I fling out my wings and try to stall my backward momentum. My speed picks up. The wind whistles in the opposite direction. It hurtles at me and forces me back. A screech tears out of my throat. I need to get to them. My body shudders then spirals. There is a powerful force wrenching at me. It insists that I am nothing but a dot of inconsequential substance. One who cannot be revived. Nothing can save me. I am caught in a web of my lies.
I throw my head back and screech again.
The sound echoes in my ears. I drop into myself and pull on that part of me that’s my dragon energy. It flares through my veins, pours through my skin, then flashes out. The force squeezes my chest, my ears. I am sure my very life is being sucked out of me. My vision goes dark. My body sinks, swiveling round and round.
A gust of wind hits me.
Pain whips through my side.
Red and white slams against the back of my eyeballs. There is a ripping sensation and I look down to find my wing is hanging at a strange angle. The earth rushes up to meet me. Closer, closer until I can discern the glint of the river, then the green vegetation on either side of it. The wind screams past me. Sweat drips down my back.
I am going to die, I am.
I close my eyes tight and only wish I had told them one last time how much I loved them. I wish I’d told him about them. He’d have taken care of them. My captor. My lover. The only man who’d seen right through all my defenses. He could have protected us if I had given him a chance. I hadn’t, and now my children were going to pay for it. I open my jaws and let out another cry. “Help me, Tristan.”
“Jess.”
A sound shudders in my ears and echoes through the noise in my head. Soothing, urgent. Needy yet giving. How can so many sensations be infused in just that one word?
“Tristan, please.”
“Open your eyes, Jess.”
The torment in his tone gets through to me. I’ve never heard him talk with such feeling. So much pleading. Is it possible he feels everything he hasn’t yet confessed for me? Everything I’d guessed? And now I am running out of time. My kids are going to die, and nothing is going to survive. Not them. Not me. Not Tristan. None of us. I should have told him. I open my mouth to tell him, but the words stick in my throat. I try to move and find I can’t. “Tristan.”
“You’re dreaming, Jess. Open your eyes and look at me. Right. This. Second.”
His voice lashes through the noise in my head. The force of his dominance is a potent call to my senses. It squeezes down on my chest until I am sure my rib cage is going to cave in. My eyelids fly open.
Burning blue flames capture my gaze. Cold. Hot. Seething with turmoil. There are dark circles around his eyes, and the skin stretches tight over his cheekbones. My gaze eats him up hungrily. I’ve missed him. I am not sure how long I’ve been separated from him, but he’s my rock. The radar that guides my life. Can I feel so much for him in so little time?
“Jess.”
I wince at a touch on my shoulder. Pain cleaves my chest.
“I won’t hurt you.” He retreats, pulling his hand to his side. His face pales further.
But those eyes, his blue gaze drills into me, trying to dig out all my secrets, and I want to tell him everything right now. I do. I open my mouth to speak again, but all I manage is a groan.
“You’re in pain.” His voice lowers to a croon.
So soft, so gentle. So not what I’d expected. Tears prick the backs of my eyeballs. I bite down on my lower lip and wince. My mouth is dry, and my tongue feels swollen. “Water,” I manage to gasp out.
He grabs a glass of water on the stand next to my bed, then holds it up in front of me. “I am going to help you sit up so you can drink it, okay?”
I nod.
He slides a hand under my shoulders and helps me sit up, then places the glass to my lips. I suck down the water, and some of it splashes down my chin and on my throat. My skin is so hot that I swear I can feel the water sizzling.
“No more, Fire, else you’ll be sick.”
The sound of my nickname on his lips brings forth a fresh spell of tears. I squeeze my eyes shut. There is a fluttery feeling in my chest. Since when did I become such a weakling?
I sense him hesitate above me. His arm is still under my shoulders, his presence all around me, my very own pillar of strength. And perhaps it’s that? When he’s with me, I am so tempted to lean on him, to get him to take care of me, to fight my battles. I suck in a breath, and the need to unburden to him squeezes my throat.
“Shh, it’s okay, Jess, I got you.”
The tears wet my cheeks, mixing with the water from the glass that I had spilled earlier.
“Don’t cry, Fire.” His voice cracks.
He pulls his arm from under my shoulders, and my eyelids fly open.
“Don’t leave me.” I grab his hand. My nails curve out and dig into his flesh.
He doesn’t wince.
A furrow appears between his eyebrows.
“I am not going anywhere, sweetheart.”
I swallow. The band around my chest tightens. The hoarseness of his tone, the concern I hear in his voice, all of it tugs at my nerve endings.
“Please,” I breathe out the word, and my belly stutters.
I am not sure what I want. I need him near me, and yet every second I spend this close to him ensures I am putting him at risk.
I had been drawing the danger close to him from the second I’d gone out of the way to catch his attention. I’d made sure he’d noticed me. Made sure he was attracted to me, only the pull went both ways. I’d been sent to bait him, and I had.
Except it is I who’d been caught in the trap.
My time is running out. My nerves stretch. All my muscles tense. I drop my arm from where it seems to now be surgically attached to him, but he snakes out his other hand and circles my wrist.
“Don’t pull back, Fire, not now. Let me hold you and soothe you. Let me lull you back to sleep. Can you give me that much after everything I did to you? Can you trust me, Fire?”
I frown at him. What’s he talking about?
I am the one who turned everything upside down. I am the reason his safe house was discovered. “I trust you, Chef, more than I trust myself.”
His gaze narrows. Something flares in the depths of those blue eyes. Desire? No, it’s more intense. Love. It has to be love. I’d been bluffing earlier when I’d said he’d loved me. Now I know it’s true. And it’s wrong. I can’t let this happen. If he falls in love with me, he’s only going to get hurt, and I won't allow that.
But perhaps just this last time I can let myself draw comfort from him, his body, his soul, from the nearness of his presence.
The thought is so intense, so real that a shiver sweeps over my body.
“You’re cold?” His features clear, and his eyes darken as if he’s reached a conclusion.
He slips onto the bed, on the covers. I frown and want to ask him why? Then he slides one arm under my neck, the other around my waist as he pulls me close to him.
My back is plastered to his chest, my hips curve where his waist is concave, and my thighs nestle in the valley between his more massive muscled ones.
The sheet separates us, yet the heat from his body pours over me, cocooning me, enclosing me in a web of comfort, of desire.
Flames lick my nerve endings, and my pussy quivers. I am half out of my head with pain, broken with regret, yet all he has to do is hold me and I will give up everything to be with him…everything except my family. My muscles tense.
“Don’t think about anything, Fire, I am here to help. Whatever you need from me, take it. Give me a chance to take on your problems, allow me to chase away your devils.”
A chuckle catches in my throat. “Didn’t take you for a wordsmith, Alpha.”
I sense the coiled tension in him. Uncertainty rolls off him, then there’s a whisper of touch to the top of my head.
Did he just kiss my hair?
“Love can do that to the t
oughest of us.” His voice is soft. “Where you are concerned, I have no defenses, can’t you tell?”
I swallow. It’s one thing to speculate that Tristan loves me, but to hear him confess it makes everything inside me burst into flames. My dragon trembles with the need to reach out to him, and I pull back my beast. Heat courses through my veins. My muscles grow heavy, and my eyelids flutter down. “I’ll remind you of that when the time comes.”
28
Tristan
Her words rattle around in my head. What did she mean by that?
The hair on the back of my neck prickles. Something in the tone of her voice, or had it been the choice of her words? Maybe the way her body had relaxed against me, even as the tension had coiled under her skin. There seemed to be some kind of turmoil inside her, something that was fighting to get out. It’s as if she wants to trust. She does trust me…just not enough to share whatever it is that is eating away at her.
My belly hardens with worry, and I am ashamed to say also desire. The woman’s hurt. My mate needs comfort and tending to, and my dick seems to be set on just one thing: being buried inside her. Embedded in her heat, drawing on the desire pulsing through her, wringing another orgasm from her, and another, keeping her high on endorphins and pumped with adrenaline. Clearly, I have an obsession with hormones. In particular, the hormones of one beautiful, gorgeous, dragon shifter female. Fuck me, if I don’t recognize the signs.
This fixation with her, the need to stay close to her, to stalk her and not let anyone else near, all of it points to one thing. She’s ready to be impregnated, and fuck if that macho Fae part of me doesn’t want to just take advantage of it. It’s the natural next step to having mated her. I knotted her, then soul-bonded her to save her life, and she isn’t aware of the significance of it.
My telekinetic energy jostles my rib cage, insisting that I reach out to her on the psychic plane, connect with her. Tame her. Own her. She’s yours, asshole. Yours to protect. To ensure nothing harms her again. To think someone had managed to get through the defenses around the safe house and hurt her… I am not going to rest, not until the bastard—whoever it is—has been sent to a very painful death. I squeeze my arms around her, and she moans.
And there you go…causing her pain again.
Her butt twitches against my groin.
My cock tents my pants, straining in that sweet valley between her ass cheeks. Her breathing grows erratic, and I know then she feels the desire that’s crawling inside me.
She’s hurt, still recovering from that fight for her life, and me…all I want to do is sink into her, make love to her, knot her again, and pump her full of my cum until she’s pregnant with my child.
My chest hurts. No, I cannot think that. I cannot do this. I need to keep my distance from her. Need to gain perspective, coward that I am. Yeah, I am not perfect—not unless you count me as being perfectly selfish. Perfectly fixed on just one agenda, my own. My pleasure, my pain. Why has it always been about me? Now, when I care about someone else more than myself everything is clear. I need to keep her here, keep her safe while I hunt down whoever did this to her.
I draw my arm from under her and sidle away.
“Chef.”
I turn and look at her.
Her pupils are dilated and sweat beads her upper lip.
I reach out and wipe it off with my thumb.
She shudders. “I need you.”
I drag my thumb down to her lips, and she closes her mouth around it and sucks. My cock almost explodes. A groan is wrenched from my throat.
“Fire, you are not well.”
“And I’ll only feel worse if you don’t make love to me.”
My throat goes dry. “I can’t take advantage of you when you have just been shot at and are not yet fully recovered—ah!”
She snakes her hand down to grip my crotch through the sheets that separate us, through the second layer of my pants. I feel each outline of her fingers as if she’s scalded me.
“You are burning up, Jess.”
“For you.”
“Fuck,” I swear aloud. I want to move, and yet every muscle in my body protests that this is wrong. “You are not thinking clearly.”
“It’s the first time I am seeing everything for what it is.”
Her words echo mine, and I want to fling aside the cover and turn her on her back and cover her body with mine, but that decent part of me, the part that seems to surface only around her, flares another warning.
“You are in pain and befuddled with whatever painkillers the doc’s given you.”
“I feel everything. I see how much you want me, I scent your arousal, your instinct, that wants to protect me. You knotted me, then shared your energy with me to save my life. You think I don’t know what that means?”
Her voice sends a pulse of need shooting through me.
My shoulders bunch, my thighs spasm, and the muscle between them throbs so hard I am sure my cock is going to extend right now and tear through the layers separating us, and I cannot have that. I grab her hand and try to pry it off, only I end up guiding her palm closer, deeper, and she cups my balls.
Lust rips through my veins. My vision narrows, and my breath comes in pants. “You don’t know what you are doing, Fire.”
“Don’t I?” Her amber eyes flare at me; her pupils are so blown that the darkness seems to bleed out and fill up her irises.
Color flushes her cheeks, and her hair streams around her shoulders. She looks possessed. Heat rolls off her body, laced with that sugary, sweet scent of her arousal, and underneath it is a bitter smell of something sharp, so tart that it goes straight to my head. I flare my nostrils, taking in a lungful of that heady scent of Jess…a Jess in heat. Fuck. All my muscles go solid. Her gaze narrows, then she squeezes my balls so hard that stars explode in my head.
“Fuck, Fire, what do you want from me?”
“Isn’t that obvious?” Her pupils flash vertical.
My groin hardens, and my nerve endings seem to fire all at once. The telekinetic energy pumps in my veins. A growl rips out of me. “You’re pushing me.”
“Good.” She tips her chin up. “Fuck me, Chef. One last time.”
“What do you mean?” There’s something in her tone that I missed earlier. An edge of desperation?
Her chin wobbles.
“What’s wrong, Fire?” The band around my chest tightens. Curious. You’d have thought I’d take what she offered. That I’d leverage her impending heat cycle to knot her and rut her over and over again. Apparently, along with acknowledging her as my mate, that human, decent part of me is so tuned in to her that I just know she’s acting out of character, that she wants me to fuck her so she can forget, and I want to so much. But if I do, I have no doubt she’ll hate me later. And that? After having almost lost her earlier, no way can I stand the thought of her feeling anything else other than love. Fuck me. Where are all these emotions coming from?
“What’s wrong is that you are not giving me what I want.” A low snarl rolls from her throat. Then she drags her fingers up, tracing the girth of my hardness until she finds the waistband of my pants.
I look down in time to see her nails slide out. A low pain shudders up my side. Her nails dig into my flesh, and then she yanks. The cover, my pants, my briefs, all of it comes off, and she flings it away.
My thick arousal springs free, and fuck, I am already half extended. The flesh hidden inside my cock peeks out through the slit. My piercing glints, mocking me. I have never extended before penetration. Never. Self-control is the other name for the Fae Corps. Though apparently not for me, and not where she is concerned.
She dips her head, and before I can stop her, she closes her mouth around the head of my cock.
29
Jess
He groans, the sound deep, harsh, and so hot that it sinks into my blood and coils under my skin.
I hadn’t meant for things to get this far, but the fact is that I am past pretense. Past wanting
to be coy in what I want. The time is ticking down, this is the last instance that I am seeing him. For I can’t lead him to the trap set for him. I need to get out of here and get to my kids. I try to pull away from him, and he growls. The force of his dominance crashes down on my back, pinning me in place.
The heat pounds through my veins, swells in waves, enlarging until it floods my cells and overflows from my pores. I am too hot. Too empty. Too needy. I want to…need to do this. I swirl my tongue over the piercing that crowns the extended flesh of his cock, and his groin muscles jump. His shaft pulses and grows bigger. A fierce need to satisfy him grips me.
I open my mouth and take him in, until his cock bumps the back of my throat, filling me up until my gag reflex kicks in. Tears fill my eyes and overflow. I hollow out my cheeks and suck on his turgid flesh.
His dick throbs.
He groans, then grips the back of my head. “Don't stop, Fire.” His fingers rake through my hair.
Friction sparks down my spine, radiating to my core. My pussy clenches, and moisture gushes out from between my thighs.
He tenses above me. “You are so fucking aroused, I can feel you wanting me, Fire.”
I drag my teeth over the sensitive flesh of his cock. Another groan spills out of him. Heat rolls off him and slams into me, and I gasp.
“This is so wrong, so fucking wrong. After everything that happened, I wanted to take care of you and instead I can’t stop myself from wanting you all over again. So fuck me, but if we are going to do this, we do this my way, okay?”
He tugs my head up and I peer at him through my eyelashes.
“You heard what I said?”
His gaze bores into me. The skin around his eyes stretches tight. His features are hard, his lips pursed. He seems possessed. A man pushed to the edge of his tether. A fierce need grips me, and heat pools in my chest. I did that. I drove him to the edge. I sweep my gaze over his features, recording every last wrinkle, every dip in that beloved face, the hollows under his cheeks, the fine lines at the edge of his lips, all of it. I know I am recording it for posterity, know that I’ll never forget how he looks now. I let myself drink in the sight of him, then drag my tongue under the thickness of his shaft as I raise my chin and let his cock slide out until the tip grazes my lips.
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