Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [711]
God, the searing, wondrous rush of pleasure to feel Andreas suckling from her vein.
It had damned them both in an instant. She knew it, and so did he; the truth of it had been written across the taut lines of his face, and was now, in the tormented glow of his gaze as he paused to stare at her under the light of the streetlamps.
She was not his to claim. Claire had to remind herself of that fact when her legs started to move instinctively toward him. She belonged to another by blood and vow, if not by love.
Another who would have felt the emotional spike in Claire’s body as if it were his own. According to Breed law, there was no greater sin than to betray the sacrament of the blood bond.
But as Andreas wheeled around and leapt off the stoop, and Claire ran to the door only in time to see him disappear into the night, she knew a far worse sin. The sin of having given herself to someone as his blood-bonded mate while her heart still yearned for another.
Thirty years ago, she had been a young woman barely into her twenties—naive about so many things, not the least of which was the existence of another race of beings that thrived on blood and darkness, incredible beings that were somehow human … yet far from it.
She had been a student abroad on her own for the first time when she was assaulted by a vampire in this very district of Hamburg. She’d been spared from the bite by another like him, not a crude beast who lunged at her from the shadows but a tall, golden, sophisticated gentleman named Wilhelm Roth.
He took her into his home—his Darkhaven, as she would learn it was called—and offered her his protection while she was in the city. Claire had liked Wilhelm Roth and his mate, a timid young woman named Ilsa who bore the same odd birthmark on her ankle as Claire had on the side of her neck. Claire learned a lot in those first few weeks of living among the Breed as Wilhelm Roth’s ward, including the fact that it was entirely possible for her to fall in love with one of their kind, which is exactly what happened once she met Andreas Reichen.
After four months together, she’d been devastated when Andreas had abruptly vanished from her life. Wilhelm Roth had given her a strong shoulder to lean on. Not long afterward it had been Claire’s turn to offer him support, when he lost Ilsa to a Rogue vampire attack. Claire had known even then that compassion and sympathy were hardly the same thing as love. Wilhelm hadn’t seemed to mind that her heart was still broken and bleeding for Andreas when he pressed her to be his mate later that year. Then again, it wasn’t even a week after they were blood bonded and mated that Wilhelm moved her out to the country while he remained in Hamburg.
What a terrible, foolish mistake she’d made. She knew that now—a bitter lesson when her head was filled with doubts about Wilhelm and her heart was breaking all over again for Andreas.
Claire was still reeling from that understanding as a black SUV screeched to a halt at the curb below her. Two heavily armed Enforcement Agents climbed out of the vehicle and caught her in the blinding beam of a flashlight.
“Frau Roth?” one of them asked, clearly surprised to find her there. “We were alerted by silent alarm to a break-in at the office. Are you all right?”
She didn’t know if she responded or not. She felt numb, adrift… bereft.
“Is anyone else in the building?” the other guard asked her.
“Are you alone here, Frau Roth? How did you manage to escape the madman who’s been wreaking bloody havoc the past couple of nights?”
Claire had no answers for them. All she wanted to do was run after Andreas, but the two big, well-armed agents kept her close as they ushered her back inside and began a search of the place.
“Don’t worry,” one of them assured her. “This nightmare is all over now. We, along with Director Roth, are going to get the bastard who attacked your home and put him down like the rabid dog he