by Ladew, Lisa
“Oorah,” Trevor parroted, then pulled Ella out into the hall, his face grim.
Only when the door closed behind him and they headed back out of the tunnel, did she feel she could ask him, even though she probably knew the answer already. “What is the Vahiy?”
“The end of the world,” he said, his voice and expression tight. “Or, to be more exact, the Death of Rhen, which is supposed to trigger the end of the world as it is now.”
Chapter 25
Heather lifted her face to the rising sun, her heart soaring, her dragon’s hand in her own as they walked slowly toward his cabin. Or rather, Graeme’s hand in her own. Idly, she wondered about the time difference, as the night had seemed short. She felt wide awake though, and ready for whatever was coming. Her entire body thrummed in time with her heart, which had eyes only for Graeme. Whatever he wanted, she would give herself to him fully.
She’d never had a man. Never been interested before, not like she was in Graeme. She wondered if he knew she was a virgin. They’d never discussed it, but could he tell? There was so little that she knew about him, but none of it seemed important until they took care of this one little detail…
In a few short moments, they were back at his place. She was surprised to see the door to the stairway that wound down to his underground treasure was gone again. Disappeared. Did that mean it was shut? She put it out of her mind, focusing instead on the tall, broad man next to her and what she anticipated they were on their way to. Her heart beat hard and her being soared, her shoes barely touching the ground. She cared what happened later, but she couldn’t control it. All she could do was open herself fully to this experience, here, now.
He preceded her into the cottage, then walked to a cabinet set into the wall and retrieved some sort of a sleeping roll, or mat, unrolling it on his stone couch in front of the fireplace.
“Would you like a fire?” he asked, and she sensed a distance between them that hadn’t been there in the woods. He was manufacturing it, creating it, she knew that. What she didn’t know was why.
She went to him, pressing her body into his, looking up into his face, trying her best to erase that distance. Before, she’d thought she was too young for him, but maybe that wasn’t it at all. Maybe she was too human for him. But why would he have brought her out here if that was the case? Her heart tried to whisper to her that if he was protecting himself, she should protect herself, but she ignored it completely. This was what she wanted. Exactly this, in the stone cottage on the top of the mountain with the man who was also a dragon.
She wouldn’t leave him any room for wondering what she was looking for. “I want you.”
He stared into her eyes for a long time before inclining his head and kissing her. Yes. She ran her fingers over his chest, feeling heated contrails follow her hands. Everywhere she touched, his skin heated. Up his pectorals, tracing his shoulders, down to his elbows, that fire followed as surely as gunpowder followed the barrel with the hole in it on the cartoons she used to watch on Saturday mornings.
Emboldened by his body’s response to her, she swirled her hands down his torso until she reached his belly, but before she could go lower, he caught her hands again. She groaned in frustration, but he moved both hands behind her back and held them there with just his left hand, freeing his right to move up to her hair, to catch it and pull on it slightly as he deepened his kiss. Her groan shifted from frustration to a yielding passion. Yes, yes, yes! She couldn’t get enough of his gentle domination and the way it made her forget everything but the feel of his lips on hers.
He laid her down then, repeating his acts in the forest until she felt like a goddess being worshiped as a ritual act. The reflection jerked her back to reality. She thought she’d closed the emotional distance between them, but had she been wrong?
But when Graeme’s hot mouth found its way to her softest skin again, she forgot the question or even that there had been a question. She forgot everything, save for the sweet wave of sensation that erased all worry from her mind, leaving her naked and panting in the dragon’s den.
***
Heather opened her eyes slowly, her body feeling groggy, her mind slow. Had she napped? She looked around in the small cottage and didn’t see Graeme anywhere. A fire burned low in the fireplace and the light from the window looked different, as if the entire day had passed.
She held the soft blue blanket that had been laid over her to her chest as she swung her legs to the floor and sat up. Graeme was not in the room. But she could feel him. He was outside, not far away.
Bending to gather her clothes, her temper began to flare slightly. Had he done something to her to get her to fall asleep? She hadn’t wanted to sleep, but rather had wanted him to take her. Hadn’t he known that?
She shook her head, trying to remember exactly when she had fallen asleep. It didn’t matter, anyway.
Once she’d pulled on her last boot, she hurried outside, finding Graeme a few feet from the cabin, no shirt still, apparently about to head inside. In his hands, he held a clay pitcher and a small red container.
He smiled broadly, but there was something guarded in it. “Ah, leannan, how did you sleep?”
She scowled at him. “I didn’t want to sleep. Did you put me to sleep somehow?”
His smiled turned mischievous. “If you mean did I do something besides relax you with what looked to be a very satisfying orgasm─ make that two orgasms─ then no, I did not.”
He passed her, that grin still on his face. Heather’s slight anger leaked away and she turned to follow him into the cottage. Inside, he placed the pitcher on the table and held out a glass for her. “Fresh water from the purest stream on the planet.”
The second Heather had the glass to her lips, she realized how thirsty she had been. She drank two glasses, her stomach clanging loudly for food, too.
Graeme lifted the lid off the red container and a lovely smell filled the room. She peeked in. Roasted… something. Maybe a rabbit? She’d never eaten an animal straight out of the forest before.
Graeme reached in, tore a bit of the meat off a bone, and put it in his mouth, his expression amused. She watched him, then tried it herself. Divine!
“Mmm, yum. It’s so good. How did you cook─” She cut herself off from asking the stupidest question in the world. “Never mind,” she mumbled, then shoved more meat in her mouth.
Graeme chuckled and held out his hands. “It’s all for you, leannan.”
She scowled at him again. “That word, what does it mean?”
“It’s a Scottish word for sweetheart.”
“Oh.” She lifted her shoulders a bit. That was ok, then. The rest of the rabbit, or whatever it was, disappeared quickly. Graeme found her a towel to wipe her hands and she did, then looked around the room again. Crud.
“Ah, Graeme, I, ah, need, ah…”
He smiled and looked out the window. “I’m afraid the forest is the only loo I have.”
Great. “Ok. You stay here, all right?”
He smiled again. “You sure you don’t want me along to protect you?”
He was teasing her now and she grew hot as the word crossed her mind. She’d show him what teasing was. “Just because I can’t turn into a big scary dragon doesn’t mean I can’t take care of myself.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
She stared at him for a moment. He was so handsome her fingers itched to touch him. After. “I don’t suppose you have any toilet paper.”
His smile didn’t change. “Sorry.”
She frowned, then grabbed the towel and the pitcher of water and took off out the door. She wandered a few feet into the forest and did her business, then cleaned up as best she could.
She took a deep breath, looking around, wondering if anyone actually lived like this anymore. Could she do it? Fetch water from a stream? Kill or grow all her food? Nothing to do but take care of your property, maybe knit in the evenings and make love when the nights grew long?
W
hich reminded her… She marched back into the cottage and found Graeme putting away the mat he had laid on the couch before her nap. She met him at the cabinet and waited for him to stand straight, then put her hands around his still-bare waist, snuggling into him.
His eyes darkened. “I brought you out here to tell you something, Heather. Something that’s going to change your life forever.”
“Is that all you brought me out here for?” she asked, trying to inject a bit of sexiness into her voice and feeling like a fool, instead. But when she felt his skin heat up, the feeling turned triumphant. She ran her fingers around his pecs again, looking for the heat contrails that had fascinated her earlier. Outside the window, darkness crept over the forest an inch at a time. Good, they would make love all night in front of the fire. It would be more romantic than any book or movie every created. She ran her fingers lower, wanting to feel the core of him.
He caught her hands and she cried out, irritation heavy in her voice. She stepped back so he couldn’t distract her again with kisses. “Graeme, why won’t you let me touch you?”
He stared at her for a long time, his head lowered, his expression guarded again. When he spoke, she didn’t know what to make of it. “I’m afraid that will never happen. When a dragon ejaculates, it is the temperature and consistency of lava.”
She frowned. “But you’re a man. I won’t be touching the dragon.”
He took a deep breath and looked over her head, then back at her. “This is part of what I needed to tell you. When I say dragon, I am not saying d-r-a-g-o-n. I am a dragen, spelled d-r-a-g-e-n. I am not a dragon in my dragon form and a human in my human form, but rather a hybrid of both in both forms. When I ejaculate as a man, it is molten. It will kill you.”
Heather gasped and stared at him, feeling very small. “I-I don’t have to touch it.”
He shook his head. “Never would I take that chance. I would die if I burnt you.”
Heather’s eyes widened. He didn’t know! “Wait!” She ran to the fireplace and reached her hand in, as he shouted behind her. She pulled out a burning log and held it in her hands like an offering. “I can’t be burnt, Graeme, I never have been burnt in my life.”
He had been running for her, but he stopped when she turned, staring for a long time at the log in her hands. Finally, he took it from her and put it back in the fireplace, then returned to her, taking first one hand in his to inspect it, then the other. When he was done, her hands were as clean as the rest of her. She looked at his hands, trying to find the soot and ash, but his were clean, too.
He stared into her eyes but his expression hadn’t changed. “I expected that to some degree, but it was still a shock. Forgive me for not believing it until I saw it fully. But I still won’t take the chance. What if he made a mistake?”
Heather shook her head, her hair flying, feeling like she was dreaming again for the first time in several hours. “Who?”
“The angel who made you for me. Your father.”
The what now? Heather felt her knees go soft.
Graeme was there to catch her.
Chapter 26
Graeme took a deep breath. Where to begin? She was strong enough to hear it all, he knew that. He’d brought her out to his home because he had needed time to decide how to break it to her, but since she’d been there, he had been the one on an expedition of discovery. He hadn’t known a female like her since his mother.
He would start with the obvious. “There’s a lot about your world that you don’t understand. That knowledge has been withheld from humans forever. Being who and what you are, though, I’m sure you have sensed something.”
He stopped, then helped her over to the couch to sit, as she still looked a little shaky. She nodded gratefully and waited for him to continue, no sign of disbelief on her face.
He paced around the room a bit. “The creation stories of humans all dance around the reality, but none of them hit it quite right.” He stopped to look straight at her. “You are most familiar with the religion of Christianity, is that correct?”
Heather nodded, but still didn’t speak.
He bent into his story in earnest, trying to keep a balance between history and the present, fearing it was a dragen history he told, and she would need to hear it again from a wolfen in order to get all the pertinent bits and pieces. As he spoke, he saw the burning words she said she had written. You are not the last dragon. That would have to be addressed, dealt with. Confirmed. Dragen were not good beings, as a rule. They tended toward evil, toward killing for fun. If there was another dragen somewhere, hiding out, as he had hid out for centuries, he would have to be the judge, jury, and possibly executioner, if it came to that.
She interrupted him by holding up her hand, some life coming into her expression. “Wait, how old are you?”
“I am nine hundred and thirty-six years old.”
Her face fell and her mouth dropped open. “These other beings fighting the demon, shiften you called them, are they all that old? Have I met any of them?”
“They are not. Shiften live much shorter lives than dragen. Aye, you have met a few. All of the police officers in Serenity are shiften.”
She stood and began to circle the room, a wider, more aggressive circle than he had made. “So that’s why you didn’t get in trouble for assaulting them. That’s why cops always stick together no matter what. That’s why…” She turned to him, her face open, wondering. “Wait, why did you grab those two guys, er, shiften, by the throats? What in the hell was up with that?”
Graeme looked out the window, not surprised she would ask that question, but not wanting to answer it. It would make what he was trying to do so much harder if she knew he felt a biological imperative to claim her as his own. She might even decide, if she could just get him to take her once, and she lived through it, he would give in to everything that came along with that. Worse, she was probably right. He stood tall and headed for the door. It would not happen. He had more years disciplining his body and mind than she had been alive for.
“Follow me,” he said. “I need to show you something.”
She cut through the room and exited right behind him without question. Once outside, he transformed.
Climb on.
Heather did and Graeme hoped he had successfully distracted her from that damning question. He leaped into the air, unfurled his wings, and began the short trip he hadn’t made for over six hundred years.
***
Heather’s brain boiled as her dragon flew them over the forest in the waning twilight, the moon high in the sky at their backs. On some level, she’d known the second she’d first seen Graeme, lying in that hospital bed, that her life would never, ever be the same, but could she so easily accept all of this talk of demons and protectors of humans and angel fathers?
She wasn’t rejecting any of it yet. Was it the only explanation that let any of this make sense? She’d given up the notion that she could be dreaming hours ago, and here she was, riding on the back of a dragon again.
Even with all the talk of the demon and the danger to humans and this epic, ages-old fight, still, all she could care about was her dragon and how he felt about her and if he ever would make love to her. Molten semen. Those had been his exact words. Talk about a hot date! Her mind spun over the fact, not able to let it go. Was she really willing to try to have sex with a man─ not a man, a dragen─ who could burn her from the inside out?
But did she believe that? It made perfect sense that, if she had been created for him, if they were meant to be together on some cosmic level that resonated so strongly inside her she almost had to believe it, then she could handle the lava jizz. She laughed to herself. Lava jizz. Immaculate ejaculate. Boiling hot man chowder with a side of hot sauce. Man Chili. Spicy salty surprise. She giggled hard and had to curl her fingers around the base of his wings to keep from sliding to the left.
She felt his attention turn toward her as he asked a big question in her mind. What’s so funny?
/>
His sense of humor was much more refined than what she’d been thinking, but she still couldn’t’ stop herself. So, your nut butter comes toasted, then?
He didn’t say anything for a moment, and she buried her face in his back, heat flushing up her cheeks. He thought she was childish. Of course, he did, he was more than nine hundred years older than her!
But then he laughed, a sweet chuckle that hurt her heart it was so sexy and so him.
He angled down slightly and she knew they were almost to the end of their journey. She took a quick look around, not wanting to miss one second of the flying because she’d been ruminating. She would think on it more, but if she had to answer yes or no right that second, she knew her answer would be yes, she was willing to bet her life that she could handle it. She wouldn’t be there, on the back of the dragon, head over heels in love with him, if she couldn’t handle sex with him.
Heather’s fingers loosened as she stared at the back of her dragon’s head, her body going lax. In love with…?
Their angle dipped hard and she slid to the left, then screamed and tried to find a handhold. Graeme shifted and dropped straight down a few feet, getting under her easily, giving her time to hold on again.
He didn’t ask why she had almost fallen and she didn’t tell. She wished fiercely it didn’t have to be so complicated. That they could have a normal courtship and a normal coming together. But it was not to be. What she got instead was something far more interesting and more satisfying, she was sure, if she could ever get him to put aside his fears and go for it.
Graeme flew toward a small clearing, then dropped lightly into it. Heather looked around from his back, not wanting to climb off just yet. She liked how powerful she felt from the higher vantage point, like nothing could ever harm her. Maybe that had something to do with the two-ton scaly beast between her legs.
Her dragon stood stock still and stared into the center of the clearing, his mood somber. Heather slid down and looked where he was looking, but there was nothing there. Or was there? Her eyes narrowed as she realized this clearing looked suspiciously like the one they had just left.