He spread her legs with his thigh, nudging her open to him. As he covered her, the rigid length of his arousal ground against her hip. Her pulse sped up, tripping as he gave her a meaningful thrust of his pelvis, those smoldering amber irises burning her up.
He took her mouth in a slow but demanding kiss. He took her lip between his teeth, sucked her tongue deep into his mouth. Kissed her until she was panting and writhing beneath him, grasping at him with needy hands. “Now, I’m going to taste you, Melena,” he murmured against her slack mouth. “Every last creamy, delectable inch of you.”
And then, heaven help her, he proceeded to do just that.
He started with a maddening sweep of his tongue just below her ear. She shivered, even though her blood was on fire for the heat of his lips and the gentle, but unmistakable, rasp of his fangs as he dragged his mouth down to the curve where her neck and shoulder met. He suckled and nipped, working his way to her breasts. Kneading them in strong hands, tonguing the tight buds at their peaks, he didn’t move on until she was moaning with pleasure and aching for more.
Her back arched into him as he began a slow and steady exploration of her rib cage and abdomen. He took care around her bruises, astonishing tenderness from a Breed male who had lived ten lifetimes and counting, whose own otherworldly body was virtually indestructible. Yet he navigated her minor wounds as though he were handling glass.
That moved her deeply, even more than his passion had overwhelmed her.
Melena reached down, cradling his dark head in her hands while his kiss traveled lower.
Across her stomach, onto each hip bone, over the quivering tops of her thighs. She trembled as his mouth blazed a slow path down the entire length of her right leg and ankle, then returned up her left calf, to her knee and the tingling flesh of her inner thigh.
If he wanted to make her wet and vibrating with the need to have him inside her, Lazaro could have stopped right after their lips had met for the first time here in his bedroom.
But it was patently clear from the wicked look he shot up the length of her nude body that he was only getting started.
His head lowered between her spread legs. When the heat of his breath rushed out against her sex, she shuddered. When his lips touched down and his hot, silky tongue cleaved into her slit, she let out a strangled cry.
Fingers gripping the coverlet on each side of her, she held on for dear life as Lazaro licked and kissed and fucked her senseless with his ruthlessly skilled mouth.
She came in mere moments, pleasure shooting through her in wave after glorious wave. She didn’t know if she sighed or screamed or both. She only knew that while her body was still floating in a million tiny shards of bliss, Lazaro started climbing back up to her on the bed.
He stroked her face, watching her—smirking in obvious satisfaction, for God’s sake.
Then his grin was gone as quickly as it had arrived, and he covered her mouth with his, kissing her hard and deep and wild.
He drew back on a curse, his breath sawing in and out of his lungs. He stripped off his clothing and boots in mere seconds. Then he pivoted back to her, gloriously naked. He found his place between her thighs again and held himself there, unmoving, watching her. Considering her in some way.
His big body threw off waves of heat and power. The glyphs that traced his bulky shoulders and muscular arms continued onto the contours of his chest and rippled abdomen. They pulsed vividly on his skin, alive and flooded with color.
Those Gen One skin markings trekked farther south as well. The thick, long shaft of his cock was circled with glyphs, their hues flushing even deeper as Melena admired him with unabashed approval.
God, he was immense. Magnificently so.
And sexy as hell.
She rose up to touch his face, cupping his stern jaw in her palm when a scowl thundered across his expression. “It’s been a while for me too,” he said, then gave a small shake of his head. “I’m not sure I can be as gentle as I’d like for you. The last thing I want to do is hurt you.”
Melena saw the torment in his aura, even if his body was being driven by a stronger need now. He didn’t want to let her in, but he couldn’t shut her out either.
He cared, even though he wanted to deny it.
She thought back to what he said to her in the cave. That just because he’d helped her stay alive, didn’t mean she was safe with him.
Melena had never felt more protected or secure with anyone in her life.
And she’d never known anything so raw and consuming—so impossible to deny—as how it felt being with Lazaro.
She wrapped her hand around his nape and pulled him down in a deep, scorching kiss. With her other hand, she sought out his cock and grasped it firmly, pumping his length in sure, steady strokes. She didn’t let go of his mouth or his penis for a good long moment. When she did, she gave him a smile against his parted lips and the fangs that now filled his mouth even more than before. “See?” she told him. “I’m not going to break.”
He uttered a low, vicious curse that sounded to be half relief and half anguish.
Then he positioned himself at her body’s entrance and drove home, deep and slow and long, all the way to the hilt.
He filled her so completely she could hardly summon her breath. Then he started to pivot in and out, rolling his hips in controlled, tantalizing swivels that dragged a curse out of her too. Sweet pressure spiraled within her core as he pushed her toward another climax. He didn’t go gently, instead driving into her so far and fully, it was all she could do to hold on to him and let her body shatter in his arms.
Lazaro watched her as she came, his eyes locked on hers. She couldn’t look away. The power of the connection was too intense. He felt it too—he had to have felt it.
As his own release built, then broke on a coarse shout, he kept his gaze fastened on hers too. It was so intense, so startlingly real, this thing coming to life between them.
If anything had the power to terrify her, it was this.
The feeling that she had already given herself to this man. A man who had pretended he barely remembered her when he first saw her on Turati’s yacht.
A man who warned her not to get close to him, all but threatened that he would only hurt her.
And here she was, giving him her body.
Staring into his eyes as she surrendered the most intimate part of herself to him, and imagining that she could so easily let herself fall. That maybe she already had. Maybe the men in her past had been right. They would never have been good enough for her.
Because all along, what she wanted them to be was someone like Lazaro Archer. Brave. Loyal. And yes, heroic, even if he refused to accept that truth.
She didn’t need him to be perfect, because even through the haze of affection and searing desire, she knew he would never be perfect. He didn’t need to be. Not for her to want him like she did. Not for her to feel so right, so safe and contented in his arms.
Oh, God...could she be falling so fast?
Did she dare?
Melena finally broke his gaze then, turning her head away from him to the side, bewildered by her epiphany.
Her heart was pounding hard, making her carotid tick palpably in the side of her neck.
She didn’t have to look back to him to know that Lazaro’s amber eyes had drifted to that fluttering vein. She felt the heat of his stare. Then she heard a dangerously low growl curl up from the back of his throat.
She went very still, terrified he might bite her.
Terrified he wouldn’t.
“Lazaro?” she whispered, uncertain what she was about to ask him to do.
She slowly pivoted her head back to look at him and saw torment in his handsome, otherworldly face. And fury. He drew back from her on a hiss.
His expression was wild looking, intense...and his smoldering aura told her he was balanced on the razor’s edge of a rigidly held, but tenuous, control.
* * * *
What the fuck was
he doing?
Lazaro came to his senses as if physically struck. He was still buried inside Melena’s hot, wet heat, his pulse still charged and racing. His cock was still hard, still greedy, even after the climax that had ripped through him with brutal ferocity.
And he’d been reckless enough to let his fevered gaze drift to the vein that throbbed so enticingly in the side of her vulnerable throat.
Christ.
He’d nearly lost control—something he never allowed to happen. Not once in twenty years had he even been tempted. His guard was always up, his will impenetrable.
Even then, he’d made a habit of avoiding women like Melena, females with the Breedmate mark. To drink from one of her kind would tie him to her singularly, irrevocably. He would always crave her. He would always feel her in his blood, in the root of his soul...unless death severed the bond, as it did when he lost Ellie.
Why the thought didn’t freeze his thirst or shrivel his desire for Melena, he didn’t want to know. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to sit there pondering that fact as she gaped at him in mute terror.
“Damn it.” He pulled out of her on a roar. As difficult as it was to deny himself the feel of her silken grip on his shaft—as much as he wanted to have her now, still, again and again—he needed the separation more.
What he needed was to put as much distance as possible between her soft, inviting body and the blood hunger that was suddenly twisting him in vicious knots.
He got off the bed to collect his clothes.
“What are you doing?” Melena asked from behind him. When he began to dress, he heard her slide across the sheets. “Talk to me, please.”
He couldn’t form words, let alone push them out of his mouth. He still wanted her too much, and he feared that if he let himself cave to that need now, he might not be able to reign it back in. He zipped up his pants, ignoring the persistent bulge of his uncooperative arousal. His hands moved hastily, aggressively, as he donned his shirt, then bent to retrieve his boots.
He had plenty of human females he could call upon to slake his needs. A pity he didn’t think to do that before he made the mistake of putting himself alone in the company of a Breedmate as tempting as Melena.
And what a feeble fucking rationalization that was.
Nothing would satisfy him more than to dismiss his near-mistake as something that might have occurred with any female sporting the teardrop-and-crescent-moon birthmark. Far more troubling to realize that it was this woman who tempted him like no other.
Melena Walsh would continue to tempt him for as long as she remained in his care, under his dubious protection.
He didn’t know how a woman who’d come into his life so unexpectedly—not to mention temporarily—was making him hungry for things that would come with a very permanent price.
“You’re just going to walk away then?” She stood beside the bed, watching him prepare to make his escape. For a long moment, she said nothing more, her silence ripe with hurt and confusion, almost too much for him to bear. “You’re not even going to acknowledge what almost happened just now?”
That he was only an instant away from taking her vein between his teeth? Or that every particle of his being was so ravenous for a taste of her Breedmate blood, there was a chance he might still act on the powerful impulse?
The memory of her blood scent hadn’t left him since he’d first caught a trace of it back in the cave. He knew what she would taste like: caramel and dark, ripe cherries. On top of the other decadent sweetness that still lingered on his tongue from his carnal exploration of her body.
Lazaro cursed roundly, a nasty profanity spoken in a language only the eldest of the Breed like him would comprehend.
“No, Melena, I’m not going to acknowledge it.” He caught her gaze, knowing how cold his own must look through her eyes. Yet even as he glowered, furious with his own lack of control, his traitorous body had lost none of its interest in her. “And yes, I am going to walk away, and what happened here will not happen again.”
She stared at him. “I think we both know better than that. You still want me, Lazaro. I don’t need to read your aura to see that.”
“This was a mistake,” he snarled through teeth and fangs. “I damned well won’t complicate it any more by letting it become something both of us will regret forever.”
He turned and walked out the door.
Before his shaky resolve could break completely.
CHAPTER 8
True to his word, he didn’t return.
She had showered and dressed, even eaten a fresh meal that Jehan had brought up to her sometime after Lazaro had gone. That was hours ago, according to the old grandfather clock in the hallway. It was well into the evening before she’d finally given up waiting, wondering...God, pitifully hoping, that he would come back and at least talk to her after the incredible passion they’d shared.
Her psychic gift prevented her from sulking over doubts about Lazaro’s intentions. It wasn’t that he didn’t want her tonight. He’d left because he wanted her too much.
But that didn’t change the fact that he was quite obviously avoiding her.
She’d since begun pacing the residential suites in the clothing he bought for her, feeling like a prisoner in a beautiful, unlocked cage. Although she had the entire fourth floor to explore, decency kept her from snooping too avidly through Lazaro’s home. Not that she’d find anything very personal in his quarters, she’d realized fairly quickly.
Each room was consummately appointed with elegant furnishings and a variety of fine things. Sophisticated pieces, tasteful antiques, a wealth of heirloom Oriental rugs—the kind of things she might expect someone who’d lived as long as him would appreciate.
But there was nothing personal in Lazaro’s home. Nothing modern.
There were no photographs on the bureaus or sofa tables or walls. No mementoes scattered about in any of the meticulously kept rooms. There was nothing to remind him of the past century, let alone the past twenty years.
He lived here in a carefully curated, elegant isolation.
Her conversation with Jehan and Savage came back to her now. The fact that Lazaro had never fully gotten over the deaths of his mate and family. That he blamed himself for not being able to save them. And so he’d joined the Order and exiled himself to this place.
If he hadn’t found room in his heart for anything or anyone in the past two decades, how could she hope he might let her in after just a couple of days?
She had half a mind to confront him about the way he was living his life. Maybe it wasn’t her place to call him on it. Maybe she’d be better off leaving well enough alone and simply wait to return home to the States, where she had her own life to manage.
A life that no longer included her father, she thought, swamped with a fresh wave of grief to think that Lazaro’s entry into her life came at the loss of someone else she loved. But even before losing her father last night, even before the loss of her dear mother years before, Melena realized that her life was missing something vital.
She had a life that, if she were truly being honest with herself, wasn’t so much different from the cage Lazaro had built around himself here in Rome.
She had a nice apartment of her own at her father’s Darkhaven in Baltimore. She had friends. She had lovers when she wanted them. She had colleagues at her father’s office and in the GNC. She had her Breed brother, Derek. She had a full life and plenty of companionship whenever she needed it.
And yet, deep down, she was so lonely.
She saw that same emptiness in Lazaro. Maybe he saw it in her too. Maybe that’s why when their gazes had locked in the midst of their release tonight, the connection had felt so real. So nakedly, startlingly real.
How could he expect her to ignore that as if it hadn’t happened?
She couldn’t.
And she wouldn’t, not without a fight.
Whatever was building so swiftly—powerfully—between them had a chance of grow
ing into something extraordinary. She felt that with a certainty in her bones, in her blood. And she knew she wasn’t alone in that feeling.
So, like it or not, Lazaro Archer was simply going to have to talk to her. He might be accustomed to blustering and bossing his way around everyone else in his life, but she wouldn’t stand for it.
Steeling herself for a battle she wasn’t sure she could win, Melena left the suite on the fourth floor and headed downstairs to the mansion’s main level. It was quiet down there, so she continued on, toward the connected command center of the estate.
She didn’t get far.
From out of nowhere, a massive wall of muscle materialized to block her path.
It wasn’t Lazaro. Not Savage or Jehan either.
She looked up and found herself gaping into the cold, hard face of the one warrior she hadn’t yet met. His shaved head and jagged scar made him look even more lethal than the dark stare he held her in now.
He didn’t speak. Didn’t seem inclined to make even the remotest effort to put her at ease.
Melena lifted her chin in defiance. “I’m looking for Lazaro.”
“He’s not here.” God, that voice was coarse gravel. “And you shouldn’t be down here either, female.”
As he spoke, Savage and Jehan came out of a nearby chamber in the corridor. Sav hissed. “Trygg, for fuck’s sake. Go easy on her. Save the venom for tonight’s patrol.”
When the scarred vampire didn’t so much as twitch in acknowledgment, Jehan stepped forward, placing himself between Melena and the warrior who bristled with a feral darkness.
Jehan squared off against his comrade, gently guiding Melena behind him. “I’m only going to say it once. Back. The. Fuck. Down.”
The one called Trygg had an aura that verged on feral. The menacing haze sent a shiver up Melena’s spine. She saw pain there too, buried deep, but it was a dangerous pain, as sharp as razorblades.
For a long moment, Trygg didn’t move. Neither did Jehan. It wasn’t clear which warrior would be the first to spill the other’s blood, but there was no mistaking that cool, calm, and cultured Jehan was every bit as lethal as his barely leashed brother-in-arms.