by Lara Adrian
And now this.
The light.
The power.
“Sia?” He opened his eyes and blinked in the darkness of a dank stone cave.
She sat beside him on a small bed of sand, her knees bent, her face resting on her folded arms. She’d been weeping. Tears streaked her beautiful face as she lifted her head and looked over at him.
“Trygg.” His name was a breathless whisper, filled with relief. And regret.
“Where are we?” His voice was groggy with misuse and the likely gallons of salt water he’d ingested after the detonation had thrown him into the sea for God knew how long.
And then he realized what Sia’s presence beside him actually meant.
“You came after me?” It sounded like an accusation and she flinched. “Sia, what the fuck were you thinking?”
She shook her head. “Lazaro said he lost contact with you. Someone had to warn you that Santino’s boat was a trap. Someone had to try to reach you in time—”
“Not you, damn it!” He choked on the words, his lungs still waterlogged and raw. “You’re the last person I’d want to risk something as reckless as that.”
“I was the only one who could,” she replied. “The crystal took me to the boat’s location, but I was too late. It exploded just as I got there.”
He stared at this Atlantean female—this woman who was as brave as any warrior he’d ever known—and felt his chest swell with pride. And with gratitude.
A host of tender emotions swamped him, all of them centered on Sia.
He glanced at her folded hands and frowned. Her wrists were empty. “You lost your crystal.”
She shrugged. “It fell off somewhere in the water when I was bringing you here.”
“I’ll help you find it,” he offered lamely. “I’ll see to it that you get another one. If that’s what you want.”
“That’s not what I want, Trygg.” Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. She swiped at them, turning her face away from him.
He rose up, taking a moment to assess what had to be catastrophic injuries from the explosion and his crash into the sea. But he saw no marks on his body at all. He felt no aches from broken bones or bruises.
He’d never felt stronger or more powerful in his life.
And his face… Christ, even that felt different now. The familiar tug of his scar each time he moved his lips or blinked his eye was gone.
He reached up to feel for the jagged line, but it was no longer there.
His face was healed.
It only took him an instant to understand why. “You gave me your blood.”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I didn’t know what else to do. You were injured so badly when I found you in the water and I—”
“Why did you do it?” A curse blasted out of him as the full realization of what she had done sank into his brain. He took her quivering chin on the tips of his fingers and drew her gaze back to his. “Why did you come after me, Sia?”
“Because I love you.”
All his breath left him in an astonished gust. “You shouldn’t. You should save your love for a man who’s more deserving. Someone gentler. Someone cleaner. These hands are stained with blood, Sia. They always will be. They’re not the kind of hands that should be touching you.”
“I don’t want anyone else. I choose you.” She squared her shoulders, some of the haughty, regal Atlantean pushing past the selfless, tender woman he also knew her to be. “I’ve chosen, Trygg. There is only you.”
He held her gaze, unable to resist the urge to smooth his fingers along the soft curve of her cheek. “That’s why you fed me your blood?”
“I couldn’t let you die, Trygg. Even if that meant you would live the rest of your life hating me for the gift.”
He listened without speaking, considering what it was going to mean to be bound to her forever. No other woman would be able to quench his thirst. No other woman would inflame his desire the way his blood would now call for Sia. She was a part of him irrevocably.
He stepped in close to her, craving her warmth already…always. “For most of my life, I only knew how to hate the chains that bound me. Now you’ve placed a new one on me.”
She closed her eyes, remorse filling her lovely face. “I know, Trygg. And I’m sorr—”
He silenced her with a deep, unhurried kiss. “I’m not sorry, Sia. I can’t think of any greater gift than the one you’ve given me now. Your blood. Your bond. Your love.”
A soft cry slipped past her lips. “I thought you would despise me.”
“No, Tamisia. I love you.”
He took her face between his palms and kissed her again, savoring the taste of her. Through the bond of her blood, he could feel the depth of her affection for him. Her love was a light that glowed inside her, filling his own heart with an unearthly, extraordinary warmth.
This was how it would be between them from now on, her vitality and emotion flowing inside him. Instead of holding him down, this shackle freed him.
It unleashed a staggering desire within him.
“Sia,” he murmured, drawing her against him as their kiss ignited into something neither of them could contain. “You’re mine now.”
“Yes,” she whispered against his lips. “Only yours, Trygg.”
His fangs responded as swiftly as the rest of him. Sia licked her lips, seeming to understand what he needed. Her hungered expression told him that she needed the same thing.
He eased her down onto the soft sand with him. They peeled away the damp, tattered rags of their clothing, and then Trygg was inside her, both of them moving together in a tempo as worshipful as it was urgent. There was no cooling their desire, no slowing their shared, intense release.
“Drink from me,” he murmured, the glow of his irises bathing her milky skin in warm amber light as he rocked inside her. With his eyes on hers, he bit into his own wrist, opening twin punctures in his veins. “I need to know you’ll be mine forever, my beautiful Tamisia.”
“Oh, Trygg,” she murmured, a pleasured smile curving her lips in the instant before her tongue touched his skin. “I already am.”
He tipped his head back on a groan of pure ecstasy as she closed her mouth over his wounds and began to take her fill.
Epilogue
Crisp salt air lashed at Trygg’s face as the fishing boat cut through the dark waves. Seated alongside him on a bench at the stern of the old vessel, Sia huddled close beneath the warmth of a thick blanket, her arms wrapped around his torso.
As far as romance went, their moonlit ride back to the mainland left something to be desired. Lazaro had been on the satellite phone with Lucan for the past ten minutes, while Savage manned the helm.
“Santino’s dead,” the commander said as he ended the call to D.C.
“What?” Trygg leaned forward, torn between elation and a morbid disappointment that he hadn’t been the one to personally send the bastard on his way to hell.
Lazaro nodded. “It just happened about an hour ago. Turns out one of the boys Santino abused held a grudge. Ten years later, the kid comes back all grown up and shoots the son of a bitch dead while he was asleep.”
Savage threw a smirk over his shoulder. “Revenge really is a dish best served cold.”
“Anyway,” Lazaro said, “Santino is out of the way, but that doesn’t mean someone else won’t be stepping up to take his place. Red Dragon is too profitable, and too effective as a weapon against us, to expect anyone to let it lie untapped.”
“Then we’ll keep taking the assholes out until we root out every last bit of that poison,” Sia said.
Trygg chuckled. “Careful. You’re starting to sound like one of us.”
She arched a brow at him. “Something wrong with that, warrior?”
He grinned. “No, ma’am. Not a thing.”
“That’s better.” She took his face in her hands and kissed him hard, not seeming to care at all that his commander and one of his comrades were looking on.
After a moment, Lazaro cleared his throat. “I suppose this means you won’t be asking me for any more letters of recommendation after all, Sia?”
She drew away from Trygg’s mouth and smiled at Lazaro. “Not unless you’d like to write one to Lucan Thorne.”
The commander smirked. “That could probably be arranged.”
Trygg nipped her earlobe. “Don’t you think we should talk about this first?”
“We just did. Partner.”
He groaned, but there was no bite to it. “I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have at my side, Sia. In the Order, and in life.”
“That’s good,” she said. “Because that’s exactly where I plan to stay. Forever.”
He chuckled, pressing another kiss to her lips as he dragged the blanket over their heads, content to let his duty, his brothers-in-arms, and the rest of the world fade away for a while.
* * * *
Also from 1001 Dark Nights and Lara Adrian, discover MIDNIGHT UNTAMED, TEMPTED BY MIDNIGHT and STROKE OF MIDNIGHT.
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Discover More Lara Adrian
Midnight Untamed
A Midnight Breed Novella
By Lara Adrian
Click here to purchase.
The mission was supposed to be simple. Infiltrate an enemy’s stronghold outside Rome and eliminate its leader. For a Breed warrior as lethal as Ettore Selvaggio, AKA “Savage,” stealth assassinations are only one of his many cold-hearted specialties. But the last thing Savage expects to find behind enemy lines—in his target’s bed—is a woman he once adored.
It’s been years since Savage last saw beautiful Arabella Genova. Years he’s strived to banish to his past, along with the fierce desire he once felt toward Bella...and the irresistible calling of her blood that stirs in him even now, despite the fact that she belongs to another male.
But when fate throws Savage and Bella together again in a race for their lives, will his long-lost love prove to be the one woman he can’t live without, or the perfect weapon to destroy him?
* * * *
Stroke of Midnight
A Midnight Breed Novella
By Lara Adrian
Click here to purchase.
Born to a noble Breed lineage steeped in exotic ritual and familial duty, vampire warrior Jehan walked away from the luxurious trappings of his upbringing in Morocco to join the Order’s command center in Rome.
But when a generations-old obligation calls Jehan home, the reluctant desert prince finds himself thrust into an unwanted handfasting with Seraphina, an unwilling beauty who’s as determined as he is to resist the antiquated pact between their families.
Yet as intent as they are to prove their incompatibility, neither can deny the attraction that ignites between them. And as Jehan and Seraphina fight to resist the calling of their blood, a deadly enemy seeks to end their uneasy truce before it even begins….
* * * *
Tempted By Midnight
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Once, they lived in secret alongside mankind. Now, emerged from the shadows, the Breed faces enemies on both sides—human and vampire alike. No one knows that better than Lazaro Archer, one of the eldest and most powerful of his kind. His beloved Breedmate and family massacred by a madman twenty years ago, Lazaro refuses to open his heart again.
Sworn to his duty as the leader of the Order’s command center in Italy, the last thing the hardened warrior wants is to be tasked with the rescue and safekeeping of an innocent woman in need of his protection. But when a covert mission takes a deadly wrong turn, Lazaro finds himself in the unlikely role of hero with a familiar, intriguing beauty he should not desire, but cannot resist.
Melena Walsh has never forgotten the dashing Breed male who saved her life as a child. But the chivalrous hero of her past is in hard contrast to the embittered, dangerous man on whom her safety now depends. And with an unwanted—yet undeniable—desire igniting between them, Melena fears that Lazaro’s protection may come at the price of her heart….
Midnight Unbound
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As a former Hunter bred to be a killing machine in the hell of a madman's lab, Breed vampire Scythe is a dangerous loner whose heart has been steeled by decades of torment and violence. He has no room in his world for love or desire--especially when it comes in the form of a vulnerable, yet courageous, Breedmate in need of protection. Scythe has loved--and lost--once before, and paid a hefty price for the weakness of his emotions. He's not about to put himself in those chains again, no matter how deeply he hungers for lovely Chiara.
For Chiara Genova, a widow and mother with a young Breed son, the last thing she needs is to put her fate and that of her child in the hands of a lethal male like Scythe. But when she's targeted by a hidden enemy, the obsidian-eyed assassin is her best hope for survival…even at the risk of her heart.
* * * *
It was long past midnight by the time Scythe pulled into the vineyard's twisting driveway at the base of Mount Vulture. After several hours behind the wheel, he was twitchy with the need for freedom. He’d elected to take Chiara’s Fiat instead of his SUV in the ho
pes of avoiding notice on the road, a decision he’d regretted more and more with each passing mile. At six-foot-six, his head grazed the ceiling of the tiny vehicle and he had to spread his legs wide in order to accommodate the steering wheel between them.
He felt like a bear trapped in a chicken coop.
Even worse than the discomfort of his cramped muscles was the distraction of Chiara’s close proximity in the tight quarters of the car. He could smell the citrusy freshness of her skin and hair, could feel the warmth of her body seated beside him. He could hear the shallow rhythm of her breathing as the silence stretched on between them, could almost feel the frantic beating of her heart like a vibration in his own veins.
She stirred other parts of him too. For a Hunter who’d been ruthlessly trained to deny his own wants and needs in favor of duty and self-control, his road trip with Chiara had been a startling reminder of the fact that beneath it all, he was still, ultimately, a flesh-and-blood male. A male who couldn’t ignore the soft, beautiful female confined in the small space along with him, no matter how hard he tried.
Even now, his cock rested heavily between his thighs, a throbbing, heated reminder of just how long he’d gone without slaking that other hunger. Under his clothing, the Breed dermaglyphs that tracked all over his skin felt tingly and alive, no doubt infusing with all of the deep, changeable colors of his desire. He swallowed on an arid throat and his tongue grazed over the tips of his emerging fangs.
