But he wouldn’t seduce her, he decided, not like this.
He wanted only a taste tonight, just enough to satisfy his
curiosity. That was all he’d permit himself. When he was
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through here, Gabrielle would have no memory of meet-
ing him, nor of the horror she had witnessed in the alley a
few nights ago.
His own need would have to wait.
Lucan went to her and eased his hip onto the mattress
beside her. He stroked the burnished softness of her hair,
brushed his fingers along the slender line of her arm.
She stirred, moaning sweetly, rousing at his light touch.
“Lucan,” she murmured sleepily, not quite awake, yet sub-
consciously aware that he had joined her in the room.
“Just a dream,” he whispered, astonished to hear his
name on her lips when he had used no vampire guile to
place it there.
She sighed deeply, settling against him. “I knew you
would come back.”
“Did you?”
“Mm-hmm.” It was a purr of sound in her throat,
raspy and erotic. Her eyes remained closed, her mind still
caught in the web of her dreams. “I wanted you to come
back.”
Lucan smiled at that, tracing his fingers over her placid
brow. “You do not fear me, beauty?”
She gave a small shake of her head, nuzzling his palm
against her cheek. Her lips were slightly parted, small
white teeth gleaming in the scant light overhead. Her neck
was graceful, proud, a regal column of alabaster above the
fragile bones of her shoulders. How sweet she would taste,
how soft against his tongue.
And her breasts . . . Lucan could not resist the peachy
dark nipple that peeked out from under the sheet draped
haphazardly across her torso. He teased the little bud be-
tween his fingers, tugging it gently and nearly growling
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with need as it puckered into a tight bead, hardening at his
touch.
He was hardening as well. He licked his lips, growing
hungry, eager to have her.
Gabrielle squirmed languidly beneath the tangled
sheet. Lucan slowly drew the cotton coverlet away, baring
her to him completely. She was exquisite, as he knew she
would be. Petite, yet strong, her body was lithe with youth,
supple and fair. Firm muscle shaped her elegant limbs; her
artist’s hands were slender and expressive, flexing mind-
lessly as Lucan trailed his fingers along her sternum and
down to the concave dip of her belly. Her skin here was
velvet and warm, too tempting to resist.
Lucan moved over her on the bed, and slid his palms
beneath her. He lifted her to him, gently arching her up off
the mattress. He kissed the sweet curve of her hip, then let
his tongue play across the small valley of her navel. She
gasped as he plumbed the shallow indentation, and the
fragrance of her need wreathed his senses.
“Jasmine,” he rasped against her heated skin, his teeth
dragging lightly as his kiss ventured lower.
Her moan of pleasure as his mouth invaded her sex
sent a violent jolt of lust through his veins. He was already
stiff and erect; his cock throbbed beneath the constricting
barrier of his clothes. She was wet and slick against his lips,
her cleft a heated sheath against his questing tongue.
Lucan suckled her as he would sweet nectar, until her body
convulsed with the coming of her release. And still he
lapped at her, bringing her to the crest of another climax,
and then another.
She’d gone slack in his arms, boneless and trembling.
Lucan trembled as well, his hands shaking as he carefully
eased her back down onto the bed. He’d never wanted a
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woman so badly. He wanted something more, he realized,
bemused by the impulse that he had to protect her.
Gabrielle panted softly as her last climax subsided, and she
curled onto her side, as innocent as a kitten.
Lucan stared down at her in silent fury, heaving with
the force of his need. Dull pain tightened his mouth as his
fangs stretched out from his gums. His tongue was dry.
Hunger knotted in his gut. His vision sharpened as lust for
blood and release slung its seductive coils around him, and
his pupils elongated to catlike slivers in his pale eyes.
Take her, urged that part of him that was inhuman, un-
earthly.
She is yours. Take her.
Just a taste—that was what he had vowed. He would
not harm her, only heighten her pleasure as he took a bit of
his own. She wouldn’t even remember this moment, come
the dawn. As his blood Host, she would give him a sustain-
ing sip of life, then awake later, drowsy and sated, but bliss-
fully unaware of its cause.
It was a small mercy, he told himself, even as his body
quickened with the urge to feed.
Lucan bent over Gabrielle’s languid form, and tenderly
swept aside the riot of ginger waves concealing her neck.
His heart was hammering in his chest, urging him to slake
his burning thirst. Just a taste, no more. Only pleasure. He
came forward, his mouth open, his senses swamped with
her intoxicating female scent. His lips pressed down
against her warmth, settling over the delicate pulse that
beat against his tongue. His fangs grazed the velvet softness
of her throat, throbbing now, like another demanding part
of his anatomy.
And in the instant before his sharp teeth penetrated her
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fragile skin, his keen vision lit on a tiny birthmark just be-
hind Gabrielle’s ear.
Nearly undetectable, the diminutive mark of a teardrop
falling into the cradle of a crescent moon made Lucan rear
back in shock. The symbol, so rare among human females,
meant only one thing . . .
Breedmate.
He withdrew from the bed as though touched by fire,
hissing a furious curse into the dark. Hunger for Gabrielle
still pounded through him, even as he grappled with the
ramifications of what he might have done to them both.
Gabrielle Maxwell was a Breedmate, a human gifted
with unique blood and DNA properties that comple-
mented those of his kind. She and the few numbers like
her were queens among other human females. To Lucan’s
kind, a race comprised solely of males, this woman was a
cherished goddess, giver of life, destined to bond in blood
and bear the seed of a new vampire generation.
And in his reckless lust t
o taste her, Lucan had nearly
claimed her for his own.
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Gabrielle could count on one hand the number of erotic
dreams she’d had in her life, but never had she experi-
enced anything as hot—not to mention, real—as the
sexfest fantasy she had enjoyed the night before, courtesy
of the virtual Lucan Thorne. His breath had been the
night breeze, sifting through the open window of her bed-
room loft. His hair was the obsidian darkness that filled the
skylights over her bed, his silver eyes the pale glow of the
moon. His hands were the silken bonds of her bedsheets,
twined around her splayed wrists and ankles, spreading her
open beneath him, holding her fast.
His mouth had been pure heat that seared every inch of
her skin, licking her like an unseen flame. Jasmine, he had
called her in the dream, and the soft hum of the word had
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vibrated against her damp flesh as his warm breath stirred
the flossy curls between her legs.
She had writhed and whimpered under the skill of his
tongue, submitting to a torment that she hoped might have
no end. But it had ended, too soon. Gabrielle had awak-
ened in her bed, alone in the dark, gasping Lucan’s name,
her body wrung out and listless, aching for more.
She still ached and that bothered her even more than
the fact that the mysterious Detective Thorne had stood
her up.
Not that his offer to come by her place tonight was any-
thing close to a date, but she had been looking forward to
seeing him again. She was interested to know more about
him since he seemed so adept at deciphering her with a
single glance. Aside from getting some more answers
about what she had witnessed the night outside the club,
Gabrielle had been hoping for a little conversation with
Lucan, maybe some wine or dinner. The fact that she
shaved her legs twice and wore some sexy black lingerie
beneath her long-sleeved silk blouse and dark jeans was
purely incidental.
Gabrielle had waited for him until well after nine, then
finally gave up on the idea and called Jamie to see if he
would have dinner with her downtown.
Seated across the table from her in a windowed alcove
at Ciao Bella bistro, Jamie set down his glass of pinot noir
and eyed her nearly untouched frutti de mare. “You’ve been
pushing that same piece of scallop around your plate for
ten minutes, sweetie. Don’t you like it?”
“No, it’s great. The food is always amazing here.”
“So, it’s just the company that sucks?”
She glanced up at him and shook her head. “Not at all.
You’re my best friend, you know that.”
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“Uh-huh,” he said, smiling. “But I don’t compare to
your wet dream.”
Gabrielle’s face warmed as one of the patrons at a
neighboring table looked their way. “You’re a shit some-
times, you know that?” she whispered to Jamie. “I
shouldn’t have told you about it.”
“Oh, honey. Don’t be embarrassed. If I had a nickel for
every time I woke up torqued and screaming some hot
guy’s name . . .”
“I wasn’t screaming his name.” No, she was gasping
and moaning it, both in bed and in the shower a short
while later, when she still couldn’t get Lucan Thorne out of
her system. “It was like he was there, Jamie. Right there, in
my bed—so real I could touch him.”
Jamie sighed. “Some girls have all the luck. Next time
you see your dream lover, be a dear and send him my way
when you’re through.”
Gabrielle smiled, knowing that her friend was hardly
lacking in the romance department. For the past four
years, he’d been happily monogamous with David, an an-
tiques dealer, who was currently out of town on business.
“You want to know the strangest thing about this, Jamie?
When I got up this morning, my front door was unlocked.”
“So?”
“So, you know me, I never leave it unlocked.”
Jamie’s tawny, manicured brows knit into a scowl.
“What are you saying, you think this guy broke in while
you were asleep?”
“Sounds crazy, I know. A police detective coming into
my house in the middle of the night to seduce me. I must
be losing my mind.”
She said it casually, but this wasn’t the first time she’d
questioned the soundness of her own sanity. Not the first
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time by a long shot. She fidgeted absently with the sleeve of
her blouse while Jamie observed her. He was quietly con-
cerned now, which only increased her discomfort with the
subject of her possible shaky mental stability.
“Look, hon. You’ve been under a lot of stress since the
weekend. That can do strange things to your head. You
were upset and confused. You must have forgotten to lock
the door.”
“And the dream?”
“Just that—a dream. Just your harried mind trying to
tell you to chill out, to relax.”
Gabrielle bobbed her head in an automatic nod of
agreement. “Right. I’m sure that’s all it is.”
If only she could accept that the explanation was as
reasonable as her friend made it sound. But something in
the pit of her stomach rejected the idea that she might
have carelessly left her door unlocked. It was something
she simply would not do, no matter how stressed out or
confused she was.
“Hey.” Jamie reached across the table to clasp her
hand. “You’re going to be okay, Gab. And you know you
can call me anytime, right? I’m here for you, always will
be.”
“Thanks.”
He let her go and picked up his fork to gesture at her
frutti de mare. “So, are you going to eat any more of that or
can I scavenge it now?”
Gabrielle traded her half-eaten plate of food for his
empty one. “It’s all yours.”
As Jamie went to work on her cold meal, Gabrielle
leaned her chin on her hand and took a long sip of her
wine. As she drank, her fingers moved idly over the faint
marks she had found on her neck this morning after her
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shower. The unlocked front door wasn’t exactly the
strangest thing she had discovered, the twin welts below
her ear took that prize, no contest.
skin, but they were there. Two of them, evenly spaced, at
the place where her pulse beat strongest against her finger-
tips. At first, she had wondered if she’d scratched herself in
her sleep, maybe been swept up in the strange dream she’d
had and raked her nails across her skin.
But the marks didn’t look like scratches. They looked
like something . . . else.
Like someone, or something, had nearly taken a bite
out of her carotid.
Crazy.
That’s what it was, and she needed to snap herself out
of that kind of thinking before she did any further harm to
herself. She had to get her head together and stop manu-
facturing paranoid fantasies about midnight visitors and
horror-movie monsters that couldn’t possibly exist in real
life. If she wasn’t careful, she might end up like her birth
mother . . .
“Ohmigod, smack me right now because I am a com-
plete and utter dolt,” Jamie exclaimed suddenly, breaking
into her thoughts. “I keep forgetting to tell you this! I got a
call at the gallery yesterday about your photographs. Some
bigwig downtown is interested in a private showing.”
“Seriously? Who is it?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know, sweetie. I didn’t actually
talk to the potential buyer, but based on the snooty attitude
of the guy’s assistant, I’d say whoever your admirer is,
he—or she—is dripping with money. I’ve got an appoint-
ment down at one of the buildings in the Financial District
tomorrow night. We’re talking penthouse office, darling.”
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“Oh, my God,” she gasped, incredulous.
“Uh-huh. Trés cool, girlfriend. Pretty soon you’re
gonna be too good for small-time art peddlers like me,” he
joked, grinning with shared excitement for her.
It was hard not to be intrigued, especially given every-
thing she had been through the past few days. Gabrielle
had achieved a respectable following and had won some
very nice accolades for her work, but a private showing for
an anonymous buyer was a first.
“Which pieces did they ask you to bring?”
Jamie lifted his wine glass and tipped it at her in mock
salute. “All of it, Miss Thang. Every single piece in the col-
lection.”
From the rooftop of an old brick building in the city’s busy
theater district, moonlight gleamed off the lethal sneer of
Midnight Breed - Book - 01 Page 6