"Kenyon, Sherrilyn - Dark-Hunter 03 - Dragonswan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kenyon Sherrilyn)

"Sebastian."
She shook her head at him. "You are persistent, aren't you?"
She had no idea.
Suppressing the predator inside him, Sebastian put his hands in his pockets to keep from reaching out to her and scaring her off. "I'm afraid it's ingrained in me. When I see something I want, I go after it."
She arched a brow at that and gave him a suspicious look. "Why on earth would you want to talk to me?"
He was aghast at her question. "My lady, do you not own a mirror?"
"Yes, but it's not an enchanted one." She turned away from him and started away.
Moving with the incredible speed of his kind, Sebastian pulled her to a stop.
"Look, Channon," he said gently. "I fear I have bungled this. I just..." He stopped and tried to think of the best way to keep her with him for a while longer.
She looked to his hand, which still gripped her elbow. He reluctantly let go, even though every part of his soul screamed for him to hold her by his side, regardless of the consequences. She was a woman with her own mind. And the first law of his people ran through his head: Nothing a woman gives is worth having unless she gives it of her own free will.
It was the one law not even he would break.
"You what?" she asked softly.
Sebastian drew a deep breath as he fought down the animal part of himself that wanted her regardless of right or laws, the part of him that snarled with a need so fierce that it scared him.
He forced a charming smile to his lips. "You seem like a very nice person, and there are so few of you in this world that I would like to spend a few minutes with you. Maybe some of it might rub off."
Channon laughed in spite of herself.


"Ah," he teased, "so you can smile."
"I can smile."
"Will you join me?" he asked. "There's a restaurant on the corner. We can walk there, in plain sight of the world. I promise, I won't bite unless you ask me to."
Channon frowned lightly at him and his quirky humor. What was it about him that made him so irresistible? It was unnatural. "I don't know about this."
"Look, I promise I'm not psychotic. Eccentric and idiosyncratic, but not psychotic."
She still wasn't completely sure about that. "I'll bet the prisons are full of men who have told women that."
"I would never hurt a woman, least of all you."
There was such sincerity in his voice that she believed him. Even more convincing, she didn't feel any inner warnings, no little voice in her head telling her to run.
Instead, she was drawn to him and felt a most peculiar kind of serenity in his presence, almost as if she were supposed to be with him. "Down the street?"
"Yes." He offered her his arm. "C'mon. I promise I'll keep my fangs hidden and my mind control to myself."
Channon had never done anything like this in her life. She was a woman who had to know a guy for a long time before she'd even consider a date.
Yet she found herself pulling on her coat and placing her hand in the crook of his arm, where she felt a muscle so taut and well formed that it sent a jolt through her.
By the feel of that arm, she could tell his fashionable black suit and overcoat hid one incredible body.
"You seem so different," she said as he walked her out of the room. "Something about you is very Old World."
He opened the glass door that led to the museum's foyer. "Old being the operative word."
"And yet you're very modern."
"A Renaissance man trapped between cultures."
"Is that what you are?"
He cast a playful sideways look to her. "Honestly?"





"Yes."
"I'm a dragon slayer."
She laughed out loud.
He scoffed. "Again you don't believe me."
"Let's just say it's no wonder you said you wanted to steal the tapestry. I suppose there's not much call for slaying a mythological beast, especially in this day and age."
Those greenish-gold eyes teased her unmercifully. "You don't believe in dragons?"
"No, of course not."
He tsked at her. "You are so skeptical."