And as if the raw beauty of his body wasn't enough, Lucan's gorgeous skin was decorated with a jaw-dropping array of intricate tattoos. The complex design of arcing lines and interlocking patterns swirled around his pecs and ribbed abdomen, up over his broad shoulders, then down his thick biceps. Their color was elusive, variegated in shades of sea green, sienna, and wine-dark red that seemed to pulse toward richer hues the longer she stared at them.

When he tilted his head downward to lavish attention on her breasts, Gabrielle saw the tattoo that stretched up the back of his neck and into his dark hairline. She had wanted to trace the intriguing markings the first time she saw Lucan. Now, she gave in to the urge with abandon, letting her hands travel all over him, marveling at both the mysterious man and the unusual art he wore.

"Kiss me," she begged him, reaching down to clutch at his tattooed shoulders.

He started to rise up over her and Gabrielle arched into him, fevered with hunger, needing to feel him inside her. His erection was a heavy length of steely heat where it pressed between her thighs. Gabrielle slid her hands down and stroked him, lifting her hips to welcome him in.

"Take me," she whispered. "Fill me, Lucan. Now. Please."

He did not deny her.

The thick head of his sex pulsed, hard and demanding, at the entrance of her body. He was trembling, she realized dimly. His massive shoulders shook beneath her hands, as if he had been holding himself back all this time and was now about to burst. She wanted him to come apart like she had. She needed to have him inside her or she was going to die. He gave a strangled groan, his mouth at the sensitive crook of her neck.

"Yes," she urged him, shifting beneath him so that the shaft of his cock now cleaved the center of her. "Don't be gentle. I won't break."

His head reared up at last, and for an instant he stared down into her eyes. Gabrielle looked up at him from beneath heavy lids, startled by the untamed fire that met her gaze. His eyes fairly glowed, twin flames of palest silver, engulfing his pupils and boring into her with preternatural heat. The bones of his face seemed sharper, his skin stretched taut across his angular cheeks and stern jaw.

It was so peculiar, the way the dim light of the room played across his features...

That thought had hardly formed before the living room lamps blinked off as one. She might have considered it strange, but as the dark settled around them, Lucan breached her body with a deep, mind-numbing thrust. Gabrielle could not bite back her moan of pleasure as he filled her, stretched her, impaled her to her core.

"Oh, my God," she nearly sobbed, accepting every hard inch of him. "You feel so good."

He dropped his head to her shoulder and grunted as he drew back, then plunged even farther than before. Gabrielle clutched at his strong back, pulling him closer, as she lifted her hips to meet his hard thrusts. He cursed under his breath, and it was a black, feral sound. His cock leaped within her, seeming to swell even greater with each relentless flex of his hips.

"I need to fuck you, Gabrielle. I've needed to fuck you from the moment I first saw you."

The frank words - his admission that he'd wanted her as much as she had wanted him - only inflamed her more. She twined her fingers in his hair, gasping wordless, pleasured cries as his tempo increased. He thrust and withdrew, pistoning between her legs now. Gabrielle felt the rush of orgasm coiling in her belly.

"I could do this all night," he growled, his breath hot against her neck. "I don't think I can stop."

"Don't, Lucan. Oh, God... don't stop."

Gabrielle held on to him as he pumped into her. It was all she could do as a raw scream tore from her throat and she was coming and coming and coming again.

Lucan stepped off Gabrielle's front stoop and headed down her dark, quiet street on foot. He'd left her sleeping in her bedroom loft, her breathing rhythmic and sated, her delectable body spent after more than three nonstop hours of passion. He had never fucked so hard, so long, or so completely.

And still he was hungry for more.

More of her.

That he'd been able to conceal the lengthening of his fangs and the wild, desire-swamped cast of his eyes from her was a miracle.

That he hadn't given in to the relentless, pounding need to sink his sharp teeth into her sweet throat and drink to inebriation was even more astounding.

Nor did he trust himself to linger anywhere near her when every fevered cell in his body ached to do just that.

Coming to see her tonight had likely been a monstrous mistake. He had thought that sex with her would purge some of the heat she fueled in him. He'd never been more wrong. Taking Gabrielle, being inside of her, had only further exposed his weakness for her. He had wanted her with an animal need, and had pursued her like the predator he was. He wasn't sure he would have taken no for an answer. He didn't think he would have been capable of leashing his desire for her.

But she hadn't denied him.

Christ, no.

In retrospect, it would have been an act of mercy if she had. Instead, Gabrielle had accepted every measure of his sexual fury, demanding he give her nothing less.

If he turned around right now and stalked back into her apartment to wake her, he could spend another few hours between her gorgeous, welcoming thighs. That would at least satisfy part of his need. And if he could not slake the other, growing torment within him, he could wait out the sun and let the killing rays scorch him into oblivion.

If duty to the Breed didn't have such a hold on him, he might consider that option as a damned attractive possibility.

Lucan hissed a curse as he turned out of Gabrielle's neighborhood and strolled deeper into the nightscape of the city. His hands were shaking. His vision was sharp, his thoughts sliding toward feral. His body was twitchy, anxious. He snarled with frustration, knowing the signs well enough.

He needed to feed again.

It was too soon since the last time when he had taken enough blood to sustain him for a week, maybe more. That had been just a few nights ago, yet his stomach gnawed as though starving. For a long time, his cravings had been getting worse. Close to unbearable, the harder he tried to suppress them.

Denial.

That's what had gotten him through this far.

Sooner or later, he was going to reach the end of that rope. And then what?

Did he really think he was so different from his father?

His brothers hadn't been, and they'd both been older, stronger, than him. Bloodlust had ultimately claimed them both: one took his life by his own hand when the addiction became too much; the other went deeper still, turning Rogue, and then losing his head to the killing blade of a Breed warrior.

Being born first generation had gifted Lucan with a great deal of strength and power - and instant respect that he knew he didn't deserve - but it was every bit as much a curse. He wondered how much longer he could fight the darkness of his own savage nature. Some nights, he grew goddamned tired of the fact that he had to.

Passing among the evening population on the streets, Lucan let his gaze roam. Although he was stoked for battle if he found it, he was pleased there were no Rogues in sight. Only a scattered number of late-generation vampires from the area's Darkhaven: one pack of young males mixing with a giggly group of human partygoers and surreptitiously trolling, as he was now, for viable blood Hosts.

He saw the youths nudge each other, heard them whisper the words warrior and Gen One as he moved toward them on the stretch of pavement. Their open awe and curiosity were annoying, though not unusual. Vampires born and raised in the Darkhavens rarely had the opportunity to see one of the warrior class, let alone the founder of the once-vaunted, now long-antiquated Order.

Most knew the old stories of how, several centuries past, eight of the fiercest, most lethal Breed males came together as a group to slay the last of the savage Ancients and the army of Rogues who served them. Those warriors became legendary, and in the time since, their Order had gone through many changes, increasing in numbers and locations under periods of Rogue conflict, only to trail off during the long stretches of peace between.

Now, the warrior class was comprised of a covert handful of individuals around the globe, operating largely independently, and not without a little contempt from the society as a whole. In this enlightened age of fair treatment and due process within the vampire nation, warrior tactics were considered renegade, and but a shade this side of the law.

As if Lucan, or any of the warriors on the front lines with him, gave a shit about public relations.

With a snarl tossed in the direction of the gaping youths, Lucan cast out a mental invitation to the nattering human females the vampires had been chatting up on the street. Every pair of feminine eyes latched on to the raw power he was knowingly throwing off in waves. Two girls - a chesty blonde and a redhead just a degree or two lighter than Gabrielle's tresses - immediately broke away from the pack to approach him, their friends and the other males instantly forgotten.

But Lucan needed only one of them, and the choice was easy. He dismissed the blonde with shake of his head. Her companion settled under his arm, petting him as he led her off the street and into a discreet, unlit alcove of a nearby building.

He got down to business without hesitation.

Sweeping the girl's smoke-and-beer scented hair away from her neck, Lucan licked his lips, then plunged his extended fangs into the flesh of her throat. She spasmed under his bite, her hands coming up instinctively as he pulled the first long draught from her vein. He sucked hard, no desire to draw things out. The female moaned, not in alarm or discomfort, but in the pleasure that was unique to the letting of blood under the thrall of a vampire.

Blood surged into Lucan's mouth, warm and thick.

Against his will, he flashed on a mental picture of Gabrielle in his arms, letting himself imagine for the briefest second that it was her neck he suckled now.

Her blood, coursing down the back of his throat and into his body.

God, to think what it would be like to draw from her vein as his cock pumped into her heat, spilling deep within her...

Christ.

He thrust the fantasy away with a vicious snarl.

Never gonna happen, he warned himself harshly. Reality was a bitch, and he'd better not lose sight of it.

Fact was, this wasn't Gabrielle, but an anonymous stranger, just the way he preferred it. The blood he took now wasn't the jasmine-tinged sweetness he craved, but a bitter copper tanginess, corrupted by some mild narcotic his Host had recently ingested.

He didn't care what she tasted like. All he needed was to smooth the edge off his hunger, and for that, anyone would do. He drew more from her and drank it down with haste, expedient in his feeding as was always his way.

When he finished, he smoothed his tongue over the twin punctures to seal them, then backed out of the unwanted embrace. The young woman was panting, her mouth slack, her body languid as though fresh off an orgasm.

Lucan put his palm on her forehead and let it drift down to close her dazed, heavy-lidded eyes. That touch would scrub all recollection of what just occurred between them.

"Your friends are looking for you," he told the girl when his hand came away from her face and she blinked up at him in confusion. "You should go home. The night is full of predators."

"Okay," she said, nodding agreeably.

Lucan waited in the shadows as she wobbled back around the corner of the building to find her companions. He sucked in a deep breath through teeth and fangs, every muscle in his body tense, tight, pulsing. His heart was hammering in his chest. Just thinking about what Gabrielle's blood might taste like in his mouth had given him a raging hard-on.

His physical appetite might be calmer now that he'd fed, but he was hardly content.

He still... wanted.

With a low growl, he stalked out into the street once more, surlier than ever. He set his sights on the roughest part of town, hoping he'd meet up with a Rogue or two before dawn started to rise. He suddenly needed a fight in a bad way. Needed to hurt something - even if that something ended up being himself.

Whatever it took to keep him far as hell away from Gabrielle Maxwell.

Chapter Eight

At first, Gabrielle thought it had just been another erotic dream. But waking up late that next morning, naked in her bed, her body spent, parts of her aching in all the right places, she knew that Lucan Thorne had definitely been there, in the flesh. And God, what amazing flesh it had been. She'd lost track of how many times he'd made her climax. If she added up every orgasm she'd had for the past two years, it probably wouldn't even come close to what she'd experienced with him last night.

Yet she'd been wishing for just one more as she dragged her eyelids open and realized with disappointment that Lucan hadn't stayed. Her bed was empty, the apartment was quiet. He'd evidently left sometime during the night.

As exhausted as she was, Gabrielle could have slept a full day, but lunch plans with Jamie and the girls got her out of the house and downtown about twenty minutes after noon. As she wandered into the Chinatown restaurant, she felt heads turning in her direction: appreciative glances from a group of advertising types over at the sushi bar, half a dozen suited young executives watching her stroll past them as she made her way toward her friends' booth near the back.

She felt sexy and confident in her dark red V-neck sweater and black skirt, and she didn't care if it was obvious to everyone in the place that she'd just had the most incredible sex of her life.

"Finally, she graces us with her presence!" Jamie exclaimed as Gabrielle reached the table and greeted her friends with quick hugs.

Megan bussed her cheek. "You look great."

Jamie nodded. "Yeah, you do, sweetie. Love the outfit. Is it new?" He didn't wait for an answer, just plopped back down into the booth and wolfed down a fried dumpling in one gulp. "I was starving, so we already ordered a few appetizers. Anyway, where've you been? I was just about to send a posse out for you."