Tempted by Midnight: A Midnight Breed Novella (1001 Dark Nights) (7 page)

“Jehan was supposed to look after your injuries when you arrived,” he muttered angrily. “He’s skilled with ointments and herbs. He should’ve given you something to help you heal.”

“I told Jehan I was fine. And I am...or at least, I can try to be, once you and the Order allow me to go home.”

Lazaro ignored the pointed complaint, even if it had merit. “I see you didn’t eat anything either.”

“What do you care?” she tossed back, her fine auburn brows pinched together.

“I care, Melena. For now, you’re under my watch. It’s my responsibility to ensure that you’re comfortable and healthy. That you’re fed and clothed.” He gestured toward the boutique box on the bed. “I arranged for some things to be sent here for you from one of the local shops.”

She cast a sidelong glance toward his gift, then back toward the bathroom where her ruined skirt and blouse lay in rags on the tile floor. Warily, she drifted over to the bed and lifted the lid off the box. She glanced inside, then one by one, pulled out the skirt and pants, then the blouse and sweater he selected for her.

“I didn’t know what you’d prefer,” he murmured.

She lifted the charcoal gray, fine-gauge sweater first, then the pair of black slacks. The understated classics of the collection, which didn’t surprise him. She glanced at the two pairs of shoes he’d purchased as well, taking out the elegant Italian flats. “These are all in my sizes. Perfectly in my sizes.” She slanted him a guarded look. “I wouldn’t think you’d paid attention long enough to notice.”

“I noticed.” Lazaro slowly approached her near the bed. “I should be focused on a thousand other things right now. Instead, here I am. Noticing everything about you, Melena.”

If she had flinched at all when he came to stand beside her, Lazaro would have somehow found the strength of will to leave her in peace.

If she had resisted even a little when he lifted her chin on his fingertips and drew her gaze up to his—if she had looked into his transformed Breed eyes with anything close to fear or uncertainty—he would have forced himself to let go of her and refrain from ever touching her again.

But Melena did none of those things.

And when he slowly lowered his mouth to hers, this time, not even he or his iron will could pretend the desire that arced between them was anything either of them would be able to deny.

He kissed her, hard and hungry. Any illusions he might have had for taking things slowly with her, or giving her a chance to get away before he pounced, were all but obliterated once their lips and tongues had come together.

A fresh surge of molten need scorched through his veins, and all at once it didn’t matter to him that getting involved with Melena Walsh was the last thing he needed to be doing.

He wanted her.

She wanted him—he knew that even in the cave.

And the fact was, he’d already let himself get involved, whether or not they allowed this undeniable, if untimely, desire for each other to flare any further out of control.

Melena awakened a need in him that he hadn’t felt in a long time. A new kind of need, something white-hot and irresistible. She had done in less than a day what no other woman before her had managed to do in two decades.

She made him feel alive again.

Lazaro growled and took her mouth in a deeper kiss. She moaned, reaching up to burrow her fingers into the short hair at his nape. Her soft curves felt like heaven against him, even through the barrier of their clothing. Her mouth tasted warm and sweet. Her body arched into his, pliant, consenting.

Welcoming.

Hot with need.

He smoothed his hand down her throat, breaking their kiss as his thumb grazed over the Breedmate mark nestled in the hollow between her collarbones. He lifted his head to look at it—to remind himself of what she was and why he could not allow himself anything more than this desire they shared.

“I should ask you if there is someone else,” he uttered thickly. He dragged his smoldering gaze back up to hers. “I should ask, but right now I don’t think I’ll give a damn if you say there is.”

“No.” She gave a faint shake of her head, her breast rising and falling with each rapid pant of her breath. “There’s no one. Not for more than a year. And even then, I never wanted anyone like this...”

He registered that sweet confession with a growl that vibrated deep in his chest.

He kissed her again, gathering her face in his hands while his mouth moved intensely, hungrily, over hers. Being Gen One, his appetites were stronger than most. With Melena all but undressed and willing in his arms, those appetites were on the verge of owning him. It was only the dim knowledge of her lingering injuries that kept him in check.

And she wasn’t helping in that regard.

Meeting each thrust of his tongue, parting her lips to take him deeper, she stoked his arousal even further. Her body pressed against his, heat igniting everywhere they touched. He couldn’t resist the loosened opening of her robe. His hand slipped inside to feel the softness of her skin. Her pulse banged against his fingertips, strong and certain. Erotic and primal.

Melena groaned in pleasure. Her voice rasped sensually against his mouth. “I like the way you kiss me, Lazaro. I like the way you touch me.”

Holy hell.
Her words made fire erupt in his already molten blood.

With fangs filling his mouth and his cock gone hard as granite behind the zipper of his pants, Lazaro moved his hand to cup the buoyant underside of her breast. A hot, pent-up sigh gusted out of her as he caressed her bare skin beneath the slackened robe. Her nipple was pebbled and erect, a temptation he lightly tweaked, then rolled between his fingers. Melena’s grasp at the back of his neck tightened, her fingers curling into his hair as a moan leaked through her parted lips.

Every taut fiber of his being ached with the need to put his mouth on her silken skin, to feel all of her. Taste all of her.

His hands obeyed that need, reaching up to gently ease the robe off Melena’s shoulders. It slipped down her arms, baring her to the waist. She was so lovely. Porcelain skin dusted with a smattering of sweet, peachy freckles and lush, feminine curves that begged to be savored.

The purple contusions and mending cuts on her torso and abdomen drew his eye just as intensely. Rage for whoever did it swirled through him like a fierce tempest. When he thought of how close she’d come to being lost in the explosion along with everyone else, that rage turned murderous and black.

But tenderly, he let his fingers light on a couple of her worst bruises. She flinched a little and some of his fury snarled out of him. “It hurts?”

“Only a bit.” When he drew his hand away, she caught it, placed his palm atop her bare breast. “I don’t want you to stop touching me.”

His cock jerked in response, more than eager for him to oblige her. He filled his hand with her breast, then took her mouth in another deep kiss.

But feeling her, kissing her, only made him ache to explore some more.

His entire Gen One being throbbed with the need to claim, to possess.

He drew the robe off her completely. Let it fall in a pool at her feet. For one indulgent moment, he soaked in the sight of her through his amber-drenched, fevered eyes.

Then he lifted her off her feet and spread her out beneath him on his bed.

CHAPTER 7

Melena sank down onto the soft mattress and watched, wide-eyed and trembling, as Lazaro prowled up the length of her naked body.

It wasn’t fear that gripped her. Nothing even close to fear.

Her every nerve ending had come alive—gone dizzyingly electric—under his careful, caressing touch and the sensual promise of his lips and tongue as he’d tenderly explored her skin.

Now, lying exposed to him completely on the bed while he remained clothed, she wasn’t uncomfortable in the least. And whether that made her a wanton harlot or a daring fool, she didn’t know. Nor did she care in that moment.

She wasn’t nervous or uncertain about anything she was doing with this man.

She wanted more.

He sent the boutique box to the floor with a sweep of his strong arm, making more room for them. She jumped, breath catching at the animalistic power that poured off Lazaro in palpable waves. She’d never felt so much energy and heat focused on her.

In her handful of failed relationships, no other man—Breed or human—had stirred her passion so easily, so masterfully.
Difficult to please
, more than one lover had called her. And they’d been right. None of them had taken her breath away. None of them had been able to hold her interest, in or out of bed, for more than a few months.

Then again, they weren’t Lazaro Archer.

She’d never been in the presence of a Gen One male with carnal hunger in his eyes.

And Lazaro’s hunger was intense.

His eyes were twin coals, locked on her as he positioned himself above her, braced on his strong fists on either side of her head. His fangs gleamed razor-sharp, enormous and fully extended.

And while his
dermaglyphs
were obscured by his black shirt and combat pants, she knew they had to be vivid with deep colors—not unlike the pulsating, blood-red aura that radiated from him as his consuming gaze drank in her nakedness from forehead to ankle.

He spread her legs with his thigh, nudging her open to him. As he covered her, the rigid length of his arousal ground against her hip. Her pulse sped up, tripping as he gave her a meaningful thrust of his pelvis, those smoldering amber irises burning her up.

He took her mouth in a slow but demanding kiss. He took her lip between his teeth, sucked her tongue deep into his mouth. Kissed her until she was panting and writhing beneath him, grasping at him with needy hands. “Now, I’m going to taste you, Melena,” he murmured against her slack mouth. “Every last creamy, delectable inch of you.”

And then, heaven help her, he proceeded to do just that.

He started with a maddening sweep of his tongue just below her ear. She shivered, even though her blood was on fire for the heat of his lips and the gentle, but unmistakable, rasp of his fangs as he dragged his mouth down to the curve where her neck and shoulder met. He suckled and nipped, working his way to her breasts. Kneading them in strong hands, tonguing the tight buds at their peaks, he didn’t move on until she was moaning with pleasure and aching for more.

Her back arched into him as he began a slow and steady exploration of her rib cage and abdomen. He took care around her bruises, astonishing tenderness from a Breed male who had lived ten lifetimes and counting, whose own otherworldly body was virtually indestructible. Yet he navigated her minor wounds as though he were handling glass.

That moved her deeply, even more than his passion had overwhelmed her.

Melena reached down, cradling his dark head in her hands while his kiss traveled lower.

Across her stomach, onto each hip bone, over the quivering tops of her thighs. She trembled as his mouth blazed a slow path down the entire length of her right leg and ankle, then returned up her left calf, to her knee and the tingling flesh of her inner thigh.

If he wanted to make her wet and vibrating with the need to have him inside her, Lazaro could have stopped right after their lips had met for the first time here in his bedroom.

But it was patently clear from the wicked look he shot up the length of her nude body that he was only getting started.

His head lowered between her spread legs. When the heat of his breath rushed out against her sex, she shuddered. When his lips touched down and his hot, silky tongue cleaved into her slit, she let out a strangled cry.

Fingers gripping the coverlet on each side of her, she held on for dear life as Lazaro licked and kissed and fucked her senseless with his ruthlessly skilled mouth.

She came in mere moments, pleasure shooting through her in wave after glorious wave. She didn’t know if she sighed or screamed or both. She only knew that while her body was still floating in a million tiny shards of bliss, Lazaro started climbing back up to her on the bed.

He stroked her face, watching her—smirking in obvious satisfaction, for God’s sake.

Then his grin was gone as quickly as it had arrived, and he covered her mouth with his, kissing her hard and deep and wild.

He drew back on a curse, his breath sawing in and out of his lungs. He stripped off his clothing and boots in mere seconds. Then he pivoted back to her, gloriously naked. He found his place between her thighs again and held himself there, unmoving, watching her. Considering her in some way.

His big body threw off waves of heat and power. The
glyphs
that traced his bulky shoulders and muscular arms continued onto the contours of his chest and rippled abdomen. They pulsed vividly on his skin, alive and flooded with color.

Those Gen One skin markings trekked farther south as well. The thick, long shaft of his cock was circled with
glyphs
, their hues flushing even deeper as Melena admired him with unabashed approval.

God, he was immense. Magnificently so.

And sexy as hell.

She rose up to touch his face, cupping his stern jaw in her palm when a scowl thundered across his expression. “It’s been a while for me too,” he said, then gave a small shake of his head. “I’m not sure I can be as gentle as I’d like for you. The last thing I want to do is hurt you.”

Melena saw the torment in his aura, even if his body was being driven by a stronger need now. He didn’t want to let her in, but he couldn’t shut her out either.

He cared, even though he wanted to deny it.

She thought back to what he said to her in the cave. That just because he’d helped her stay alive, didn’t mean she was safe with him.

Melena had never felt more protected or secure with anyone in her life.

And she’d never known anything so raw and consuming—so impossible to deny—as how it felt being with Lazaro.

She wrapped her hand around his nape and pulled him down in a deep, scorching kiss. With her other hand, she sought out his cock and grasped it firmly, pumping his length in sure, steady strokes. She didn’t let go of his mouth or his penis for a good long moment. When she did, she gave him a smile against his parted lips and the fangs that now filled his mouth even more than before. “See?” she told him. “I’m not going to break.”