Free Daysider (Nightsiders) by Susan Krinard Page A

came of her mixed heritage. It was so muted that he couldn’t identify it, but it had the effect of releasing the last, pitiful scraps of his reason.
    He moved to her other breast, licking and nipping, raising himself high enough to work his hand under her waistband. He found her undergarment, damp with perspiration, and reached beneath.
    She was wet and hot and ready, pushing up against him with an uninhibited boldness that took his breath away in spite of all she’d already done to him. He stroked her, distantly aware of her moans of pleasure as she found his cock and rubbed it through his pants, tracing its contours and molding it with her fingers. He closed his eyes and groaned when she began to unzip him. Only moments now. A few quick movements to free themselves of their clothes, and then—
    The muzzle of a gun barrel came up hard against the side of Damon’s head.
    “Get off her,” Michael snarled, “before I blow your frickin’ bloodsucker brains out.”

Chapter 5
    A lexia heard her partner’s voice as if through muffling layers of gauze that seemed to fill her head and keep her thoughts from comprehending what was truly happening. Her body throbbed—not with pain, but pleasure—and her breasts ached as if she had scratched them on the sharp little branches of the manzanitas growing nearby.
    She opened her eyes. It took her a moment to recognize what she was seeing: two faces, both male and as pitiless as the Court that had condemned Garret to a lifetime of servitude.
    “Cover her up,” one of the men said—Michael, his blond hair mussed and his face smudged with dirt. The other man, the one whose scent still bathed her skin, laid something on top of her...his jacket, still warm from the heat of his body.
    “Alexia,” Michael said, staring down at her. “Are you all right?”
    No. Not all right. The pleasure was beginning to fade, replaced by a sense of something profoundly wrong with her body. She began to remember what had happened since Damon—yes, that was the other man—had left her alone, hot and shivering and barely aware that he had gone away.
    Then there had been brief moments of lucidity between much longer spans of darkness, the consequences of the illness raging inside her body. When Damon had come back for her, she had been half out of her mind. More than half. She had known she needed something, something important, that only Damon could give her.
    Garret. She had said something about Garret. And then she’d forgotten about her half brother, forgotten everything, and...
    She felt frantically under the borrowed jacket. Her uniform shirt and undershirt were torn wide open. The bandage was gone, and her shoulder wound was nothing but a patch of puckered skin, cool to the touch. She brushed her lips with her fingers. They were bruised and sore.
    God. What had she done? What had he done?
    “I can kill him now if you want me to,” Michael said, his voice ringing with hatred. He held the muzzle of his gun to Damon’s temple, just as when they’d first met. Damon looked steadily at Alexia.
    She tried to sit up, but a surging tide of dizziness forced her back down. The borrowed jacket slipped to the ground, and she pulled her own jacket closed over her breasts as she fought to clear her mind.
    “No,” she said, as steadily as she could. “It wasn’t what you thought, Michael.”
    “Then what was it? It looked to me like he was about ready to tear your chest open.”
    Was that what he’d seen? Which would be worse—his believing that Damon meant to take her blood or that they were having sex in the middle of a dangerous mission?
    Sex with a Daysider. And she’d been willing. More than willing.
    “He didn’t hurt me,” she insisted. “It wasn’t his fault.”
    Mike scowled at her, contempt in his eyes. Not only for Damon, but for her. Judging her, even before she had a chance to get him alone and explain.
    How could she ever do that when she didn’t understand it