Midnight Breed - Book - 01
Page 44
Then the explanation hit her, and she instantly felt
like an idiot for losing her cool.
Costume contacts.
Chill out, she told herself. She was getting jumpy
for no good reason. The guy must have been at a
Halloween party that got out of hand or something.
Not much she could tell from his eyes so long as he
was wearing those ridiculous lenses.
Maybe he’d been partying with a rough crowd; he
certainly looked big and dangerous enough to be part
of some kind of gang. If he was rolling with gang-
bangers tonight, she didn’t detect any evidence of
drugs on him. She didn’t smell alcohol on him, either.
Just some heavy-duty smoke, and not from cigarettes.
He smelled like he’d walked through fire. Just be-
fore he took a dive into the Mystic River.
“Can you move your arms or legs?” she asked him,
moving on to inspect his limbs. “Do you think you
have any broken bones?”
She skimmed her hands over his thick arms, feel-
ing no obvious fractures. His legs were solid, too, no
real damage beyond the bullet wound in his left calf.
From the look of it, the round appeared to have
passed clean through. Same with the one that hit him
in the torso. Luckily for him.
“I’d like to move you to one of my exam rooms.
Do you think you can walk if I help hold you up?”
“Blood,” he gasped, his voice thready. “Need it . . .
now.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but I can’t help you there. You’ll
need a hospital for that. Right now we need to get you
off this floor and out of those ruined clothes. God
PDF
Adri_9780553589375_3p_all_r1.qxp 2/9/07 2:54 PM Page 414
knows what kind of bacteria you picked up in that wa-
ter out there.”
She put her hands under his armpits and started to
lift, encouraging him to stand. He growled, something
deep and animalistic. As the sound left his mouth,
Tess caught a glimpse of his teeth behind his curled
upper lip.
Whoa. That’s weird.
Were those monstrous canines actually . . . fangs?
His eyes came open as if he had sensed her aware-
ness. Her unease. Tess was instantly blasted by pierc-
ing bright amber light, the glowing irises sending a
bolt of panic straight into her chest. Those sure as hell
weren’t contacts.
Good Lord. Something wasn’t right with this guy at all.
He grabbed her upper arms. Tess cried out in
alarm. She tried to pull out of his grasp, but he was
too strong. Hands as unyielding as iron bands
clamped tighter around her and brought her closer.
Tess shrieked, wide-eyed, frozen in fear as he drew her
right up against him.
“Oh God. No!”
He turned his bloodied, battered face toward her
throat. Sucked in a sharp breath as he neared her, his
lips brushing her skin.
“Shhh.” Warm air skated across her neck as he
spoke in a low, pained rasp. “I won’t . . . not going
to . . . hurt you. I promise. . . .”
Tess heard the words.
She almost believed them.
Until that split second of terror, when he parted
his lips and sank his teeth deep into her flesh.
PDF
Adri_9780553589375_3p_all_r1.qxp 2/9/07 2:54 PM Page 415
C H A P T E R
W
Four
Blood surged into Dante’s mouth from the twin punc-
tures in the female’s neck. He drew from her with deep,
urgent pulls, unable to curb the feral part of him that
knew only need and desperation. It was life pulsing over
his tongue and down his parched throat, silky, cinna-
mon-sweet, and so very warm.
Maybe it was the severity of his need that made
her taste so incredible, so indescribably perfect to him.
Whatever it was, he didn’t care. He drank more of her,
needing her heat when he was chilled to his marrow.
“Oh God. No!” The woman’s voice was heady with
shock. “Please! Let me go!”
She clutched at his shoulders reflexively, fingers dig-
PDF
Adri_9780553589375_3p_all_r1.qxp 2/9/07 2:54 PM Page 416
ging into his muscles. But the rest of her body was
slowly going still in his arms, lulled to a boneless sort
of trance by the hypnotic power of Dante’s bite. She
sighed a long gasp of breath, sagging limply as he
eased her down onto the floor beneath him and took
the nourishment he so badly needed.
There was no pain for her now, not since the initial
penetration of his fangs, which would have been
sharp but swiftly fleeting. The only pain here was
Dante’s own. His body shuddered from the depth of
its trauma, his head splitting from concussion, his
torso and limbs laced open in too many places to
count.
It’s okay. Don’t be afraid.
You are safe. I promise.
He sent the reassurances into her mind, even as he
held her tighter, brought her more firmly into the
cage of his arms, his mouth still drawing hard from
the wound at her throat.
Despite the ferocity of his thirst, a need amplified
by the severity of his injuries, Dante’s word was good.
Beyond the bite that startled her, he would not harm
the female.
I’ll take only what I need. Then I’ll be gone, and you will
forget all about me.
Already his strength was returning. Torn flesh was
mending from the inside out. Bullet and shrapnel
wounds were healing over.
Burns cooling.
Pain fading.
He eased up on the female, willing himself to slow,
even though the taste of her was beyond enticing.
He’d registered the exotic note of her blood scent on
PDF
Adri_9780553589375_3p_all_r1.qxp 2/9/07 2:54 PM Page 417
his first draw, but now that his body was rejuve-
nating, his senses coming back online fully, Dante
couldn’t help but savor the sweetness of his unwilling
Host.
And her body.
Beneath the shapeless white lab coat, she was
strong, lean muscle and long, graceful limbs. Curvy
in all the right places. Dante felt the mash of her
breasts pressing against his chest, where he pinned
her on the storeroom floor, her legs tangled with
his. Her hands were still gripped hard on his shoul-
ders, no longer pushing against him, but simply hold-
ing on to him as he took a final sip of her life-giving
blood.
God, she was so exquisite he could drink from her
all night.
He could do a hell of a lot more than that, he
thought, suddenly aware of the erection that was
wedged hard and demanding at her pelvis. She felt too
good beneath him. His blessed angel of mercy, even if
she’d come into the role by force.
Dante breathed in her spicy-sweet scent, gently
dropping a kiss on the wound that had fed him a sec-
&nbs
p; ond chance at life.
“Thank you,” he whispered against her warm,
velvet-soft skin. “I think you saved my life tonight.”
He smoothed his tongue over the small punctures,
sealing them closed, and erasing all traces of his bite.
The female moaned, stirring from her temporary
thrall. She moved under him, the subtle shifting of
her body only heightening Dante’s desire to be inside
her.
But he’d already taken enough from her tonight.
PDF
Adri_9780553589375_3p_all_r1.qxp 2/9/07 2:54 PM Page 418
In spite of the fact that she would remember none
of what occurred, it seemed less than sporting to se-
duce her in a puddle of stale river water and spilled
blood. Particularly after going at her neck like an an-
imal.
He moved slightly off of her, and brought his right
hand up near her face. She flinched, understandably
wary. Her eyes were open now—mesmerizing eyes,
the color of flawless aquamarine.
“My God, you are beautiful,” he murmured,
words he’d casually tossed out to numerous females in
the past, but surprisingly never meant more than he
did now.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please, don’t hurt me.”
“No,” Dante said gently. “I’m not going to hurt
you. Just close your eyes now, angel. It’s almost over.”
A brief press of his palm against her brow, and she
would forget all about him.
“Everything’s all right,” he told her as she shrank
back from him on the floor, her eyes locked onto his as
if she waited for him to strike her. Dared him to.
Dante smoothed her hair off her cheek with the ten-
derness of a lover. Her felt her tension ratchet a little
tighter. “Relax now. You can trust—”
Something sharp stuck him in the thigh.
With a vicious snarl, Dante rolled away, flipping
onto his back. “What the hell?”
Heat spread from that stabbing point of contact,
burning through him like acid. A bitter taste gathered
at the back of his throat, just before his vision began
to swim crazily. Dante tried to heave himself upright
on the floor, but fell back again, his body as uncooper-
ative as a lead slab.
PDF
Adri_9780553589375_3p_all_r1.qxp 2/9/07 2:54 PM Page 419
Panting rapidly, those bright blue-green eyes wide
with panic, Dante’s angel of mercy peered over
him. Her pretty face warped in and out of his vision.
One slender hand was pressed to her neck, where
he’d bitten her. The other was raised up at shoulder
level, holding an empty syringe in a white-knuckled
grip.
Holy Christ.
She drugged him.
But as bad as that news was, Dante registered
something even worse as his blurring gaze struggled
to hold on to the small hand that had managed to fell
him with one blow. Between her thumb and forefin-
ger, in that fleshy juncture of soft skin, the female bore
a small birthmark.
Deep scarlet, smaller than a dime, the image of a
teardrop falling into the bowl of a crescent moon
seared into Dante’s brain.
It was a rare mark, a genetic stamp that pro-
claimed the female sacred to those of Dante’s kind.
She was a Breedmate.
And with her blood now pulsing within him,
Dante had just completed one half of a solemn bond.
By vampire law, she was his.
Irrevocably.
Eternally.
The very last thing he wanted or needed.
In his mind, Dante roared, but all he heard was
a low, wordless growl. He blinked dully, reaching out
for the woman, missing her by an easy foot. His arm
dropped like it was weighted down with irons. His
eyelids were too heavy to lift more than a fraction. He
PDF
Adri_9780553589375_3p_all_r1.qxp 2/9/07 2:54 PM Page 420
moaned, watching his erstwhile savior’s features blur
before his eyes.
She glared down at him, her voice edged with de-
fiant fury.
“Sleep tight, you psychotic son of a bitch!”
PDF
Purchase a physical copy of
KISS OF MIDNIGHT
by Lara Adrian
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Borders
Powellʼs
IndieBound
Books-a-Million
Random House
Read all the books in the Midnight Breed series:
Kiss of Midnight
Kiss of Crimson
Midnight Awakening
Paperback
Paperback
Paperback
eBook
eBook
eBook
Midnight Rising
Veil of Midnight
Ashes of Midnight
(Coming May 26, 2009)
Paperback
Paperback
Paperback
eBook
eBook
eBook