Edge of Dawn Page 0,86

it too. He felt her craving for him, raw and thirsting. He heard it in her breathless moan, as she clutched at him and arched beneath him, her head craned to the side on the pillow, granting him total access to her carotid.

She wanted more of him. More than he was willing to give. He couldn’t let her drink now, not when her link to him would only increase her pain tenfold when they were parted by death.

“Please,” she gasped. “Oh, God . . . Kellan . . .”

God help him, he nearly gave in to her plea when she came in that next instant, her fingernails scoring his shoulders, his name a throaty roar as her release crested and broke. He wanted to bleed for her.

More than anything in that moment, he wanted to bind her to him and give her the same depth of pleasure she was giving him now. But he reined in the impulse with narrowly held control and dubious honor. Pressing his mouth to her open vein, he sealed the punctures with his tongue and braced himself for the rolling tide of her climax. Every nuance of her emotions branded themselves on his senses. She came with the same unbridled intensity that she did most everything else in her life, her climax astonishing him with its force as the waves of her body’s release flowed through his veins as if his own.

He couldn’t slow the tempest building within him now too. With Mira’s orgasm still crashing over him, Kellan came too, shouting with the ferocity of it as his seed blasted out of him, scalding and ferocious.

And Mira’s sweet, welcoming body accepted all that he had to give.

He didn’t know how long it took before the aftershocks finally began to recede. Could have been moments. Could have been hours.

All he knew was the warm cushion of her body beneath him on the bed, her limbs still tangled around his, her fingers playing in the hair at his nape while he rested his head next to her shoulder.

It was her quiet voice that brought him back to the here and now.

Back to the reality of what they still faced.

“I don’t want you to go to the Order.” He felt her worry in the dull throb of her pulse, in the tang of dread that filtered through their new bond, into him. “I’ve changed my mind, Kellan. About wanting you to plead your case, trying to convince the Order and the Council to pardon you. I don’t want you to go anywhere near D.C. Neither one of us can ever go back there.”

“Ah, Mouse.” He kissed the bare curve of her shoulder, then came up on one elbow so he could meet her troubled gaze. “You don’t mean that. You’ve never been one to run and hide. That was always more my territory, remember? And look where that’s gotten us.”

“I don’t care,” she murmured, a stubborn edge to her tone. “Let’s just stay here, like this. For as long as we can, let’s just be together and make this last. Whatever it takes.”

He kissed her again, on the mouth this time, unrushed and tender. “I don’t want this to end either. Not now or ever. But I don’t want it if it means forcing you into a life of skulking in shadows and fearing what lies around every corner. I can’t do that, Mira. And we can’t stay here. It’s not safe for any of us now. We all have to get out of here soon, go to another location. Somewhere out of the line of fire.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere safe.”

His dread about the Order closing in on him was still very real and disturbing. And the prospect of either a stealth death squad or, after last night’s turn of events, a full-scale invasion was more than he was willing to risk. A sick guilt weighed down on him when he thought of Candice and Doc and Nina coming under heavy weapons fire amid the chaos of a raid. As for Mira, he knew his Breedmate well enough to realize that she would fight to her own death if she thought she could save him.

As he would for her.

And would, in a short time from now.

He hadn’t been much of a leader to his crew of rebels, not that it had ever been his intent to lead them. He hadn’t been anything close to a worthy mate to Mira either, and that he wanted more than anything.

But he still had