but I’ve got to ask you to stop. If I don’t then we end up right where we left off. Like I said before, my morals, or what’s left of them, need to regroup.”
“Do you believe I love you?”
I looked at him warily. If he gave me the screw-me-because-I-love-you speech, I was going to break his damned nose. I nodded, not trusting my voice.
“Then you must believe I respect you, yes?”
My fists formed, and my shoulders straightened.
“And if you believe I love and respect you, then you must believe I’ll accept your wishes on this matter.” He smiled at me, his lips reddened from our kisses, his pants bulging dangerously in the front.
I relaxed my hands and noticed that he noticed, then he laughed, rubbing his jaw.
“Besides,” he said, “I’ve no intent of giving you any more reason to punch me, whether I stand before you as a dragon or a man.” He tilted his head to the side and chuckled at my blushing cheeks.
“Sorry for that last time.” I stumbled through the apology, unsure how sincere it really was.
Bahlin and I gathered up the scattered remnants of our remaining suspects and laid everything back out on the table. We were left with Hellion, Tarrek and Imeena.
“I suggest we start with Imeena since she’s the most recent to disappear,” I said, running my fingers over her name. I could imagine her with her blue-black hair and Caribbean blue eyes staring at me across the High Council’s meeting table. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, thinking through the events of the last week and a half.
“Maddy, I think it’s important to rule out Hellion first,” Bahlin said, his voice insistent.
“No. Because I don’t believe Imeena did it and if I’m right, she’s the most recent disappearance.”
He looked at me, his eyebrows shooting precariously close to his hairline. “But she’s a vampire,” he exclaimed.
“And you’re a dragon. It doesn’t make either of you guilty.” My tone rang sharp. “Harboring a little prejudice?”
Bahlin blushed like mad and I suddenly knew, with alarming clarity and vivid imagination, that he and Imeena were once lovers.
“Bay, you had better come clean about this right now before I pick your damn name up off the floor and reconsider your place in all this,” I growled at him. Jealousy made me want to stand on the table and beat my fists on my chest, then throw him to the ground and love him until he begged me for release. Which, of course, I’d deny. Okay, not really, but it sounded good and made me squirm in my seat a little.
“It was about seventy years ago,” he said, and my head snapped up as I realized I still didn’t know how old Bahlin was. “She’d lost her mate and we, well, I’d come out of a bad relationship and the Council had just met and we ended up getting together for a few years, but it wasn’t significant. It was a passing entertainment for both of us.”
A few years? “How old are you, Bahlin?”
He closed his eyes and let his head drop back.
“Tell me,” I said, standing up to loom over his seated form by inches. Pathetic, but it was the best I could do with such a huge man. “Tell me, damn it.”
“How about we compromise and I tell you how long dragons live?” he asked, never opening his eyes or picking up his head.
“Both,” I said through gritted teeth.
He cracked a single eye.
“Tell me both.” I had no idea why it was so important to know his age, but he’d been so sketchy about it that now I needed to know…desperately.
“Dragons live to be about ten thousand years old,” he said softly. Then he lifted his head up to look at me, slowly pushing himself to standing and never taking his eyes off me as he did it. “And I’m two thousand, four hundred and thirty-seven years old. Are you happy? Does this make you feel any better, Maddy?”
I sat and missed the chair completely, catching my hip as I went by it so that it tipped me over. I threw out an arm to keep from face-planting it on the carpet.
“No,” I said. “It really doesn’t help me much at all.”
“Do you understand now why I didn’t want to disclose this?” he asked, staring down at me with his dragon’s eyes.
“Makes perfect sense,” I whispered.
“Should I get the door for you now, or will you wait to run until I’ve got my back