Ashes of Midnight

"I have no concern whatsoever. Play, Claire." She lifted the lid that protected the keys, then sighed thoughtfully as she brought her hands up to hover over them. From the very first notes, she mesmerized him. He didn't know the piece she played, but it was beautiful--haunting and sad, powerful. There was a heart breaking in every note, lyrical movement so deep and emotional, he could only stand there and let the music wash over him ... through him. As he watched her play the piece from memory, he felt the profundity of her own reaction to the music. She was living it as she played it, every stanza full of meaning. It was her own creation, he realized. The beautiful composition had come from Claire's own heart... her own soul. "You wrote that," he said softly as the final note trailed off. She looked up at him with shining eyes. "After you left, music was all I had for a while. I wrote several pieces, including this one. It just seemed to... I don't know... pour out of me in the first few weeks after you were gone." Reichen drifted closer to her, moved by the power of everything he was hearing and feeling when he was in this woman's presence. "It's incredible, Claire. You are incredible." He sat down beside her on the little bench. He gazed into her dark eyes, his fingers softly caressing the smooth perfection of her beautiful dusky brown skin. When he kissed her this time, it was not with searing hunger but with infinite care and reverence. He held her as if she were made of glass, worshipped her mouth as though it were the rarest delicacy. He loved her. If he had longed to deny it--even to himself--the truth was staring him full in the face now.



He loved this woman, even though she wasn't his. Even though he was not good enough for her, and never had been. If nothing else, Roth had been right about that all those years ago. "He knows about us," Claire blurted quietly as Reichen held her in his arms. "He knows we've been together--that I am with you now." It didn't shock him to hear it. Roth's blood bond with Claire would have betrayed her to him. But the little tremor of fear in her voice made Reichen's own blood seethe. "What happened? Did he do something to you?" "Last night, while we were making love, he let me know that he was aware of my infidelity to him. I don't know what he might have done, but his message of pain came through loud and clear to me." "You didn't tell me." Reichen drew her away from him and stared hard into her eyes. "Why did you keep that from me?" "Because there is nothing to be done about it, Andre." "Like hell there isn't," he gritted. "As soon as I know where that bastard is hiding, I will damned well do something about him." Claire winced, slowly shook her head. "I'm afraid of what he will do to you. He will kill you if he can. You have to know that. It's no stretch to assume that it was him who tried to kill you back in Hamburg all those years ago.



He was there at the Darkhaven after you and I argued. I was crying when I went inside. I told him what happened, how I wished more than anything that you wanted me for your mate. I told him everything, Andre. And the next thing I knew, you had disappeared. I didn't think about the fact that I went to him about you then, but now..." Reichen pulled her close and placed a kiss to the top of her head. "You didn't do anything wrong. I've felt all along that the assault on me was too personal and violent to be random. It might not even be centered entirely on us being together. But whether or not Roth had a hand in it doesn't matter, because the end result--the change that came over me in that field--is the thing that drove me away from you. It's the only thing that could have kept me away." She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his chest. "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry for everything he's done to you. Your family your female friend in Berlin that he turned Minion... Oh, God, Andre. I'm so very sorry for all the pain you've endured."



Reichen hushed her, holding her close. "This is between Roth and me. None of the blame rests with you. What happened to me is insignificant. But my family deserves justice. So does Helene." Claire was silent for a long moment, then she asked gently, "Did you love her very much?" He thought about Helene and the strong bond of trust and understanding they'd shared. She was a remarkable woman who had been something more than just another of his long line of casual, noncommittal dalliances. It had nearly killed him to see her drained of her humanity, but no more than it had devastated him to have to be the one to finish her after Roth had left her an empty shell, her mind enslaved to carry out his evil bidding. "I cared for Helene deeply," he admitted. "I loved her as best as I was capable. But I wasn't able to give her my heart, because it was already lost to another." Claire drew out of his arms then and gazed up at him. "It's always been you, you know." He cupped her face in his palms. "I have been in love with you all along."



She closed her eyes for a long moment. When she opened them again, they were welling with tears. "Oh, Andreas. I still love you. I never stopped." With a growl he could not contain, Reichen captured her mouth in a possessive kiss. When they were both panting with desire, he pushed the piano bench back and stood her up in front of him. The keys let out a burst of discordant noise as Claire leaned against them. He threw her long skirt up over her thighs. "Ah, Jesus," he hissed through his huge fangs. "You're not wearing panties." She gave him a saucy smile. "Surprise." If he'd known that, they never would have made it out of the house in the first place.



Ravenous for the taste of her, he buried his head between her legs and plundered her sweetness. She held on to him, fingers twisting in his hair. He kissed her ruthlessly, needing to feel her come apart against his mouth. When she was writhing, moaning and sighing with the rush of a ferocious orgasm, he reached down to unzip his trousers and free his raging erection. He rose from the bench and wedged himself between her gorgeous thighs. All he wanted to do was drive his cock home, but she looked too enticing to rush, her sex flushed deep red and juicy, her dark curls like wet silk. He took himself in hand and played the head of his penis along the slick cleft of her body, delighting in her breathless mewls of pleasure. It was a torture that broke him before it did her. On the knife's edge of coming just from the feel of her, he shifted his hips and pushed inside. She was molten heat around him, her plush sheath swallowing him from tip to balls. He began to pump, slowly at first, still delusioned enough to think that he had any patience where loving Claire was concerned. Her body milked him, the hot, wet friction driving him toward a more urgent tempo. He couldn't stop. He couldn't hold it, not for another second. He gritted his teeth and let out a sharp roar as his seed exploded out of him and deep into her. She climaxed with him, her fingernails scoring his shoulders as she cried out with her own release.



He murmured her name over and over, his cock as hard as marble even as the last tremors of his orgasm racked him. He stared down at her, moved as always by her exquisite, delicate beauty. He loved the way they looked together, the contrast of their skin, the perfect fit of them when they were joined. And he loved her spicy warm blood scent, especially when it mixed with the musky perfume of her arousal. "I don't want to let go of this night," he murmured, gazing into the absorbing color of her eyes. "I don't want to let go of you." "Then don't let go." She wrapped her arms around him a bit tighter. "This time, I won't let you go." He smiled, regret and duty tearing at him from inside. He had intended to explain to her at least half a dozen times already this evening that their time in Newport was over. He had intended to explain it now, too, but instead he found himself lost in her eyes. Lost in the intoxicating pleasure of her body. "For now," he said, kissing her as he spoke, "let's neither one of us let go." "Yes," she said, moving her hips in a provocative way against him. She stared up at him then, her eyes intense and imploring. "Will you do something else for me tonight, Andre?" He grunted, bending his head to taste the soft skin below her ear.



"Anything." "Make love to me again, the way you would if we were truly mated." He came up to regard her with a frown. "Drink from me," she said, stroking his face with a lovingly tender touch. "Let me pretend that we're together as blood-bonded mates. Just for tonight." God, the very notion lit through his veins like a flash fire. He could feel his glyphs surging with hungered colors, and his fangs stretched even longer in his mouth. "I want you to do it," she said, a soft demand. "Drink from me as though I were really yours." The sound that left his lips was raw, profane. He reared back, fighting the need that shot through him.



But then Claire tilted her head to the side and moved her hair away from her neck, and he was lost. He bore down on her in a primal surge of motion, fangs seeking out her vein as he plunged deep into her welcoming heat once more. The taste of her sweet, warm blood slammed into his senses in a flood of roaring power. He couldn't curb his possessive growl as he suckled hard at her throat. Nor could he get close enough as he held Claire tight against him and buried himself to the hilt. He pumped hard and fast, unable to be gentle when her blood was spurring him like the most potent, intoxicating drug. He had never known this kind of primal, visceral union. It staggered him. It humbled him. It shamed him too, when he wanted more than anything to give himself to Claire in the same way, but could not because she was already bonded to another male. Reichen could offer her his vein, but no matter how much of him she drank, her bond would remain to Wilhelm Roth. A flicker of aggression and fury began to twist and kindle in Reichen's gut when he thought of any male having a claim on Claire.



That it was Roth only gave more fuel to the anger threatening to ignite inside him. No, he thought fiercely, denying the heat that was so eager to leap to life, just waiting for his summons. Reichen centered all of his focus on Claire, ignoring everything but the strong beat of her pulse against his tongue, and the gentle squeeze of her sex around his. He reveled in her soft cries as she came, memorizing every flush and quiver that traveled her body as he pleasured her time and again, loath to let the night--and their fleeting time together--come to its end.



Chapter Eighteen



How's Harvard doing?" Lucan asked as Gideon came out of the compound's infirmary. "Still unconscious, which is probably for the best right now. Fortunately the bullet passed clean through, but the holes it left behind in his chest and back are going to need some time to heal. He's going to be okay, but he'll be hurting for a while, and he's down for a week, minimum." "Shit," Lucan muttered. "The last thing we need is to lose any of our numbers while Dragos is apparently ramping up his operation." The altercation earlier that night in the city had proven to be one hell of a revelation. The Order had been aware of the fact that Dragos had other highly skilled assassins like Hunter at his beck and call, all of them presumably kept loyal by unremovable UV collars, programmed to detonate and sever the head of any who tampered with the device or disobeyed his command. But what Lucan and the Order hadn't known for a fact--and, frankly, had dreaded to imagine--was that one or more of those assassins might be first-generation Breed, like Hunter. And to take that disturbing thought one step further, it was easily feasible to assume that if Dragos had other Gen One assassins in his service, Gen Ones who looked remarkably like Hunter himself and with similar glyphs, then the son of a bitch had to be breeding them from scratch off one of the original, otherworldly fathers of the vampire race on this planet. An Ancient.



Like the one that the Order recently discovered had been kept in hibernation deep within the rock of the Bohemian mountains for probably centuries. The one that Dragos had awakened and removed God only knew how long ago. If that creature was in fact alive, being used to produce new sons with first-generation strength and abilities--if a breeding process like that had been going on for decades or longer--then it wasn't only the Order and the vampire nation that had cause for concern, but all of humankind. Bred in great numbers, a force that brutal, that bloodthirsty and powerful, would be virtually unstoppable. The dark thoughts followed Lucan as he and Gideon left the infirmary wing and walked the twisting corridors to the tech lab. The entire compound was gathered there, the warriors in from patrol, and all of the Breedmates. Hunter was also in attendance, the big Gen One looming at the back of the room, while the rest of the group had taken seats around the large table in the center.



Lucan gave the male a brief nod of greeting, silent acknowledgment of Hunter's assistance tonight--assistance that had probably saved more than one warrior's ass and also netted the Order an up-close look at the technological wonder of the dead assassin's UV collar. Although it was smashed and detonated, Gideon had been playing with the device ever since it arrived, trying to get a handle on how the thing worked and how it could potentially be used against its wearer. "How's the arm?" Lucan asked, turning his attention to Brock, who sat between Kade and Nikolai at the table. The bulky black warrior shrugged his wounded shoulder and cracked a broad grin. "It'll feel a helluva lot better when I get a chance to smoke one of these Gen One freaks of nature." He glanced over at Hunter. "No offense." The vampire's golden gaze was as flat as slate. "None taken." Lucan took his place next to Gabrielle at the head of the table and addressed the assembled team. "Obviously, after what we learned a few hours ago, our mission to disable Dragos and his operation has acquired a new, immediate objective. I don't need to tell any of you that the last thing we need is a Gen One killer loose in the city, slaughtering humans at will and wreaking general havoc. Now, we can hope that it was just the one inpidual, an isolated incident, but I'm not the kind to rely on hope. I need answers.