Read Night Series Collection: Books 1 and 2 for Free Online

lavender was gone, the blue of his eyes filled with unspoken words. I knew what he was thinking. He’d let me down. I’d nearly died while he’d been caught up in Lust’s grip.
    And again this is all part and parcel of the complicated relationship we share. Luc’s hurt me before. But age and time has softened him. He’s responsible, not the reckless and wild thing I remember from our youth. Now, he almost seemed to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. Always thinking somehow everything’s his fault, especially as it pertains to me or any other neph under his care. I’d often teased him of being a martyr, but there was always some truth in teasing. If he was possessed by a second demon, I didn’t know it and he wouldn’t share it. I feared that one day his sense of justice would lead him to do something stupid...like get himself killed.
    I wanted to kiss that torture from him.
    His fingers dug into my back. He squeezed me in a tight hug, as if he never meant to let me go.
    Pain and pleasure became one. My body was broken, but my hunger grew.
    “Share my body, Dora,” he said in a voice grown soft and unsure. He’d made the offer before and I’d turned him down. Was he worried I’d do the same again?
    It wasn’t often I saw Luc like this and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. He was everything a true neph should be. I’d always been the freak, the outsider. The one talking about things like love and hope. He’d always been the one to correct me, warn me away from thinking like that. Love and hope didn’t exist in our world. It was a weakness we couldn’t afford.
    He frowned and I could see some of that legendary control of his slipping. What was wrong with him?
    He closed his eyes, turned his face to the side as if he didn’t want me to see something. He was shielding himself, and I didn’t like that.
    I ran my fingers through the softness of his hair, tugging on it enough to force him to look at me. “Do not hide yourself from me. I would have truth between us.”
    The look in his face was so raw it was almost too painful to look upon. He shuddered, buried his face in my hair and inhaled my scent. “Let me take away this pain.”
    I wrapped my arms around his neck and let him see how much he meant to me. How much I wanted him, needed him. This had nothing to do with Lust. What I felt for Luc in that moment transcended something so carnal.
    He kneeled on the bed with me still cradled in his arms. My body hurt, but it also tingled with the rising awareness that I was about to get the drug I needed. I might curse Lust, wish her dead, but she had her useful moments. Tit for tat. Give her sex and I’d be whole again.
    Luc moved back, standing at the side of the bed as he started undressing. His fingers found the buttons of his shirt. He took his time with it, undoing one at a time, letting his hand linger before moving on. His gaze, hot with need, never swerved from my face.
    After so many years together he knew what I liked, how I liked it. Sometimes watching a man undress was almost more exciting than the sex itself.
    Lust stirred, like a lazy cat smelling something tasty in the air.
    Once done, he rolled the shirt over his shoulders, letting it spill behind him to the carpet. Heat crashed between my thighs. He was so beautiful. Long and lean. Every sinewy muscle in his chest and abdomen flexed as he reached for the zipper of his jeans. Again, he was excruciatingly slow, every movement a deliberate seduction that made me whimper with desire.
    Unzipped, I could see he’d gone commando tonight.
    That golden, sun-kissed skin of his seemed to glow in the flickering flames of candlelight. His little brown nipples were hard. I wanted to draw them into my mouth and bite them, twist them, rake my nails across them until they flushed a bright pink.
    His eyes were twin pools of liquid amethyst; his demon was fully awake and very aroused. So was Luc, judging by the hard bulge in his jeans.
    A sound, very