His hot gaze raked her from head to toe and he swallowed a little growl of ever-present desire. Dressed in a thin, clinging lilac gown—one of several Nell had altered for her, and he suspected Nellie was deliberately choosing ones to drive him to distraction—with a deeply scooped neckline and snug bodice, she was a vision. Her tousled curls spilled about her face and she was pinching her luscious lower lip, deep in thought. She got as lost as his da did in the old tales, becoming absorbed to the point of deafness.

When she shifted position, curling on her side on the soft cushions, her breasts pushed together above the neckline of her gown and lust quickened within him. Though he’d loved her upon awakening, as he did each morn, he ached anew to bury his face in that lush valley, kiss and lick and nibble till she was panting and crying his name.

The past ten days had passed swiftly, far too swiftly for Dageus’s taste. He wanted to halt time, to elongate each day, stretch it to the length of a year. To cram a lifetime into the now, suck it dry of the bittersweet joy of being mated.

Sweet because he had his woman.

Bitter because he had to stay his tongue, and not make promises he burned to speak. Promises that weren’t his to give because his future was uncertain. To his immense frustration, he couldn’t offer what small truths he possessed either, because Chloe still hadn’t asked him about the “curse.”

He wanted to tell her. He needed to tell her. Needed to know that she knew what he was and could accept it. Thrice he’d tested the waters, once in her dream, once later, while strolling the gardens with her beneath a silvery half-full moon. In her dream, she’d flinched and evaded. In her waking, she’d done the same.

The third time he’d begun speaking of it, she’d tugged his head down and used one of his tactics: She’d silenced him with a kiss and made him forget not only what he was about to say but what century he was in.

It wasn’t like him to fail to confront a difficult situation, but he’d reluctantly ceded to her resistance and let it go for the time being.

He had no doubt that, eventually, she would ask. Chloe was nothing if not tenaciously curious. He knew he’d burdened her with a great many new things in a very short time: time-travel, Druids, legendary races, new relics, the demands of his insatiable lusty appetites. She’d proven remarkably resilient. If she needed a bit of time to work her way around to beginning to ask questions again, he certainly couldn’t begrudge her the respite.