Kiss of the Night by Sylvia Day Read Free Book Online Page A

wanted to earn her trust for himself. He hoped like hell she realized what it had cost him to deny them both tonight. His hunger for her was a driving force, making his jaw ache and his entire body tense. Lust, he knew well. This kind of need was completely unfamiliar, goaded as it was by respect for her strength and tenderness for her vulnerabilities.
    Blood and sex. That was all he could have of her.
    He prayed that would be enough to sate him.
    * * * * *
    Wielding her flashlight carefully, Briana made her way through the pitch-black cargo bay until she found James. She wrinkled her nose at the sight of him frozen in his kneeling position between two crates, his eyes open and sightless. The poor thing looked so sad and kind of creepy. She searched along his nape until she found the tiny reset button. James blinked and then scowled before rising.
    “I do not like Captain Night, Mistress,” he grumbled.
    “I’m sorry, James. The captain turned out to have a bit of a possessive streak.”
    “He has no reason to feel any ownership of you.” He paused a moment with his head cocked to the side. “All systems are working correctly and the link between us was not broken, but if something had happened to you, I would have been unable to respond.”
    “Nothing happened,” she soothed, running a hand along his arm. “Let’s get out of here. This place gives me the willies.” With its three-story-tall ceiling and massive cranes, the vast space made her shiver.
    James followed. “Quite a bit happened. You and the captain are now involved.”
    Blushing, Bree shut the cargo door behind them. “I wouldn’t say that. We—”
    “Became intimate,” he said flatly. “I knew you had considered that scenario a possibility, but I had hoped your better sense would assert itself.”
    “Excuse me?”
    Droids were programmed to never aggressively contradict their owners. Because of her passionate nature, she’d had James’ programming altered a little to facilitate discussion, knowing that listening to a purely logical viewpoint would help her considerably. However, discussing her sex life was not one of the things she’d wanted to debate. And discussing the intimacy she’d shared with Alex seemed… wrong . It was too private to share.
    “I apologize,” he said quickly, reading her irritation. “How you handle your personal affairs is for you to decide. It is simply beyond my reasoning to understand why you would invest so much of your life and risk your very existence for a cause, then jeopardize it so easily by aligning yourself with a known criminal.”
    “I’m not aligning myself with him!” she argued and then her face heated again. They’d aligned all right. Perfectly. She shivered in remembrance. She’d known Alex would be an expert lover, but to make her come repeatedly without using his cock? Hell, she’d had the best orgasms of her life last night. What would it be like when he actually did fuck her?
    “I am equipped with all the tools needed to please you just as well as Night can,” James said, his hand coming to rest on the small of her back. But unlike when Alexei touched her, Briana felt no thrill of awareness or spark of heat. Some owners had been known to fall in love with their droid companions, but Bree had never been able to look past the fact that James’ emotions were not real and with a simple code change or two, he could care for another owner just as well as he cared for her.
    “I know your thoughts, Mistress, and because of that I can touch you in just the way you desire at just the moment you desire it. No one else can do that for you.”
    “Thank you for the offer, James, but you know how I feel about that.”
    “Sex with a living being who doesn’t love you is better than sex with a droid whose sole purpose for existence is to serve you?”
    Disgruntled by his strange mood, she asked, “What is up with you today?”
    James shrugged. “You seem determined to ignore your own doubts.