Defy the Dawn

by Lara Adrian

  She pivoted away from him again, as if she was finished with their conversation and finished with him. Maybe that ice-cold shoulder had been enough to shut out all of the other men who tried to get close to Brynne, but not him.

  He’d seen the desire in her eyes when they had nearly kissed today. He’d felt her soften in his arms in that moment, not only resigned to the need that they both felt, but consumed by it with the same intensity that it owned him.

  She flinched when he came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. She stiffened under his touch, but he could feel the heavy spike of her pulse, and the sudden, rapid rhythm of her breathing. “If you’re so hell-bent on running away, at least be honest about it. You’re running away from me.”

  “I’m sure you’d like to think so.”

  “No, Brynne. I don’t want you to run away from me.” He swore, low under his breath, and he turned her around to face him. Her mouth was set in a firm line, but her glittering eyes softened as he held her. “I should be glad that you want to run away from me, from this. I should want that as badly as you seem determined to go.”

  To his astonishment, she trembled as the seconds stretched out between them. Bold, defiant, hard-headed Brynne stared at him in silent trepidation. She licked her lips, and he glimpsed the sharp white points of her fangs.

  “I told you earlier that I didn’t want anything to do with you, Zael.” Desperation crept into her voice. “Why can’t you accept that? Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

  “Because every time I look at you, I see the same desire in your eyes that I feel burning me up inside.”

  He brought one hand up to stroke the softness of her cheek. Pinkness rose into her face as his thumb flicked across her parted lips. It made her look so fragile, almost innocent. The color spread downward, along the delicate column of her throat, then into the open collar of her shirt and across the pretty swells of her breasts.

  Yes, Brynne Kirkland was hard-shelled and stubborn. Yes, she was a lethally powerful creature, born of a race his own had long feared and despised. But beneath her dermaglyph-covered skin, she was a woman. A woman who yearned for a man’s touch.

  His touch.

  “Wanting you this way is the last thing I should be doing, Brynne. But I’m not going to stand here and lie to you by pretending there’s nothing between us.” He caught her face in his palms. “I’m not going to stand here and let you lie about that either.”

  “Zael—” She moaned the instant their mouths met. Her hands flattened against his shoulders, but it wasn’t to push him away. As he took her deeper into his kiss, Brynne’s fingers curled into the loose white linen of his shirt. She clung to him, her body telling him everything her words could not.

  He growled low and possessive into her mouth as he pushed his tongue inside to meet hers. Her breath raced hot and heavy. The tips of her fangs grazed his lips as he claimed her hungrily, demanding her surrender. And she gave it to him.

  Holy fuck, did she ever.

  That kiss they’d been denied a short while ago only made the heat reignite all the hotter now.

  Their mouths joined in undeniable need, Zael skimmed his hands over her arms, then traced his fingers along her sides. She shivered as he slid his palms under her blouse and onto the soft, bare skin of her torso.

  The intricate lines of her glyphs throbbed beneath his fingertips, warm and pulsing. Unearthly and alive. Their pattern created a tempting, tactile roadmap across her belly and rib cage—one he craved to follow with his tongue.

  He wanted to uncover and devour every sweet inch of her body.

  But first, he wanted to hear her say the words.

  “Now tell me there’s nothing happening between us,” he rasped against her kiss-swollen lips.

  As he spoke, Zael reached around her and deftly unfastened her bra. The lacy cups slackened, freeing her naked breasts into his hands. She sighed deeply as he caressed her. Moaned sharply as he rolled the tight beads of her nipples between his fingers.

  “Tell me you haven’t been wanting this as much as I have, Brynne.”

  Her pleasured gasp tore out of her without resistance, but it wasn’t good enough.

  Pushing her shirt and bra out of the way, he bent his head and pulled one rosy nipple into his mouth. Each tug of his tongue and lips made the colors of her dermaglyphs intensify, their patterns churning and transforming in response to her rising desire. Brynne arched against him as he sucked and licked her. Her spine bowed, she plunged her fingers into his hair, her legs trembling beneath her.

  The scent of her arousal filled his nostrils. Spicy and sweet. Ethereal and bold. Like earth and heaven combined.

  Damn, she was lovely. Sexy as hell. Although he had bedded many women over his long lifetime, he had never been with a woman who was Breed. He never imagined he could want any woman the way he wanted Brynne.

  The cynical part of him tried to dismiss this need he felt for Brynne as nothing more than sexual novelty, just his libido craving a new diversion. But if that had been the case, he never would have denied her back in London. Refusing her had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done. And he wasn’t about to let her act as if he was alone in that torment.

  “Tell me you want me, Brynne. Tell me what you said to me the other night on that dance floor. Now, when there’s no whisky to hide behind. Nothing but you and me, and the truth between us.”

  He skated one hand down the length of her body, into the parted cleft of her thighs. The tiny scrap of black silk that covered her sex was soaked and so hot against Zael’s fingertips he groaned with the need to touch her, to taste her…to brand himself on all of her senses.

  He cupped his hand over her mound, one finger slipping beneath her panties to the silken heat of her naked folds. Her sex was slick and lush, her juices coating his fingertips as he caressed her swollen folds and the hardened bud of her clit.

  “Tell me now,” he said, “when you can’t take it back later or tell me I’m insane for thinking you feel this need too.”

  She whimpered, a tremor shuddering through her as he stroked her wet satin flesh. He teased the tight entrance of her sex, stopping just shy of penetration, despite that her thighs clamped tight around his hand in unspoken demand.

  He wanted to hear her admit the truth out loud, once and for all.

  “Say it, Brynne. Tell me you haven’t been wanting to feel me inside you from the moment we first saw each other right outside on that terrace last week.”

  She made an anguished sound and he glanced up to find her eyes blazing with fiery amber, her Breed pupils narrowed to thin slits. Her fangs gleamed from behind the plush line of her upper lip.

  She was beautiful under normal circumstances, but like this, she was primal and otherworldly, so fiercely sexy that she defied any description.

  Holding his gaze, Brynne licked her lips and the truth boiled out of her in a single word. “Yes.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Everything he’d said was true.

  She was trying to run away. From him, from what he made her feel.

  From what he’d made her want.

  After witnessing the latest attack by Opus Nostrum, a surge of panic had gripped her. She couldn’t get out of that room fast enough. The world was on fire, under siege from so many new and deadly terrors. She had watched the fresh footage and felt swamped with shame that her biggest personal problem was an unwanted attraction to a male she shouldn’t desire and who would probably only break her heart.

  She ran because she realized that she needed to get her priorities straight—something she seemed unable to do whenever Zael was near.

  It wasn’t because she felt there was nothing between them.

  It was because, sooner or later, she knew she’d be unable to deny him.

  And now that her admission had left her lips, there could be no turning back.

  She wanted him.

  She had been trying to convince herself otherwise since that morning she
saw him standing in the thin light of dawn—inhumanly handsome, gilded in sunshine like some strange, golden angel.

  She had wanted him then.

  She had wanted him the other night too.

  “It wasn’t the whisky,” she murmured now, captivated by his hungry stare as he held her close, his fingers stroking her sex in exquisite torment. Her breath was shallow from desire, every nerve ending in her body lit up with need for this man. She shook her head, sending her loose sable waves shifting around her shoulders. “When I said I wanted to be with you last night in London…that I wanted you to take me home and to bed with you… Zael, it wasn’t because I’d been drinking. It was the truth.”

  His low reply was less a word than a masculine growl of satisfaction.

  Of triumph.

  Taking her mouth in another searing kiss, he began unfastening the buttons of her shirt. When he tore his lips away from hers, his breath was sawing out of him, his blue eyes darkened with desire.

  “Do you have any idea how hard it was to say no to you last night?” He grinned, but it was a hungered smile. “I wanted to bite these buttons loose with my teeth on that dance floor.”

  With that, he took off her blouse, then slid her undone bra off her arms as well. Brynne watched his gaze drink in the sight of her glyphs. Being something even purer than Gen One, her skin markings arced and twisted all over her torso and onto her limbs. Smaller flourishes danced along the undersides of her breasts and around her erect nipples.

  Ordinarily, the glyphs were just a shade darker than her own pale skin, but with the intensity of her desire for Zael now, hers were awash in variegated hues of deep indigo, wine, and burnished gold. He traced some of them with his fingers, then bent his head to follow the looping line of one pattern with his tongue.

  She hissed at the sensation of it. The warm, wet trail felt like fire on her skin. His touch inflamed her too. Caressing and stroking her breasts, he lifted his mouth to hers again and captured her bottom lip between his teeth. Brynne moaned, pleasure arrowing through her when she felt his tongue teasing the lethal points of her fangs.

  It was a brazen thing to do—not only because she was Breed, but because he had no idea how sharp her hunger truly was.

  She hadn’t fed in nearly a week. That was skating a thin enough edge in her day to day life, but now, with sexual need coiling around her as well, she was treading dangerous ground.

  Zael wasn’t Breed, but he wasn’t human either. Nathan and Jordana had already proven that a blood bond was possible between Breed and Atlantean. The last thing Brynne wanted was to shackle herself to anyone in a bond that could never be broken—and that went double for Zael.

  Especially when seeing her feed would show him the hideous secret she kept.

  She rocked back on a snarl, tearing her mouth away from his.

  Zael must have seen the misery in her eyes. He saw her torment, but he must have mistaken it as doubt. Doubt for what she wanted. Doubt for what she felt about him.

  Frowning, he gave a rough shake of his head and took a step back from her.

  “If you’re going to say no, Brynne, do it now.” His deep voice rasped, as raw and on edge as she felt. “Because if you let me take this any further with you—”

  She didn’t give him the chance to finish. Before he could think for another second that she wanted anything other than the pleasure he was giving her, Brynne closed the scant distance between them. Zael caught her in his arms, and their mouths crashed together in a kiss that obliterated all words and doubts and pretenses.

  She wanted him so fiercely, she could hardly stand it. And she needed him inside her.

  Her fingers speared into his silky hair, she backed toward the bed and brought him down onto the mattress with her. She was no seductress—far from it—but with Zael she felt powerful, sexy . . . more wanted than she ever had before in her life.

  Wanted by an immortal male whose race had despised the forbears of hers for thousands of years.

  She and Zael couldn’t have been more different. He was born of light, and she was bred from a terrible darkness. But none of that mattered when Zael was caressing her naked breasts and kissing her as if he wouldn’t ever get enough.

  His desire for her didn’t blaze from his irises the way hers did. His smooth, bronzed skin didn’t churn with color-drenched dermaglyphs to betray the depth of his need for her. When his mouth suckled and licked at hers, she didn’t feel the sharp abrasion of fangs.

  But Zael was formidable in his need. His large, muscled body pressed her to the mattress beneath him. His fingers slid inside her panties as if he already owned every inch of her. His strokes were possessive, merciless. His thick moan rumbled against her mouth as he delved into her drenched cleft to roll the rough pad of his thumb over her aching clit in a teasing tempo that drove her wild.

  Brynne arched her spine and ground her hips shamelessly, helplessly, against the wicked pleasure of his touch on her sensitive flesh. She couldn’t bite back her strangled cry as heat began to coil and spiral through her core.

  “You like that,” Zael said. Not a question, but a confident statement of fact. “Tell me you don’t want me to stop, Brynne.”

  “Don’t stop.” The words leaked out of her on panted breaths between kisses. It had been so long since she’d known a man’s touch on her. And never with the same need for it that she felt for this man’s touch. “Please, Zael… Don’t stop.”

  He gritted a curse against her mouth and yanked her panties off in his fist. Cool air skated across her wet folds, only to be replaced by Zael’s mouth a moment later when he slid down her body and buried his face between her parted thighs.

  She had no words now. Only breathless gasps and raw, carnal sounds that should have embarrassed her but only amplified the intensity of her desire.

  There was no more teasing in his touch, nor in his kiss.

  With long strokes of his tongue and deftly moving fingers, he didn’t ask for her surrender—he demanded it. God help her, but she had to admit here and now that this wanton part of her had been his all along.

  Writhing and bucking, she clutched at the coverlet as Zael sucked her clit deeper into his mouth. Pleasure swamped every cell in her body, sending her senses reeling, higher and higher still. She shuddered as the first shockwave of release broke over her.

  Brilliant and jagged, her climax tore through her like lightning. She couldn’t stop it, couldn’t hold back her sharp cry of Zael’s name as she bowed up off the mattress with the intensity of her orgasm.

  Her hands sought him out blindly, latching onto his hair when he refused to show her any mercy. His mouth and tongue moved over her quivering flesh with ruthless purpose, while his fingers invaded the molten and aching core of her body.

  “You’re beautiful,” he murmured, glancing up and catching her watching him between her spread thighs. “I’ve never seen anything as lovely as you, Brynne.”

  His praise warmed her, even if she didn’t believe him.

  She knew how she must look to him. Her eyes burning hot as coals, pupils as thin as a cat’s. Her glyphs were livid with color now, pulsing like living rivers of changeable, unearthly ink all over her skin. And with every breath that panted in and out of her, she knew there could be no hiding the long white points of her fangs. Fully extended now, they filled her mouth, sharp tips sinking into the flesh of her tongue.

  “Beautiful,” he said again, as if he knew she doubted him.

  And maybe to prove it—to her or to himself, she wasn’t sure—Zael rose from between her parted legs and slowly pulled off his clothing.

  She had seen him half-dressed more than once, enough to be prepared for the naked splendor of his broad shoulders and the sculpted muscles of his chest and abdomen. But he still took her breath away as he stood before her next to the bed, his golden skin looking as smooth and soft as velvet over the sinewy ropes and lean planes of his body.

  His cock stood long and erect, a thick spear of hard flesh. The
sight of him so fully aroused made her blood thrum heavily in her veins. It made her mouth water for the taste of him.

  To her, Zael always looked something slightly more than human. No mere mortal genetics could produce his heartbreakingly sculpted features and cerulean blue eyes, or the copper-threaded, golden mane that crowned his handsome face. Human men could spend their lifetimes at the gym and never emerge with the flawlessly honed muscles that wrapped every inch of Zael’s powerful physique.

  “You’re the beautiful one.” She couldn’t hide her awe. “You look like a fallen angel. That’s what I thought when I saw you that first morning.”

  “Is that so?” He smirked as he moved onto the bed with her. “I promise there was nothing angelic about the things I thought about you then. Or now.”

  Brynne’s quiet laugh dissolved into a sigh as he levered himself over her, brushing the head of his heavy cock against the sensitive skin of her inner thigh. “Mmm,” he groaned. “Definitely not now.”

  She bit her lower lip, every nerve ending tingling with awareness as Zael stroked her wet clit with his fingers. She was still electric with desire for him, even though her orgasm had given her some relief. Her body undulated beneath his touch, aching for more.

  “Tell me what you want, Brynne.” His rough whisper nearly undid her. Yes, he was golden and beautiful, but he was also strong and commanding, formidably male. He nudged at the slick entrance of her body, his erection feeling immense and hot as fire-forged steel. “You want this?”

  “I want you.” She arched her hips in invitation… In surrender.

  Zael claimed her in a slow, breath-stealing thrust that seemed to go on forever.

  He was large and thick, stretching her as he seated himself to the hilt inside her. Brynne wrapped her legs around him, angling to accommodate more of him as he began to rock in and out of her.

  Each stroke went deeper, every thrust held more ferocity, until the need and rhythm of their bodies was no longer either of theirs to control.

  Brynne cried out as he pushed her to the limit—not only her body’s, but the limit of her sanity. Bliss and need twined together in a coil that twisted tighter, hotter…beyond anything she knew before.