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  She pivoted away from him again, as if she was finished with their conversation and finished with him. Maybe that ice-cold shoulder had been enough to shut out all of the other men who tried to get close to Brynne, but not him.

  He’d seen the desire in her eyes when they had nearly kissed today. He’d felt her soften in his arms in that moment, not only resigned to the need that they both felt, but consumed by it with the same intensity that it owned him.

  She flinched when he came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. She stiffened under his touch, but he could feel the heavy spike of her pulse, and the sudden, rapid rhythm of her breathing. “If you’re so hell-bent on running away, at least be honest about it. You’re running away from me.”

  “I’m sure you’d like to think so.”

  “No, Brynne. I don’t want you to run away from me.” He swore, low under his breath, and he turned her around to face him. Her mouth was set in a firm line, but her glittering eyes softened as he held her. “I should be glad that you want to run away from me, from this. I should want that as badly as you seem determined to go.”

  To his astonishment, she trembled as the seconds stretched out between them. Bold, defiant, hard-headed Brynne stared at him in silent trepidation. She licked her lips, and he glimpsed the sharp white points of her fangs.

  “I told you earlier that I didn’t want anything to do with you, Zael.” Desperation crept into her voice. “Why can’t you accept that? Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

  “Because every time I look at you, I see the same desire in your eyes that I feel burning me up inside.”

  He brought one hand up to stroke the softness of her cheek. Pinkness rose into her face as his thumb flicked across her parted lips. It made her look so fragile, almost innocent. The color spread downward, along the delicate column of her throat, then into the open collar of her shirt and across the pretty swells of her breasts.

  Yes, Brynne Kirkland was hard-shelled and stubborn. Yes, she was a lethally powerful creature, born of a race his own had long feared and despised. But beneath her dermaglyph-covered skin, she was a woman. A woman who yearned for a man’s touch.

  His touch.

  “Wanting you this way is the last thing I should be doing, Brynne. But I’m not going to stand here and lie to you by pretending there’s nothing between us.” He caught her face in his palms. “I’m not going to stand here and let you lie about that either.”

  “Zael—” She moaned the instant their mouths met. Her hands flattened against his shoulders, but it wasn’t to push him away. As he took her deeper into his kiss, Brynne’s fingers curled into the loose white linen of his shirt. She clung to him, her body telling him everything her words could not.

  He growled low and possessive into her mouth as he pushed his tongue inside to meet hers. Her breath raced hot and heavy. The tips of her fangs grazed his lips as he claimed her hungrily, demanding her surrender. And she gave it to him.

  Holy fuck, did she ever.

  That kiss they’d been denied a short while ago only made the heat reignite all the hotter now.

  Their mouths joined in undeniable need, Zael skimmed his hands over her arms, then traced his fingers along her sides. She shivered as he slid his palms under her blouse and onto the soft, bare skin of her torso.

  The intricate lines of her glyphs throbbed beneath his fingertips, warm and pulsing. Unearthly and alive. Their pattern created a tempting, tactile roadmap across her belly and rib cage—one he craved to follow with his tongue.

  He wanted to uncover and devour every sweet inch of her body.

  But first, he wanted to hear her say the words.

  “Now tell me there’s nothing happening between us,” he rasped against her kiss-swollen lips.

  As he spoke, Zael reached around her and deftly unfastened her bra. The lacy cups slackened, freeing her naked breasts into his hands. She sighed deeply as he caressed her. Moaned sharply as he rolled the tight beads of her nipples between his fingers.

  “Tell me you haven’t been wanting this as much as I have, Brynne.”

  Her pleasured gasp tore out of her without resistance, but it wasn’t good enough.

  Pushing her shirt and bra out of the way, he bent his head and pulled one rosy nipple into his mouth. Each tug of his tongue and lips made the colors of her dermaglyphs intensify, their patterns churning and transforming in response to her rising desire. Brynne arched against him as he sucked and licked her. Her spine bowed, she plunged her fingers into his hair, her legs trembling beneath her.

  The scent of her arousal filled his nostrils. Spicy and sweet. Ethereal and bold. Like earth and heaven combined.

  Damn, she was lovely. Sexy as hell. Although he had bedded many women over his long lifetime, he had never been with a woman who was Breed. He never imagined he could want any woman the way he wanted Brynne.

  The cynical part of him tried to dismiss this need he felt for Brynne as nothing more than sexual novelty, just his libido craving a new diversion. But if that had been the case, he never would have denied her back in London. Refusing her had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done. And he wasn’t about to let her act as if he was alone in that torment.

  “Tell me you want me, Brynne. Tell me what you said to me the other night on that dance floor. Now, when there’s no whisky to hide behind. Nothing but you and me, and the truth between us.”

  He skated one hand down the length of her body, into the parted cleft of her thighs. The tiny scrap of black silk that covered her sex was soaked and so hot against Zael’s fingertips he groaned with the need to touch her, to taste her…to brand himself on all of her senses.

  He cupped his hand over her mound, one finger slipping beneath her panties to the silken heat of her naked folds. Her sex was slick and lush, her juices coating his fingertips as he caressed her swollen folds and the hardened bud of her clit.

  “Tell me now,” he said, “when you can’t take it back later or tell me I’m insane for thinking you feel this need too.”

  She whimpered, a tremor shuddering through her as he stroked her wet satin flesh. He teased the tight entrance of her sex, stopping just shy of penetration, despite that her thighs clamped tight around his hand in unspoken demand.

  He wanted to hear her admit the truth out loud, once and for all.

  “Say it, Brynne. Tell me you haven’t been wanting to feel me inside you from the moment we first saw each other right outside on that terrace last week.”

  She made an anguished sound and he glanced up to find her eyes blazing with fiery amber, her Breed pupils narrowed to thin slits. Her fangs gleamed from behind the plush line of her upper lip.

  She was beautiful under normal circumstances, but like this, she was primal and otherworldly, so fiercely sexy that she defied any description.

  Holding his gaze, Brynne licked her lips and the truth boiled out of her in a single word. “Yes.”

  On behalf of 1001 Dark Nights,

  Liz Berry and M.J. Rose would like to thank ~

  Steve Berry

  Doug Scofield

  Kim Guidroz

  Jillian Stein

  InkSlinger PR

  Dan Slater

  Asha Hossain

  Chris Graham

  Pamela Jamison

  Fedora Chen

  Jessica Johns

  Dylan Stockton

  Richard Blake

  BookTrib After Dark

  The Dinner Party Show

  and Simon Lipskar

  Table of Contents

  Book Description

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

    Lara Adrian, Midnight Untamed

  (Series: Midnight Breed # 14.50)