by Lara Adrian
Beneath the table, her hand slid over to reach for his. He gathered her slender fingers in his grasp and she glanced to him, smiling faintly as their fingers twined together in silent reassurance. Something deeper passed between them in that moment—an unspoken acknowledgment of the growing bond they shared.
He knew she was strong. He knew she was a courageous, resilient woman who had taken more than her fair share of hits in her lifetime and still came up swinging. But seeing her now, gripped in a moment of quiet vulnerability, made his heart crack just a little.
He loved that she wasn’t some delicate flower that wilted under the smallest bit of heat. But he loved this glimpse of softness in her, too.
God, there was so much to love about her.
If not for the slight problem that she hadn’t been born a Breedmate, Jenna Darrow was a woman he could easily envision at his side—a true partner, in life and in all things. But she was mortal, and falling for her would inevitably mean losing her. What happened in New York earlier today—seeing her in the hands of Dragos’s Minions—had only driven that point home with sharper clarity.
Corinne’s death had been a blow he hadn’t been prepared for, but he’d managed to go on. Losing Jenna, whether to the age that would eventually take her or by any other means, had somehow become impossible even to imagine.
As he held her hand in his, he knew that he could no longer pretend that she was simply another mission, or that protecting her was merely his duty to the Order. He’d fallen too far and too fast to deny just how much she meant to him.
He was still turning that troubling realization over in his mind as Lucan rose from the table and went to stand near Christophe Archer. Lucan put his hand on the other male’s shoulder, his dark brows knitted together in a solemn look. “We won’t rest until we find your son and bring him home. You have my word, and you have the word of my brethren here in this room.”
At his pledge, Brock and the other warriors also rose from their seats around the table in a show of solidarity. Even Hunter, the Gen One who knew firsthand how ruthless Dragos and his assassins truly were, stood in support of their new mission.
Christophe turned a hard gaze on the Order’s leader. “Thank you. There is nothing more I can ask.”
“And there is nothing I won’t give,” Lazaro said, joining his son and Lucan near the back of the room. “The Order has my faith and my full trust. I cannot forgive myself for ignoring your advice a year ago, Lucan. Just look what it’s costing me now.” He shook his head sadly. “Perhaps I have lived too long, if an evil individual like Dragos can exist among us. Is this what is to become of the Breed? Making war on one another, letting greed and power corrupt us, just like humankind. Perhaps we’re not so different from them, after all. For that matter, are we any different from the savage otherworlders who spawned us?”
Lucan’s steel gray gaze had never looked more resolute. “I’m counting on it.”
Lazaro Archer nodded. “And I am counting on you,” he said, sweeping a look over each warrior and the females who now stood with them. “I am counting on all of you.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-three
The Order continued the meeting for another couple of hours after Lazaro and Christophe Archer left. Sometime earlier, Jenna and the rest of the women had gone to have their dinner elsewhere in the compound, leaving the warriors to discuss their limited options and tactics for how they might go about searching for the abducted boy.
Although Brock listened and offered suggestions when he had them, his mind—and his heart—was distracted. A lot of his focus had walked out of the room when Jenna left, and since then, he’d been counting down the minutes until he could be with her again. As soon as the meeting in the tech lab broke up, he headed out to the corridor to find her.
Alex was coming out of his quarters, closing the door behind her as he approached. She smiled knowingly when she saw him.
“How is she doing?” he asked.
“A lot better than I would be after what she went through today. She’s dead on her feet, but you know Jen. She would never say as much.”
“Yeah,” he said, returning Alex’s smile. “I do know that.”
“She’s more concerned about you, I think. She told me what you did, Brock. How you came after her, driving into the full light of day.”
He shrugged, uncomfortable with the praise. “I had the proper gear. My burns were minimal. They were healed by the time we got back to the compound.”
“That’s not the point.” Alex’s mouth curved warmly. Then she abruptly went up on her toes and placed a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you for saving my friend.”
When he stood there, unsure how to respond, Alex rolled her eyes. “What are you waiting for? Go on in and see her for yourself.”
He waited until Kade’s mate had gone before he rapped his knuckles on the door. It took a few moments before Jenna opened it. She was barefoot, dressed in his white terry bathrobe, he was guessing, with little to nothing more beneath it.
“Hi,” she said, giving him a welcoming smile that made his blood fire to life in his veins. “I was just about to get in the shower.”
Oh, he definitely didn’t need that tempting mental image to make his body burn any hotter.
“I wanted to come by and check on you,” he murmured, a thick rasp in his voice as he recalled the feminine curves and long, luscious limbs that were hiding under the oversize robe. A robe fastened only by the loosely tied sash around her slender waist. He cleared his throat. “But if you’re tired—”
“I’m not.” She pivoted away from the door, leaving it open behind her in unspoken invitation.
Brock stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
He hadn’t gone there with ideas about seducing her, but he had to admit it seemed like a really stellar idea now that he was close enough to touch her. Close enough to sense that she felt the same way.
Before he could stop himself, he reached out for her hand and brought her back toward him. She didn’t resist. Her hazel eyes were wide and welcoming as he cupped his hand around the back of her head and drew her against him. He caught her mouth in a deep, hungered kiss. She sucked his lower lip hard between her teeth, and all of his good intentions, few though they were, went up in flames.
“God, Jenna,” he rasped against her mouth. “I can’t stay away from you.”
Her answer was a throaty moan, the slow feminine purr vibrating through his body and straight into his cock. He was hard as steel, his skin tight and overheated, every nerve ending throbbing in time with the roar of his pulse.
He peeled the loose terry cloth off Jenna’s luscious body, revealing her to his thirsting gaze inch by inch, curve by delectable curve. He smoothed his hands over her soft skin, reveling in the velvety feel of her under his rough fingertips. Her breasts filled his palms, a perfect swell of creamy flesh capped with small pink nipples that begged him to taste them. He dipped his head down and lavished her with his tongue, suckling the tight little buds and growling with pleasure as she moaned and sighed above him.
The sweet scent of her arousal slammed into him, making his already emerged fangs punch out of his gums in primal, urgent response. He reached down between her legs, cleaving his fingers into the slick seam of her body. “So soft,” he murmured, teasing the petals of her body and reveling in the way she blossomed even fuller under his touch. “So hot and wet. You are so fucking sexy, Jenna.”
“Oh, God,” she gasped, her fingers digging into his shoulders as he slowly penetrated her with first one finger, then a second. “More,” she whispered. “Don’t stop.”
With a growl, he rocked his palm against her and took her mouth in a hard, possessive kiss, tongue and fingers delving deep, giving and taking until he felt her body quake with the first tremors of release. She let out a sharp, shuddery sigh but he didn’t let up until she shattered against him, crying out his name in release.
She was still panting, still holding onto his
shoulders as he slowly caressed her sex, and bent to kiss the tight little buds of her nipples.
“You’re way overdressed,” she murmured, her heavy-lidded eyes dark and demanding, though no more than the hands that were now drifting down his arms and heading on a direct course for the massive bulge below the waistband of his fatigues. She stroked him over the fabric, her unbashful handling of him making his cock surge tighter, fuller, straining to be freed. “Take these off. Now.”
“Bossy as ever,” he said, grinning as he rushed to comply to her lusty demands.
She laughed, running her hands all over his body as he shucked his clothes. When he was naked, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him until her curves melded with his hard planes and muscles. She was no fragile waif, and he loved that about her. He loved her strength. There was so much he loved about this woman, he realized, standing there skin to skin with her, staring into her eyes.
Oh, yeah … he was in big trouble right here.
“You said something about a shower,” he murmured, trying to pretend he wasn’t falling in love right that very second. Trying to convince himself that he hadn’t fallen for her much earlier than this—as early as the moment he’d first seen her, terrorized but unbroken, in the dark of her Alaska cabin.
She smiled up at him, oblivious to the wash of revelation pouring over him. “I did say something about a shower, actually. But it’s way over there in the bathroom, and we’re out here.”
“Easy enough to take care of that.” He scooped her up into his arms and used the inhuman speed he’d been born with to carry her into the adjacent bathroom before she could even yelp for him to put her down.
“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed, laughing around the words as he set her feet down on the marble floor. “Neat trick.”
“Baby, stick around. I’ve got plenty more where that came from.”
She arched a slim brow. “Is that an invitation?”
“Do you want it to be?”
Instead of shooting back with something teasing or suggestive, she got quiet suddenly. Glanced away for a second. When she looked back up at him, her face was as serious as he’d ever seen it. “I don’t know what I want … other than more of this. More of you.”
Brock lifted her beautiful face on the edge of his hand. “Take all you want.”
She brought her arms around the back of his neck and kissed him like she meant to never let go. He held her, mouths joined and needy, as he walked them both into the large shower and turned on the spray. Warm water coursed all around them, drenching them as they continued to touch and stroke and kiss.
Jenna set their pace and he gladly submitted to her, leaning back against the cold marble tile of the shower when she broke away from his mouth and slowly sank down before him. She ran her mouth over his chest and stomach, her tongue following the patterns of his glyphs while her wet hands slid up and down his stiff shaft. He nearly lost it when her lips closed around the head of his cock. She sucked him deep, rendering him mindless after just a few moments of her sweet, wet torture.
“Ah, Christ,” he hissed, so very close to the edge already. “Come up here now.”
He pulled her up against his hard body and kissed her hungrily, thrusting his tongue into the hot sheath of her mouth the way he was dying to be inside her sex. He reached down and parted her legs from behind, spreading the firm, wet mounds of her pretty ass. He hauled her against him and brought his hand around to the slick, hot core of her body.
“I need to be inside you,” he growled, hunger ratcheting so tight he felt ready to explode.
Bracing his feet on the floor of the shower, his spine pressed to the wall, he lifted her up onto him. Slowly, hissing with the pure white-hot pleasure of it, he guided her down the full length of his cock.
She moaned, burying her face in his shoulder as he rocked her in an unhurried tempo, relishing every sigh and gasp of bliss she gave him. She came on a shivery cry, her sheath milking him, tiny pulsations running up and down his shaft.
His own need for release was roaring up on him. He turned her around and splayed her legs in front of him. She leaned forward, palms against the marble wall, water streaming down the valley of her spine and into the crack of her pretty ass. He slid back home, hooking his arm around her waist as he thrust into her, too far gone to take things slowly.
He’d never known sex this intense. He’d never known the depth of need he felt for this woman. The urge to possess slammed into him, just as it had the first time he’d made love with Jenna. The scorching desire to claim her, to mark her as his alone and hold her away from any other male forever, was something he’d never expected to feel.
But it was alive in him now. As he pumped into the soft, wet heat of her body, his gums ached with the hunger to taste her. To bind her to him, regardless of the impossibility of ever truly taking this female—a mortal woman—as his blood-bonded mate.
He snarled with the force of that desire, unable to keep from pressing his mouth to the supple curve of her neck and shoulder as he drove deeper into her with each hard thrust. All the while, the points of his fangs rested against her tender skin. Teasing … testing.
“Do it,” she whispered. “Oh, God, Brock … I want to feel it. I want to feel all of you.”
He growled low in his throat, letting the sharp tips sink in a little more, just a breath away from breaking the surface. “It won’t mean anything,” he rasped harshly, unsure if it was anger or regret that made his voice so raw. His orgasm was coiling tightly, on the verge of exploding. “I just … ah, fuck … I need to taste you, Jenna.”
She reached out and put her palm against the back of his head, ready to force him. “Do it.”
He bit down, penetrating the soft flesh at the same instant he buried himself to the hilt and spilled deep within her. Jenna’s blood was hot on his tongue, a thick, coppery blast of human red cells, but he’d never tasted anything so sweet. He drank from her as she climaxed again, taking care not to hurt her, wanting to give her only pleasure. When she relaxed again, coming down off the crest of her release, he gently stroked his tongue over the twin punctures to seal them.
He turned her around to face him, both of them soaking under the warm deluge of the shower. He had no words, only reverence and wonder for this human female who had somehow stolen his heart. She glanced up at him from under the dark spikes of her lashes, her cheeks pink, mouth still swollen from his kisses.
Brock caressed her jaw, that stubborn, beautiful jaw. She smiled, a sexy curve of her lips, and then suddenly they were kissing all over again. His sex responded instantly, and the fire in his blood stoked back up to a rapid boil. Jenna reached down to touch him, at the same time her tongue slid into his mouth to play along the length of his fangs.
Oh, yeah.
It was going to be a long night.
CHAPTER
Twenty-four
Jenna woke up in Brock’s big bed, wrapped within his strong arms.
They’d made love for endless hours: under the water of the shower; against the bedroom wall; on the sofa in the living room … she’d lost track of all the places, and all the creative ways they’d found to pleasure each other’s bodies.
Now she dragged her eyelids open in a state of blissful contentment as she snuggled further into his embrace, her cheek pressed to his chest, one leg bent and slung over the tops of his thighs. Her shifting stirred a low groan out of him, the deep rumble vibrating through her.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” she whispered.
Another groan, something dark and wicked. “I wasn’t sleeping.”
His biceps flexed as he pulled her closer, then he covered her hand with his and guided her touch down to the part of him that was, without question, very much alert. Jenna’s laugh rasped sleepily in her throat. “You know, for an old man, you have amazing stamina.”
He gave a faint thrust as she palmed him, his thick shaft growing more rigid, impossibly larger, in her grasp. “You got s
omething against centenarians?”
“A hundred years?” she asked, coming up onto her elbow to look at him. There was so much she didn’t know about him. So many things she wanted to learn. “Are you really that old?”
“Somewhere around there. Older, probably, but I stopped counting the years a long time ago.” He smiled, just a slight curving of his sensual lips, as he reached out and smoothed some of her hair behind her ear. “Afraid I won’t be able to keep up with you?”
She lifted a brow. “Not after last night.”
As he chuckled, she leaned down and kissed him. She rose up and straddled him, sighing with pleasure for the way they fit so perfectly together. As she moved lazily atop him, simply relishing the sensation of him filling her once again, she noted the tiny, but healing, bite marks she’d left on his neck during their last bout of lovemaking.
She hadn’t been able to resist nipping at him, particularly after he’d drunk from her in the shower. Just the thought of it made her wild with arousal. It made her want to devour him, even now. Instead she bent over him and licked her tongue along the throbbing pulse point at the base of his throat. “Mmm,” she moaned against his skin. “You are incredible.”
“And you’re insatiable,” he replied, though it didn’t exactly sound like criticism.
“Well, then, consider yourself warned. I seem to have energy to burn, especially where you’re involved.” She intended it as a joke, but as she said it, she realized just now how much truth there was in that statement. She drew back and stared down at him, astonished by everything she was feeling. “I can’t recall how long it’s been since I’ve felt this good. I’ve never felt more, I don’t know … more alive, I guess.”
His dark brown eyes held her tenderly. “You seem better every day.”
“I am.” She swallowed, reflecting on all of the changes that had come over her since she’d arrived in the Order’s care. She’d never felt more attuned to the world around her, nor more curious and engaged about life. Physically she was still healing, still waiting to see how the ordeal she’d been through in Alaska might impact her moving forward. But inside she felt buoyant and strong.
