Read Online Born to Bite by Lynsay Sands - Free Book Online Page B

leather-clad legs. She really had quite shapely legs, he thought, and then acknowledged that everything about her was shapely. The brief glimpse he’d had of her upper body before being distracted by the sight of her undone pants had been a rather revealing one. Eshe didn’t have very large breasts, barely more than a handful each, but they were round and perfect for all that. Besides, who needed more than a handful?
    “Okay, I’ll get some jeans and T-shirts,” Eshe said suddenly in a voice that was almost rebellious. “But I’m not buying any flowery dresses or anything like the one Mrs. Ramsey was wearing today.”
    “You don’t need dresses,” Armand said with amusement. “Jeans will do just fine.”
    Eshe gave a small, appeased “hrrumph” and then fell silent again, leaving Armand to his thoughts. He was deep into a silent debate as to whether he should call Lucian and have him take her somewhere else when she suddenly said, “I’m not your first life mate.”
    The comment set him aback briefly and he took a moment to gather his thoughts before acknowledging, “No. I have had a life mate before.”
    “So have I,” she said quietly, and then added, “I was fortunate enough to meet my first life mate while still quite young, only thirty. I got to spend eight lovely centuries with him before I lost him.”
    “How did you lose him?” he asked curiously.
    “He died in battle,” Eshe said quietly. “He was a fierce warrior, but luck was with the other side that day and they took his head.”
    “Were there any children?” Armand asked after a hesitation.
    “Yes. Eight. Six still live,” she said simply, and then said, “I know you have three. All of them were not your life mate’s children, though, were they?”
    “No,” he said on a sigh. “Susanna, my first wife and life mate, she and I had only one child, Nicholas. Thomas was born to my second wife, and my daughter, Jeanne Louise, to my third.”
    “But your second and third wives weren’t life mates to you.”
    Despite the fact that it was a statement rather than a question, Armand said, “No, they weren’t.”
    “Then why did you marry the other two women?” she asked simply.
    It wasn’t an unusual question, but the explanation was complicated. Grimacing, he finally simply told the truth. “I was lonely, and my second wife, Althea, looked very like my deceased life mate, Susanna. Even so, I didn’t plan to marry her, but she became pregnant, and single women were ruined by such things in those days.”
    “So she tricked you into marriage,” Eshe said dryly. Immortal women didn’t become pregnant accidentally as could happen with mortal women. The nanos in their bodies were programmed to keep them at peak condition, and having babies used up a lot of nutrients and blood so that the nanos apparently saw the baby as a parasite to be flushed from the body. An immortal woman had to consume extra blood to get pregnant and then had to continue to consume extra blood for the next nine months to keep the child to term.
    “Essentially, yes, she did,” Armand admitted quietly. “But I didn’t mind very much. As I said, I was lonely and the idea of another child pleased me.”
    “And the idea of another wife?” she asked.
    Armand frowned at the question. There was something in her voice that made him glance at her, but her expression held mere curiosity and he decided he must have grown a bit paranoid over the centuries and answered, “Althea was the daughter of a friend. I had great affection for her. And I blamed myself for not realizing what she was up to.”
    “What do you mean what she was up to?” This time it was definitely curiosity in her voice.
    “Althea had had a crush on me since she was about twelve. The fact that she couldn’t read me convinced her that I must be her life mate. Her parents explained that she simply couldn’t read me because I was older and that I could read her, but she didn’t want to hear that