Ashes of Midnight (21 page)

 

“You taste so good,” he murmured against her wetness. “Even sweeter than I remembered. Better than any dream.”

 

Claire put her palms on his shoulders, pushing him back as she drew herself up. She eased him down, then crawled up over him, straddling his legs with her bare thighs. She ran her hands under his loose shirt, baring him for her mouth to explore.

 

When she had worked her way up to his throat, she stripped the shirt off completely and let her eyes take in the unique beauty of his
dermaglyph
patterns. Right now, with desire etched in Andreas’s every taut muscle and expression, his
glyphs
were flooded with indigo, burgundy, and darkest autumn gold. Claire traced them with her fingertip, then bent her head and followed the intricate swirls and flourishes with her tongue as she’d been dying to do since she saw him sitting on the moonlit lakeshore of his dream.

 

Some of those
glyphs
tracked farther down his body, as she
vividly recalled. Not wanting to neglect any part of him, Claire unfastened the button of his pants and loosened the zipper. He sucked in his breath as she nuzzled the soft skin of his groin and nipped at his tender flesh. When she tugged his pants down lower, past the smooth, jutting head of his penis, then lower still, he exhaled a pleading oath.

 

Claire kissed her way around his thick cock, admiring the breadth and length and power of him before she dipped her head and caught the blunt tip of him in her mouth. She only teased for now, loving the silky, salty taste of him. She didn’t want to rush. She wanted to prolong this moment, this stolen night that she’d dreamed of for so long.

 

When she spoke, her voice was husky from passion and a fresh, kindling need. “Do you have any idea how many times I wanted to seek you out when I was sleeping? There were days, sometimes weeks at a time, when it was all I thought of… all I wanted to do was run away to find you. To know this pleasure again with you. You were the only one, Andre. It’s always been you.”

 

He growled, a sound of total, unabashed possessiveness. His hands were rough in her hair, hard against the back of her skull as she bent over him once more and took him fully into her mouth. He arched up, hissing a wordless cry as she sucked him deeper.

 

“Ah, God,” he gasped. “That feels so damn good. Claire, if you don’t stop …”

 

She didn’t stop. She couldn’t get enough of him, not even when his body gave a hard shudder and his release roared out of him. She stroked him with her tongue and throat, greedy for everything he would give her after so many years of wanting him.

 

Of loving him.

 

She couldn’t deny that it was love she felt for him as he drew out of her grasp and plundered her mouth with a fevered, demanding kiss. It was love that filled her heart as he filled her body with his own.

 

Love that made her scream his name as he brought her to the height of another devastating climax, before he began to seduce her all over again.

 

 

The bitch was sorely trying his patience.

 

Wilhelm Roth fisted his hand and drove it through the clouded window of the Boston warehouse he’d been forced to relocate to recently. Pain ripped through him as he brought his hand out of the shattered glass, the flesh over his knuckles shredded and bloodied. He knew Claire would feel it, too, if distantly, just as he was feeling the proof of her current infidelity with Andreas Reichen.

 

Her pleasure made acid boil in his gut.

 

That it was pleasure shared with Reichen made him want to kill them both.

 

Savagely.

 

He’d been more than a little surprised to detect Claire’s presence near Boston earlier tonight. The awareness of her had since faded, but he was certain she was in New England somewhere. She and Reichen both, apparently

 

The only thing keeping him from hunting the pair down was the fact that his hands were full with the current mission for Dragos in the city. His priorities had been made crystal clear by Dragos when he’d exiled him to Boston, and Roth wasn’t about to let him down.

 

He would have his chance to make Claire and her damnable lover pay. He was certain he’d have ample
opportunity to inflict great pain on both of them soon enough.

 

And he could hardly wait.

 

He’d been chewing on the fact that Dragos had intimated that Reichen was involved with the Order. It wouldn’t be surprising if it were true. Despite the male’s arrogance and insubordination, there had long been an air of self-righteousness about him.

 

Roth supposed the male had subscribed to a certain code of honor, even then, in the past, when he had come sniffing around Claire’s skirts after Roth had already decided she would belong to him alone. Never mind that he already had a mate; he and Ilsa had been a poor match, one he’d made hastily in a moment of passion and grown bored of not long afterward. He should have gotten rid of her sooner than he had, but then Claire came along and gave him all the excuse he needed.

 

Or, rather, Andreas Reichen had provided the excuse, just a short time before either man had even met the beautiful Claire Samuels.

 

Roth had often wondered if Reichen realized the seething contempt he’d inspired when he’d shown weak little Ilsa a gesture of kindness at a Darkhaven reception. It had been a small thing, really, a dry jacket to cover her after Roth had sent her weeping to a rain-drenched balcony when she dared to contradict him in front of his peers. He’d meant to punish her privately, but Reichen had strolled by and discovered her sitting outside by herself in the cold. Incredibly, he’d had the gall to insist she take his coat and then arranged for his driver to send her home without Roth’s permission.

 

Roth fumed even now just to think on it.

 

He’d fumed then, too, and waited for a chance to put
Reichen firmly in his place. He found that chance once Claire arrived in Hamburg and caught the eye of nearly every available Breed male in the region. Reichen included. So Roth had waited and watched, and when the time was right, he’d had his men deal with Reichen. Then he threw himself into the task of helping poor, devastated Claire pick up the pieces of her shattered heart. Taking her as his mate was merely icing on an already delectable cake.

 

Oh, he’d had to kill Ilsa to clear the way, but it was a small inconvenience to have the satisfaction of knowing he’d made his point with Reichen and stolen the female he loved.

 

He couldn’t have been more stunned to learn that Reichen had reappeared in Berlin later that year. To the younger male’s credit, after what was likely a very bitter lesson learned, he stayed well away from Hamburg, and from Claire. Until the past summer, when the human whore who’d been Reichen’s latest lover began snooping around in Roth’s affairs.

 

He’d had no patience to deal with Reichen again, and so he’d sent a very swift, clear message to the Berlin Darkhaven where Reichen and his kin lived. Swift and clear, but not quite thorough enough, as the attack had left Reichen alive.

 

Not again, Roth vowed.

 

When he next got Andreas Reichen in his sights, the son of a bitch was going down. So much the better if he could send Claire to her death alongside him.

 

Pleasantly sadistic musings of just how he might accomplish those two goals were swirling in his head when the cell phone in his coat pocket went off.

 

“Yes, sire.”

 

“I trust your operation is proceeding as planned,” Dragos said, his tone practically daring Roth to disappoint him.

 

“The diversion is perfectly under control, sire. As I promised you it would be.”

 

Dragos grunted. “Keep it that way. I am nearly finished with the preparations here. Soon the new objective will be under way.”

 

“Very good, sire,” Roth said. “I will continue with the plan we discussed and await your further command.”

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER
Sixteen

 

 

T
he next morning, while Reichen stayed behind and tried not to be paranoid about danger lurking on every street corner or alleyway Claire left the house with their remaining euros and drove into town to exchange the money and pick up some food for herself and fresh clothing for both of them. Reichen had attempted to persuade her into waiting until evening when he could go with her—just in case she ran into trouble—but she brushed him off with a look and left him sitting in the big empty house by himself. He had forgotten how independent she was, and a part of him admired the fact that several decades under Roth’s thumb hadn’t stolen any of her spirit.

 

Still, he worried.

 

He knew she was safe from Roth or Dragos or any other members of the Breed so long as it was daytime and the sun would keep all of his kind locked indoors. But the protective part of him—the part of him that had yet to accept that he wasn’t still the leader of a Darkhaven, responsible for keeping his home and family safe from harm—balked at the idea of Claire walking around out there without him looking out for her. She was too precious, too vulnerable in a world filled with hidden dangers. She was a treasure worth preserving at any cost.

 

And she was…
not his
.

 

Damn, but it took some effort to remember that, especially after last night. They’d spent an incredible evening together, making love in the living room overlooking the Atlantic, then again upstairs, on the four-poster bed in the palatial room that had been Claire’s when she was a young woman living in her grandmother’s house. And yet another time before daybreak this morning, after she’d gotten up to ensure that all the blinds and curtains were drawn tight to protect him from the sun.

 

He’d have liked to have followed her into the shower before she left to run her errands, but she’d gently chided him to pace himself, that they would have plenty of time together. But they didn’t have that luxury, and he knew it. It was easy to imagine that their reunion—this respite in an idyllic setting, without the constant reminders of the darkness they’d left behind in Germany—could go on forever.

 

It couldn’t.

 

As good as it felt to be with Claire again, they couldn’t stay in Newport together for long. Until Roth was found and eliminated, she needed to be somewhere protected and well out of his reach. She wasn’t going to like it, but so
long as Roth was alive and able to get his hands on her, she needed to be placed under the guard of the Order. The sooner the better.

 

As for Reichen, each minute he wasn’t looking for Roth was an opportunity for the bastard to dig in deeper wherever he was and continue his presumed machinations alongside Dragos. Reichen knew he should be spending every breathing moment and exhausting every effort to hunt Roth down. Vengeance still burned in his belly and his issue with Wilhelm Roth would not be forgiven simply because he had Claire to warm his heart and his bed.

 

Roth could not be permitted to continue breathing when he was evil to his core. Nor so long as he might decide to punish Claire for letting herself be pulled back into Reichen’s life again.

 

With that grave thought fueling him, he took out the cell phone Tegan had given him and pressed the last number in the speed dial queue. The number rang twice before Gideon’s British-tinged accent came on the line.

 

“Talk to me,” he said, chipper despite the intrusion on his morning.

 

“It’s Reichen. I apologize for not phoning last night.”

 

“No worries. Where are you?”

 

Naked from his recent shower, he leaned back on a shrouded chair. “Newport, Rhode Island.”

 

“You find your female?”

 

“Yes,” Reichen answered, not bothering to clarify that she wasn’t, in fact, his at all. “Everything is fine. Claire is safe, and so am I. Have you found anything yet on Roth?”

 

“Nothing yet, but we’re working on it. I’m running down a couple of international leads right now. Trust me, we want to get this bastard as badly as you do. He may be
our most solid link to Dragos at the moment, so we’re hitting hard on every bit of intel we can gather on him.”

 

As Gideon spoke, Reichen considered the fact that he should be there with the warriors, digging into every clue on Roth’s whereabouts and helping them flush the son of a bitch out. He was eager to do just that, his palms itching with the need to choke the life out of Roth for all he’d done.

 

“So, what’s the story over there in Newport?” Gideon asked. “You gonna be delayed there for a while yet?”

 

“No,” he said, even though he’d been torn between what his heart wanted him to say and what his duty demanded. “No more delaying. I need to smooth a few things out on this end, but Claire and I can be ready for pickup later tonight if that can be arranged.”

 

“No problem. I can have one of the guys there about an hour after sundown.”

 

Reichen scowled, calculating the short span of hours that would leave him for breaking the news to Claire that he was going to be yanking her out of her home. Again. “I may need a bit more time than that, Gideon. Claire doesn’t know I’ve called you, or that she’s going to be leaving Newport tonight. She’s just left one gilded cage; I have a feeling she won’t be eager to be put into another one.”