Tempted by Midnight
A Midnight Breed Novella
By Lara Adrian
1001 Dark Nights
Tempted by Midnight
A Midnight Breed Novella
By Lara Adrian
1001 Dark Nights
Copyright 2014 Lara Adrian LLC
ISBN: 978-1-940887-08-1
Foreword: Copyright 2014 M. J.
Rose
Published by Evil Eye Concepts,
Incorporated
All rights reserved. No part of this
book may be reproduced, scanned, or
distributed in any printed or electronic
form without permission. Please do not
participate in or encourage piracy of
copyrighted materials in violation of the
author’s rights.
This is a work of fiction. Names,
places, characters and incidents are the
product of the author’s imagination and
are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, events or
establishments is solely coincidental.
Book Description
Tempted By Midnight: A Midnight
Breed Novella
By Lara Adrian
Once, they lived in secret alongside
mankind. Now, emerged from the
shadows, the Breed faces enemies on
both sides—human and vampire alike.
No one knows that better than Lazaro
Archer, one of the eldest, most powerful
of his kind. His beloved Breedmate and
family massacred by a madman twenty
years ago, Lazaro refuses to open his
heart again.
Sworn to his duty as the leader of
the Order’s command center in Italy, the
last thing the hardened warrior wants is
to be tasked with the rescue and
safekeeping of an innocent woman in
need of his protection. But when a
covert mission takes a deadly wrong
turn, Lazaro finds himself in the unlikely
role of hero with a familiar, intriguing
beauty he should not desire, but cannot
resist.
Melena Walsh has never forgotten
the dashing Breed male who saved her
life as a child. But the chivalrous hero of
her past is in hard contrast to the
embittered, dangerous man on whom her
safety now depends. And with an
unwanted—yet
undeniable—desire
igniting between them, Melena fears that
Lazaro’s protection may come at the
price of her heart….
Sign up for the 1001 Dark Nights Newsletter
and be entered to win a
Tiffany Key necklace.
There's a contest every month!
Click here to subscribe.
As a bonus, all subscribers will
receive a free
1001 Dark Nights story on
1/1/15.
The First Night
by Shayla Black, Lexi Blake
& M.J. Rose
Table of Contents
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Also From 1001 Dark Nights
Acknowledgments from the Author
About Lara Adrian
An excerpt from A Touch of Midnight by
Lara Adrian
Also by Lara Adrian
Special Thanks
One Thousand and One
Dark Nights
Once upon a time, in the future…
I was a student fascinated with stories
and learning.
I studied philosophy, poetry, history,
the occult, and
the art and science of love and magic. I
had a vast
library at my father’s home and
collected thousands
of volumes of fantastic tales.
I learned all about ancient races and
bygone
times. About myths and legends and
dreams of all
people through the millennium. And the
more I read
the stronger my imagination grew until
I discovered
that I was able to travel into the
stories... to actually
become part of them.
I wish I could say that I listened to my
teacher
and respected my gift, as I ought to
have. If I had, I
would not be telling you this tale now.
But I was foolhardy and confused,
showing off
with bravery.
One afternoon, curious about the myth
of the
Arabian Nights, I traveled back to
ancient Persia to
see for myself if it was true that every
day Shahryar
(Persian: رﺎﯾﺮﮭﺷ , “king”) married a
new virgin, and then
sent yesterday's wife to be beheaded. It
was written
and I had read, that by the time he met
Scheherazade,
the vizier's daughter, he’d killed one
thousand
women.
Something went wrong with my efforts.
I arrived
in the midst of the story and somehow
exchanged
places with Scheherazade – a
phenomena that had
never occurred before and that still to
this day, I
cannot explain.
Now I am trapped in that ancient past.
I have
taken on Scheherazade’s life and the
only way I can
protect myself and stay alive is to do
what she did to
protect herself and stay alive.
Every night the King calls for me and
listens as I spin tales.
And when the evening ends and dawn
breaks, I stop at a
point that leaves him breathless and
yearning for more.
And so the King spares my life for one
more day, so that
he might hear the rest of my dark tale.
As soon as I finish a story... I begin a
new
one... like the one that you, dear
reader, have before
you now.
CHAPTER 1
He had lived for more than a
thousand years, long enough that few
things still held the power to amaze him.
The sea at night was one of those rare
pleasures for Lazaro Archer.
Standing on the third-level bow
deck of a gleaming, 279-foot private
megayacht off the western coast of Italy,
Lazaro braced his hands on the polished
mahogany rail and indulged his senses in
a brief appreciation of his moonlit
surroundings.
Crisp, salty Mediterranean air
filled his nostrils and tousled his jet-
black hair. The late summer breeze was
cool tonight, gusting rhythmically
toward
the Italian mainland. Dark, rippling
water spread out in all directions under
the milky glow of the cloud-strewn moon
and blanket of stars. Far below, waves
lapped fluidly, sensually, against the
sides of the yacht where it floated,
engines silenced as it waited at its
destined location on the Tyrrhenian Sea.
Lazaro supposed the luxurious
vessel he stood aboard would take the
breath away from just about anyone—
human or Breed. Being born the latter,
and first generation Breed besides, one
of the vampire nation’s eldest, most
pure-blooded individuals, Lazaro had
known his fair share of wealth and
luxury.
He’d once had all of those things
himself. Still did, if he could be
bothered to care.
He left everything he once had back
most precious things in his long life had
been taken from him. His blood-bonded
Breedmate, his sons and their mates, a
houseful of innocent children...all gone.
His only surviving kin was his grandson,
Kellan, who’d been with Lazaro the
night the Archers’ Darkhaven home was
razed to the ground in a heinous,
unprovoked attack by a madman named
Dragos.
Lazaro exhaled deeply, no longer
feeling the raw scrape of grief whenever
he thought of his slain family. The
anguish had dulled over time, yet his
guilt was always with him, scarred over
like a physical wound. A hideous,
permanent reminder of his loss.
Of his life’s greatest failure.
If his existence had any meaning
now, it belonged to his work with Lucan
Thorne and his fellow Breed warriors of
the Order. As the commander of the
Order’s operation in Rome these past
two decades, Lazaro had little time for
self-pity or personal indulgences. He
had even less opportunity for pleasure,
rare or otherwise.
Which was the way he preferred it.
He dealt in justice now.
At times, he dealt in death.
Tonight, he was representing the
Order on a less official basis, on the
hopes that he could facilitate a secret
meeting between two of his trusted
friends. One of them was Breed, a high-
ranking American member of the Global
Nations
Council.
The
other,
the
megayacht’s owner, was human, an
influential Italian businessman who also
happened to be the brother of that
country’s newly elected president, a
politician who had won his office with
tough talk against the Breed. If the
meeting with Paolo Turati took place as
planned tonight and was deemed a
success, it would be the first step toward
forging an alliance with one of the
vampire nation’s most vocal detractors.
As for Byron Walsh, the Breed
male had been one of Lazaro’s
colleagues in the States, even before the
GNC had tapped Walsh for his current
diplomatic post. As leader of his own
Darkhaven in Maryland, Walsh’s social
circle had occasionally intersected with
Lazaro’s in Boston. There had even been
a time, one bitter winter, that Walsh’s
family came to visit Lazaro’s at their
Back Bay mansion.
A long time ago, back when Lazaro
had a Darkhaven. Back when he still had
a family kept safe under his protection.
It had been even longer since
Lazaro Archer had played emissary for
any cause. He hoped like hell this
clandestine
introduction
wasn’t
a
mistake.
Seventy-odd miles behind him was
the seaside town of Anzio, where Lazaro
had joined Turati on his yacht a couple
of hours ago. Up ahead of them, an even
farther distance, the island of Sardinia
glittered with light against the darkness.
A smattering of other large yachts
and watercraft bobbed in the vast space
between Turati’s vessel and the island,
but it was the low drone of a motorboat
that captured Lazaro’s full attention. The
size of a small cabin cruiser, the yacht
tender had departed from an idling
vessel in the distance and was heading
Lazaro’s way. He watched the chase
boat approach from out of the inky
darkness, its navigation lights dimmed as
instructed, flashing three times as it
crossed the water toward them.
His Breed colleague from the
States did not disappoint. Byron Walsh
was arriving as promised, and right on
time.
Lazaro nodded, grim with relief.
He turned away from the rail and
headed down to the yacht’s main deck
salon where Turati waited. On Lazaro’s
directions and assurances, the gray-
haired billionaire had brought just two
men from his usual security entourage.
The yacht’s crew of fifty had been
personnel to operate the vessel.
At Lazaro’s entrance to the lavish
salon, Turati glanced up, wiry brows
lifting in question. “He comes?” the old
man asked in his native tongue.
Lazaro answered in Italian as well.
“The boat is on the way now.” As
tonight’s host did not speak English,
Lazaro would personally translate for
the duration of the meeting, if only to
ensure that the conversation didn’t
inadvertently
stray
into
unfriendly
waters.
Paolo Turati was one of a small
number of humans Lazaro considered a
friend. He was also one of the few
humans who didn’t look upon the Breed
as a race of monsters in need of
collaring at best, or, at worst, wholesale
extermination.
Granted, the fear wasn’t without
cause. For millennia, the Breed existed
in the shadows alongside their Homo
sapiens neighbors. In the twenty years
since Lazaro’s kind was outed to man,
trust between the two races on the planet
had been anything but easy.
That trust became even more
complicated a couple of weeks ago,
when a violent cabal calling themselves
Opus Nostrum smuggled a bomb into a
very important summit gathering of
Breed and human dignitaries.
If tonight’s introductions went well,
the Breed would gain a supportive voice
and a much-needed ally in their efforts to
keep the peace between man and
vampire all around the world. If it went
poorly, the Order’s efforts to broker
peace could ignite the smoldering war
that Opus Nostrum seemed to want so
badly.
“I hope your friend from Maryland
comes to this meeting with the same
intentions as I do,” Turati said,
apprehension in the flat line of his
mouth, even though the old human’s eyes
held Lazaro in a trusting look. “If I like
what I hear tonight, I will do what I can
to persuade my brother to at least
entertain the idea of talks with the GNC
and Lucan Thorne. After all, everyone’s
goal is peace, not only for ourselves, but
for our generations to follow.”
“Indeed,” Lazaro replied. His acute
Breed hearing picked up the faint,
approaching growl of the boat carrying
Byron Walsh. “He’s arriving now. Wait
here, Paolo. I’ll go down to meet him
and bring him up.”
Turati frowned then shook his head.
“I will join you, Lazaro. It seems only
proper that I greet Councilman Walsh
personally and welcome him aboard
along with you. I would do no less for
any invited guest.”
Lazaro inclined his head in
agreement. “A fine idea.”
He waited patiently as the old man
stood and smoothed his custom-tailored
navy suit and creamy silk shirt. By
contrast, Lazaro was dressed in what
he’d come to regard as Order casual—
black slacks, light-duty combat boots,
and a fitted black patrol shirt.
And
although
he
was
first
generation Breed and more than deadly
with his bare hands alone, he carried a
blade concealed in each boot and had a
semiautomatic 9mm pistol strapped to
his right ankle. He didn’t expect trouble
from either of the two men or their few
staff present at tonight’s meeting, but
he’d be damned if he didn’t come
prepared for it.
Together, he and Turati left the
grand salon on the yacht’s second level,
making their way down a polished brass
stairwell that spiraled elegantly onto the
lower deck. The boat carrying Walsh
was coming around the stern as Lazaro
and Turati arrived on the aft deck to
meet it.
A suited bodyguard stood at
attention on the motorboat, just outside
the cabin’s hatch. He was Breed, as big