Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [586]
But the simple truth was, he’d grown tired of that lifestyle long ago. Someone years past had once accused him of being a perpetual child—selfish and irresponsible. She’d been right, even then. Especially then, when he’d been fool enough to let that woman and the love she’d given him slip through his fingers. After too many decades of self-indulgence, it felt good to be making a difference. Or trying to, as it were.
“I don’t expect you came by tonight just to distract me with kisses and attractive offers of employment,” he said, sensing a seriousness had come over Helene.
“No, I didn’t, unfortunately. I thought you should know that one of my girls at the club may be missing. You recall me mentioning that Gina, one of my newer girls, showed up with bite marks on her neck last week?”
Reichen nodded. “The one who’d been talking about a rich new boyfriend she was dating.”
“That’s right. Well, it’s not the first time she’s missed her shift at work, but her housemate told me this afternoon that Gina hasn’t been home or telephoned for more than three days. It could be nothing, but I thought you’d want to know.”
“Yes,” he said. “Do you have any information on the male she was seeing? A description, a name, anything at all?”
“No. The housemate had never met him, naturally, so she couldn’t tell me anything.”
Reichen considered the numerous things that could happen to a young woman who found herself unwittingly mixed up with one of his kind. Although most of the Breed were law-abiding members of the vampire nation, there were others who reveled in their savage side. “I need you to discreetly ask around at the club tonight, see if any of the other girls heard Gina mention this boyfriend of hers. I’m looking for names, places she might have gone with him, even the smallest detail could be important.”
Helene nodded, but there was a note of interest in her eyes. “I rather like this serious side to you, Andreas. It’s incredibly sexy.”
Her hand trailed down the open front of his silk shirt, her long painted nails playing over the ridges of his muscled abdomen. Although his thoughts were grim, his body responded to her expert touch. His dermaglyphs began to saturate with color, and his vision sharpened with the flood of amber that was swiftly filling his irises. Lower still, his cock stiffened, swelling where it now rested beneath her palm.
“I really shouldn’t stay,” she murmured, her voice husky and teasing. “I don’t want to be late for work.”
When she started to get up, Reichen held her back. “Don’t worry about that. I know the woman who runs the place, I’ll make your excuses for you. I have it on good authority that she fancies me.”
“Do you now?”
Reichen grunted, baring the points of his fangs with his broad grin. “Poor dear is mad for me.”
“Mad for an arrogant thing like you?” Helene teased. “Darling, don’t flatter yourself. She may want you only for your decadent body.”
“True enough,” he replied, “but you won’t hear me complaining either way.”
Helene smiled, not resisting in the least as he pulled her down onto his lap for a deep, hungered kiss.
By nightfall, Lex was fully recovered from the agony Renata had dealt him. His rage—his festering hatred for her—remained.
He cursed her over and over in his mind as he leaned against a rotting wall of a rat-infested crack house in Montreal’s worst slum, watching as a young human male tied off his arm with an old leather belt. The loose tail caught between a smattering of broken, decayed teeth, the junkie stuck the needle of a filthy syringe into the field of scabs and bruises that tracked along his emaciated arm. He moaned as the heroin entered his