“She’s perfect the way she is,” Arawn hissed at him while his skin crackled with electricity. “There’s nothing wrong with her.”
“She screws up every potion she lays a finger on,” Oli said. “She’s a failure. I’m just glad she’s not my real daughter.”
“Oh, yeah?” Arawn said. “I don’t think she screws anything up. Watch.”
He grabbed the copper vessel still smoking over the fire.
“No, it’s too hot!” Willow warned him.
He downed the scalding potion, pouring it into his mouth and swallowing the burning liquid in one gulp. He was a dragon, and he breathed blue dragonfire, which was far hotter than mere boiling water. He puffed steam back into his mouth.
“Arawn!” Willow cried. “Arawn, don’t!”
Rage filled him, a rage as enormous as a black dragon, at the stupid man who abused his Willow.
Arawn threw his arms to the side and shouted at the sun far above the casino.
The copper pot rattled on the floor as he blew into black smoke.
Love Potion #9
“ARAWN!” Willow cried as he swallowed the liquid.
The potion was still boiling hot. Arawn shouldn’t have chugged it. It would burn his mouth and throat so badly.
Not to mention the fact that she was a horrible screw-up as a witch and that potion might be poisonous.
The copper vessel fell from his hand.
He’d probably burned his hand, too.
“Arawn, are you all right?” she begged.
He turned, anger still written on his face.
But his eyes—
Arawn’s eyes glittered with bright blue sparks.
The glowing flecks multiplied.
Sapphire blue sparks flowered and flowed inward, completely consuming his irises, a raging waterfall of blue fire falling into a hole.
When he saw Willow, he stepped toward her, almost stumbling. “Willow.”
“Yes? Yes, Arawn?” Would he tell her that he needed to seek and find that other woman, his fated mate? Would he leave her? Was this their last minute together?
His arm caught her waist, and he held himself up with his other on the countertop like he was dying. His mouth crashed down on hers like he was starving for her. When he broke it off, he whispered, “It’s you. It’s always been you. I have never loved anyone in my life except you. Be my mate. Live with me and be my love.”
“Yes,” Willow said, her chest tight.
Arawn stepped back from her and threw his arms out from his sides. His head fell back. He shouted a wordless, raging scream, and his body disintegrated, reforming into an enormous, black dragon.
In the enclosed space of the commercial kitchen.
The dragon’s enormous body shoved the cabinets and counters apart. His back cracked the ceiling even though he crouched. Steel shelves crumbled and snapped as the dragon whipped his muscular tail.
“Tiamat?” Willow asked, holding her hands out in front of her.
Willow’s mother and stepfather scrambled to get out of the way. Oli’s face had turned pale green, a color Willow hadn’t known he could turn.
Tiamat looked over his shoulder, snarling at her mother and stepfather.
“No, Tiamat!” Willow yelled. “Don’t fry them! No frying the people!”
He turned his head back to Willow, staring at her.
His eyes were still the same gorgeous blue with striations of darker blue and white, but now they, too, held the rushing fire of mating fever, just like Arawn’s had.
When Willow reached out to the beaded fabric of his neck, his skin was warmer than before. “Tiamat, baby? Are you okay?”
Tiamat reached out his leg and shoved her with his nose, hard, toward the talons on his foot. Cobalt blue dragonfire leaked from his mouth and uncomfortably warmed her leg.
“What do you want?” she asked the dragon.
He pushed her toward his leg again.
Willow patted the dragon’s foot and sharp, silver-black talons. “Good dragon?”
The black maw of the dragon’s mouth gaped above her, and thousands of pristine, alabaster daggers stabbed toward her body.
Willow couldn’t help herself. She screamed.
Her scream echoed in the darkness of Tiamat’s mouth as his lips closed around her waist.
For a fraction of a second, Willow braced herself to be bitten in half. At least it would be quick. Being chomped in half by guillotine-sharp teeth would be a much quicker death than being burned alive, and oh she should have just dated and married that day-going vampire who’d made a pass at her in Paris and then she’d be in France and undead and living forever and having little undead-bloodsucking babies and wouldn’t be being eaten by a dragon. Gods, she hoped he was going to chew her up and not let this go on.
Tiamat’s lips clamped around her waist, protecting her from his teeth.
Dragons had lips?
Her feet left the ground, and she dangled, kicking, from the dragon’s mouth like a lizard caught by a cat.
Tiamat’s mouth opened, and she was flying through the air at the obsidian plates on his back. She landed among the boney ridges and grabbed one as she nearly slid off the smooth beads of his back. “What the hell are you doing!”
Tiamat swiveled his neck and glared at her as she clung to his back, his eyes narrowing.
“Okay, Tiamat,” Willow gasped. “No use being upset, right? We’re okay. Can I get down?”
From below, her stepfather yelled, “What a jackass, turning into a—”
Tiamat jerked his head around and stared at her mother and stepfather.
The dragon inhaled deeply, and the roar of dragonfire rumbled within his body under Willow’s legs.
“No! No, Tiamat! Don’t!” she yelled.
Her mother and stepfather ran toward the door to the casino.
Tiamat huffed a breath that was barely a putt-putt of a puff.
A wisp of blue dragonfire darted through the shelves and nailed her stepfather directly on the butt.
Oli howled and ran faster, swearing all the way.
Willow’s mother stumbled, but Oli didn’t stop to help her up. Lunamaria staggered to her feet and high-tailed it out of the kitchen.
The swinging door clacked as it swung back and forth.
Tiamat swung his massive head around, pointed his face toward the brick-and-steel back wall of the kitchen, and blasted it with a concentrated column of blue-hot dragonfire.
A Dragon’s Lair
UNDER the assault of the star-blue dragonfire, the kitchen’s back wall melted. Red bricks sizzled and splintered in the heat, revealing steel beams that wept silver metal in the flames.
Willow’s hands cramped as she clutched the stone-like plates that ridged Tiamat’s spine. She wove her legs between the plates, hooking her knees and ankles around the protruding discs. “Tiamat? Honey? You don’t have to do this. We can find another way to get you out of here. Can I get down?”
The dragon stalked closer to the back wall as his continuing stream of dragonfire broke through to the alleyway behind the casino. Molten bits of burning bricks and dripping metal showered the floor.
Willow drew her arms in more tightly. “Tiamat? It’s okay. I’m safe now. We’re both safe.”
The dragon clawed the fragile, burning wall out of the way with its gleaming talons, revealing blue sky beyond.
Inside, the fire alarms blared, and the sprinklers sprayed water over the kitchen.
The dragon flinched and growled at the water, and then he jumped forward.
Willow ducked as the dragon broke through the wall and burst into the alley. “Tiamat? Where are we going?”
The dragon squatted on its haunches and leaped into the sky.
With a powerful stroke of his wings, Tiamat pushed the air behind them, and they soared above the rooftops.
Willow grabbed the stony plates on Tiamat’s back and hung on. She clung with her fingers and thighs, her toes and her arms, and she fervently praye
d to every witch god and dragon god that had ever existed not to fall off Tiamat’s back and end up as a greasy splat on the Strip far below.
Icy wind rushed through Willow’s hair and dragged at her clothes. She flattened herself against Tiamat’s back, where the heat emanating from the dragon’s skin warmed her. She scooted her fingers closer to the dragon’s body so that they would not become numb from the frigid wind streaming past as they flew.
The dragon sliced through the cloudless, summer sky, rising and falling smoothly with each beat of his wings. After a few minutes, Willow loosened her grip just a little, secure that she didn’t have to hold on with all her strength to keep from falling off. In front of her, Tiamat’s head was slightly raised, breaking the wind that flowed over them. Now that they were up, it was less like sticking your head out of a sunroof at a hundred miles an hour and more of a stiff breeze.
After a few more minutes, Willow managed to look around herself and the dragon at the desert landscape floating by underneath them.
Far below, thousands of feet below, tiny cacti and boulders dotted the ground.
Nope, still terrifying.
Willow buried her face in the dragon’s back and clung more tightly to him.
Soon, Willow’s ears popped, and the dragon fluttered to a landing amid enormous, red rocks. Willow slid to the ground, her legs shaking.
Behind two boulders guarding the entrance, a dark cave hollowed out a section of the mountain.
Willow asked the dragon, “Tiamat, is this your lair? I thought dragon caves were just rumors.”
Willow could stand up easily in the entrance to the cave and picked her way between the sharp rocks as she wandered farther back inside.
A breeze whooshed by her, and more sunlight streamed into the cave. The ground flattened out to a stone floor that looked and felt glassy, like it had been melted smooth by dragonfire.
Beyond the entryway, farther back in the cool darkness, a bedroom had been set up. A canopied bed was dressed in a puffy, dark blue and silver duvet and matching curtains. The velvet stirred in a cool breeze wafting from the back of the cave.
Willow turned and asked, “What the heck is this?”
Arawn stood half-behind one of the rusty stones. Sunlight brightened his blond hair, broad shoulders, and where his bare body narrowed to the muscular ripples of his abdominals. He grabbed a rock like he might fall.
Willow gathered the magic from her soul and the Earth under her feet and threw it at him, conjuring suit slacks and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up past his forearms. It was kind of impressive that she could summon any magic at all, considering how much of her energy she had poured into the potion.
He glanced down at the clothes that had appeared on his body, but he was already rushing across the room to her. “Willow.”
“Arawn, are you—”
When he was halfway across the room, she saw his eyes were still flowing with sapphire mating-fever fire.
He caught her up in his arms—a breath-catching frisson tingled on her arm where his hand touched her skin—and carried her to the bed, asking, “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” She couldn’t put enough emphasis and certainty into that inadequate word.
He touched her face, and that shivering energy still crackled between them. “This is forever. This is for both our lives. I’ll be yours forever, and there’s no going back.”
“Yes.”
“Promise me that it’s yes.”
“It’s yes,” she said. “A thousand times, it’s yes.”
Arawn cradled her, laying her on the softness of the bed, and slid onto the duvet beside her. “I have wanted to be with you for so long. I have wanted to claim you for my mate like an ache that has tormented me every day, every minute.”
He kissed her slowly, his lips touching hers softly, sucking gently, until she was yearning for more.
“I have dreamed of this moment for years,” he whispered as he slipped her clothes off her body.
He said, “I have wanted to touch you and take you into my arms my whole life.” His low voice rumbled near her ear as he caressed her skin, making her hunger for him.
He murmured, “I have always been yours. I’ve been waiting for you. I was born to be with you.” His voice turned husky as he touched her, stroking deeper, slipping his fingers inside her as he nipped her shoulder and then bit her more deeply.
The dragon venom flowed through her, spinning her head and making her writhe in his arms.
Willow clung to him as he moved inside her with long, slow strokes. He bit her again on her other shoulder, and the delirium drove her higher.
“Do it,” she whispered. “Take me. Make me your mate.”
Arawn’s body rippled over hers, a deep driving that destroyed all thought. He held her in his arms and his tears touched her hair as he murmured that his soul was hers, his body was hers, his fortune and his name and his honor were hers, and all these he laid at her feet.
His breath warmed her shoulder.
Blue dragonfire washed over her skin.
Burning.
Burning deeper.
Igniting a fire deep inside her and driving her inside her soul and the astral plane.
Arawn followed her down, two souls diving deep into the dark blue sea that extended around them for miles and miles and years before and all the years after.
The dragonfire became light, became a twisted mass, became a shining bond between them.
As Willow hovered at that moment of suspension before falling, that instant of bliss expanded into a lifetime that stretched in both directions of time as well as space.
The frayed ribbon that reached between them thickened and grew tendrils, plowing deeply into Arawn’s human soul and his dragon soul. The mating bond inundated him, changing him at a soul-deep level.
The two halves of his bifurcated soul merged.
On her end, the mating bond paused, a tree reaching for the sky, its branches nearly tall enough to scrape the sun, but it hesitated, waiting for her.
Willow floated above the astral bond as it reached for her, observing it like she was suspended underwater.
Arawn was writhing as the mating bond permeated him, imbuing his body with a new, more powerful magic from the bond and the universe around them.
But it was incomplete.
If Willow didn’t reach out soon, the mating bond would disintegrate, draining Arawn dry of the magic that was charging his soul.
Ah, that was the senescence, when the mating bond prepared a dragon soul and body for mating but then ripped away the magic if it wasn’t completed.
Willow reached forward, her fingertips drifting toward the mating bond as it held steady in the air, sparking.
As she touched it, the magic warmed her, flowing over her skin.
Another, smaller cord that led away from Arawn and pierced deeply into the astral plane shattered, and the remnants spun away like it had been under tension for a long time.
The bond between them strengthened, grew, fattened, and lashed new bonds around Arawn’s soul and her own ethereal body.
But it needed more from her.
With a shift in her witch powers, Willow closed her eyes and opened her soul to the bond, surrendering to it.
Arawn’s power flowed through her, a rocking, throbbing pulse that was Arawn’s heartbeat and the restless tides of his breath, the sparks of his mind and the power of his body, his heart and his soul.
Willow surrendered to the rhythm of his body, and his dragon magic flowed into her. It was the blistering heat of blue-hot fire and the vitality of the dragon kind, and a soul-deep love that flowed through every cell in her body and every mote in the universe.
Will I breathe fire? she thought, the world spinning around them both.
No, came an answer as Arawn was there beside her, his body moving with hers. No, but you’ll be my love forever, and then I’ll follow you into the beyond.
His body moved in hers, and his flesh
quenched the dragonfire in her skin.
She was his.
And he was hers.
And nothing could break the cord of dragonfire that had been forged in love and bound them.
Not a fated mate.
Not time.
Not death.
Nothing.
In the Night
WILLOW held her eyes closed, her breath filling her lungs and their hearts beating in unison.
She could still feel the magical cord that bound them like a lifeline, a pull of her cells toward his.
“Open your eyes,” Arawn said.
She rocked her head back and forth, still rolling on the waves, too euphoric to think.
“Please, Willow. Open your eyes.”
She cracked one lid open, but the lamplight was so bright. “What?”
Arawn was staring at her, fear in his eyes.
She sat up a little on the bed, bracing herself on her elbows and blinking in the light. “What’s going on?”
“Look at me.”
Willow ran her hand through her tangled hair to get it out of her face. “Okay.”
Arawn peered at her eyes, his eyes still shot through with azure dragonfire, and a slow grin started in his eyes and grew on his lips. “We did it. It worked.”
“Huh?”
He touched the dark marking on her shoulder. He had a new tattoo, too, and for a minute she wondered just when he’d gotten that. The dragon venom must still be dulling her mind.
“Your eyes,” he whispered. “Oh, Willow. It worked. You’re a dragonmate.”
Well, of course, she had to go look, and luckily there was a mirror in the cave’s bathroom.
Flowing blue fire filled her eyes.
~~~
In the deep darkness of a cave, in the languid exhaustion after love-making and the forging of a dragon magic bond, Willow almost slept.
Almost.
Arawn was curled around her, all muscular limbs and hard-rippled torso, and he was breathing evenly.
“Arawn?” she asked the darkness and the faint patch of moonlight far away in the cavern.
Dragons and Mayhem Page 17