by Lola Gabriel
“Oh!” she howled, the tension mounting as Anders’ movements grew more furious, his fingers digging into the skin of her naked hips, forcing her forward.
“That’s it,” he grunted. “I want to feel you all over me.”
Her knees gave up, and her mounting climax overtook her body as she released against him.
“I feel you,” Anders mumbled, his movements growing harder. “Don’t stop, sweetheart. Keep doing that for me—”
He groaned, and Sawyer felt his erection enlarge inside her. He froze, his grip on her hips almost painful, and she felt the hot streams shooting inside her like. Anders pushed himself against her, and she bucked back, wanting to feel every drop of his climax inside her, their bodies a trembling, identical mass of sticky sweat and pleasure.
Slowly, the fog that had overcome her since the moment she had stepped into the condo seemed to lift, and Sawyer was very embarrassed. She pulled herself forward, feeling Anders slip out of her as she yanked her skirt down. She turned to face him, unsure of what to say. A jumble of words escaped her lips at once.
“I—I’m sorry!” she muttered, avoiding his eyes. “I don’t know what the hell I was thinking.”
Anders chuckled dryly. “I think the entire beauty of that was that we stopped thinking for a little bit,” he replied softly, cocking his head to look at her. “Do you regret it?”
Sawyer’s dark head whipped up, and she shook her head vehemently.
“No! No, of course not!” she replied, her face red with humiliation. “I just meant… I mean, I don’t really… I’m not…” Oh, my God, spit it out, Sawyer!
“Me neither,” Anders offered smoothly, but before he could say another word, his phone rang. A peculiar look crossed his face, as if he realized something as he pulled the device from his pocket and read the name on the display. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I have to take this.”
Sawyer nodded, hurriedly collecting her things before turning back toward the condo.
“I’m coming,” Anders said into the mouthpiece in the way of a greeting, and Sawyer lifted her head, pretending not to listen. As she did, her heart caught in her throat.
Vander was standing in the glass hallway, his arms folded across his chest in bemusement. He shook his head as she rushed inside, her cheeks on fire.
“Naughty girl,” the older man chided. “He’s going to break your heart.”
Sawyer snorted aloud, turning to walk away as Vander followed, making a reproving clucking noise with his tongue.
“Hardly,” she replied shortly. “You have to have a heart in order to have it broken.” It was a one-night stand. Nothing more. I can cross “bedding a hot billionaire” off my bucket list now.
Now if only she could get her pulse to slow, she would believe it, too.
10
Three of his brothers had already arrived when Anders finally got to the house in Connecticut.
“What the hell?” Titus snapped when he landed, his wings gracefully folding at his sides as he shifted back into his mortal form. “We’ve been here for hours!”
“I got detained,” Anders replied evasively, gesturing for his brothers to follow him into the secluded manor house on the outskirts of Guilford. Long Island Sound was peaceful that night, only the sounds of the night birds calling along the waters meeting their ears on any sides.
“What could be more important than what you claimed to have seen?” Titus demanded, scowling. “If you’re going to drop a bomb like that—”
“Drink?” Anders interrupted, unable to jump into the direness of the situation when he was still consumed with the feeling of Sawyer on his skin.
“We already helped ourselves,” Marcus replied, gesturing at the tumbler in his hand. “Now maybe you can tell us what’s going on.”
Sighing, Anders realized that his brothers were right. No matter how great his evening had been, they had a much more serious situation on their hands at that moment.
“Is Max coming?” he asked. “I think one of the children has gone rogue.”
“Speak English,” Ansel groaned. “What children?”
“The dragon kids,” Titus explained. “Anders thinks he saw a dragon in broad daylight yesterday.”
“I don’t think I saw,” Anders grumbled. “I saw him. He was trying to take down my jet. And not only did I see him, so did my assistant.”
“No way!” Ansel and Marcus exclaimed in unison.
“It was probably a bird,” Ansel offered weakly.
“Yeah, Ansel, I can’t tell the difference between a heron and a goddamn dragon,” Anders snapped. “It was a dragon. A male, for certain, and I’m sure he was fully grown, but the only males would be us, Father, and the children.”
“You’re sure it wasn’t Father?”
The question was inevitable, each one of the brothers fully aware of how dangerous King Rui could be when he was on a destructive path.
“It wasn’t Father,” Anders sighed. “I have no idea who it was.”
“Max needs to go to the Alps and check on the others. No one has heard from them in years,” Titus agreed. “It could have been one of the older boys.”
Anders sat on the sofa, crossing an ankle over his knee. He didn’t want to voice his doubts aloud, not without being a hundred percent certain, but he knew in his gut that it wasn’t one of the kids. Thankfully, Marcus saved him from speaking his concerns.
“And what if it isn’t one of the kids?”
“It has to be!” Titus snapped. “Who the hell else could it be? He probably thought it was a joke.”
“You heard about the fires?”
Cassius appeared at the patio doors, and the men turned to him.
“I’m going to tell you the same thing I told you then: those were random acts, some pyromaniac who gets off on arson. It has nothing to do with us!” Ansel growled. “I have a match tomorrow, and you guys are stressing me the hell out right now.”
“Ansel, you have to admit that the timing is weird.”
“So what? There are dragons flying around that we’ve never seen nor heard of who just randomly appear to set shit on fire now and again and disappear? It doesn’t make sense!” Ansel protested. “Let Max check in on the kids. I bet they are and have been getting into trouble. I mean, they must be bored living up in seclusion. Who can blame them? We’ll go set them straight, and this will be the end of it.”
There was an uncertain murmur of consensus, but Anders knew they had not heard the last of it.
It was true; there had been a rash of unsolved arsons over the centuries, one which had apparently sprung from nowhere and ended just as quickly. They could have been anything.
“Are we done here then?” Ansel demanded, rising from his spot on the arm of the sofa. “I really do have a fight tomorrow.”
“Go,” the brothers chorused. “Good luck.”
Ansel seemed grateful for the out and took it, his feet transforming into claws even before his entire body was out the back door. His massive shape lifted over the Sound and vanished into the night, leaving the remaining brothers to stare at one another.
“Opal could have changed more of us,” Marcus muttered, rising to pace the room. “Why did we always think we were the only ones?”
“I thought we weren’t going to jump to conclusions,” Titus said, but Anders could see he was no more convinced than anyone else in the sunken living room.
“Get Max on the phone,” Anders called out to no one in particular. “We won’t know until we talk to the kids.”
But as Cassius reached for his cell to call his brother in Misty Woods, Anders was already thinking about what came next, for if there were other dragons in their midst, there were a million questions that needed to be addressed.
Who were they? What did they want? Did they know about the princes? And if so, what was their intention?
“Max, you need to go to Switzerland and check on the women and children,” Cassius said when he got his brother on speaker. “M
ake sure they are all accounted for and haven’t been off causing mayhem.”
Max laughed through the phone, but when he realized no one else joined him, he grunted. “What’s going on?”
Cassius filled him in as Anders rose to look out the back bay window into the night. He couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a reason he had seen the dragon. The chances of one dragon seeing another randomly were so slim that it had to have been done purposely.
Unless there are more dragons in the world than we realize.
The thought made his blood run cold.
“Have we been so egocentric that we just overlooked them all this time?” he whispered. “Have they been among us all along and we didn’t notice?”
“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” Titus told him flatly. “We’ll have more information tomorrow.”
“We need to start planning for what will happen if there are more of us, Titus. What if they want a war?”
All his brothers laughed.
“Then we’ll give them a war, Anders, but what good will that serve? None of us can be killed. There’s no point in fighting if a resolution can’t be found.”
“What if they know a way to kill us?” he muttered, a whole new rash of fears filling his mind. “What if that’s why they’re making themselves known now? What if they’ve figured out a—?”
“Stop it!” Marcus yelled. “You’re always such a lawyer. You can’t start with this game until we have more information. I’m still not sure you even saw anything.”
“Well, maybe I can call my assistant in here and you can ask him!” Anders retorted hotly. “Because he’s fairly damned sure he saw one, no matter how much I tried to convince him otherwise.”
“Is he going to be a problem?” Titus asked, his eyes growing wide with concern.
“Of course not. I’m just telling you, my pilot almost crashed the plane. We know what we saw.”
A heavy silence fell over the room as each man appeared to be lost in thought.
“We’ll get to the bottom of this,” Max sighed in his usual calm fashion. He had been catering to the king for centuries, after all. He was used to keeping a level head about things, no matter how out of control they might be. “I’ll be in touch.” Max disconnected the call, and the brothers remained in place.
“There’s no point in sitting here agonizing over this until he gets back to us,” Marcus decided. “I’m going back to Toronto. Call me when you find out anything.” He disappeared as the other brothers followed his lead toward the black yard.
One by one, they all shifted and escaped into the night, leaving for their respective homes across the world. When they were gone, Anders remained by the water, the moon’s rays bouncing across the stillness innocuously.
For the first time in years, he found himself feeling slightly lonely in the silence.
I should go back to New York and see if Sawyer wants to come here with me for the weekend, he thought. We can spend the weekend making love by the fireplace and ignoring the outside world.
He realized he didn’t have such an option, not when he was waiting on word from Maximus.
If I bring her here and I learn that we have a mess on our hands, I’ll have to bring her right back. She’ll think I’m playing a game with her or something. But what if it turns out to be nothing? Do you want to give up a chance to spend the weekend with that girl?
Temporarily conflicted, he waited, staring expectantly at the cell phone in his hand, as if he expected it to ring with news already. To his shock, it vibrated in his hand, and he narrowed his eyes when he didn’t recognize the number.
“Hello?” He could barely hear through the chaos meeting his ears, a hysterical voice screaming beyond an unimaginable din in the background. “Hello? Who is this?”
“Anders! Anders, oh my God!”
“Amelia? What the hell is going on?” Suddenly, he heard the wail of sirens and his back tensed. “Amelia?” Anders yelled. “What’s happening over there?”
“Anders, where are you?” Amelia squealed. “You have to come back! You have to come home!”
“What’s happening?” His ex-wife took a deep, shaky breath, although he could still hear her sobbing.
“Your condo!” she gasped, her voice choking as she tried to get the words out. “Your condo…”
“What happened at the condo?”
“Oh, my God…”
“Amelia!” Anders screamed. “What happened?”
“Anders… there are so many bodies…”
“What?”
“They’re trapped…”
“What the hell are you trying to say?”
“Someone set your condo on fire! It’s gone! They’re all gone!”
11
The chaos was unbearable, smoke and flames licking at the guests who flooded the stairwells, trying to break free from the death trap encasing them.
Sawyer was bumped and pushed, a mass hysteria ensuing as people ran in the wrong direction, unsure of which one was safe. She was dizzy from the fumes, and a part of her wanted to curl up in a corner and forget the din around her, but she refused to stop moving.
J.J. will never forgive you if you die here, she told herself inanely, clawing her way down the overcrowded stairwell. Again, she was shoved from behind and lost her footing, falling forward onto the group ahead of her. A swell of terrified cries erupted from the mob as they fell like dominos onto the landing.
“Get up!” she coughed, reaching to help up as many as she could. Some slapped her hands away while others reached for her gratefully. One man tried to pull her down on him as if to use her as a shield, but she fought and managed to get away, panic overwhelming her.
A garbled voice called through the intercom, someone from the FDNY instructing them to keep calm, but it was nearly impossible to hear through the devastation.
Sawyer could barely understand what had happened. One minute, she was seated beside Vander, watching the runway show in the ballroom on the second floor. Her mind was not on the high-end designs, nor on the pretentious crowd who seemed to be eyeballing her with naked disapproval.
In her own head, she was still bent over the railing of the balcony, being swept away in the feeling of Anders’ touch as he grasped her waist. She could still smell his cologne in her nostrils, a small smile toying at the corners of her mouth.
“Wipe that silly smile off your face,” Vander ordered with a slight growl in his tone. “You look like the cat that swallowed the canary.”
“Jealous?” Sawyer couldn’t resist asking, and Vander only scowled.
“Clearly, I am not Anders’ type,” he replied. “But don’t forget what you’re doing here.”
Sawyer eyed him innocently. “A few hours ago, you said I was here to have fun. I thought that’s what I was doing.”
“You’re a sassy girl, Sawyer. That’s not something I learned about you until now.”
Sawyer was sure it wasn’t meant to be a compliment, but she took it as one anyway. It didn’t matter what Vander thought of her, especially when she wasn’t sure how she felt about him. A part of her didn’t trust the man. After all, he had confessed to watching her for months, and he had gone behind her back to put a stranger in her home to watch her dog. What else was he capable of?
On the other hand, they shared a common goal, and he had whisked her away to the most amazing place she had ever been.
On a private jet. In a palace. With a prince.
Maybe she could put up with his petty envy for a little while.
“Don’t get too attached to Anders Williams,” Vander continued. “He doesn’t have time for indulgences like us mere mortals.” Sawyer felt her back tense.
“What do you mean?” she demanded. “He’s not a—”
“No!” Vander snapped. “That’s not what I meant. I mean that men like Anders will always be gods to the rest of us. If he has any dragon blood, I have yet to learn about it.”
Sawyer exhaled slowly, realizing ho
w scared she had been to suspect that the attorney might be one of “them.”
Of course he’s not, she thought. There’s nothing cruel or murderous about Anders Williams. It’s just like Vander said; he’s a god among men.
“Did you hear what I said?” Vander insisted, poking her in the ribs with malice.
“Ow! Yes, I heard you!” she snapped. “And of course I’m not getting attached. He’s not even here anymore. I’ll probably never see him again.”
The thought gave her a twinge of sadness, but she didn’t have time to pursue it—the world went red and then black.
Sawyer wasn’t sure how she managed to scramble her way from the second floor to the stairwell among the mayhem, but she somehow fell with the crowd through the blinding smoke. Even though her movements were becoming sluggish and slow, she would not stop, knowing her only hope for survival was at the bottom of the building.
Help is coming, some logical part of her mind insisted. Keep going down and you will encounter help along the way. There was a searing pain shooting through her leg, but there was no qualia, despite the fact she had popped the ankle bone clear from its socket in her fall. Sawyer’s only focus was on moving. We were thirty-nine floors up. How much longer until we reach the ground?
A loud crash reverberated from above, and before she could turn to acknowledge what was happening, a piece of flaming debris shot down the center of the stairwell. More screams emanated through the passageway, and another surge of terrorized pushing ensued.
“Stop shoving!” she tried to shout, but her voice was lost in the din, and Sawyer knew she needed to save her strength for survival.
God, I hope Vander is all right, she thought, trying to locate the bald man in the group. It was an exercise in futility, her visibility as good as her ability to move. Are we even moving?
It didn’t feel like they were, but soon, the thickness of the soot began to ease somewhat, and she realized that they had made it through the worst of the blaze. Of course, that didn’t mean they were out of the woods yet; the ceiling could collapse any minute, bringing down the entire structure. They would not be safe until they were clear of the building completely.