Undying Embrace by Jessica Lee Read Free Book Online Page B

lip. The taste of his blood filled his mouth. He couldn’t breathe.
    “Arran?”
    Running both palms over his hair, he gulped for a mouthful of oxygen. “Uh…” He sucked in hard for another breath, unable to take his eyes off the target every cell of his being wanted to claim. Get out! One foot moved back. Then another. “I gotta go.”
    “Wh-what? Why?” She jumped up from the stairs. Confusion creased her brow. Maybe hurt. But he had to go. She needed a man. A real man. Not him. He hadn’t been human for more than a century. Gabrielle wanted to pretend he was more than the monster who owned him. She was dead wrong.
    There was no way she could handle the beast he kept checked in her presence. Not after the trauma she’d suffered from the fangs of a DEAD. How the hell could she ever get past that?
    “There’s someplace I gotta be.” He shoved his hand in his pocket and pulled out his keys as he turned for the door. Air. Now.
    “You’re kidding me, right?”
    He didn’t look back. “No joke,” he said with his hand on the doorknob. Arran yanked the door wide. He risked a glance over his shoulder. She stood, her eyes wide. “I’ll be in touch.” With the door closed behind him, he leaned on the warm wood for a second, drawing a greedy lungful of air. No honeysuckle. Nothing but the scent of pine and grass rode the air, battling for space with the fumes rolling off the nearby interstate. Thank God.
    …
    Elle watched the door close behind Arran. He’d left.
    Wow. Déjà vu?
    After their first kiss the evening the mansion had been invaded, he’d walked away as if that had been a sinful mistake. Elle closed her eyes, and for a moment, she was there once again in Arran’s arms on the floor in the Enclave’s Headquarters. Every detail of that night flickered past her mind’s eye with crystal clarity. Never in her life had she been kissed the way Arran had taken her mouth. Hard. Dominant. Stealing her breath and her heart in the process. Then Logan’s booming voice had fractured the moment.
    “What the fuck?” Two large hands grabbed Arran’s shoulders. Logan yanked Arran, tumbling Elle onto her rear, and spun him around into the opposite wall.
    Then Logan was in Arran’s face. “You disgust me,” the other vampire had spat. “You save her from a DEAD, so that gives you the right to ram your tongue down her throat and paw all over her?”
    “Wait a minute!” she yelled from behind them.
    “Stay out of this.” Arran’s expression said he deserved everything Logan wanted to rain down on his head.
    What the hell was going on?
    Logan’s hand circled Arran’s throat, knocking the back of his head into the wall. “Don’t ever tell her what to do. You don’t deserve to breathe her exhale.”
    Arran grew still under the pressure of his grip, submitting to the other warrior. So unlike the vampire she knew. Logan eased back, releasing his throat.
    “You’re right,” Arran said.
    “Arran, don’t. Don’t say that,” she pleaded. “You know that’s not true.”
    “No, he’s right,” he continued. “About everything.” Sliding from around Logan, Arran met her gaze. “I’m sorry. I had no right to touch you. Please. Forgive me. It won’t happen again.”
    Her palm found her sternum, and she rubbed the growing ache behind the bone. The memory still hurt as if it had all happened yesterday and not a few years ago. And now, counting his exit from her and the Enclave, for a third time, he’d walked out on her. Dazed, she stood motionless, staring at the door until the hurt and anger inside had festered long enough. “You asshole.” And to think, a few seconds ago she was about to forgive him. Ellewasn’t sure who she was more pissed at, herself or him.
    Whirling around, she went for her keys. Metal clinked against the glass bowl as she wrapped her fingers around them before hurrying to the door. There was one thing she did know for sure. “Arran MacLain, you are not going to do this to