by Kyle, Celia
Willing herself to calm down didn’t work very well, but it was enough for her to compare this freezing with the last one in the Midwest. That stun job had only lasted a few minutes, but this one felt…different. Stronger. Definitely stronger. She suspected that unless Danque broke the spell himself, it would last a helluva lot longer than just a few minutes. Maybe forever.
And judging by the gleam in his terrifying gaze, forever was exactly what he had in mind.
She fought against his hold, trying everything she could to break free, but it seemed the harder she struggled, the more control he gained over her. Her feet were held in quicksand, and so was her mind. She was stuck inside herself, yet she could see everything clearly. The feeling reminded her of an old childhood nightmare, where she couldn’t scream or even run away from the murderer chasing after her. She’d always awakened from those nightmares gasping for breath, but Chelle had a feeling she wouldn’t be waking up from this nightmare.
Ever.
Cocky bastard that he was, Danque quickly shifted back into his human form, clearly not giving two shits about being completely nude in the alley. The duffel bag of cash lay at his feet, but Danque appeared to be in no hurry to escape the scene. In fact, he folded his arms behind his back and gave Chelle a prolonged, lingering once-over. His tiny cock twitched.
She seethed with rage, yet she was completely incapable of defending herself. She’d assumed that after he shifted back to human, the spell would be broken and they could kick his ass in the way he deserved. How the hell was he still holding them in place without the use of his serpent powers?
“Chhhhelle,” he hissed happily as his greedy eyes drank her in. “What a complete and utter pleasure it is to make your acquaintance again.”
Chelle fumed, her chest rising and falling rapidly with terse breaths even as her mouth was sealed shut and her throat produced no sound. Danque slowly paced circles around the two of them, a hideously arrogant look on his face.
“Have you noticed, Miss Calidi, that my powers have become stronger since the last time we met?” he sneered.
Shit. He’d known she wasn’t a damn janitor the entire time! It was unfathomable how a moron like Danque could constantly stay two—or maybe closer to ten—steps ahead of her all this time.
“I’ve been growing in power over the past few weeks, which I’m sure you realize by now. Look at the way I can keep you two frozen like a couple of popsicles. Mine for the licking, if I so desire.”
He waggled his tongue in her face, coming within inches of making slimy, disgusting contact. The only physical thing Chelle could manage was to stare daggers at him.
“You are aware that the two of you are after me for such shallow, pointless reasons,” he sighed, steepling his fingers as he paced back and forth in front of them. “The law is constantly getting in my way when they really should be focusing on criminals they can control. It’s not like any of them can stop me anyway. Life will be so much easier for everyone once it becomes clear I am at the top of the food chain now. I’m the beast you all should fear, the monster under your beds and in your dusty closets. I am the nightmare that stalks you in your dreams, and I will stop at nothing to get what I want.”
He paused, giving them both a terrifying smile. “And what I want is…the world. It’s simple but complex at the same time. I am patient, though, and I will get there. In fact, soon I will be completely invincible. Can you imagine? I won’t be stopped. Not by you, not by anyone. My powers have swollen to something far greater than anything you have ever seen before. Pretty cool, huh?”
He reached out and stroked his filthy fingers around Chelle’s chin and she strained against his control, wanting nothing more than to bite off his disgusting digits. Lord only knew where they’d been. But his powers remained firmly intact.
“Well, my friends, I regret to inform you that I am getting a little tired of our cat and mouse game. Oh, what a treat! Surely by now you’ve realized that I am the cat and you are the mice. All this time, you thought it was the other way around. Didn’t you?”
He cackled, clearly pleased with himself.
“It’s been a pleasure toying with you, but you’ve gotten a little too close for my liking, I’m afraid. It’s time for me to eliminate you. So with that, I’ll say… See ya, suckers!”
Chelle watched with rapt horror as Danque shifted back into snake form and began to slither around them, winding his body around them, constricting and squeezing the life out of them. Alarm bells clanged loudly in Chelle’s mind as she desperately fought to break the spell.
She wasn’t ready to die yet. Over the course of her career, she’d willingly faced death many times. Even eagerly, on occasion. Dying in pursuit of her life’s work was something she’d accepted a long time ago. But not today. Not now.
She’d only just found Allon, someone who could keep up with her, meet her halfway while also challenging her and pushing her to become even better. And now it was all going to end. Bile bubbled up until she could taste it as Danque squeezed the air out of her lungs. Her vision began to fade and a single tear slipped down her cheek. This wasn’t a fitting end for either of them. Not strangled to death in a filthy alley.
Movement caught what remained of her sight and then a bright blue beam of light shot through the alley and struck Danque dead-on. He released a horrific, hair-raising hiss before collapsing to the ground around their feet. And just like that, she regained control of her body again.
Her first move was to look down and make sure Danque was incapacitated. Boy was he! His entire scaly body had iced over as if it had just been pulled out of a commercial freezer. Once her brain realized she was safe, she slumped against Allon, clutching her chest, even as he gasped for air.
Oxygen never tasted so delicious, and she couldn’t get enough for several seconds. Only once the darkness had faded away did she notice the great figure looming at the entrance of the alley. A gnarled, sharp-eyed dragon stood there, blue smoke wafting in tendrils from his snout. He stomped toward them, causing Chelle and Allon to step out of the way instinctively. With one flick of his powerful tail, the dragon shattered Danque’s frozen form into a flurry of green snow.
And just like that, the chase was over.
Chapter Ten
“Par excellence!” Charlie said in the Wildridge Security conference room later that afternoon, where the rest of Wildridge’s team was gathered. “That was a textbook example of teamwork…among the three of you,” he added, furrowing his brow as his compliment kind of fell apart.
Allon had found a new respect for teamwork once he and Chelle started working together instead of against each other, but he really wouldn’t call what happened with the Gunslinger “teamwork.” At best, it was an accident, at worst, a trap. Regardless, it got the job done, which made their bosses very happy—even as Allon and Chelle licked their wounded egos.
“Shame Klent is so reclusive these days,” said Robb Samuels from the screen on the wall. “The three of you would make a good team in the long term. Sounds like you were all invaluable to each other.”
“The only thing Klent was invaluable at was dropping in and creeping us out,” Chelle snorted.
“Yeah, maybe we should all let him retire in peace,” Allon agreed, winking at Chelle and adopting a slightly different strategy to change the topic.
Charlie chuckled and shook his head. “Don’t worry, we’re being as facetious as you. In all seriousness, I’m sincerely happy to see how well the two of you worked together by the end. You two could barely stand to be in each other’s presence yesterday, and now look at you.”
Allon had to fight very hard to keep from letting an incriminating grin spread across his face, and he couldn’t even look over at Chelle. He would have lost it. If Charlie had half a clue as to how little progress they’d actually made on this case, he might not have fired them, but he would have chased them from the office for the day with a bolt of fire on their heels.
“Can we circle back t
o Anguis’s ability to stun dragons?” Wyntir asked, brushing a gentle blonde wave off her cheek, her fresh manicure gleaming in the afternoon sun. “Can you, like, tell me how that works again?”
“No clue,” Allon shook his head. “I was more interested in catching the guy.”
“Okay, but what does it feel like? If I throw myself in front of a client and get frozen, I want to know what I’m in for.”
“I think you’re confusing Klent with Danque,” Thrett said. “Klent has the ability to freeze. Danque only appears to stun.”
Wyntir rolled her eyes at the semantics. “Whatever. They know what I meant.”
Allon frowned, not really wanting to relive the experience while also wanting to prepare his cohort in case they ever come across something similar. “I guess the best way to describe it is that it felt like I was caught in quicksand.”
“Ever had a night terror?” Chelle asked, cutting to the point. “Cold sweat, total panic, but you can’t move or even scream? That’s what it’s like. Only worse because you know it’s real.”
“The more you fight your way out of it, the more it felt like fishhooks pulling you back in your mind,” Allon added to Chelle’s agreement.
“Basically, it fuckin’ sucks,” Chelle said, shaking her head. “Makes me wish I could turn him into dust too.”
“Can we hire her?” Elektra silently mouthed to Charlie. Charlie smirked but shook his head.
“Speaking of,” Dyrk interjected, stroking his chin. “This freezing power this Gunslinger character has—what do we know about it? I’ve never heard of a dragon who had anything but fire coming out their jaws.”
“Ooh,” Tessa spoke up from her corner of the table, the sound of her rapid typing pausing. Allon might have missed Bellicent’s snark, but at least Tessa was leagues better at taking notes. “Neptune is in retrograde right now at the same time one of its moons is having an eclipse. That might explain it.”
She beamed at Dyrk, the straightest arrow of the bunch, who blinked at her a few times before giving his head a light shake and ignoring it.
“As I’ve already mentioned to these two,” Charlie said to the rest of the specialists in the room, “Klent Ellwood is no one to be trifled with.”
Chelle sniffed, as if the old man hadn’t handed them their proverbial asses on a plate. “Whatever. I’m more worried about what Danque’s aunt said, that he was somehow changed in prison.
“I’m glad you mentioned that,” Charlie said. “That’s not something we’ll tackle at this meeting, but I think…we…should…”
The soft, rhythmic sound of light thumping and dragging made Charlie slow his speech to a halt as everyone’s head turned to the open conference room doorway, toward the floor. A stunningly large iguana’s ugly face poked around the corner, and then it dragged its body inside. It moved at a lazy pace, pausing to sniff the air curiously every now and then on its meandering way toward the conference table.
Chelle and Robb looked completely baffled, but nobody else in the room was surprised, much less Allon. He’d never admit it, but one of his arms was still sore from the day they had to pull apart the python and the ferret.
“Oh, goodness,” Tessa exclaimed, springing out of her seat. She knelt down and made kissy sounds at the beast. “Fluffy, it’s me, over here!”
“Uh, is that a, uh…” Robb said from the safety of the screen, “…a company mascot?”
“Something like that,” Charlie spoke, already slowly standing.
“Fluffy!” Alice’s voice came from the lobby. “Oh please, hon, it’s closing time. You know I told you I’d take you on a field trip tomorrow!”
Tessa scooped up Fluffy, kissing its scaly snout as she cradled it in her arms like a baby. She had more balls than Allon. And he was a dragon.
“Excuse me, Rob, but something’s come up,” he said, taking Fluffy from Tessa’s arms and heading for the lobby. “I think we’ve resolved everything, yes?”
“Resolved enough that Klent is willing to split that bounty with us?” Allon asked. “You know, with us being such a good team and all?”
Charlie was already gone, so Robb answered with a chuckle. “No such luck, my friend. He won this one, fair and square.”
“I think we came out alright, all things considered,” Chelle gave Allon a meaningful look, and all thoughts of the reward flew from Allon’s mind.
“We’re all done here. Right?” Allon stood quickly, sending his chair flying into the wall behind him. “Yes? No objections? Good.”
He hurried around the table and grabbed Chelle by the hand. She didn’t even need explanation. They hurried out of the room together, ignoring the subtle snickers behind them.
“Where are we going?” Chelle breathed as they hurried up to the helicopter pad on the roof of the building.
“Where it all began,” he said, winking over his shoulder at her.
Moments later, magic hiding them from prying human gazes, the two dragons spread their wings and spun up into the sky together, circling one another as the cool air whipped over their bodies. Allon’s dragon-form let out a roar as he crested over Chelle, but she whipped around him with just as much vigor as the two nipped at each other playfully.
In spirited but unplanned twirls and circles, the two massive dragons had a wide berth through the air as they hurtled toward the woods, to the very same clearing where they first ran into each other. Literally. When they were close enough to see the clearing, Allon bared his fangs in a dragony smile and rolled into Chelle. He bumped her hard and nearly knocked her out of the air like she had to him.
Grinning as only a dragon could, she let out a teasing gout of flame that he returned. On the second breath, their fireballs smacked into each other at the same time before the two dragons joined claws and spun together on their descent, feeling as free and uninhibited as the first time they’d collided in a pile of anger and sex.
Which was good because that was precisely what Allon was planning to do all over again. Hopefully, minus the anger.
* * *
It was impossible to resist Allon.
The moment her clawed feet touched the ground, the air grew heavy, electric lust crackling in the atmosphere. She looked at Allon, flames of desire flickering in his eyes, and a violent heat took over her body. It was overwhelming, even for a dragon.
They took their time, circling each other as though before combat. Her heavy dragon limbs were tense and ready, and a prickle of anticipation danced on the thin membranes of her wings. Exhaling sharply, she reared up on her hind legs and spread her wings wide, allowing her heartbeat to slow considerably. She kept her eyes on Allon, almost as if she was afraid he’d be gone if she blinked.
One deep breath and she allowed her powerful dragon body to melt into the softness of her feminine curves. Her leathery muscles receded into soft flesh, her vicious jaw shrinking as it retreated into her human features, and the ever-present heat swirling inside her calmed. Still in his dragon form, Allon circled her, his sharp eyes taking in each and every one of her curves. His gaze wandered from her face to her breasts, and then farther down. Her heart skipped a beat, and a pleasant warmth flared between her legs.
“Are you going to join me or do I have to kick your ass?” Her lips tipped up in a smile and he flashed her one of his own in answer. It was hard to tell if he was smiling, but judging by the row of sharp teeth he showed her, she believed that to be the case.
Finally, Allon followed her lead.
Ropes of dragon muscle gave way to a chiseled human body, every detail of it so perfect she could’ve sworn he’d been carved into existence by a master sculptor. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the perfect contour of his pectorals and abs, every inch of his naked skin demanding her attention, and it didn’t take long before she was following the V lines under his abs toward their merry destination.
“You can do more than just stare,” he took one step toward her.
His eyes were hungry, drinking up each of her curv
es with unbridled desperation, and his voice brimmed with desire. A shiver ran up her spine, her heart tightening as she returned his gaze. It didn’t matter how many times he did it, she would never grow tired of the way he looked at her.
“Same goes for you,” she threw back at him, and now it was her turn to take one step forward.
Only a couple of feet separated their naked bodies, and the magnetic pull between them was becoming harder to resist. Not that she wanted to resist. In fact, that was the last thing on her mind.
Slowly, Allon reached for her with one hand. He laid it on her face, cupping her cheek, and she trembled under his touch. The few times they had messed around had been a complete wildfire, but now she felt a tenderness in his caress that hadn’t been there before. Somehow, she knew he wanted more than just her body.
“What are you thinking?” His voice was a low whisper.
“You already have my body,” her lips twitched at the corners. “Do you want my thoughts as well?”
“What if I do?” he shot back, that maddening smile of his returning.
He didn’t wait for her reply before simply leaning in. Her eyelids fluttered as he closed the distance between them, and she held her breath as their lips finally touched. His manly scent made its way to her brain, coiling itself around each and every one of her thoughts, and she melted into his embrace. Even though their kiss started gentle and tender, it was only a matter of time before it became wild and frenzied.
Allon’s hands ran down the sides of her body, his palms caressing the smooth curve of her backside, and then he dug his fingers into her flesh. Pulling her into him, he pried her mouth open with the tip of his tongue, the warmth emanating from his body making Chelle’s heart beat even faster than before, so much that she half-expected it to burst.