by Zoe Chant
The moment he set the brake, Reese was out of the car and around it, pulling open her door. Tara had just a moment to undo her seat belt before Reese pulled her to her feet, tugged her out of the car, and closed the door. He pushed her against it the moment it slammed shut, and then his hands were cupping her jaw, holding her still so that he could kiss her.
Fireworks.
Tara didn't think the word so much as feel the warmth of brightly-colored night sky explosions behind her eyelids, setting off a chain reaction through her body. She couldn't stop herself from grabbing on to his shoulders, steadying herself as his tongue swept past her lips, claiming her, making her groan against his kiss.
There was nothing held back when Reese kissed her. She could somehow tell in the very core of herself that he was giving her everything he had, offering it up for her to take or to leave as she chose. She could taste his longing and his fierce need in the kiss even as she felt the sharpness of his teeth against her lower lip, the sweetness of his tongue against hers.
When did he get coffee? Tara wondered hazily, because that was what he tasted like, something dark and vital with just a hint of sugar to it.
He pulled back just long enough for her to catch her breath, just long enough that she could see that the copper of his eyes had warmed to something more like gold. The sight of them, passion incarnate, made her weak in the knees, and that was even before he leaned down to kiss the side of her neck, locating her pulse with a kind of unerring accuracy. She hissed a little when she felt his teeth there as well, that wintry sharpness tracing one of the most vital parts of her, kissing and nuzzling her until she had to cling to him for support. Her world felt as if it was spinning around her, but he was solid. He wouldn't let her fall.
His hands slid down her body, tugging slightly at the hem of her tank top before sliding up her bare sides. She could feel how rough his hands were, how the callouses caught at the tender skin there. She gasped for a moment, wary of tickling, but the pressure he applied was just right, enough to draw lines of fiery pleasure through her body without making her squirm.
“So good,” he murmured against her throat. “You have no idea how good you feel...”
“I ... I might have some idea...”
Reese laughed at her response, and that deep sound so much like a growl, made her shiver.
“I need more than this,” he said abruptly. “I need to feel all of you.”
Before she had quite figured out what that meant, Reese was pulling her tank top over her head, throwing it on the roof of the car behind her. She gasped, and then his arms were around her, undoing her bra with a kind of brutal efficiency.
“What if someone sees?”
“No one will, not this stretch of road, not this early...”
She started to say that that hardly sounded like a guarantee of safety from the highway patrol, but then her bra was gone, joining her top somewhere behind her. Reese dropped his head, nuzzling at her breasts with a soft sigh of pleasure, and it felt so good that she never wanted him to stop.
Tara threaded her fingers through the thick strands of his dark hair, whimpering as he caressed the sensitive sides of her breasts with his skilled hands. She could feel him tracing his lips lightly, so lightly, against the peaks of her nipples, and then she let out a gasp she would swear echoed as he pressed his sharp teeth against her sensitive flesh.
“So very beautiful,” he murmured, and she would have told him to knock it off, but he sounded like he truly believed it.
To her surprise, he straightened just long enough to lift her up, his hands on her thighs. He had said that he was strong, but the ease with which he lifted her took her breath away. She clung to his arms in surprise, not letting go until he settled her on the hood of the car.
“Why...”
“Because sand is terrible and I am not doing it in the back seat of the damned car,” he murmured, kissing her again.
She might have asked what he meant, but then he was reaching for her jeans, unzipping them, and then tugging them down her legs. She kicked her sneakers off, and after he got rid of her panties as well, she was naked as the day she was born, perched on the hood of a dragon's car.
She made a brief noise of surprise when Reese pushed her back, her legs hanging over the edge of the car, her back flush against the warm metal.
“Reese!”
“Tell me if you want me to stop, because otherwise ... I won't.”
Then, to her agony, he stopped himself, a look of nearly comical consternation on his face.
“Condom,” he growled. “I don't have a— ”
“Implant,” she said, because clear communication was important. “Don't stop.”
Never stop.
The sound that Reese made echoed through her body, and when he looked up at her, the hunger and adoration she saw there made her draw in her breath.
“I won't,” he said, and leaned down to kiss her again.
He stepped between her legs, and there was something exciting about how rough the fabric of his jeans felt against the inside of her thighs. He loomed over her, overwhelming in a way that made pleasure pulse through her body.
He kissed a line from the spot between her breasts, over the curve of her belly. He nuzzled at the hair between her legs, and in the pleasure that swept over her, Tara could only describe his motion as hungry. He wanted her with something that went far deeper than just being turned on, and even if she wasn't ready to admit it to herself yet, something in her understood it.
“Gorgeous, and all mine,” he murmured.
He spread her with his thumbs, baring her most sensitive flesh to his lips, his mouth, his tongue. Tara felt so raw and so sensitized already that she almost flinched at his first touch. Then she realized that despite the hunger that they both felt, he was being gentle.
He lapped at her with a care that made her heart thud in her chest. It felt so good that she found herself pulling back from the brink whenever she approached it. Her eyes opened, and the sky above was blue streaked with gold. It was so gorgeous that it took her breath away, or maybe that was Reese, working over her with a nearly astonishing single-minded dedication.
He worked two fingers inside her, almost as if he were testing her, and when he curled those fingers slightly, her cries went higher, got louder. She banged her head against the metal of the hood, and her hands came down hard in Reese's hair. She couldn't bear it if he stopped. She wasn't sure if she could bear it if he kept going.
Under the onslaught of his tongue and his hands, Reese pushed her to the end of her control, and then without a single pause, pushed her past it. One moment it felt as if every muscle in her body was straining against an invisible force. The next moment, she had unleashed all of that energy with a deep hoarse cry.
The pleasure that had been building up inside her took her like wildfire taking dry wood. There was no resisting it, no stopping it, and she couldn't care how tightly she grabbed at Reese's hair.
Shaking and trembling, she finally came down to herself. When she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was Reese's face over hers, his eyes bright and his mouth red.
Dragon, she thought nonsensically, and then he was entering her, filling her with a single thrust.
She cried out at his entry, and Reese froze, looking down at her.
“Did I hurt you? Are you-”
“No, no, please, I'm going to kill you if you stop...”
An expression of fierce joy came over Reese's face.
“I'll remind you later that you said that.”
He drew back, almost all the way, and then he thrust into her again. She had had sex before, but it had never been like this, this strange give and take, the pleasure spilling between them as if they created as one whole and then separated into two. It lit up the world, it lit up the sky, and though a part of her was shocked that she had anything left after what they had already done, Tara allowed it to take her again.
Reese's thrusts and the growling
sounds he made deep in his throat carried her higher. She broke when she felt the way he shook for her. His movements became sharper, less coordinated. His control eroded as he gave in to the pleasure that swelled between them, and that was what pushed her over the edge.
Her second orgasm was somehow even more powerful than the first, made even more potent because she knew that Reese could feel it as well. She cried out, clinging to him hard, and then she felt him spill inside her. She buried her face into his clothed shoulder, her eyes shut tight. Nothing mattered but being as close to him as she could get, being with him.
All she could feel was Reese. All she wanted was Reese, and something told her that he felt the same way she did.
All that mattered was the two of them at the top of the world, the dawn sky above them turning from deep blue to gold.
Chapter 10
The last thing in the world that Reese wanted was to be apart from Tara, but he knew he couldn't stay with her on the hood of a car parked next to a highway. It cost him control he didn't even know he had, but he pulled away from her as carefully as she could.
Tara made a brief sound of protest that struck him as terribly adorable, but she accepted his hand to help her sit up. He felt lit up from inside, as if he really had eaten the sun, like the dragon in the old story.
Mine, his dragon crooned, satisfied and drowsy. Mine, and mine, and mine...
“Are you all right?” Reese murmured, and she offered him a wry smile.
“I suppose I should remember that when I challenge you to prove something to me that you are going to go all out.”
Reese looked down at her, frowning slightly.
“If you regret what we did...”
“No. Not at all. I mean, I couldn't, not after I yelled my head off like that— ”
“I liked it.”
“I did too. But...”
Reese pulled back so that he could look at her a little more closely in the rising sun.
“But?”
She sighed, looking away from him.
“Could you pass me my jeans, please?”
Reese was very briefly tempted to hold her clothes hostage until she told him what was running through her mind. Instead, he handed her her clothing piece by piece until she was fully dressed and standing on her own two feet.
He waited, but for a moment, she only stared at out at the open desert, her eyes scanning the horizon. The idea that Tara was trying to avoid looking at him stung.
“Sorry, I didn't think we should be having discussions like that while we're both so very naked.”
“Fair. So...?”
“So that was good sex. I mean... really, really, good sex.”
Reese arched an eyebrow.
“Just really, really, good?”
“Oh come on, what more do you — Okay. Fine. If I'm going to be utterly truthful it was phenomenal. Happy?”
“That will do for now,” Reese said, trying to keep the hurt out of his voice. It was more then phenomenal for him. It shook the world, it changed everything, but maybe for her, it was different.
“I will accept that,” he said, more firmly.
“Spoiled and conceited, what a winning combination,” she said with a grin. “And honestly, fair. That was amazing. But that's all it was.”
Reese stared at her, searching her face for... something, some change, something that said that she belonged to him just as much as he belonged to her. When he couldn't find it, his heart sank.
“That's all it was to you?”
She shrugged uncomfortably.
“It was sex, it was ... God. How can I make you understand? You think that something important happened. You think that something about what we did should have changed me, changed something between us.”
“Yes.” Reese's response was fast, nearly immediate. His dragon had picked up his agitation. It was growing restless, and he very firmly brought it back under control. He could think of few worse things now than letting it out.
“No. No, Reese. That's ... that's the kind of thing that that asshole guys tell innocent girls to get them into bed. Sex is magic, sex is going to change the world, sex is going to bind them together.”
Reese reared back slightly, something deeply unpleasant churning in his belly. Instead of heat, there was something cold inside him, viscous, like black river mud.
“Is that what you think I was trying to do with you?”
He was grateful when she shook her head.
“No. At least I don't think you were doing it on purpose.”
“Tara!”
She flinched, as if she didn't want to be having this conversation any more than he did.
“Look, you might be a hundred years old, but you're acting like this is your first time or something. Wait, it's not, is it?”
She looked so shocked and horrified by the idea that he might have been a virgin that Reese managed a small smile.
“No. Don't worry. You have not spoiled my purity.”
“Wow, that was ... not a thing I have ever heard anyone really say. All right. But Reese, it was just sex. It was good, all right, great even, but that's all it was. There's no change. No mystic connection that was forged when you banged me on the hood of your car.”
Reese knew that she was being crude to put him off. It was working, sort of. He couldn't stand the idea that for him, the world had changed, and that for her, it had just been good sex.
She's lying.
Suddenly, he realized that his dragon was not concerned at all. It had roused at his agitation, but now it curled back up, sleepy and indifferent. To his dragon, everything was well. His mate was here, he had made love to her. Everything was fine.
Reese wasn't sure what to think. Tara didn't look like she was lying, and he knew instinctively that nothing would be gained by telling her she was.
“We should get back in the car,” he said finally. “Get back on the road, get some distance behind us.”
“That sounds like a great idea.”
“Unless you want to try again to see if the second time is the charm?” Reese offered. “We never know.”
Tara's laugh was as bright as new-fallen snow, as clear the Wyoming sky.
“Don't push your luck,” she said, and with a pang that he did not show, Reese could hear the relief in her voice.
She thinks that she won that one. She thinks I'm some kind of strange love-starved lunatic.
Reese paused for a moment after he closed the passenger's door after she got in.
She thinks she can ignore that part of her that already wants this with me. Wants us.
He had been told two things about the bond between dragons and their mates. The first was that it was perhaps the strongest thing that they would ever feel. The second thing was that both parties always felt it in equal measure.
As he nudged the car back onto the road, Reese glanced at Tara, chin propped on her hand, eyes on the horizon.
She feels it too.
The realization brought a stab of sheer joy to his chest, but it was quickly extinguished by a second realization.
How in the world do I get her to admit it to me and to herself?
Chapter 11
The miles rolled under them, the sun rose higher, and Tara very quietly tried to figure out if she was going insane.
I was doing so very well having that conversation with him after we had sex, she thought with dismay. I was being all logical about things, and now...
She knew that she was lying to herself. The feelings that seemed to simmer under her skin, that seemed to be rising up from her very bones, had started long before Reese ever kissed her.
It was back in that damned alley.
At the time, she had figured that she was on an adrenaline high, half out of her head with fear, and when Reese had shown up, it only made sense that everything had gotten amped up to eleven. That had explained those strange feelings she had had, from the sensation of falling into the sky to the certainty that everything w
as going to be all right.
I didn't think that everything was going to be all right because some random man showed up to join the party, she thought with some dismay. I thought everything was going to be right because it was Reese.
He hadn't said a word to her since they had gotten back into the car. In another man, she might have thought he was sulking, but there was nothing resentful about Reese. He was only quiet, thoughtful like she was. She was grateful for it, and though she kept her eyes resolutely turned towards the horizon, it was hard to keep herself from glancing at him from time to time.
Tara was just thinking about what this all meant when Reese spoke, not looking away from the road.
“I'm not going to hurt you,” he said quietly. “Even if ... I won't. I couldn't.”
“I know that.”
“Good.”
There was such a degree of relief in Reese's voice that Tara winced.
“I'm not afraid of you. Not even from the beginning.”
She hadn't meant to tell him that. She was afraid that he would start trying to convince her again, and then she didn't know what she would do. Instead he only nodded, face as still as a mountain, and without his prompting, her mind went back to what he had said about mates.
Would it be so very bad?
The tiny voice in the back of her head, the one that reminded her that the safest kind of target was a moving target, that was always looking out for the angles and making sure that she knew where all the exits were, was persistent. Would it be so very bad to accept the role that Reese seemed to want her in so badly? Would it be so terrible to accept the idea that there truly was something beyond her understanding drawing them together?
Tara suddenly wanted to accept it so badly that she nearly reached over to touch Reese, and then in the next moment, she lurched back, horrified at herself.
Even if she didn't believe what he said about mates, he clearly did. If she accepted it, if she took what he was offering, it would make her a worse person than she had ever dreamed of being. She couldn't do that to him, not even if it would give her enough money and protection to live in luxury instead of merely scraping by on the very edge of survival. She'd be ... she'd be a parasite preying on a man who seemed to believe with all his heart that she was something she was not.