Chapter 6
Claire felt the steady rise and fall of his breathing beneath her cheek, though she knew he wasn’t asleep. Every inch of her body ached, but she didn’t care. It was a miniscule price to pay for what she’d just experienced.
The connection between them had eased some, as if it had revved up and relaxed along with their arousal. It was far from gone though, the same way the desire for one another had far from dissipated. Just a few moments of calm, like a smoldering fire in the minutes before a new breath of oxygen brings it to full blaze once again.
It was different now, though; clearer. From the first time he’d touched her, it had been more intense, as if it were a vision more in focus than any sight she’d seen before. And so she knew exactly what he was talking about when he inclined his head to look at her and said, “Tell me.”
Her body stiffened automatically; it was accustomed to lies and secrets, not opening up to anyone. But she could do this; she wanted to do this. Why she wanted Noah to know the truth was a mystery even to her, but she suddenly wanted it desperately.
“I was born in 1914,” she began, pausing to see how he would respond to that.
“Would it be inappropriate of me to say you’ve aged well?” he smiled, seemingly unperturbed by this revelation.
“And when were you born?” she asked back, curious since she knew absolutely nothing about how a dragon aged.
“1476.”
What was she supposed to say to that? Here she was thinking she was ancient, and he was several centuries older than her.
“I guess I should be saying the same to you then, shouldn’t I?”
“Maybe, but we’re talking about you, remember?” he teased.
She smiled back, but leaned up and propped her arms against his chest. “My parents died on January 12, 1920. They drowned when the SS Afrique sunk not far from Olonne, France.”
“I’m sorry, Claire.”
She nodded, but pushed aside the sadness that came with the thought of her parents’ death. “I was sent to live with my uncle—Uncle William—the only living family member I had. I don’t think he was pleased at first, to be saddled with a six-year-old girl when he was just starting out in his career, but he tried to make the best of it. He intended to enroll me in a boarding school, but I refused to go, and so, not knowing what else to do, he took me with him. We traveled all over—Egypt, India, Africa, Scotland. I wasn’t always allowed to go with him to dig sites, but usually he let me come because I was good about staying out of the way.”
She was silent for a moment. Of course she wanted to tell him the rest, but years of keeping silent made for a difficult habit to break. And yet, she wasn’t afraid to tell him, she just had no idea what to say. It wasn’t something she’d ever rehearsed. Finding no pre-written script, she waded in the best she could.
She told him about the rock with the strange glow, the haze that developed and the strange things that began to happen. And she told him how she’d spent her life ever since trying to track down whatever it was she touched, realizing only hours ago that the Creag Bruadar had anything to do with it.
“Why?” he asked simply.
“Why, what?”
“Why have you spent so much time searching for it?”
“In hopes of undoing it, of course.”
He was silent for a moment, but she could feel that he was not pleased with her answer for some reason, though she couldn’t see exactly why.
“I hated being able to…see so much more than everyone else, Noah. Not just see it, but feel it. And nearly a century of never touching people…of never being touched…it isn’t the same with you as it is with most people,” she confessed shyly. “I don’t know why it’s different with you, but usually it’s…painful. And everyone I knew kept aging so fast…and I didn’t. I haven’t aged a day in more than eighty years. I still looked the same when my uncle died as I did when he published his first major article. I’ve been alone for a very long time.”
“You’re not alone now.”
She was about to reply with some glib comment about his never-ending string of female conquests, but something stopped her. He wasn’t joking, and he wasn’t only talking about this moment, either. But as tempting as the thought was, she couldn’t negate the fact they’d known each other for such a short amount of time. He would eventually grow tired of her. It was inevitable for a man who could have any woman he wanted—and did on a regular basis.
“You stopped aging when you were in your early twenties, right?” he asked, drawing her back to their present conversation.
“Yes.”
“And you see people in a way others can’t? You see deeper?”
“Yes. Why?”
He was probing for something, making sure dots were connected.
“It’s like touch transfers pieces of you and them?”
“Yes, but…”
“I don’t think you can undo it, Claire,” he said with a certainty she could feel came from past knowledge. “I didn’t know whether I should tell you or not, but I think you have a right to know, and you may not find out on your own.”
“I have a right to know what?”
“You’re what is known as a Venefica Eis. It’s Latin, and loosely translated, it means ‘enchantress.’ No rock made you this way.”
“You can’t possibly know that. I touched that rock, and soon after, that’s when I started to see things. I’m sure of it now.”
“It’s possible something about that rock sped it up, but it didn’t cause it. Nothing ‘caused’ it. You were born this way, Claire, but it usually lies dormant until one starts to approach adulthood. For some reason, whether it was the rock or something else, you simply developed your gift faster than others.”
This wasn’t happening. He couldn’t be right. He didn’t know her, so how could he possibly know what she was or how she got this way? But he was so certain.
Still touching him, she could feel that his knowledge came firsthand; she could almost see an image of the young woman. A thrill ran down her spine, thinking that she might finally have the answers she sought, and she wasn’t the only one, but she squelched it quickly. There were no guarantees, after all.
“You’ll never age; you’ll never get sick,” he said matter-of-factly. “And you’ve believed that your gift is a passive one, but it isn’t. You have no idea what you’re capable of, Claire.”
“I don’t understand. You call it a gift, but it’s not.”
“It’s a gift that takes time to develop. Your parents should have been the ones to help you learn to use it, but they were taken from you. But when you hone it, you won’t just see what a person feels or what they’ve done. You’ll be able to see what they’re going to do. And you’ll also learn how to segregate it from your own thoughts and emotions.”
He paused, but she could tell there was more.
“You don’t just see into them, Claire. Your gift allows you to do so much more. You can settle your own emotions into any human, turning them away from any number of evil things.”
It was just too unbelievable, wasn’t it? But she could see he wasn’t lying. “Where do these Venefica Eis come from and how can they do so much?”
“There is an ancient myth that the Venefica Eis were created as the ultimate peacekeepers, to keep humans from committing the very atrocities they have,” he told her easily. “Some of them started to take advantage of their power, though, using it for their own selfish gain instead, and they were hunted. It wasn’t easy, since they are likeable by nature; they’re mesmerizing creatures, but humans employed the help of other beings, and thus brought the Venefica Eis to near-extinction. It’s nothing but a myth, though, and it’s difficult to know what truth to glean from it.”
Likeable, mesmerizing creatures? Did that really describe her? And if they’d been brought to near-extinction, what was the likelihood she happened to be one of the remaining few?
He smiled knowingly, as if he could tell exactly what she was thinking. “Since you stopped aging, everyone you’ve come in contact with has liked you, haven’t they? And you’ve been picked out of a crowd more times than you can count?”
But if it was true and people were only drawn to her because of what she was…
“Then you’re only here because—”
“No,” he cut her off before she could finish the thought. “It’s different, Claire. Your gift gives you sway over humans, not dragons. I don’t know what this is, but I can tell you it isn’t just because you’re a Venefica Eis. You and I…the connection between us isn’t the same as it’s been with other people, is it?”
“No, it’s nothing like it.”
Her head was swirling with all the things Noah had told her; things that had the potential to completely change the way she thought about herself. And it was too much to process all at once.
She forced her thoughts elsewhere, and it didn’t take them long to latch onto something else; a thought that had been lingering in the back of her mind since she’d woken up in Noah’s bed.
“I want to see you,” she said, arousal tingling through her veins.
He was silent, but he knew what she meant. His eyes met hers for some time until he finally nodded. He seemed reluctant to get up, to put any distance between their bodies, but he did, and she immediately regretted asking. But he grabbed his pants from the floor and shrugged into them while she went to follow suit. It didn’t take long for her to realize her clothes were in shreds; what Damon hadn’t destroyed, Noah had ripped off her in his hurry to get her naked. She wondered if she shouldn’t just lunge for him and banish all thoughts of going anywhere but back to bed, but he opened a dresser drawer and tossed her a long-sleeve, button-down shirt from it.
“Don’t worry. We won’t be going anywhere you’ll be seen,” he told her when she stared down at the shirt in her hands dubiously. “If you don’t cover up, though…”
The heated look in his eyes told her what he meant. She slipped into the oversized shirt and followed him out the door and onto the boat’s deck. He seemed to be taking great care not to touch her and she was taking equal care not to think about the floating hunk of metal beneath her feet.
Once off the boat and onto the wide dock, he stopped, looking around and listening. It was dark, so she could see little beyond the dock, illuminated by a single light near the boat, and she couldn’t hear anything but the waves gently lapping at the boat’s hull.
After a moment, he took a step away from her, and then another. She followed him. She wanted to tell him he didn’t have to do this, but the words stuck in her throat. He leaned in and kissed her, his lips light against her own. But quickly, the pressure increased, and he pulled her to him, the kiss growing more urgent by the second.
“Just…stay here, Claire,” he told her as he wrenched his mouth away. “No matter what, just stay here.”
She nodded while he took several steps back, not stopping until there was at least twenty feet of space between them. He closed his eyes, and then it happened; so quickly, she might have missed it if she’d blinked.
Nothing she’d ever seen came close to the magnificence in front of her. He was beautiful, powerful and utterly mesmerizing. She saw him more deeply like this, even without touching him. He was terror and goodness, strength and warmth. He was pure, blatant sexuality and deep-rooted wisdom.
She didn’t know when it happened, but she’d started forward, closing the large gap he’d created. There should be some semblance of fear as she approached the massive beast, but she felt none as she reached out to brush her hand along the scaled arm in front of her—the arm that had saved her life.
He took a mighty step back, and then another. A few more inches and he would have collided with his boat.
“Please, don’t. I want to…” She didn’t finish the sentence, but stepped toward him once again. Her fingers grazed along his face that was bowed down low to meet her.
“Thank you,” she whispered, for the trust he’d put in her, and for saving her. She leaned in and pressed her lips against the plated hardness of his cheek.
His massive body shook, and he sidestepped away quickly—five yards in a single step. And then another. And then she watched in the dim light as he changed back.
“Why did you…”
“I can’t control myself like that, Claire. I can barely maintain control like this.”
Rock hard, and his hands trembling, she understood what he meant, and a thrill shocked through her body to know she drove him wild like that.
She didn’t know whether he’d come to her, or she’d gone to him, but they were together there, alone on the dock, and sparks flew behind her eyes as he kissed her. She was naked in seconds and their hands roamed over each other’s bare flesh. He drew her down to the ground quickly, but as he moved over top of her, she struggled.
“Roll over, Noah,” she whispered against his ear.
This time, she would ride the dragon.