Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [79]
“Fuck you,” Lucan growled to the vampire who had once, long ago, been a trusted friend. “I should kill you. I should have killed you then.”
Tegan didn’t so much as flinch from the threat. “You’re looking for enemies, Lucan? Then take a look in the mirror. That’s the one son of a bitch who’s going to beat you every time.”
Lucan hauled Tegan around and slammed him against the opposite wall of the training room. The mirrored glass crunched with the impact, shattering outward around Tegan’s shoulders and torso like a haloing starburst.
Despite his efforts to deny the truth in what he was hearing, Lucan caught his own savage reflection, replicated a hundred times in the network of broken pieces. He saw the slivered pupils, the glowing irises—a Rogue’s eyes—staring back at him. His huge fangs were stretched long in his open mouth, his face contorted into a hideous mask.
He saw everything he hated, everything he had pledged his life to destroy, just like Tegan said he would.
And now, coming through the doors behind him and into the many reflections that had so transfixed him, Lucan saw Nikolai and Dante, their expressions wary as they strode into the training facility.
“Nobody told us we’re having a party,” Dante drawled, even though the look he shot between the two would-be combatants was anything but casual. “What’s going on? Everything cool here?”
A long, tense silence fell over the room.
Lucan released Tegan from the punishing hold, slowly drawing away from him. He lowered his eyes, a knee-jerk reaction meant to shield their wildness from the other warriors. The shame he felt was something new to him. He didn’t like the bitter taste of it; he couldn’t speak for the bile that rose up from within him.
Finally, Tegan broke the silence. “Yeah,” he said, his stare never leaving Lucan’s face. “We’re cool.”
Lucan whirled away from Tegan and the others, his thigh smashing into the table of weapons and sending it into a metallic shudder as he stalked toward the exit.
“Damn, he’s jacked up tonight,” Niko murmured. “Smells like a fresh kill, too.”
As he stepped through the training facility’s doors to the hall outside, Lucan heard Dante’s quiet reply. “No, man. He smells like overkill.”
CHAPTER
Eighteen
More,” the human female moaned, draping herself over his lap and arching her neck up under his mouth. She pulled at him with greedy hands at his nape, her eyes drooping as though drugged. “Please…take more of me. I want you to take it all!”
“Perhaps,” he promised idly, already growing bored with his pretty toy.
K. Delaney, R.N., had proven entertaining enough sport the first several hours he’d had her in his private quarters, but like all humans gripped by the power of a vampire’s draining kiss, she had eventually stopped fighting and now craved an end to her torment. Naked, she writhed against him like a feline in heat, rubbing her bare skin across his lips, whimpering when he refused to give her his fangs.
“Please,” she said again, whining now, and beginning to annoy.
He couldn’t deny the pleasure he’d taken with her, both in her willing body and the delicious, deeper fulfillment as she Hosted him at her sweet, succulent throat. But he was finished with that now. Finished with her, unless he meant to sap the last of the female’s humanity and make her one of his Minion servants.
Not yet. He might decide to play again.
But if he didn’t remove himself from her current needy grasping, he might be tempted to drain Nurse K. Delaney past that delicate tipping point and right into death.
He dumped her off his lap without ceremony and rose to his feet.
“No,” she complained, “don’t go.”
He was already crossing the room. The sumptuous folds of his silk robe skated around his calves as he strode out of the bedchamber and into his study across the hall. This room, his secret sanctuary, was filled with every luxury he desired: exquisite furnishings, priceless art and antiques, rugs that had been woven