Kiss of Midnight

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 by Persian hands at the height of Earth's religious crusades. All mementoes of his own past, objects collected over countless ages for the pleasure they gave him, and recently brought here, to the New England base of his budding army.



There was another recent artistic acquisition, too.



This one - a series of contemporary photographs - did not please him at all. He stared at the black-and-white images of various Rogue lairs around the city and could not contain his snarl of fury.



"Hey... those aren't yours..."



He flicked an irritated glance to where the female now sat, having crawled after him from the other room. She slumped on the palace rug behind him, her face screwed into a little-girl pout. Head lolling on her shoulders and blinking dully as if scarcely able to hold her focus, she was staring at the collection of photographs.



"Oh?" he asked, not really interested in playing games, but curious enough to know what it was about the images that had managed to sink through her muddled head. "Whom do you think they belong to?"



"My friend... they're hers."



His eyebrows rose in response to the innocent revelation. "You know this artist, do you?"



The young woman nodded sluggishly. "My friend... Gabby."



"Gabrielle Maxwell," he said, turning around, his attention distracted truly now. "Tell me about your friend. What is her interest in these places she photographs?"



He had been rolling that question over in his mind since Gabrielle had first come to his attention as an inconvenient witness to a killing carelessly perpetrated by some of his new recruits. He'd been irritated, though not alarmed, to hear about the Maxwell woman from the Minion at the police station. Seeing her inquisitive face on the asylum's closed-circuit security feed hadn't exactly pleased him, either. But it was her apparent attention to documenting vampire locations that piqued a dark sort of interest in him.



He had, until now, been occupied with other, more crucial things that required his attention. He'd been focused elsewhere, and had been satisfied with merely keeping a close eye on Gabrielle Maxwell. Perhaps her interest and activities might bear closer scrutiny. She might, in fact, warrant hard interrogation. Torture, if it pleased him.



"Let's talk about your friend."



His tiresome playmate tossed her head, then flopped back on the rug, throwing out her arms like a petulant child being denied something she wanted. "No... don't talk about her," she murmured, as her hips arched up off the floor. "Come here... kiss me first... talk about me... about us..."



He took a step toward the female, but his intentions were hardly obliging. The slivering of his pupils might have fooled her into thinking he desired her, but it was anger pulsing through his body. There was contempt in his hard grasp as he stood over her and hauled her to her feet before him.



"Yes," she sighed, nearly his to command already.



With the flat of his palm, he guided her head back onto her shoulder, baring the pale column of skin that was still scored and bleeding from his last taste of her. He lapped roughly at the wound, his fangs surging with rage.



"You'll tell me everything I want to know," he whispered, lethal in his control as he stared into her bleary gaze. "From this moment forward, you, Nurse K. Delaney, will do whatever I tell you to do."



He bared his teeth, then struck as fiercely as a viper, draining every last bit of her conscience and her feeble human soul in one savage bite.



Gabrielle made a perimeter check of her apartment, taking care that all the locks on her doors and windows were secure. She had been back home since mid-afternoon, having left Megan's place in the morning after her friend went to work. Meg had offered for her to stay as long as she wanted, but Gabrielle couldn't hide forever, and she hated the idea that she might drag her friend any deeper into a situation that was becoming more terrifying and unexplainable by the hour.



At first, she'd avoided returning to her apartment and had walked around the city in a paranoid haze, all but giving in to the rising hysteria. Instinct warned her to prepare herself for a fight.



One that she knew would be coming sooner than later.



She worried that she'd find Lucan, one of his bloodsucking friends, or something even worse waiting for her when she arrived home. But it had been broad daylight, and she'd returned, at last, to find her apartment empty, not a thing out of place.



Now, as darkness settled outside, her anxieties returned tenfold.



Wrapping her arms around her cocoon of an oversized white sweater and jeans, she walked back into the kitchen where her answering machine was blinking with two new messages. They were both from Megan. She'd been phoning for the past hour, since her original message about the body recovered in the playground area where Gabrielle had been assaulted the night before.



Megan was frantic, telling Gabrielle about the police report she'd gotten from Ray, describing how her attacker had apparently been mauled by animals not long after he'd tried to hurt Gabrielle. And there was more. A police officer had been murdered in the station; it was his weapon recovered from the savaged body found on the grounds of the children's park.



"Gabby, please call me as soon as you get this. I know you're scared, honey, but the police really need your statement. Ray's about to go on break from duty. He says he can come and pick you up, if you'd feel safer - "



Gabrielle hit the erase button.



And felt the hairs at the back of her neck begin to rise.



She was no longer alone in the kitchen.



Heart lurching into overdrive, she whirled around to face her intruder, not at all surprised to see that it was Lucan. He stood in the door from the living room, watching her in thoughtful silence.



Or maybe he was just sizing up his next meal.



Curiously, Gabrielle realized she wasn't so much afraid of him as she was angry. He looked so normal, even now, standing there in a dark trenchcoat, tailored black pants, and an expensive-looking shirt that was a few shades darker than the mesmerizing silver of his eyes.



There was no trace of the monster she had witnessed last night. Just a man. The dark lover she only thought she knew.



She found herself wishing that he would have shown up with fangs bared and fury sparking in his strangely transformed eyes, as the terror he'd betrayed himself to be last night. It would have been more fair than this outward semblance of normalcy that made her want to pretend everything was all right. That he was actually Detective Lucan Thorne of the Boston Police, a man pledged to protect the innocent and uphold the law.



A man she might have been able to fall in love with - perhaps already was.



But everything about him had been a lie.



"I told myself I wasn't going to come here tonight."



Gabrielle swallowed hard. "I knew you would. I know you followed me last night, after I ran from you."



Something flickered within his penetrating gaze, which held her too intensely. Too much like a caress. "I wouldn't have hurt you. I don't want to hurt you, now."



"Then leave."



He shook his head. Took a step forward. "Not until we've talked."



"You mean, not until you've made sure I won't talk," she replied, trying not to be lulled into complacency simply because he looked like the man she had trusted.



Or because her body - even her idiot heart - responded to him on sight.



"There are things you need to understand, Gabrielle."



"Oh, I do understand," she said, amazed that her voice held no tremor. Her fingers came up near her neck, feeling for the cross pendant she hadn't worn since her first communion. The delicate talisman seemed like ridiculously flimsy armor now that she was standing in front of Lucan, with nothing to separate them except a few strides of his long, muscular legs. "You don't have to explain anything to me. It's taken me a while, granted, but I think I finally understand it all."



"No. You don't." He came toward her, pausing to notice the knot of chalky white bulbs tied above his head in the door of the kitchen. "Garlic," he drawled, and exhaled an amused chuckle.



Gabrielle retreated a pace from him, her Keds squeaking on the kitchen tiles. "I told you, I was expecting you."



And she'd done a bit of other prep work before he arrived. If he looked around, he would find the same threshold decoration in every room of the apartment, including the front door. Not that he seemed to care.



Multiple locks hadn't stopped him and neither had this further attempt at a security measure. He walked under Gabrielle's homemade vampire repellant unfazed, his eyes dark and fixed on her intently.



As he stepped closer, she backed up farther into the kitchen, until the counter came up behind her. A trial-sized mouthwash bottle lay on the polished granite top. It no longer contained Scope but a little something else she had picked up on her way home that morning, when she'd stopped in at St. Mary's for a long overdue confession. Gabrielle grabbed the plastic bottle off the counter and held it close to her chest.



"Holy water?" Lucan asked, coolly meeting her gaze. "What are you going to do with that, throw it on me?"



"If I have to."



He moved so quickly, she saw only a dizzying blur in front of her as he reached out and snatched the small vial out of her grasp and emptied it into his hands. He smoothed his dripping fingers over his face and into his glossy black hair.



Nothing happened.



He tossed the useless container aside and took another step toward her.



"I'm not what you think, Gabrielle."



He sounded so reasonable, she almost believed him. "I saw what you did. You murdered a man, Lucan."



He calmly shook his head. "I killed a human who was no longer a man - hardly human at all, in fact. What had once been human in him was bled out by the vampire who made him into a Minion slave. He was as good as dead already. I merely finished the job. I regret that you had to see it, but I cannot apologize. And I won't. I would kill anyone, human or otherwise, who means to do you harm."



"Which makes you either dangerously overprotective, or just plain psychotic. To say nothing of the fact that you sliced that guy's throat open with your teeth, and drank his blood!"



She waited for another composed reply. Some other rational explanation that might make her consider that even something as unbelievable as vampirism could actually make sense - could actually exist - in the real world.



But Lucan didn't give her any such response.



"This isn't how I wanted things to go between us, Gabrielle. God knows, you deserve better." He muttered something low under his breath, in a language she could not understand. "You deserve to be brought into this gently, by a male who will say the right words, and do the right things for you. That's why I wanted to send Gideon - " He raked his fingers through his hair in a gesture of frustration. "I am no emissary for my race. I am a warrior. At times, an executioner. I deal in death, Gabrielle, and I am not accustomed to making excuses to anyone for my actions."



"I'm not asking you for excuses."



"What, then - the truth?" He gave her a wry smile. "You saw the truth last night when I killed that Minion and drained him dry. That was truth, Gabrielle. That is who I truly am."



She felt a keen sickness in her belly that he hadn't even tried to deny the horror of what he was telling her. "You're a monster, Lucan. My God, you're something out of a nightmare."



"According to human superstitions and folklore, yes. Those same stories would tell you to fight my kind with garlic or holy water - all farce, as you've just seen for yourself. In fact, our races are very closely intertwined. We are not so different from each other."



"Really?" she scoffed, hysteria clutching at her as he took a step closer, forcing her to retreat again. "Last time I checked, cannibalism wasn't high on my to-do list. Then again, neither was screwing the undead, but I seem to be doing that with a bit of regularity lately."



He exhaled a humorless laugh. "I assure you, I am not undead. I breathe, like you. I bleed, like you. I can be killed, though not easily, and I have been living for a long, long time, Gabrielle." He came toward her, closing the small distance that separated them in the kitchen. "I am every bit as alive as you are."



As if to prove it, his warm fingers closed around hers. He brought her hand up between their bodies and pressed her palm against his chest. Through the soft fabric of his shirt, his heart pounded strong and steady. She felt his breath flowing in and out as his lungs expanded and contracted, the warmth of his body seeping into her fingertips, permeating her weary senses like a soothing balm.



"No." She pulled away from him. "No, damn you! No more tricks. I saw your face last night, Lucan. I saw your fangs, your eyes! You said that was who you truly are, so what is this? Everything you present yourself to be now - everything I feel when I am near you - are they illusions?"



"I am real, as I stand here now... and as you saw me last night."



"Then show me. Let me see the other you again instead of this one. I want to know what I'm really dealing with, it's only fair."