• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

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