Aurora Champions Box Set

by Ophelia Bell

  The headlight illuminated the empty road ahead of her and she pressed harder on the throttle, leaning over the front of the bike as it shot down the road. With the wind surrounding her she could almost pretend she was flying, that her dragon wasn’t locked up in a dormant sleep triggered by the toxin in her blood, severed from the connection she’d trained her entire life to forge.

  But a few miles on she couldn’t fend off the clamoring thoughts of tonight’s revelations. Javin’s embrace, his clear desire, his retreat that had left her cold. Then Simon’s own confessions. The pair of them had been fucking. Something she might have come to terms with if it hadn’t been for that gut punch Simon had delivered at the end. They both thought of her while they were together.

  As if it weren’t bad enough for her to pine for a man who she believed didn’t want her. Now she knew he did, but he refused to touch her out of some ridiculous sense of loyalty to her dead brother. How fucking long had Javin felt this way?

  And she had no idea what the fuck to think about Simon. Her earlier repulsion had been turned on its head in the past two days. He was friendly, kind, and certainly attractive. He intrigued her in a way most other men didn’t. When she sought out men for sex, they invariably wanted to assert themselves, as if proving their power over her would endear themselves to her in some fashion. That it would turn her on if they were strong enough to dominate her, when that was the farthest from the truth.

  Simon pushed her, challenged her, but he also gave in, and something about his deference was a total turn-on.

  The rumble of the engine between her legs wasn’t doing much to help the rising need over thoughts of the pair of them. She was no longer feeling hurt over the idea of Javin fucking someone else. Now she’d fallen into full-on dirty-fantasy mode, imagining what Simon looked like while being topped. Hell, simply imagining him naked and aroused had her revving the engine higher just to increase the vibrations through her pelvis.

  But the bike itself wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy her. She thought about the bar Bruce had mentioned and regretted turning the opposite direction, but she’d driven blindly for miles already and wasn’t sure she had the patience to turn and head all the way back into town. There didn’t seem to be anything out this way but desolate road surrounded by forests, an ideal spot for a shifter retreat, but not for a woman who needed a quick lay.

  The red glow of a light on the panel in front of her made her slow, then curse when she realized it was the low-fuel warning. She’d be willing to bet that there were plenty of fuel stations back in town too. What an idiot she’d been.

  She turned off at a mountain lookout and cut the engine, taking off her helmet to breathe for a few. Stepping off the bike, she wandered to the railing, staring out over a dark, moonlit vista. Beyond the mountain ranges was the glowing golden gem of a city in the distance, nestled among the hills. That was where they were meeting the answer to their prayers tomorrow, it had to be.

  But what if they failed? What if her only shot at being whole was accepting someone like Simon?

  She tilted her head to the sky and yelled at the top of her lungs.

  “Fuck!”

  She didn’t want a mate. She wanted the fucking arena back. So whatever this ridiculous itch was that caused her to throw herself at Javin, she couldn’t let it sidetrack her from the real goal. She’d scratch it, somehow, and she had a good sense that Simon might be the perfect person to help on that count. He wanted her already, and he wouldn’t push his agenda. She might even be able to form an alliance of sorts with him to make sure Javin got off her back about the mate thing when the time came.

  Resolved in her decision and more determined than ever to follow through, she got back on the bike and headed back the way she’d come.

  The fuel only took her halfway before the engine sputtered and died, forcing her to push the thing down the dark road back to the house.

  She turned off the headlight after a couple miles when its power started to dim, and her senses sharpened immediately. She closed her eyes for a moment as she kept walking, gratified that even without a tight bond with her animal, her nose and ears were keen enough to pick up the details of her environment. The forest around her was alive and teeming with the activity of whatever nocturnal creatures called it home. She scented mammalian musk in the distance, on top of the earthy scent of the forest floor, similar to her home yet with its own subtle nuances.

  When she opened her eyes, her eyesight immediately acclimated to the darkness and she imagined herself in the arena again, stalking her opponent around the obstacles positioned to present a challenge and add to the audience’s excitement. She had no opponent now, but she did have a target. Her prey was back in that house, oblivious of her desire to best him.

  She doubted Simon would pose much of a challenge, but she’d be lying to herself if she didn’t admit to having an ulterior motive with him.

  After an hour or more of walking, she finally reached the gravel drive leading up to the house. The garage was still open and lit, but when she pushed the bike back into its spot, Bruce was nowhere to be seen and the car’s hood was closed.

  Footsteps crunched across the ground outside and she stepped into the shadows. When Bruce’s tall frame appeared, he paused, his attention fixed on where she stood. He tilted his nose into the air and sniffed. “You didn’t head into town, did you?”

  Astra sighed and stepped into the light. “I’m really off my game if you spotted me,” she said.

  He chuckled. “Nah. I’m a former champion myself. Those talents never really fade.” He touched his nose and his eyes flickered with yellow light. He was some kind of cat shifter, but she hadn’t picked up on it earlier.

  “Not unless you get hit with this fucking toxin,” she said. “Thanks for the escape. Sorry I burned up all the gas, and the battery may be dying too, but I needed that.”

  He pressed his lips together and nodded. “Not a problem. Glad I could help. And I’ll offer you one more bit of advice.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Take care when you head in. Your men are beside themselves over you running off like that. The dark one in particular. I explained that you just needed a little break but he doesn’t seem inclined to listen to reason. Something about a treatment you need to get on time or something.”

  Astra winced. Her injection, which she was probably late for. Well, Javin could wait a little longer.

  “Thanks for the warning,” she said, giving him a nod before sauntering toward the house.

  12

  Simon

  “She’s doing this to test me,” Javin said, taking another circuit across the wide living room, fists clenched at his sides.

  “She’s doing it because she needs a fucking break from you. You’re a controlling ass. You do realize this, right?” Simon said.

  Javin glared at him. “She’s risking worse damage than she already has if she doesn’t let me administer treatment on time. You know this as well as I do.” He halted and narrowed his eyes at Simon. “Actually, scratch that. You’re just as willfully ignorant as she is sometimes. Promise me you didn’t bring a stash of the drug with you on this trip.”

  Simon rolled his eyes and slouched back into the comfortable armchair. “I didn’t because I knew you would be here. Besides, I’ve got a lot riding on our success. Even if I can never compete again, I want to start over. I can’t do that if I need you sneaking me serum every week to keep me sane.”

  Javin turned away and pushed the curtains aside, peeking out the window for the hundredth time in an hour. His shoulders went rigid and Simon sat up straighter when the other man darted to the front door and flung it open.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” Javin called.

  Simon remained in his seat, preferring not to get in between the pair of them, but he didn’t hear Astra respond.

  He did hear her stomp up the porch steps though. He leaned forward in his chair to peek past the curtains. Astra stopped at the front door, her jaw set and her eyes
a piercing stare.

  “Get the fuck out of my way, Javin,” she said after a few beats.

  “Not until you agree to stop being so fucking stubborn. I’m trying to help you.”

  “No. You’re trying to control me. It needs to stop.”

  Javin let out an exasperated sigh. “Just come inside and let me give you your shots, and I’ll leave you alone.”

  Simon grimaced and shook his head. The idiot didn’t even see what was staring him in the face. Astra’s brief flash of pain was obvious enough to him though. She didn’t want to be left alone. She wanted Javin’s attention, but not the kind he was giving her.

  She seemed to deflate when she nodded and he let her pass. Simon offered her a friendly wave from his seat when she passed through the room and she stopped short, turning and pressing a hand to Javin’s chest to stop his progress toward the stairs.

  “Wait,” she said, a glint of mischief in her eyes. “On second thought, I want Simon to do it.”

  Simon straightened. “Do what exactly?”

  Javin scowled. “Simon isn’t medically trained, Astra. It should be me.”

  “Seriously?” Astra said. “The champion who was caught doping isn’t qualified to give me a shot? Simon, how many times did you give yourself injections of that vile shit before you were caught?”

  He cleared his throat, not wanting to correct her. He’d kept giving himself injections well past being found out. “Enough to know how to give one to someone else.” He stood slowly, gaze flitting between the two of them in their little standoff. This was interesting as hell.

  “See?” Astra said. “I want him to do it. I’m heading up to my room. Send Simon up with the treatment in a few minutes.”

  Simon lifted his hand, not wanting to destroy this rare opportunity to be closer to her but needing to ask the question anyway. “Ah, why can’t you just do it yourself?”

  Astra’s jaw clenched and she stared at the floor. Javin finally answered for her. “It’s incredibly painful and needs to be injected several times around the site of the wound. It’s simply safer if someone else administers the treatment in case she passes out.”

  Simon nodded. So this wasn’t anything like the single-shot serum Javin gave him once a week. He walked over and gave Astra a gentle squeeze on her upper arm. “Go on up. I’ll meet you in your room in a few minutes. I’ll take care of you.”

  She shot him a grateful look that was tinged with something more. Something he must have imagined because he didn’t dare hope she wanted anything more from him than to serve as a barrier between her and Javin.

  Astra headed up the stairs, a slight hitch in her gait that reminded him how well she had handled this injury so far. He’d hate to see her fall into the same chasm of self-hatred that he’d let himself sink into. She was far too good a champion.

  “Tell me what I need to do,” he said.

  “You need to let me do this,” Javin said, trudging up the stairs and down the hall to his room.

  “Fuck that. You heard her as well as I did. She doesn’t need your overbearing attitude up her ass every minute of every day. Give her a break for a change and let me help her.”

  Javin went to his bags and pulled out a shiny silver box. Inside was a cartridge similar to the one Simon had kept the drug in for easy dosing. Then Javin pulled out a sealed injector that had a tiny retractable needle at one end and a plunger at the other end of a smooth cylinder.

  “There are eight doses. They need to be distributed evenly around her wound. Give her a few seconds to breathe between each dose so she’s in no danger of passing out. The pain fades quickly, but built up, it can overwhelm her. If she were in sync with her dragon, it would be easy, but she isn’t. And if she does faint, just stay with her until she comes to.”

  Simon accepted the sealed injector and the cartridge. “Got it.” As he turned to go, his skin prickled under Javin’s bitter stare. He paused at the door and turned back. “Listen, man, she asked for this so you’d better not fucking take it out on me. Maybe if you’d been less of an ass and actually, I don’t know, started being honest with yourself, she wouldn’t be pushing you away.”

  With that, he turned to go, gratified by the stricken expression on Javin’s face as he shut the door behind him.

  Heart pounding, he headed up the stairs to the third-floor landing and knocked on the door. Astra called for him to enter and he pushed the door open. He poked his head in and froze.

  She lay on the big bed beneath an open window, clad in nothing but a skimpy bra and panties made of skinny straps and tiny triangles of black lace that barely concealed anything. And she had a distinctly hungry look in her eyes.

  Simon blinked in confusion and glanced back toward the stairs. “Ah, are you sure you don’t want him after all?”

  “No, Simon, I don’t. Get in here now.”

  His eyebrows shot up at the command in her voice and he entered, a hesitant smile tugging at his lips. She wanted him? And holy hell, as he drew close, she flexed her gorgeous body, lifting a knee and arching her back. This beautiful creature in front of him did not look damaged in the least. Had this all been some crazy ruse to make his wildest dreams come true?

  But when he reached the foot of the bed, he spied the nearly invisible bandage on the inside of her upper thigh, along with the discolored tendrils extending along her skin beyond the edges of it. Right. This was what he was here for, not the delectable woman who was probably just torturing him for her own entertainment.

  He took a deep breath to calm himself but her scent washed over him and sent his pulse rising higher.

  “This is not fucking fair,” he said, lifting his gaze from her wound up to her face. “Are you fucking with me or something? Because if you are, I really don’t appreciate it.”

  Astra’s throat rippled as she swallowed and she spread her thighs, letting her knees fall wide. Her scent grew stronger and Simon groaned, realizing she wasn’t just teasing. She was turned on. But this still might not be an invitation.

  “It depends,” she said. “Do you want to fuck with Javin?”

  Simon’s gaze was fixed on the barely-there scrap of lace that obscured her pussy from his sight. He licked his lips and forced his eyes up. Her expectant look made everything click. He grinned. “You want to use me to make him jealous, is that it?”

  She frowned and started to shake her head. “I wouldn’t put it that way.”

  He climbed onto the bed and crawled between her legs. “No, it’s all right. Use me. Use me all fucking night if you want. But try not to tease me too much before I take care of this.” He held the cartridge up.

  Astra cringed. “Ugh, I hate that stuff. Make it quick, all right?”

  “He said you might pass out if I went too fast. It’ll be pretty hard to use me if you’re unconscious.”

  He touched her knee and glided his palm up her inner thigh, heart thumping at the softness of her skin. Fucking hell, his dreams really had come true. He had a shot at sex with the woman of his dreams and could take a jab at that ass Javin in the process.

  “No hands,” Astra snapped and Simon jerked his hand away, staring at her wide-eyed.

  “What? I kind of need my hands to do this.”

  “I mean, just touch me as little as possible,” she said.

  “Okay,” he drawled. “So, you plan to use me, yet I can’t touch you. I have a feeling there’s a bit of a conflict there.”

  “I just don’t want to risk you marking me, that’s all.”

  Simon grinned as understanding dawned. “Well then you’ve got nothing to worry about,” he said, returning his hand to her thigh. “Hyenas are like wolves. We don’t mark by touch. We’re biters. Which is a shame really, since I imagine that means you’ll want me to keep my mouth away from you.”

  He set the injector on the bed beside her hip along with the fresh bandage he’d apply when he was done. Then he scooted closer between her legs and ran his hands up both her thighs, circling them around to the
backs of her legs and sliding back down again. Astra’s breathing hitched and she frowned, her mistake apparently sinking in.

  “Shit,” she whispered, falling back against the pillows. “You’re right. Marking by touch is a dragon thing. Um . . .”

  “Why don’t I give you your shots and get that over with, then we can talk about what you want after,” he said, taking pity on her.

  She nodded, avoiding meeting his gaze again. Simon watched her for a second, nearly overwhelmed by how beautiful she was, half naked and bared to him. She was the supplicant at the moment, which made his heart stutter in his chest, but also made him sad. The powerful, commanding woman who’d turned him on with a word when he walked in was racked with uncertainty now. She covered her face with her hands and sighed. “Just do it already and go. I’m sorry for teasing you. This was stupid.”

  He plucked at the edge of the bandage and peeled it off. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. I wholeheartedly agree with the idea of making Javin jealous. He needs a fucking wake-up call about you.”

  “You know how he feels?” she asked, then said, “Never mind. Of course you do. That can’t have felt good though, to have him saying someone else’s name while he fucked you. Why did you keep seeing him?”

  He shrugged and prepped the injector, sliding the cartridge in and snapping it into place, then replacing the cap and testing the button at the end. Then he took the disinfectant wipe and began to clean the area around her half-healed wound. The wound itself was only a series of dark punctures fading to a deep red the same color as the tendrils snaking out around them. But he could see a series of tiny dots surrounding the wound, showing him where Javin had given her the treatment before.

  “I needed treatment too. The difference is, my shots go into my arm. I can’t imagine how the fuck he managed to be this close to a pussy that smells so fucking sweet and not lose himself. I would die to taste you, Astra.”