Kiss of Midnight

CHAPTER Twenty-three

He was lying in cool shade, a soft breeze sifting through his hair. He didn’t want to wake up from the deep, dreamless sleep. It wasn’t often that he found this kind of peace. Never like this. He wanted to nestle down into it, sleep for a hundred years.

But the faint trace of jasmine floating close by made him stir. He sucked the sweet scent into his lungs, tasting it in the back of his parched throat. Savoring it. He peeled open his heavy lids, looked up, and saw beautiful brown eyes gazing back at him.

“Feeling better?”

He was, actually. The searing headache was gone. His skin no longer felt like it was being shredded off of him. The twisting pain in his gut had faded to a hollow gnawing, uncomfortable as hell, but nothing he couldn’t handle.

He tried to tell her he was better, but his voice came out in a hoarse croak. He cleared his throat, pushed sound out of his mouth. “I’m okay.”

Gabrielle was seated on the bed with him, holding his head in her lap. She pressed a cool, damp cloth softly to his forehead and cheeks. With her other hand, she was stroking his hair, her fingers gentle and soothing.

It felt good. So incredibly good.

“You were in pretty bad shape. I was worried about you.”

He groaned at the reminder of what had happened. The attack of blood hunger had knocked him on his ass. He’d been reduced to a sputtering, feeble ball of pain. And she had seen it all. Jesus, he wanted to crawl in a dark hole and die for letting anyone see him laid low like that. Particularly Gabrielle.

Humiliation over his own weakness hit him hard, but it was the sudden jolt of dread that made him rise up, fully awake. “Christ. Gabrielle, I didn’t… did I hurt you?”

“No.” She touched his jaw, not a trace of fear in her eyes or her tender caress. “I’m fine. You didn’t do anything to me, Lucan.”

Thank God.

“You’re wearing my shirt,” he said, just now noticing that her sweater and jeans were gone and her slender curves were draped in a shroud of his black tee-shirt. All he wore were his pants.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, pulling at a loose thread. “I put this on a while ago, when Dante came by looking for you. I told him you were in bed, asleep.” She blushed a little. “I thought he’d be less inclined to ask questions if I answered the door in this.”

Lucan sat back, frowning at her. “You lied for me.”

“It seemed pretty important to you that nobody see you… like you were.”

He looked at her, sitting there so trusting with him, and he was leveled with admiration. Anyone else who’d have witnessed him like that would have put a titanium blade through his heart—and rightly so. But she hadn’t been afraid. He’d fought through one of his worst bouts so far, and Gabrielle had been there with him the whole time. Taking care of him.

She had protected him.

His chest tightened with respect. With deepest gratitude.

He had never known what that could feel like, being able to trust someone like that. He knew that any one of his brethren would have his back in battle, as he would theirs, but this was different. This was someone looking out for him. Protecting him at his most vulnerable.

Even when he’d been spitting and snarling at her, trying to drive her away. Letting her see him for the true beast he was.

She had stayed beside him, despite all of that.

He didn’t have the words to thank her for something so profoundly generous. Instead, he leaned in and kissed her, as softly as he could, with all the reverence he could never adequately express.

“I should get dressed,” he said, groaning at the thought of leaving her. “I’m better now. I should go.”

“Go where?”

“Topside, to take out a few more Rogues. I can’t let the others do all of my work.”

Gabrielle moved toward him on the bed, putting her hand on his forearm. “Lucan, it’s ten o’clock in the morning. It’s daylight up there.”

He swiveled his head to the bedside clock and saw that she was right. “Shit. I slept through the night? Dante’s going to ride my ass for a while about this one.”

Gabrielle’s lips curved into a sensual smile. “Actually, he’s under the impression that you were riding mine all this time. Remember?”

Arousal sparked inside him like flame on dry tinder.

Goddamn.

Just the thought…

She was sitting with her legs folded beneath her, the black tee-shirt bunched high on her thighs, giving him a shadowed glimpse of tiny white panties at the top of all that peachy skin. Her hair fell around her face and shoulders in sumptuous waves, making him want nothing more than to bury his hands in it as he sank down into her body.

“I hate that you had to lie for me,” he said, growling the words. He smoothed his hand along the silky curve of her thigh. “I should make an honest woman of you.”

She caught his fingers, and held them still. “Do you really think you’re up to that?”

He chuckled with dark humor. “Oh, I’m more than up to it.”

Although her eyes were warm with interest, she gave him a dubious look. “You’ve been through a lot. Maybe we should talk about what happened. It might be a better idea for you to get some more rest.”

The last thing he wanted to do was talk about his problems, especially when Gabrielle was looking so tempting in his bed. His body was recovered from its earlier trial, and his sex came easily to life. As usual, whenever he was near her. Whenever he so much as thought of her.

“You tell me if I need more rest.”

Taking her hand in his, he guided her toward the hard ridge of his erection, which bulged against the zipper of his pants. She rubbed the aching bulk of his shaft, then rotated her wrist to cup him in her palm. He closed his eyes, losing himself to her touch and the warm perfume of her own arousal as she edged into his arms.

He kissed her, long and deep, a slow joining of their mouths. Lucan slipped his hands under the tee-shirt, letting his fingers travel up the silky skin of her back, then around to her ribs, and the delicious swell of her breasts. Her nipples pinched tight as he stroked them, little buds just begging to be suckled.

She arched into his hands, moaning. Her own fingers were working the button and fly at his waist. Unzipping his pants. Sliding in, then pulling his length into the hot palm of her hand.

“You are so dangerous,” he whispered against her mouth. “I like seeing you here, in my domain. I didn’t think I would. God knows, I shouldn’t.”

He gathered up the hem of the tee-shirt, drew it over her head, and tossed it aside so that he could gaze with open appreciation at her nude body. He swept aside her hair, and tenderly stroked the side of her neck with the backs of his knuckles.

“Am I really the first woman you’ve brought here?”

He smiled wryly, caressing her soft skin. “Who told you that? Savannah?”

“Is it true?”

He bent forward and took one of her rosy nipples into his mouth. Pressed her down beneath him with the weight of his body while he quickly shucked off his pants. His fangs began to stretch out from his gums, desire swiftly burning out of control, pumping through him in hot waves.

“You’re the only one,” he said thickly, giving her that honesty in return for the trust she had given him hours before.

Gabrielle would be the last female he’d bring here, too.

He couldn’t imagine having anyone else in his bed, now. He would never permit anyone into his heart again. Because he had to face some hard facts, here—that’s what he’d done. For all his careful control and years of self-imposed solitude, he had let his emotional guard slip, and Gabrielle had filled his void like no other ever could again.

“God, you are so soft,” he said, caressing her, trailing his fingers down her side and abdomen, to the delicate flare of her hip. He pressed a kiss to her lips. “So sweet.”

His hand traveled lower, between her thighs, coaxing her legs apart for his questing touch.

“So wet,” he murmured, plumbing her mouth with his tongue as his finger delved past her panties, into the slick folds of her cleft.

He penetrated her, just a tease at first, then deeper. She clutched at him, arching up as two more fingers entered her body, caressing the plush sheath that gripped him so fiercely. He broke their kiss and removed the lace that covered her sex. Then he inched down the length of her, pushing her legs apart and sinking down between them.

“So beautiful,” he rasped, mesmerized by the flushed perfection of her. He pressed his face against her, opening her to him with his fingers, tonguing her clit and the wet crevices that surrounded it. He brought her to a swift climax, relishing the hard tremors that rolled over her as she curled her fingers into his shoulders and cried out in release.

“God, you wreck me, woman. I can never get enough of you.”

He was so fevered to be inside of her, he hardly heard her little gasp as he came back up to cover her with his body. He registered the sudden stillness of her, but it was her voice that made him freeze above her.

“Lucan… your eyes…”

Instinctively, he turned his face away from her. Too late. He knew that she had glimpsed the hungered glow of his transformed gaze. It was the same feral look she had seen in him last night—or, rather, close enough that her human eyes would have difficulty telling the difference between blood hunger and the heated intensity of desire.

“Please,” she said gently. “Let me see you…”

Reluctantly, bracing himself over her on his fists, he brought his eyes back to hers. He saw the flicker of alarm but she didn’t flinch from him. She looked closely, studying him.

“I won’t harm you,” he said, his voice raspy and thick. He let her see his fangs as he spoke, unable to conceal any of his body’s reaction to her now. “This is need, Gabrielle. Desire. You do this to me. Sometimes just thinking about you—” He broke off, cursing low under his breath. “I don’t want to frighten you, but I can’t stop the change. Not when I want you so damned much.”

“And all the other times we’ve been together?” she whispered, frowning. “You’ve hidden this from me? You always shielded your face, kept your eyes averted, when we made love before?”

“I didn’t want to scare you. I didn’t want you to see what I was.” He scoffed. “You’ve seen everything anyway.”

She slowly shook her head, her hands coming up to hold his face still. She looked at him deeply, taking in every part of him. Her eyes were moist, glittering, incredibly bright. Tender with affection, and all of it pouring out for him. “You are beautiful to me, Lucan. I will always want to see you. There’s nothing you ever need to hide from me.”

Her earnest declaration moved him. She held his wild gaze as she stroked his rigid jaw, her fingers tracing down to play across his parted lips. His fangs ached, elongating further as she explored his face with her tender touch.

As if to prove something to him—or maybe, to herself—she slipped her finger past his lips, into his mouth. Lucan groaned deep in his throat, a harsh, wordless snarl. His tongue pressed hungrily against her fingertip, his teeth grazing her skin with tender restraint as he closed his lips and sucked her deeper into his mouth.

He watched Gabrielle swallow hard. He smelled adrenaline jetting through her, mixing with the scent of her desire.

She was so damned beautiful, so soft and giving, so courageous in everything she did, he couldn’t help but feel awed by her.

“I trust you,” she told him, her dusky eyes darkening with passion as she slowly withdrew her finger from between his sharp teeth. “And I want you. Every part of you.”

It was more than he could take.

With an animal grunt of lust, he came down on her, positioning his pelvis between her thighs and spreading them wide with his knees. Her sex was slick and hot against the head of his cock, a welcome he couldn’t resist. With a deep thrust, he impaled her, sliding as deep as he could go. She took every last inch of him, her tight channel gripping him like a fist, bathing him in wondrous, wet heat. Lucan hissed sharply as the walls of her sex shuddered with his first slow withdrawal. He filled her again, hooking her knees over his arms so he could get even closer, delve ever deeper.

“Yes,” she coaxed him, moving with him in a tempo that was becoming anything but gentle. “God, Lucan. Yes.”

He knew his face was harsh with the force of his lust; he had likely never looked more beastly than at that moment, when his blood was running molten, summoning the part of him that was the curse of his father’s brutal lineage. He fucked her hard, trying to ignore the thrumming, rising need within him that called for something more than this immense pleasure.

His focus latched on to Gabrielle’s throat, where a strong vein pulsed beneath her delicate skin. His mouth watered feverishly, even as the pressure built in the base of his spine, signaling his coming release.

“Don’t stop,” she said without the slightest tremor in her voice. God help her, but she actually pulled him closer to her, holding his feral gaze as her warm fingers stroked his cheek. “Take as much of me as you need. Just… Oh, God… don’t stop.”

Lucan’s nostrils filled with the erotic scent of her, and the faintly copper tanginess of the blood that was coloring her breasts and flushing the pale skin of her neck and face. He roared in agony, fighting to deny himself—deny them both—the ecstasy that could be had only through a vampire’s kiss.

Wrenching his eyes away from her throat, Lucan drove into her body with renewed vigor, bringing her, and then himself, to a shattering climax.

But his release only abated one part of his need.

The other, deeper one remained, worsening with each strong pulse of Gabrielle’s heart.

“Damn it.” He rolled away from her on the bed, his voice raw and fevered.

“What’s wrong?” Gabrielle put her hand on his shoulder.

She moved closer to him, and he felt the plush warmth of her breasts crushing against his spine. Her pulse hammered audibly, vibrating through flesh and bone until it was all that he could hear. All that he knew.

“Lucan? Are you all right?”

“Goddamn it,” he growled, shrugging from under her light grasp on his shoulder. He threw his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up, putting his head in his hands. His fingers trembled as he shoved them through his hair. Behind him, Gabrielle was silent; he turned and met her questioning gaze. “You haven’t done anything wrong. You feel too right, and I have to… I can’t get enough of you right now.”

“It’s okay.”

“No. I shouldn’t be with you like this, when I need…” You, his body answered. “Holy Christ, this is just no good.”

He turned away again, about to get up off the bed.

“Lucan, if you’re hungry… if you need blood…”

From behind him, she moved closer. Put her arm over his shoulder, her wrist hovering just under his chin.

“Jesus, don’t offer it to me.” Reflexively, he recoiled from her, like he would from poison. He got up, threw on his pants. Started pacing. “I’m not going to drink from you, Gabrielle.”

“Why not?” She sounded hurt, rightfully confused. “You obviously need it. And I’m the only human around at the moment, so I guess you’re stuck with me.”

“That’s not it.” He shook his head, eyes squeezed closed to force the feral part of him to heel. “I can’t do it. I won’t bind you to me.”

“What are you talking about? It’s okay to screw me, but the thought of taking my blood turns your stomach?” She gave a sharp laugh. “My God. I can’t believe I actually feel insulted over that.”

“This isn’t going to work,” he said, furious at himself for digging them into a deeper hole because of his own lack of control around her. “This isn’t going to come out right. I should have set things straight between us from the start.”

“If you have something to tell me, I wish you would. I know you have a problem, Lucan. Pretty hard to miss it, after seeing you last night.”

“That’s not it.” He cursed. “It’s part of it. I don’t want to hurt you. And by taking your blood, I will. Sooner or later, if you are bound to me in blood, I will hurt you.”

“Bound to you,” she said slowly. “How?”

“You bear the mark of a Breedmate, Gabrielle.” He gestured toward her left shoulder. “It’s there, just below your ear.”

She frowned, her hand drifting up to the precise place where the diminutive teardrop and crescent moon rested on her skin. “This? It’s a birthmark. I’ve had it ever since I can remember.”

“Every Breedmate has borne the same mark somewhere on her body. Savannah and the other females have it. My own mother as well. You all do.”

She had gone very still, now. Her voice was very small. “How long have you known this about me?”

“I saw it the first night I came to your apartment.”

“When you took my cell phone pictures?”

“After,” he said. “When I came back later, and you were sleeping in your bed.”

Understanding dawned in her expression, a mix of surprise and emotional violation. “You were there. I thought I had dreamed you.”

“You’ve never felt a part of the world you live in because it’s not your world, Gabrielle. Your photographs, the way you’re drawn to places that house vampires, your confusion over your feelings about blood and the compulsion to let it—these are all parts of who you truly are.”

He could see her struggling to accept what she was hearing, and he hated that he wasn’t able to make things easier. Might as well get everything out on the table and be done with it.

“One day, you’ll find a worthy male and take him as your mate. He will drink from you alone, and you from him. Blood will bind the two of you as one. It’s a sacred vow among our kind. One that I can’t give you.”

He might as well have slapped her from the look of injury on her pretty face. “You can’t… or you won’t?”

“Does it matter? I’m telling you that it’s not going to happen because I won’t permit it. If we share a blood bond, I will be drawn to you for as long as I have breath in my body and you in yours. You would never be free of me because the bond will compel me to seek you out wherever you run.”

“Why do you think I would run from you?”

He exhaled dryly. “Because, one day, this thing I’m fighting is going to get me, and I can’t bear the idea that you might be in my path when it does.”

“You’re talking about Bloodlust.”

“Yes,” he said, the first time he had ever truly acknowledged it, even to himself. All these years, he’d been able to hide it. Not from her. “Bloodlust is the greatest weakness of my kind. It is an addiction—a damnable plague. Once it has you in its grasp, few vampires are strong enough to escape it. They go Rogue, and then they are lost for good.”

“How does it happen?”

“It’s different for everyone. Sometimes, the disease moves in, little by little. The hunger grows, and so you feed it. You feed it whenever it calls, and one night you realize the need is never filled. For others, one careless indulgence can tip them past breaking.”

“And how is it for you?”

His smile grew tight, more a baring of his teeth and fangs. “I have the dubious honor of carrying my father’s blood in my veins. If the Rogues are beasts, they are nothing compared to the scourge that started our entire race. For Gen Ones, the temptation is always there, drumming harder in us than in any others. If you want to know the truth of it, I have been staving off Bloodlust since my first taste.”

“So, you have a problem, but you got through it last night.”

“I was able to hold it back, thanks in no small part to you, but each time it gets worse.”

“You can get through it again. We’ll get through it together.”

“You don’t know my history. I’ve already lost both of my brothers to the disease.”

“When?”

“A very long time ago.” He scowled, thinking back on a past he didn’t like to dredge up. But the words came quickly now, whether he wanted to relive them or not. “Evran, the middle born of us three, went Rogue soon after he reached adulthood. He was killed in combat, fighting for the wrong side in one of the old wars between the Breed and the Rogues. Marek was the eldest, and the most fearless. He and Tegan and I were part of the first cadre of Breed warriors to rise up against the last of the Ancients and their armies of Rogues. We formed the Order around the time of the great human plague in Europe. Less than a hundred years later, Bloodlust claimed Marek; he sought the sun to end his misery. Even Tegan had a close brush with the addiction long ago.”

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “You’ve lost so much to it. And to this conflict with the Rogues. I can see why it terrifies you.”

He had a flippant reply perched at the tip of his tongue—some line of bullshit he wouldn’t hesitate to trot out for one of the other warriors if they were presumptuous enough to think him afraid of anything. But the dismissive retort stayed stuck in his throat as he looked at Gabrielle, knowing that better than anyone in all his long existence, she understood him best.

She knew him on a level no one else ever had, and part of him was going to miss that once the time came to send her away to the future that awaited her in the Darkhavens.

“I didn’t realize Tegan and you went back so far,” Gabrielle said.

“He and I go all the way back, to the beginning. We’re both Gen One, both sworn in our duty to defend our race.”

“You’re not friends, though.”

“Friends?” Lucan laughed, considering the centuries of animosity that simmered between the two of them. “Tegan doesn’t have friends. And if he did, he sure as hell wouldn’t count me among them.”

“Then why do you let him stay here?”

“He’s one of the best warriors I’ve ever known. His commitment to the Order goes deeper than any hatred he harbors for me. We share the belief that nothing is more important than protecting the future of the Breed.”

“Not even love?”

He couldn’t speak for a second, caught off guard by her frank question and unwilling to consider where it might lead. He had no experience with that particular emotion. The way his life was going currently, he didn’t want to get close to anything resembling it, either. “Love is for the males who choose to lead soft lives in the Darkhavens. Not for warriors.”

“Some of the others in this compound might argue that with you.”

He met her gaze with a level stare. “I’m not them.”

Her chin dropped at once, long lashes shuttering her eyes from his view. “So, what does all of this make me? Am I just a way of passing time for you between killing Rogues and trying to pretend you’ve got everything under control?” When she looked up, tears were swelling in her eyes. “Am I just some little toy that you turn to whenever you need to get off?”

“I haven’t heard you complain.”

Her breath caught, a tiny gasp snagging in her throat as she gaped at him, clearly appalled and having every right to be. Her expression fell, then hardened into something as brittle as glass. “Fuck you.”

Her contempt for him in that moment was understandable, but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow. He would never take such a verbal beating from anyone. Before now, no one had ever had the nerve to try him. Lucan, the aloof one, the stone-cold killer who tolerated weakness in no form whatsoever—least of all in himself.

For all the conditioning and discipline he had mastered in his centuries of living, here he stood, being torn wide open by the only woman he had been foolish enough to let get close to him. And he cared for her, too, far more than he should. Which made hurting her now seem all the more repugnant, regardless of the fact that last night made it clear to him that it was necessary he push her away. It was unavoidable, and he would only make it worse by trying to pretend she would ever fit into his way of life.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Gabrielle, and I know that I will.”

“What do you think you’re doing right now?” she whispered, a slight hitch in her voice. “You know, I believed you. God, I actually believed every lie you’ve fed me. Even that bullshit about wanting to help me find my true destiny. I really thought you cared.”

Lucan felt helpless, the coldest kind of bastard for letting things get so out of hand with her. He strode over to a bureau, took out a fresh shirt and put it on. Heading for the door that led to the hallway outside his private apartments, he paused to look back at Gabrielle.

He wanted so badly to reach out to her, to try to make things better somehow, but he knew that would be a mistake. One touch and he would have her in his arms again.

Then he might not be able to let her go.

He opened the door, about to walk out.

“You have found your destiny, Gabrielle. Just like I said you would. I never told you it would be with me.”