Free Tempted by Midnight: A Midnight Breed Novella (1001 Dark Nights) by Lara Adrián Page B

tomorrow Lazaro would be taking her back to the States put a pang of regret in her breast. She wanted to stay a bit longer with Savage and Jehan.
    She wanted to get to know them: Savage and his easy charm and gorgeous smile. Jehan, with his intriguing past and enigmatic personality. She wanted to know what obligation awaited him in Morocco, and why was he trying to outrun it. Against her own sense of logic or self-preservation, Melena also wanted to stay long enough to understand what had inspired Trygg’s terrifying animosity toward women.
    And Lazaro...
    Would there ever be enough time in this life to unravel all of his torment and secrets and dark, hidden thoughts? Would he even allow her that, if by some miracle they did have more time? All those rooms of his upstairs, missing memories...she wanted to help him fill them back up again.
    She wanted to be the one to save him this time.
    “Come on,” Sav said. “You really shouldn’t be down here in the operations compound. Lazaro will have our balls if—”
    The warrior’s words cut short as a gust of cold, dark air seemed to blow in from the far end of the corridor. He was there. Melena waited to hear Lazaro growl his fury at the men, or demand to know what she was doing back in the Order’s domain after he prohibited her from distracting his team.
    But he didn’t growl or demand anything. He just stared at her in silence, his sapphire gaze trained on her alone.
    Intense. Penetrating. Focused on her with searingly sensual regard.
    She trembled a little under that potent gaze, not from anything resembling fear. Seeing him there, looking at her as though no one and nothing else existed but the two of them, it was all she could do to keep from launching herself at him from down the corridor and flying into his arms.
    But Melena held back. And now she noticed that there was something different about him tonight. Something different in the relaxed state of his glyphs , in his schooled expression.
    “You were gone for a long time,” she murmured. And then she did start to approach him, though not with the jubilation she felt just a moment ago. This was something heavier. Something that stung as the realization began to dawn on her. “You’ve fed. You went out to find a blood Host. A woman?”
    He didn’t deny it.
    Damn him, he just stood there, watching impassively as she slowed to a stop in front of him. The array of skin markings on his arms under his rolled-back sleeves were calm, satiated. “Did you fuck her too, Lazaro?”
    Behind her, Melena heard Jehan quietly clear his throat. There was brief movement in the corridor at her back, followed by the polite closing of a door as the two warriors made a hasty exit.
    “Did you?” she repeated, now that it was just she and Lazaro in the passageway.
    He swore, roundly, fiercely under his breath. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
    She scoffed. “You know what’s ridiculous? Sitting around waiting for you to return. Hoping that I didn’t somehow push you away tonight. But how can I push you away when I never had you in the first place?”
    She swept past him on a wounded, furious cry. She didn’t know if he followed. In that moment, she didn’t care.
    But he had followed her. She had only made it to the main floor of the mansion’s residential wing when Lazaro halted her by grasping her hand. “Melena—”
    “You know what else is ridiculous?” she fumed at him. “Hoping you’d come back and tell me that you realize there’s something serious going on between us too.” She glanced away, giving a shake of her head. “It’s ridiculous to expect that a man who’s been living his life like a ghost for twenty years could ever admit that he actually feels something again.”
    Wrenching out of his light hold, she ran for the stairs. She heard him stalking up behind her, but he didn’t stop her now. Her breath was heaving by the time she found herself in the center of Lazaro’s palatial living room suite.
    “I