by Cecilia Lane
The line was so quiet that he thought Mariko had hung up on him. Andon waited. She likely had silenced the call and conferred with her underboss.
The Yakuza were hesitant to strike any deals. They were more organized than the Shadow Mob and seemed to strike with one goal in mind, never the fractured goals of individuals. But if Andon could give them what they wanted—territory—then they would be willing to give him what he needed—mercenaries and a Lost Prince—as payment.
“We will meet and discuss the details. It just so happens I have a prior engagement in your area. I should be free after sunset.”
Andon paused. It was suspicious she was already in the city. Perhaps she was just setting her people to watch the cage fights. She would want to be prepared for anything with the brewing conflict with Gilchrist’s family. “I would add one more request. I want Gilchrist to return to Patomas with me. Alive.”
Mariko didn’t hesitate. “He’s of no concern to me as long as he makes a home elsewhere.”
A timid knock on the door alerted Andon to the arrival of his next meeting. He opened it with a wicked smile. He would have Gilchrist in hand soon enough.
“Hello, Lenore.”
10
“Reservations?” Annika asked. She tugged at Eoghan’s jacket. “We aren't dressed for somewhere requiring reservations. This is not the sort of jacket they mean when they ask for suit and tie.”
“Not somewhere, something.”
He seemed distracted and she let him lapse into silence. Annika wondered how much of it had to do with Andon’s appearance. They were not friends by any stretch of the definition. Andon irritated Eoghan as soon as he stepped into the warehouse. It was probably good they had Eoghan’s mysterious reservations, or Andon might have left with some bodily damage.
Annika tried pressing again on his plans as they crossed the river and made their way to the Inner Harbor. He parked near some docks. “Why don’t we simply fly wherever we’re going? You have wings.”
He growled and his eyes glowed. A thin line of smoke trailed from his nostrils. “I am not a pack mule.”
“So, there are things to carry.”
He hurried around and opened the door for her. “There are things tae carry. Just wait and see.”
Eoghan led her down the dock and toward a seaplane at the end. Skyline Tours was emblazoned on the side. The plane dipped and shifted when the pilot stepped out and greeted them.
“A sky tour?”
“And a packed dinner and drinks on Pleasure Island,” he said, deadpan.
She snorted. “Seriously? It can’t possibly be named that.”
The pilot nodded. “It absolutely is. Now, watch your step and we can get your tour started.”
Eoghan helped her into the plane and slid in next to her. He snuck a kiss on the top of her head before strapping himself in. “Maybe seeing the city from up high will help ya remember things.”
Settled, the engine roared to life and they lifted into the air. She pressed her face to the glass and looked down at the skyline. The setting sun shadowed the buildings in a lovely silhouette. Neighborhoods stretched away from the river and ports and train yards and surrounded the skyscrapers of downtown. It was peaceful to imagine all the people carrying on with their lives below.
“It’s no Edinburgh, but it’ll do.”
She turned to Eoghan. “How long has it been since you’ve been here?”
“Ten years, give or take.”
The weight of those years edged his voice. For the first time, Annika wondered if she had a stroke of luck in forgetting her past.
His dour mood lifted by the time the plane plopped into the bay and pulled to a stop at a tiny dock on a tiny spit of land. Eoghan grinned wolfishly at her and tugged off his boots. “Shoes off,” he ordered. “You don’t want tae get sand in them, do ya?”
Done, he opened the door and helped her step out of the plane and onto the shaking dock. He reached inside and pulled out a basket.
“Come along, Ann. Let’s have dinner.”
Shady trees and shorter scrub were a short distance from the beach itself. The sand was soft between her toes. Waves crashed lightly on the shore. He led her around the island, out of sight of the plane and dock.
Eoghan made quick work of setting the scene. A checkered blanket went down over the sand. Towels followed and were piled at one edge. He waved her to sit and pulled out a bottle of white wine and a covered tin filled with ice and oysters.
Annika had trouble hiding her smile. It was positively...domestic.
“Plying me with aphrodisiacs? When did you plan this?” He had barely left her side since she made it to Baltimore.
“Doubt I’ll need the help.” His nostrils flared and a slow smile spread across his face. “No, I don’t think so at all. How’s yer head?”
Memories, he was asking. It had been a pretty trip but nothing new came to her. “Did we fly this way before?”
“When ya had yer wings. Went for a swim somewhere out that way.” He gestured with the bottle of wine then went back to filling their glasses. He made a face at the first sip. “There was a time when I wasn’t so particular.”
“In Edinburgh?” She swirled her glass as he made quick work shucking the oysters.
“Ay. We had nothing. My da and ma had five mouths tae feed. Da did side jobs with a family there. They took me on after I did my time.”
“From the mean streets of Edinburgh to chartering seaplanes for oyster dinners on an island. What an interesting life you’ve led, Eoghan Gilchrist.”
He used the excuse of passing her an oyster to sneak another kiss on her neck. His breath tickled her skin and her body warmed with the nearness of him. “Just ya wait, Annika Leeds.”
“I had another dream last night.” The subjects had changed since she came off all her prescriptions. Where she used to have dreams of being a dragon, now they were filling in details outside of a life in the air.
“Oh?”
The question was innocent but his sudden attention wasn’t. Even as he looked out over the water between shucking oysters, she could feel his focus.
“I was fighting. I think. Or maybe just practicing? The floor was soft under my feet.”
“Well, ya had tae learn it somewhere. Can ya remember anything else?”
She chewed on her cheeks. He had all the answers to their time together. He didn’t reveal much, claiming to follow her own rules of starting over. But even he was surprised at how she managed to fight off Mariko and her goon.
It still shocked her. The movements that came to her felt natural. Her body simply knew what to do to survive. It wasn’t the first time she did something or moved a certain way or cooked a new recipe that her body remembered what her mind couldn’t. It’d been a strange year.
“It was in an open courtyard. Big stone walls rose up all around. The second floor even had a balcony to watch the fighting.”
“Maybe it was a sister?”
She eyed him and pursed her lips. He kept asking about her sisters and she kept telling him she only had brothers. She first thought she wasn’t the only one who got dosed with some memory drug. “I don’t have sisters. At least, not that I remember.”
Eoghan grunted and was quiet for a moment. “Maybe it’s nothing. Ya dragons learn tae punch each other before ya learn tae read.”
“You dragons? Awful big statement for someone who turns into a fire-breathing worm himself.”
“I was raised by wolves. We’re a civilized lot.” He swayed into her. “Here, eat up.”
Raised by wolves and civilized definitely didn’t pair together. He was rough around the edges. The hard abrasions she brushed against now and again just reminded her of how alive they were.
“The girls at the shelter used to gossip about me. I wasn’t like them. They knew where they came from and why they were there. But me? No one knew about me. So, they made up stories. Maybe they were right and maybe I used to hurt people—”
“Don’t
think like that. Ya wouldn’t hurt anybody.”
“I did, though. I broke that man’s arm and I stabbed Mariko,” Annika said quietly.
“That’s different. That’s kill or be killed.”
The silence hung heavy between them but he didn’t push. The only sound was the crash of the waves and the shifting of ice as they picked up the oyster shells and swallowed down the bites. Like the teasing of her body, he seemed to know exactly when to push her to talk. It was utterly maddening that he could trick her into saying more when she didn’t know she had the words on her tongue.
“Can I see your dragon?” she asked hesitantly.
His lips raised in a smile. “Ya want tae see my... dragon, do ya?”
She pushed at his shoulder. He barely even swayed, to her annoyance. “You know what I mean.”
“See it for yerself. Ya got one inside ya.”
“I can't.”
“Ya can’t find yer connection tae the Wyrd?”
She shook her head. “I know what that means like I know the definition in a dictionary. But I don't know how that feels.”
“It's like... there's this well in yer center. Filled with something that's ya and more than ya. Something universal. And ya can reach in, draw it into ya and become more. Try it. Close your eyes and try tae find it.”
She did as he said. With her eyes closed, the sounds around her grew louder. She could pick out individual birds singing in the scrub behind them. Waves crashed along the shore. Each breath from Eoghan made her painfully aware of how her body responded to him.
But there was nothing more than the feeling of a glimmer at the edge of herself.
She opened her eyes and wrapped her arms around her knees. “Nothing.”
He ran a hand down her spine. “It'll come. In the meantime...”
He sprang to his feet and hauled his shirt over his head.
She'd seen him shirtless before. He used every excuse to strip down and tempt her. And each time, she had a difficult time tearing her eyes away from the perfection of his frame. He wasn’t bulky but he was no lithe string, either. His lovely golden-brown skin, not entirely different from her own, dipped and curved with strong muscles underneath.
There was something wilder about it then, surrounded as they were by the sound of waves and birds and nothing else.
He tugged his jeans down and she saw he wore nothing underneath.
Her mouth dried and her hands itched to run over the thick, smooth muscles of his arms, his stomach, his thighs. Her cheeks flushed when she focused on his cock. He was long and hard.
His nostrils flared and he smirked. She knew he scented her arousal. “Like what ya see?”
More blood rushed to her cheeks and she bit her lower lip. She nodded.
“All ya had tae do was ask if ya wanted that sort of show.”
The hair on her arms rose with something swirling in the air. It was familiar and foreign all at once. What stole her breath was Eoghan’s shift from two-legged human to a huge dragon.
She rose to her feet and circled him slowly. He watched her with shining eyes. His scales were a rich mahogany along the top of his head and back and down his tail. His inner legs and belly faded to a light gold.
He was beautiful.
Hot breath blew in her face and ruffled her hair. She reached forward, trailing her fingers up the bronze scales on his snout. He turned his head into her touch and rumbled when she ran her fingers over the ridge above his eye.
Then, with a shake of his massive body and another hair-raising moment, Eoghan stood before her in all his magnetic human glory. He closed his eyes and inhaled, and when he looked at her again, the color had darkened into the deep shade she knew meant lust.
He took a single step closer and her core clenched. Her breath was ragged in her lungs.
“Easy. I won't do anything ya don't want. I only want tae love ya.” He bent and tugged a towel around his waist. “Let me love ya, Ann.”
A nod was all he needed. He didn’t need to seduce her when he had her permission to touch her. His lips lowered to hers even as his hands found the hem of her tank top. His fingers skimmed across her stomach and up her sides while his mouth stole the last objections she might muster.
He made quick work of pulling her shirt away, breaking their kiss only to drop it to the blanket and ease her down along with it. Their dinner forgotten and shoved aside, he kissed a path down the column of her neck and over the curve of her breasts. Down and down he went, until his lips dotted her navel and his fingers undid the button on her jeans. He didn’t stop planting hot kisses on her skin even when he tugged and rolled her jeans over her hips and down her legs.
He sank between her thighs and took one last look at her face before dipping to taste her. She swallowed hard at the heated blue of his eyes. He knew exactly how he thrilled her.
She didn’t have the mind to consider anything else then. He leaned forward and snaked his tongue to touch the top of her pussy. He teased and tasted a slow line down her slit, then turned and traveled back up with more demanding and pressing licks.
“So fooking good, Ann.”
His voice deepened into a near growl, a guttural and masculine sound. She licked her lips and watched him. Nothing could steal her attention away at that moment.
He swiped the flat of his tongue against her aching clit and a ball of pleasure built in her core. When he wasn’t teasing moans from her lips, he nibbled and licked and tasted her with expert strokes.
Part of her didn’t believe it was real. He was too good to her, too patient. Too demanding that he gave her pleasure. She wanted to cry, having missed so many chances to be with him in their time apart.
She reached forward and brushed her fingers through his hair. He was all real and entirely focused on her.
Annika swallowed hard and her head fell back. Her entire body contracted and twitched when he pressed thick fingers into her pussy. Fingers that knew what she liked quickly found the spot that would send her reeling.
He pressed inside her with his fingers and his mouth sucked on her clit. The twin touches built on the bliss growing in her.
Her release gathered in her like a storm ready to burst. The gentle breeze of pleasure whipped into an onslaught of bliss. Then, lightning struck and her heat spasmed around his fingers.
Eoghan’s eyes darkened further. He pulled his fingers from her channel and licked them clean, locking his eyes with hers and groaning with obvious delight.
She reached for him and tried to pull him closer. But he wouldn’t budge.
“Not until ya remember. That’s what ya wanted and that’s what yer going tae get.” His pained look turned to mischief. “I want ya desperate for me.”
Annika groaned and pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. She was already desperate for him, even if she knew he was right to deny her.
Chuckling darkly, Eoghan stood and dressed, and she followed his example a moment later. He joined her when she stretched back out on the blanket. His body radiated warmth and simmered the desire still heating her body. His fingers trailed over her skin and raised goose bumps as he went. She rolled to face him.
The dark blue hadn’t faded. The hard line of his cock pressed between them. Her nipples tightened in her tank top. She pressed her forehead to his and slowly licked her lips.
Eoghan sucked in a breath. He brushed his lips against the curve of her breast. His fingers dug into her waist and he rocked his hips into her. His control was just a frayed thread away from snapping entirely.
He tensed at something unheard, then the roar of a motor reached her ears seconds after. A speedboat buzzed the beach, turned, then slowed. There was a crack in the distance and a tree near their heads splintered into shards of bark.
“Run!” Eoghan urged her to her feet and into the trees behind them.
Her heart thumped as more cracks peppered the air with bullets. She expected Eoghan to follow her to cover but he wasn’t behind her when she turned to look f
or him.
Her dragon roared a challenge at the boat and streaked into the air.
The driver tried to send the boat flying across the water but Eoghan was too quick and too furious at the attempt on their lives. Bullets directed toward the beach were aimed for his underbelly and wings.
Eoghan plucked the screaming driver from the boat and the other two shooters scrambled out of the path of menacing claws. Eoghan again lifted high into the air, the man struggling to free himself. The body dropped toward the water a moment later and Eoghan streamed down after it.
Flames shot out of his mouth and consumed the motionless boat. The others inside tried to jump to safety but it was too late. They angered a dragon and they would pay with their lives.
Annika watched with her hands over her mouth as Eoghan dragged the swimming men from the water and left their charred remains behind.
He landed on the beach and was entirely human when he reached her and grabbed her by the shoulders. His eyes flashed with his anger but she knew it wasn’t directed at her. “Did they hit you? Are you injured?”
She shook her head. “No. They were too focused on you after the first few shots.”
He crushed her to his chest. It was the second time he killed to protect her. Some of his anger rubbed off on her and she wanted to rage at the ones who would interrupt a peaceful evening. All over what? Territory and business?
“We need to get out of here.”
“What about the plane?”
“Leave it. The company was the only one who knew where we’d be.” His eyes glowed with the welling powyr inside him. “You get your wish, Ann. Climb on and we’ll fly home.”
The shift rippled through him again. He shook his wings out as his form settled.
Annika hauled herself up his back and settled along his neck. He waited only long enough for her climb up before leaping into the air and flying toward the buildings scraping against the last bit of sun.
“What the hell was that about?” She demanded as soon as they landed. Her cheeks still felt cold from the rush of the wind.
He opened the door and pulled on the pants he kept in a shelf tucked into the corner. “Mariko. Looks like we just bought ourselves a tour company. They will pay for selling me out.”