Edge of Dawn

Mira speared her fingers into his thick chestnut hair as he took her mouth in a hotter, more demanding kiss that left her gasping and drugged beneath him. She didn’t know how he managed to strip off her sweats and panties, didn’t much care. Because suddenly Kellan was moving down the length of her body, pushing up the hem of her T-shirt and kissing a warm, wet trail along the flat plane of her belly. She moaned, bowing up off the bed as he kneaded her breasts, then took one peachy nipple into his mouth. He kissed the other one too, giving it a teasing graze of his teeth.

“You taste the same,” he murmured against her skin. “Still sweet and tender.”

She couldn’t reply, could only twist her fingers in the sheet and suck in her breath as his mouth began a downward trek, leaving a trail of fire everywhere his lips touched her skin. He paused at her hip bone, licked its delicate ridge. “Sweeter here.”

Oh, God.

She lifted her head and watched as he drifted lower still. He glanced up at her as he moved into the apex of her thighs, his irises swamped with amber, swallowing the thin vertical lines of his pupils. That otherworldly, predatory gaze stayed locked on her, the tips of his fangs stretching longer, sharper as his broad mouth spread into a carnal smile. Then he parted her legs and sank down between them.

He kissed the triangle of light curls at the mound of her sex. Mira held her breath, pulse racing, veins filled with liquid fire. Another kiss, this one lingering much longer, the tip of his tongue cleaving into the sensitive folds. He licked her slowly, suckling her, drawing the tender bud against the wet heat of his tongue. His approving growl vibrated against her quivering sex as he went deeper. “So sweet and juicy. This is what I thirst for. You, Mira.”

He went down on her again. The air shuddered out of her lungs on a ragged sigh, sensation shooting through her like tiny lightning bolts, the coming of a storm. He played with her, teasing her *, tonguing her, making the petals of her body weep for him.

“I need you,” she gasped, rising up to reach for him, fingers digging into the hard bulk of his shoulders. “Please, Kellan. I don’t want to wait. I’m afraid to wait another second . . .”

Afraid the moment would somehow shatter and reality would toss them both back where they’d been just a few minutes ago: Enemies, not lovers. Strangers, not friends.

Back to a man and woman with a distant, shared past, an uneasy present, and a dubious, uncertain future.

Mira couldn’t let go of him, not now. “Come up here. I need to feel you against me again. I want you inside me.”

Whatever he said was lost in a deep, rumbling growl. He moved back up on the bed, shucking his pants along the way. Mira drank in the sight of him, naked and lean and beautiful. So strong and powerful.

So alive.

How long had she dreamed of this moment—being with Kellan again, having him back from the dead?

It made her greedy for him now. Desperate to hold him close, as close as their bodies possibly could be.

Kellan covered her, every inch of him pulsing with warmth and masculinity. He kissed her again, deep and long and possessive. His thighs were wedged between hers, his arousal heavy and hard, the thick shaft nestled upright in the moist cleft of her sex.

Not close enough.

Mira shifted her hips, seating him for his first thrust. She sucked on his tongue, and his cock gave a little kick in response. Kellan moaned into her mouth, a raw sound of need. He broke their kiss with a curse and stared down at her, propped up on his fists.

“I want to go slow with you, but . . .” His voice trailed off, and he shook his head, giving a slight press of his pelvis. The head of his penis nudged into her, testing. “Ah, Christ . . . you feel too good.”

Mira’s heart was banging in her chest like a caged bird, every nerve ending quivering with an urgent need. “I don’t want to go slow. There’s been too much time standing between us. No more, Kellan. Not right now.”

He nodded, eyes rooted on her as he gave another experimental thrust. “You’re so tight. Just like the first time we were together.”

She’d been a virgin that first time—the only time—she and Kellan made love. He had been too. Although their desire had been mutual, undeniable for years before that night, they’d never taken it so far. She’d been too young at first, then, later, when she was a woman, Kellan had thrown himself into his duty with the Order, taking on missions that sent him away for weeks, sometimes months at a time. But he always came back to her, and when he did, it never took long for them to end up in a tangle of arms and legs and questing mouths.

They’d learned to pleasure each other in other ways before that moment eight years ago until, finally, need had proven greater than any amount of denial or restraint. Mira had given herself to Kellan and he to her.

It had been magical. Miraculous. Until a few hours later, when a rebel’s bomb took all of that away.

She gazed up at Kellan, poised above her in the soft quiet of his bed. Her heart was still broken from everything that had happened that night and in the time since. But this moment was real. It was now. It was theirs.

She smiled at the feel of his nakedness all over her, moaned in pleasured pain as the head of his cock stretched her impossibly tight around him. He was so careful with her. Too careful. She reached up, stroked his handsome face. “There’s been no other for me either, Kellan. Not in all this time.”

A flash of bewilderment raced across his features. “No one?”

She shook her head. “Only you.”

“Ah, God.” He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, they were blazing with a newer, fiercer light. He wasn’t happy. Not at all. “Ah, Christ, Mouse. Damn you for that. Damn both of us for not having the sense to let go.”

With a growl through gritted teeth and fangs, he pushed inside her on a swift, deep thrust. Mira cried out as he filled her, biting her lip as the sharp, initial sting of his invasion gave way to a glorious completion.

Oh, f*ck.

He felt so good.

She felt so good, holding him buried within her.

She knew this dance with him, every instinct within her responding like it had been only yesterday that she’d last kissed him like this—naked and breathless, skin on skin, melting with pleasure and hungry for more. Their first time together had been branded into her senses, a memory she’d carried all this time. It had been all she’d had left of him, and she’d clung to it as she would her own soul.

And now she had Kellan with her again. Inside her.

His name was a ragged whisper on her lips as he increased his tempo, each long push going deeper, stoking the fire that was already roaring inside her. His mouth covered hers as the first broken cry of her climax curled up from the back of her throat.

He showed her no quarter, but then, she hadn’t wanted any. Not like this. Not when her need for him was still so raw and unsated.

But her orgasm was building swiftly. It raced up on her with his every stroke and retreat, every kiss and caress carrying her higher, closer to the edge. Kellan drove into her with relentless purpose, pushing her mercilessly toward the cliff.

“Oh, God,” she gasped as the first hot waves crashed into her. “Kellan.”

Mira held on to him and tumbled headlong into the pleasure of the moment.

The pleasure of this reunion    , no matter how fleeting her heart feared it might be.

12
MIRA WOKE UP SOMETIME LATER THAT MORNING, NESTLED into the crook of Kellan’s strong arm. His warmth surrounded her, a cocoon of peace and contentment she hadn’t known for a very long time.

Not since the morning eight years before, when she’d awakened in a similar pose, in a similar state of blissful exhaustion.

That day had ended in a nightmare of fire and ash and tears. Today she felt renewed. Hopeful. She felt happy, and that scared her more than anything. Especially when her happiness had come in the arms of Kellan Archer. Not the teenage boy she’d adored as a child. Not even the young Breed warrior who’d trained alongside her with the Order and had become her dearest, most trusted friend and confidant.

No, her happiness had been delivered by the leader of an outlaw band of rebels, who’d not only abducted an innocent civilian but defied Lucan Thorne and the entire Order by disrupting an operation and taking one of its members hostage.

A hostage who had very willingly tumbled into bed to sleep with the enemy.

Among other things.

Wicked, wonderful things.

Mira couldn’t resist kissing the bulky biceps that caged her against Kellan’s big body. She tongued the arcing lines of the glyphs on his arm, delighting in the flood of dark color left in the wake of her teasing kiss.

He stirred. With a low moan, he flexed his arm and tucked her farther into his embrace. His chest was a wall of solid heat against her nipples, his ridged abdomen like sun-warmed granite against her belly. And lower still, his arousal was quite obviously apparent, nudging into her hip, stiff and hot. Much too tempting for her roaming hands.

Mira carefully traced her fingers along the smoothness of his chest and abs, past his navel, to the bristly thatch of crisp hair and the jutting girth of his sex. She stroked him once, marveling at the softness that encased so much rigid steel. And the fat plum that crowned his shaft, already weeping with a bead of moisture as she ran her fingertips over the head of his penis.

She flicked her gaze up to see if she’d woken him.

Ember-bright eyes stared back at her, blazing with wide-awake desire.

“Pleasant dreams?” she asked him, attempting innocence.

He wasn’t buying it. His dark goatee stretched wickedly around his mouth, lips peeled back in a smile that was purely carnal. “Who needs dreams when reality is fondling me so sweetly?”

He rolled her beneath him, moving with a speed that startled her, even though she was well aware of the power and agility that was always at his command. Mira spread her thighs to accommodate him, ready for him again. Her heart knocking like a hammer in her breast.

Kellan bent to take her earlobe between his lips and teeth, murmuring blush-worthy plans for all the ways he intended to enjoy her in those next moments.

Mira’s pulse was clamoring so urgently, her body so ripe for his taking, it took her a second to realize he’d gone suddenly still and tense above her. He lifted his head, stock-still now.

“What the f*ck—”

Someone was in the corridor outside, banging on the door. The rapping came again, fast and hard. Panicked.

“Bowman! Are you in there?” A female voice, pitched high with worry. Not Candice, but the other woman of the rebel base. “Bowman, come quick!”

“It’s Nina,” Kellan murmured, already rolling off Mira and throwing on his pants. He sent her a sober look. Mira scrambled out of the bed and hurried into his T-shirt and sweatpants. He glanced to make sure she was clothed, then flipped the lock with his mind and opened the door on Nina’s ashen face.

“Oh, my God,” the human woman gasped. “It’s Vince. He—oh, my God!”

“What’s going on?” Kellan demanded. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know!” Nina shook her head, indigo hair tossing, sending the dozens of tiny metal loops swinging in her pierced earlobes. She was sobbing now. “Vince is gone. He took the van. He’s got Ackmeyer with him.”

Although Mira tried to stay in the background, she couldn’t bite back her gasp of alarm. Even Kellan seemed to take the news with no small amount of shock. He went still for an instant, silent. Then seemed to shake it off like the leader he now was.

“Where?” His voice was a roll of thunder, dark and lethal, fully Breed. He stepped out into the corridor. “Where did he take him?”

“I don’t know,” Nina cried. “But Chaz and Candice tried to stop him. Oh, God . . . he killed Chaz. He’s dead, Bowman. Vince slit his throat—”

“Jesus Christ,” Kellan muttered. His shoulders slumped a bit, but when he spoke, his voice was level with cold command. “When did this happen? How long has the bastard been gone?”

Nina shook her head. “I don’t know. A little while ago, not long. He killed Chaz, then he stole the van and took off.”

Mira closed her eyes, absorbing the weight of all she was hearing. Jeremy Ackmeyer in the hands of a cold-blooded killer. Kellan betrayed by one of his own. A death among the ranks of his comrades.

“And Candice,” Nina went on. She sucked in a hitching breath, then dissolved into more tears. “Vince stabbed her too. Doc’s trying to take care of her, but she’s bleeding really bad. He says the blade nicked an artery in her thigh. He can’t get it to stop.”

Kellan’s answering curse was quiet but savage. He swung a look over his shoulder at Mira, somewhere between misery and apology. Mira’s own guilt gnawed at her with sharp teeth. All of this violence and betrayal had happened while she and Kellan were making love.

Her body was still humming from the pleasure of Kellan’s touch, but her chest was heavy with the knowledge that one life had been cut short today, another stolen away with Vince’s escape. If anything happened to Candice now, Mira could see in Kellan’s tormented eyes that he would never forgive himself.

She gave him a faint nod, understanding that whatever they’d shared in the privacy of his bed for the past few hours was over now. He wasn’t hers in this moment; he belonged to them. To his comrades. His friends.

“They need you,” Mira said quietly, meant for his ears alone. “Go to them.”

Kellan took off like a shot, Nina trailing after him at a run.



Kellan didn’t have to guess where Doc was treating Candice. The olfactory blast of spilled fresh red cells led him like a beacon to the cell where Ackmeyer had been held.

Jesus Christ.

Blood was everywhere. Pooling almost black under the crumpled slump of Chaz’s unmoving body inside the opened cage. Splattered on the cement block walls. Smeared in a chaotic path by Vince’s boots and Jeremy Ackmeyer’s stumbling feet as he’d obviously been dragged away. And then there was Candice.

Lying supine inside the cell, arms splayed out at her sides, she was covered in blood from the front of her T-shirt down, with still more of it seeping out beneath her. Her legs were bare; Doc had apparently removed her jeans so he could work on the nasty puncture in her right thigh. His brown eyes sober, he glanced Kellan’s way only briefly before returning all of his focus to treating Candice’s wound.

Kellan’s skin went tight, fangs filling his mouth. His vision had gone instantly red—not only in physical reaction to the presence of so much fresh-flowing blood but in deadly rage for the betrayal by one of his own. A betrayal that had resulted in the slaying of one friend and the grave injury of another.

All of this havoc and loss wreaked while Kellan had been distracted by the pleasure of having Mira in his bed.

He’d failed his crew in the worst possible way. Failed Jeremy Ackmeyer too, whom Kellan should have freed immediately upon learning of his innocence several hours ago. None of this would have happened if Kellan had kept his head on straight as the leader these people expected him to. They had entrusted their lives to him, trusted him to protect them.

Instead, he’d allowed himself to get caught up in a romantic entanglement with Mira that could only end in disaster. So, yeah, he’d failed her today as well, and it was too late to call back any of his mistakes.

“Goddamn it,” he snarled, self-directed anger making his voice sound raw and violent, even to his own ears.

More than anything, he wanted to tear out of the bunker and hunt Vince down—daylight or not. He wanted the bastard to suffer for this, wanted to make him bleed. But it was Kellan’s crew that was bleeding and suffering now—one of them bled out on the floor in front of him, another possibly heading that way too.

The sight of Candice injured so severely jolted Kellan back to his duty as the commander of this base and its people. He ignored the coppery gut-punch of Candice’s bleeding wound as he walked to her side and went down on his haunches next to her.

Her breath raced between slack, pale lips. Her eyes were wide and unblinking, fixed on the ceiling as Doc bent her leg at the knee, elevating the wound, before fastening his belt around her thigh as a tourniquet.

Kellan grabbed her discarded jeans and rolled them into a makeshift pillow. As he lifted her head off the floor and rested it back onto the softer fabric, her glassy gaze slid to him. “Vince . . . I tried to stop him, but he—”

“I know. Don’t worry about him. You just hang in there, you got it?” Her eyelids drooped with her weak nod. Kellan clamped his teeth and fangs together as he smoothed his fingers over her clammy brow. “How we doing, Doc?”

“Be a helluva lot better once I get the blood flow stanched,” Doc replied, hands slick with red, face grim as he tightened the belt on Candice’s thigh.

Kellan shot a glance over his shoulder to Nina, who hovered nervously in the doorway. “Clean towels, lots of them. Cloths too. Bring whatever you can find.”

“On it.” She took off at once.

Candice’s teeth started to chatter. Her eyes were glazed, alternating between rolling back in her head and sliding over to focus on him. “I’m s-scared, Bowman. Don’t want to die.”

“You’re going to be all right,” he assured her. “Doc’s treated worse. You remember the shit condition I was in when you dragged me in to meet him that first time?”

“Yeah.” Her voice was thready, small. “I remember.”

Kellan nodded, swept a lock of damp black hair from where it was plastered to her cheek. Her skin was cold, alarmingly so. “Doc didn’t let me die that night; neither did you. He and I aren’t about to let you die now either. So, you hang in, Brady, that’s a f*cking order.”

“Okay,” she said, giving him a faint smile as her eyes drifted closed. A shudder went through her whole body, prolonged, bone-deep. She trembled, blue-lipped and shivering, despite the summertime humidity of the bunker. “Freezing in here,” she murmured. “I’m so cold.”

Before Kellan could respond or turn to find something to provide her some warmth, a blanket appeared from somewhere behind him.

Mira.

He looked up to find her standing at his back, holding a blanket she’d brought from his bed. She moved around him to cover Candice’s torso, gently tucking it under her chin and shoulders to keep in as much heat as possible.

When she was done, she stepped back, her hand coming to rest tenderly on Kellan’s shoulder. He reached up to meet her touch, clasping her fingers in a grateful squeeze. His guilt and self-recrimination was still acid in his gut, but the sight of Mira standing near him, the feel of her touch on him in silent support and understanding, was a balm he couldn’t deny. He saw Doc’s gaze flick to the unspoken exchange, saw the question in the rebel’s eyes as Kellan’s hand lingered on Mira’s, possessive and intimate.

“Tell us what you need us to do, Doc.”

“Keep her awake,” the medic said, going back to work on the wound. “Shock will make her want to sleep, but we can’t let her do that. She needs to stay conscious right now.”

Kellan nodded. “Open your eyes, Candice. I need you to look at me, stay focused,” he prompted, letting go of Mira’s hand to give Candice’s shoulder a rousing shake. “I need you to tell me what happened in here with Vince. Can you do that?”

“Yes,” she murmured. Her eyelids lifted, though she seemed to struggle with the effort. “Came in here to pick up Ackmeyer’s meal tray. Chaz came with me . . . gonna take Ackmeyer for a bathroom break.”

Kellan grunted in acknowledgment, his eye drifting to the upended tray of half-eaten food that lay scattered on the floor nearby. When Candice shuddered again, struggling to suck air into her lungs, Kellan reached down and stroked his palm over the top of her head. “You’re doing great. Take your time, but you stay with me. You stay awake, Brady.”

“O-okay. I’m okay.” She looked up at him and took a few deeper breaths. “Ackmeyer asked if we were letting him go . . . started going on about how he was innocent . . . never meant to hurt anyone with his inventions.”

All the things Kellan heard from the scientist himself. Things Kellan’s touch had vouched for as truth.