“You can’t be serious,” he said. “Thirty years of war caused deforestation—not demoralized dryads.”
“I’m going back and you should, too,” she said, kissing his palm. “It might be the only way you can heal what’s been broken inside you.”
Reluctantly, he pulled his hand away. “No, I’m done with war. And this thing between us can’t happen. I’ve gotta get out of here, and I can’t get you pregnant.”
“But you can,” she insisted. “You may be the only man who can. You must.”
“Look, I’m not some kind of animal you can breed. My answer is no.”
She couldn’t quite believe he was going to refuse her. No mortal man had ever refused her, even without having eaten the fruit of her heart tree. Embarrassment and anger made her cheeks burn. “Then I hope you like being tethered, because I’m not letting you go until you change your mind.”
That seemed to infuriate him, and he started to get up, but couldn’t. Rage darkened his features when he realized she’d tethered him to the chair. He wanted to shout at her. She could almost see the words forming. He wanted to call her a crazy bitch. But he was concentrating too intently on whether or not he could break the enchanted bond.
Meanwhile, Dessa was spending her remaining magic at a prodigious rate to keep him there, but she knew the bindings would hold, so she started for the door.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To get you some dinner,” she said. “You said a man likes to be wooed.”
Crazy bitch!
Nick’s muscles strained against the invisible bonds that held him to the chair. Whatever ardor he’d felt before was well and truly cooled. Inside, his three parts were at war. Stubborn Vic wanted him to just wait her out—eventually the dryad would get tired of holding them captive and let them go. Rick wanted to fight, to thrash, to claw her limb from limb. And then there was the greedy playboy gambler—the dragon, the lizard brain in Nick—who wondered why he was making this so hard on himself.
All he had to do was knock this chick up and be on his way. How hard was that? What was the worst she could do? Sue him for child support? She couldn’t possibly have a better legal team than the U.S. Marine Corps, and in five years they hadn’t managed to drag him back to meet his obligations.
That thought brought a sour taste to his mouth. The car crash wasn’t the only reason Nick had joined the Marines. And it wasn’t just because he’d lost a bet. He’d wanted to do something good with his life, and he used to be a believer. Semper Fi.
But there was something else he’d learned as a Marine, and it might just help him now: Improvise, Adapt and Overcome.
Chapter Eight
The first thing Dessa did was retrieve her discarded shoes and radio; she didn’t want her co-workers thinking she’d been kidnapped. Casino security was still on the alert, but not actively searching for Nick. Card counters weren’t the worst scoundrels casinos had to deal with, after all.
The second thing Dessa did was return to her suite, change into a dry set of clothes and call down to the lobby to tell them she was taking the rest of the night off. Then she started rummaging for food in her kitchenette, a task made more difficult by her shaking hands.
She wasn’t as powerful as she used to be—using her dryad magic on Nick had taken its toll and she didn’t want him to see it. Even now, she felt him straining as no one and nothing had ever struggled against her before. It was draining; she wasn’t sure how long she could hold him against his will in the unfinished spa. But if she let him go, she’d never have the daughter she needed to save the forests. Moreover, she’d never be able to save Nick from himself.
If Nick didn’t go back to Afghanistan and help his fellow Marines repair the land in which so much blood had been spilled, he might never be whole. One day, he might not even be able to merge back together into one man—before her powers failed her, she had to make him understand that.
When she was finally sure she could face him again, Dessa used her passkey to let herself back into the unfinished spa where she found Nick.
All three of him. The goat, the lion and the dragon.
The first incarnation was still sitting in the chair, stubbornly and methodically shuffling a deck of cards. He looked slightly different than the Nick she was used to—with an unkempt goatee. He was also naked, and Dessa struggled not to stare at the hard muscles of his sinewy body. There was not a spare ounce of flesh on him; he was perfect.
A second incarnation was also naked and crouched a few feet away with a pen in his hand. He had longer hair and looked like some wounded animal, like a lion with its paw in the jaws of a trap. As soon as Dessa started to speak, that one lunged at her, trying to stab her with the pen, then growled with frustration when the tether held him back.
Finally, there was the one who looked most familiar to her—the cunning, reptilian version of Nick who stood there in his wet clothes daring her to come closer.
“Nice try,” she said, trying to hide her fear, “but I anticipated you’d try this.”
It was false bravado. Dessa had lived in the forest long enough to know that men were dangerous predators in their own right. Nick was strong, but she could hold her own against him. She wasn’t sure she could fight off all three of him. Luckily, he had only loosened his bonds enough to fracture like the chimera he was. He hadn’t managed to break the tethers altogether.
“I brought wine,” she murmured, realizing that she’d have to bind him back together before she dared come closer. But she was so tired, so very tired.
“Did you bring candles, too?” Nick mocked her. “Maybe we can each take a turn with you. How’s that for romance?”
“Don’t be this way.” Dessa sighed.
“Don’t tell me how to be,” his inner dragon demanded. “I’m better at giving orders than taking them.”
She preferred him as one man. When all his aspects combined to form the proud—but ultimately gentle—warrior, he was a man she could care for. Maybe even a man she could love. But when he was separated, his sense of humor took on a deeply bitter edge and he couldn’t be trusted.
Spreading a blanket on the ground, Dessa quietly laid out a humble feast. Some raspberries, cold fried chicken and half a loaf of bread. All three of Nick’s selves looked on hungrily, but until she loosened his bindings, he couldn’t get to her, or the food.
“Do you want to sit with me and eat like one civilized man?”
“I’m not a civilized man,” one of him replied—she didn’t look up to see which one. “I’m a monster. You said so yourself.”
“Maybe you don’t have to be,” she said, pouring the wine. “If you go back to Afghanistan—”
“I can’t go back even if I wanted to. I’m AWOL.”
Dessa pretended she understood. “What will the Americans do to you if you return?”
“They think I’m a deserter, Dessa. What do you think they’ll do?”
Careful not to step within the boundaries of the tethers that held him near the chair, Dessa handed the crafty incarnation of Nick a glass of wine. She felt certain that if she handed it to the crouched one with the longer hair he’d dash it out of her hand. “I need two more glasses,” Nick said.
“Merge back together and you won’t.”
He shook his head. “It’s not that easy. It’s painful.”
“It’s only going to get more painful. At first, your other selves probably just felt like extra limbs, but now they’re taking on personalities of their own, aren’t they?” When he didn’t answer, she continued, “Do you know what I think? I think you don’t like being a deserter any more than I do. I think we both had a duty and we’ve only hurt ourselves in abandoning it.”
“A fine lecture from someone like you,” Nick said, taking an experimental sip of wine, those predatory dragon eyes hard like obsidian. Since this incarnation seemed like the only one willing to talk, she loosened his tether and let him come a little closer. When he realized it, he sat on
the edge of the blanket. “You’re used to using your powers to get whatever you want.”
Dessa took a bite of bread and chewed slowly, because he did have a point. And yet…“I didn’t want my kind to drift away to live in the mortal world. I didn’t want my forest to burn down. I didn’t want to lose my heart tree…but I couldn’t stop any of that. I want a daughter to help me guard the forests and that’s one thing that’s still in my power.”
“You think so?” he asked, fire in his eyes.
“I do,” she said. “You may be a chimera, but I can bend you to my will.”
“Is that how you want it to be?”
He was so infuriating, so willful, so…desirable. It was as if he, a mortal man, thought himself her equal. Maybe that’s why he was her chosen mate. She’d known it the first day she saw him. It’s why she kept that scorched joker with her—not to remind her of a soldier who helped condemn those little girls to die, but because it reminded her of a man who made those little girls laugh.
“No, I don’t want it to be like that,” Dessa confessed. “But I’m desperate. I’m asking you, I’m begging you—”
“I’ll make you a deal,” Nick said, the avarice of a gambler in his eye. “I’ll make love to you, but not here hidden and caged up like an animal, and not while I’m in your power. You don’t get to be in control; you’ll have to put yourself in mine.”
Chapter Nine
Dessa should have known better than to make a deal with a dragon; it had to be some kind of trick. But by nightfall, her powers were waning and she’d exhausted all other options. They’d eaten her makeshift picnic, they’d finished the wine and she’d already told Nick that sneaking him out of the resort was best done under cover of darkness.
“Damn,” he complained, staring out the window. “The moon is out.”
“Don’t worry,” Dessa said, shaking with exertion. “Casino security isn’t going to shoot you. It’s just a matter of slipping past the cameras and navigating through the woods to the road.”
“You’re going to keep your word, then? And let me go?”
It’d taken so much out of her to keep him bound she was not sure she could stand. But somehow she found the strength. “A dryad always keeps her word.”
She wasn’t so sure about chimeras.
She allowed all three men to stand and follow her to the exit. Then, as they stepped out behind the building into the moonlit night, she let the tethers grow slack like she might do with three pets on the end of a leash. He could run quite a ways before realizing that he was still bound, but he didn’t try. None of him did. The three men simply crept into the forest beside her, trusting her to guide the way.
It was some time before they were in the thick of the wilds, away from the Evergreen Resort and its guests. Crickets chirped into the night air, and Dessa took off her shoes so as to feel the forest floor beneath her feet. When they reached the foot of a crimson firewheel tree, Dessa stopped and closed her eyes.
She had to let him go. She had to let him go free, but she was afraid. One of him seemed to realize it—the savage one with the leonine hair who didn’t speak. He stopped behind her. She turned her head to the side to see his teeth bared, and for a moment, she feared he would devour her. But instead, he bit her softly at the nape of the neck, his breath warm in her ear. She pressed back against him, groaning with the heat that flowed through her body.
“Am I still tethered?” Nick asked, his voice coming from another body, from farther away.
Dessa broke the gossamer threads and let out a small, exhausted cry. “Not anymore.”
He was going to leave her, and there’d be nothing she could do to stop him. He was going to run. Just as he’d run from the car crash. As he’d run from the war. As he’d run from security.
He said he was a deserter, after all.
But against all reason, he didn’t run. Nick’s leonine aspect caught her hands and held them at the small of her back. The one with the goatee took her round the waist, working his fingers at the buttons of her blouse. And the one with the dark dragon eyes cupped her chin and kissed her.
For a moment, Dessa felt crowded, overwhelmed. She tried to free her hands, but there was no escape. “Not like this,” she said.
“I thought you were a dryad…do we really need to find a hotel room?”
“No,” she said. “I mean, not like this with you all…fractured.”
“You promised you’d do it my way,” his dragon self replied, almost cruelly. “Unless you’ve changed your mind?”
He’d been right about her. Dessa was used to having her own way. Used to being strong and powerful, used to ruling forests and men alike. Even when she’d lived amongst the mortals, she’d always known it was play-pretend. They’d never had her in their power the way Nick had her now.
She was drained of magic and at his mercy; only he could give her a child. “No,” she said. “I haven’t changed my mind.”
“Good,” he replied and then kissed her hard. The rush of it flowed over her senses. With six hands, he undressed her easily, exposing her nudity to the night air. One set of hands cupped her breasts from behind, kneading the flesh until the nipples tightened with a pleasurable ache. Meanwhile, a warm, insistent mouth sought the downy cleft between her legs. All the while, the controlling, manipulative dragon aspect of him was staring into her eyes.
“You’re so sexy,” he murmured between kisses. “It’s amazing to taste you, touch you, kiss you—all at the same time.”
Dessa shuddered with the unfamiliar thrill, overcome with sensation. There were too many hands on her, too many mouths on her, to focus on any one pleasure. There was nothing she could do to stop it, nothing she wanted to do to stop it. Abandoning all pretense of composure, Dessa moaned, wanton and shameless.
She was yearning, shaking, aching.
At length, Nick pulled her down to the forest floor. She straddled him and sank down until he was buried deep inside her. With her knees on the cool life-affirming earth, she pumped her hips until a second set of hands grasped her bottom and spread her cheeks. A second hardness was pressing slowly but insistently behind, another body wanting to join with her.
“You have to open yourself to me,” Nick whispered.
What he was asking was base, so why did she want it so much? Because sex was a union, a kind of natural binding all its own, and she wanted to feel at one with him. Relaxing herself to accommodate the savage lion behind her, she felt herself taken a second time. The soft mounds of her buttocks quivered against his groin, and then she was captured, caught between his two bodies, and filled like the earth itself as tumescent tree roots penetrated the soil.
Nick’s third self—the one with the goatee—was close by, only staring. It unsettled her. It was wrong. Now, she didn’t want some part of Nick just to watch; she didn’t want him to hold some part of himself aloof. The pulse of her heart tree beat in all his parts. They were connected, and she wanted him. All of him.
She reached out and drew his third erection to her lips. She took him into her mouth; she took Nick into every part of herself she could take him and some cycle completed, some bond forged. She felt their bodies meld together—the orgiastic pleasure unbearable to contain.
Her orgasm blossomed inside her, exploding like flowers in springtime, a cacophony of color and beauty. Her body convulsed like a butterfly shedding its cocoon. Then her moonlit world went blindingly white.
It was only after a few moments, when she could see again, when she could breathe again, that Nick stiffened beneath her and flooded her with his seed. He came with a sound that gave her deep contentment.
It was just the two of them now and she felt fertile as the earth. She hadn’t imagined the merging of bodies and souls. But had Nick’s other selves gone back into him, or into her?
She felt the life quicken inside her, and she knew the answer was both.
Chapter Ten
“Did you put me back together?” Nick asked, as if bewilde
red by the fact that he was whole.
“Not on purpose,” Dessa whispered, falling forward onto his chest where he cradled her. “But in joining with me…it just happened.”
“I guess three was a crowd.” That sense of humor returned now that he was one man. “You swear you didn’t tether me?”
Dessa shook her head. “I kept my part of the bargain. You’re free…”
“Do you think I kept mine?” Nick whispered.
“Yes, we made a daughter,” Dessa said softly. “I feel her inside me, like I used to feel my heart tree—like I still feel my heart tree when you’re near me.”
Nick rolled atop her then, laying her gently against the soil where the loamy scents of the world added to her contentment. But, as he stroked her hair from her face, he looked terribly sad. “You know I wouldn’t have done that…if I’d been myself. Some part of me wanted to shame you for having trapped me.”
“I’m not ashamed.”
Nick sighed. “If I’d been myself, I’d have never made that bargain with you in the first place. I wouldn’t have risked making a baby, knowing I was just going to run out on you.”
Dessa tried to keep her lower lip from quaking. What should it matter to her that he left her now? He was a mortal. She was a dryad. They came from different worlds. They’d return to different worlds. But she was worried for him. “How long can you keep running, Nick? What will they do to you—truly—if they catch you?”
“The best-case scenario? They’re so desperate for soldiers they might send me right back into the fight.”
“And the worst case?” Dessa asked.
“They’ll lock me in an insane asylum for the rest of my life.”
“And the most likely?”
“Most likely they’ll give me two years in prison, but I don’t think I could live through even a day of being locked up.”
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