Pleasures of the Night(60)

Just thinking about him made her long for his arms around her. He had come an incalculable distance to save her, leaving everything—everything—he knew behind. For her.

She stepped on the gas pedal and drove to Chad’s, her eyes lifting constantly to her rearview mirror. Her thoughts were tumultuous, her breathing uneven, and her hands and feet were as cold as ice. She parked her car at Chad’s by instinct, her brain too overloaded to record the events. As she slowly recovered from shock, it took her an hour to realize Aidan wasn’t talking to her.

He was silent as he arranged Chad on the floor by the bed, simulating a fall that would in no way account for his exhausted muscles and bruised face, but was the best they could do. He was silent on the ride home and on the walk into the house from the garage, even though she’d paused at the door with her hand on the knob, her blood heating at the memory of what they had done there. Only hours ago, yet it seemed like forever.

She’d looked over her shoulder and noted the darkness of his gaze. He had thought of it, too, but aside from the heat in his eyes, he had been distant and cold.

Now, as he stood in her kitchen with a sleeping pill in his palm, she realized this was as hard on him as it was on her. She shook her head. “I don’t want that now. We need to talk.”

“We’ve talked enough.” His jaw was firm. “You need sleep.”

“I’m not tired.”

“You’re in shock. You don’t know what you are.” His tone lowered wearily. “Or what I am.”



“Aidan…”

His eyes closed at the sound of his name.

“Will you come upstairs with me?” she asked softly.

“I can’t. I’ve got work to do.”

“Just until I fall asleep?”

“Lyssa.” He shook his head. “If I lie down, I may fall asleep. I can’t do that. We’ll have to sleep in shifts. We can’t afford to have me unconscious at the same time you are.”

If they slept in shifts, they would never be together.

And she needed him.

She almost told him that all she wanted was him wrapped around her, inside her, making her feel cherished and safe. But she worried that telling him would ensure a negative response. For the first time since he’d walked in the door, she was fairly certain he didn’t want to make love to her. So all she said was, “Please.”

He growled low and ran a hand through his hair. He gestured for her to go ahead of him and then followed her up the stairs. When she stopped by the bathroom, Aidan handed her the sleeping pill, and she went to the sink as he sprawled on the bed. She looked at her reflection, knowing she looked like death warmed over, but also knowing it wasn’t her looks that had dampened Aidan’s ardor.

She set the pill on the counter. If she needed it later, so be it. But first she was going to try to get Aidan to talk to her.

Returning to the bedroom, Lyssa crawled on the bed and stretched out parallel to him. Aidan lay on his side, his head in his hand, but when she got close he rolled to his back and tucked her against him. She tossed her leg over his and her arm across his abdomen. He stiffened in response.

“You’re mad at me,” she whispered, her breath hot as it gusted across his bare chest.

He exhaled audibly and rolled into her. “No. I’m not mad at you.”

“Then hold me,” she breathed. “I need you.”

“Lyssa…” Aidan lowered his head and took her mouth, his tongue gliding deep, making her shudder beneath him. She needed this, needed the connection to ground her to him. He was a dream, an alien, a man centuries older than she was. She was a threat, a prophecy, the key to his destruction. The distance between them yawned galaxies and planes of existence apart, and yet he was the yang to her yin, a living puzzle piece that by some miracle made him physically able to fit her, just as males of her own species did. Together they could become one, with no separation at all between them. That’s what she needed, right now, as much as she needed to breathe.

As her desire for him built, her embrace loosened, her hands moving to stroke the length of his spine. He smelled delicious, even more so than usual because he’d worked up a sweat earlier. The combination of Aidan, adrenaline overload, and testosterone was a potent aphrodisiac.

Endlessly in lust with him, she stroked his tongue with her own.

“Remember the apple?” he murmured into her mouth.

Lyssa stilled. “Yeah…”

“That hasn’t changed just because you understand now.”

“What are you saying?”



“I don’t know how long I’ll be here,” he said softly, his gaze starkly intense beneath the lock of black hair that fell over his brow. “The information I need may be in the books I brought, or it could be back in the Twilight. Right now, we both need to consider my being here as temporary and my eventual departure as permanent.”