The Last of His Kind (8 page)

"Why
have you got those, Doric? Are you going to bite me?"

Heaven help
her, the mere thought had more of her juices trickling down her leg, and she
rubbed her thighs together to relieve the heavy ache in her core. Doric's
nostrils flared. His eyes darkened, and Penelope held her breath at the pain,
emotion, and sheer animal lust she read in their depths.

"No, but
fuck it, I want to so badly it hurts." Doric ground the words out and
shook his head again as though disgusted with himself.

"What
will happen to me if you do? Will I ... will I become like you?"

Shit
, that really
shouldn’t excite her so much, should it? If she touched herself right now she
would come on the spot.

A wry smile
played round Doric's full lips, and he shook his head. He slowly unclenched his
fists, and his remarkable eyes sought hers.

"No,
that's not the way it works." He cupped her chin, his gaze turning
thoughtful, and Penelope held her breath at the intense way he studied her.
"It's how my kind procreates. We mate with humans, but our seed will only
take if we bite during sex, and then there is only a remote chance. It's one of
the reasons we're extinct. Plus, through the ages, our babies were strangled at
birth. No one wants to give birth to a fucking monster, no matter what they
tell you during sex, or how much you wish it to be otherwise."

She gasped at
the horrific images that comment evoked in her mind, and her heart clenched for
Doric and his kind. He turned away from her, his voice so full of pain and
disgust, it hurt to listen to. He turned the shower off and opened the door of
the shower cubicle.

"Doric,
wait." Penelope wrapped her hand round his biceps and he froze.

"So is
this something you can't help, or—"

She flinched
at the speed with which he turned and crowded her against the tiled wall. Her
heart beat faster, and her breath hitched as she wrapped her arms around his
neck.

"If
you're asking me whether my kind can’t help be swept away with it all, then the
answer is no. Contrary to popular fiction, we do not set out to impregnate any
female we come across. We only want to bite the women we…we," He shut his
eyes and mumbled something in his own language, before he stepped back not
looking at her.

"You
what, Doric? Finish your sentence, please."

Penelope's
heart beat so fast, she started to feel faint.

"We only
bite the women we love."

Chapter Eight

Penelope's
eyes widened in astonishment, and her smile lit up her face.
God’s truth,
she was beautiful. Perhaps not in the traditional sense – her nose was slightly
too small for her face, her eyes too close, her mouth too full – no perfect
symmetry in the adorable pixie features of his love. But, when she smiled liked
that, and squinted her eyes to help her focus without her glasses, she made him
want to crush her to him and never let her go. The tiny seed of hope, which had
settled in Doric's chest ever since her acceptance of him in his true form had
brought an end to the curse, blossomed and soared.

"So,
does that mean what I think it means?" She looked uncertain and hopeful
all rolled into one and utterly adorable as he stepped closer to her. She
raised one tentative hand up to his fangs again, and his jaw ached with the
need to claim her. But this wasn't about his needs. It never had been. She had
given him the most precious gift by breaking the curse that bound him to the
Loch
. He was free to roam the world and visit his
ancestral homes once again. The fact that it all would mean nothing without the
woman he loved by his side was perhaps the cruelest trick of all.

She swayed
slightly on the slippery floor, and he pulled her to him and hugged her tight
for several precious seconds. Her small sigh of submission, and the trusting
way she snuggled as close to him as humanly possible, filled the empty spaces
inside his soul with so much hope and love he felt light-headed.

"It
means I'm going to take care of you,
ceannbeag,
and right now you need sleep, and food, and then we'll talk
about this."

He
silenced her mewl of protest with a kiss that whipped his blood into a frenzy
and left her trembling in his arms. Ruthlessly ignoring his body's needs he
wrapped her up in a towel and deposited her on her bed. Exhaustion was fast
catching up with her, and she couldn't hide the big yawn or the way she
desperately tried to keep her eyes open. He extricated himself out of the death
grip she had on him and pulled her into his side.

"Go
to sleep. I'm not going anywhere."

"Promise?"
Her sleepy voice made him smile, and he kissed her now closed eyes.

"
Geallaim,
ceannbeag."
Doric looked down on his
little human and closed his own eyes. Peace flowed through him, and for the
first time in centuries he allowed himself to fall asleep in his human form.

****

Heat
licked her skin, ropes cut into her flesh, fear choked her until she couldn't
breathe, couldn't move, couldn't even scream. Huge menacing shapes surrounded
her. The eagle swooped down, claws raised to sink into her face and…

Penelope
woke up with a start, heart beating in her chest so fast she couldn't catch her
breath, hands blindly groping and connecting with thin air. The dream had been
so horrifyingly real, but the smell burning her nostrils was not the heat of
fire, animals, and decay, but the delightful aroma of brewing coffee and
sizzling bacon. She wasn't back in that terrible cave, but safely tucked under
her covers surrounded by Doric's familiar scent. The pillow next to hers still
held the shape of his head, and she smiled at the single strand of his long
hair left behind as a reminder. Judging by the sounds and smells carrying up
the stairs he was cooking, and her stomach rumbled loudly in anticipation of
food. Her heart clenched in anticipation of seeing the man himself. She had so
many questions bouncing around in her head, but it was the need to see him, to
reassure herself that he was real and not a figment of her imagination, that
drove her out of bed.
 
She grimaced at
her reflection in the dresser, ran a brush through her hair and looked for her
bathrobe.

She
flinched remembering where she'd left that particular item of clothing. Doric's
deep rumble carried up the stairs, and Penelope's heart skipped a few beats as
the vibrations danced across her skin. He was singing in that guttural language
he used when he was deep in thought, but rather than the agonized tones he usually
uttered in what she presumed must be his species' mother tongue, he sounded
happy.

Penelope
grinned to herself, and she pulled open the bottom drawer of the dresser. The
cream silk negligée with matching thong, garter belt, and six inch killer heels
had been a never-worn impulse buy. Persuaded by the sales lady that it matched
Penelope's complexion, and would drive her man wild, she had indulged herself
in an effort to raise her self-esteem after the break-up with her fiancé.
 
Of course she'd had no man to drive wild, and
she couldn't be sure it would work on Doric, being that he wasn't exactly
human, but it had to be worth a try. The thought made her pause for a second as
her heart beat faster still. He wasn't human. He hadn't said it in as many
words, but Penelope got the impression that his normal form was the one he
adopted in the
Loch
.

She
resumed pulling up her stockings and smiled. It didn't matter. He'd as good as
said he'd loved her earlier. A shudder went through Penelope as she recalled
his struggle for control and the way every atom in her body had responded to
that leashed aggression. She should have been terrified, but instead she'd felt
safe and cherished, the connection between them so strong it had been
breath-taking. The same connection she'd felt even as a child when he'd brought
her to shore, his amazing eyes boring into her soul, branding her to him with
forces stronger than any she could or would want to fight against. Her mother's
last words made sense now.

Racked
with the pain of her cancer, she'd smiled at Penelope, and with her dying
breath she had whispered words that hadn’t made sense at the time.

"Go
to the
Loch
; fulfill your destiny, my
child."

A
grief strickenPenelope had not understood what her mother had meant. All these
years she'd warned her away from the Loch, but in the end even her mother had
always come back year after year to meditate and to pray, keeping a wary eye on
Penelope at all times. She'd felt the pull of the
Loch
as much as her daughter had. Penelope now knew that it was Doric who'd called
her. He was her destiny and always had been.

So
what if he wasn't human? The few humans she'd allowed herself to get close to
had proven nothing but a huge disappointment so far, and besides, she loved
him. The realization that she did settled in her heart with a warm glow, and
she all but skipped down the stairs. Or at least she tried to. The heels took
some getting used to.
 
She had to tell
him. She had to make him see that whatever he felt he had to say, whatever
objections he would throw at her, it didn't matter. They could have their very
own fairy tale. She would make damn sure of that.

As
she thought, Doric was in the kitchen. Wearing nothing but her frilly apron,
which was far too small on his huge frame, he nonetheless looked sexy as hell.
He stood facing the cooker, expertly flipping the omelet he was cooking, his
taut, naked butt a clit-clenching sight for sore eyes. Penelope bit her lips to
stop herself from moaning out loud. It seemed around him her inner nymphomaniac
was having a field day.

"We
really need to get you some clothes, Doric." She rolled her eyes at the
breathy quality of her own voice.
Yep, Miss Nympho, say hello.

He
turned round slowly, and Penelope held her breath. Doric's smile lit up his
stern features, and he ran his heated gaze over her scantily clad form. Her
skin heated, her pussy clenched, and her nipples beaded against the silk of her
negligée, as she felt his eyes roaming over her like a physical caress. By the
time their gazes locked she was a quivering mass of pure need, and she had to
hold onto the back of the kitchen chair, lest she slide to the floor.

"Yes,
well, I'm afraid the ones I do have are centuries out of date. Breeches went
out of fashion a while ago I believe." His smile deepened at her sharp
intake of breath. Doric in breeches.
Oh my!

"Sit
down,
ceannbeag,
before you fall down. You need some food in you. All I
could find were eggs, bacon, and milk. Do you never eat?" He winked at her
and put a mouthwatering plate of steaming, fluffy omelet in front of her.

"I
was due a trip into town to stock up on groceries, before this big lout washed
up on my shore, you see." Penelope sat down with an inelegant thump, as
her mind struggled to process what he'd just told her. "So, if your last clothes
were breeches–" She swallowed audibly, and Doric's chuckle washed over her
senses. "Then, does that mean you have, I mean, you've been in the
Loch
all that time, as…as your other you?"

God,
that sounded lame, but what else could she call him?

"Not
my other me,
ceannbeag,
as me. The form I take in the water is my true
form. This feeble body is not the true me."

He
smiled at her muttered, "I wouldn't call that body feeble, Doric."
She picked up the fork and started eating automatically. The fluffy texture
exploded on her tongue, and she moaned her approval, making Doric chuckle.

"Eat.
We can discuss this later."

"No,
I can eat and listen. This is
so
good, Doric." Her fork clanged on
the plate loudly in her haste to stop him from walking away. She clamped her
hand around his biceps, once again marveling at the power under her fingertips,
and he pulled up a chair next to her and sat down.

"Please
keep talking. I want to understand all this. I just know the legends, and I
know
that's not who you are."

He
sighed and cupped her face in his large hand. He nodded, dropped his hand and
motioned for her to carry on eating. Only when she did, did he carry on
talking.

 
"This body is merely the form my species
adopted to blend in. When we stopped having female offspring, embracing the
human living within us became of utmost importance.
 
In our desperation to keep our species alive,
we made mistakes. Some of our young males listened only to their hormones and
sought to mate with as many human females as possible. It was never going to
work. Our young look human, but their golden eyes and set of teeth give them
away at birth. Thousands were killed; the myth of the changelings from the
water was born, and our kind was hunted to extinction."

The
quietly uttered words carried a wealth of pain and sorrow and sliced right
through Penelope's heart. Half-eaten omelet abandoned, she got up and wrapped
her arms around his neck. His sigh settled on her skin, and he pulled her down
on his lap, and buried his head in her hair.