CHAPTER
Eleven

Lucan rapped on Gabrielle’s apartment door again.

Still no response.

He had been standing on her front stoop in the dark for about five minutes, waiting for her either to open the damn door and invite him in, or curse him as a bastard from behind the perceived safety of her multiple locks and tell him to get lost.

After the hard-core moves he’d put on her the night before, he wasn’t sure which reaction he deserved. Probably the irate kiss-off.

He dropped his knuckles onto the door once more, hard enough that the neighbors likely heard it, but there was no movement from within Gabrielle’s apartment. Only quiet. Too much stillness on the other side.

She was in there, though. He could sense her through the layers of wood and brick that stood between them. And he smelled blood, too—not a lot, but trace amounts somewhere near the door.

Son of a bitch.

She was inside, and she was hurt.

“Gabrielle!”

Concern ran like acid through his arteries as he calmed his mind enough to focus his mental powers on the chain lock and double bolts that were set on the other side of the door. With effort, he turned one lock, then the other. The chain slid free of its channel, swinging loose against the doorjamb with a metallic scrape.

Lucan threw open the door, his boots pounding over the tiled foyer. Gabrielle’s camera bag lay directly in his path, likely fallen where she dropped it in her haste. The jasmine-sweet scent of her blood slammed into his nostrils just an instant before an erratic trail of small crimson splatters caught his eye.

A bitter tang of fear laced the air of the apartment as well. Its odor had faded, some hours old, but lingering like fog.

He strode through the living room, about to head for the kitchen where the blood droplets continued. As he stalked farther inside, his gaze snagged on a stack of photos lying on the sofa table.

They were rough cuts, an odd assortment of images. Some he recognized from Gabrielle’s work-in-progress, the one she was calling Urban Renewal. But there were a few shots he hadn’t seen before. Or maybe hadn’t looked close enough to notice.

He noticed them now.

Goddamn, did he ever.

An old warehouse near the wharf. An abandoned paper mill just outside the city. Several other forbidding-looking structures that no human—let alone an unsuspecting woman like Gabrielle—ought to be getting anywhere near.

Rogue lairs.

Some of them were defunct now, forced into that status by Lucan and his warriors, but a few others were active cells. He spotted several that Gideon currently had under surveillance. Sifting through the others, he wondered how many other photos she had here of Rogue locations not yet on the Breed’s radar.

“Jesus Christ,” he whispered tightly, fingering through a couple more images.

She even had some exterior shots of local Darkhavens, obscure entryways and masking signage meant to conceal the vampire sanctuaries from easy detection, whether from nosy humans or the enemy Rogues.

Yet Gabrielle had found all of these places. How?

It sure as hell wasn’t by chance. Her extraordinary visual sense must have led her to them. She had already proven to be all but immune to the regular tricks of vampire guile—mass hypnotic illusion, mind control…now this.

With a curse, Lucan shoved a few pictures into the pocket of his leather jacket, then tossed the rest back onto the table.

“Gabrielle?”

He moved into the kitchen, where something even more disturbing waited for him.

The scent of Gabrielle’s blood grew stronger here, drawing him to the sink. He froze in front of it, something cold clamping down around his chest as he stared into the basin.

It looked like someone had tried to clean up a crime scene, and had done a piss-poor job of it. More than a dozen waterlogged, bloodstained paper towels were clumped in the sink along with a paring knife that had been removed from the wooden block on the counter.

He picked up the sharp blade and gave it a quick inspection. It hadn’t been used, but all the blood in the sink and spattered on the floor from the foyer to the kitchen belonged solely to Gabrielle.

And the torn clothing that lay in a discarded heap near his foot carried her scent, too.

God, if anyone had touched her—

If anything had happened to her…

“Gabrielle!”

Lucan followed his senses down to the basement level of her apartment. He didn’t bother with lights; his vision was most acute in the dark. Tearing down the stairs, he called her name into the quiet.

At the back corner of the space, Gabrielle’s scent grew strongest. Lucan found himself standing before another closed door, this one framed in thick weatherstripping to block out all exterior light. He tried the latch, rattling the door on its meager lock.

“Gabrielle. Can you hear me? Baby, open the door.”

He didn’t wait for a reply. He didn’t have the patience for that, or the focus to carefully release the hook and eye closure on the other side. With a growl of fury, Lucan smashed his shoulder into the door and burst inside.

His eyes instantly found her in the lightless space. Her body was curled up on the floor of the cramped darkroom, naked except for a skimpy lace bra and bikini underwear. She jerked awake with the sudden crash of his arrival.

Her head came up fast. Her eyelids were heavy, puffed from recent crying. She’d been sobbing in here, and for some length of time by his guess. Exhaustion poured off her in waves. She looked so small, so vulnerable.

“Ah, God. Gabrielle,” he whispered, dropping into a low crouch beside her. “What the hell are you doing in here? Did somebody hurt you?”

She shook her head, but didn’t answer right away. With dragging hands, she pushed her hair out of her face, trying to find him in the dark. “Just…tired. I needed quiet…peace.”

“So you locked yourself down here?” He blew out a sharp breath, relieved, except for the fact that her body did bear injuries that had only recently stopped bleeding. “You’re sure you’re all right?”

She nodded, listing toward him in the dark.

Scowling, Lucan reached for her, smoothed his palm over the top of her head. She seemed to take his touch as an invitation, crawling into his arms like a child in need of comforting and warmth. It wasn’t good, how natural it felt to hold her, how strong the inclination was to reassure her that she was safe with him. That he would protect her as his own.

His own.

Impossible, he reminded himself. More than impossible; it was ludicrous.

He looked down, silently considering the soft bundle of warm, beautiful woman wrapped around him in a delicious state of near nakedness. She couldn’t have any inkling of the dangerous world she was now involved in—not least of all, from the deadly vampire male who held her against him now.

He was the last one who should offer a Breedmate protection from harm. With Gabrielle, just the faintest scent of her brought his blood hunger raging into the danger zone. He stroked her neck and shoulder, trying to ignore the steady beat of her pulse beneath his fingertips. He had to fight like hell to ignore the memory of when he’d last been with her, or how badly he needed to have her again.

“Mmm, you feel good,” she murmured dazedly into his chest, her voice a sleep-heavy purr that sent a jolt of heat down his spine. “This another dream?”

Lucan groaned, incapable of answering. It wasn’t a dream, and personally he didn’t feel good at all. He felt every bit the ancient, haggard beast as she nestled into him even more, all tender trust and innocence.

Searching for distraction, he found one all too quickly. A glance up over their heads made every muscle in his body go rigid with a new kind of tension.

His eyes locked onto more of Gabrielle’s photographs clipped to a drying line in the darkroom. Hanging among various other insignificant shots were a handful more taken of vampire locations.

For God’s sake, she even had a photograph of the warriors’ compound. The daylight shot had been taken from the road outside the secured estate. There was no mistaking the enormous, scrolled wrought-iron gate that blockaded the long drive, and the high-security mansion at its end, from the public at large.

Gabrielle must have been standing right outside the property to take this picture. Based on the leafy summer foliage of the surrounding trees, the image couldn’t be more than a few weeks old. She’d been there, just a few hundred yards from where he lived.

He had never been one to subscribe to the notion of fate, but it seemed pretty damned clear that one way or another this female was meant to cross his path.

Oh, yeah. Cross it like a black cat.

Just his luck that after centuries of dodging cosmic bullets and messy emotional entanglements, the twisted sisters of fate and reality would decide to put him on their shit lists at the same time.

“It’s all right,” he told Gabrielle, even though things were quickly progressing way south of that point. “Let’s get you upstairs and dressed, then we’ll talk.” Before the continued sight of her in those flimsy scraps of lace and satin did him in.

Lucan gathered her into his arms, then carried her out of the darkroom and up the stairs to the main floor. Holding her this close, his keen senses registered the details of the sundry wounds she bore: raw scrapes on her hands and knees, evidence of a pretty vicious fall.

She had been running away from something—or someone—in terror when she had taken a spill. Lucan’s blood boiled to know who had caused this harm, but there would be time for that soon. Gabrielle’s comfort and well-being was his primary concern now.

Lucan walked with her through her living room, to the steps to her bedroom loft. His intent was to help her into some clothes, but as he passed the adjoining bathroom, he mentally flipped on the water. The two of them really needed to talk, and things probably would go down a bit easier for her after she’d had a warm soak.

With Gabrielle’s arms wrapped around his shoulders, Lucan carried her into the bathroom. A small nightlight gave off an ambient glow, just enough illumination for his liking. He brought his languid armload over to the tub and seated himself on the edge, balancing Gabrielle in his lap.

He unsnapped the front closure on the wispy piece of satin, baring her breasts to his suddenly fevered eyes. His hands itched to touch her, so he did, brushing his fingertips along the buoyant curves, flicking his thumb over the dusky pink of her nipples.

God help him, the soft mewl of pleasure that curled up from her throat hardened his cock to painful degrees.

He skimmed his palm down her torso, to the matching scrap of glossy fabric that covered her sex. His hands were too large, too careless with the flimsy satin, but he somehow managed to peel the panties off and slide them down Gabrielle’s long legs.

Blood surged through him like molten lava at the sight of her, nude before him once more.

Maybe he should feel guilty for finding her so incredibly desirable even in her current vulnerable state, but he wasn’t much better at bowing to shame than he was at playing the nurturer. And he’d already proven to himself that trying to muster any kind of control around this particular female was a battle he might never win.

Next to the tub sat a bottle of liquid bubble bath. Lucan poured a generous dollop under the stream of running water. As the lather built, he carefully eased Gabrielle down into the warm bath. She moaned with clear appreciation as she sank into the foaming water, her limbs going visibly slack, her shoulders drooping against the towel Lucan quickly supplied as a cushion to keep her back from resting against cold tile and porcelain.

The small bathroom was filled with steam and Gabrielle’s own faintly jasmine scent.

“Comfortable?” he asked her, as he shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it over the pedestal sink.

“Mmm,” she moaned.

He couldn’t resist putting his hands on her. With a gentle caress of her shoulder, he said, “Slide farther down and wet your hair. I’ll wash it for you.”

She obeyed, letting him guide her head under the water, then back up, her long ginger tresses darkened to a sleek auburn. She was silent for a long moment, then she slowly lifted her eyelids, smiling at him as if she had just come back to consciousness and was surprised to find him there. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“What time is it?” she asked around a stretch and a stifled yawn.

Lucan shrugged. “Around eight, I guess.”

Gabrielle sank back against the tub, closing her eyes with a moan.

“Bad day?”

“Not one of my best.”

“So I gathered. Your hands and knees are a little worse for wear.” Lucan reached over and turned off the water. He grabbed a tube of shampoo from nearby and squeezed some into his hands. “Wanna tell me what happened?”

“I’d rather not.” A crease formed between her slim brows. “I did something stupid this afternoon. You’ll hear all about it soon enough, I’m sure.”

“How so?” Lucan asked, working up the lather in his palms.

As he massaged the thick foam into her scalp, Gabrielle opened one eye and slid him a sideways glance. “The kid from the station didn’t say anything to anyone?”

“What kid?”

“The one who clerks down at the precinct house. Tall, lanky, kind of average-looking? I don’t know his name, but I’m pretty certain he was there the night I gave my statement about the murder. Today I saw him in the Common. I thought he was watching me, actually, and I…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “I ran after him like a crazy person, accusing him of spying on me.”

Lucan’s hands stilled in her hair, his warrior’s instincts coming to full attention. “You what?”

“I know,” she said, obviously misinterpreting his reaction. She dispersed a mound of bubbles with a sweep of her hand. “I told you it was stupid. Anyway, I chased the poor kid all the way into Chinatown.”

Although he didn’t say as much, Lucan knew that Gabrielle’s initial instincts had been spot-on about the stranger watching her in the park. Since the incident had occurred in broad daylight, it couldn’t have been the Rogues—a small blessing—but the humans who served them could be equally dangerous. The Rogues employed Minions in all corners of the world, humans enslaved by a draining bite of a powerful vampire that rid them of their conscience and free will, leaving only unquestioning obedience in its wake.

Lucan had no doubt whatsoever that the man who had been observing Gabrielle was doing so in service to a Rogue who commanded him.

“Did this person hurt you? Is that how you got those injuries?”

“No, no. That was my own doing. I got myself all freaked out over nothing. After losing track of the kid in Chinatown, I just lost it. I thought a car was coming after me, but it wasn’t.”

“How can you be sure?”

She gave him a sheepish look. “Because it was the mayor, Lucan. I thought his chauffeured car was coming after me and I started running. To top off a perfectly awful day, I fell flat on my face in the middle of a crowded sidewalk and then had to limp home with bloodied hands and knees.”

He cursed under his breath, realizing just how close she had come to danger. For chrissake, she had actually gone after the Minion by herself. The thought chilled Lucan more than he’d like to admit.

“You need to promise me you’ll be more careful,” he said, knowing he was scolding but unwilling to bother with politeness when she might have gotten herself killed today. “If something like this happens again, you need to tell me right away.”

“It’s not going to happen again because it was my mistake. And I wasn’t about to call you or anyone else at the station about this. Wouldn’t they just love it if I phoned in to report that one of their file clerks was stalking me for no apparent reason?”

Shit. His lie about being a cop was tripping him up damned good now. Even worse, it might have put her in jeopardy if she’d called the station looking for “Detective Thorne” and attracted the attention of an embedded Minion instead.

“I’m going to give you my cell phone number. You can always reach me there. I want you to use it anytime, understand?”

She nodded as Lucan turned on the faucet, then ran clear water into his hands and over her silky, burnished waves.

Frustrated with himself, he grabbed a washcloth from an overhead shelf and thrust it down into the water. “Now let me see your knee.”

She lifted her leg from under the flotilla of bubbles. Lucan held her foot in one palm, carefully washing the angry-looking abrasion. It was just a scrape, but it was bleeding again now that the warm water had soaked the wound. Lucan ground down hard on his jaw as the fragrant, scarlet threads wove a delicate trail down her skin and into the pristine foam of the bath.

He finished cleansing both of her injured knees, then gestured for her to let him attend her palms next. He didn’t trust his voice to work when the combined one/two punch of Gabrielle’s nude body and the scent of her fresh, trickling blood was slamming into his skull like a jackhammer.

With an economy of attention, he dabbed at the scrapes on her palms, painfully aware of her rich, dark gaze following his every movement, the pulse at her wrist beating quickly under the pressure of his fingertips.

She wanted him, too.

Lucan started to release her, but as her arm twisted slightly on its retreat, he spotted something troubling. His eyes lit at once on a series of faint marks that spoiled the flawless peach skin. The marks were scars, tiny slices cut into the underside of her forearms. And she had more on her thighs.

Razor cuts.

As if she’d endured repeated and hellish torture when she was little more than a girl. “Jesus Christ.” He swiveled his head back to look at her, fury no doubt rampant in his expression. “Who did this to you?”

“It’s not what you think.”

He was fuming now, not about to let this one slide. “Tell me.”

“It’s nothing, really. Just forget—”

“Give me a name, goddamn it, and I swear, I will kill the son of a bitch with my bare hands—”

“I did it,” she blurted out in a quiet rush of breath. “It was me. No one did this, just me.”

“What?” Holding her fragile wrist in his hand, he turned her arm over once more so he could inspect the faded network of crisscrossing, purplish scars. “You did this? Why?”

She withdrew from his loose grasp and sank both arms under the water, as if to shield them from his further inspection.

Lucan swore low under his breath, and in a language he rarely spoke anymore. “How often, Gabrielle?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged, avoiding his gaze now. “I haven’t done it in a long time. I got over it.”

“Is that why there’s a knife lying in the sink downstairs?”

The look she gave him was pained and defensive. She didn’t like him prying, no more than he would like it himself, but Lucan wanted to understand. He could hardly fathom what might drive her to dig a blade into her own flesh.

Over and over and over again.

She scowled, staring at the dissipating suds surrounding her. “Look, can we just drop the subject? I really don’t want to talk about—”

“Maybe you should talk about it.”

“Oh, sure.” Her small laugh held an edge of irony. “Is this the part where you suggest I need to see a shrink, Detective Thorne? Maybe go someplace where I can be put in a medicated stupor and under a doctor’s close watch for my own good?”

“Did that happen to you?”

“People don’t understand me. They never have. I don’t understand myself sometimes.”

“Don’t understand what? That you have a need to hurt yourself?”

“No. That’s not it. That’s not why I did it.”

“Then why? Good God, Gabrielle, there must be upwards of a hundred scars.”

“I didn’t do it because I wanted pain. It wasn’t painful to me.” She drew in a breath and pushed it out between her lips. It took her a second to speak, and when she did, Lucan could only stare at her in stunned silence. “It was never about causing hurt, not to anyone. I wasn’t burying traumatic memories or trying to escape some kind of abuse, despite the opinions of several so-called experts appointed by the state. I cut myself because…it soothed me. Bleeding calmed me. It didn’t take much, only a small cut, never very deep. When I’d bleed, everything that was out of place and strange about me suddenly felt…normal.”

She held his unwavering gaze with a new air of defiance, as if a gate had been opened somewhere deep inside her and a heavy burden had been freed. In some small way, Lucan realized that was just what he’d witnessed here. Except she still was missing a crucial piece of information that would make things click into place for her.

She didn’t know that she was a Breedmate.

She couldn’t know that one day a member of his race would take her as his eternal beloved and show her a world unlike she had ever dreamed of. Her eyes would be opened to a pleasure that only existed between blood-bonded pairs.

Lucan found himself hating that nameless male who would have the honor of loving her.

“I’m not crazy, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Lucan gave a slow shake of his head. “I am not thinking that at all.”

“I despise pity.”

“So do I,” he said, detecting the warning in her words. “You don’t need pity, Gabrielle. And you don’t need medicine or doctors, either.”

She had been retreating into herself from the moment he had first discovered her scars, but now he felt her hesitation, her tentative trust in him slowly returning.

“You don’t belong to this world,” he told her, not sentiment but fact. He reached out, cupping her face in his palm. “You are far too extraordinary for the life you’ve been living, Gabrielle. I think you’ve known it all along. One day, it will all make sense to you, I promise. Then you’ll understand, and you will find your true destiny. Maybe I can help you find it.”

He meant to resume bathing her, but the awareness that she was watching him made his hands still. The profound warmth in her answering smile put an ache in his chest. Snared in her tender regard, he felt his throat constrict strangely.

“What is it?”

She gave a small shake of her head. “I’m surprised, that’s all. I didn’t expect a big tough cop like you to speak so romantically about life and destiny.”

The reminder that he had, and was still, coming to her under false pretenses jolted some of his wits back into his brain. He plunged the washcloth back into the soapy water and let it float among the suds. “Maybe I’m just full of shit.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Don’t give me so much credit,” he said, forcing a casualness into his tone. “You don’t know me, Gabrielle. Not really.”

“I’d like to know you. Really.” She sat up in the water, the tepid little waves lapping around her nude body the way Lucan wanted to do with his tongue. The tops of her breasts rode just above the surface, pink nipples hard as buds, surrounded in frothy white foam. “Tell me, Lucan. Where do you belong?”

“Nowhere.” The answer slipped out of his mouth in a growl, a confession closer to the truth than he cared to admit. Like her, he despised pity and was relieved that she was looking at him more in curiosity than sympathy. He ran his finger along the pert, freckle-spattered bridge of her nose. “I am the original misfit. I’ve never really belonged anywhere.”

“That’s not true.”

Gabrielle’s arms circled around his shoulders. Her soft brown eyes held his gaze tenderly, with the same care he’d given her as he’d brought her out of the locked darkroom and into the warm bath. She kissed him and, as her tongue swept his lips, Lucan’s senses were swamped with the heady perfume of desire and sweet, feminine affection.

“You’ve taken such good care of me tonight. Let me take care of you now, Lucan.” She kissed him again, a deep plundering with her slick little tongue that forced a groan of pure male pleasure from deep within him. When she finally broke contact, she was breathing hard, her eyes afire with carnal need. “You’re wearing too many clothes. Take them off. I want you naked with me in here.”

Lucan obeyed, shucking his boots, socks, pants, and shirt to the floor. He wore nothing else, standing before Gabrielle fully nude.

Fully engorged and eager for her.

He was careful to keep his eyes tilted away from hers now that his pupils had narrowed with hunger, and he was mindful of the throbbing press of his fangs, which had stretched long behind his lips. If not for the bare trace of light from the night lamp near the sink, she would have surely seen him in all his ravenous glory.

And that would be quite a buzzkill for an otherwise promising moment.

He wasn’t about to take that chance.

With a sharp mental command, he shattered the small bulb behind the night light’s plastic cover. Gabrielle startled at the sudden pop, but then she sighed as blissful darkness surrounded them. Her body was making lovely, slippery noises in the tub.

“Turn on another light, if you want.”

“I’ll find you without it,” he promised, speech a tricky thing now that lust had a firm hold on him.

“Then come,” bid his siren from the warm pool of her bath.

He stepped into the water, sinking down to face her in the dark. He wanted nothing more than to haul her close—drag her into the cradle of his thighs and sheath himself to the hilt in one long stroke. But he would let her set their pace for now.

Last night he had come there hungry and taking; tonight he would give.

Even if the restraint killed him.

Gabrielle glided toward him through the thinning clouds of foam. Her feet went around his hips and linked loosely over his ass. She bent forward at the waist, her fingers finding his thighs beneath the surface of the bath. She squeezed the taut muscles, kneaded them, then firmly rode their length in slow, delicious torment.

“You should know, I’m not usually like this.”

His groan of interest sounded strained in his ears. “You mean, hot enough to reduce any male to cinder at your feet?”

She exhaled a soft laugh. “Is that what I do to you?”

He brought her teasing hands up to the jutting thickness of his cock. “What do you think?”

“I think you’re amazing.” She didn’t withdraw her touch after his hands left hers. She traced his shaft and balls, then lazily brought her fingers up around the bulbous head that more than breached the surface of the bathwater. “You’re not like anyone I’ve ever known. And what I meant was, I’m not usually so…well, aggressive. I don’t date a lot.”

“You don’t take a lot of men to your bed?”

Even in the dark, he sensed her sudden blush. “No. It’s been a very long time.”

In that moment, he didn’t want her to take any other male—human or vampire—into her bed.

He didn’t want her fucking anyone else ever again.

And God help him, he would hunt down and disembowel the Minion bastard who might have harmed her today.

The thought hit him with a savage rush of possessiveness as her fingers squeezed his sex, wringing a drop of slick wetness from the tip. When she bent down over him and drew his cock into her mouth, suckling him deeply, he arched up as tight as a bowstring.

Forget tearing out the Minion’s entrails, he would settle for nothing less than flat-out, bloody murder.

Lucan lowered his hands onto Gabrielle’s shoulders as she worked him into a mindless frenzy. Her fingers, her lips, her tongue, her breath rasping against his bare abdomen as she took him deeper and deeper into her hot mouth—all of it driving him to the brink of extraordinary madness. He couldn’t get enough. When she drew off of him, he swore roundly at the loss of her sweet suction.

“I need you inside me,” she told him, panting.

“Yes,” he snarled. “God, yes.”

“But…”

Her hesitation confused him. Angered that part of him that was more savage Rogue than considerate lover.

“What’s wrong?” It came out more of a demand than he meant.

“Shouldn’t we…? Last night, things got out of hand before I could mention it…but shouldn’t we, you know, use something this time?” Her discomfort sliced through his passion-drenched mind like a blade. He grew still, and she pulled away from him as if to get out of the tub. “I have some condoms in the other room….”

His hand clamped down around her wrist before she could move to rise.

“I can’t make you pregnant.” Why did that sound so harsh to him now? It was plain truth. Only bonded pairs—Breedmate women and the vampire males who exchanged blood from each other’s veins—could successfully produce offspring. “As for anything else, you don’t have to worry about protecting yourself. I’m healthy, and nothing we do together will hurt either one of us.”

“Oh. Me, too. And I hope you don’t think I’m prudish for asking—”

He drew her closer to him, silencing her awkwardness with a slow kiss. When their lips parted, he said, “I think, Gabrielle Maxwell, that you’re an intelligent woman who respects her body and herself. I respect you for having the courage to be careful.”

She smiled against his mouth. “I don’t want to be careful when I’m near you. You make me wild. You make me want to scream.”

With her hands splayed on his chest, she pushed him down, until he was leaning against the back of the tub. Then she rose up over the heavy spear of his sex and moved her slick cleft along its length, sliding up and down, almost—but fuck, not quite!—sheathing him in her warmth.

“I want to make you scream,” she whispered near his ear.

Lucan groaned with the pure agony of her sensual dance. He fisted his hands at his sides in the water to keep from grabbing her and impaling her on his nearly bursting erection. She kept up her wicked game, until he felt his climax knotting in his shaft. He was about to spill, and she was still teasing him mercilessly.

“Fuck,” he swore through gritted teeth and fangs, tipping his head back. “For chrissake, Gabrielle, you are killing me.”

“I want to hear it,” she coaxed.

And then her juicy sex was inching down over the head of his cock.

Slowly.

So damned slowly.

His seed boiled up, and he shuddered as a trickle of hot liquid spurted into her body. He moaned, never so close to losing it as he was just then. And Gabrielle’s tightness enveloped him further. The tiny muscles inside her clenched at him as she sank lower on his shaft.

He could hardly bear any more.

Gabrielle’s scent surrounded him, wafting on the steam of the bath and mingling with the intoxicating perfume of their joined bodies. Her breasts bobbed near his mouth like fruit just ripe for his picking, but he didn’t dare sample them when his control was so near to snapping. He wanted to pull her peachy mounds into his mouth, but his fangs were throbbing with the need to draw blood—a need only heightened in the midst of sexual release.

He turned his head aside and let out a howl of anguish, torn in so many tempting directions, not the least of which was the pressure to come inside Gabrielle, filling her with every drop of his passion. He shouted a curse, and then he truly was screaming, roaring a deep oath that only gained in strength as she sank down hard on his starving cock and wrung him dry, her own orgasm following quickly behind his.

Once his head stopped ringing and his legs regained strength enough to hold him, Lucan wrapped his arms around Gabrielle’s back and started to rise with her, holding her in place on his already rousing erection.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ve had your fun. Now I’m taking you to bed.”

         

The shrill ring of his cell phone jolted Lucan out of a heavy sleep. He was in bed with Gabrielle, both of them spent. She was curled up beside him, her naked body gloriously draped over his legs and torso.

Jesus, how long had he been out? Had to be hours, which was amazing considering his usual itchy state of insomnia.

The phone rang again and he was on his feet, heading for the bathroom, where he’d left his jacket. He dug the cell out of one of the pockets and flipped it open.

“Yeah.”

“Hey.” It was Gideon, and there was something odd about his voice. “Lucan, how fast can you get to the compound?”

He looked over his shoulder to the adjacent bedroom loft. Gabrielle was sitting up now, drowsy from sleep, her bare hips wreathed in tangled sheets, her hair a wild mess around her face. He’d never seen anything so bloody tempting. Maybe it was better that he did leave soon, while he still stood a chance of getting away before the sun came up.

Wrenching his gaze away from the arousing sight of her, Lucan growled an answer into the phone. “I’m not far. What’s going on?”

A lengthy silence stretched on the other end.

“Something’s happened, Lucan. It’s bad.” More quiet, then some of Gideon’s natural calm cracked. “Ah, fuck, there’s no easy way to say it. We lost one tonight, Lucan. One of the warriors is dead.”