tight fists he’d cut off circulation, and he stared at his hands a moment, flexing his fingers, getting the circulation back. After a moment, he raised his head and faced Lily’s father. “His comments infuriated me. We had strong words; it got ugly. Later, before I did the spell to access the astral, he held one of his big public rallies against Chanku rights of citizenship. I watched the remote feed and noticed he had at least six large bodyguards up on the stage with him. Men I’d never seen before, but he likes to flaunt his power, so their presence wasn’t unusual. Except one bodyguard had his right arm in a sling. Another had a slashed nose and a walking cast on his left leg.”
“Coincidence?” Cheval raised an eyebrow.
“If you say so.” Sebastian met his steady gaze.
Cheval studied him for what felt like a very long time. Then he nodded, as if answering his own questions. “I have a condition if you want to continue seeing my daughter. Now, obviously I can’t prevent you and Lily from being together if that’s what she wants, but I hope you’ll humor me on this.”
Sebastian merely waited while Cheval walked across the room to his desk, reached into a bottom drawer, and grabbed a small plastic jar. Sebastian walked over to stand beside the desk, and Cheval dropped the jar into his hand.
It was filled with large brownish-green capsules.
“These are the nutrients I want you to take. I believe you are Chanku, but I want to know for sure. Once you take these, if you are Chanku, you can’t go back. You will no longer be human. The changes are at a cellular level, and they are permanent.”
Sebastian held up the plastic container and looked at the capsules. “Lily asked me to take them. I told her I would.”
“And then you left.”
Sebastian nodded. “And then I left.” He glanced at Cheval. “Not a very bright move on my part. I knew it the moment I shut the door behind me I’d made a stupid mistake.”
“Good. There’s hope for you yet.” Cheval glanced at the jar. “They go well with cognac.”
Sebastian removed the lid and dumped one of the capsules into his palm. He retrieved his glass from the bar, swallowed the capsule down with too big a gulp of cognac and almost choked.
Cheval ignored his coughing and checked his wristwatch. “Do you play chess?”
“I do.”my
“Good. We can play while we wait for Lily. And when she arrives, I would like to hear more of your walk on the astral.”
None of this felt real. Annie gazed into Alex’s eyes and wondered if she should pinch herself. He was usually so funny, teasing and playing jokes, acting like a clown. Making her laugh.
Not now. Not here. His hands slid down her arms, but his fingers trembled against her skin. His lips parted when he cupped her breasts, and he sort of gnawed on his lower lip as if he was totally lost in touching her.
She was quickly losing herself. Losing any sense of who or what she was beyond what she could be for Alex. What they could be together. Was this love, this terrifying sense of free fall, the feeling that if he didn’t do more now, make love to her now, she’d burst into flames?
She’d had sex with a lot of women—girlfriends both human and Chanku. None of them, not even Lily tonight, had affected her the way Alex did, merely by looking at her as he ran his big hands over her body.
She reveled in the rough scrape of calloused palms, his strength, and the flex of muscles barely visible in the darkness. Even with her Chanku eyesight, he was all line and shadow, shape and form without truly defined edges, but he was every inch an alpha male.
What was he thinking? She wondered if he’d open his thoughts to her, and when she dropped her shields, just like that he was in her head.
And firmly entrenched within her heart.
Beautiful. So beautiful, and I don’t know if I’m good enough, if I’ll ever be good enough. Beautiful, perfect Annie.
Her breath caught in her throat. He had no idea she was listening, that he was broadcasting, and as much as she wanted to hear more, it wasn’t fair to him. Not when she could answer his questions so easily.
Since I was little, you were always the best thing in my world. The boy I looked up to, and then the man. The