Tempted by Midnight: A Midnight Breed Novella (1001 Dark Nights) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Turati’s intentions are good, he means no harm to—”
    She wasn’t able to finish what she was saying because in that same instant, Lazaro tensed. His head snapped up, eyes searching the dark sky. Some of the blood seemed to drain out of his grim face in that fraction of a second.
    “Fuck,” he snarled, his grip tightening on Melena’s arms. “Goddamnit, no.”
    He lunged into motion, yanking her against him protectively. His arms wrapped around her. He then tumbled her over the railing of the second-level deck along with him...
    Just as a screaming object arrowed down from the sky.
    It hit the yacht, a direct, dead center strike.
    The vessel exploded. On the deafening boom of impact, Melena crashed into the hard waves with Lazaro. Engulfed by the cold, horrified by what she was seeing, all the air left her lungs on an anguished cry. She tried to break away, but Lazaro held her close, refusing to let her swim back up to find her father.
    Together she and Lazaro sank deep into the water, falling down, and down, and down...
    Far above them, a hellish ball of flame had erupted on the surface. Fiery chunks of debris dropped into the sea everywhere she looked.
    There was only ruin left up there.
    The yacht and all of its occupants obliterated in an instant.
     

CHAPTER 3
    By Lazaro’s guess, they had been in the water roughly two hours before Anzio’s cliff-edged shore was finally within sight. Bleeding from shrapnel wounds and battered by the long journey, he was close to exhaustion—even with the preternatural strength and speed of Breed genetics at his command.
    Melena was faring far worse. She was limp against him, having fallen unconscious somewhere around the halfway point of their swim. Although she wasn’t entirely mortal either, her human metabolism could not cope with the prolonged exposure in the cold seawater.
    In that regard, Lazaro was doubly fortunate. Being Breed had given him another advantage. The same one that had allowed him to pull Melena out of the frozen pond twenty-two years ago. His ability to withstand extreme temperatures had given him the strength to search for her under the ice and pull her to safety before she drowned.
    He hoped he hadn’t lost her tonight.
    Lazaro held her close at his side as he paddled the last few hundred yards with his free arm. As soon as his bare feet were able to touch ground, he repositioned Melena in both arms and ran her toward the empty, moonlit beach.
    The bulky cliffs that lined the shore loomed just ahead. Several large caves were burrowed into the rock—black, yawning mouths that had once been part of an ancient Roman emperor’s crumbled stone villa that was a thousand years in ruin. Lazaro carried Melena inside one of the caves, past a littering of rough rocks and pools of tidal water, to a spot where the sand was soft and dry underfoot.
    As he set her down, he couldn’t help revisiting the night he’d carried a lifeless little girl into his Darkhaven in Boston. He’d remembered every minute of it, despite the indifference he’d feigned with Melena earlier on the yacht. She had been a seven-year-old child that first, and last, time he saw her before tonight. Back then, she had been as helpless and fragile as a baby bird to his mind. He’d rescued her the same way he would have done for any innocent child.
    But now...
    Now, Melena Walsh was a grown woman. She was as enticing a woman as he’d ever seen—even more so, with her lovely face and thick red hair, and all of her soft, feminine curves that drew his eye even as he carefully arranged her unresponsive, alarmingly chilled body on the sand.
    And as fiercely as he’d wanted to save her life in Boston, he wanted to save her now.
    Not the least of his reasons being his need to know what secret she was keeping from him. She’d been on the verge of telling him in the seconds before the yacht was blown to pieces. If that secret had anything to do with the attack tonight, he was going to see that