Edge of Darkness

by Adrian, Lara

  He reached up, tenderly cupping her face in his big palm. “I know what I’ve cost you, Leni. In killing Travis Parrish tonight, I’ve taken away your home, your business and livelihood . . . Christ, in telling you what I read in that bastard’s sins, I’ve even taken away your faith in your sister’s safe return.”

  “No, Knox.” Leni gave a slow shake of her head. “I needed to know what you learned about Shannon. You didn’t take away anything by telling me the truth.”

  He uttered a curse. “The point is, I want to give those things back to you. All of them. Instead, because of me, you’ve lost everything you once had.”

  Overcome with emotion, she lifted her hand to the rigid line of his squared jaw. “If being with you means leaving Parrish Falls for a future somewhere else—anywhere else—that’s all I need. You, Knox. And that little boy sleeping in the room behind me.” She slid her hand around to his nape and pulled him down for her kiss. “Knox, I love you. I started falling the moment you stood up for me in the diner against Dwight.”

  He growled in response, the amber fire in his eyes exploding into twin infernos of heat. She wasn’t prepared for the possessiveness of his kiss. It seared her, igniting her veins and sending a hot spiral of need shooting into her bloodstream.

  When he drew his mouth away from hers, his gaze nearly incinerated her. “You are mine, Lenora.”

  “Yes.” It was all the breath she had in her lungs, the only word she could muster when her senses were consumed with the desire—and the love—she felt for this Breed male.

  Hers.

  Knox snarled in response, triumph gleaming in his eyes and in the brief flash of his diamond-sharp fangs. He lifted her into his arms and strode down the hallway with her, bringing her into one of the large bedrooms at the far end.

  Far enough not to disturb the innocent child sleeping at the head of the long corridor.

  With the door quietly closed behind them, Knox brought Leni to the king-size bed and undressed her with hands that moved with both precision and impatience. When she lay naked before him, he kissed every inch of her bare skin from forehead to toes, leaving her quivering and breathless, and so aroused it was a miracle she didn’t melt right into the crisp, cool sheets.

  His own clothes came off with equal efficiency.

  Leni sat up, moving to the edge of the mattress as he disrobed for her. She couldn’t keep the hunger out of her eyes, no more than she could resist reaching out to run her hands over his magnificent body and the beautiful patterns of his glyphs.

  After dreading she might never be with him like this again, seeing Knox standing before her naked and pulsing with raw male power made everything female in her awaken with a fierce need to claim what was hers.

  She stroked his heavy shaft, teasing the elegant arcs and swirls that tracked like multi-hued vines from the root of his thick cock nearly to its blunt crown.

  Leni licked her lips, glancing up at him in fascination and overwhelming desire. “I love looking at you, Knox. I love knowing all of this belongs to me.”

  His reply was a groan that rumbled in his broad, muscled chest. It cut short on a hiss when Leni pulled him toward her and drew him deep into the heat of her mouth. The taste of his silky skin on her tongue lit a hotter flame inside her. The salty bead of wetness that slid down her throat as she took him all the way inside made the coil of hunger in her core twist into something ravenous.

  She took her time savoring the feel of him moving over her tongue, filling her mouth and throat the way she knew he would fill the other part of her that ached to have him. His muscles bunched in her grip as she clutched his tight backside with one hand and stroked his length with the other.

  He cursed, low and guttural, as a jolt traveled the hardness of his shaft. Power vibrated through his limbs and torso, his pleasure a jagged growl as his palm cupped the back of her skull while she licked and suckled and teased him.

  “Fuck,” he ground out hoarsely. “That feels too good, baby.”

  She wanted to keep going, take him right over the edge with her mouth, but on a tight groan he jerked out of her grasp. Then his hands were under her arms, lifting her up and onto the bed. He spread her legs with shaking hands, his dark head lowering between them.

  Leni gasped as his mouth settled over her sex and he began a slow, merciless assault on her clit. She couldn’t hold back the orgasm that had been building simply from the taste of him on her tongue. Now, that wave of arousal and need crashed into her. She bucked against Knox’s mouth, her release engulfing her, pulling her beneath a velvet tide of pure pleasure.

  When she opened her eyes moments later she found Knox watching her from between her thighs, a satisfied smile glittering in his amber-drenched gaze.

  “I could watch you come all night,” he murmured, his low voice thrumming all the way into her bones. “First chance we get to be alone, I’m going to do just that.”

  Leni smiled. “Promises, promises.”

  “I don’t make them if I can’t keep them.” He smirked, rising up to cover her body with his. “Right now, I need to be inside you.”

  She nodded, then let out a shuddery gasp as he entered her body and seated himself to the root. With his eyes locked on hers, he began to rock against her, pushing impossibly deep, then withdrawing in a slow slide that drove her mad with need.

  Each thrust and retreat made the fire in his transformed eyes burn even hotter, his irises as bright as lit coals. His pupils were thin and catlike, elliptical slits hardly discernible amid the intensifying glow that swamped them.

  His dermaglyphs pulsed and churned with variegated colors, the intricate patterns filling with deep shades of indigo, burgundy, and gold. She’d seen these hues whenever they kissed or made love, and had guessed they were the emotional markers of Breed desire and arousal.

  Yet there was another shade competing for dominance in Knox’s glyphs.

  Moving between dark reddish purple and inky black, this newer color seemed to sharpen by the minute. Knox’s fangs had grown more pronounced as well, filling his mouth as he drove inside her body in a relentless rhythm.

  His eyes had drifted away from her gaze, settled on the hammering pulse of her carotid.

  She had read the torment in his handsome face as a purely primal one—and it was. Not only sexual need, but another need that was riding him as savagely as the other.

  “Knox.” She reached up to him, smoothing the backs of her fingers against his heated brow. “You haven’t fed since your UV burns. Even longer than that.”

  His answer was a wordless snarl, his hips still moving against hers. He dragged his hungry gaze up from her pulse point, and she could see the depth of his thirst in the endless fire of his irises. He was starving.

  She tilted her head on the pillow, baring the side of her neck to him. He snarled again, low, unearthly. Far from human.

  “It’s not sustenance I want from you,” he uttered thickly. “I won’t settle for anything less than your bond, Lenora. If you’ll give it to me.”

  She smiled up at him. “It’s been yours all along, Knox. In my heart, I know it always has been yours. I’ve just been waiting for you to come and claim me.”

  He let go of another wordless noise, one that sounded so possessive and exultant it astonished her. Though nothing could have prepared her for the feel of his mouth coming down hotly over her vein. An instant later, her tender flesh gave way to the razor-sharp points of his fangs. They sank deep, his bite an indescribable shock to every fiber of her being.

  Pain and pleasure twisted into a glimmering cord of sensation as he drew her blood into his mouth. Her heart fed him, beat after beat, every vessel in her body coming alive under the erotic suction of his mouth.

  “Oh, God,” she gasped as he fed from her opened vein.

  Instead of feeling drained, she felt energized by the act of nourishing him. She felt fulfilled.

  Powerful.

  And running undercurrent of those feelings was the incredib
le love she felt for the male who had just bound himself to her forever by blood.

  “Knox,” she whispered, overcome with emotion.

  His tongue swept over the wounds he’d made in her neck, his breath fanning hot against her skin. “You taste so good. Your blood is as unique as you are. Crisp and fresh, like a cedar forest in winter, yet as warm and sweet as cream. I want to drink from you all night.”

  She wanted that too. She moaned at the loss of his mouth at her vein.

  And she had a thirst of her own that was now beating like a drum in her marrow.

  “I can feel you in me now, Leni. Your blood, your bond. Ah, Christ. It’s amazing. So fucking bright and strong. Just like you.” He lifted his head, searching out her arousal-drenched gaze. “I can feel your love. God knows I don’t deserve that any more than I deserve the rest of you. But you’re mine, Lenora. Mine.”

  He kept pumping inside her as he spoke, his tempo growing more urgent, fueling the fire in her. One that had only intensified under the feel of his bite. She closed her eyes, unable to curb the broken moan that leaked past her lips.

  He gathered her close, thrusting deep. Leni arched with him, taking everything he gave her. She needed more. She needed all of him now.

  As if she had spoken her desire aloud, Knox picked up his tempo. It was all she could do to simply hold on to him as he brought her past the edge of a blinding, soul-scorching release and into a pleasure that knew no bounds.

  CHAPTER 22

  He would never get enough of this woman.

  His woman.

  His Breedmate.

  Drinking Leni’s blood, feeling her bond take hold inside him, had been more than he’d imagined. More than he could ever hope to be worthy of, even if he had a hundred lifetimes to prove himself to her.

  He had eternity now. He intended to use every second of it making sure she never regretted allowing him into her life.

  Her love and forgiveness were two more gifts he hardly deserved, but was determined to keep.

  Knox watched her spiral down from her release, his own veins echoing with the thrum of her pleasure as he moved inside her, still hard even after he’d come. Still craving more of the woman who had given herself over to him so openly, so honestly, right from the start.

  When her eyelids lifted, her tender gaze held him as lovingly as her arms. She smiled up at him. “Is this what happiness feels like? I don’t think I’ve ever really known it before.”

  He lowered his head and kissed her, unrushed, his hips still rocking against hers. “I don’t know about happiness. It’s never been something I wanted or needed. But I do need this. I want this, with you.”

  “You have me now,” she said, her smile deepening. “And I have you, Knox.”

  “Yes, you do.” He felt the depth of her vow in the bond that linked him to her. But as he stared into her beautiful hazel eyes, he slowly shook his head. “Growing up in Dragos’s lab, I never knew what it meant to have a family. I didn’t know how to feel anything. None of us did. We didn’t want to feel, because in the Hunter program, emotion meant death. The only way to survive was to be a machine, so that’s what I did. That’s what we all did.”

  “I hate that you went through that,” Leni murmured, caressing his face. “And I’m so very glad that you did survive, Knox.”

  Her sincerity—her tender compassion—wrapped its warmth around him through the bond. Where he once might have resisted the comfort, now he welcomed it. Hell, he needed it, more than he wanted to admit.

  “I let someone in once,” he murmured. “When she died, I fell back on my old ways. I closed myself off. I walled everyone out, including my brothers who’d escaped with me to build new lives outside the program. Over time, I had myself convinced I didn’t need anyone, that I didn’t want ties to any place or to any person. Then I met you, Lenora.”

  He smoothed his thumb over her soft lips, then couldn’t resist leaning down to kiss her. She melted into him, her fingers tunneling into his hair and holding him close.

  He let out a wry, airless laugh. “You ruined everything. You ruined me.”

  Her eyes widened under her furrowing brow. Doubt crackled through his connection to her and he wanted to kick himself for putting even as much as a second of uncertainty in her heart.

  “What I mean to say is that you’ve changed me, Leni. You’ve done more than that. You’ve saved me.”

  She gave him a gentle smile. “You saved me too.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “You were never the one in need of saving, and not just because of your mark. You are the strongest woman I’ve ever known. You have the purest heart. The most unshakable faith.” He exhaled a hard sigh, feeling awkward for the fact that he couldn’t even give her proper words to express all the things she made him feel. And yet he had just taken the one thing she couldn’t share with another for as long as either of them drew breath. “You make me want to be the kind of mate you deserve. I want to earn the love and forgiveness I feel through your blood.”

  Leni frowned. “You don’t have to earn anything, Knox.”

  “Yes, I do,” he bit off sharply. “I’ve taken too much away from you tonight. I promise, I’ll find a way to make it right.”

  Her fingers gently stroked the side of his face. “There’s nothing more I want than what you’ve already given me. Your love, Knox. That’s everything to me.”

  He kissed her again, each drumming beat of her heart pulling down the remnants of the walls that had served to protect him for as long as he could remember. With Leni, none of his walls had been high enough or strong enough to keep her from getting through, from getting into his blood even before he’d put his mouth to her vein tonight.

  “You have my love,” he murmured against her lips. “You’ll always have that. You and Riley both. Tonight, I’m also offering you my bond.”

  She drew back, emotion glittering in her eyes. There was hesitation in her voice, and that note of uncertainty carved a hole inside him. “It’s forever, Knox. If I drink from you, it can’t be undone . . . not ever. I’ll be a shackle you can’t ever break.”

  Ah, Christ. His own words tossed back at him now, even as gently as Leni delivered them, struck him like a lash. He hated that he’d said them to her. He hadn’t meant to be so cruel. Fear had done that to him, fear of what he was feeling for the extraordinary woman who had already given him more than he could ever want or need.

  “Forever, my beautiful Lenora.” He smoothed his fingers over the curve of her pretty cheek and delicate jaw line. “That’s what the bond means. I know that, and I won’t settle for anything less with you. If you’ll have me.”

  Her soft gasp caught in her throat as elation poured through her veins. He felt it, reveled in it. Made a silent vow that he would love her with every breath in his body, right down to his last.

  With his gaze locked on hers, he brought his wrist up to his mouth. His fangs sank into the flesh and muscle below his palm, piercing the vein that ran the length of his forearm.

  Blood dripped onto her bare breasts as he waited for Leni to make her decision.

  To his relief, she barely hesitated before taking hold of his arm and bringing the twin punctures to her mouth. The instant her lips closed over his wrist, his spine bowed. A strangled growl of pleasure boiled out of him, every sinew in his body going taut as Leni took the first sip of his blood.

  Fuck, he’d had no idea what to expect. He wasn’t prepared for the electric jolt that traveled through him as she drank and the bond between them fused into completion.

  His veins were still lit up and humming with the power of her blood, but now a further energy coursed between Leni and him. He saw it in her eyes as she held his awestruck gaze and drew from his vein. He felt it in the connection that strengthened and pulsed with white-hot ferocity as the gossamer threads of their bond forged into an unbreakable, eternal link.

  His love for her overwhelmed him.

  His desire, which had seemed boundless before
, now burned into an infinite need.

  He thrust hard, groaning at the feel of her tight walls gripping him, milking him. She moaned as he rolled his pelvis against hers, each stroke more desperate than the last. He couldn’t get close enough to her, couldn’t go deep enough.

  And through their bond, he could feel the same insatiable need in Leni.

  On a ragged snarl, he drew his wrist away from the delicious suction of her lips and hastily sealed the wounds he’d made.

  Lowering his head, he took her mouth in a savage kiss. “You’re mine now. Forever.”

  “Yes,” she whispered, her love wrapping around him from both the joining of their bond and their bodies. “And you’re mine, Knox.”

  He growled his answer, too far gone to form words. All he knew was the pleasure of his female’s body beneath his, her heat surrounding him, coaxing the explosive release he was powerless to control any longer.

  Leni’s climax crashed into him before his own had snapped its leash. Knox marveled at the feel of her surrendering to him completely.

  Her body’s delicate tremors would have been reward enough, but sharing her bliss through their bond made his own orgasm detonate with enormous force. He roared his pleasure, then rolled Leni over to start all over again.

  “Mine,” he rasped against the soft curve of her neck and shoulder as he entered her.

  Leni let go of a shuddery sigh. “God, yes. Knox, don’t stop.”

  He had no intention of it.

  Possession poured over him, more powerful than any storm. She was his. Nothing—and no one—was going to stand in the way of that now.

  Sooner or later, he still had to answer for Travis Parrish’s murder, but he would gladly pay whatever price the Order or law enforcement demanded of him.

  As for the rest of the Parrishes, they could burn in hell for all he cared.

  And if they ever tried to lay a finger on Leni or Riley, Knox was prepared to send them there personally.

  CHAPTER 23