Ashes of Midnight (24 page)

 

Reichen hushed her, holding her close. “This is between Roth and me. None of the blame rests with you. What happened to me is insignificant. But my family deserves justice. So does Helene.”

 

Claire was silent for a long moment, then she asked gently, “Did you love her very much?”

 

He thought about Helene and the strong bond of trust and understanding they’d shared. She was a remarkable woman who had been something more than just another of his long line of casual, noncommittal dalliances. It had nearly killed him to see her drained of her humanity, but no more than it had devastated him to have to be the one to finish her after Roth had left her an empty shell, her mind enslaved to carry out his evil bidding.

 

“I cared for Helene deeply,” he admitted. “I loved her as best as I was capable. But I wasn’t able to give her my heart, because it was already lost to another.”

 

Claire drew out of his arms then and gazed up at him.

 

“It’s always been you, you know.” He cupped her face in his palms. “I have been in love with you all along.”

 

She closed her eyes for a long moment. When she opened them again, they were welling with tears. “Oh, Andreas. I still love you. I never stopped.”

 

With a growl he could not contain, Reichen captured her mouth in a possessive kiss. When they were both panting with desire, he pushed the piano bench back and stood
her up in front of him. The keys let out a burst of discordant noise as Claire leaned against them. He threw her long skirt up over her thighs.

 

“Ah, Jesus,” he hissed through his huge fangs. “You’re not wearing panties.”

 

She gave him a saucy smile. “Surprise.”

 

If he’d known that, they never would have made it out of the house in the first place. Ravenous for the taste of her, he buried his head between her legs and plundered her sweetness. She held on to him, fingers twisting in his hair. He kissed her ruthlessly, needing to feel her come apart against his mouth. When she was writhing, moaning and sighing with the rush of a ferocious orgasm, he reached down to unzip his trousers and free his raging erection.

 

He rose from the bench and wedged himself between her gorgeous thighs. All he wanted to do was drive his cock home, but she looked too enticing to rush, her sex flushed deep red and juicy, her dark curls like wet silk. He took himself in hand and played the head of his penis along the slick cleft of her body, delighting in her breathless mewls of pleasure.

 

It was a torture that broke him before it did her.

 

On the knife’s edge of coming just from the feel of her, he shifted his hips and pushed inside. She was molten heat around him, her plush sheath swallowing him from tip to balls. He began to pump, slowly at first, still delusioned enough to think that he had any patience where loving Claire was concerned. Her body milked him, the hot, wet friction driving him toward a more urgent tempo. He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t hold it, not for another second.

 

He gritted his teeth and let out a sharp roar as his seed exploded out of him and deep into her. She climaxed with
him, her fingernails scoring his shoulders as she cried out with her own release. He murmured her name over and over, his cock as hard as marble even as the last tremors of his orgasm racked him.

 

He stared down at her, moved as always by her exquisite, delicate beauty. He loved the way they looked together, the contrast of their skin, the perfect fit of them when they were joined. And he loved her spicy warm blood scent, especially when it mixed with the musky perfume of her arousal.

 

“I don’t want to let go of this night,” he murmured, gazing into the absorbing color of her eyes. “I don’t want to let go of you.”

 

“Then don’t let go.” She wrapped her arms around him a bit tighter. “This time, I won’t let you go.”

 

He smiled, regret and duty tearing at him from inside. He had intended to explain to her at least half a dozen times already this evening that their time in Newport was over. He had intended to explain it now, too, but instead he found himself lost in her eyes. Lost in the intoxicating pleasure of her body.

 

“For now,” he said, kissing her as he spoke, “let’s neither one of us let go.”

 

“Yes,” she said, moving her hips in a provocative way against him. She stared up at him then, her eyes intense and imploring. “Will you do something else for me tonight, Andre?”

 

He grunted, bending his head to taste the soft skin below her ear. “Anything.”

 

“Make love to me again, the way you would if we were truly mated.”

 

He came up to regard her with a frown.

 

“Drink from me,” she said, stroking his face with a lovingly
tender touch. “Let me pretend that we’re together as blood-bonded mates. Just for tonight.”

 

God, the very notion lit through his veins like a flash fire. He could feel his
glyphs
surging with hungered colors, and his fangs stretched even longer in his mouth.

 

“I want you to do it,” she said, a soft demand. “Drink from me as though I were really yours.”

 

The sound that left his lips was raw, profane. He reared back, fighting the need that shot through him. But then Claire tilted her head to the side and moved her hair away from her neck, and he was lost.

 

He bore down on her in a primal surge of motion, fangs seeking out her vein as he plunged deep into her welcoming heat once more.

 

The taste of her sweet, warm blood slammed into his senses in a flood of roaring power. He couldn’t curb his possessive growl as he suckled hard at her throat. Nor could he get close enough as he held Claire tight against him and buried himself to the hilt. He pumped hard and fast, unable to be gentle when her blood was spurring him like the most potent, intoxicating drug.

 

He had never known this kind of primal, visceral union.

 

It staggered him.

 

It humbled him.

 

It shamed him too, when he wanted more than anything to give himself to Claire in the same way, but could not because she was already bonded to another male. Reichen could offer her his vein, but no matter how much of him she drank, her bond would remain to Wilhelm Roth.

 

A flicker of aggression and fury began to twist and kindle in Reichen’s gut when he thought of any male having a
claim on Claire. That it was Roth only gave more fuel to the anger threatening to ignite inside him.

 

No, he thought fiercely, denying the heat that was so eager to leap to life, just waiting for his summons.

 

Reichen centered all of his focus on Claire, ignoring everything but the strong beat of her pulse against his tongue, and the gentle squeeze of her sex around his. He reveled in her soft cries as she came, memorizing every flush and quiver that traveled her body as he pleasured her time and again, loath to let the night—and their fleeting time together—come to its end.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER
Eighteen

 

 

H
ow’s Harvard doing?” Lucan asked as Gideon came out of the compound’s infirmary.

 

“Still unconscious, which is probably for the best right now. Fortunately the bullet passed clean through, but the holes it left behind in his chest and back are going to need some time to heal. He’s going to be okay, but he’ll be hurting for a while, and he’s down for a week, minimum.”

 

“Shit,” Lucan muttered. “The last thing we need is to lose any of our numbers while Dragos is apparently ramping up his operation.”

 

The altercation earlier that night in the city had proven to be one hell of a revelation. The Order had been aware of the fact that Dragos had other highly skilled assassins
like Hunter at his beck and call, all of them presumably kept loyal by unremovable UV collars, programmed to detonate and sever the head of any who tampered with the device or disobeyed his command. But what Lucan and the Order hadn’t known for a fact—and, frankly, had dreaded to imagine—was that one or more of those assassins might be first-generation Breed, like Hunter.

 

And to take that disturbing thought one step further, it was easily feasible to assume that if Dragos had other Gen One assassins in his service, Gen Ones who looked remarkably like Hunter himself and with similar
glyphs
, then the son of a bitch had to be breeding them from scratch off one of the original, otherworldly fathers of the vampire race on this planet.

 

An Ancient.

 

Like the one that the Order recently discovered had been kept in hibernation deep within the rock of the Bohemian mountains for probably centuries. The one that Dragos had awakened and removed God only knew how long ago.

 

If that creature was in fact alive, being used to produce new sons with first-generation strength and abilities—if a breeding process like that had been going on for decades or longer—then it wasn’t only the Order and the vampire nation that had cause for concern, but all of humankind. Bred in great numbers, a force that brutal, that bloodthirsty and powerful, would be virtually unstoppable.

 

The dark thoughts followed Lucan as he and Gideon left the infirmary wing and walked the twisting corridors to the tech lab. The entire compound was gathered there, the warriors in from patrol, and all of the Breedmates. Hunter was also in attendance, the big Gen One looming at the
back of the room, while the rest of the group had taken seats around the large table in the center.

 

Lucan gave the male a brief nod of greeting, silent acknowledgment of Hunter’s assistance tonight—assistance that had probably saved more than one warrior’s ass and also netted the Order an up-close look at the technological wonder of the dead assassin’s UV collar. Although it was smashed and detonated, Gideon had been playing with the device ever since it arrived, trying to get a handle on how the thing worked and how it could potentially be used against its wearer.

 

“How’s the arm?” Lucan asked, turning his attention to Brock, who sat between Kade and Nikolai at the table.

 

The bulky black warrior shrugged his wounded shoulder and cracked a broad grin. “It’ll feel a helluva lot better when I get a chance to smoke one of these Gen One freaks of nature.” He glanced over at Hunter. “No offense.”

 

The vampire’s golden gaze was as flat as slate. “None taken.”

 

Lucan took his place next to Gabrielle at the head of the table and addressed the assembled team. “Obviously, after what we learned a few hours ago, our mission to disable Dragos and his operation has acquired a new, immediate objective. I don’t need to tell any of you that the last thing we need is a Gen One killer loose in the city, slaughtering humans at will and wreaking general havoc. Now, we can hope that it was just the one individual, an isolated incident, but I’m not the kind to rely on hope. I need answers. Solid intel on just what we might be dealing with here—before Dragos sends it to our doorstep.”

 

There were a few nods around the table, and more than one of the mated warriors shot Lucan a look that communicated the same dread he felt whenever he thought of the
potential of their war with Dragos coming home to the compound.

 

“Tomorrow night I want a sweep of the entire city,” he said. “We’ll divide up: Tegan, Hunter, and myself each accompanying one group in case we run into more Gen Ones. This is an extermination mission. If one of Dragos’s assassins is spotted, we take him out. I want to send a very clear message to that son of a bitch and drive him back. Hard.”

 

“That could be exactly what he wants us to do,” Tegan replied. “Have you considered that what happened these past two nights might have been Dragos’s way of baiting us? Trying to pull us into street combat with his underlings so we’re not going after him?”

 

Lucan nodded. “It could be. But if he’s sent assassins into the city, can we really afford to take that chance and not confront the threat head-on?”

 

Very subtly, tenderly, Tegan slid his hand over to cover Elise’s. “No, we can’t.”

 

“Okay,” Lucan said. “Let’s go over the map and divvy up territories for tonight’s patrol.”

 

 

Reichen closed the cell phone and raked his hand over the top of his head. “Jesus Christ.”

 

“Is it bad news?” Claire came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, her body still glistening with droplets of water from her shower.

 

“It’s not good,” he said, glancing up from where he sat on the edge of the bed. It was close to midnight, and he’d been waiting for Claire to get cleaned up and dressed before he broached the subject of leaving Newport, when the disturbing call came in from the Order. “Two of the warriors
were shot earlier tonight in a confrontation with one of Dragos’s henchmen.”

 

“Good lord,” she whispered. “I’m sorry to hear that, Andre. How terrible.”

 

Reichen nodded gravely. “They’re down one man now, and planning to run intensive sweeps of the city tomorrow night to rout out any other potential threats.”

 

Claire inched over to join him where he sat, but instead of touching him, she wrapped her arms around herself. He could feel her unease in both the tentative way she moved and the sudden spike of her adrenaline, which echoed in his own veins. “Do they believe Dragos is in Boston, then?”