by Zoe Chant
The dress was backless, allowing him to see more of her glittering dragonmarks. They wound sinuously around her left shoulder and upper arm like chains of silver, trailing along her side and across her chest. The low-cut front showed more of Raluca’s cleavage, but Nick still couldn’t tell exactly how far the dragonmarks went. A winding line of silver curved above one breast and then disappeared under her blouse. He wondered if it looped around her nipple...
“Well?”
Nick swallowed, hastily jerking his gaze upward. “Gorgeous. You look fu — you look great. Beautiful dress. Perfect.”
Raluca’s lips quirked in an amused smile he was getting to know all too well. “I was going to ask if you’d help me zip it up.”
She indicated a zip on one side, nearly invisible against the jewels.
“Right.” Nick took the tab and tried to pull it upward.
The seam gaped open; he had to use his other hand to hold it together, sliding his fingers upward as he went. It was impossible to close it without touching Raluca’s hot skin. Why did she have to pick a dress so tight that she couldn’t zip it up herself? It was killing him to feel her skin, so silken-soft, and not caress her or pull her into his arms or spin her around and kiss her.
He’d lay money that she usually wore perfume, probably the sort that came in a crystal bottle and cost about $10 per drop if you divided the amount of liquid by the price. But she must have washed it off before she’d gone to bed the night before, because all he could smell was her natural scent. It was a little bit like Lucas’s, with overtones of hot metal — a dragon’s scent — but sweeter. Like roses in a steel vase in the sun.
Nick breathed it in deep as he inched the zipper up, making sure not to snag it in her hair. But her hair was everywhere, flowing over his hands like silk, like the skirts flowed over her hips. It was cool against the heat of her skin, smooth as satin but oddly heavy. It felt like real silver beaten impossibly thin, each strand strong and slightly weightier than it looked.
The tab caught on some snag. Nick had to step in closer to disengage it. He was trying not to stare, not to put his hands anywhere inappropriate, not to fucking breathe—
He forced his gaze away from her. Or at least, he tried. But when he looked straight ahead, he saw them both in the mirror. He stood behind her, with his big hands on her body, one palm flat on her waist and one at the top of her bodice. Her hair moved in the air conditioned currents, drifting across his broad shoulders and settling over his forearms, as if she was binding him in silver chains.
He looked like he was holding her, like they were dancing together. But his jeans and boots and black leather jacket and tats were all wrong for the person who should be holding her — he was all wrong for her. She was every inch a princess in her jewels and silk and gauze. The only thing they had in common was the designs on their skin. But she’d been born with her royal dragonmarks, while his tattoos were the brand of his gangster past.
Raluca didn’t turn to look back over her shoulder. Instead, she caught and held his gaze in the mirror. Still looking straight ahead, she reached down. He watched in the mirror as her hand closed around the stem of a cocktail glass and lifted it. But to his surprise, her hand reached the level of her mouth, then moved backward. Raluca lifted the glass to his lips.
“For your help,” she said. “It must have been very dull to stand guard while I enjoyed my shopping. So take a moment for your own enjoyment. I presume that you drink?”
“Not on the job.” His voice came out hoarse. The drink and her hand were right beneath his nose. The sharp alcohol odor of the cocktail and the steel-and-roses scent of Raluca herself nearly overwhelmed him, the contrast as intense as that of the heat of her body and the cold of the drink.
“Really?” Raluca didn’t set down the glass. It stayed right where it was, taunting and tempting him — not with the cocktail, the drink itself was nothing, but with the idea of accepting it from her. Of drinking from her hand.
She couldn’t possibly know what that meant to a werewolf... Could she?
“Would one sip of alcohol affect your reflexes to the extent that you’d be unable to protect me?” Her tone was lightly teasing.
She didn’t know. He could hear it in her voice. Nick wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or relieved. She was just fucking with him. She probably thought it was harmless, playful revenge for every rude and teasing thing he’d said that day. But she’d accidentally struck a nerve, and he couldn’t match her lightness in his reply.
“No, of course not. I’m a fucking werewolf —” The word slipped out despite his resolve to not use it around her. “Fuck! I mean, sorry!”
Raluca’s eyes glinted in amusement. Apparently watching him get flustered was worth hearing him swear. “You were saying?”
Nick plowed on, trying to regain his composure. “Anyway, no, it won’t. I’d have to drink a bottle of Jack for it to affect me at all. Two bottles before it would really fuck with — mess up my reflexes. Wolves have a high tolerance.”
“Company rules, then?”
He knew she was leading him on purely to make him lose his cool, to get her own back, and because she apparently found him just as irresistibly teaseable as he found her. He knew it. But that didn’t make it any less tempting. Nick had to go slower and slower with the zipper, keeping tight control over his hands, or they’d start shaking and she’d feel it.
“Do I look like I care about fucking rules?” His voice came out rougher than ever. He sounded like he was squaring off with some punks in an alley, forcing them to retreat with the power of his voice alone.
He expected Raluca to glare or scold him or kick him out of the dressing room. Instead, she just kept on looking at him. He’d never seen anything like the silver of her eyes, bright and hot as molten metal. He could’ve sworn they hadn’t looked anywhere near as metallic when they’d come in. If they had, he’d have gotten her a pair of shades. Even the most oblivious passerby would notice that those weren’t human eyes.
“Then drink,” Raluca whispered. “Or else take off your jacket. It’s hot in here— you’re burning up.”
“I’m not hot,” Nick said. “That’s you.”
Her lips curved into a smile. Had he seen her smile before? If he had, it sure hadn’t been one like this, provocative and sensual and daring.
She’s just fucking with me, Nick told himself. Any second now, she’ll tempt me into making some kind of move on her. And then she’ll go full-on princess and tell me to get my filthy hands off her, and I’ll have to slink away with my tail between my legs.
She will not, growled his wolf. She is teasing, but she means it, too.
Nick ignored his fucking crazy wolf. He had to stay cool. Stay professional. Keep —
Raluca moved the glass until its rim touched his lips, then tipped it backward. Icy liquid washed against his mouth. He had to either drink or let it spill down the front of his shirt.
Or step back and make her look stupid, pouring a cocktail on the dressing room floor, Nick thought.
He had a split second to decide. The last was so obviously the best option — harmless, but giving her a taste of her own medicine — that he had every intention of doing it.
Instead, Nick opened his mouth and drank from her hands.
She doesn’t know what she’s doing, he reminded himself.
But it didn’t matter. The part of him that was pure wolf, uncivilized and untamed, knew what it meant. He’d just signaled his intent to give himself to her and hold nothing back, offering her a power over him that had nothing to do with dominance or submission, and everything to do with love.
I drink from your hands. His wolf’s voice was low and deep, shaking Nick to the core as he silently spoke the ritual words. I give you my heart.
Nick drained the tiny glass in a single swallow. When he spoke, it was in his wolf’s snarl. “You don’t know what you’ve done.”
“Yes, I do.” Raluca turned at last, making his hands slid
e over her body as she moved to face him. Her voice was changed too when she spoke again, not the light ring of crystal but the deeper resonance of a tolling bell. “I’m doing what I want to do. Finally.”
They collided as much as embraced. For a split second he still thought he could step away, but then her mouth found his, or his found hers, and then no fucking power on earth could make him stop. Her lips were soft and hungry, seeking rather than yielding. And hot, so hot. Her mouth was like a furnace, her tongue a caress of fire. He could still taste the cocktail she’d given him, bourbon and bitters, and the fainter vodka-cucumber-mint-elderflower of the one she’d had earlier. Her scent rose up until he thought he could taste that too, flame and metal and roses, sweet and spicy, hot and strong.
The glass dropped from her hands. He didn’t hear it break, so maybe it hit the carpeted floor and rolled away. But he couldn’t spare a moment to look for it, not with her cool hair falling all over him and her hot hands cupping his face as she kissed him with a wildness he’d have never imagined. He caught a glimpse of her in the mirror, all silver hair and ivory skin and skirts like ocean foam. Then her hands reached up, and her hot fingers ran through his hair, and he bent to her touch.
They fell together against the wall, lips locked on each other, bodies pressed together. He was desperate to get out of his clothes, to take off hers, but unable to pull away from her touch for long enough to do anything. His hands roamed all over her body, stroking the skin of her back and arms and face, everywhere that was already bare. She could touch nothing but his hands and face and hair, but she pushed herself against him, and her heat seared through her clothes and his.
He was shaking with desire, his head spinning. He’d never felt anything like this before. She too was trembling in his arms. He couldn’t tell where she ended and he began. If she was hot, he was on fucking fire.
In a brief flash of sanity, Nick knew that he had to protect her and he couldn’t do that if he was distracted by kissing her, let alone fucking her. But he couldn’t make himself stop. So he moved to put his back against the door, which was locked anyway, so anyone who tried to get in would have to go through him first.
Raluca moved with him, those hot little hands of hers dropping down to reach under his jacket. He involuntarily thrust into that heat. She caught him and squeezed, sending a bolt of lightning up his spine, and he groaned into her mouth.
Nick had never felt so out of control in his life. He might do anything at all. Nothing seemed impossible. He still could hardly believe that the fucking princess was kissing him.
Kissing, fuck — she was giving him a fucking hand job, right through his jeans. One hand stroked his cock, making him groan again, while her other stole lower down, cupping and caressing his balls through the tight denim. Where had she learned to do that?
And how was she managing to look so cool while she was doing such dirty, dirty things below his belt? Nick caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. His face was flushed, his eyes blazing green, his black hair tousled and damp with sweat. Not cool at all.
His head spun with the conflicting desires to let her go on touching him forever or until he came, and to break that impossible reserve of hers.
Or maybe he could do both.
He reached down and lifted her skirts, piling them over one arm. There were layers and layers of them, gauzy and light. They seemed to go on forever, making him feel like a fumbling idiot. But it was nearly impossible to do anything while she was working away at him with her hot little hands, sliding them slowly down his cock and balls, then stroking his inner thighs.
Nick finally got his hand under her skirts, brushing the heated skin of her bare thigh. She gave a little start, and he felt her inhale against his mouth. That was more like it. He drew back to nip at her soft lips as he stroked upward, taking his time, until he felt the lace and silk of her panties.
I’ll give you a taste of your own medicine, he thought dizzily.
Nick cupped her mound, silk and all. She gasped again, then nipped back. If it hurt, he couldn’t tell. And if this was medicine, it could raise the dead.
He stroked her through the thin silk, feeling her moist heat. He could feel the soft hair over her mound, and the folds of her inner lips. Her hands stilled, clutching at his thighs rather than stroking them. But he didn’t mind. He was breaking her cool, and he loved it.
Nick could feel it happening with every one of his heightened senses: her already-damp panties getting outright wet, her juices slicking his fingers, her scent becoming both more heated and more animal, her womanly musk overwhelming her delicate roses. Her breath caught in her throat, turning from her deep and measured rhythm to quick, shallow gasps. She broke off their kiss to gulp for air. He grinned, pushing aside her panties and pressing his fingers in deeper, feeling her heartbeat accelerate. Raluca was shaking in his arms, her ivory skin flushing at last to a delicate pink. She broke out in a light sweat that made her skin seem to glow.
“I —” Raluca gasped. “I can’t — I’ve never — Oh!”
Nick had a pretty good idea of what she’d never done: had sex in an inappropriate place, with the most inappropriate man imaginable. But she was doing it now, all right, and she sure didn’t sound like she wanted to stop.
He found the nub of her clit and rubbed it, letting her gasps and shudders tell him how hard or soft, fast or slow to go. He wrapped the arm that held the skirts around her waist, in case she was one of those women who seemed to melt when she came.
He had two fingers pushed inside her, stroking her walls as he caressed her clit with his thumb. Raluca thrust against him, rubbing herself against his hand with an abandon he’d never imagined when he’d first seen her, gasping rhythmically. Her eyelids fluttered, sometimes brushing against his skin in a butterfly kiss. Her eyes were molten silver.
“Come on,” Nick said. He meant to whisper, but it came out in a low growl. “Come for me, baby.”
She cried out and came against his hand, her hot walls pulsing, her swollen clit throbbing. Her hands clenched on his thighs, bruising him with her shifter strength, but he didn’t give a fuck. Princess Raluca was coming in his arms, shaking and gasping and spilling her hot juices until they ran over his hand and down her thighs.
And then, just as he’d guessed, she melted into him, all her muscles relaxing at once. Her head fell against his shoulder, and her cool hair slid all over him. A few locks even slithered inside his shirt, where they lay silky over his skin. He held her tight, his beautiful, delicate, daring princess, and never wanted to let her go.
But soon enough, she was stirring. Raluca lifted her head and opened her eyes, and Nick got to see the soft glow of contentment brighten to molten desire.
“You,” Raluca said, her cut crystal voice once again deepening as she spoke. “I have done nothing for you.”
She glanced from her still-upraised skirts to the bulge in his jeans, then put her hot little hand over it. Nick’s whole body jerked like he’d stuck his finger in an electric socket. He couldn’t think straight — he could barely think at all — with her hand on him, but he forced himself to focus. He had to protect her, in every way, not just from assassins.
“Are you on birth control?” Nick had to force the words out. He was panting for breath, his heart pounding like a jackhammer. Her lightest touch drove him half out of his mind.
Raluca stiffened in his arms. For a woman who had just thoroughly enjoyed a hand job in the dressing room of the ritziest clothing shop in Santa Martina, she looked bizarrely offended. “Certainly not! I am a dragon princess — former princess — but still!”
Nick had no idea whether it was dragons or princesses or specifically dragon princesses who didn’t believe in birth control, let alone why, but he wasn’t going to stop to discuss it. He didn’t have any condoms, but he didn’t care. He had to know what those hot fingers would feel like on his bare skin.
“Use your hands,” he gasped.
She settled down again, a teas
ing smile hovering at her lips. “As you wish.”
With excruciating, taunting slowness, Raluca unbuttoned his jeans, making sure she brushed against him, but no more than that, with every movement. Then she began undoing the zipper the exact same way.
“God!” Nick finally exclaimed. “Just pull it!”
“It’s very tight,” Raluca said, not going one bit faster. “If I yank on it, I might break it off. Dragon strength, you know.”
She tugged it the tiniest increment downward. Her other hand strayed to his balls, toying with them, running a heated finger around them in light circles.
“I don’t fucking care,” Nick said. “Break it, rip it off, what the fuck ever.”
Another tenth-of-an-inch down. She glanced up at him through her silver eyelashes. “Are you begging? That might get better results than swearing.”
“Yes, I’m fucking begging!” Nick burst out. “Come on, Raluca, get the fuck on with it, before I come in my fucking pants!” As an afterthought, he added, “Please!”
“Since you phrase it so elegantly,” she teased.
But to his immense relief, she did pull down the zipper. He shoved his own jeans and boxers down past his hips, unable to wait for her. His cock pressed against his belly, thick and swollen with blood, throbbing for release.
Hold back, Nick told himself. Don’t come the second she touches you. Take your time to enjoy it, because there’s no fucking way she’ll ever do this again...
Raluca’s hand closed over him. He had a second to see those delicate fingers adorned with jewels, slim hand, fine ivory skin, and small oval nails painted silver, wrapped around his cock — a glimpse that he knew would sear itself forever into his memory — before sensation took over, and he could see nothing at all.
Her fingers were fire itself, if its burn gave pleasure rather than pain. She squeezed hard as she drew her fist upward, and maybe it did hurt too, Nick was too far gone to tell. All he knew was that he’d never felt anything like her touch. It set him on fire, body and soul. He wanted it to go on forever, but he couldn’t hold out against that intensity. Everything in him was building toward his climax, pushing him with irresistible force.