Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [724]
Reichen paused in front of the closed bedroom at the far end of hallway. His pulse kicked with a visceral awareness of Claire on the other side of that painted white door. He prayed she was asleep, figured she had to be after the hours he’d stalled downstairs. As quietly as he could, he turned the worn porcelain knob and peered inside.
“Hello,” she said, barely above a whisper. She was sitting up on one side of the king-size bed, wearing a thin baby blue T-shirt that didn’t quite conceal the dark buds of her nipples or the shapely swell of her breasts. A small lamp glowed on the nightstand beside her, golden light playing in her ebony hair and across her lovely face.
He scowled and stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him without a sound. “You should be sleeping.”
She lifted her shoulder. “I thought the bath would relax me, but I can’t seem to close my eyes.”
He had to work damn hard to ignore the bolt of lust that shot through him with the renewed image of Claire sitting naked in a tub full of steaming water and silky white bubbles.
“Nightfall will come early,” he grumbled. “We’ve got to be ready to catch our ride back to the States at sundown. You’d better douse that lamp and try to get some rest.”
She moved on the bed, but only to reach over and gesture to the empty side. “I took one of the softer pillows, but if you’d rather have it you can.”
He glowered at her, more from the discomfort of his growing erection than her offer of his choice of pillow. Her shift on the mattress had stretched her T-shirt into a second skin. And with the dislodging of the quilt coverlet as she moved, his burning gaze fixated on the tiny scrap of her panties.
Crimson red panties, for the love of God.
He froze where he stood, every nerve ending in his body going nuclear with arousal.
“You might remember that I’m a very sound sleeper,” she said, but he was hardly hearing what she was saying. “Don’t worry about waking me up if you still toss and turn and hog the covers over there. I probably won’t even notice.”
He shook himself back to consciousness when he realized she expected him to sleep in the bed with her. Right beside her, when the only thing preventing him from acting on his unholy desire for her was a paltry slip of cotton and a minuscule triangle of red satin.
“The bed is yours,” he said, his voice a rough scrape in his throat. “This isn’t a slumber party, for fuck’s sake. You can’t actually expect me to sleep with you, Claire.”
Her expression faltered. “I didn’t mean…”
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. His skin prickled with a sudden wash of heat and hunger that made his desire stoke even hotter. “Getting in bed with you is the bloody last thing I need to do right now.”
He must have sounded even more harsh than he realized, based on how quickly she glanced away from him. She shook her head, then exhaled a sigh. “The bed is big enough for both of us. That’s all I was trying to say.”
He stared at her for a long moment, his muscles twitching with the urge to move, to propel him over to where she was on the mattress and ease her down beneath him.
He wanted that so badly it was all he could see. All he could taste as the points of his emerging fangs pressed into the flesh of his tongue.
“Get some sleep, Claire.”
He tore himself away from the sight of her and took his own place on the floor nearby. The hand-loomed rug that covered the old wood planks was lumpy and smelled vaguely of lemon wax. He tossed onto his side on the hard floor, the only position that didn’t make him painfully aware of the hard-on that was jutting between his thighs like a column of stone.
Had he actually tried to caution her a few minutes ago that nightfall would come early?
Like hell.
It was going to be a long fucking wait till sundown.
CHAPTER
Twelve
Claire lay on the huge bed, wide awake, staring into the shuttered darkness of the room. She hadn’t moved since Andreas took himself to the floor. Time dragged, and for quite a while she was certain he’d been just as awake