by A. C. Arthur
She rolled her eyes, she couldn’t help it. Even in claiming he wasn’t perfect, he said the right things.
“How do you think I ended up in Miami? If my life as a Noble Drakon was so perfect, why’d I leave the Far Realm to come here? And work? I’m a Noble, my family has more money than even the richest human in this realm, yet I was in Miami working a regular job, just like you. Why would I do that if I had everything?”
She’d wondered about that a time or two, but never asked him because she hadn’t cared. The answer wasn’t going to change her mind. Closing her eyes, she huffed, “None of this matters now.”
“It does and that’s why I’m going to tell you.” He lay on his side propped up on one elbow while staring down at her. Their positions and the fact that they were both naked might be intimate, but in these moments she couldn’t feel farther apart from him.
“I left my family on the Far Realm. Walked away from the position I was supposed to assume within the Nobility there, and the legacy that had been dropped on my shoulder. You want to know why I did that?”
She felt like an idiot when she nodded.
“Because I was going to let them down. I killed Drakon when I was supposed to be a protector to our kind. Sure, I told myself I killed them because they’d been traveling the realms terrifying humans and preternaturals alike, they were the ones creating a bad reputation as vicious killers for our kind. But I was the one who killed them in cold blood, and I didn’t feel any remorse. My job as a Noble was to bring them to the emperor and let him deliver punishment. But the emperor had been the one instructing those Drakon to wreak as much havoc as they could across all the realms. Of course, later we learned that the emperor had been possessed. Still, I had no right to take matters into my own hands. It wasn’t my place.”
He still didn’t get how good and perfect that made him sound. “Protecting others from bad Drakon doesn’t sound like it would disappoint anyone. In fact, that sounds damn heroic.”
“Not when it involved killing innocent children.” The sheer horror and pain that draped his face at this moment, held her still. “I didn’t know they were in the same building as the dragons I was hunting, but it didn’t matter. If I hadn’t gone on a rampage, then it would’ve never happened.
“It was so easy to feel just like you said, heroic, as I wandered the realms scorching any Drakon I saw doing something to harm others that was against our code. There was no investigation, no questions, just judgment, swift and fatal, toward them all.”
She jerked back at the heated way in which he’d said that last word.
“You see that, you feel it?” He tapped a finger over the spot in her chest where her heart had begun to beat frantically. “Your immediate reaction was shock and disgust. Anger will come next and then recrimination. This is exactly what I knew my parents would feel. It’s what I knew the emperor and the Nobility would have to consider when deciding how to judge me. Instead of publicly disgracing my family, I left and I knew I’d never return to what had already been preordained for me. And then I found you in Miami and I felt whole again. I felt that even with everything I’d done that someone like you would still love and want me.”
Until she pushed him away.
Sitting up now, she dragged her hands through her hair she was sure looked a matted mess, and took a long slow breath before speaking again. “You left the Far Realm before being judged or reprimanded for the crimes you knew you committed and yet you never hesitated to preach everything about the Drakon world and its laws to me as if they were the gospel.” When he didn’t immediately respond she looked over her shoulder at him.
“I’m not perfect.” He shrugged. “I’m flawed from my basic reasoning to the actions I took—then and now. I know you’re thinking I was a coward for running away instead of facing the consequences and you’re right. I am. I’m also a bastard for walking out on my family without any type of explanation. And after all this time I haven’t owned up to the wrong I’ve done. Not in all the years since I left the Far Realm and not when I returned last year to help Theo get his mate back. I didn’t visit my family, nor did I turn myself in to the head of the Nobility for judgment or correction, or whatever they feel is necessary to do to me. When it was time to leave with Theo and Shola, that’s what I did.”
“Does he know? Your fearless leader, the one whose orders you follow without a second thought? Does he know what you did?”
“He’s never asked. When I ended up here in Burgess after leaving Miami, I just applied for the job that was closest to what I’d been doing with the Collectors. Legion Security was that place.”
“You knew Theo was a Drakon when you applied to his company?”
“I did.”
She turned all the way around then, crossing each foot over her thighs as she now faced him. “You aligned yourself with a Drakon whose goal was to protect humans and other beings from preternatural forces. Just like when you were with the Collectors, you were hunting and detaining known preternatural criminals others couldn’t catch.”
He nodded. “It’s what I’m good at.”
“It’s what you think you need to do to redeem yourself for killing those children.” Damn, even with that dark moment, in her eyes he was still fuckin’ perfect.
Bringing himself to a sitting position, he reached for her hands, and she let him take them. His fingers were longer, and she felt the brute strength in them as they moved over hers. When he lifted her hands to his mouth, kissing the back of each, she tried like hell not to melt.
“It’s what I do because it’s what I am. Just as you’re here, now, doing what you do, because this is who you are.” Easing their hands down slowly, until they were still entwined but now resting in her lap, he leaned in to drop the softest kiss on her forehead. “Your parents may not have taught you how to be a Drakon, but you know, Mel. It’s in you and now it’s trying to come out. No amount of running or fighting it off is going to work. You’ve got to see that now. This is who you are. And you are who I want.”
His next kiss was to the tip of her nose, then another brushed warmly over her lips. She pulled her hands away from his then and eagerly laced them behind his head, holding him still while she kissed him. An easy peck at first and then a more urgent touch of lips and tongues because it was what she yearned for at the moment. The physical was easier. That swirling and reaching that ignited as if his proximity just flipped a switch was easily quenched when they touched, because something within him was reaching out in the same way. She’d felt it for certain a few hours ago when they’d been in the game room. The connection had been like a blinding light—almost like that light that had shined in their faces when they were on stakeout—locking the two beasts together in a blissful spin of passion.
That’s what she wanted right now. It was what she needed to feel, because her brain was destined to play tricks on her. It wanted to keep the conflict going, to rebut everything Aiken tried to say about her, to resist making peace with the hurt that had stained her since she was a child.
He knew, Aiken, or his beast did, or perhaps both, she didn’t care which. All she cared about right now was the way he wrapped her in his arms while sucking on her tongue. Keeping their mouths linked, he eased her back on the bed, and she pulled him down on top of her, holding him so tightly she wondered if she were suffocating him.
“You’re safe here, baby,” he whispered when he pulled his lips away from hers and proceeded to kiss along the line of her jaw.
Safety wasn’t what she was looking for, not now. Her hands moved over his shoulders and down the strong muscles of his back. He eased away from her, breaking the contact so that she gasped with the unwanted separation. She watched him push the sheets away from their bodies and come back so that he was on his knees between her spread legs.
“This tat goes all the way around.” The featherlight touch of his fingertip gliding along the l
ine of stars that marched across her lower belly and over to her waist was enticing and the sensation sent quick spikes of desire to her pussy.
“It does. The wind, sun, the moon, the stars, a constant for me because they’re always there. The only things I never have to worry about leaving.” He’d dropped his head to stare down at his finger moving over the tat. She felt exposed, open, bared to him in a way she never had before.
“There’s something else that’s constant.” His voice was a deep rumble that moved over her skin in the same way his fingertip was.
“What?” A whisper in the room filled with so much sexual tension at this moment she wondered if it would overflow into the hallways and the rest of this fortress.
“Pleasure.” He’d eased his body down so that his hands were now on her hips, his face level with her mound, his breath brushing over her in a way that had her juices flowing.
When his tongue had touched her here in the game room, she’d thought she was going to hop up off that table. Now, laying on this bed, the second he touched his lips to her plump folds she saw stars bursting bright and fierce behind her closed lids. More than the ones of her tat, more than any she’d ever seen in the sky. He opened his mouth and slid his tongue along the slick soft skin and she gripped the sheets, shouting his name with the explosion of heat in her body.
Need expanded inside her, filling every crevice with longing. “Aiken.” It was all she could and all she needed to say.
He pressed his fingers inside of her, spreading her tender muscles to accommodate their presence. She lifted her legs, planting her feet on the mattress, giving herself more leverage to meet his intentional thrusts. While his mouth worked her clit, his fingers pumped her faster. Her toes curled, fingers yanked the sheets from the bed, and a scream ripped from her throat as the first wave of release plunged her into a pleasure spiral.
Seconds later he was moving again, this time turning her around so that she was on her knees and he was again behind her.
“Love being inside you,” he mumbled, hands grasping her butt cheeks and squeezing until she moaned.
“Now, Aiken. I need you back now.” It could be said that she was being selfish, taking all that he offered without giving him any pleasure in return, but it had been so long since she felt this way. It felt like an eternity since she’d been touched, tasted, fucked, the way only Aiken could.
When he slid his thick length into her, spreading her cheeks wider so that she knew he could see his dick pressing into her, she moaned his name and tossed her hips back. He groaned and she continued moving against his thrusts, increasing the friction and driving them both mad. She loved the sound their bodies made together, skin clapping, the crisp crackle of her essence meeting his, it was all so intoxicating, she felt drunk with desire.
And if that wasn’t enough, the thing within her moved in easy acquiescence with Aiken and his beast. It filled her effortlessly, edging her human body to open and accept, to move and give all that it had and more. But only to Aiken. Never, in all the years they’d been apart and the times she’d been with other men, had it felt like this. That other part had never been present and so there’d always been a huge void in the experience. She knew why. She’d known then and she definitely knew now. It was only for Aiken.
“Just this.” He was talking and pumping into her, holding on to her hips, which was actually a good thing, otherwise the force of his thrusts would’ve sent her flying off the bed. “There’s nothing like this, like us. There never will be.”
“Aiken.” His name fell from her lips before another moan. He shifted slightly to the side, spearing his dick into her from this new angle, and her eyes opened wide, then closed as she tried to register the newest shot of pleasure. His words were so true and they matched her thoughts. What did that mean?
“Mel, baby. I don’t ever want to lose you.”
Not like before. He hadn’t said those words but they both felt it. In the surge of pleasure that shot through them with his last stroke. She felt like something was melting and trickling away, disappearing, and it confused her. “This...” she started and then stopped when his thrusts came quicker, his breathing heavier. She was falling, fast and long, off what felt like the cliff she’d held herself on for more than eighty years. There was a moment of weightlessness and then her stomach dropped as if fear might take over. But at the same time, her thighs trembled, that tiny swirl of desire that had started in the pit of her stomach churned until it was a full-blown storm and she gasped.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes. Yes!”
He began chanting that one word repeatedly until they were both falling together, his thrusts slowing until he cried out with his release and she moaned with hers.
Hours later, as she lay in his arms thinking about all that had happened between them and all that may happen if they didn’t act swiftly and with coordinated precision, Mel tapped her fingers on Aiken’s chest. He’d been asleep, she knew, because the motion of his breaths had slowed to an even pattern, but he’d still held her close. She’d missed the feeling of being in his embrace. Just as she’d missed working with him and simply being around him.
What she hadn’t missed was all that she still didn’t know. About the Drakon and about herself.
“I want you to show me,” she said in the quiet of the room.
“Show you what, baby?” His voice sounded a little gruff but she knew he was on full alert. She could feel his beast rising to reach for hers.
“Show me how to be a dragon.”
Chapter Twelve
Enes had been following him all night. After the fire at Montoy’s house the day before yesterday, she’d known he’d make a move. Now, she pulled up next to his car. With gloved hands she removed her helmet and stared at the tinted windows of the car. Montoy had given it to him right after he arrived. He’d given him money and an apartment too. Anything to get Montoy closer to that ancient burial ground. Anything to get Montoy more power. That’s all the Chief Lord could think about.
Stepping off her bike, she kicked the stand down to keep it parked, then walked across frozen grass toward the front door. That’s when she picked up the scent. Her mouth watered and she stared around into the darkness trying to pinpoint its source. Changing course, she walked around to the side of the house, booted feet making deep crunching footprints in the snow. There was another set of footprints alongside hers, moving in the same direction.
Three bodies were piled, one on top of the other, and pushed up against the side of the dilapidated house, blood still dripping from wounds at their neck and wrists.
“Fuck!” Now, she stomped back around to the front of the house. She was so tired of doing this, so exhausted by the whole kill to survive motto vampires lived by. Her life as a human had been full of fighting and now, in this other life, she seemed destined for the same ending.
“What the hell are you doing here?” He was too cocky to ever think somebody would follow him. Too arrogant to believe he’d ever get caught.
The stench of blood inside the house was even more powerful than it had been outside. This time she had to swallow a few times before she could look around to see where it was coming from. Her gaze froze on the wall where a bloody handprint was smeared, then the curtain in the doorway that had blood spatter. But that wasn’t enough to make her stomach churn and the seemingly insatiable hunger pump through her. It was on the other side of that curtain, a puddle in the floor she was betting, and somewhere else inside that part of the house would be the dead body.
“What happened? Who’re those men outside and why’d you kill them?”
He shrugged. “Some type of security guards, I guess. It’s nothing you need to worry about.” He walked around her pushing the door she’d just come through closed and grabbed the can sitting there. “Now get lost. This is not a place you want to be in the next thirty seconds.”
He w
as pouring something out of the can—gasoline—spreading it around the perimeter of the room. “Wait a minute, you’re planning to burn this place down. You’ve got to be kidding me? What’s Montoy going to say?”
Obviously not deterred by anything she said, he continued to move around the room. “Well done. Good job. Frankly, I don’t give a damn what he says. As long as the check clears.”
“You’re bringing a lot of heat to town. Those at the Capitol won’t like it.” How many times had she been forced to listen to all the rules and regulations those at the Capitol expected to be followed by all the Royal Blood? Rules that basically castrated the Lords from ruling as they pleased. Warrick had hated them with a passion and yet had been so heartbroken because they wouldn’t let him in. All she could do now was shake her head at how things had turned out for the vampire who’d changed her and now, ultimately, for her.
Duncan tossed the can across the room and laughed. “You got jokes.”
“No. I got good sense. This won’t play out well. You should’ve just—”
In a flash he was right in her face, smelling like the gasoline he’d just poured and more blood. He leaned in close, baring his teeth and she knew in those seconds he wouldn’t hesitate to kill her too. Another time, another place, and definitely another vampire, and she might’ve been scared. Her stomach rumbled again and she stepped around him, to glance at the blood on the floor. She’d come straight here from the townhouse where she still stayed after Warrick’s death, hadn’t stopped to feed before going about her nightly business. It wasn’t often that she needed blood. Warrick had trained her not to solely depend on it for sustenance. Food could suffice for a period of time, but ultimately, it was the blood that would keep her functioning at full capacity.
“You don’t get to roll up in here and change my plans. And look at me when I’m speaking to you,” he ordered. He was a moody vamp, kinda like a newborn, high on the power he thought he had over Montoy. But she knew better. Montoy was just entertaining this fool, the same way he’d done with Warrick. The Chief Lord always had a backup plan and if this joker couldn’t deliver on getting them onto that burial ground so that Montoy could raise his ancestors, he was as good as dead.