“I’ll come then, bossy Beatrix. For one drink, if you insist. And then it’s bedtime.”
“That’s all I ask,” she typed back, grinning at the thought of bedtime with Lyre. “One drink.”
Intimacy
The nearest pub was a few blocks away, on a friendly street lined with red brick row houses with cheery white trim, quite a different feeling from the dark of the construction-lined abandoned zone where they’d made the Forsaken vanish into the night.
The two spent the walk exchanging quick texts. Trix wasn’t exactly adept at typing while strolling, but Lyre’s fingers moved with blinding speed, as though he’d mastered the art over the years. The Hunter supposed that this was his preferred means of communication with anyone who wasn’t able to sign, and it took only a few minutes for a nice rhythm to develop between them.
“How did you know where I was? And that I needed help?” she wrote to him. He replied with a shrug before poking out a rapid response with his fingertips. God, he looked sexy while stroking those digits over his phone.
“I didn’t. Not at first. But then I smelled you,” he typed, chuckling at the words he’d just added to the small screen.
“That. Is. Horrifying,” she wrote back. A frowning emoticon seemed insufficient in this situation. More like mortified embarrassment. She wanted to add a dagger ramming itself into a sad face, but there wasn’t an emoji for that, so she had to settle for a small set of yellowish, blushing features.
“Don’t take it as an insult. I have a very keen nose. They say that when one sense goes, the others improve, you know. I’m like a bloodhound on steroids. And perhaps a touch of crack.”
“And so, druggie dog—you can smell…everything?”
Lyre smiled when he read the message. “Everything,” he wrote. “Including jasmine-scented Hunters.”
Trix flushed at the words, but tried to hide what they were doing to her insides. Somehow the thought of him taking in her scent aroused her more than anything ever had in her life.
“Tell me then, do you know what a fresh tattoo smells like?”
“You have a fresh tattoo?”
She nodded as he turned her way, his right eyebrow arched inquisitively. His fingers scrambled to type the next four words. “May I see it?”
A shake of her head. She stopped walking to type her reply. “Buy me a drink first, then we’ll talk about whether I might yank my jeans down for you.”
“Ah, that sort of tattoo. The sort that only lowered inhibitions can bring to light.”
Another nod, making her red hair cascade in shaking waves about her face.
“Then I’ll definitely buy you a drink. And after I’ve seen the tattoo, I’ll probably fly away home so I’m not too tempted to ask for more revelations of your skin.”
Trix laughed. “Home? Where do you live?” she wrote. Somehow, the idea of his living in a house or flat seemed odd.
He began to type his response, but instead of continuing he stopped and looked at her, seeming to assess their situation for a moment. Slowly, he moved his right hand towards her, laying it gently on her arm. The act, so innocent, sent a hard shiver through her body that seemed to end only when it had shot a pulse of excitement to the place between her legs.
Never had he touched her in his human form, she realized. And it was something special, to put it mildly. Electricity zapped through her as though someone had inserted wires connecting every erogenous zone to all the others, and the charge began at his fingertips, guiding itself expertly as though searching for the most pleasant nerve endings.
Lyre looked down at her again to ensure that her eyes were meeting his, then lifted the fingers of his left hand to his eyelids, shutting them gently with his fingertips. He opened them again and pointed to her as though to say, “Now you do the same.”
She let her eyelids lower, wondering what he had up his sleeve. But only a moment later she understood. His right hand stayed on her, and somehow, through that touch of his, an image entered her mind: a large, opulent house in the country, made of grey slabs of weathered limestone. A multitude of windows decorated its façade, a gravel drive led in a semi-circle to its massive front door. It looked like something out of a Jane Austen novel, untouched by modern times, and most certainly worth millions of pounds.
“You live in that house? Really?” she mouthed, opening her eyes.
He nodded. There was no air of superiority about him, no sense of pride in the accomplishment of owning such property. Just a sort of matter of fact conveyance of information. He pulled out his phone again and typed. “I want to show you another house, though. My favourite place in the world. Close your eyes again.”
She did, and as he touched her a second time, another image came to her. This time, a charming little stone house set atop a cliff, looking out to the sea. Its slate roof was damp with moisture, whitened in places from salt mist eating away at its surface. Tall grasses wafted in the wind, clouds drifted overhead. In the grey-white stone of the cliff, large cavernous holes were carved from millenia of waves crashing against its surface. And for a moment, Trix thought she could see a Dragon soaring in the distance, but perhaps she’d only imagined it.
“It’s so beautiful,” she mouthed, her eyes looking into his again when they’d opened. He smiled, his expression altering into something that defeated any chill of the night, warming her all over. Affection moved through her like liquid flame, and even as the sensation overwhelmed her, Lyre stepped forward, inching his body closer to hers.
For a moment she thought he was going to kiss her, even as his hand moved towards her face. But instead, he pulled her hood back and away from her hair, unleashing the tendrils of red to blow in the breeze.
“Come,” the voice on his phone commanded a moment later. “Let’s get to the pub.”
Reluctant to leave this spot that had seemed so magical a moment earlier, Trix began to walk beside him again, observing that his hands were now at his sides. A part of her wanted to reach for him, to stop him in his tracks. To tell him that, whether he could hear her or not, she’d never felt so intimate, so close to anyone in her entire life. That something had happened to her. Something wonderful and thrilling.
And that if he disappeared again from her life she might break.
What the hell was going on? She wasn’t one to fall in love; she always said that she didn’t even really know what the word meant. And the last thing she’d ever wanted was to put herself at the mercy of a man. She loved men, as all her friends and colleagues knew. Loved flirting and kissing, and all the delicious things males had to offer. But she’d never been in love with anyone, never felt the sort of passion that people talked about so often.
Trix was independent, and had never needed a soul for anything, other than the odd romp on a well-worn mattress. But even as she and Lyre moved now, mere inches apart, she felt too far away from him.
They didn’t speak again until they reached the Hare and Hound pub. After Lyre had opened the door and guided her in, they moved to a corner table. Trix ordered two pints of lager, and then she found the courage to look at Lyre once again. “Is this all right?” she mouthed.
He nodded before typing a response. “You figured out pretty quickly that I can read your lips.”
“Yes,” she laughed. “I suppose I did. Though it makes me a little self-conscious to have you stare at me when I speak.”
“Oh? It shouldn’t. They’re lovely lips on a beautiful face. It would be a shame not to look at you,” his phone told her.
Another deep crimson blush concealed her freckles for a moment. The woman who’d been flinging weaponry at a Forsaken a few minutes earlier had turned into a schoolgirl, a melting, hopeless, appallingly turned-on schoolgirl.
“Thank you,” she mouthed, her eyes fixed on his. It was so nice—so amazing—to be sitting so close to him. To be able to take in his scent now, as it twisted around her, drawing her in; a savoury, raw, sensual lure. The beautiful aroma of a Dragon shifter unleas
hed.
Never had she wanted anything or anyone so much as she wanted him in that moment. She craved knowledge of him, to see more of his mind. To be let into his world, and maybe even eventually into his bed.
“That place—your favourite place,” she began, prying her mind away from the most carnal of her desires. “Um, it belongs to your family?”
He nodded, typing out another quick reply.
“We spent every summer there when Minach and I were growing up. We still own the property.”
“Where is it?”
“Near Dover, on the east coast. Ironically, I love it because of how quiet it is there. You wouldn’t think that would matter to a man who can’t hear, but…”
Trix smiled. She didn’t suppose he wanted to talk about his lack of hearing. “Tell me a story about that place—about when you were boys.”
Lyre’s fingers flew over the phone’s touch pad, a paragraph emerging in seconds before he handed it back. “It’s where I learned to fly. Minach and I both, when we were ten years old. Our parents brought us out for a holiday during the school year—we’d been many times before, but that week was special. My father took us to the cliff’s edge and told us it was time.”
“Did you know what he meant?”
“Yes. We’d seen him fly—been filled with admiration for him all our lives. But we didn’t know how it would happen for us. How it would feel. And so, he stepped off the edge of the cliff and his Dragon burst out, beautiful shades of blue, silver and gold. And just like that he was gliding into the distance. No instruction. Nothing.”
“So what did you do?” Trix was looking up at his face. Those large, blue eyes framed by dark lashes, defined brows, and strands of his black hair, outlining exquisite, masculine cheekbones. And those lips of his. So full and sensual, so biteable. She wished she could see them mouth her name. Beatrix. The B-sound alone would have been enough.
He typed again after he’d pulled his eyes away from her.
“We did what he’d done. We trusted in our own power. We held hands and stepped off the edge. I’ll admit that we screamed bloody murder when gravity started to take us down towards the rocky coast.”
“And then?”
“Just when I thought we were doomed, my Dragon came, and Minach’s a moment later. Exploded out of us. Just in time for our bellies to graze the froth on the water, and then we flew up, as though we’d been doing it forever. We spent almost the entire week in our Dragon forms, flapping about, playing in the waves, roaring in our pathetic little Dragon voices.”
“You could hear then?”
Lyre nodded before typing again. “Yes. I could hear it all.”
“Do you ever…do you miss it?”
He let out a heavy exhale as he wrote her a reply. “There are many beautiful things in this world. Sights, sounds, scents. But there are some god-awful sounds, too, and I don’t miss hearing those. I am grateful that I can see you, smell you, touch you. And I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to hear your lovely voice in my head when I was in my déor’s form. If I never hear another voice in my life, that’s enough for me.”
As she read the words, warmth poured over Trix, blanketing her in affection for the man sitting next to her. What a beautiful mind he had, what a beautiful attitude towards life. He was perfect in every way.
“So what happened? Why did you lose your hearing?”
As soon as she’d mouthed the words, Trix regretted them.
For the first time he looked away, his jaw tightening. Instinctively the Hunter extended a hand to touch his arm. Another shot of electricity darted through her fingers towards her chest as he looked back at her face.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up a difficult topic,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. It didn’t matter. All he needed was to see her lips.
He typed again. “I don’t want to talk about it just now. Is that all right?”
She nodded. Yes, of course it’s all right.
“I—my human side—tend to shut myself off from people. Call it a defense mechanism, if you like.”
Trix nodded again, the warmth that had settled inside her quickly replaced by misery. She’d pushed him away by being too inquisitive. Idiot.
But Lyre wrote a new note, which made her feel slightly better:
“As for my Dragon, he has an easy time opening up to you. He likes to talk when you’re about.”
“And you?” She leaned towards him, chancing another look into his eyes. “Do you have a hard time letting me in?”
He stared at her for a moment before pulling his eyes away, steering them back to his phone. Trix watched the words appear as he typed. “In human form it’s harder. I can’t quite speak directly to your mind. I can only do that with the Kindred. So instead, I type, which means I’m always thinking before I say anything. I could only talk to your mind if we were to”…
He stopped typing, and after a second he deleted the last partial sentence. But too late, she’d already read it. And she knew what he’d been about to write. If they bonded, he’d meant. If they were together, mated, as Neko and Lumen were. Then they would be able to enter one another’s minds easily. There would be no need to sign, or to mouth words.
“But,” he wrote, “That could never happen.” He held the phone up for her to see, knowing that she understood.
“Ah,” she mouthed. “Right then. Well, don’t I feel utterly rejected.”
Lyre frowned. “It’s not like that,” he typed. “Not at all.”
“Then what is it like?”
“Complicated. More than you can imagine.”
“Ah. So there’s someone else,” she said, knowing full well that there wasn’t. There couldn’t be. She’d seen the way he looked at her. She could feel what was happening between them. If there were someone else, he’d never be here with her. She knew it.
“No.” The word flashed on his screen. “There’s no one else, damn it. If there were anyone, it would be you, Beatrix. It would be you alone.”
Touch
For the briefest of moments, Lyre was allowing himself to enjoy this—this closeness to another being. To feel what it was to form a bond with a person—something he’d avoided for years, decades, of loneliness. Deep inside, his Dragon purred approval, telling him that this was right. She was here for him, a gift. A treasure of his own.
But looking into those extraordinary eyes of hers, smiling up at him as much as her lips did, Lyre felt the creeping hand of devastation moving towards his throat, ready to lock on. To choke the happiness out of him, and to remind him that he wasn’t allowed any of it.
He wasn’t allowed to have her.
She wanted him; that much was clear. It was written all over her face, her body language. Her scent, as well, told him that her body was ready to claim him, to take him for her own. The beautiful, heady lusciousness of the wondrous place between her legs betrayed any shyness that she might exhibit, and he would have been a liar to deny that he wanted to crawl under the table and to peel her tight jeans away, to have a taste of her.
But to do so would have been unfair to them both. Because he could never follow through. Could never give her all of him, only bits and pieces. Enough to tease and to titillate, but never enough to quench the thirst that each of them had developed for one another.
He was broken. And if she accepted him, she would break too.
Minach had always told him that he was a fool; that there was no risk in taking a mate. But even Lyre’s twin admitted that there was no way to be sure. And he simply couldn’t—wouldn’t—take the chance. Not with a woman as vital and gifted as Trix. The bond with a Dragon was meant to enhance his mate, not to destroy her from the inside out.
If there was a chance, though—if there was a chance that they could bond without risk—what a thing that would be. He would take her in an instant, so long as she nodded a yes. He would claim her, and it would be spectacular.
“What are you thinking about?” she
mouthed, those sweet, soft lips moving for him, reminding him with every passing second what he was denying himself.
“You,” he spoke with his hand, finger pointing towards her.
“Me?” Instinctively she gestured towards her chest with her thumb.
He nodded, then, slowly, he pointed a thumb at his chin, his fingers gesturing upwards before rolling over the front of his face.
“I don’t know what that means,” she said, smiling. Whether she did or not, he could see that she liked it.
He typed a word into his phone, and let the mechanical voice utter it.
Beautiful.
Trix took a sip of her beer, another blush heating her cheeks. How did he do it? How did he make her feel so weak-kneed?
“Thank you.”
Between them now, a stillness set in as each of them contemplated their next move. Lyre, torn between staying and leaving, between desire and responsibility.
But it was Trix who made the move, typing another note and holding it up for him to see. Her screen, rather than her lips, communicating for her. Perhaps it was a fear of being misunderstood that drove her.
And when he saw the message, there was no lack of clarity.
“Lyre, come home with me.”
He read her note, the shallowest of smiles forming on his lips, his eyes moving back to hers. He began to type a response. But instead of finishing it, he slipped the phone into his pocket and slid closer to her.
A hand came up to her face, cupping her cheek, and oh so slowly, fingers trailed along her skin, downwards along her neck. Lifting away the mane of red hair that covered her white flesh, he stroked fingertips down, touching her so softly that she wondered if she was only imagining it. But a moment later she knew it was real. He leaned in, his mouth grazing the same spot, this time with a less gentle touch. Hunger, want, need transferred from that gorgeous man into her skin, sending tremors through her entire body.
Trix wanted to cry out with the erotic pleasure of it—those soft, tender lips meeting her skin were almost enough to bring about an orgasm. Never once in all her sleep-deprived fantasies had it occurred to her that his mouth would find its way to any part of her, or that any man’s touch could feel so fucking good.
Dragon Seeker: Part One (Dragon Hunter Chronicles Book 5) Page 5