THE MIDNIGHT BREED SERIES
By Lara Adrian
“Evocative, enticing, erotic…Enter Lara Adrian’s vampire world and be enchanted!”
—J. R. Ward, bestselling author
KISS OF MIDNIGHT
He watches her from across the crowded dance club, a sensual black-haired stranger who stirs Gabrielle Maxwell’s deepest fantasies. But nothing about this night—or this man—is what it seems. For when Gabrielle witnesses a murder outside the club, reality shifts into something dark and deadly. In that shattering instant she is thrust into a realm she never knew existed—a realm where vampires stalk the shadows and a blood war is set to ignite.
Lucan Thorne despises the violence carried out by his lawless brethren. A vampire himself, Lucan is a Breed warrior, sworn to protect his kind—and the unwitting humans existing alongside them—from the mounting threat of the Rogues. Lucan cannot risk binding himself to a mortal woman, but when Gabrielle is targeted by his enemies, he has no choice but to bring her into the dark underworld he commands.
Here, in the arms of the Breed’s formidable leader, Gabrielle will confront an extraordinary destiny of danger, seduction, and the darkest pleasures of all.…
Take a sneak peek inside …
It was wrong to pursue the woman.
Lucan knew this, even as he had waited on Gabrielle Maxwell’s apartment steps that evening, showing her a detective’s badge and photo ID card. It wasn’t his. It wasn’t real, in fact, only a hypnotic manipulation that made her human mind believe he was who he had presented himself to be.
A simple trick for elders of his kind, like himself, but one he seldom stooped to use.
Yet now, here he was again, some time past midnight, stretching his slim personal code of honor even thinner as he tried the latch on her front door and found it unlocked. He knew it would be; he’d given her the suggestion while he had talked with her that evening, when he had shown her what he wanted to do with her and read the surprised, but receptive, response in her soft brown eyes.
He could have taken her then. She would have Hosted him willingly, he was certain, and knowing the intense pleasure they would have shared in the process had nearly been his undoing.
KISS OF CRIMSON
He comes to her more dead than alive, a towering black-clad stranger riddled with bullets and rapidly losing blood. As she struggles to save him, veterinarian Tess Culver is unaware that the man calling himself Dante is no man at all, but one of the Breed, vampire warriors engaged in a desperate battle. In a single erotically charged moment Tess is plunged into his world—a shifting, shadowed place where bands of Rogue vampires stalk the night, cutting a swath of terror.
Haunted by visions of a dark future, Dante lives and fights like there is no tomorrow. Tess is a complication he does not need—but now, with his brethren under attack, he must shield Tess from a growing threat that includes Dante himself. For with one reckless, irresistible kiss, she has become an inextricable part of his underworld realm…and his touch awakens her to hidden gifts, desires, and hungers she never knew she possessed. Bonded by blood, Dante and Tess must work together to thwart deadly enemies, even as they discover a passion that transcends the boundaries of life itself.…
Take a sneak peek inside …
“Hello?” Tess called into the empty space. “Is someone here? Ben, is that you? Nora?”
Nobody answered. And now the noises she’d heard before had gone still as well.
Great. She’d just announced her presence to an intruder. Brilliant, Culver. Absolutely frigging brilliant.
She tried to console herself with some fast logic. Maybe it was just a homeless person looking for shelter who’d found his or her way into the clinic from the back alley. Not an intruder. Nothing dangerous at all.
Yeah? So why were the hairs on the back of her neck tingling with dread?
Tess shoved her hands into the pockets of her lab coat, feeling suddenly very vulnerable. She felt her ballpoint pen knock against her fingers. Something else was in there as well.
Ph, that’s right. The tranq syringe, full of enough anesthetic to knock a four-hundred-pound animal out cold.
“Is someone back there?” she asked, trying to keep her voice firm and steady. She paused at the reception station and reached for the phone. The damn thing wasn’t cordless—she’d gotten it cheap on closeout—and the receiver barely reached her ear over the counter. Tess went around the big U-shaped desk, glancing nervously over her shoulder as she started punching 911 on the key pad. “You’d better get out of here right now, because I’m calling the cops.”
“No … please … don’t be afraid …”
The deep voice was so quiet, it shouldn’t have reached her ears, but it did. She heard it as surely as if the words had been whispered right up next to her head. Inside her head, strange as that seemed.
MIDNIGHT AWAKENING
With a dagger in her hand and vengeance on her mind, Darkhaven beauty Elise Chase prowls Boston’s streets in search of retribution against the Rogue vampires who took from her everything she cherished. Using an extraordinary psychic gift, she tracks her prey, well aware that the power she possesses is destroying her. She must learn to harness this gift, and for that she can turn to only one man—the deadliest of the Breed warriors, Tegan.
No stranger to loss, Tegan knows Elise’s pain. He knows fury, but when he slays his enemies it is with ice in his veins. He is perfect in his self-control, until Elise seeks his aid in her personal war. An unholy alliance is forged—a bond that will link them by blood and vow—and plunge them into a tempest of danger, desire, and the darkest passions of the heart….
Take a sneak peek inside …
She swam to the steps and came out of the water, evidently too piqued to care that Tegan was staring openly at her wet body. His eyes honed in on the birthmark riding the inner edge of her thigh, drawn there unerringly like a heat-seeking missile locked on a target.
Saliva surged into his mouth as he watched rivulets of water slide down her smooth, bare thighs. His skin felt tights all over, heat moving in his veins, and in the dermaglyph markings that covered his body and declared him one of the Breed. His gums ached with the sudden press of his fangs. He clamped his jaws together, curbing the startling jolt of hunger.
He didn’t want to look at the female, but damned if he could tear his eyes away from her now.
“Sterling hasn’t convinced me of anything,” she said as she grabbed her towel and covered herself with it. “He won’t even speak to me, if you want to know the truth. I think he must hate me after what happened last fall.”
Tegan studied her smart lavender eyes. “Is that really what you think—that he hates you?”
“Sterling was my mate’s brother—by marriage, he is my brother. It would be completely improper—”
Tegan scoffed. “Men have gone to war with their own brothers for the want of the same woman. Desire could give a damn about propriety.”
Elise held the towel closed between her breasts and paced from him. “I don’t like where this conversation is heading.”
“Do you have feelings for him?”
“Of course not.” She looked at Tegan, clearly, rightfully, appalled. “And what right have you to ask me that?”