Everlasting Enchantment by Kathryne Kennedy Page B

animal with no place to go, no room to run.
    Millicent didn’t want to want him, damn it.
    She should never have put that bracelet around her wrist. She should have just snatched it and run. Then Selena could have put on the relic and satisfied her obvious lust for Sir Gareth. It would now be around the wrist of a woman who would relish a night of pleasure in the arms of this sensual man…
    Millicent paused on top of a thick carpet. She flexed her claws repeatedly into the deep pile while she thought, a slow purr beginning to rumble in the back of her throat. She shifted back to human, ignoring the fuzzy shreds of yarn now piled at her feet.
    “How bound are you to the wearer of the relic?”
    “I like your were-beast,” he commented absently, stretching out on one of the couches, his tunic pulling up with the movement, revealing muscular thighs through that thick woolen hose he wore. “You move with sensual grace.”
    “Predators usually do. It’s how we manage to catch our prey.” She smiled without humor, revealing the unusually long human canines that mimicked her beast. “Now would you please answer the question?”
    “I’m not forced to make love with the wearer, if that’s what you mean. Although it would be foolish of me, since she may just be the one who could break my curse.” He locked his arms behind his head, making his chest appear even broader. Pulling up his tunic even higher. “I do not have to stay by her side, either. But no matter how far away from the bracelet I roam, it always manages to swallow me when the sun rises.”
    Millicent averted her eyes from his recumbent body, wondering if he wore some sort of drawers beneath that tunic, or only the hose… which didn’t seem quite so thick now. “No, I mean, can you make love to someone else? Even while another woman wears the relic?”
    “It would have been some long years with the grandmothers if I couldn’t.” He frowned at her, a hint of anger in those pale blue eyes. “Verily, I don’t need the relic to seduce a woman.”
    “That’s bloody obvious.”
    He raised himself up on his arms, lowering his head and gazing at her through hooded eyes. Every movement he made seemed designed to inflame a woman’s desire. “I will not force you.”
    “So you’ve said. But how willing are you to help me?”
    Gareth shrugged. “I’m not bound by the relic to do so. But honor demands it of me. My sword is at your service, my lady.” He looked down at his empty scabbard in chagrin. “Forsooth, it would be if I had it.”
    Millicent smiled. “Ah, but that’s not the weapon we’ll be needing, Sir Gareth Solimere.”

Four
    Gareth shouldn’t have been annoyed by Millicent’s plan, yet he found himself tugging the bellpull with enough force to tear the embroidered fabric from its rope. He stared at the cloth in his hand with chagrin. Why was he reacting this way? Millicent’s idea actually had merit, and he had no doubt he could seduce the were-vampire bat into revealing where the duke had imprisoned this Nell woman.
    He admired the skillfully sewn visions of nude women feeding grapes to recumbent men onto a velvet settee, before he tossed down the bellpull, and turned to frown at the closed bedroom door where Millicent had taken refuge. He shrugged his shoulders, trying to dismiss his irritation. It’s just that he wasn’t accustomed to a woman throwing him at another. Indeed, he’d often had to prevent the relic-holder from physically harming another woman who dared to even look at him. He hadn’t realized until this moment that a woman’s possessiveness had fed his vanity… or that he’d become a vain man. Gareth had always taken for granted his extraordinary charisma as just a part of who he was.
    He smiled when he realized Millicent had made him look at himself anew. Something he hadn’t done in over a hundred years.
    The door to their prison slid open into the thick wall beside it and Selena stepped into the room, a guard