Midnight Awakening (26 page)

“Focus on the one,” Tegan murmured, still holding her hand, still guiding her with his words and the protective warmth of his touch. “Pull one voice closer, even as the others begin to drift around you. They can’t touch you. You’re stronger than your gift, Elise. Your power is in you, in your own will.”

She felt everything he was saying. She knew it was true. With his fingers wrapped around hers, his voice a low purr near her ear, she believed that she was strong. She believed that she could do this…

“Feel your strength, Elise,” Tegan coached her. “There is no panic here, only calm. Your gift does not own you…you are in control.”

And so she was, she realized only now—knowing that what Tegan was showing her was just a glimmer of the control she was capable of. He was opening a door in her subconscious, and wherever it was that her Breedmate gift originated within her, Tegan was guiding her inside that place, letting her see the power of her own potential.

It was a revelation. Her temples still pounded from the onslaught of psychic pain, but it was a dull, manageable throb now that she was focusing, honing her skill. She wanted to keep working it, to keep pushing herself, but the exercise was also exhausting. The one voice she clung to began to slip out of her grasp, blending back into the din.

Outside her body and her mind, she felt the car slow to a stop. Footsteps approached, two pairs of them, joined by the efficient shuffle of the driver’s quick gait as he ran around the vehicle to get the door.

As soon as it opened, Tegan’s touch was gone.

Elise blinked, lifting her gaze to find Reichen outside the car, giving a beautiful raven-haired woman a brief kiss on the mouth. She was wrapped in a silvery fur coat—and from what Elise could tell, little else beneath it. On the side of her graceful throat was a pink bloom of color, only a fading rosebud mark to indicate the place where Reichen had no doubt fed from her just a short while ago.

“A pleasure as always, my darling Helene,” he said as the two of them parted. “You spoil me so well.”

Evidently the Darkhaven male’s personal business was of a very personal nature.

The woman’s glossy mouth curved into a catlike smile at his charm. She didn’t wait at the car for him to leave, but pivoted on staggeringly tall silver stiletto heels and sauntered back into a red, unmarked door of the building where Reichen’s car sat idling.

“My thanks for the curb service,” the German said as he crawled into the limousine and took a seat opposite Tegan and Elise. “Not to imply I don’t enjoy your company, but I rather hoped you might be longer at your appointment. You finished quickly.”

Tegan smirked. “So did you, from the looks of it.”

Reichen chuckled, unabashed as he lounged back in the seat and the car took off. He smelled like expensive perfume, blood, and sex. Not that he cared, Elise thought as she considered him. His broad, sated grin said he couldn’t be in a happier, more familiar state.

Andreas Reichen was a very attractive male, mysterious and sophisticated, but even his smoldering sensuality paled next to Tegan’s raw appeal. Elise practically burned from the heat of Tegan’s thigh where it pressed unassumingly against hers. His head was tilted down, eyes hooded beneath the thick fringe of his eyelashes.

He kept his arms crossed over his chest now, and she missed the warm feel of his touch. She craved it, especially as the limousine navigated through the busy city streets and her Breedmate gift continued to buffet her senses. Instead she tried to use the brief lesson he’d given her, taking what he’d shown her and wielding it against the crush of her psychic pain.

More than anything, she wanted to grab Tegan’s hand again and feel his calming strength.

But he only put a measure of distance between them. He moved away from her on the seat, a subtle shift of his thigh that left a gap of space in its place. When they arrived a short while later at the lakeshore Darkhaven, Tegan leaped out of the car almost as soon as Klaus slowed to a stop on the front driveway.

“I have to report in to the compound,” he said, keeping his gaze averted. He stalked off before either Elise or Reichen could get out of the car.

“All business, that one,” Reichen remarked with a shake of his head. “May I get you something to eat in the house, Elise? You must be hungry.”

She was famished, actually, having last eaten around noon. “That would be lovely, thank you.”

Elise let Reichen help her out of the vehicle, and took his proffered arm as they walked up to the main entrance of the estate. But all the while, her thoughts were fixed on Tegan, and on quelling the strong—evidently onesided—desire he stirred in her.

CHAPTER
Twenty-one

T
egan closed his cell phone after reporting in to the compound and leaned back on the ridiculously froufrou velvet settee in his private room of the Darkhaven. He was pissed off that the night had resulted in a stalemate with Petrov Odolf, and more rattled than he cared to admit by the Bloodlust reality check he’d gotten at the facility. Seeing Odolf and the other Rogues was a damn good reminder of the fire he’d walked through after Sorcha’s death.

He’d managed to beat his Bloodlust all those years ago, but the fight had been brutal. And the hunger was always with him, even when he was trying his hardest to deny it.

Being near Elise only magnified his craving. Damn, but that female put his blood on a slow, rising boil.

That moment alone with her in Reichen’s car—touching her, walking her through her psychic distress—had been a colossal mistake. It only made him realize how deeply he wanted to help her. That he didn’t want to see her in pain.

That despite centuries of religiously honed apathy, he was starting to care. He was genuinely beginning to have feelings for her, a bold and complicated Darkhaven beauty who could have her choice of any male, Breed or otherwise. He truly cared about Elise. He wanted her…and he knew that it was only a matter of time before he went after her like the predator he was.

Touching her soft skin had made him recall how good it had been to feel her body pressed against him, how delicious her mouth fit his own…how sweet even the smallest taste of her blood had been on the tip of his tongue.

Christ.

He hadn’t been able to bolt out of the car fast enough.

And the hour he’d spent alone up here in his guest room hadn’t done much to cool the need that urged him to go downstairs and find Elise. Sate himself with her the way Reichen had so freely been able to do with the woman in the city.

The fire Elise had stoked in him from nearly the moment he set eyes on her was banked, but still burning.

Maybe he could douse it, Tegan thought, stalking into the bathroom to turn on the shower. God knew he wanted to get the feel of the containment facility off his skin as well. Seeing those incarcerated, mostly catatonic Rogues had pulled him back to an ugly time in his own life—one he had no desire to relive, even in passing memory. That part of him was buried deep, where it belonged.

He stripped off his shirt and weapons and dropped the lot of it on a chair beside the settee. His fingers were working the zipper of his black fatigues when a knock sounded on the closed door to the hall. He ignored it, wondering if it might be Reichen looking to drag him into a few hours of sin back in the city. Part of him was tempted by the thought—anything to slake the coiling hunger he had for Elise.

The knock came again, and this time Tegan threw open the door without a thought.

As the panel swung wide, he was surprised—and not a little furious—to see the subject of his frustration standing there. Just what he didn’t need right now. Gorgeous as ever, still wearing the proper navy pantsuit she had on at the clinic, the sight of Elise was a major dose of gasoline tossed on his fire.

“What the hell are you doing up here?” His voice was harsh, more rough than he intended.

Elise didn’t so much as flinch. “I thought we might talk.”

“What happened to Reichen finding you some dinner downstairs?”

“He did. That was almost an hour ago. I…waited for a while to see if you might come out of your room, but when you didn’t, I decided to come to you.”

He stared at her for a minute, then mentally cut the shower off and turned to grab his shirt and weapons holster. “I was just on my way out.”

“Oh.” She didn’t look like she was buying it. “What could be so urgent all of a sudden?”

“Just a little thing called duty, sweetheart. I’m not used to spending my nights sitting on my ass when I could be outside killing something.” He said it deliberately to shock her, and he probably took a bit too much satisfaction at the disturbed frown that creased her forehead. “I need to get out of this place for a while. I should be in the city, on the streets, where I’m useful. Not wasting my fucking time sitting around here.”

He expected her to give him space and be glad he was leaving. His cold attitude had scared away countless Breed males, even among the Order, so he didn’t expect this female to linger for long.

For a second, he really thought she was going to retreat like he’d intended her to do.

But then she strode right over the threshold and into his room.

“You’re not going anywhere tonight,” she said, soft but resolute. There was apprehension in her expression, but damn if she didn’t close the door behind her and keep coming toward him. “Tonight we need to talk. I need to know where things stand. Where
we
stand, Tegan.”

He glared. “You think it’s wise to shut yourself in here with me? It won’t take long for Reichen and the rest of this house to figure out where you are and think the worst. He may be discreet when needed, but the others who live here—”

“I don’t care what anyone else thinks. I just need to know what you think.”

He scoffed, a grating sound that held more mockery than he’d intended. “I think you’re out of your fucking head.”

She glanced down, gave a little nod. “I’m confused, I’ll give you that. I don’t know if you…I don’t know what to make of you, Tegan. Not from day one. I don’t know how to play this game that we seem to be playing together.”

“I don’t play games,” he said, deadly serious. “I don’t have the interest or the time—”

“Bullshit!”

He arched a brow at her unexpected blurt of profanity. He was ready to push again—seething with the compulsion to shove her away hard, before she got any closer to the truth of what he was feeling. But the glint of anger in her eyes gave him pause.

She crossed her arms over her breasts and took a couple of paces nearer to him, making it clear that if he pushed now, she was sure as hell going to push back.

“What do you call it when you’re tender with me one moment, then cold as ice the next? You kiss me, only to push me away a minute later.” She drew a breath, letting it out on a frustrated-sounding sigh. “Sometimes you look at me as if you might really feel something for me, but then…then you blink and it’s like the feeling was never there in the first place. What is that, if not your twisted idea of fun?”

Since she wasn’t about to stand down, he pivoted away from her on a snarl and went for the duffel bag that held more of his gear and weapons, ignoring her attempt to goad him. He reached in and blindly grabbed for a cache of combat supplies. He pulled out a sheathed blade, then a clip of titanium rounds for his 9mm—anything to keep his hands moving and his focus trained on something other than the maddening awareness of the woman who was slowly walking up behind him.

Incredibly, his fingers were shaking as he put his gear down on the settee’s velvet cushions. His vision was going sharp, his field of sight taking on a hard edge as his pupils narrowed and a flood of amber fire bathed everything in a hunter’s light. His gums ached with the emergence of his fangs, his mouth watering with the hunger he’d barely been able to stave off before Elise arrived in his room.

Now that she was here, provoking him with her mere presence, he didn’t know how long he could hold the beast at bay. It had been snapping at its leash since the moment he first laid eyes on her.

Behind him, he heard the thick Persian rug crush with the subtle movement of her feet. He closed his eyes, his senses flooded with awareness of her.

With the keen, aching want of her.

“You say you don’t play games, but you’re a master at it, Tegan. In fact, I think you’ve been playing at them for so long you can’t remember how to be real anymore.”