At Twilight by Maggie Shayne

Author:Maggie Shayne
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Silhouette
Published: 2002-04-03T22:00:00+00:00

He was not a monster. I stirred awake, still nestled in his arms, my head resting upon his chest. And I knew that I had misjudged him so thoroughly that I could not have been more wrong. Of course I had. I’d put him on the defensive right from the start, attacked him and accused him, and he’d shown me his worst in return. If he despised me, I realized, I’d given him reason.

He had known that the screaming child was not his own. He had known it before he’d gone to the overturned car. There was no doubt of that. And yet he’d gone, all the same. He’d burned himself, and I knew enough of my kind to realize that a single false move or stray breeze or misstep could have sent him up in a blinding conflagration. At any moment, he could have suffered the same agonizing death as that creature I’d killed. But he risked it, to save the child of a stranger. And a mortal stranger, at that.

I had known mortal men, Christian men, who would not have done what this dark demon had done. He was not the embodiment of evil. He was not a devil sent to tempt me into sin. He was just a man, I realized, lifting my head and allowing my eyes to roam his face. A man filled with anger and in search of vengeance, yes. But also a man with a good heart, and boundless courage, and unselfish valor.

And beautiful velvet-brown eyes with stripes of ebony that glittered in the moonlight.

And a well-deserved dislike for me.

His eyes opened, searched mine. “You’re awake before me,” he said, still sounding sleepy. “That’s unusual.”

“The burns must have weakened you more than you realized.” I sat up slowly, hating to pull my body from the wonderful nest of his. His chest made a fine pillow, and his arms had remained around me even as he’d rested.

“You’re probably right. I still feel a little fuzzy.”

My head came around, my eyes locking with his. “Perhaps you need…”

His gaze dipped to the hollow of my throat only briefly, before he slammed his eyes closed and turned his head away. “What I need is to get the hell out of this cave.” He lunged to his feet and hurried to the doorway, a single swipe of his powerful arm sending my pine-bough door sailing into the night. Then he stepped outside, tipped his head back and inhaled, expanded his marvelous chest and stretched his arms overhead. I remained in the doorway, simply watching him. Fully appreciating—not for the first time—the utter beauty of the man. And I realized that perhaps I had been unable to see such things before. Clinging to my mortal ways of thinking.

It was high time I got used to the idea that I was not a mortal woman anymore.

The thought sent a shiver of what might have been fear—or might have been excitement—up the base of my neck. And I realized there was something else tickling my senses as well.

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