"Channon?"
Channon felt as if she were floating, as if she had no real form at all. Suddenly, she stood in a summer field with wildflowers all around her. She was dressed in a sheer white gown that left her all but bare. There was a medieval castle in the distance, highlighted against the horizon. It reminded her of one of the manuscript pages she studied. None of it seemed real until she felt strong arms wrap around her. Glancing over her shoulder, she looked up to find Sebastian behind her. Like her, he was practically naked, dressed only in a pair of thin white pants. The breeze stirred his dark hair around his handsome face, and he flashed those killer dimples. Her heart soaring, she turned in his arms, reached up, and placed her marked palm over his Sentinel tattoo. "Am I dreaming?"
"Yes. This was the only way I could reach you."
She frowned. "I don't understand."
"I'm dying."
"No," she said emphatically, "you're still alive. You came back to me."
The tenderness on his face as he looked at her made her heart pound. "In part, but I still lack the strength I need to wake."
He sat down on the ground and pulled her down with him. "I missed you today."
So had she, in a way that made no sense whatsoever to her, but then feelings seldom did. The entire time he'd been unconscious, she had felt as if a vital part of her was gone. Now, in the circle of his arms, leaning back against him, she felt right again. She felt whole and warm. Sebastian took her hand into his and used his thumb to toy gently with her fingers.
"I can't lose you," she whispered. "I've spent hours thinking of my life at home. It was lonely and empty. I had no one to laugh with."
He placed his lips against her temple and kissed her tenderly. Then he cupped her head in his hands and leaned his forehead against her. "I know, love. I've spent my life alone in caves, my only company the sound of the wind outside. But the only way I can fight my way back to you is to regain my powers."
"Regain them how? How did you lose them?"
She felt his lips moving against her skin as he whispered the words while he nuzzled her. It was wonderful to have him holding her again. "I was using them against myself. I set the dragon and the human inside me at odds."
His touch burned through her. She didn't want to live another day without feeling him by her side, without seeing that devilish smile and those deep dimples.
In short, she needed this man.
"Why did you do that?" she asked.
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He pulled back and kissed her fingertips. "To protect you."
"From what?"
"Me," he said simply.
Channon stared up at him, baffled by his words. He would never hurt her. She knew that. Even in his true dragon form he had done nothing but protect her. "I don't understand."
He ran his thumb over her palm, tracing the lines of her mark. Chills swept up her arm, tightening her breasts as she watched him.
When he met her gaze, she saw his sorrow. "I lied to you when you asked me about the mark on your hand. Part of the curse of my people is that we are only designated one mate for our entire existence, a mate we don't choose."
Channon frowned. Damos had refused to speak to her when she asked him what he meant when he had called her Sebastian's mate. He'd told her it was for Sebastian to do. Sebastian kissed her marked palm. "The moment we Arcadians and Katagaria are born, the Fates choose a mate for us. We spend the rest of our lives trying to find our other half. Unlike humans, we can'
t have a family or children with anyone other than our mate. If we fail to find our other half, we are doomed to live out our lives alone.
"As a human, you have the freewill to love anyone. You can love more than once. But I can't. You, Channon, are the only woman in any time or place who I can love. The only woman I can ever have a family with. The only woman I will ever desire."
She remembered Plato's theory about the human race being two halves of the same person--the male and female who were separated by the gods. Now she realized Plato's theory was based on the reality of Sebastian's people, not hers.
"So what do you need to regain your powers?"
He fingered her lips and stared at her with desperate need. She knew he was still holding himself back, still keeping himself from kissing her.
"You have to claim me as your mate," he said quietly.
"Sex regenerates our powers. It heightens them. I was trying so hard to keep from forcing you into the Claiming that I buried them too deeply. There is a delicate balance in all Arcadians and Katagaria between the human and animal half. I was fighting myself so hard to protect you that I ruptured the balance."
"It can only be repaired by Claiming me?"
He nodded.
"And this Claiming, what is it exactly?"
He traced the line of her jaw, making her burn from the inside out. "When you claim me, you acknowledge me as your soulmate. The ceremony is really quite simple. You place your marked palm over mine and then you take me into your body. You hold me there and say, 'I accept you as you are, and I will always hold you close to my heart. I will walk beside you forever.'"
"And then?"
"I repeat the words back to you."
That seemed just a little too easy to her. If that was all there was to it, why had he fought it so hard?
"That's it?"
He hesitated.
Inwardly, she groaned. "I know that look," she said, pulling back slightly from him. "Any time you're not telling me the whole truth you get that look."
He smiled at her and planted a chaste kiss on her cheek. "All right, there is something more. When we join, my natural instinct will be to bond you to me."
That still didn't sound so bad. "Bond me how?"
"With blood."
"Okay, I don't like this part. What do you mean with blood? "
He dropped his hands and leaned back on them to watch her. "You know how humans will bind themselves together as blood brothers?"
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"Yes."
"It's basically the same thing--but with one major difference. If you take my blood into you, our mortal lives are completely conjoined."
"Meaning we will become one person?" she asked.
"No, nothing like that. Do you remember your Greek myths at all?"
"Some of them."
"Do you remember who Atropos is?"
She shook her head. "Nope, not a clue."
"She is one of the Moirae, the Fates. She's the one who assigns our mates to us at birth, and if we choose to bond with that mate, her sister Clotho, who is the spinner of our lives, combines our life-threads together. At the end of a normal life Atropos will cut the thread and cause a death. But if we are bonded together and our threads are one, then she can't cut one without the other."
"We die together."
"Exactly."
Wow, that was a big commitment. Especially for him. "So you will have a human life span."
"No. My thread is stronger. You will have an Arcadian life span."
She blinked at that. "Are you saying I could live several hundred years?"
He nodded. "Or we could both die tomorrow."
"Whoa. Is there anything else?" she asked, curiously.
"Will I also get some of your powers? Mind control? Timewalking?"
He laughed at her. "No. Sorry. My powers are tied to my birth and my destiny. Bonding only extends to our life-threads."
Channon smiled as she rose up on her knees, between his legs. She crouched over him, forcing him to lean back farther on his arms as she hovered over him. She bit her lip as she stared at his handsome face, at those lips she was dying to taste.
"So, what you're offering me is a gorgeous, incredibly sexy man who is completely devoted to me for the next few centuries?"
"Yes."
/> She smiled even wider. "One who can never stray?"
"Never."
She forced him to lie back on the ground as she straddled his waist and leaned forward on her arms so that her face was just a few inches above his. She felt his hard erection through his pants, pressing against her core. How she wanted him. But first she wanted to make sure she understood all the consequences.
"You know," she said, "it's real hard to say no to this. What downside could there possibly be?"
He shifted his hips under hers, making her burn for him as he tucked a stray piece of her hair back behind her ear. Still, he didn't touch her, and she knew he was leaving it all up to her now.
"The Katagaria who want me dead," he said seriously.
"They will never cease coming for us, and because I am banished, it will only be the two of us to fight them off. Our children will be Arcadian and not human, and they, too, will have to battle the Katagaria. But most important, you will have to remain here in the Middle Ages."
"Why?"
"Because of the electricity in your time period. Arcadians who are natural animals such as hawks, panthers, wolves, bears, and such can live in your world. If they are accidentally changed, their animal forms are small or normal enough to hide from humans."
"But if you become a dragon, then we have a Godzilla movie."
"Exactly. And in your time period, there are plenty of tasers and electrical devices that can completely incapacitate me. No offense, but I don't relish being someone's science experiment. Been there, done that, and sold the T-shirt for profit."
She sat up straight, still straddling him, as she digested all of this. The man offered her the deal of a lifetime.
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wanted to do was make love to her. He'd told her everything. Now it was up to her, and he trembled with the fear that she would leave him.
She took his hands in hers and held them to her waist. "Our babies will be normal, right?"
"Perfectly normal. They will age like human children with the only exception being that they won't be teenagers until their twenties."
"And that's a drawback?"
He laughed.
"Oh, by the way, you're no longer banished."
Sebastian scowled. "What?"
"While they were torturing Damos, the Katagaria admitted that they had tricked you so they could get the tapestry from Antiphone. But she refused to let them have it."
"Why? What was so important about it?"
"Unfortunately nothing, but they believed that it contained the secret for immortality. It seems Katagaria legend had it that the granddaughter of their creator had placed his secrets into the work she'd created to honor him. They captured Damos, thinking he had it, and when they found out you alone knew where it was, they arranged the bargain with you."
"My sister died for no reason?"
"Sh," she said, placing her hand over his lips. "Just be glad the truth is out and the tapestry is safe. Damos wants to make the past up to you."
Sebastian couldn't believe it. After all this time, his banishment was lifted?
That meant a real home for Channon where she would be safe. A home where their children would be safe.
Channon laid her body down over his and breathed him in. "Which means you're no longer alone, Sebastian. You don't really need me."
"That's not true. I need you more than I've ever needed anything else. My heart was dead until I looked into your eyes."
He cupped her face in his hands. "I want you to claim me, Channon," he said fiercely. "I want to spend the rest of my life waking up with you in my arms and feeling your hair in my palm."
She choked as he used her words. He'd heard her. "I want you, too."
Laughing, he rolled over with her, pinning her to the ground and letting her feel every hard, wonderful inch of his body.
They kissed each other in a frenzied hurry as they helped one another out of their clothes. Channon pulled back as their naked bodies slid against each other. "Does it count if we do this in a dream?"
"This isn't really a dream. It's an alternate place."
"You know, you scare me when you talk like that."
He smiled at her. "I have much to teach you about my world."
"And I am willing to learn it all." Channon kissed those delectable lips as she wrapped her bare legs around his. She felt his erection against her hip, and it made her burn with need.
"Are you sure about this?" he asked, nibbling his way along her jaw. "You'll be giving up all your future Buffy episodes."
She drew her breath in sharply between her teeth as she thought it over. "I have to tell you, it's a hard decision to make. Watching Spike prance around and be all Spikey, versus a couple hundred years of making love to a Greek god." She clucked her tongue. "What is a woman to do?"
She moaned as he ran his tongue around her ear and whispered, "What can I do to sway your verdict?"
"That's a real good start right there." She sighed as her body erupted into chills and he dipped his head to torment her breast with his hot mouth. "I guess I'll just have to find another pastime besides television watching."
"I think I can help you with that." He rolled over again to place her on top of him. The intensity of his stare scalded her.
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"Tradition demands you be in charge of this, my lady. The whole idea behind the Claiming is that the woman places her life and her trust into the hands of her mate. Once you accept me, the animal inside me will do whatever it takes to keep you safe."
"Like when you turned into a dragon in front of all those people?"
He nodded.
She smiled. "You know it's a pity I didn't know you in third grade. There was this bully--"
He cut her words off with a kiss.
"Mmm," she breathed. "I like that. Now, where were we?"
She nibbled her way down his chin to his chest.
Sebastian growled as she found his nipple and teased it with her tongue and lips. He felt his powers surging again, felt the air around them charging with the force of it. Channon felt it, too. She moaned as the energy moved around her body, caressing her. Sebastian held his left hand up. The mark in his palm glowed and shimmered. Looking into his eyes, Channon covered his mark with hers and laced her fingers with his. Heat engulfed her entire body as she felt something hot and demanding rush through her. She saw the beast in his eyes and the man as he breathed raggedly.
It was the sexiest thing she'd ever beheld.
Arching her back, she lifted her hips and took him deep into her body. They moaned in unison.
She watched Sebastian's face as she slowly ground herself against him. "Um, I forgot the words."
He laughed as he lifted his hips, driving himself so deep into her that she groaned. "I accept you as you are."
"Oh," she breathed, then remembering what she was doing, she repeated his words. "I accept you as you are."
"And I will always hold you close to my heart."
"Umm, hmmm. I will most definitely hold you close to my heart."
"I will walk beside you forever."
She placed her hand on his chest, over his heart. "I will walk beside you forever."
His eyes turned eerily dark. He reached up with his free hand and cupped her cheek. His voice was a deep, low growl, a cross between the voice of the dragon and the voice of the man. "I accept you as you are, and I will always hold you close to my heart. I will walk beside you forever."
He'd barely finished the words before his teeth grew long and sharp and his eyes darkened to the color of obsidian.
"Sebastian?"
"Don't be afraid," he said as he bared his fangs. "It's the dragon wanting to bond with you, but I have control o
f it."
"And if I want to bond with you?"
He hesitated. "Do you understand what you're doing?" Channon paused with him inside her and locked gazes with him. "I've lived alone all my life, Sebastian. I don't want to do it another day."
He sat up, keeping them joined.
Channon hissed at how good he felt as she wrapped her free arm around his waist and he pulled her against him with his.
She lifted her hips, then dropped herself down on him.
"That's it, love, claim me as yours." Sebastian let her ride him slowly as he waited for more of his powers to return. He needed to be in total control for this.
Their marked hands still joined, he held her close to him so that he could feel her heart beating in rapid time to his.
When he was certain his powers were perfectly aligned, he leaned his head forward and sank his teeth gently into her neck.
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and sound. Her head fell back as she felt the strength of him moving through her, the smell of him engulfing her. It was electrifying and terrifying.
Her sight grew sharper and clearer, and she felt her teeth elongate. Growling, she knew instinctively what she was supposed to do. She clutched feverishly at his shoulders, pulling herself up in his arms. Then she leaned forward and sank her teeth into his shoulder. For an instant, time stood still with them locked together. Channon couldn't breathe as her body and mind joined his in a place she'd never known existed. It was just the two of them. Just their hearts beating, their bodies joining.
Sebastian hissed as he felt their bonding. The air around them sizzled and spun as they came together in an orgasm so intense, so powerful, that they cried out in unison. Panting and weak from it, he kissed her lips, holding her to him as he felt her teeth recede.
"That was incredible," she said, still clutching him to her.
He smiled. "Too bad it's a one-time thing."
"Really?"
He nodded. "You're fully human again. Except you have a long life ahead of you."
She bit her lip and gave him a hot, promising look. "And my own pet dragon."
"Aye, my lady. And you can pet him any time you want."
She laughed at him. "You know, since the moment I saw you, I keep having this strange feeling that all of this is just some weird dream."