Immortal Danger (Night Watch 0.5)(33)
Author: Cynthia Eden

As the waves of release pulsated in her sex, Maya turned her head and pressed a kiss against his cheek.

No, definitely not human.

As if there had ever been any doubt.

"So…" Maya began, her voice a slow drawl, "I think it might be time we had that little talk of ours."

She was lying in bed beside him, propped up on one elbow. Her eyes were blue again, not the burning black they’d changed to during her orgasm.

And, damn, but she was something else.

His heart still pounded like a drum, and his thighs actually shook.

Sex with Maya was freaking great.

The best of his very long life.

He’d never planned to get involved with her. To care.

But he’d learned long ago that great plans often went to shit.

"Adam?" A frown narrowed her eyes.

"Give me a minute," he said and decided to tell her, quite truthfully, "I’m still trying to recover."

For a moment, one brief split second in time, she smiled. Actually smiled at him. A real smile, not one of those sarcastic, kiss-my-ass grins she usually wore. No, this smile was different. Her face softened, changed from pretty to-

Beautiful.

Oh, shit.

But then the smile vanished, disappearing as if it had never been there, and she studied him with a slightly distant expression in her eyes. "So what are you?"

A strange conversation to have in bed. Probably not the right place. They were both also still naked, which served to make him horny as hell, but when Maya heard what he had to say, well, he doubted she’d be feeling a return of her lust.

Maybe that’s why I needed her so much. I wanted one more time with her, before-

"Not a demon. Although when I caught the scent of smoke around you a few times, I thought you might be an L10."

He’d learned to mask his scent over the years, but sometimes, if he became angry enough, the beast inside overpowered even the strong chemicals in his system.

"Figured at first you were a shifter. Maybe a wolf or a bear."

Adam climbed from the bed. Rifled through the closet until he found a pair of his jeans.

"Huh." He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Maya had sat up in bed. She hadn’t bothered to cover her br**sts or any part of her sexy little body. With an effort he managed to look at her face.

Her head tilted slightly to the left. "Must be bad if you’re jumping out of bed."

No, the move had just been a way to fight the temptation to jump her again.

Business first.

Pleasure, if she’d have him again, later.

"I am a shifter," he told her, pacing toward the bed. "Of a sort." A very ancient sort .

"Go on."

He hadn’t shared this secret with many. The first had been his childhood friend Richard.

The same friend who’d tried to butcher him twelve short days later.

The second, well, that had been his intended bride, Isabella. He’d shared his secret many, many years after the bloody encounter with Richard. He’d thought of not telling her, but if the woman was planning to spend every night of her life with him, he figured she’d deserved to know.

Isabella had thrown herself from the cliffs near his home. Her body had never been recovered.

He’d grieved her for years. Wished he’d kept his dark secret.

No, definitely not a good track record.

But Maya wasn’t really in a position to judge. She wasn’t exactly normal, either.

Yet Maya had once been human. While he-

"Look, Slick, unlike you, I didn’t spend the last two days sleeping." Her mouth split open into a wide yawn, one she actually tried to cover this time. "So do you think you might could hurry this little tale of yours along?"

Screw it . "I’m a Wyvern."

Her brows drew low. "What the hell is that?"

"You…don’t know?"

A shrug.

Well, hell. So much for being the terror of the century. "I’m a dragon," he said, voice hard.

Maya snorted. "Bullshit."

He didn’t quite know how to respond to that. "I assure you," he finally managed, "I’m telling the truth."

"Prove it." One brow arched. "If you’re a shifter, then shift." She waved a hand before him.

"Change into a dragon."

He glanced around the room. Gauged the distance from floor to ceiling. "Not enough room in here."

"’Course not." She climbed from the bed. "’Cause that’d be just too much to ask for, huh? I mean, I’ve only saved your ass here, if you don’t want to trust me with the truth about yourself-"

He grabbed her arms, pulling her close. "This is the truth."

"The stories all say your kind were wiped out a long time ago. I mean, I haven’t so much as heard a whisper about a dragon shifter still being around-and, you know what, Slick? I’d think it would be pretty hard to keep something as big as a dragon secret."

Not as hard as she might expect. "You’re still new to the supernatural world, Maya." A baby, really. Just five years in his realm. "Trust me on this one. You need to accept the fact that there are literally thousands of creatures out there that you don’t hear about."

Everyone knew of the vampires and the wolf shifters, the werewolves. Those two just couldn’t seem to keep low enough profiles. Sure, most supernaturals also knew about demons-because those guys were always going around stirring up trouble.

But the really smart beings, they stayed in the shadows, and they let the vamps and the wolves draw all the fire from the humans-in their books, their movies, even in their nightmares.

"I’m new, huh? Okay, I’ll buy that. But what about you, Slick? Just how new to this game are you?"

Truth time. "I’m a little over a thousand years old."

Her eyes widened. "How is that possible? Shifters age-wolves, panthers, bears. Hell, that’s the reason they’re always selling out to the vamps-looking for that promised you’ll-live-forever magic."

He let her arms go, stepped back. Mostly because the sight of her br**sts with the tight pink ni**les was really distracting him at a point when he needed to stay focused. "Could you…get dressed?" Hard to say. So very hard. But they needed to talk, and if she didn’t cover up, he figured the talking would be stopping very, very soon and the hot sex would be starting.

She frowned at him, but marched over to her bag and pulled out a black bra and another T-shirt.

As he watched, helpless to look away, she covered those touch-me br**sts, slipped into a matching black pair of panties, then jerked up her discarded jeans. "Satisfied?"

He had been, but-

"You were telling me how a guy who claims to be a thousand looks like he’s thirty." Her foot began to tap against the carpet. "Focus here, Slick."