Read Online Dances With Demons - A Phoenix Chronicle Novella by Lori Handeland - Free Book Online

never be the cause of any harm.”
    “You’re clean?”
    “I am.”
    “You haven’t slept with anyone since your last blood test?” I clarified.
    His forehead creased. “I’ve never slept with anyone attall.”
    I laughed. “Right. You don’t sleep. Ha.”
    “Megan, I don’t—”
    I lifted a hand. “Enough said.” I did not want to hear details about his lack of sleep with other women. Oddly, it bothered me to think that there’d been other women. Which was stupid. As I’d told him before, this was sex, not love.
    “Did my mother-in-law say anything else?”
    His gaze went distant. “There was something about a cougar. I told her that the legend was about the cat dubh —a panther. She didn’t seem to understand what I meant. Although I have no idea how she knew we were in Doras Dearg . I didn’t tell her.”
    “Cougar,” I repeated, and the light dawned. “She wasn’t talking about the legend. She was talking about me.”
    Bitch . I wasn’t that old.
    “What does a cougar have to do with you?”
    “Do you watch any television, Quinn?”
    “Why would I?”
    I suddenly realized I knew nothing about him after he left Murphy’s. Where did he live? What did he do? Who were his friends?
    “What do you do in your free time?”
    He looked away, lifted one shoulder. “Sleep.”
    “You work and you sleep?” Sounded like me.
    His gaze flicked to mine. “You’re changing the subject.”
    Was I? I hadn’t meant to.
    “Why did your mother-in-law use the word cougar?”
    Maybe I had meant to.
    “A cougar is a name for an older woman who likes younger men.”
    “You aren’t older than me.”
    I laughed. He didn’t. “Quinn, I’m at least five years older than you, maybe more.”
    “You aren’t.”
    “How old are you?”
    “How old are you ?”
    I resisted the urge to say, I asked you first , the childishness of which would only prove his point.
    “Twenty-nine,” I said. Though there were days, as well as nights, that I could swear I was aging in dog years—seven for every one—which would make me two hundred and three. That felt about right.
    “I am much older than that.”
    “Prove it.”
    He opened his mouth, shut it again, tilted his head. “How?”
    “Driver’s license?” I held out my hand.
    “I didn’t bring it.”
    “Passport?” He glanced out the door. “You had to have that or they wouldn’t have let you on the plane.”
    “I left it in the car of the friend who brought me here.”
    “Convenient.”
    “Not really.” His gaze returned to mine. “Does age matter?”
    “No.” Age didn’t matter. Lying did. Though I wasn’t sure what, exactly, Quinn was lying about, I did know he was lying.
    I was the mother of three. I could smell a lie as clearly as a recently soiled diaper.
    * * *
    Quinn’s hand burned as sharply as his chest. He should probably breathe—not that lack of breathing would kill him—but he couldn’t let out the air he’d taken in until she stopped staring at him as if he’d lied right to her face.
    He had, but how did she know that?
    The same way she knew when Anna had watched a show on the TV box that she shouldn’t, or Aaron read a comic book instead of a schoolbook, or Benji ate everyone’s candy.
    “About last night,” she began, and the breath he’d held in rushed out.
    That she’d kissed him had been a miracle; that she’d touched him even more. The joining of their bodies had been beyond anything he’d ever dreamed. Who would dream something like that?
    “We can’t do it again.”
    He thought they could. In fact, he thought they could again right now.
    “Don’t look at me like that,” she said.
    “Like what?”
    “Like... like... “ She threw up her hands. “Like you’re that damn cat dubh and I’m a mouse.”
    He froze. “Why would you say somethin’ like that?”
    She let out her breath. “You work for me, Quinn. It’s taking unfair advantage if I—”
    “I don’t mind.”
    “I mind. My mother-in-law is a