NIGHT EMBRACE by Sherrilyn Kenyon Read Free Book Online

nodded.
    "We're directly over it."
    "Thanks." He relayed the information to Kyrian.
    "Talon, I swear, your hormones are going to get you killed someday."
    He didn't bother to correct Kyrian. They'd known each other for over a thousand years and Talon had never before been caught out like this. Kyrian wouldn't believe the truth of how he came to be in this loft. Hell, he barely believed it himself. "I also need you to bring me some clothes."
    The silence in his ear was deafening.
    Oh yeah, Nick was such a dead man when Talon got his hands on him.
    "What?" Kyrian asked hesitantly.
    "I lost my clothes."
    Kyrian laughed. Hard.
    "Shut up, Kyrian, it's not funny."
    "Hey, from where I'm standing it's funny as hell."
    Yeah, well, from where Talon was standing, with a pink blanket wrapped around his hips, it wasn't.
    "Okay," Kyrian said, sobering. "We'll be over there as soon as we can."
    "We?"
    "Me and Julian."
    Talon cringed again. An ex-Dark-Hunter and an Oracle. Great. Just great. They would never let him live this down and by nightfall one of them would be guaranteed to post this on the Dark-Hunter.com Web site for everyone to laugh about.
    "All right," Talon said, tamping down his ire. "See you in a little while."
    "You know," Sunshine said as soon as he hung up. "I could just go buy you some clothes. I do owe you."
    Talon glanced around the loft. It looked as if a bottle of Pepto-Bismol had exploded, or the Cat in the Hat had come for a visit. There was pink everywhere. But what struck him most was the dilapidated condition of her furniture and her piecemeal decorations. Definitely a starving artist, the last thing this woman could afford was a pair of two-thousand-dollar pants, and the earth would stand still and shatter before Talon ever put denim on his body.
    "It's all right," he told her. "My friends will take care of it."
    She brought him a plate of muffins and what appeared to be grass. "What's this?"
    "Breakfast… or lunch." When he didn't take it, she added, "You need to eat. It's good for you. It's a cranberry bran muffin with flaxseed and alfalfa sprouts."
    There was nothing on that plate that came close to resembling food. Especially to a man who was born and bred to be a Celtic chieftain.
    Okay, Talon, you can cope with this
. "Do you have any coffee?"
    "Ew! No, that stuff will kill you. I have herbal teas, though."
    "Herbal teas? That's mulch, not a beverage."
    "Oooo, Mr. Picky woke up on the wrong side of the bed."
    No human had ever been so flippant with him. Even Nick knew better. Feeling totally out of his element, Talon gave up.
    "Fine. Where's your bathroom?"
    Then right behind that came the thought,
Please tell me you have one inside this loft and not out back in a parking lot
.
    She pointed to a dark corner of the loft. "Right there."
    It was another area sectioned off by a hanging curtain. How wonderful was this?
    And he'd mistakenly thought the Middle Ages were over.
    Oh, what fond memories… not.
    Talon walked over to it and had just pulled the curtain closed and dropped the blanket to the floor when Sunshine joined him. She held a pink towel and washcloth in her hands and stopped dead in her tracks when she caught sight of him standing there naked.
    She put the towel on the sink and moved around him, looking him up and down. "You are just simply male perfection, you know that?"
    He would have felt flattered had she not looked like someone sizing up a car. It wasn't desire for him that made her say that. Her tone was detached, the way her mother's had been.
    She ran her warm, smooth hand down his back, over his tattoo. "Whoever gave you this tattoo was a very talented artist."
    Chills spread over him as her hand glided down his spine to his hip. "My uncle did it," he said before he could stop himself. He hadn't spoken of his uncle with anyone in centuries.
    "Really? Wow." She slid her hand up across his shoulders to the Dark-Hunter bow-and-arrow brand on his right shoulder blade. "Where did this come