As she spoke, he imagined her face merging with his Kira’s, the woman who had taken his heart as a casualty of the war between himself and Mace. They were there on his bed, her shoulder bared, Mace’s mark on her flesh. Damon had stumbled backward, the betrayal a physical blow. Rage had overtaken him as the dragon leapt from its reins to lash out at her. Its intention, he had known, was to kill her but Mace had interfered. She had died that day, whether in reality or only in his mind, he wasn’t sure, and had never been seen again.
But now, he needed the gods’ help to remove her image from this woman’s face. If this Kira had known him she could have revealed his true face, ruined his chances of returning home. Yet she seemed intrigued by him and completely unaware of who he was—and what he was.
Yet, she had the amulet and the spell of protection that went with it.
His ancestors had been unable to control their demons, unable to squelch the dragons inside themselves, until the amulet had been forged from stones deep within the bowels of the planet. It gave power to those who possessed it. It had been given to him by his father as a means of control until Mace ripped the amulet from his neck and tossed it into the vortex.
Now, the woman’s fingers closed over the necklace as she turned to the side, the room filling with applause as she moved to the side of the stage… Behind her, on a large projection screen, an image came to life. It was then that his heart literally stopped beating.
Whispers and excited awe filled the room as those standing near him turned to gaze at the man whose face looked down upon the crowd. He could read the writing scrawled across the picture. Dragon’s Law: The Quest. The dragon hummed in his ear as his heartbeat began a wild rhythm. How had the woman known his face? How could she see into his soul, announce him to the world for what he was?
Mace was a master manipulator, but could he have commanded her performance? As her eyes locked with his, his lover’s face became clear once more, and the pain she had inflicted on him came rushing forth as the dragon threatened to take control. The blood rushed into his ears as he awaited the crowd’s response.
No one seemed surprised. She bit her bottom lip and sent him a helpless gaze as the roar of the crowd intensified and the applause heightened. The necklace pulsed around her neck, forcing her heartbeat into Damon’s system, causing their hearts to beat in time with one another, forcing him to look at her, not that he could tear his eyes away now if he wanted to do so.
Then she spoke again. Legends of men and dragons, a foreign planet where dragons ruled and men fought for dominance. The land could be his homeland, but the woman should know nothing about Tyr. Then the word spilled from her lips. A game. This was all a game, some elaborate device meant for entertainment. These humans took it as such, but he understood even further. She was toying with him, mocking his pain. Worse, she was mocking his need to reclaim his title. This was an elaborate game set into play by Mace. Only Mace did not realize how Damon intended to win.
Questions poured in from all sides, yet he was intent upon reaching the platform where she stood. Just as he approached, determined to take her into his arms and force the secrets from her, crush her against him until he could not feel anymore, a man stepped between him and the crowd that consumed her, pulling her beyond his sight.
The man’s jaw was set in clear determination as his lips pressed together. “Who are you and why are you following her?”
Damon looked down at the man, who was much taller than most of the men he had encountered on this planet. Still, he was no match for a man whose insides housed a beast. “Get out of my way,” he growled.
“No. I don’t know who you are, but she’s mine. Understand? Stay away from her.”
The declaration of property sent a jolt through him and his own possessive nature rose to the occasion. He would not allow a simple Earth man to claim the woman he intended to have as his own. “Move aside.” The man did not budge and Damon attempted to move around him in order to go after Kira.
“Wait one minute. I want to know who you are.” The man’s hand closed around Damon’s biceps with a grip he had not expected from such a man. His physical size did not match the strength of his grip or the fierce look of a predator that radiated from his eyes.
“No one touches me.” The snarl that escaped his lips, combined with his bared teeth, showed more of his nature than he would have liked. The dragon threatened to emerge as it sensed the challenge of another beast that had been pushed too far.
“Shit.” The man removed his hand and took a step backward as the word escaped his lips. It was a human curse Damon had heard numerous times in the past days. “How do you know Kira?” The challenge in his eyes waned as he now looked at Damon with outright curiosity.
“We just met.”
“I’m Leland. Excuse my overprotective instinct. Kira and I are…close.”
“You said she was your woman.”
“Perhaps I …exaggerated.”
The sudden change in the man’s demeanor had him more on alert than he had been when the man’s hand had touched his flesh. “I have no time for this.”
“Neither do I. That’s why I’m here. I need to warn Kira. She’s in danger.”
The dragon inside him whispered a warning, but it was one he was already well aware of. If there was a danger to Kira, he knew the source. “I sense no danger.” He practiced the words before uttering them to ensure his ability to speak them clearly. The only thing he felt since making the connection between Kira and this woman was an overwhelming sense of danger. And he was the cause.
“Well, I do. And I know that there is more to you than it appears. I know what lurks inside you, and I’m here to help.”
Damon stopped cold and stared at the man. How could he possibly know what lived beneath his skin? Kira. There was no doubt in his mind now that she and his lover were one and the same. Only his Kira would know his secrets and only she could have shared them with her lover, which this man clearly had been, even if he was no longer. “You know nothing of me.”
“I know there’s a change that overtakes you, one that you can’t control, one that lingers just beneath your skin, threatening your sanity.”
“And what makes you think you know this?”
“I pay attention. Let me introduce myself. I am Dr. Leland Tambourne. I study creatures that aren’t supposed to exist. For fifteen years, I have been tracking a creature that changes by the moon. And I think tonight I’ve found him.”
“Let us not talk here. There are too many around.” The man nodded his agreement before leading Damon through the crowd that was still blissfully unaware that the man moving among them had the ability to kill.
The moon of Earth was dim compared to those of his homeland. Yet, as they stepped out into the darkness, Damon felt a familiar tranquility washing over him, making him almost imagine that he were in his home, stepping out onto his veranda. If he closed his eyes he could imagine her still lying in his bed, fresh from their lovemaking, exhausted yet wanting more.
“She bears your mark,” the man said after they had retreated into the cover of night.
“Who? Kira?”
“Yes. You know her, then?”
“Knew her. Once.”
“She doesn’t remember her past. Nothing before six years ago. I found her after you left her for dead.”
“I did no such deed.” Yet deep inside, he knew that he may have left her for dead. Rage had blinded him and the dragon had been out of control. There was no way of knowing what he had done to the woman he had once loved. The one thing he knew for sure was that he had not sent her here.
“The bite mark on her shoulder. It is yours?”
He swallowed hard. No, it wasn’t his. It belonged to his brother. Mace had given her the balm that would make her more than human but less than a cursed dragon. Piercing her skin with his fangs had been enough to place his poison in her system, changing her forever. Taking her away from him. Whatever else had taken place between them d
id not matter. Mace had marked her as his, and Damon could not touch her. “I have not touched her.” The lie tasted bitter on his tongue as he denied their past and their love—just as she had.
“Then there are more out there? More like you and me?”
Damon turned his attention from the night sky to face the man who could not possibly be a dragon. Yet his strength was more than human. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m talking about werewolves. Man by day, wolf by night when the moon changes. Come on, man, level with me. Are you a werewolf?”
Wolf? The creature he had seen in the zoo, howling at the moon, raging quietly over its captivity? Damon had felt a connection to the animal and its position as a prisoner in a world where it didn’t belong.
“I am not a wolf. “
“But your mouth—when you snarled earlier, it showed the change. I saw your teeth, the perfect outline of what I have studied on Kira’s shoulder for six years. She is the key between the two of us, between us and whatever created us. Her body is changing and she is going to need our help.”
He heard the words but did not have the ability to comprehend them. Every second that passed seemed to bring a new revelation, yet they all ended with the same conclusion. His Kira was alive, and her betrayal continued to live inside him like a virus attaching itself to him.
“I can’t help you. I want nothing to do with her.”
“But you were following her. Stalking her. You looked at her like a predator looks at his prey. If you don’t want her, then what are you doing?”
He would not trust this man who claimed to be a wolf. He had not been on Earth long, but he had never encountered another creature on any of the worlds he had visited who was cursed to change by the moon as he was. Until now. The connection did not require trust or understanding. It only required warning to stay out of one another’s paths.
“I have no interest in her,” he repeated his vow, yet it felt empty.
“Then leave her to me. She is going to change soon, and she will need someone who understands.”
“How do you know this?”
“I have tracked her DNA for six years. I know the changes her body is undergoing. The change is slow with some, quick with others. The bite that was inflicted upon her was not deep enough to cause immediate changes. It took time.”
“Are you certain it was a wolf?”
“A wolf, or whatever you are. Which would be?”
“A man. Nothing more than a man.”
“I don’t buy that, but you can tell yourself that all you want. I know there’s more to you than that. I’ve studied creatures that don’t exist almost half my life. I know you are not human.”
The man’s questions ended when Damon’s refusal to answer became apparent. He had no desire to share his curse with Kira’s lover, and he had no idea if he could trust the man’s assertion that Kira did not remember him. Part of him wanted to walk away from this New Orleans and find his way home. But there was still the matter of the amulet, and the fact that he could not return home. Then there was Kira, the woman who he would not leave without.
His planet was in danger, though. His people were at the mercy of his brother and his enemies, who would have him declared a false leader without the protection of the amulet. Only Kardoth’s son, his firstborn, would be able to wear the amulet. Only his first son would be cursed as Damon was.
All the men on Tyr shared the curse, but Damon’s was part of the original line. The firstborn male son in the original line would need more than sex to quell the beast inside him. He would need the ancient stone of Tarnu, the one residing in the amulet around Kira’s lovely neck. Mace had known Damon’s weakness, had feared his challenge for the throne, and had taken the eclipse as an opportunity to rid himself of Damon’s presence.
But there were more problems that just those. Damon had no idea how to get home. The vortex that had opened that night had brought him here, to find Kira, to follow the amulet, but now that window was closed and there may not be another avenue of return. Everything inside him knew Kira held the key to his salvation. He just wasn’t sure if he wished to reopen the old wound. But he was inexplicably drawn to her. He needed her now just as he had needed her years before on his home planet. Then, even as he swore to protect her, he had been unable to resist her, unable to stop touching her.
He had spent the day watching people watch her, watching them play this game she had created and wander through the world she had drawn so perfectly, so beautifully. None of them knew this world actually existed somewhere in the stars they looked upon each night. None of them knew that the only reason he was here was because he and Kira were connected to one another.
Worse yet, none of them knew the secret beast lingering just beneath the surface, threatening at any moment to break free and mate with the first available female. If he did not mate soon, he would lose control in a way that he could never explain. It was only with those of Kardoth’s line, the firstborn sons descended from Rylan, the original dragon of Tyr.
The dragon hissed in his ear, warning him that tonight he may not have a choice, and if he continued to grow weaker, if the fever continued to spread through his body, he may be forced to choose a mate and risk remaining on this planet forever, not that he had much choice in the matter right now.
But Kira… Her face loomed above him, calling out to him like his salvation. He knew she held more in her hands than just his charm, she held his future. Taking a mask from one of the display tables, he slid it over his face and made his way to the masquerade ballroom.
He would be gentle and suave. He would force the dragon to submit to him as he romanced the woman who called out to him in his dreams. But in the end, he would take her tonight. The sun could not set on him once more without mating. To do so would unleash the dragon. And to deny himself her sweet flesh once more was unthinkable.
* * * * *
Kira barely made it to her room before the fever overtook her. The heat was so intense it was difficult to breathe. She wanted to rip the blue dress from her body and step into the flow of a cold shower. In her momentary attempt to regain control, her hand brushed against the necklace that lay on her chest. The cool stone soothed her inner ache with a warning that the relief was only temporary. Soon she would have to find a man.
The bite on her shoulder throbbed a warning, too, and she felt as if someone else were living inside her head, urging her to go find the stranger she had met earlier. Everything inside her screamed that he held the answers to her past. And it wasn’t because he was so incredibly beautiful. It was because somewhere deep inside she knew he was the cause of this, even if nothing seemed to make sense anymore.
She felt as if she were a stranger inside her body, which was not entirely untrue. But she couldn’t go back downstairs, not with Leland lurking about, threatening to drive her back to that dark place she could not escape. Life as a lab project was not for her. No more needles, no more tests to see what was going to happen to her reproductive organs or her blood or anything else. All she wanted now, all she needed, was Damon, the one who looked so much like the man whose face had driven her to create an alternate world. The man who, she knew, had come to her in her dreams, and who was now here for her.
The masquerade. As she caught sight of her fairy wings hanging in the hotel closet, she remembered that the masquerade was starting downstairs. She had been so distracted, first by Damon and then by Leland, that she had forgotten the remainder of the night’s activities. The masquerade was the perfect place to become someone else and live out her fantasy. She changed clothes, determined to find some self-confidence in her costume.
Self-doubt crept up her back like a poisonous snake as Kira contemplated what she was about to do. Everything inside her wanted to invite Damon into her room, damn the consequences, and make him hers for the weekend. She deserved it, after all. But there was something so intense about his eyes, something that made her yearn for more than just a weekend with the
hunk. Deep down, she knew what it was but she wanted to deny that fate had anything to do with what was going on inside her head.
She knew him. Somehow she knew this man was part of her past.
Staring into the mirror, trying to get her headband on just right, she knew there was no use denying the truth. From the second she had seen him from across the room, she had known he was the man who had haunted her dreams for so long, the man who had inspired her Dragon’s Law games in the first place. But this was no game.
“Relax,” she encouraged the frightened reflection in the mirror. All she had wanted was a weekend fling, not a date with destiny or anything that may upset her newly ordered, boring life.
Her hands shook as she tried one last time to get the ring of flowers to stay put on top of her overly curly hair. Pinning it into place, she took in a deep breath. So what if he was the guy from her dream? It didn’t matter anyway. She wasn’t the first person in the world to have dreams about strangers and then meet them.
But she couldn’t pass this off as some weird cosmic accident. There was far more to her meeting of her dream man than just accidental destiny. And now her plans for a sexathon this weekend were going to be hindered by her good sense.
She would have thrown herself across the bed in defeat, but her fairy wings would have been crushed and three hundred dollars would have gone down the drain. They had survived the flight and she certainly wasn’t going to mess them up just because of the self-doubt that wouldn’t leave her alone.
Maybe he wouldn’t even be at the masquerade. Maybe he had disappeared and had gone somewhere else to pick on another fairy or pixie and leave her to herself. She knew this would never happen. He had known her, too. So he may not have said the words, she saw the recognition sweep across his face when the cover for her new game was revealed. He felt the connection and knew that there was more to his being here than coincidence. She’d be willing to bet her next royalty check on it.
Dragon's Law: Damon Page 5