“A gift from my father. You should be grateful that unlike him, I don’t suck blood.”
“Oh, sweetheart, there isn’t anything you could do to me that I wouldn’t like.”
“Sean, please.” She shoved him farther away and paced along the back of the elevator. “I’m not here on a pleasure run. I need your help.”
Her worry settled cold in his blood, effectively cooling the wayward desire. He watched her carefully. Her stride as she paced was brisk and determined. Yet she repeatedly curled and uncurled her fingers while shooting him brief darting glances. Nervousness was mixed in with her worry.
Sean silently swore. How did he so instinctively know that without delving into her mind? What was this thing between them? Why the instant attraction before and again now, and why did he so easily pick up on her moods? And why was his beast so conflicted between desiring her and wanting to tear her to shreds?
The only thing he understood about any of it was that he didn’t like it—at all. It was an interruption in his life that he didn’t need right now. This was something he couldn’t control. And the safety of his family and his own life depended on his ability to control the vile urges demanding their deaths that still haunted him at times.
Without looking, he reached over and hit the stop button. When the elevator bounced gently to a halt, he asked, “I haven’t heard from you in nearly a year, what sort of help do you think I’d be willing to offer?”
She paused to look at him with narrowed eyes. “I gave up trying to contact you after about four months.”
“I never received a call or any other contact from you.”
“If by other contact you mean telepathy, I can’t do that unless I can see you. So summoning you with my mind was out of the question. Since you’d shifted into a dragon, it wasn’t that hard to guess your identity. There aren’t that many dragon clans left, and the way you reacted to hearing my name made it fairly obvious you were a Drake. After that, finding the phone number to Dragon’s Lair was easy.” She resumed pacing, her arms crossed against her body. “Unfortunately, I kept getting the wrong Drake. I spoke to your aunt. The last time I called she told me that you were recently engaged and to leave you alone.” The look she turned on him was frigid. “So I did.”
He felt her rising anger. However, it was nothing compared to his own. Engaged? That was the best Aunt Dani could devise? “When was this?”
Caitlin shook her head and sighed as if bored with this conversation. “The first time was about a month after you disappeared from my bedroom.”
She’d called while he was still debating whether to come home or not. Which explains why he had never received word that she’d called. However, he’d returned to the Lair shortly after that, so why hadn’t his aunt mentioned the calls?
That was something he’d take up with Danielle later.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t living here then.”
“Ah.”
He was taken aback by the shortness of her answer. “I am not engaged.”
She rolled her eyes and shrugged. “That doesn’t matter.”
“What did you—”
She turned to face him, throwing up her hands to stop him from talking. She screamed in frustration and then nearly shouted, “Our son has been kidnapped!”
The beast reared back and growled with enough force to send him stumbling backward. The growl turned menacing as it vibrated inside his chest. Between that unexplained bout of temper and the sudden roaring in his ears, he wasn’t certain he’d heard her correctly. After taking a deep breath and shaking his head, he asked, “Our what?”
“Son. Our son.”
“That isn’t possible.”
“Yes,” she shot back. “It is possible.” She covered her face with a shaking hand for a second before adding, “I don’t have the time, nor the inclination, for this.”
He repeated, “It’s not possible.” He would have known. The beast should have known. This woman had been marked as its mate, why hadn’t the beast known, or at least sensed this had happened?
“Damn it!” she yelled. “Do you think I sleep with so many men that I don’t know who the father of my child is?”
“No.” His mind swirled with an effort to make sense of this. First, however, he needed to defuse her anger before she managed to give the beast a reason to be uncontrollably enraged. “That isn’t what I meant. Calm down. Give me a minute to—”
“Would you like a calculator?” She jerked her purse from her shoulder, rummaged inside and slapped her smartphone against his chest. “Here. We were together a little over a year ago. He’s three months old. You do the math.”
Sean cursed and pushed the phone aside. “I assumed you were on the pill.”
Not only was it lame, it was the flimsiest excuse he’d ever used. Especially since he knew what her response would be.
“Oh, of course you did. And I suppose you also assumed that human birth control pills would somehow be effective?”
He closed his eyes at the expected reply. He’d never had to worry about any type of danger inherent with spur-of-the-moment sex, since his beast had the uncanny ability to sense when something wasn’t quite right and would steer him away from the encounter. As for birth control—his brothers had assured him that it was a nonissue since he could only impregnate his...mate.
Sean wanted to kick himself. Once they’d walked into her bedroom he’d been so wrapped up in lust, need, desire and her that he’d never given a second thought to the fact his dragon had marked this female at the bar. How had he let himself get so out of touch with reality? It wasn’t as if he could blame the alcohol—he’d only had two beers. Regardless, intoxication wasn’t an acceptable excuse for anything. Especially not for this.
Caitlin dropped the phone back inside her purse, and then she grasped the lapels of his suit jacket. “I don’t care if you believe me or not. I know he’s your son, and he’s in danger.”
Sean looked down at her as he willed the snarling dragon to calm down enough for him to think. “I never said I didn’t believe you.”
“He’s just a baby.” Tears welled in her eyes. Her chin quivered. “Please, help me.”
He could hear the beast’s roar in his ears, saw it thrash back and forth in his mind. The dragon was feeling trapped and angry, but the woman in front of him was afraid and worried. His beast would soon get over its hissy fit. However, Caitlin couldn’t be expected to do the same. He stroked her cheek and brushed away a falling tear. “Yes. Of course I will.”
She fell against his chest with a cry. “Thank you.”
Ignoring a sudden bout of heartburn caused by the dragon’s displeasure with this entire situation, Sean restarted the elevator and then, against his better judgment, he wrapped his arms around her. “It’ll be fine. We’ll get him back safely. Have the kidnappers asked for a ransom?”
She nodded against his chest.
“That’s good. Money isn’t an obstacle.”
“The ransom isn’t money.”
The kidnapper didn’t want money? Then what was the demand? “So you’ve talked to the kidnapper?”
The elevator doors whooshed open, and Caitlin stepped out of his embrace. She shrugged one shoulder and then said, “In a manner of speaking, yes.”
Sean frowned at her elusive answer. “My suite is right around the corner. We can talk there.”