Midnight Awakening (16 page)

He saw the outrage spark in her eyes, but it was her humiliation that struck him like a blow to the gut. It was considered crass in the extreme to speak publicly of the blood bonds between a female and her mate—even worse, to speak of it in mixed company.

To suggest that an unbonded Breedmate take a male for sustenance alone was beyond profane.

“I am a widow,” she said quietly. “I am in mourning—”

“Five years,” Tegan reminded her, his voice sounding tight even to his own ears. “Where will you be in another five? Or ten? You’re letting yourself die on your feet and you know it. Don’t ask me to help you get there faster.”

She stared up at him mutely, her delicate throat working as she swallowed what was likely a sob. Maybe a curse that he go straight to hell, which was probably where he was heading even before this ugly display.

“You’re right, Tegan,” she whispered, not a trace of weakness or any hitch in her voice. “You are right…and I concede that you’ve made your point.”

With squared shoulders, she pivoted around and walked calmly out of the lab, a vision of stoic dignity. Tegan felt like an ass, watching her leave in rigid silence. After she disappeared from view, he exhaled a sharp curse.

“What the fuck are you looking at?” he barked to Chase, who had risen from the table he’d been seated at. The ex-Darkhaven agent had his hand curled around the butt of a handgun that was holstered across his chest. His expression was nothing short of murderous.

“Screw this,” Tegan growled. “I’m outta here.”

Not surprisingly, Chase was right on his heels. He gave Tegan’s shoulder a hard shove as the two of them exited to the corridor outside the lab.

“You son of a bitch. She didn’t deserve that kind of treatment—least of all from someone like you.”

No, she didn’t. But it was necessary. There was no way in hell he was going to put himself in close quarters again with Elise, let alone make her his accomplice on this mission to Berlin. He’d needed to shut her down, and shut her down hard. So what if he’d made himself into a bigger asshole for doing it publicly. He’d only fortified what everyone already thought of him.

Tegan met Chase’s furious look and affected a callous smile. “You care so much about the female, Harvard? Why don’t you go console her like you’re burning to do. Just do us all a favor and keep her the fuck away from me.”

Chase got up in his face, blue eyes flashing raw anger. “You’re a real dick, you know that?”

“Yeah?” Tegan shrugged. “Last time I checked, I wasn’t campaigning for any Mr. Congeniality awards.”

“Arrogant motherf—”

Parting his lips, Tegan hissed through his lengthening fangs as he bore down on Chase, cutting off the further round of insult. He half hoped the irate vampire would push him into a fight. Part of him craved to know Chase’s feelings of torment and rage, and as torqued as he was right now, he wouldn’t turn down a chance to bruise his knuckles in a little hand-to-hand.

But Dante smoothly intervened, coming out of the lab at that very second to grab Chase’s arm and physically pull the warrior out of Tegan’s path. “Shit, Harvard. Don’t go getting yourself killed now that I’ve almost got you trained. What a friggin’ waste that would be, eh?”

After a few seconds of interference, Chase simmered down, but his eyes were still hot on Tegan even as Dante tugged him up the corridor. In the lab, Gideon was back at his keyboard. Nikolai, Brock, and Kade got back to business too, all of them acting as though Tegan hadn’t just come off like a heartless bastard in front of a defenseless female.

Tegan cursed low under his breath. He had to get the hell out of there, and the way things were going, tomorrow night’s flight to Berlin wasn’t going to be soon enough.

He had somewhere he could go—the place he always went when shit started bearing down on him. Sometimes he’d disappear there for nights on end; none of his brethren in the Order had ever been there. It was his own private hell, a forsaken, hollow place, filled with death. Right about now, it sounded like a fucking holiday.

Elise stood in the center of a large, mostly vacant chamber in the compound, feeling as if she’d had the wind knocked out of her. She was still shaking from her confrontation with Tegan, but whether it was from humiliation or anger, she wasn’t sure. What he’d done to her in front of his brethren was inexcusable, incredibly cold. He had to know that what he suggested was blasphemous and profanely insulting—not just to her, but to the warriors who’d been in the room to hear it. Only the lowest females living among the Breed would engage in a blood bond without a solemn commitment and a deeply shared love.

The blood bond was the most sacred communion between a Breedmate and the male she chose as her own. The ultimate intimacy, it was very often a sexual act, and one never entered into lightly. To use a vampire’s blood only to further one’s longevity and strength was simply not done. Not by anyone Elise knew.

But she couldn’t deny that Tegan’s observations of her had been the truth.

What he’d said was cruel and crude…and utterly accurate. She was willingly wasting away, which was her prerogative as a widowed Breedmate. But she wanted to have an active part in thwarting the Rogues, and it was foolish of her to think she could do so if she continued on as she was.

Elise glanced at the barren room around her. The white, windowless walls contained no color at all—no pleasing art or photographs, like she’d seen in the rest of the compound. No sofa, no electronic equipment or computers, no books. Nothing of personal expression at all.

Near the far wall stood a tall black cabinet, and a black wooden bench beside it, underneath which was two pairs of large black leather boots, arranged with military precision. There was a large bed in the adjacent room, but even that wasn’t particularly inviting. Just gunmetal gray sheets and a coal-colored blanket folded neatly at the foot of the king-sized mattress. Elise had never seen a soldiers’ barracks, but she imagined they’d look like this…maybe not this cold and impersonal.

She knew where she was, of course. She’d known where she was heading when she navigated the labyrinth of corridors after removing herself from the embarrassment she’d endured in the Order’s control room.

She knew what she was about to do now, but that didn’t make her heart skip any less frantically when she heard Tegan’s hard gait approaching from outside the open door of his private quarters.

That long-legged stride slowed, then ceased altogether as the air stirred coldly, announcing his arrival. His immense body filled the door frame, muscular arms crossed over his chest, his powerful, denim-clad thighs spread in a battle stance. He didn’t speak at first, but there was no need for words when his emerald-green eyes narrowed on her, as sharp as gemstones and as cold as a glacier.

“Tegan—”

“If you’re looking for an apology, you can forget it.”

Elise held that menacing gaze as she forced herself to approach him. “I’m not here for that,” she told him, surprised there was no tremor in her voice for the way her pulse was skittering in her veins. “I came here to tell you that you were right back there. I do need the strength of a blood bond, but I’m not looking for a mate. I need an uncomplicated arrangement, with someone who isn’t going to care what I do, or when I walk away…so I choose you.”

CHAPTER
Thirteen

E
very smartass, apathetic reply that might have sprung to his lips fled, along with all the blood in his brain. Tegan stood there in the doorway of his private apartments, struck stupid with shock at what he just heard.

He sure as hell never saw this coming.

And although all good sense told him to deny Elise’s proposal—shut the goddamn idea down before another second passed—his mouth didn’t seem capable of speech. An erotic mental image burned instantly into his mind: Elise’s lips pressed against his skin, her sweet pink tongue lapping at him, her mouth drawing deeply from his vein.

He wanted that, he realized in a flash of disbelief.

Wanted it so bad he shuddered with the force of it.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, finding his voice at last. “You’re insane. And I’m leaving. I only came to grab a few of my things and I’m out of here.”

When he stalked forward, meaning to dismiss her and her ludicrous suggestion without another word, Elise moved into his way. He glared down at her, but she didn’t so much as flinch under the deadly look that would have withered warriors and Rogues alike.

“What are you running from, Tegan?” Soft lavender eyes fixed on him in defiant challenge. “I’m sure it can’t be me scaring you off.”

He scoffed at the idea, refusing to let her see how close to the mark she might be. “Do you know what you’re asking for? If you take my blood, a part of you will be linked to me for as long as I’m alive. It’s an unbreakable connection.”

“I know very well what the blood bond entails. All of it.”

Her sudden flush seemed to indicate that she was also aware of the sexual nature of the act. Vampire blood had a highly aphrodisiac quality. In females without the Breedmate mark, the effect was often a rush of fierce desire; in females like Elise, who were capable of bearing Breed offspring, the drinking of Breed blood nearly always sent them into a heated sexual hunger that demanded to be slaked.

“I’m not what you’re used to,” he told her sternly, the only warning he could think of now. “Don’t think that I’ll be gentle with you. I wouldn’t show you any mercy.”

Her little smile was mocking. “I’d hardly expect that you would.”

With that, she turned and strode away from him, her spine impeccably erect as she went into his bedroom to await him. Tegan raked his fingers through his hair, knowing he had about two seconds to get a grip on himself and walk away from this certain disaster. Any longer for him to think about it, and he didn’t know if he’d have the will to refuse her.

In the adjacent room, he heard the soft clop of Elise’s shoes hitting the rug as she took them off. If he thought he could scare her out of going through with this, apparently all he’d done was fortify her resolve. She’d thrown a gauntlet here, and he had never been the kind of male to back down from a challenge.

Even now, when every survival instinct he possessed was clamoring for him to turn tail and run from a situation that had catastrophe written all over it.

Long moments ticked by.

And still she waited.

Tegan growled a dark oath.

Then, with hardly a conscious thought to command it, he brought the door to his apartments closed with the will of his mind and headed for the bedroom after her.

Some of Elise’s resolve wavered as Tegan came in behind her to his bedroom. There was a savage intensity in his slow steady stride and in the unblinking gaze trained on her. Suddenly she felt as if she were standing before a predator while it measured its options, preparing to close in for the kill.

“How do you want…” She let the words trail off, uncertain how to proceed now that she actually had him here. “Where shall I…?”

“The bed,” came his flat reply.

He began pulling off his black knit shirt, baring his
glyph
-marked torso. Their normal henna hue was deepening now, no longer the neutral shade indicating a placid mood, but blushing darker, the patterns beginning to saturate. Elise sat down on the very edge of the mattress and turned her head to avert her eyes from him. She heard the crush of fabric as Tegan set the shirt aside and came nearer to the bed.

“You’re overdressed,” he said, his warm breath tickling the side of her bare neck.

His presence so close to her was almost as startling as his words. Elise turned an anxious glance on him. “You mean for me to disrobe? I don’t see why I sh—”

“You will,” he said, leaving no room for argument. “If I were a cultured Darkhaven male and not the crude warrior that I am, I doubt you’d expect me to receive you fully clothed.”

It was true. Respect for the act of blood-bonding between vampire and Breedmate demanded that both parties come to each other without concealment, coercion, or reservation. Naked in body, commitment, and intent.

Tegan reached down to unfasten the zipper on his low-slung blue jeans.

As they sagged on his trim pelvis, Elise’s eyes fell unwillingly to the ridges of taut muscle that defined him, and to the trailing pattern of
dermaglyphs
that quite obviously continued all the way down to his naked, swelling groin. He wore nothing beneath, she realized in a state of instant panic.