Midnight Breed - Book - 01
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Kiss of Midnight
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“I love you.” The words were low and earnest, a caress
she felt deep inside of her. “Gabrielle Maxwell, I love you
more than life itself. I’ve been alone for so long, I didn’t
know enough to recognize that until it was nearly too late.”
He stopped talking then, searching her eyes intensely. “It’s
not . . . too late, is it?”
He loved her.
Joy, pure and bright, poured through her to hear those
words coming from Lucan.
“Say it again,” she whispered, needing to know that
this moment was real, that it would last.
“I love you, Gabrielle. With every ounce of life in me, I
love you.”
“Lucan.” She sighed his name, tears rising, swelling,
spilling over to run down her cheeks.
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her deeply, a
passionate joining of their mouths that sent her head spin-
ning, her heart soaring, her blood pulsing like fire in her
veins.
“You deserve so much better than me,” he told her, rev-
erence in his voice and in his bright, amber-flecked gray
gaze. “You know the demons in me. Can you love me—
would you have me—even though you know my weak-
ness?”
She cupped his strong jaw in her palm, letting him see
the love she held for him reflecting in her eyes. “You’re
never weak, Lucan. And I will love you no matter what.
Together we can get past anything.”
“You make me believe that. You’ve given me hope.”
Lovingly, he caressed her arm, her shoulder, her cheek. His
gaze roamed over her face, following the reverent path of
his hands. “My God, you are so exquisite. You could have
any male, Breed or human—”
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“You’re the only one I want.”
He smiled. “God help you, but I will have no other. I’ve
never wanted anything so selfishly as I want this moment.
Be mine, Gabrielle.”
“I am.”
He swallowed, glancing down as if suddenly uncertain.
“I’m talking about forever. I can’t settle for anything less.
Gabrielle, will you have me as your mate?”
“Forever and always,” she whispered, leaning back
onto the bed and bringing him down with her. “I am
yours, Lucan, forever and always.”
They kissed again, and when they drew apart this time,
Lucan reached for a slim gold dagger lying on the table
next to the bed. He brought it toward his face. Gabrielle
started a bit, seeing him bring the edge of the blade up to
his mouth. “Lucan—”
His eyes were soft, serious, yet tender as he held her
anxious gaze. “You’ve given me your blood to heal me.
You strengthen me and protect me. You are all that I ever
want, all that I could ever need.”
She’d never heard him speak so solemnly. His irises just
about glowed, the pale gray mingling with amber and the
depth of his emotion.
“Gabrielle, will you honor me now and take my blood
to complete our bond?”
Her voice was the barest gasp. “Yes.”
Lucan bowed his head and moved the dagger to his
lower lip. When he set the blade aside and looked at her
once more, his mouth was glossy with dark red blood.
“Come here. Let me love you now,” he said, and
pressed his scarlet kiss to her lips.
Nothing could have prepared her for that first sweet
taste of Lucan’s blood.
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Kiss of Midnight
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Richer than wine, instantly intoxicating, his blood
flowed over her tongue like an elixir crafted for the gods.
She felt all of Lucan’s love pouring into her, all of his
power and strength. Light filled her from deep within, giv-
ing her a taste of the future that awaited her as Lucan’s
Breedmate. Happiness flooded her, leaving her flushed
with its heat, and a feeling of contentment like she had
never known before.
She felt desire, too.
More intense than it had ever been.
With a low growl of need, Gabrielle braced her hand
against Lucan’s bare chest and rolled him onto his back.
She stripped out of her clothes in little more than an in-
stant and climbed on top of him, straddling his hips be-
tween her thighs.
His sex thrust up in front of her, thick and solid as
stone. The beautiful web of markings on his skin were
deep purple shot with vivid red, pulsing in stronger hues as
she gazed upon him in hunger. Gabrielle leaned down and
let her tongue trace along the swirling, intricate lines that
decorated him from thigh to navel, and higher, up his mus-
cled chest and shoulders.
He was hers.
The thought was fiercely possessive, primal. She had
never wanted him more than she did in that moment. She
was panting and wet, burning up with the need to mount
him and ride him hard.
God, was this what Savannah meant when she said the
blood-bond would enhance lovemaking?
Gabrielle looked at Lucan with pure carnal need,
hardly knowing where to begin with him. She wanted to
devour him, worship him, use him up. Slake the coiling
need that was churning inside of her.
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“You should have warned me you were feeding me an
aphrodisiac.”
Lucan grinned up at her. “And spoil the surprise?”
“Laugh it up, vampire.” Gabrielle arched a brow, then
gripped his stiff erection and sheathed him to the hilt in
one long move. “You just promised me eternity, you know.
I can make you live to regret it.”
“Yeah?” The word was more of a strangled groan as
she rocked on him, making his hips buck sharply beneath
her. Eyes blazing now, he gave her a glimpse of fang as he
smiled, clearly enjoying his torture. “Breedmate, I’m going
to love seeing you try.”
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
With family roots stretching back to the
Mayflower, author Lara Adrian lives with
her husband in coastal New England, sur-
rounded by centuries’ old graveyards, hip
urban comforts, and the endless inspiration
of the broody Atlantic Ocean. To learn
more about Lara and her novels, please
visit www.LaraAdrian.com.
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Read on for a preview of
Lara Adrian’s next novel in her
heart-stopping Midnight Breed series. . . .
Kissof
Crimson
b y
L A R A A D R I A N
On sale June 2007
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Kiss of Crimson
O n s a l e J u n e 2 0 0 7
C H A P T E R
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Three
Tess came awake with a start.
Shit. How long had she been dozing? She was in
her office, Shiva’s case file open beneath her cheek on
the desk. Last she recalled, she’d fed the malnourished
tiger and put it back in its containment so she could
begin writing up her findings. That was—she glanced
at her watch—two and a half hours ago? It was now a
few minutes before 3 A.M. She was due back in the
clinic at 7 o’clock.
Tess groaned around a big yawn and a stretch of
her cramped arms.
Good thing she woke up before Nora reported
back to work, or she’d never hear the end of—
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A loud bump sounded from somewhere in the
back of the clinic.
What the hell?
Had she been jolted out of her sleep by a similar
noise a minute ago?
Oh, jeez. Of course. Ben must have driven past
and saw the lights on in the clinic. It wouldn’t be the
first time he’d come around on a late-night drive-by to
check in on her. She really didn’t feel like getting a lec-
ture on her crazy hours, or her stubborn streak of in-
dependence.
The noise came again, another clumsy bump, fol-
lowed by an abrupt clatter of metal as something got
knocked off a shelf.
Which meant someone was in the back storage
room.
Tess rose from her desk and took a few tentative
steps toward her office door, ears tuned to any distur-
bance at all. In the kennels off the reception area, the
handful of post-op cats and dogs were restless. Some
of them were whining; others were issuing low warn-
ing growls.
“Hello?” Tess called into the empty space. “Is
someone here? Ben, is that you? Nora?”
Nobody answered. And now the noises she’d heard
before had gone still as well.
Great. She’d just announced her presence to an in-
truder. Brilliant, Culver. Absolutely frigging brilliant.
She tried to console herself with some fast logic.
Maybe it was just a homeless person looking for shel-
ter, who found his or her way into the clinic from the
back alley. Not an intruder. Nothing dangerous at all.
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Yeah? So why were the hairs on the back of her
neck tingling with dread?
Tess shoved her hands into the pockets of her lab
coat, feeling suddenly very vulnerable. She felt her
ballpoint pen knock against her fingers. Something
else was in there as well.
Oh, that’s right. The tranq syringe, full of enough
Telazol to knock a four-hundred-pound animal out
cold.
“Is someone back there?” she asked, trying to keep
her voice firm and steady. She paused at the reception
station and reached for the phone. The damn thing
wasn’t cordless—she’d gotten it cheap on closeout—
and the receiver barely reached to her ear from over
the counter. Tess went around the big U-shaped desk,
glancing nervously over her shoulder as she started
punching 9-1-1 on the keypad. “You’d better get out
of here right now, because I’m calling the cops.”
“No . . . please . . . don’t be afraid. . . .”
The deep voice was so quiet, it shouldn’t have
reached her ears, but it did. She heard it as surely as if
the words had been whispered right up next to her
head. Inside her head, strange as that seemed.
There was a dry croak and a violent, wracking
cough, definitely coming from the storage room. And
whomever the voice belonged to sounded like he was
in a world of hurt. Life and death kind of hurt.
“Damn it.”
Tess held her breath and hung up the phone be-
fore her call connected. She walked slowly toward the
back of the clinic, uncertain what she was going to
find, and really wishing she didn’t have to look at all.
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“Hello? What are you doing in here? Are you
hurt?”
She spoke to the intruder as she pushed open the
door and stepped inside. She heard labored breath-
ing, smelled smoke and the briny stench of the river.
She smelled blood, too. Lots of it.
Tess flicked the light on.
Harsh fluorescent tubes buzzed to life overhead, il-
luminating the incredible bulk of a drenched, heavily
injured man slumped on the floor near one of the
supply shelves. He was dressed all in black, like some
kind of goth nightmare—black leather jacket, tee-
shirt, fatigues, and lace-up combat boots. Even his
hair was black, the wet strands plastered to his head,
shielding his down-turned face from view. An ugly
smudge of blood and river water traveled from the
back door, partially opened onto the alley, to where
the man lay in Tess’s storeroom. He had evidently
dragged himself inside, maybe unable to walk.
If she hadn’t been so accustomed to seeing the
grisly aftermath of car accidents, beatings, and other
bodily trauma in her animal patients, the sight of this
man’s injuries might have turned Tess’s stomach in-
side out.
Instead, her mind switched from alarm and the in-
stinctual fight-or-flight mode she’d been feeling out in
the reception area, to that of the physician she was
trained to be. Clinical, calm, and concerned.
“What happened to you?”
The man grunted, gave a vague shake of his dark
head like he wasn’t going to tell her anything about it.
Perhaps he couldn’t.
“You’re covered in burns and wounds. My God,
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there must be hundreds of them. Were you in some
kind of accident?” She glanced down to where one of
his hands was resting on his abdomen. Blood was
seeping through his fingers from a fresh, deep punc-
ture. “Your gut is bleeding—and your leg, too. Jesus,
have you been shot?”
“Need . . . blood.”
He was probably right about that. The floor
beneath him was slick and dark from what he’d
lost just since his arrival at the clinic. He’d likely lost a
good deal more before he got there. Nearly every
patch of his exposed skin bore multiple lacerations—
his face and neck, his hands, everywhere Tess looked,
she saw bleeding cuts and contusions. His cheeks and
mouth were pale white, ghostly.
“You need an ambulance,” she told him, not want-
ing to upset him, but damn, the guy was in bad shape.
“Just relax now. I’m going to go call 911 for you.”
“No!” He lurched from his slump on the floor,
thrusting his hand out to her in alarm. “No hospi-
tals! Can’t . . . can’t go there . . . they won’t . . . can’t
help me.”
Despite his protest, Tess started to run for the
phone in the other room. But then she remembered
the stolen tiger hanging out in one of her exam
rooms. Hard to explain that to the EMTs, or, God for-
bid, the police. The gun shop had probably already
called in the theft of the animal, or would by the time
the store opened that morning, just a few short hours
away.
“Please,” gasped the huge man bleeding all over
her clinic. “No doctors.”
Tess paused, regarding him in silence. He needed
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help in a big way, and he needed it now. Unfor-
tunately, she looked like his best chance at the mo-
ment. She wasn’t sure what she could do for him here,
but maybe she could patch him up temporarily, get
him on his feet and get him the hell out of there.
“Okay,” she said. “No ambulances for now. Listen,
I’m, ah—I’m actually a doctor. Well, more or less.
This is my veterinary clinic. Would it be all right if I
come a little closer and have a look at you?”
She took the quirk of his mouth and ragged ex-
haled sigh as a yes.
Tess inched down beside him on the floor. He
seemed big from across the room, but crouched next
to him, she realized that he was immense, easily six-
and-a-half feet, and 250-plus pounds of heavy bone
and solid muscle. Was he some kind of bodybuilder?
One of those macho meatheads who spent his life in
the gym? Something about him didn’t quite fit that
mold. With the grim cut of his face, he looked like the
kind of guy who could tear a gym rat to pieces with
his teeth.
She moved her hands lightly over his face, feeling
for trauma. His skull was intact, but her touch told her
that he’d suffered a mild concussion in some fashion.
Probably was still in a state of shock.
“I’m just going to check your eyes,” she informed
him gently, then lifted one of his lids.
Holy shit.
The slit pupil cutting through the center of a large,
bright amber iris took her aback. She recoiled,
freaked out by the unexpected presentation.
“What the—”
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