Edge of Dawn (22 page)

“If you don’t love me,” she said, “if you truly want me gone . . . then let go.”

He didn’t. His fingers stayed clamped around her hands, going tighter, despite every sane and logical cell in his body telling him—no, demanding him—to release her now and walk away.

“Fucking hell, Mouse,” he hissed, low and lethal. Then, without a second’s warning, he brought his head down to hers and took her mouth.

The kiss was hard and deep and possessive. He couldn’t give it to her any other way, not in that moment.

And she took him for all he was worth. He sent his tongue past her lips, groaning with animal need when she sucked at him, her mouth opening to him on a broken sigh.

His veins were on fire, shooting lava through his limbs, into his head and heart, into his groin. He laced his fingers through hers and guided her around with his body, until he was crowding her back against the wet wall of the shower. Her nipples were beads he could feel through the soaked fabric of his T-shirt. Her curves were soft and lush, melting perfectly against his hard planes and ridges.

Kellan lifted his arms, taking hers with them on an upward slide along the wall, until he held her hands high above her head. He pinned her there, caught in his grasp and bound by the weight of his body leaning into her. Still kissing her, devouring her mouth, he ground his stiff erection against her abdomen. She felt so good, his pelvis jerked on its own, his cock giving a hard leap behind the tight confinement of his jeans.

He dropped his head to her neck and kissed her there, making her moan and shudder beneath his lips. “Fuck, Mira,” he growled against her delicate, water-sluiced throat. “Fuck.”

He rocked into her, his clothing soaked, head delirious with the warm, wet scent of her naked skin and the sweet, honeyed fragrance of her arousal. His fangs throbbed, filling his mouth.

A taste of her sweetness.

He needed it now.

Her blood called to him, but it was another nectar that drew him away from her neck on a ragged snarl. Only then did he let loose her hands, sinking down in front of her, kissing his way past her breasts and ribs, then lower, along the muscular softness of her belly.

She made an impatient noise in the back of her throat as he took his time getting where he was heading, mouth and tongue and lips sampling every inch of tender skin they ran across. With one hand on her breast, he smoothed the other along her side, raising gooseflesh in his wake and making her tremble with tiny, sigh-laced spasms.

As he kissed her body, his roaming hand slid down the length of her thigh, then came around to the inside and began a lazy upward path along her tender flesh. A nudge of his fingers opened her thighs to him. He smiled against her stomach at her eager response, then delved the tip of his tongue into her navel while he trailed his knuckles over the silky petals at her core.

He parted her with his fingertips and slid them into her hot cleft. She quivered in his hand, breath catching and shaky as he stroked his thumb over the tight little pearl nestled at the top of her slit. Kellan’s fangs surged even longer in his mouth, desire knifing through him.

He was down on his knees before her now, head lowering between her legs as the warm spray of the shower pelted him from above. On a deep growl, he turned his face toward the inside of her thigh and suckled the tender skin there. She moaned and gasped, her climax already building and he hadn’t even put his mouth where he wanted it to be.

Kellan lifted her leg onto his shoulder, kissing her some more, taking wicked enjoyment in the fact that she was so ready for him, so eager and responsive. For
him,
he thought greedily. She’d said it herself that morning in his bed. There had been no one but him, not in all this time. Not ever.

A tide of possessiveness swamped him. Unbidden. Undeserved.

Yet undeniable, especially when Mira was melting for him so sweetly.

He swiveled his head back to admire the flushed pink temptation of her sex. A brief kiss made her shiver. His lips and fangs teasing the juicy petals made her suck in a sharp breath, sent her hands into his hair, holding him steady as he cleaved her flesh with his tongue and brought the intoxicating taste of her into his mouth.

“Oh, my God,” she rasped brokenly. “I’m going to come.”

“Not yet,” he murmured. Then he reached around to grasp her firm little ass in both hands and hauled her to his hungry mouth.

He buried his face in her, drinking her in, drowning in her. In that next instant, she shattered against his mouth, hips bucking, spasms rippling through her in pretty waves. He lapped her up, thirsty for more.

As her climax began to ebb, she swung her leg down off his shoulder and grabbed at him. Her fingers were demanding, twisting in his soaked T-shirt, trying to yank it off him. “Inside me,” she panted. “Now, Kellan.”

He rose without argument. Pulled off his shirt and tossed it to the shower floor in a wet heap, then kicked off his boots while Mira worked on the buttons of his drenched jeans. She fumbled more than once and he took over. No sooner had he opened the last button, Mira pushed his pants down over his hips, freeing his engorged cock into her wet, waiting hands.

She stroked him a few times, and God help him, it was all he could bear.

Gathering her up in his arms, he lifted her thighs around his waist and drove home in one deep thrust. Both of them grunted with the force of their joining, both of them shuddering as he seated himself to the root, filling her, stretching her like a silken glove around his girth. He pumped his pelvis a few times, but he was too far gone to take it easy.

He fell into an urgent rhythm, holding fast to Mira, watching her face as the crest of another climax rose up on her. She clutched at him, heels digging into his ass, fingernails scoring his shoulders. His own orgasm was coiling at the base of his spine, heat shooting through his veins.

Mira gripped him more fiercely, her pleasured sighs turning into rapid pants as the first tremors of her release coursed along the length of Kellan’s shaft. He plunged deeper, harder, pushing her toward it. Holding back his own need until he felt her start to splinter around him. She let out a throaty cry as she came, her breath blowing like a furnace against his ear.

Kellan kept his fevered eyes on her, drinking in every nuance of her release. She was so beautiful. So damn sexy. So hot and wet and greedy, her tiny muscles milking him as he thrust at a frenzied tempo, his cock pistoning in and out of her slick sheath.

His orgasm rolled up on him like a freight train, fierce and uncontainable.

He came on a roar, hips bucking wildly, unable to stop even after the last of his seed had poured out of him. Spent but far from sated, he dropped his head to the curve of her shoulder and simply rocked into her, savoring the feel of her body pressed to his, the hot, wet haven of her sex holding him inside.

“You stayed,” he murmured, mouth moving over the side of her neck, where her pulse throbbed in time with his.

Her softly whispered answer sifted into his hair where her lips rested against the top of his head. “You didn’t let go.”

15

THEY MADE LOVE AGAIN, SLOWLY, THEN TOOK TURNS washing each other under the warm spray of the shower.

A few minutes later, Mira was in Kellan’s quarters, getting dressed with him in a comfortable silence. She could almost imagine that they were a couple in truth, sharing this space as bonded mates. Sharing the bed as lovers, which shouldn’t have been as tempting to her, considering the number of times he’d just made her come.

Mira watched Kellan move as he put on fresh clothes, a black T-shirt that clung to his muscled chest and shoulders, short sleeves tight around his
glyph
-adorned biceps. His long, firm thighs disappeared into dark jeans that hugged his fine ass and rode at just the right level on his sharply cut hips.

He was gorgeous, and a few minutes ago she had tasted every divine inch of him. She allowed herself to savor that memory for a moment, standing near the foot of the bed in just her bra and panties.

It was so easy to feel normal around him. To feel whole. She wasn’t ready to give that up. She’d never be ready for that, no matter what her damned vision had shown him.

Kellan shot her an appraising glance over his shoulder as he buttoned the fly of his jeans. “Good as you look like that, you’d better put something on before I jump you again.” He lifted his chin, indicating his clothing trunk at her feet. “You’ll find more shirts in there. Take your pick.”

The black jeans she’d had on the day she and Jeremy Ackmeyer were brought to the rebel base were still in decent shape, a bit worse for wear, but doable. Her shirt had been toast, ripped up in the scuffle and ruined with blood and grime. Mira hunkered down on folded legs in front of Kellan’s clothing locker and sifted through the dozen or so Ts and jerseys stacked neatly inside.

Her hand bumped against something cold and metallic, tucked between a few of the articles. She pulled it out to see what it was. A hand mirror, elegant and feminine, the back of it fashioned of polished silver, inlaid with delicate black onyx cut into the shape of a gracefully arched bow bearing a nocked arrow—the Archer family emblem.

“It belonged to my grandmother,” Kellan said when Mira looked up at him in question.

“It’s stunning.” She ran her fingertip over the careful crafts-manship, admiring each flawless line. “How did you get this?”

When he disappeared years earlier, he’d taken nothing with him but the clothes on his back the night of the patrol that had gone so wrong.

Kellan strode over and gently took the mirror from her grasp. He turned it over in his hands, his mouth curving into a distant smile. “A couple years ago, I ran reconnaissance on a militia group I planned to shut down. They were dealing drugs and small arms out of Maine, north of Augusta. Realized when my intel gathering was over, I was only a few miles from my grandfather, Lazaro’s, old place up there.”

“The temporary compound the Order moved into after our headquarters in Boston was compromised.” Mira recalled it well, even though she’d been just a girl at the time she and Kellan and the rest of the warriors and their mates had lived there.

After First Dawn, it was decided by Lucan and the other elders that the Order needed to spread its resources around the United States and Europe, to better combat uprisings and violence that occurred in the wake of the Breed’s outing to mankind. Lazaro Archer, Kellan’s grandfather, was now the leader of the Order’s command center in Italy.

Mira thought about the many good times—and the handful of bad—that had taken place in that hidden Darkhaven compound nestled in the deep woods of northern Maine. Her first snowball fight, pitted against Kellan and Nathan. Her first Christmas tree, shared with Renata and Nikolai and the rest of her new family, all of the warriors and their mates. The presentation ceremony for Xander Raphael, Dante and Tess’s son, who’d been born just days before the Order’s emergency relocation from Boston.

So many memories, and she could see that Kellan was reliving them too.

“The place was vacant, or I never would’ve risked going near it,” he said. “But there were a few things left behind. Furnishings, some clothing . . . and this.” He touched the bow-and-arrow emblem with reverent fingers. “It was in my grandfather’s quarters, on top of a dressing table he’d made for my grandmother out of the surrounding pines. The mirror was charred and blackened with soot and ash. I realized then and there that he must’ve gone back to our Boston Darkhaven after it had been razed. He must’ve crawled through the rubble to retrieve this, even though he’d vowed he would never go back to the scene of her death. Back to the house that took her and my parents—all of my kin, his kin—down in flames.”

“Kellan,” Mira whispered, her heart squeezing in her breast.

“I had no right to take it, but once it was in my hand, I couldn’t leave it behind.” He carefully replaced the mirror into the chest, setting it gingerly on top of the soft contents. “I have something else that I have no right keeping either.”

He strode over to his bureau and opened the top drawer. Took out her treasured dagger and walked it back to her. She took it from his outstretched hand with a small, grateful smile.

She read the word that was carved onto each side of the precious blade. “Honor. Sacrifice.” The other one, the other half of the pair, which she’d lost the day she was brought back into Kellan’s life, bore another set of tenets she strove to live by: Faith. Courage. “It feels strange, just the one,” she murmured. “Unbalanced. Not as strong without its mate. I never thought they’d be separated.”

Kellan’s eyes were tender on her, his expression sober, regretful. He clearly understood that she could as easily be speaking about the two of them. “I never wanted to take anything away from you, Mouse. Least of all your happiness. I didn’t want to cost you anything, including the blade that I promised you’d have again, before everything went so wrong. Just another way I’ve let you down.”

He reached out, gently lifted her to her feet. He stroked her face, his touch so careful and kind, she nearly choked on the sob building in her throat. “If I could go back in time, I’d change so much,” he said. “I would do whatever it took to make sure you’d never be caught up in this with me in the first place.”