Free The Last of His Kind by Doris O'Connor Page A

The only
fail-safe way to kill us is to take off our heads." He smiled grimly at
her gasp in response. "So biting our mates not only ensures that we can
procreate, it makes sure they stay with us. My mother and father lived happily
for nigh on a millennium. We had to keep moving, because, being human, Mother
could never stay somewhere for too long, before people asked questions, and we
had to be close to water, because a part of us dies if we're not in our natural
habitat for any length of time."
    "I
see." Penelope had to say something over the frantic beating of her heart,
grateful beyond belief that she was ensconced in Doric's arms, as otherwise
she'd have disgraced herself by falling off the chair.
    "Are
you okay there, ceannbeag? You're not going to pass out on me, are
you?"
    "Only
if you promise to give me the kiss of life." Her sassy comeback brought a
belly laugh from Doric, and she had to grasp his arms for support as the whole
kitchen shook. He sobered and kissed her nose with such tenderness that
Penelope had to blink away tears.
    "So
what happened to your parents and your brothers? Those were your brothers in
the cave, weren't they? And did I call them somehow?"
    " Sea,
ceannbeag, you did. You invoked a protection spell that called them out. To
protect the woman I love." Again, he didn't look at her as he mumbled the
words, and this time Penelope didn't even try to stop her tears from falling.
They splashed on his arms, and he swore, pulling her closer into him.
    "Don't
cry. I don't expect you to love me back. I couldn’t ask that of you. You've
given me so much already." He put one hand on her mouth to stop her from
interrupting him. "No, let me finish. You need to hear it all, and if I
don’t tell you now, then I never will, and if you keep looking at me like that
then I will lose what little control I have left. All I want to do right now is
bend you over this table and fuck you silly. I want to bury my cock in your
body, sink my teeth into your soft flesh, and your choice be damned, make you
mine – forever. Because I love you so much it hurts. I've never wanted anyone
or anything so badly in my whole fucking life, and it scares me. It scares the
hell out of me, because I'm no good for you. Binding you to me will mean you're
always looking over your shoulder. There will always be people after me, the
last of my kind, people like Euan, people like the ones who slaughtered my
mother and my unborn siblings. My father went crazy when he lost her. He lost
the will to live and allowed himself to be killed to escape a life without my
mother. I hated your kind so much for that."
    He
shook his head, lost in the past and his painful memories, and Penelope cried
harder for his pain and all he'd lost.
    "And
then I met Antje, on one of my trips into town. I was hunting for my father's
killers, even though that is not our way, and she blew me away. It was as
though I had been struck by lightning, just like my father had always said it
had been for him and my mother. I was a stupid fool. She was a witch, who'd
used a potion to lure any man she fancied to herself. It so happened she wanted
me. Lured in by her beauty I lay with her. She swore she loved me, and
desperate as I was to believe her, I bit her and revealed my true self."
    He
roared his anger, and the air around him shimmered as every muscle in his body
tensed, and Penelope watched in stunned fascination as his skin changed to the
texture of his true self. Just like before it bled back to human where she
touched him, and she dropped a tender kiss on his chest, just where his heart
was beating frantically. The touch soothed him, and some of the tension left
his frame. The shimmering stopped, and he was once again just his human self.
He looked at her with a wry smile.
    "I
have no idea how you do that to me, but it must be how you broke the
curse."
    "The
curse?" She asked.
    "Yes,
Antje, she didn’t take my revelation well. She ran away screaming and brought
the