Lucan could only stare at her in stunned silence. “It was
never about causing hurt, not to anyone. I wasn’t burying
traumatic memories or trying to escape some kind of
abuse, despite the opinions of several so-called experts ap-
pointed by the state. I cut myself because . . . it soothed me.
Bleeding calmed me. It didn’t take much, only a small cut,
never very deep. When I’d bleed, everything that was out
of place and strange about me suddenly felt. . . normal.”
She held his unwavering gaze with a new air of defi-
ance, as if a gate had been opened somewhere deep inside
her and a heavy burden had been freed. In some small
way, Lucan realized that was just what he’d witnessed here.
Except she still was missing a crucial piece of information
that would make things click into place for her.
She didn’t know that she was a Breedmate.
She couldn’t know that one day a member of his race
would take her as his eternal beloved and show her a world
unlike she had ever dreamed of. Her eyes would be opened
to a pleasure that only existed between blood-bonded
pairs.
Lucan found himself hating that nameless male who
would have the honor of loving her.
“I’m not crazy, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Lucan gave a slow shake of his head. “I am not think-
ing that at all.”
“I despise pity.”
“So do I,” he said, detecting the warning in her words.
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“You don’t need pity, Gabrielle. And you don’t need medi-
cine or doctors, either.”
She had been retreating into herself from the moment
he had first discovered her scars, but now he felt her hesita-
tion, her tentative trust in him slowly returning.
“You don’t belong to this world,” he told her, not senti-
ment but fact. He reached out, cupping her face in his
palm. “You are far too extraordinary for the life you’ve
been living, Gabrielle. I think you’ve known it all along.
One day, it will all make sense to you, I promise. Then
you’ll understand, and you will find your true destiny.
Maybe I can help you find it.”
He meant to resume bathing her, but the awareness
that she was watching him made his hands still. The pro-
found warmth in her answering smile put an ache in his
chest. Snared in her tender regard, he felt his throat con-
strict strangely.
“What is it?”
She gave a small shake of her head. “I’m surprised,
that’s all. I didn’t expect a big tough cop like you to speak
so romantically about life and destiny.”
The reminder that he had, and was still, coming to her
under false pretenses jolted some of his wits back into his
brain. He plunged the washcloth back into the soapy water
and let it float among the suds. “Maybe I’m just full of
shit.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Don’t give me so much credit,” he said, forcing a casu-
alness into his tone. “You don’t know me, Gabrielle. Not
really.”
“I’d like to know you. Really.” She sat up in the water,
the tepid little waves lapping around her nude body the
way Lucan wanted to do with his tongue. The tops of her
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breasts rode just above the surface, pink nipples hard as
buds, surrounded in frothy white foam. “Tell me, Lucan.
Where do you belong?”
“Nowhere.” The answer slipped out of his mouth in a
growl, a confession closer to the truth than he cared to ad-
mit. Like her, he despised pity and was relieved that she
was looking at him more in curiosity than sympathy. He
ran his finger along the pert, freckle-spattered bridge of
her nose. “I am the original misfit. I’ve never really be-
longed anywhere.”
“That’s not true.”
Gabrielle’s arms circled around his shoulders. Her soft
brown eyes held his gaze tenderly, with the same care he’d
given her as he’d brought her out of the locked darkroom
and into the warm bath. She kissed him and, as her tongue
swept his lips, Lucan’s senses were swamped with the
heady perfume of desire and sweet, feminine affection.
“You’ve taken such good care of me tonight. Let me
take care of you now, Lucan.” She kissed him again, a
deep plundering with her slick little tongue that forced a
groan of pure male pleasure from deep within him. When
she finally broke contact, she was breathing hard, her eyes
afire with carnal need. “You’re wearing too many clothes.
Take them off. I want you naked with me in here.”
Lucan obeyed, shucking his boots, socks, pants, and
shirt to the floor. He wore nothing else, standing before
Gabrielle fully nude.
Fully engorged and eager for her.
He was careful to keep his eyes tilted away from hers
now that his pupils had narrowed with hunger, and he was
mindful of the throbbing press of his fangs, which had
stretched long behind his lips. If not for the bare trace of
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light from the night lamp near the sink, she would have
surely seen him in all his ravenous glory.
And that would be quite a buzzkill for an otherwise
promising moment.
He wasn’t about to take that chance.
With a sharp mental command, he shattered the small
bulb behind the night light’s plastic cover. Gabrielle star-
tled at the sudden pop, but then she sighed as blissful
darkness surrounded them. Her body was making lovely,
slippery noises in the tub.
“Turn on another light, if you want.”
“I’ll find you without it,” he promised, speech a tricky
thing now that lust had a firm hold on him.
“Then come,” bid his siren from the warm pool of her
bath.
He stepped into the water, sinking down to face her in
the dark. He wanted nothing more than to haul her
close—drag her into the cradle of his thighs and sheath
himself to the hilt in one long stroke. But he would let her
set their pace for now.
Last night he had come there hungry and taking;
tonight he would give.
Even if the restraint killed him.
Gabrielle glided toward him through the thinning
clouds of foam. Her feet went around his hips and linked
loosely over his ass. She bent forward at the waist, her fin-
gers finding his thighs beneath the surface of the bath. She
squeezed the taut muscles, kneaded them, then firmly rode
their length in slow, delicious torment.
“You should know, I’m not usually like this.”
His groan of int
erest sounded strained in his ears. “You
mean, hot enough to reduce any male to cinder at your
feet?”
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She exhaled a soft laugh. “Is that what I do to you?”
He brought her teasing hands up to the jutting thick-
ness of his cock. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re amazing.” She didn’t withdraw her
touch after his hands left hers. She traced his shaft and
balls, then lazily brought her fingers up around the bul-
bous head that more than breached the surface of the
bathwater. “You’re not like anyone I’ve ever known. And
what I meant was, I’m not usually so . . . well, aggressive. I
don’t date a lot.”
“You don’t take a lot of men to your bed?”
Even in the dark, he sensed her sudden blush. “No. It’s
been a very long time.”
In that moment, he didn’t want her to take any other
male—human or vampire—into her bed.
He didn’t want her fucking anyone else ever again.
And God help him, he would hunt down and disem-
bowel the Minion bastard who might have harmed her
today.
The thought hit him with a savage rush of possessive-
ness as her fingers squeezed his sex, wringing a drop of
slick wetness from the tip. When she bent down over him
and drew his cock into her mouth, suckling him deeply, he
arched up as tight as a bowstring.
Forget tearing out the Minion’s entrails, he would settle
for nothing less than flat-out, bloody murder.
Lucan lowered his hands onto Gabrielle’s shoulders as
she worked him into a mindless frenzy. Her fingers, her
lips, her tongue, her breath rasping against his bare ab-
domen as she took him deeper and deeper into her hot
mouth—all of it driving him to the brink of extraordinary
madness. He couldn’t get enough. When she drew off of
him, he swore roundly at the loss of her sweet suction.
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“I need you inside me,” she told him, panting.
“Yes,” he snarled. “God, yes.”
“But . . .”
Her hesitation confused him. Angered that part of him
that was more savage Rogue than considerate lover.
“What’s wrong?” It came out more of a demand than
he meant.
“Shouldn’t we . . . ? Last night, things got out of hand
before I could mention it . . . but shouldn’t we, you know,
use something this time?” Her discomfort sliced through
his passion-drenched mind like a blade. He grew still, and
she pulled away from him as if to get out of the tub. “I
have some condoms in the other room. . . .”
His hand clamped down around her wrist before she
could move to rise.
“I can’t make you pregnant.” Why did that sound so
harsh to him now? It was plain truth. Only bonded pairs—
Breedmate women and the vampire males who exchanged
blood from each other’s veins—could successfully produce
offspring. “As for anything else, you don’t have to worry
about protecting yourself. I’m healthy, and nothing we do
together will hurt either one of us.”
“Oh. Me, too. And I hope you don’t think I’m prudish
for asking—”
He drew her closer to him, silencing her awkwardness
with a slow kiss. When their lips parted, he said, “I think,
Gabrielle Maxwell, that you’re an intelligent woman who
respects her body and herself. I respect you for having the
courage to be careful.”
She smiled against his mouth. “I don’t want to be care-
ful when I’m near you. You make me wild. You make me
want to scream.”
With her hands splayed on his chest, she pushed him
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down, until he was leaning against the back of the tub. Then
she rose up over the heavy spear of his sex and moved her
slick cleft along its length, sliding up and down, almost—but
fuck, not quite!—sheathing him in her warmth.
“I want to make you scream,” she whispered near
his ear.
Lucan groaned with the pure agony of her sensual
dance. He fisted his hands at his sides in the water to keep
from grabbing her and impaling her on his nearly bursting
erection. She kept up her wicked game, until he felt his cli-
max knotting in his shaft. He was about to spill, and she
was still teasing him mercilessly.
“Fuck,” he swore through gritted teeth and fangs,
tipping his head back. “For chrissake, Gabrielle, you are
killing me.”
“I want to hear it,” she coaxed.
And then her juicy sex was inching down over the head
of his cock.
Slowly.
So damned slowly.
His seed boiled up, and he shuddered as a trickle of hot
liquid spurted into her body. He moaned, never so close to
losing it as he was just then. And Gabrielle’s tightness en-
veloped him further. The tiny muscles inside her clenched
at him as she sank lower on his shaft.
He could hardly bear any more.
Gabrielle’s scent surrounded him, wafting on the steam
of the bath and mingling with the intoxicating perfume of
their joined bodies. Her breasts bobbed near his mouth
like fruit just ripe for his picking, but he didn’t dare sample
them when his control was so near to snapping. He wanted
to pull her peachy mounds into his mouth, but his fangs
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were throbbing with the need to draw blood—a need only
heightened in the midst of sexual release.
He turned his head aside and let out a howl of anguish,
torn in so many tempting directions, not the least of which
was the pressure to come inside Gabrielle, filling her with
every drop of his passion. He shouted a curse, and then he
truly was screaming, roaring a deep oath that only gained
in strength as she sank down hard on his starving cock
and wrung him dry, her own orgasm following quickly be-
hind his.
Once his head stopped ringing and his legs regained
strength enough to hold him, Lucan wrapped his arms
around Gabrielle’s back and started to rise with her, hold-
ing her in place on his already rousing erection.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ve had your fun. Now I’m taking you to bed.”
The shrill ring of his cell phone jolted Lucan out of a
heavy sleep. He was in bed with Gabrielle, both of them
spent. She was curled up beside him, her naked body glo-
riously draped over his legs and torso.
Jesus, how long had he been out? Had to be hours,
&nbs
p; which was amazing considering his usual itchy state of in-
somnia.
The phone rang again and he was on his feet, heading
for the bathroom, where he’d left his jacket. He dug the
cell out of one of the pockets and flipped it open.
“Yeah.”
“Hey.” It was Gideon, and there was something odd
about his voice. “Lucan, how fast can you get to the com-
pound?”
He looked over his shoulder to the adjacent bedroom
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loft. Gabrielle was sitting up now, drowsy from sleep, her
bare hips wreathed in tangled sheets, her hair a wild mess
around her face. He’d never seen anything so bloody
tempting. Maybe it was better that he did leave soon,
while he still stood a chance of getting away before the
sun came up.
Wrenching his gaze away from the arousing sight of
her, Lucan growled an answer into the phone. “I’m not far.
What’s going on?”
A lengthy silence stretched on the other end.
“Something’s happened, Lucan. It’s bad.” More quiet,
then some of Gideon’s natural calm cracked. “Ah, fuck,
there’s no easy way to say it. We lost one tonight, Lucan.
One of the warriors is dead.”
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The sounds of a female’s mourning reached Lucan’s ears
as soon as he stepped out of the elevator that had delivered
him to the subterranean depths of the compound. Heart-
rending cries of deep anguish, the Breedmate’s keening
sorrow was raw, palpable, the only thing audible in the still-
ness of the long corridor.
It clawed at Lucan, the stunning weight of loss.
He didn’t know yet which of the Breed warriors had
perished that night. He wouldn’t strive to guess. His foot-
steps were brisk, all but running toward the infirmary
chambers from where Gideon had called him a few min-
utes ago. He rounded a bend in the corridor just in time to
see Savannah leading a grief-stricken, wailing Danika from
one of the rooms.
A fresh wave of shock hit him.
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So, it was Conlan who was gone, then. The big
Highlander with the easy laugh and deep, unfailing
honor . . . dead now. Soon to be dust.
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