Lara Adrian's Midnight Breed 8-Book Bundle (278 page)

“Jesus Christ. You’re telling me this sick bastard is the one who took Kellan?”

Lucan nodded. “I’m sorry.”

Christophe vaulted to his feet and began pacing back and forth behind the table. “We have to get him back. Damn it, we have to bring my son home, no matter what it takes.”

“We are all agreed on that,” Lucan said, speaking for everyone gathered in solemn silence in the tech lab. “But you have to understand that no matter how this unfolds, there will be risks—”

“Damn the risks!” Christophe shouted. “We’re talking about my son, my only child. My beloved, innocent boy. Don’t tell me about risks, Lucan. I will gladly trade my own life for Kellan.”

“As will I,” Lazaro put in soberly. “Anything for my kin.”

Brock watched the emotional exchange, knowing what it felt like to be helpless in the face of such a loss. But even more than he was moved by the Archers’ pain, he was struck by how raw Jenna looked beside him.

Although she held her jaw still, tension bracketed her mouth. Her lips quivered slightly, and her hazel eyes were moist with unshed tears. Whether in sympathy for what the two Breed males were going through or remembrance of her own anguish at having a loved one yanked away so abruptly, he wasn’t sure. But the tenderness he saw in her touched him deeply.

Beneath the table, her hand slid over to reach for his. He gathered her slender fingers in his grasp and she glanced to him, smiling faintly as their fingers twined together in silent reassurance. Something deeper passed between them
in that moment—an unspoken acknowledgment of the growing bond they shared.

He knew she was strong. He knew she was a courageous, resilient woman who had taken more than her fair share of hits in her lifetime and still came up swinging. But seeing her now, gripped in a moment of quiet vulnerability, made his heart crack just a little.

He loved that she wasn’t some delicate flower that wilted under the smallest bit of heat. But he loved this glimpse of softness in her, too.

God, there was so much to love about her.

If not for the slight problem that she hadn’t been born a Breedmate, Jenna Darrow was a woman he could easily envision at his side—a true partner, in life and in all things. But she was mortal, and falling for her would inevitably mean losing her. What happened in New York earlier today—seeing her in the hands of Dragos’s Minions—had only driven that point home with sharper clarity.

Corinne’s death had been a blow he hadn’t been prepared for, but he’d managed to go on. Losing Jenna, whether to the age that would eventually take her or by any other means, had somehow become impossible even to imagine.

As he held her hand in his, he knew that he could no longer pretend that she was simply another mission, or that protecting her was merely his duty to the Order. He’d fallen too far and too fast to deny just how much she meant to him.

He was still turning that troubling realization over in his mind as Lucan rose from the table and went to stand near Christophe Archer. Lucan put his hand on the other male’s shoulder, his dark brows knitted together in a solemn look. “We won’t rest until we find your son and
bring him home. You have my word, and you have the word of my brethren here in this room.”

At his pledge, Brock and the other warriors also rose from their seats around the table in a show of solidarity. Even Hunter, the Gen One who knew firsthand how ruthless Dragos and his assassins truly were, stood in support of their new mission.

Christophe turned a hard gaze on the Order’s leader. “Thank you. There is nothing more I can ask.”

“And there is nothing I won’t give,” Lazaro said, joining his son and Lucan near the back of the room. “The Order has my faith and my full trust. I cannot forgive myself for ignoring your advice a year ago, Lucan. Just look what it’s costing me now.” He shook his head sadly. “Perhaps I have lived too long, if an evil individual like Dragos can exist among us. Is this what is to become of the Breed? Making war on one another, letting greed and power corrupt us, just like humankind. Perhaps we’re not so different from them, after all. For that matter, are we any different from the savage otherworlders who spawned us?”

Lucan’s steel gray gaze had never looked more resolute. “I’m counting on it.”

Lazaro Archer nodded. “And I am counting on you,” he said, sweeping a look over each warrior and the females who now stood with them. “I am counting on all of you.”

T
he Order continued the meeting for another couple of hours after Lazaro and Christophe Archer left. Sometime earlier, Jenna and the rest of the women had gone to have their dinner elsewhere in the compound, leaving the warriors to discuss their limited options and tactics for how they might go about searching for the abducted boy.

Although Brock listened and offered suggestions when he had them, his mind—and his heart—was distracted. A lot of his focus had walked out of the room when Jenna left, and since then, he’d been counting down the minutes until he could be with her again. As soon as the meeting in the tech lab broke up, he headed out to the corridor to find her.

Alex was coming out of his quarters, closing the door behind her as he approached. She smiled knowingly when she saw him.

“How is she doing?” he asked.

“A lot better than I would be after what she went through today. She’s dead on her feet, but you know Jen. She would never say as much.”

“Yeah,” he said, returning Alex’s smile. “I do know that.”

“She’s more concerned about you, I think. She told me what you did, Brock. How you came after her, driving into the full light of day.”

He shrugged, uncomfortable with the praise. “I had the proper gear. My burns were minimal. They were healed by the time we got back to the compound.”

“That’s not the point.” Alex’s mouth curved warmly. Then she abruptly went up on her toes and placed a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you for saving my friend.”

When he stood there, unsure how to respond, Alex rolled her eyes. “What are you waiting for? Go on in and see her for yourself.”

He waited until Kade’s mate had gone before he rapped his knuckles on the door. It took a few moments before Jenna opened it. She was barefoot, dressed in his white terry bathrobe, he was guessing, with little to nothing more beneath it.

“Hi,” she said, giving him a welcoming smile that made his blood fire to life in his veins. “I was just about to get in the shower.”

Oh, he definitely didn’t need that tempting mental image to make his body burn any hotter
.

“I wanted to come by and check on you,” he murmured, a thick rasp in his voice as he recalled the feminine
curves and long, luscious limbs that were hiding under the oversize robe. A robe fastened only by the loosely tied sash around her slender waist. He cleared his throat. “But if you’re tired—”

“I’m not.” She pivoted away from the door, leaving it open behind her in unspoken invitation.

Brock stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

He hadn’t gone there with ideas about seducing her, but he had to admit it seemed like a really stellar idea now that he was close enough to touch her. Close enough to sense that she felt the same way.

Before he could stop himself, he reached out for her hand and brought her back toward him. She didn’t resist. Her hazel eyes were wide and welcoming as he cupped his hand around the back of her head and drew her against him. He caught her mouth in a deep, hungered kiss. She sucked his lower lip hard between her teeth, and all of his good intentions, few though they were, went up in flames.

“God, Jenna,” he rasped against her mouth. “I can’t stay away from you.”

Her answer was a throaty moan, the slow feminine purr vibrating through his body and straight into his cock. He was hard as steel, his skin tight and overheated, every nerve ending throbbing in time with the roar of his pulse.

He peeled the loose terry cloth off Jenna’s luscious body, revealing her to his thirsting gaze inch by inch, curve by delectable curve. He smoothed his hands over her soft skin, reveling in the velvety feel of her under his rough fingertips. Her breasts filled his palms, a perfect swell of creamy flesh capped with small pink nipples that begged him to taste them. He dipped his head down and lavished her with his tongue, suckling the tight little buds
and growling with pleasure as she moaned and sighed above him.

The sweet scent of her arousal slammed into him, making his already emerged fangs punch out of his gums in primal, urgent response. He reached down between her legs, cleaving his fingers into the slick seam of her body. “So soft,” he murmured, teasing the petals of her body and reveling in the way she blossomed even fuller under his touch. “So hot and wet. You are so fucking sexy, Jenna.”

“Oh, God,” she gasped, her fingers digging into his shoulders as he slowly penetrated her with first one finger, then a second. “More,” she whispered. “Don’t stop.”

With a growl, he rocked his palm against her and took her mouth in a hard, possessive kiss, tongue and fingers delving deep, giving and taking until he felt her body quake with the first tremors of release. She let out a sharp, shuddery sigh but he didn’t let up until she shattered against him, crying out his name in release.

She was still panting, still holding onto his shoulders as he slowly caressed her sex, and bent to kiss the tight little buds of her nipples.

“You’re way overdressed,” she murmured, her heavy-lidded eyes dark and demanding, though no more than the hands that were now drifting down his arms and heading on a direct course for the massive bulge below the waistband of his fatigues. She stroked him over the fabric, her unbashful handling of him making his cock surge tighter, fuller, straining to be freed. “Take these off. Now.”

“Bossy as ever,” he said, grinning as he rushed to comply to her lusty demands.

She laughed, running her hands all over his body as he shucked his clothes. When he was naked, he wrapped his
arms around her and pulled her against him until her curves melded with his hard planes and muscles. She was no fragile waif, and he loved that about her. He loved her strength. There was so much he loved about this woman, he realized, standing there skin to skin with her, staring into her eyes.

Oh, yeah … he was in big trouble right here.

“You said something about a shower,” he murmured, trying to pretend he wasn’t falling in love right that very second. Trying to convince himself that he hadn’t fallen for her much earlier than this—as early as the moment he’d first seen her, terrorized but unbroken, in the dark of her Alaska cabin.

She smiled up at him, oblivious to the wash of revelation pouring over him. “I did say something about a shower, actually. But it’s way over there in the bathroom, and we’re out here.”

“Easy enough to take care of that.” He scooped her up into his arms and used the inhuman speed he’d been born with to carry her into the adjacent bathroom before she could even yelp for him to put her down.

“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed, laughing around the words as he set her feet down on the marble floor. “Neat trick.”

“Baby, stick around. I’ve got plenty more where that came from.”

She arched a slim brow. “Is that an invitation?”

“Do you want it to be?”

Instead of shooting back with something teasing or suggestive, she got quiet suddenly. Glanced away for a second. When she looked back up at him, her face was as serious as he’d ever seen it. “I don’t know what I want … other than more of this. More of you.”

Brock lifted her beautiful face on the edge of his hand. “Take all you want.”

She brought her arms around the back of his neck and kissed him like she meant to never let go. He held her, mouths joined and needy, as he walked them both into the large shower and turned on the spray. Warm water coursed all around them, drenching them as they continued to touch and stroke and kiss.

Jenna set their pace and he gladly submitted to her, leaning back against the cold marble tile of the shower when she broke away from his mouth and slowly sank down before him. She ran her mouth over his chest and stomach, her tongue following the patterns of his
glyphs
while her wet hands slid up and down his stiff shaft. He nearly lost it when her lips closed around the head of his cock. She sucked him deep, rendering him mindless after just a few moments of her sweet, wet torture.

“Ah, Christ,” he hissed, so very close to the edge already. “Come up here now.”

He pulled her up against his hard body and kissed her hungrily, thrusting his tongue into the hot sheath of her mouth the way he was dying to be inside her sex. He reached down and parted her legs from behind, spreading the firm, wet mounds of her pretty ass. He hauled her against him and brought his hand around to the slick, hot core of her body.

“I need to be inside you,” he growled, hunger ratcheting so tight he felt ready to explode.

Bracing his feet on the floor of the shower, his spine pressed to the wall, he lifted her up onto him. Slowly, hissing with the pure white-hot pleasure of it, he guided her down the full length of his cock.