Dragon, Interrupted (Fire Mates Book 5)

by Lexxie Couper

  Ari! she cried out in her head.

  “The way I want you to,” Derek murmured against her temple, pinching her nostrils closed.

  No. No, no.

  She writhed. Choked. Shook her head, desperate for air. Her lungs burned. Screamed for oxygen.

  Until, incapable of stopping herself, she swallowed and sucked a swift, deep breath into her mouth when Derek allowed it.

  “That’s my girl,” he praised with a happy chuckle, dropping his fingers from her nose. He released her chin, smoothing his hand down her throat, over her chest to her right breast.

  Jilly’s stomach churned. Her body reacted to the alien liquid inside it. Icy-cold beads of perspiration broke out over her skin. She began to tremble. Cold. She’d never felt so cold. So cold and empty…

  “My girl,” he whispered, raining a slew of nibbling kisses along her jaw, up to her ear.

  Her head swam. Her eyes fluttered closed, the eyelids too heavy to keep open. The room lurched. The air flowed into her burning lungs like freezing mist.

  Ari, she thought. I’m…I’m…

  Derek’s hand grew bolder on her breast. His lips moved to the side of her neck.

  She groaned, trembling still. This wasn’t right…this wasn’t…

  “I’ve wanted you from the first moment I saw you, Jilly.” Derek’s voice scratched at the icy fog enveloping her. His fingers traced the edge of her neckline. Dipped beneath it. Found her nipple. “And I so desperately wanted you to love me back. I knew you would, one day. If I just waited.”

  She whimpered, every molecule of her existence recoiling from his touch.

  And yet, at the same time, wasn’t this the way it was meant to be? Wasn’t—

  Ari.

  The name floated through the coldness in her mind, a single point of inexplicable heat.

  Ari? Why would she think of that name? She didn’t know anyone called Ari.

  Did she?

  “I couldn’t understand why I was drawn to you,” Derek murmured against her temple, fingers exploring her breast, “until I researched your blood line. I’ve always preferred thin girls.”

  Jilly’s stomach lurched again. A ripple of heat razed her chilled flesh. There and gone just as quickly. She whimpered again, giddy and disorientated.

  Where…what was…

  Fingers plucked at her nipple, and she gasped, her gaze focusing on Derek.

  Derek, her best friend, touching her…

  He pulled away from her a little, his smile earnest. “When I discovered your line was once joined with my own,” he inched the neckline of her dress to the side, until her breast fell free of its confines, “when I discovered our ancestors were once bound by ancient magic,” he touched her lips with shaking fingers and cupped her breast completely in his hand, “I knew I needed to bind us together again. But still, I waited, hoping it would happen naturally. And then the fucking dragon came, and I couldn’t wait any longer. But I took care of that problem, didn’t I?”

  Jilly stared at him, foggy and dazed.

  He smiled wider, lowered his head to her breast, and touched his tongue to her flesh.

  The second he did, Jilly’s head erupted in a choir of chanting.

  Furious, powerful chanting.

  “No!” she screamed, thrashing against the ropes, against Derek. “Get off me. Get the fuck off me!”

  He staggered back, face twisted in stunned disbelief. “Wh-what? I don’t…why aren’t you—”

  “Touch me again, druid,” Jilly snarled, the ice shattering from her mind, her body, “and I’ll show you how the Nordic pagans dealt with rapists!”

  He stared at her, his face a mask of confusion.

  Jilly leaned toward him, straining at the ropes. “Ari is going to—”

  “He’s not coming for you, Jilly,” he snarled, the veins on his neck bulging, his eyes doing the same .

  “Yes he is!” He had to. He was her Fire Mate.

  Derek scrunched up his face, fisting his hands in his hair. “The dragon’s not coming for you!”

  She strained against the ropes, glaring up at him. “How do you know?”

  “Because I made sure he couldn’t.”

  Cold dread washed over her. The chanting in her head faded, growing more faint with every thumping beat of her heart. “What have you done?”

  He curled his lip, his chest rising and falling with a deep breath. “What needed to be done—removed Arriman Drake from your life. I’m saving you, Jilly. The binding between you and Drake is a distortion that should’ve never been. The pagans perverted their magic to forge an alliance with the dragons, one that resulted in what you are now—a dragon shifter who can’t transform. Your ancestors were all perversions! All shifters incapable of changing.”

  Jilly blinked. Her skin turned clammy. “Are you telling me I’m a dragon shifter?”

  Derek nodded, removing the small distance between them with a hesitant step. He crouched down until their eyes were level, his hands finding her balled fists. “You are. A special kind. But I’m removing everything that means, Jilly. One more dose should be all it takes.”

  “You’re…de-dragoning me?” Her mouth grew dry. A prickly heat razed over the goose bumps on her skin. The chanting in her head grew fainter, fainter, until only silence filled her mind. “Like you would if I had worms?”

  He nodded again, smoothing his fingers to the ropes around her wrists. “Do you understand now why I’m doing this?”

  She swallowed. “So we can be together?”

  He smiled the smile of her best friend. “So we can be together. If I take these rope off, Jilly. Will you promise not to try to run away if I do? I want to trust you. And you should trust me.”

  Numb and calm at once, Jilly smiled back. “I promise.”

  Ari hit the brakes on the loaner Ducati he’d taken from the safe house, studying the warehouse he’d been drawn to.

  It looked abandoned. Derelict. The brittle afternoon sun cast it in glaring light, throwing stark shadows over its boarded-up windows, graffiti-scrawled walls and chained doors. Weeds sprouted from between the cracks in the asphalt outside the building. The carcass of a small animal lay rotting near what Ari assumed was the entry door, its pungent odor assaulting his preternatural sense of smell.

  He narrowed his eyes. He didn’t believe the animal had chosen that particular spot to die. Its location was too perfect; an odious scent intended to overpower the scent of whoever was currently in the warehouse.

  Lowering the kickstand of the bike with his heel, he drew a deep breath.

  The stench of decay streamed into his nose, along with the oily taint of old grease and gasoline and…and…

  He closed his eyes and breathed in deeper, lips slighted parted, tasting the air.

  His heart slammed up into his throat.

  Jilly. He could smell her.

  She was here, somewhere in the warehouse. With Garrison.

  Ari balled his fists. He could detect the druid’s blood and his lust. The carnal combination didn’t sit well with Ari at all.

  “Time to fucking end this,” he muttered, climbing off the Ducati. He studied the building.

  The closer the building became, the fainter the sensation on his body drawing him to Jilly. The fact that he could smell his Fire Mate inside but not feel her ate at him. He should be able to sense her on every level now.

  Unease scraped at his tenuous calm, and he ground his teeth. He didn’t like it. Could Garrison be more powerful at druid magic than the dragon shifters in Sydney assumed? Hell, he’d had enough skill to immobilize Ari back in Jilly’s apartment, and conceal her from him more than once. When it came down to it, that alone proved Garrison was capable of more than anyone had believed possible.

  This sensation, however, felt different from that earlier numb lack of awareness. Ari had still sensed—on a visceral level—the connection between him and Jilly back then. Now, standing what could only be a few hundred yards from her, he couldn’t feel her at
all. It was as if the connection between them no longer existed.

  Which was absurd. Once Fire Mates began the mating fire, they were bound together for life, and the moment he and Jilly had touched—the second he’d tasted her skin, her sweat, her sex—they’d been joined for the rest of eternity.

  So why couldn’t he feel her?

  Dragging in another slow breath to pinpoint exactly where her scent came from, he crossed to the warehouse’s wire gate and shoved at it.

  An electric jolt blasted up his arm, powerful and excruciating.

  His heart stopped. The world turned black. The taint of ozone and metal filled his mouth. And then he tore his fingers free of the wire, his breathing rapid.

  He glared at the building beyond the fence, heart once more pounding hard in his chest. The bones in his healing shoulder complained, a sure sign they’d yet to completely reknit. If he saw Colin again, he was shutting down the Extraho Venator once and for all. That was if Tyson Conley hadn’t already dealt with the incompetent dragon hunter by now.

  “Okay,” he repeated, rubbing his aching hands, “it’s going to be like that, is it?”

  He lifted his focus to the top of the fence, noting the razor wire looping along the perimeter.

  “Twelve feet,” he estimated, rubbing his singed palms together. “Easy.”

  He took a few steps back, sucked in a couple of quick breaths, checked there were no witnesses, and launched himself upward.

  His brain registered the scraping contact of his right heel with a loop of razor wire a split second before he was on the ground on the other side of the fence.

  He remained motionless for a heartbeat, waiting to see if he’d triggered a security system with his arrival inside the grounds.

  None.

  “Good,” he muttered, throwing himself into a forward sprint.

  He had two options. Charge in and deal with whatever shit Garrison had planned, or take the druid bastard by surprise.

  Either choice put Jilly in danger. Garrison’s lust hung on the air like cloying mist. Whatever Ari did, Garrison wasn’t going to just roll over and show him his belly.

  So we can be together?

  Ari stumbled to a halt as Jilly’s voice whispered through his mind, an image of a smiling Garrison accompanying it.

  He pressed his palms to his knees, head spinning. The image of Garrison wobbled, as if Ari saw it through a puddle of muddy water. The man said something he didn’t hear, lips moving slowly.

  I promise, he heard Jilly say, her voice a fragile whisper barely there in his head.

  Promise what? What was she—

  The sensation of something coarse snaked over Ari’s wrists, followed by the warmth of a hand cupping the side of his face.

  And then it vanished. Gone.

  Leaving him with nothing but the stench of rotting animal and the faintest scent of Jilly in his nose.

  Ari closed his eyes. Rage rushed through him.

  He was going to fucking kill Garrison when he got inside—

  Something heavy smashed into what sounded like furniture inside the warehouse. A man cried out in pain. A woman did the same.

  Jilly.

  Ari snapped open his eyes and ran for the closest entry point—a window covered in boards and sheets of metal.

  Inside the warehouse, Garrison shouted again, pain and shock in the cry.

  More sounds of breaking furniture crashed into the air, and then Jilly screamed, high and scared. And furious.

  Ari hooked his fingers beneath the edge of one of the sheets of metal and pulled. It didn’t budge. Pain pierced through his injured shoulder.

  Jilly screamed again, the sound cut dead a heartbeat later.

  Silence.

  Ari’s blood turned to ice.

  Without thought, without hesitation, he drew on his croi and blasted the sheets of wood and metal with a stream of concentrated flameless heat from his mouth.

  The wood erupted in flames. The metal turned to liquid.

  He threw himself through the burning, melting barriers, shutting out the excruciating pain razing his human skin.

  But not the potent scent of Jilly flooding into his lungs.

  Her body, her fear, her anger…

  He ran to her, led by her scent through the darkness toward what looked like an office space in the middle of the building.

  Get…off…me!

  Jilly’s snarl lashed at him just as he reached the outside wall of the interior enclosure. He ground his teeth and smashed his shoulder into the door. Wood splintered.

  Garrison’s scream shattered the air.

  Ari’s stare fixed on the man straddling a writhing Jilly on the floor, terror on his bleeding, bruised face as he gaped up at Ari.

  “Ari!” Jilly cried. Garrison’s hands were wrapped around her wrists as she bucked and fought against him.

  “No!” the druid shouted, hate blazing in his wide eyes. “She’s mine! She’s—”

  Ari slammed into him. Driving him off Jilly.

  They smashed into an overturned table, a fallen filing cabinet, the wall. Ari dug his shoulder into Garrison’s gut, pummeling punch after punch into the man’s side.

  Garrison struggled against him, lashing out with feet and flailing fists. “You can’t,” the druid gasped, “have her!”

  He smashed his forehead into Ari’s nose.

  Pain detonated through Ari’s head, white and blinding.

  “Ari!” Jilly screamed. “Watch out! He’s got—”

  The world turned blue. Everything slowed down. Stopped. Ari grew cold, so cold. His vision blurred. Sound did the same. He tried to move, to blink. He couldn’t do either.

  “She’s mine, dragon,” Garrison’s voice sank into the frozen world. “I’m going to fuck the memory of you right out of her head! Right here in front of you, and there’s nothing you can do to stop—”

  Ari shifted.

  From human form to dragon.

  Agony tore through his body. His bones split apart and reformed. His skin ripped and reknitted. The fabricated walls and wooden frame of the office rained down on him as his dragon form destroyed the internal structure.

  And then, stare locking onto Garrison, he screeched and smacked the wailing druid across the room with a swift swipe of his tail.

  Garrison hit the brick wall with a crunch and, limp and lifeless, fell to the floor.

  Ari prowled toward his motionless form, an inferno building in his lungs, the need to incinerate Garrison, to destroy him, to end him, a driving force he could barely control.

  One breath. One blast. That’s all it would take. One exhalation—

  “Ari?” Jilly’s whisper flayed at his slipping control. “Oh my God. Oh my God, it’s real. It’s…it’s all real!”

  A raw sob choked the last word.

  Heart slamming up into his throat, he tore his stare from Garrison. Turned to her.

  She stood a few feet away, her hair a tangled mess, the green dress she wore torn at the neck. Scratches and bruises marred her creamy flesh. Blood trickled from some of them.

  Staying completely still, he regarded her. She needing to see him. As a dragon. To see his wings, his tail, his scales…his teeth and talons.

  She stared at him, eyes wide. Did she know she was shaking her head?

  Because of him, because of what he was? Or because of the nightmare situation she’d found herself in?

  Heart racing, he extended his neck, bringing his head, his muzzle closer to her.

  Dropping her gaze to it, she half raised her hand as if to touch him. And then shook her head again, arms cinching around her chest. “I don’t…” She hugged herself tighter. “I don’t know what to think.”

  Pulling away from her a little, he drew in a slow, deep breath and willed his body back into human form.

  The cold air in the warehouse licked over his naked, feverish skin.

  He ignored it, keeping his focus on Jilly.

  Disbelief and fear fought each other
on her face. “You really are a dragon,” she whispered.

  He nodded, letting his lips curl into a lopsided smile. “I am. I’m your dragon, Jilly. Until the end of time.”

  She shook her head again, shoulders hunching. “I don’t…”

  Forcing himself to be calm, he stepped toward her. “It’s okay.” He kept his voice low and soothing. “He won’t hurt you again.”

  She took a step back, eyes wide. Confusion flared in their hazel depths. “I… He told me…” Another sob fell from her, and she pressed a hand to her mouth.

  “Told you what?” An icy finger of unease dragged up Ari’s spine. This close to her, he should be burning up with the need to take her, pleasure her. They were still in the frenzied twelve-hour mating fire period. Sexual hunger should be controlling their very actions, enslaving them.

  Instead, rage broiled within him at Garrison. And a dull emptiness, where once he’d experienced the inferno of his and Jilly’s fated desire and lust for each other.

  Sucking in a slow breath, he wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. The distinct coppery tang of blood slicked over his lips. Garrison, it seemed, had landed more than one blow.

  “What did he do to you, Jilly?” he asked, taking another step toward her.

  She retreated again, shock swimming in her eyes as she met his gaze. “He told me I came from an ancient pagan bloodline, and because of that, I was some kind of…of…I can’t believe I’m saying this. Some kind of dragon shifter who couldn’t shift. He told me he was going to fix it so I wouldn’t be…” She faltered, catching her bottom lip with her teeth.

  “Wouldn’t be what?”

  Jilly hugged herself again, her gaze flicking over him. “You know you’re naked, right?”

  He couldn’t stop his dry chuckle. “It happens when you shift without undressing first.”

  She frowned. “Does it happen a lot?”

  “Not until I met you.”

  Her frown deepened. “Is that a compliment?”

  “Strangely, it is.” Risking the tenuous moment, he stepped toward her again. “What did he do to you, Jilly? And what did you do to him?”

  She stared at him. That she didn’t retreat made his heart sing. The unnerving absence of the mating fire’s burning urgency dampened his elation, however.