Defy the Dawn (Midnight Breed #14) - Lara Adrian Page 0,30

to you last night?” He grinned, but it was a hungered smile. “I wanted to bite these buttons loose with my teeth on that dance floor.”

With that, he took off her blouse, then slid her undone bra off her arms as well. Brynne watched his gaze drink in the sight of her glyphs. Being something even purer than Gen One, her skin markings arced and twisted all over her torso and onto her limbs. Smaller flourishes danced along the undersides of her breasts and around her erect nipples.

Ordinarily, the glyphs were just a shade darker than her own pale skin, but with the intensity of her desire for Zael now, hers were awash in variegated hues of deep indigo, wine, and burnished gold. He traced some of them with his fingers, then bent his head to follow the looping line of one pattern with his tongue.

She hissed at the sensation of it. The warm, wet trail felt like fire on her skin. His touch inflamed her too. Caressing and stroking her breasts, he lifted his mouth to hers again and captured her bottom lip between his teeth. Brynne moaned, pleasure arrowing through her when she felt his tongue teasing the lethal points of her fangs.

It was a brazen thing to do—not only because she was Breed, but because he had no idea how sharp her hunger truly was.

She hadn’t fed in nearly a week. That was skating a thin enough edge in her day to day life, but now, with sexual need coiling around her as well, she was treading dangerous ground.

Zael wasn’t Breed, but he wasn’t human either. Nathan and Jordana had already proven that a blood bond was possible between Breed and Atlantean. The last thing Brynne wanted was to shackle herself to anyone in a bond that could never be broken—and that went double for Zael.

Especially when seeing her feed would show him the hideous secret she kept.

She rocked back on a snarl, tearing her mouth away from his.

Zael must have seen the misery in her eyes. He saw her torment, but he must have mistaken it as doubt. Doubt for what she wanted. Doubt for what she felt about him.

Frowning, he gave a rough shake of his head and took a step back from her.

“If you’re going to say no, Brynne, do it now.” His deep voice rasped, as raw and on edge as she felt. “Because if you let me take this any further with you—”

She didn’t give him the chance to finish. Before he could think for another second that she wanted anything other than the pleasure he was giving her, Brynne closed the scant distance between them. Zael caught her in his arms, and their mouths crashed together in a kiss that obliterated all words and doubts and pretenses.

She wanted him so fiercely, she could hardly stand it. And she needed him inside her.

Her fingers speared into his silky hair, she backed toward the bed and brought him down onto the mattress with her. She was no seductress—far from it—but with Zael she felt powerful, sexy . . . more wanted than she ever had before in her life.

Wanted by an immortal male whose race had despised the forbears of hers for thousands of years.

She and Zael couldn’t have been more different. He was born of light, and she was bred from a terrible darkness. But none of that mattered when Zael was caressing her naked breasts and kissing her as if he wouldn’t ever get enough.

His desire for her didn’t blaze from his irises the way hers did. His smooth, bronzed skin didn’t churn with color-drenched dermaglyphs to betray the depth of his need for her. When his mouth suckled and licked at hers, she didn’t feel the sharp abrasion of fangs.

But Zael was formidable in his need. His large, muscled body pressed her to the mattress beneath him. His fingers slid inside her panties as if he already owned every inch of her. His strokes were possessive, merciless. His thick moan rumbled against her mouth as he delved into her drenched cleft to roll the rough pad of his thumb over her aching clit in a teasing tempo that drove her wild.

Brynne arched her spine and ground her hips shamelessly, helplessly, against the wicked pleasure of his touch on her sensitive flesh. She couldn’t bite back her strangled cry as heat began to coil and spiral through her core.

“You like that,” Zael said. Not a question, but a confident statement of