ClosertoFire

by Alexis Reed

  “Thank you,” he said firmly. Deflated, she left, and Bane returned his attention to Lily.

  They were seated at a booth in the rear of the restaurant, a small steakhouse about a mile from the hotel where they had been staying in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. He’d chosen the site because it was close to the coast and not far from where Kai and Savara lived. They had checked out of the room and walked, carrying only Bane’s black physician’s bag and a flowery tote Savara had given him full of clothing and essentials for Lily.

  When they got to the restaurant, Bane had insisted that Lily sit between him and the wall, with Darek across from them in the seat facing the door of the restaurant. His fear wasn’t that Lily would run away. He was concerned about what might happen if Anthony or his other Council members got wind of their relationship with Lily. He trusted Kai and Savara, but it was possible he’d been seen coming and going this morning.

  Oblivious to this problem, Lily ate happily next to him. She was wearing one of several sets of clothing Savara had given him—a flirty black miniskirt and a tight pink T-shirt. The word “babydoll” was printed across her breasts in sequined silver letters.

  The previous morning, both Kai and Savara had been helpful, offering answers and advice. Savara, thrilled at the discovery of Lily, had given him a number of things for her “sister”—clothes, shoes, hats and a bewildering array of bottles and potions she’d insisted were absolute necessities for female existence. He’d taken them graciously, exchanging amused glances with Kai.

  Savara had also proffered an overwhelming variety of barely decent outfits before huffily conceding that yes, Lily probably needed to look inconspicuous. Her eye for sizes was uncanny, considering she’d had only a photo of Lily to work with, but her idea of “inconspicuous” was a far cry from his own. Still, he thought, glancing at the generous amount of Lily’s cleavage revealed by the shirt, he had to appreciate her style.

  On the way to the restaurant, he and Darek had told Lily more about the dracambri and the war. Bane could only imagine how strange their story must seem to her. After all, she’d been raised as a human woman. The story of the war had troubled her, particularly the idani’s role in the conflict, giving birth to armies of náladon.

  She’d asked to see them in dragon form. He grinned, remembering her wide-eyed, excited expression. They couldn’t shift there, of course, not when they might be spotted by the odd hiker. Only those of the sovráns’ bloodline had the ability to cloak themselves from human detection. Lily’s dragon show would have to wait until tonight. He knew of a quiet little cove off the inlet near Cape Hatteras.

  Between bites, Lily asked, “About the hybrids—the náladon. If their mothers are idani and their fathers dracambri, does that mean that I… That we could… Well, that I could get pregnant with a náladon?” She shuddered.

  “Your IUD will prevent a pregnancy, Lily,” Bane hedged. It wasn’t a lie but it wasn’t an answer either. Honestly he didn’t know what would happen if her IUD were removed. Without the shots, a full-blooded idana could not have borne his or Darek’s offspring. But Lily was half human. If her IUD were removed, a pregnancy was theoretically possible. Whether the child would be náladon, he didn’t know. At some point, he would have to bring up surgical sterilization—if not for her, then for himself and Darek. He didn’t want to learn the answer to that question.

  The previous evening, he’d run a rapid blood test to rule out the presence of the drug cocktail la vedova used to prime her broodmares. Lily’s blood was negative—no surprise there. At least he could demonstrate to Anthony that she’d never been a part of the breeding program.

  “What are they like? The náladon?” she asked.

  Darek cleared his throat. “We’ve not seen many of them in human form. As dragons, they’re black in the daytime, invisible in the darkness. Like their sires, they hail to one of the four elements—water, fire, earth or air—and they have power over that element. Some can also sift—teleport—like the idani. We’ve encountered one with psychic abilities. That’s really the problem—we’re not sure. We don’t know everything they can do yet.”

  Lily drained her glass of water and Bane refilled it. “Okay, question,” she said.

  Darek sat forward. “Shoot.”

  “I have some of my mother’s traits. Do I have others? Can I sift?” Lily asked. She took a swallow of her water.

  “I don’t know,” Bane answered. “Savara says she’ll help you find out if you want.”

  Darek shot him a baleful look. “Or not.”

  He was probably right. Kai’s unlikely mate was as unpredictable as she was gorgeous. And she was gorgeous—in her natural form, she was six feet of sex on toast.

  Picturing Lily taking advice from Kai’s mate made him a little nervous. Kai had told him that morning, “Savara is civilized, but she’s not entirely…tame.”

  Bane glanced at her often as he ate his own food.

  “I’m not going to run away,” she said finally, her mouth curved in a slight smile. “You don’t have to watch me so closely.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “It’s not that. I want to make sure you drink enough fluids. Ether dehydrates people.” Her eyes narrowed at his mention of the drug.

  He grimaced. “Sorry about that.”

  “That, and he wants an excuse to stare at your cleavage,” Darek joked.

  “So does every guy in here,” Bane growled, glancing sideways at the bar. “A couple of minutes ago the bartender poured that guy a tequila and Coke.” He gestured at a disgruntled-looking man seated at the bar.

  Lily wrinkled her nose.

  “Savara could teach her how to tone down her glamor,” Darek suggested. “I sure as hell couldn’t teach her that.”

  “Oh gosh, I never thought of that. If my mother could do it, I could too, right?” Lily asked, straightening suddenly. Bane saw a series of images flash through her mind—a sea of sad, desperate male faces. Lily put her palm to her forehead. “All of those times I wished and wished they’d just leave me alone. How could she?”

  “How could who?” Darek asked.

  “If I could have stopped it, why would my mother have kept that from me?”

  “Maybe she didn’t know how much it bothered you,” Bane said.

  Lily stabbed at her pasta moodily. “How come it doesn’t affect you guys?”

  Bane grinned ruefully. “It does.”

  Darek half grunted, half growled his agreement.

  “We just have a little more…armor against it than humans do,” Bane added.

  “And,” Darek said in a low voice, his gaze heating, “we can keep up with you.” Lily blushed and Bane saw her nipples pearl tightly under the thin shirt. He remembered how she’d looked riding Darek, her breasts swaying gently, her eyes meeting his, hungry. Her eyes had drifted closed when he came. He’d tried to be generous, to give her time, but damn, he was jealous of Darek.

  “Bane?” His eyes snapped open at the sound of Lily’s voice. “You bent your fork.”

  He cleared his throat and set down the ruined utensil. “So I did. I’ll be right back.” He stood, meeting Darek’s commiserative gaze

  Lily watched Bane walk to the back of the restaurant, appreciating the smooth, silent way he moved even as her mind whirred with worry. She turned to Darek. “Is he mad?”

  Darek shook his head but Lily was unconvinced. Her record with men was beyond terrible. She’d caused more fights than she could count, just by being in the vicinity of more than one man. Bane and Darek had talked a good game about sharing her, but the way Bane had looked at Darek just now was unsettling. The serenity she’d felt ensconced between them seemed naïve in the harsh light of day.

  “Maybe this isn’t the greatest idea,” she said, looking down at her plate. “You guys have a great friendship. I know you said that you believe you’re supposed to share me somehow, but it’s only been forty-eight hours and Bane’s already mad at you. Maybe once we work out this Inquiry thing, it
would be best if we went our separate ways.” A weight, heavy and cold, descended on her chest at the thought. She knew of painful breakups only from books, but ruining a friendship like theirs would just be wrong of her.

  When she chanced a look at Darek, he was smiling ruefully. “Lily, I’m afraid we have no choice in the matter. And you misunderstood. Bane needs you, but he doesn’t want to rush you. It’s the waiting that’s killing him. He’s only jealous because I’ve taken you and he hasn’t. Go to him.”

  She looked up at him, torn. “Look, you guys are…just beyond wonderful. But you don’t know me. Every guy I’ve ever touched—” She snapped her mouth shut, noticing the dark flare of jealousy in his eyes. “See, that’s just it,” she hissed. “You look at me like that when I mention my one disastrous teenage hook-up, but you can just sit out here and wait for us to be done or something?”

  A muscle in Darek’s jaw worked. He slid out of his seat and came over to her side of the booth. “You don’t understand how this works. I’m not jealous of Bane and he’s not of me. This feels right because it is.” He put his arm around her.

  His warmth, his scent were comforting, but the knot in her chest remained. “I never thought I’d find a man I wanted to be with, who could—I don’t know—survive being with me. That I found two is just beyond imagining.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, frowning.

  Something in his posture seemed odd. Lily raised an eyebrow. “What?”

  Darek drew in a long breath. “There’s something we haven’t mentioned yet. Dracambri—our species—we have soul mates,” he began. “They’re called wyrmates. We don’t choose our mates like humans do. We find them. And when we do, we know it, head to toe, horns to tail and everywhere in between. It changes us. We become a part of them and they of us.” He nuzzled her neck, breathing in. “See, you already carry my scent. Once you carry his, the bond will be permanent.”

  Her shoulders tensed. “What does that mean?”

  “Bane should be explaining this.” Darek shot an impatient glance in the direction Bane had taken. “It means that once wyrmates are bonded, each carries a part of the other’s soul. If one dies, the other rarely survives.”

  Lily blinked, clenching her hands together under the table. “Okay. So do dracambri always mate in threes?”

  “No,” Darek said. “Not often, but sometimes.”

  The man at the bar pushed back his chair to leave. The loud scraping noise made Lily jump. “So I’m your wyrmate?” she asked, testing the word in her mouth. “Yours and Bane’s?”

  Darek smiled. “Yes.”

  Lily stared, unsure how to respond.

  “Bane and I have a long history,” he said. “There aren’t many female dracambri left. It makes sense that we’d share a wyrmate.” He swirled the ice in his glass, watching her closely. As she had earlier, Lily sensed another, more predatory creature in his dark, watchful gaze.

  Lily tapped her knees with trembling fingertips. “You said we will change. What will happen to us?”

  Darek’s irises contracted, his pupils narrowing to inhuman, vertical slits. She leaned closer, fascinated, hardly daring to breathe.

  “To begin with, you’ll manifest our mark somewhere on your body,” he said.

  “Your mark?” Lily asked a little too loudly.

  Darek placed a finger over her lips, shushing her. “Don’t be afraid. This isn’t about what happens up here,” he said, tapping her forehead. “It’s about what happens in here.” He touched the center of her chest. The tips of his fingers were unnaturally warm, sending a shiver down her spine. “And lower,” he added. Lily felt a rush of wet heat and blushed, glancing toward the watchful bartender. Darek’s nostrils flared. “Oh I do like that scent.”

  Lily shivered. “Stop it.”

  Darek shrugged and took a sip of his drink. “I can’t, love.”

  She sighed, exasperated. “The mark. What does it look like?”

  “I’m told it looks a little like a tattoo, but it’s got a mind of its own.” He looked up from his drink, capturing her gaze with those mesmeric, preternatural eyes. “It’s supposed to be a wicked sensitive spot.”

  Lily’s breath hitched, a frisson of desire sparking through her. He sat next to her fully clothed, but the memory of his thick cock sliding into her was so real, so present that she moaned softly. Her skin was hot, her clothes stifling. The tables around her faded from her awareness. There was only Darek’s hard, warm body and her slipping control.

  Darek shook his head slowly. “That’s not me. It’s Bane calling you. Go to him now.”

  Lily nodded slowly, feeling as though she were in a dream. He set a large bill on the table and stood so she could get up. Forcing her shaky limbs to comply, she stood.

  He sat back down, sliding back to the wall and stretching his legs on the bench. “Go, Lily. I’ll keep an eye on things out here.”

  In the small but neat men’s room, Bane splashed water on his face, trying to regain his composure. He didn’t want to push Lily, especially now that he knew sex was new to her. But truth be told, though he’d loved every second of watching her take Darek first, it had taken every ounce of his control to hold back. He wanted more than the satisfaction of fucking her. The creature sliding just beneath the surface of his skin would accept nothing less than her complete surrender. He was haunted by visions of Lily beneath him—supple, compliant, eager to please. He groaned, a desperate sound that echoed in the small space. Lily was such a gentle, generous sex partner that his darker desires made him feel guilty. He heard the door creak open and turned, swiping the last drops of water from his face.

  Lily stood there alone. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said, clearing his throat. She dried her palms against her jeans. The scent of her need laced with a hint of nerves reached him. He closed his eyes, drinking it in. “Lock the door,” he heard himself say.

  She did as he said.

  “Come here.”

  She walked toward him slowly, an exotic vision in Savara’s most modest outfit. He stood there, a man transfixed, as she slipped her body in between his and the sink, placing her palms against his chest. His cock hardened against his jeans. One of his hands settled on her shoulder, the other tucked a stray strand of flaxen hair behind her ear. She leaned into his touch.

  Without a word, he guided her hand to the waistband of his jeans and pressed her palm to his belly, watching her closely. Let her decide.

  She hesitated for the briefest moment, then slid her hand beneath the fabric. Her cool fingers were a balm to his burning skin. She cupped his cock so hard it ached and wrapped her fingers around it, tentatively at first, then with delicious firmness. He groaned with relief, a sound that emerged a deep, inhuman growl.

  Desperate need rose in him, a force so wild he feared for her. He fought the urge to tear her shirt away from the soft haven of her breasts. He took her face in his hands, fighting for control. “Lily, I—”

  “Bane, I need you,” she whispered. The urgency in her words cleared his mind and he saw for the first time his own feral desire mirrored in her amber eyes. She let go of his cock to work at his belt buckle with one small hand. With the other, she pressed the back of his neck, tugging him to her. He leaned down, claiming her mouth with his own.

  Her thoughts were a silken caress in his mind. Please make me yours.

  “Lily, I don’t want to hurt you,” he breathed against her mouth. “I waited because you needed rest, but I waited too long and I need—I need too much.” He’d never felt so out of control.

  “I don’t think you need more than I can give,” she murmured. He scented her need laced with the fiery allure of her idana blood and it destroyed what was left of his control. He pinched her nipples gently, testing her.

  She gasped and leaned into his touch, her eyes drifting closed. More. Please, more.

  The dragon answered—dark, dominant, hungry. Yes. She asked, she received. He lifted her onto the counte
r and tugged at the hem of her skirt. “Lift this for me,” he commanded. She did as he said, her gaze burning. He kissed her, parting her lips with his tongue to explore the velvet texture of her mouth.

  When he found a lacy barrier to his touch he growled, grasping her chin and forcing her to look into his eyes. One finger lengthened into a talon and he slit the fabric, careful not to cut her. Her soft, surprised cry pleased him and he slid his fingers, talons gone, into her wet heat. She moaned, a wrenching, helpless sound, her tight pussy clenching his fingers.

  “No underwear under skirts. Are we clear?”

  Her eyes widened and she nodded, her pupils dilating. A flood of hot, wet warmth soaked his hand and he realized he’d hit a nerve. A submissive nerve. Interesting.

  “Come here.”

  Her breath coming in short puffs, she scooted toward him on the counter. She ground on his hand, her pussy sucking hungrily at his fingers. He laughed softly. This would be a fascinating experiment.

  “Say it,” he ordered, eliciting an excited whimper from her.

  “I’m…I’m not to wear underwear with skirts,” she said with a gasp, feathering kisses along his jawline.

  Oh God. He closed his eyes. She was so perfect. “Very good. Put your hands behind you.” She would need the support.

  He knelt in front of her, nudging her knees wide apart to admit his broad shoulders. His hand was soaked to the wrist and he was eager to taste her.

  Her knees trembled, her back arching. “Bane, please—”

  He nipped the inside of her leg, chiding. She gasped and he kissed the tiny hurt, soothing it with his tongue. “Hush. I’ll tell you when to beg,” he murmured against the smooth skin of her thigh. But he wasn’t going to make her wait long. Maybe later…but not now. He needed to be in her, and soon.