Threshold of Pleasure (Mills & Boon Nocturne Cravings) (2 page)

When he’d first been given this assignment, he’d done a lot of research on Eden Swain. He knew she’d been a police officer for only two years before the incident in the alleyway. He also knew that she’d had a breakdown afterward.

She’d left her position, although he wondered if it had been forced, and she regularly saw a therapist. He also knew she drank to forget. On many occasions, he’d followed her to a liquor store or to a small hole-in-the-wall bar, where she would sit on her own, not talking to anyone, and drink.

He also knew she was alone.

And this, he thought, was why he’d taken to her so quickly. Because of his own loneliness. It was difficult to be what he was, even in his world, which was so different from this one. He was an outcast as much as Eden was in her own way.

Her face turned in the window, her gaze tracking him on the rooftop. He knew she couldn’t possibly see him, as he was too far away and cloaked in darkness, but he ducked anyway.

He waited for a few minutes, then peered over the roof’s edge. She was gone from the window. He imagined that she’d gone to bed. This was confirmed when the lights went off in the living room and went on in what he suspected was her bedroom. Unfortunately the curtains were drawn so he couldn’t see her.

He knew she was in for the night, but he couldn’t force himself to get up and go home. So he settled on the gravel, sitting cross-legged and resting his arms on the edge of the roof. Since he barely slept, fatigue would not come for a long time. He’d sit and watch and wait. And make sure she was safe.

Although he’d been given the task to keep Threshold safe from her, he knew it was she who needed his protection.

Chapter Three

Once more the dream came.

Although adrenaline raced through her body like wildfire, the gun was sure and steady in Eden’s hands. A call had come in about screams in a downtown alley, the second call in three weeks in the same area. Before, it had been some kids playing around in the Dumpster.

This time it was a man holding a young woman hostage by knifepoint, and she was on her own until backup showed up.

The man appeared agitated, unhinged, likely high on something. He had his arm around the woman’s neck, and held a knife to her throat. There was already blood on the blade and running down her neck. The front of her light-colored shirt was stained red. She was crying silently.

“Let the girl go,” Eden said, her gun trained on him.

“Never!” he shouted, then giggled. “She’s mine forever and ever. Master told me so.”

The woman made a whimpering sound that put Eden’s back up. Then her head lifted and she caught Eden’s gaze, pleading in her eyes.

“It’s going to be okay, ma’am.”

“Of course she’s going to be okay,” the man said, “She’s been chosen.”

It was then that Eden noticed the blood on his teeth and around his mouth. He’d been biting the woman and tasting her blood. Eden’s stomach lurched at that.

“We can all walk away from this. Just let her go.”

“No one gets out alive, bitch.”

The tip of his knife dug into the woman’s throat. She tried to get away but couldn’t, the blade sliding even more across her skin.

Without flinching, Eden took the shot. Everything moved in slow motion after that.

The bullet ripped through his cheek, knocking him sideways. His hold loosened on the woman and she dropped to the ground.

Eden rushed to the man’s side to make sure he was down. She pressed her fingers to his throat. No pulse. Vacant eyes stared up at her and he wasn’t moving. She holstered her weapon and crouched next to the injured woman.

“I need an ambulance stat,” she barked into her radio. A siren could already be heard in the distance.

Whipping off her jacket, Eden pressed it to the wound in the woman’s throat. The knife had definitely nicked a major artery—blood bubbled out of the hole with every breath the woman took.

In reality, Eden had stayed there administering pressure to the wound until the EMTs arrived. But the woman had died on the gurney and they’d been unable to resuscitate her.

However, the man Eden had shot and killed had disappeared. The only evidence of him was another blood pool in the alley.

In her dreams, the woman always smiled up at her and begged, “Save me.”

She did this now, then lifted her arm and reached for some unseen entity.

Glancing around, Eden noticed a dark shape materializing through the veil of tears. She rubbed at one eye with her bloodied hand, but the shape was still blurry. In awe, she watched as a tall, dark figure approached her.

It was a man dressed in black, with longish dark hair and pale skin. As he neared, she noticed the rugged features of his face and his full, sensuous mouth. Why she noticed these things as the woman died at her feet, she didn’t know. Eventually, the dark man stood over her, staring down, his eyes shining with emotion.

As he smiled, he held out one long, elegant hand toward her. “I can make the pain go away, Eden. Just take my hand.”

She wanted the pain to recede. Too long had she lived with the emotional turmoil that the woman’s death had induced. Daylight hours brought too many sobering feelings, and the night brought agonizing nightmares, just like the one she replayed almost every night.

Eden wasn’t sure how long her mind could survive her inner torment. Not much longer, she was sure.

Raising her head to meet his gaze, Eden felt a sexual tug. The man invoked sensations she had long ago dismissed as unimportant. She wanted him to take her pain. She wanted him.

He grinned as she raised her arm. But before she could touch his hand, Eden saw red flames dance in the black of his eyes....

“Eden.” His voice was a caress, touching her in places she hadn’t been touched in far too long. “You want to forget.” He smiled and she spied a pair of fangs jutting from his upper jaw. It sent a shudder down her body, but she didn’t pull away.

“You want so many things. I can give them to you. Will you let me?”

Her hand moved toward him as if it wasn’t her hand at all.
No!
She shook her head and snatched her hand back. Frantically, she looked around. Everything was wrong. Where was the woman she’d been unable to save? Where was the blood?

Where was she?

She was no longer in the alley surrounded by death and carnage—she was in a room, a bedroom, facing a bed with red satin sheets and candles. Hundreds of candles. Candles everywhere.

Someone stood behind her—she could feel his presence and she both wanted to lean back into that solid mass and surrender to him
and
she wanted to spin around and shove her gun beneath his chin.

“Eden.”

It was him. The dark man. The one from the alley. She’d have recognized that voice anywhere. Deep, potent as the smoothest scotch, faintly accented. He had the kind of voice that spoke to her on more than one level.

“Eden, I want you. Please, let me touch you, for both of our sakes.”

His voice didn’t just sound like scotch—it had the same effect on her. Numbing her senses, dulling her inhibitions. She turned around to face him, fully intending to tell him off, but one look at him and all intentions evaporated.

She’d been with men before but never with one who looked like him. He wasn’t real. He couldn’t be. He was too perfect, standing there with his silk pajama bottoms riding low on his hips and nothing else. His feet were bare. His chest was bare and smooth and sculpted like that of an elite athlete. But it was his face—his rugged jaw, his patrician nose, his dark, dark eyes—that pierced her with desire and longing, that affected her most.

And those fangs. They weren’t long—were almost invisible among the rest of his teeth—but she saw the curve of them, and the sharp tips.

“You want me, too. I can see it.” He approached her with the fluid grace of a panther and Eden was mesmerized by the unconscious play of muscles across his torso as he neared.

It took effort to lift her eyes, but she somehow managed, and when she met his gaze, she caught her breath. The intensity of his stare stole the air around her.

“How badly do you want to forget?”

“Very,” she whispered.

He touched her face, the softest of caresses. “Will you permit me to help?”

“How?”

“Like this.”

Up until that moment, everything had been happening as if in slow motion. But the minute the dark man said
like this
, time sped up. His hand whipped out to circle her neck, pulling her closer. His other hand lifted her chin, tilting her face toward him.

One second he was looking down at her, the next his lips were on hers. No, not on hers—they were a part of her.

If what he was doing was kissing her, it was like no kiss Eden had ever experienced. His kiss was hungry and desperate and controlling and possessive. She responded in kind, needing his mouth and his tongue and all of him. As if her life depended on it.

Her tongue laved across those fangs, and it sent another pang of lust between her thighs.

No amount of scotch could compare to the effect one kiss from this man had on her. She was drunk from him.

“More,” she whispered against his lips. “I need more.”

She could feel him smile against her lips.

He picked her up and carried her the few feet to the bed and ever so gently set her down on the cool silk before joining her.

“You are so beautiful.” He stroked her cheek, the edge of her jaw, down her neck to the base of her collarbone. “You have no idea how much I want you.” With a hand behind her neck, he pulled up as he lowered his head to kiss her.

It had been too long. That was the only explanation for the effect this man was having on her. His touch, his lips, his words—all of him made her forget everything else.

Was this what he’d meant when he’d said he’d help her forget?

“Tell me how. Tell me how to forget,” she said breathlessly.

He stopped kissing her neck and raised his head so that he could meet her gaze. “You need only give yourself to me.”

This time, when she saw the fire leap into his dark pupils, she didn’t care. She’d give anything to forget.

“I want to, but...”

“Lie down.”

He gave her a little nudge and Eden fell on her back. She didn’t even bother to wonder what had happened to her jeans, her shirt, her bra...her gun. The only thing she had on was her panties and that was it.

Lying there, with her hands above her head, she had never felt more desirable than she did at that moment—not even when she’d been with Charlie—as the dark man’s gaze devoured her from head to toe and back up again.

“Do you give yourself to me?”

Eden didn’t even hesitate. “Yes.”

His smile was as dark as his bottomless pupils, and he leaned across her and kissed her. First her lips, then her throat, then lower.

“Please,” she sighed, arching toward him. “Please.”

He moved lower until his mouth found her breasts.

“Yes!”

The second his tongue grazed her nipple, Eden jolted with the fiercest arousal she’d ever experienced. Holy hell, if that was what he could do with a mere touch of his tongue, what would it feel like if he touched her between her thighs? Kissed her there? Made love to her?

Eden wanted to find out.

She needed to find out.

With fingers threaded through his dark hair, she pushed him lower. He didn’t need coaxing to leave her breasts as his tongue sampled and tasted all of her—her rib cage, her navel—until finally he hovered between her spread legs, his breath cool and sweet against her thighs.

“Eden?”

“Yes.” She lifted her hips. “Please. Yes.”

One side of his mouth turned up in a smile, one lovely curved fang flashing at her, before her perfect, dark stranger hitched his thumbs beneath the waistband of her panties and tugged.

The silky material slid over her hips and down her legs.

“Open yourself. Give yourself to me.”

Never had Eden been so brazen. Never had she been so uninhibited. She let her thighs fall open and reveled in the hungry expression of the man with the fierce black eyes.

With a long finger, he touched her exposed flesh. “This is how you will forget.” Then he lowered his head and engulfed the most sensitive part of her with his mouth.

It was like being caught between pleasure and pain, ecstasy and torture. Heaven and hell.

Eden’s hips shot skyward. “More,” she screamed. “I need more!”

Then there was another voice in her dream, a deeper one....

“
Get away from her!
”

Gasping, Eden jolted from her sleep and sat up in bed. What the hell had just happened?

Cold sweat slicked her face and body.

A dream. A fucking dream, that’s all it was. But it had felt so real.

She rubbed her face. Then again, lately all of her dreams had felt real. She shivered in the cool morning air. Her bedroom window was open and the breeze floated in, ruffling her gauzy blue curtains.

Staring at the window, Eden frowned. She couldn’t remember opening it before she’d passed out on the bed. But her mind was so muddled lately that it was possible she had done it.

Rubbing a hand over her sweaty face and into her tangled nest of hair, Eden tried to push the dream out of her mind. It was the same one she’d been having for the past year, except for the dark man. He was an unsettling new addition.

Swinging her feet over the bed, Eden stood on quivering legs and stumbled down the hall to her bathroom. After filling the sink with icy water, she submerged her face until the bite of the cold liquid stung her cheeks and her lungs burst with the need for oxygen. Behind her closed eyes, the comely face of the man in black flashed before her. He was smiling. And blood dripped from his wide, inviting mouth.

Gasping, she flipped her head up. Water ran down her neck and soaked her sweat-stained tank top that she always wore to bed. Shivers racked her body as she grabbed a towel and wiped at her face and throat.

Who was this man? Why was he invading her mind? And why did she find him so alluring? Was she attracted to him because he seemed to be offering her a way out of her consuming guilt?