Free Dance of the Gods by Nora Roberts Page A

smiling.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI was just wondering if you have that look in your eye over the dragon or over the man.”
    â€œWe’re talking dragon. But the man’s not half bad.”
    â€œGorgeous, fairly adorable, and with the heart of a champion.”
    Blair raised her eyebrows. “Hey, didn’t you recently get married—to somebody else?”
    â€œIt didn’t strike me blind. Just FYI? Larkin gets that look in his eye, now and again, when he turns in your direction.”
    â€œMaybe he does, and maybe I’ll think about taking him up on it one of these days. But right now…” She slid off the table. “I’m going to go upstairs and take a really long, really hot shower.”
    â€œBlair? Sometimes the heart of a champion is tender.”
    â€œI’m not looking to bruise hearts.”
    â€œI was thinking of yours, too,” Glenna replied when she was alone.
    Blair heard voices from the library as she passed, and veered just close enough to identify them. Satisfied that Larkin was speaking with Moira, she rerouted for the steps to head upstairs. She wanted nothing more than to wash away the sea salt, the blood and the death.
    She paused at the top of the steps when she saw Cian in the shadows of the hallway. She knew her fingers had reached down to skim over the stake in her belt, and didn’t bother to pretend she hadn’t. It was knee-jerk. Hunter, vampire. They’d both have to accept it, and move on.
    â€œA little early for you to be up and around, isn’t it?”
    â€œMy brother has no respect for my sleep cycle.”
    There was something preternaturally sexual, she thought, about a vampire staring out from the cloaked light. Or there was with this one. “Hoyt had a rough one.”
    â€œSo I could see for myself. He looked ill. But then…” The smile was slow and deliberate. “He’s human.”
    â€œDo you work on that kind of thing? The silky voice, the dangerous smile?”
    â€œBorn with it. Died with it, too. Are we going to come to terms, you and me?”
    â€œI think we have.” She saw his gaze slide down to her hand, and the stake under it. “Can’t help it.” But she lifted the hand away, hooked her thumb in her belt. “It’s ingrained.”
    â€œDo you enjoy your work?”
    â€œI guess I do, on some level. I’m good at it, and you have to like doing what you’re good at. It’s what I do. It’s what I am.”
    â€œYes, we are what we are.” He stepped closer. “You look as she must have when she was your age. Younger, I suppose, she’d have been younger, our Nola, when she looked as you did. Women wore down faster then.”
    â€œA lot of times vampires look to family for their first kills.”
    â€œHome’s the place you go where they have to take you in. Do you think any of the others in this house would be alive if I wanted them otherwise?”
    â€œNo.” So it was time for honesty. “I think you’d have played along with them for a few days, maybe a week. Get some jollies out of it. And wait until they trusted you, let their guards down. Then you’d have slaughtered them.”
    â€œYou think like a vampire,” he acknowledged. “It’s part of your skill. So, why haven’t I slaughtered the lot of them?”
    She kept her eyes on his, struck suddenly by the fact it was nearly like looking into her own. Same color, same shape. “We are what we are. I guess that’s not what you are, or not anymore.”
    â€œI killed my share in my day. But excepting that I once tried to kill my brother, I never touched my family. I can’t say why except I didn’t want their lives. You’re family, whether either of us is comfortable with that. You come from my sister. You have her eyes. And once I loved her, quite a lot.”
    She felt something—not pity, it wasn’t