Page 42 of Kiss of Smoke

“It’s new to me as well, lass.” He glanced at Alec. “Telepathy wasn’t one of my gifts until you came along.”

I lowered my hand. “What do you mean?”

“It’s a fae ability. My mother was a werewolf.” He grimaced. “Not a race known for their communication skills.”

My gaze drifted to Alec. “So your mother was…”

“Fae. We inherit gifts from our mothers, but dragon blood is strong. For example, Lach is pulled by the moon, but he can’t shift into wolf form. His dragon side is too dominant. When we pass on our genes, our bairns only get our dragon DNA. It’s as if the blood protects itself from being diluted.”

The mention of bairns made my stomach do a weird little flip. “I’m human. I don’t have any gifts to pass on.”

An aura of discomfort settled over the men. Alec smiled, but it wasn’t one of his open, easy smiles. “You’ll pass on love for your children, lass.”

Lachlan was silent. When I met his gaze, he lowered his eyes, his expression locked down as tight as I’d ever seen it.

And, suddenly, puzzle pieces clicked into place. His relative coldness toward me when Alec was so warm and charming. His not-so-subtle efforts to convince me to stay in New York. “It bothers you,” I said. “Me being human.”

He lifted his head, but his eyes were shuttered. “It doesn’t matter. Fate chose you for us.”

“How can you be sure?”

Alec’s smile fled. “I should think last night proved it. And the night before that.” He raked a gaze down my sheet-clad body. “Deny it all you want, sweet Chloe, but you want us. Badly.”

Heat blossomed in all the usual places, but I ignored it. I couldn’t let him seduce me again. I had too much to think about. Like whether I was okay committing to an eternity of living with two dragons.

Including one who might not really want me at all.

Gaze locked with Alec’s, I marshaled every ounce of willpower I possessed. “I want”—I dragged in a breath, then spoke in a rush—“to go back to my room.”

His irises lightened, and for a split second I swore I could see fire in the emerald depths. Then, like the moon emerging from behind a cloud, light built under his skin. His features changed, growing sharper, and his hair waved in a breeze I couldn’t feel. His ears curved to delicate points. He was beautiful. But it was a terrible beauty. Something tickled my cheek, and I realized I was crying.

Playful, charming Alec was gone. In his place was a gorgeous, haughty creature too breathtaking to be real. Seeing him now, it was laughable to think I could have ever held him off with a sword.

Moving with fluid grace, he turned his head slightly, looking over his shoulder.

The door clicked, then slowly opened. My breath caught in my throat.

He faced me, and his voice rippled with the same electric power from the night before. “You can leave this room… But you’re not to leave the castle.”

Chapter Eleven

ALEC

Five days after Lachlan and I talked to Chloe in the tower, I knew I’d fucked up.

By dropping my glamour and calling up my power, I’d intended to show her there were dangerous creatures in the world, and that running from Lachlan and me would be foolish. Instead, I scared her senseless and now she wanted nothing to do with either of us. She’d gone straight from the tower to her bedroom, and we hadn’t seen her since.

I’d waited three hundred years to find my female. Now she was two doors down and it might as well be two thousand.

“Do you think it’s possible to die from lack of sex?” I asked Lachlan from the sofa in his bedroom, where I lay on my back with a glass of whisky balanced on my bare chest. He sat in the chair opposite me, his face buried in a newspaper. A fire roared merrily in the fireplace, snapping and dancing. Mocking me.

“Lach?”

He folded down the top of his paper long enough to cast me a mild look. “If this is about Chloe, you have no one to blame but yourself.”

“Really? I had no idea. Too bad you haven’t pointed it out several times.”

“If you’re that hard up, you should use your hand.”

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