do,” she said. “And I have something for you.”

  She drew out of his arms and walked back into their bedroom. He followed behind her, unable to take his eyes from the sway of her perfect ass that looked even more incredible with every long stride she took in those spiked black heels. She pulled something from out of a bureau drawer on the other side of the room and held it behind her as she turned to face him. “It’s not much, just something I thought you’d like to have.”

  “You didn’t have to get me anything,” he replied, voice a bit thick now that his fangs were erupting out of his gums in desire for his woman. He wanted to peel her out of that clingy skirt and lick her from the toe of her glossy boots to the peachy tips of the nipples that were pressing through the lacy black bra and gauzy silk of her blouse. “I already have everything I could possibly want.”

  She brought the gift around, a large, folded square of fabric tied with a red satin ribbon. Gabrielle placed it in his hands. “Open it.”

  He tugged the bow loose and untied the ribbon. As he began to unfold the embroidered swatch, he realized at once what it was. The tapestry was old—centuries old, a medieval depiction of a dark knight on horseback, a hilltop castle smoldering in the distance behind him. Lucan remembered that moment very well; he’d lived it. He had commissioned the tapestry not long after he’d founded the Order, never suspecting the secrets it would hold within its design, or for how long it would keep them.

  The tapestry was important to him for many reasons, but mostly now because his Breedmate had seen to it that the piece made it safely out of Boston.

  “You were so busy gathering up combat gear and equipment, I decided to bring a few things of yours from before.”

  Lucan glanced up to meet his beloved’s gaze. “Thank you. I’ve never had a nicer gift.”

  He put the tapestry down on the bed nearby and pulled Gabrielle into his arms. Their mouths met in a deep kiss, unhurried, sensual. Lucan soaked her in, felt the heat of her body pressed against his naked skin, silk sliding between them as he drew her close and ran his tongue along the wet softness of her lips, desire stirring like a flame meeting gasoline inside him.

  His breath escaped on a rough growl as he skated his hands along the elegant line of her spine, then down to the strong curve of her backside. She moaned as he caressed and kissed her, the slick tip of her tongue pushing past his teeth and fangs to enter his mouth. Her fingers found his cock and took him in a firm grasp. He was already hard as granite, but her touch sent his blood surging southward, building toward an impossible ache. Mouth locked with his, she toyed with him, lightly stroking his shaft, teasing his balls with just the tips of her fingers.

  Lucan brought his hand up between them and palmed her breast, flicking his thumb over the pebbled bead of a nipple that strained against the lace and silk that confined it. He made quick work of the tiny buttons on her blouse, then eased it off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor at their feet. When he started to reach for the front closure on the skimpy bra, Gabrielle took his hand and guided him to her hips.

  “Touch me,” she whispered around heady kisses. “Feel how much I want you.”

  He obeyed at once, lifting the long drape of her skirt until he could slide his hand beneath. Her firm thighs were encased in silk stockings that rasped against his roughened fingertips as he stroked up the length of them. The silk ended abruptly, topped off by a band of grippy lace. Her hips and ass were bare.

  No panties.

  Ah, Christ.

  She let go of a shuddery sigh as he let his hands roam over her smooth, naked skin. When he slipped his fingers between the wet satin of her sex, he felt her answering moan vibrate deep inside his own throat. His arousal throbbed with the need to be in her. His blood went molten, desire hot and possessive in his veins. He found the zipper on the side of her skirt and tugged it down. His hands were clumsy and rough as he pushed it over her hips and watched as his woman was revealed to him, in nothing but a black lacy bra, thigh-highs, and gleaming leather boots.

  “Holy hell,” he murmured, feasting his gaze on her.

  She smiled, a catlike curve of her kiss-swollen mouth. “The tapestry might not be the best gift you’ve ever gotten.”

  Lucan could only stand there at full attention as she slowly sank down onto those slender heels before him and took his stiff cock in her hands. Her eyes on his, she stroked his shaft and palmed his balls, her thumb working the underside, fingers slick with his arousal. God help him, when her mouth closed around the head of him, he nearly lost it, right on the spot.

  She sucked him until he could hardly stand it anymore, until all he could do was lift her up to her feet and bury himself to the hilt where they were standing. He didn’t know how they made it over to the wall near the open French doors a moment later, didn’t have control enough to pause this fevered fucking and bring her to the bed, where he could make love to her properly.

  Not that this didn’t feel proper. He’d never felt anything more proper in his life than the heat of Gabrielle engulfing him completely, her body caught in his arms, her mouth hungry and demanding on his.

  “Feed me,” she whispered against his lips now, nipping at him with her blunt little teeth. “Let me drink from you, Lucan.”

  He couldn’t refuse her. There was nothing more intimate than the bond they shared. There was nothing more precious he could offer his mate than the lifeblood that gave her immortality with him and bound her to him for as long as they both drew breath. And drinking from him would heighten her pleasure now like nothing else could.

  Gathering her weight in one arm as he continued to thrust into her welcoming body, Lucan brought
his other wrist to his mouth and sank his fangs into the veins that pulsed there. Gabrielle drew him to her and latched on hard. She moaned with ecstasy as the first drops of his blood hit her tongue.

  He could feel her climax building. His own was right behind her, gaining power as she suckled at his wrist and wrapped herself more tightly around him. He could see her pulse ticking strongly in the veins of her pretty throat. That rhythmic drum pounded inside him too, driving him toward release and beckoning him to take the pleasure that waited just beneath the delicate flesh of his beautiful Breedmate’s neck.

  Gabrielle’s eyes were open, watching him, imploring him. She angled her head, presenting herself to him like an offering atop an altar.

  Lucan snarled with the force of the temptation. But his release was too close. And there was a crescent moon out tonight. His gaze flicked toward it through the open French doors and he couldn’t bite back his growl.

  Gabrielle’s mouth drew away from the small wounds on his wrist. She reached up to touch his face, her eyes tender with understanding. “Would it be so bad, Lucan? I want this too.”

  He couldn’t speak. He looked into her loving gaze, torn with longing and fear, dread for what kind of future their sons would have if he failed in his mission now. Could he risk that?

  Could he risk knowing that the sons he shared with Gabrielle might be born into this war of his making—or, worse, become casualties of it?

  Gabrielle showed him no mercy. Her lips fastened once more to the open vein at his wrist, as her legs wrapped tighter at his hips, spiked boot heels digging into him like spurs as she held him against her and cried out with the first tremors of her orgasm. Lucan roared as pleasure rocked her body, the sheath of her sex clutching hard around him, tiny muscles coaxing him toward the point of no return.

  “Do it,” she whispered harshly, lips stained red with his blood as she reached up to take his nape in her palm. She guided his face down to her vulnerable throat. Pressed his mouth against her throbbing carotid as her slender body began to crest beneath him in release. “Oh, God, Lucan. Please … do it now. I can feel how much you want this too.”

  Lucan’s orgasm coiled hard at the base of his shaft. He couldn’t stop his hips from moving, couldn’t stop his seed from its want to boil over, his release on the verge of exploding.

  One nick of his fangs against her skin. That’s all it would take. One taste of her blood on the tip of his tongue and he would be unable to keep from taking her in full. She’d be pregnant with his child by the end of the night.

  Ah, fuck …

  “No,” he snarled, more to himself than in rejection of what she’d asked of him. His cock shuddered as he drove in deeper, his control beginning to snap its leash. “I can’t … I won’t do this to you.”

  He’d barely gotten the words out before his body detonated inside her. His release shot through him, a rushing, endless stream. Lucan turned his face away from the temptation of Gabrielle’s fast-ticking vein as his seed flooded her and she went very still against him.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured when he was finally able to summon his voice again. He gently pulled his wrist out of her slack grasp and sealed the punctures with a sweep of his tongue. “Gabrielle … I’m sorry.”

  Feeling like a coward and a bastard, he bowed his head to hers and held her in a prolonged and awful silence.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SHE DIDN’T KNOW where he’d taken her. The room was dark, windows shuttered with louvered steel sandwiched between twin panes of glass. There was no light coming in from the street outside, but in the hours that had passed since she’d been brought there, Tavia could hear the muffled din of traffic increasing with the rise of dawn. The late-night hush was gone, punctuated now by the ruckus of the morning commute, the occasional blare of a car horn or the hiss of a slowing mass transit bus interrupting the rhythmic hum of tires speeding over frozen asphalt.

  She was in a house of some sort. Probably still within Boston, perhaps even in the heart of the city.

  She’d expected to be dead by now. After being forced from the hotel at gunpoint, having witnessed what she had inside the suite—three fully armed law enforcement officials disabled and left unmoving at the hands of one clearly unhinged, lethal man—Tavia hadn’t been given any logical reason to think she’d be spared, never mind her abductor’s word that he wasn’t going to hurt her. She’d been alert and waiting for death to come at any moment, listening to the quiet inside the strange place he’d brought her, wondering if he merely slept outside the locked door of the bedroom or was deciding how best to dispose of her.

  Even now, after the night had passed into dawn and she was still breathing, she wasn’t at all convinced she was going to make it out of this situation alive. She sat on the edge of a bare king-size mattress in a room that was vacant except for its few pieces of shrouded furniture, dreading that the next time she saw him would likely be the last.

  He hadn’t told her where they were going, had simply rushed her down the back stairwell of the hotel to the parking garage below street level, tossed her into the trunk of the federal agents’ sedan, and sped away with her. Although it had seemed like they’d driven for more than an hour, Tavia could have sworn they’d never left the city. The sounds and smells, the bumps and turns of the tight network of streets, the general crackle of activity—her senses had known all of it as though she could almost picture the city from inside the cramped darkness of the trunk.

  It was familiar to her. It was freedom out there, if only she could find her way out of this locked room.

  Away from this lifeless, shrouded phantom of a house.

  Wrapping the robe tighter around herself, Tavia got off the bed and padded over to the window once more. There was nothing to see, no means of opening the shutters. They appeared to be electronically controlled and as secure as a bank vault. The glass panes were thick, stationary panels. The only way through them would be to smash her way out, assuming the glass could be broken. And assuming she could find any kind of tool to use on it.

  Her eyes having long since adjusted to the lightless gloom, Tavia glanced at the furniture that stood draped in pale sheets around the bedroom. Sturdy, masculine shapes hinted at a tall bureau and mirrored dresser across the floor from the four-poster bed. She walked over and lifted the shroud to make a quick perusal of the drawers. To her surprise she found them neatly packed with folded socks and underwear, organized with military precision into grouped color ranges and fabric styles.

  The walk-in closet yielded the same unexpected discovery: a full wardrobe of men’s clothing, from scores of expensive-looking tailored suits and tuxedos, to easily tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of conservative casual wear. A collection of size-fourteen shoes, all black, and all meticulously polished and maintained, lined the bottom row of the enormous closet. Whoever had lived here enjoyed a privileged life surrounded by very fine things.

  And they’d apparently left it all behind.

  The entire bedroom screamed of old money and long-established roots. Tavia glanced up at the crown molding that framed the ten-foot ceilings, the wainscoted walls that weren’t painted or papered but covered in delicate ivory silk. She drifted to the other side of the large room, her bare feet cushioned by a dark-patterned Oriental rug that spread out over nearly the entire span of the floor.

  A wide desk ate up most of the wall space across from the bed. She pulled off its linen drape and sat down in the sumptuous leather chair. The top of the desk had been swept clean, but its drawers, like those of the bureau and dresser, held the neatly ordered contents of a life interrupted and abandoned.

  Tavia sifted through the pens and office implements, looking for something she might wield as a weapon against her abductor or a tool to break out of her confinement. As she dug toward the back of the drawer, her fingertips disrupted a stack of printed snapshots collected with an assortment of other memorabilia in a shallow silver tray.

  She pulled the tray out and
set it atop the polished wood surface of the desk. It was engraved with a distinguished-sounding name: Sterling Chase. His? she wondered.

  A small metal vial about the size of her thumb rolled back and forth on top of the photos. Tavia picked it up and examined it, but she couldn’t tell what, if anything, was inside. It felt light in her hand, and made no sound when she shook it, but its corked stopper had been carefully sealed with red wax. She set it aside as her gaze lit on the photographs.

  There were about a dozen in all. Random events and subjects documenting what seemed to be a decade of time: A formal reception inside a posh country club. Some award presentation attended by a crowd of immense men dressed in the same kind of dark suits she’d found in the bedroom closet. A young boy’s birthday party, resplendent with bright balloons and streamers and a mound of gift-wrapped presents, the celebration held in what appeared to be this very house.

  And one final snapshot, buried at the bottom of the stack.

  Tavia stared at it and felt some of the blood rush out of her head …

  It was her captor.

  The deranged menace—the man whom her instincts warned was something more than human. He stood behind a pricey-looking sofa, his muscled arms spread along its back to form a protective arch around the slender shoulders of a petite blond woman and the young boy from the birthday party picture. The boy had gotten older, no longer the towheaded, grinning child holding a giant box with a bow on top of it but a handsome teen wearing a Harvard University sweatshirt and a cocky smile that seemed to say he had the world by the tail.

  The woman was stunning. Delicate and beautiful, her perfect oval face was as flawless as the ivory silk on the walls that surrounded her, her long blond hair the color of corn silk, her wide lavender eyes fringed in dark lashes. She beamed at the young man like a proud mother, even though she looked to be only a few years older than he.