A Taste of Midnight by Lara Adrián Read Free Book Online Page B

the table, striding naked with her, out of the kitchen and up the castle stairwell to the master bedroom on the second floor. His bedroom. The one he hadn’t set foot in for months.
    Not since he’d buried the ruined pieces of his old life and his quest to destroy Reiver began.
    He brought Danika into the room and set her down on the king-size four-poster bed. The thing was a relic, only a couple hundred years younger than he was. Its headboard, canopy, and carved supports were made of tooled black walnut, its thick downmattress cloaked in creamy sheepskin coverlets and wool blankets woven in MacBain red and black. Danika looked sexy as hell in the middle of it, propped up on her elbows, one slender leg bent at the knee.
    Malcolm wanted her all over again.
    Still.
    Her heavy-lidded gaze raked his naked body and she gave him a knowing smile, all the invitation he required.
    He prowled onto the bed and covered her, sank back into her welcoming warmth. He made love to her slowly this time, properly, the way a woman like her deserved to be pleasured. When they were both slicked in clean sweat and sated again, he stretched out alongside her and gathered her close. He stroked her pretty breasts, caressed her delicate throat and jawline. Tried to will his eager, all-too-obvious erection to heel. An exercise in futility when Danika reached down to touch him, wrapping her fingers around the shaft and tenderly petting its length.
    He groaned, savoring the feel of her hands on him. His curse was raw in his throat, as dark as the guilt that was suddenly rising up on him. He’d been able to push it aside so long as his senses were consumed with need, but now it gnawed at him.
    Danika’s touch went still. She was looking at him in concern now, forehead creased. “What is it, Mal? Am I doingsomething wrong?”
    “No.” He cursed again and brought her hand up to his mouth to place a kiss in her palm. “Nothing you’ve done is wrong. As for me … Christ.” He met her searching gaze, hated that he was making her think she was at fault somehow. He couldn’t keep his hands from seeking her out. His fingers craved the feel of her the same way his cock longed to be back inside her. “I feel like I’m betraying Conlan when I touch you. I’m betraying him by wanting you … now, as I did then.”
    She stared at him in silence, a flicker of surprise in her eyes. “You wanted me?” She gave a small shake of her head, dismissing the idea with a quiet laugh. “As I recall it, through all your travels and exploits at the time, there was hardly a woman you met that you didn’t eventually charm out of her virtue.”
    “But not you. And you were the only one I loved,” he confessed, too late to bite it back.
    He and Conlan had been friends for years, neighbors for even longer. They’d defended their lands together, rode into battles as a single force, as brothers. But as close as they’d been on the field and in duty, the two Breed males couldn’t have been more different. Malcolm craved adventure and was always ready to chase it. Conlan was the steady one, the reliable one. The one most deserving of an extraordinary female like Danika.
    Mal could still picture the night he and Con first saw her—thegolden, Nordic beauty and adopted daughter of a powerful Darkhaven leader from Copenhagen. She was in Scotland on sojourn, independent even then, a mere girl of eighteen, staying with Breed relations in Edinburgh. Mal had wasted no time making introductions, seeking to impress her with stories of his travels all over the world and his dangerous exploits.
    But it was Conlan who eventually won her over. Calm and considerate, steady Con.
    “You were so unsettled, always unpredictable,” she remarked now. “You would have broken my heart.”
    “Probably,” he admitted. “But I was an idiot then. I didn’t realize what you meant to me until Con confided that you and he were to be mated.”
    She swallowed, scarcely breathing now.