Vampire Dragon

by Annette Blair

“Come anytime you want,” she said. “In between, I’ll make its acquaintance.”

  “Get to know each other. I will just close my eyes for a bit.”

  “I admit that I let your presence rush me the first time, so now I am ready to explore. Because I noticed that this tricky thing has what might be called scales beneath the skin. As I slide my hand along your length, the hidden scales appear to move in the direction my hand does. The scales stand for a minute beneath your skin, then flip to the opposite side. That must feel amazing from the inside—when you’re the overcoat.”

  He opened his eyes, his contentment unbound. “You are confused, my masked lady. You would be the overcoat,” he said, his breath coming in short gasps as she intentionally manhandled him. “I would be in”—he caught his breath—“inside you.”

  “There, I would be wet, Darkwyn, and warm, and pulsing. I would pull you deep, and deeper, kneading your finest asset, its scales, its arrowed tip, your ability to—is this prehensile? This sucker has a mind of its own!”

  “This is bad,” he said, once again on the edge of completion. “I can barely hold back while you talk like that, while you—with both word and action—toy with me.”

  “You can come again so soon?”

  “Since I began to practice, while thinking of you, I have noticed no time gap in my ability for pleasure.”

  Bronte’s eyes twinkled with delighted mischief. “I am so keeping you.”

  FIFTEEN

  “You are keeping me?” he asked, his delight rising and infecting her. “Keeping me happy is what you mean, right? Or,” he added, looking disappointed, “keeping me for the sake of employment?”

  “Guess again,” she said, enjoying her seductive torture.

  “I prefer to hope that you would keep me as your plaything. Please say yes.”

  She laughed. Laughed! And amazed herself for the first time in longer than since the last time she had sex.

  As if by mutual agreement, they settled into her bed facing each other, their lips meeting, their no-touching rule dissolved the minute she stroked his chest.

  His tongue mated with hers in such a way as to make her think him experienced. At nearly the same height, even their feet stroked each other. And she’d thought she was too tall.

  His arousal created action, traction, and a reaction of its own, as his sex appeared to knock at her warm, willing center. He craved entry so well, she answered by moving her hips his way, and together they mixed one hell of a chemical cocktail.

  He attempted to memorize her shape with his hands, but they were experts at finding certain spots—unknown to her—that drew pleasure with a skim or a stir of warm air. His mouth couldn’t possibly be in the same place as his hands, and yet, warm breezes, everywhere, raised her nipples and warmed her top to toe as he removed each slip of fabric between them.

  She caught his hand. “Not the mask, remember?”

  “I forgot. It is beyond cruel to see every place but your face. It is cold and human.”

  “Are you not human?” she asked.

  “I am now.”

  “Shelve that for further observation,” she said, thinking she should worry but she couldn’t, not when there was such rich pleasure to be found.

  So human of her. She didn’t take offense. Humans could be cruel, especially when planned. “Forget my face and feast on the rest.” She understood his need to see her, because she loved looking at his face, but not to be a cliché, her mask was a matter of life and death.

  “Take me, Darkwyn. Hard and fast, and hard, again. Forgive me for the mask and accept me as I am? You practically promised.”

  “As you are. The one need I held for centuries was to be accepted as I was, and now I am me, instead. This we can do for each other. It is sensual in its own way being accepted by one person more than any other. I accept. Yes, as you are, mask and all.” He kissed the mask, while her overflowing heart prevented her from responding with anything but a wholehearted surrender to tactile pleasure.

  She learned his body like there’d be a quiz, and she loved the process, long, tight, sinewy, muscular back and chest, thighs and arms.

  A phoenix rising from the ashes. His tat spoke of her sex life, the two of them rising to blessed, orgasmic oblivion.

  He learned her body the way she learned his, pooling moisture at her center as he closed his lips over a nipple, raising her to ecstasy by using her slick fluids to ease his way.

  His groan became a growl, almost feral, both of them wild with excitement. He came before he entered her, a nod to what they did for each other, and she came again just watching his stream. At this rate they’d never consummate.

  After that, his third or fourth preview of bliss, he crushed her to him, a habit she already liked. This time, though, he opened his mouth over hers, eating her up with his embrace, his lips hungry and getting hungrier.

  Devoured—she was being devoured by her man.

  Before she knew it, he had memorized her center, his concentration more on her pleasure than his.

  “You are my first on this plane,” he said against her lips. “I will make this good.”

  She ignored the tiny inner voice that said she wanted to be his first and last. “This has been good many times, already,” she admitted. “But I’m up for more. Ah, and so are you.”

  “This will be as nothing before, since my dragon tail knows a few special tricks.”

  Like splitting me in half, she thought, a bit fearful of his size. “Yes,” she said, anticipating him working inside her. Silky soft on the outside, those small movable disks beneath the silk skin of his penis sliding up and back, back and down, abrading her G-spot, stroking her everywhere, to her deepest recesses—deeper than any man had gone before—like the finest five-battery vibrator bunny, all its twirly whirlies and bunny ears running on high.

  Her imagination, as it turned out, paled in comparison to the experience, because when he rose above her and barely slipped inside, she soared to the edge of culmination, again.

  “Now we will do that ‘hide the mattress’ mumbo jumbo you were talking about.”

  She laughed at his mixed metaphor, but not for long, his determination to bring her lethal pleasure nearly her undoing. He found her clit, without using his hands. Huh? Aah, prehensile bullet with a brain. That’s what he meant by tricks.

  Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, universe!

  No, no thinking. Too good to waste, she thought. Ride me, ride me higher.

  Bronte clung to Darkwyn as he worked his magick, like he was playing a fiddle and dancing to it at the same time. She’d found herself one of those rare male multitaskers.

  Each time she came, she fell farther and rose higher, and he growled louder, the muscles in his back and arms became taut, rigid, and . . . lumpy along his spine? No time to figure that out. Her whole body stretched, and rose in every way possible.

  She’d never had a climax as lethal as death, but she did now, ending up so weak, she could barely keep her legs around him, but he raised himself and her, too, and though she practically stood on her head, nothing, but nothing, had ever brought her to this plane of pleasured existence.

  He did split her in half, splintered her to shards, and she’d never be whole again, but who the bloody frickin’ heck cared? She could die fulfilled.

  He raised her off the bed with each multiple multiple, took her outside herself. Crazy out of her mind with ecstasy.

  Wrung out from it, she rotated her hips and pulled him to a place so deep, she didn’t know it existed.

  They climaxed together, muffling their orgasmic shouts with kisses and hands and lips everywhere, and as she fell over the precipice to perfect bliss, the room glowed, literally, with a streak of light that sizzled to nothingness.

  SIXTEEN

  Lightning. Killian. “We have to get you to a hospital,” Darkwyn said, scared out of his mind for Bronte’s safety.

  He barely got his jeans up and a blanket over Bronte before Zachary ran
in. “Bronte?” He shook her with no luck.

  “She’s unconscious,” Darkwyn said, wanting to heal her, but afraid of revealing his ability to the boy.

  “No hospital,” Zachary said.

  “He’s right,” Bronte echoed, groaning as she raised a hand to the gash on her temple. “No hospital.”

  “Bronte, did you get hit by lightning, too?” Zachary asked.

  “Did you?” Darkwyn asked the boy, slipping his shirt over his head, confused, because Zachary looked fine. “Who else got hit?”

  “Ogden got struck on his balcony,” Zachary said. “I called 911. But on my way to tell Bronte, I heard the crash in here.”

  “As long as help is coming,” Darkwyn said, “let’s have the medics look you over, too, Bronte.”

  “Listen,” Zachary said. “As long as you work for us, neither of us goes to a hospital or gets examined by a medic. Ever. Under any condition. Got that?”

  Bronte rolled to her back and pulled a pillow beneath her head, blood dripping from the gash on her temple. “Zachary’s right, Darkwyn.”

  “That makes no sense. Why not?”

  Zachary huffed. “Dental records, X-rays. You name it.”

  Scorch jumped to the window from the balcony and curled up on the sill, her black tail wagging, as if the kitten was happy or proud of herself, or . . . her work was done. Darkwyn didn’t like that notion. He might say Scorch gave him a Cheshire cat grin.

  Meanwhile, Lila, the lilac point kitten, jumped on the bed, raised a paw that glowed brighter than she did, and held it so her light touched Bronte’s wound.

  Zachary tried to shoo her away but Lila hissed and snapped at the boy. Weird, when Scorch usually hissed and Lila did not. Meanwhile, Darkwyn was glad Zachary couldn’t see how Lila’s paw glowed.

  “I hear sirens,” Darkwyn said. “They must be for Ogden.”

  “Zachary,” Bronte said, petting the sweet ministering kitten. “Let them in downstairs and show them to Ogden’s apartment. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “I’ll take care of her,” Darkwyn told the boy.

  Zachary gave him a hostile look. “Yeah, right.” Zachary turned and left.

  “Lightning with a forked bolt,” Darkwyn said, sitting beside Bronte to look at her cut. One of Killian’s finest, he thought. “Two for the price of one. Half came through our open window, hit that shelf above your head, and gave you that gash when it and everything on it rained down on us.”

  He moved Lila aside, surprised to note that Bronte’s wound looked better—smaller? Because of the cat? Nobody healed better than him, except maybe Andra. He cupped the cut on Bronte’s temple. “Relax and let me help. I will never hurt you.”

  “Ouch. Every man I know has uttered those words, and every one broke his promise.”

  “I am so far removed from ‘every man’ as to be laughable,” Darkwyn said, “and I am not talking about my super cock, here. Not that I think I am better, but I am different. You will see.”

  “Sure I will, but, oh, I feel better already. You’re taking away my headache. How do you do that? Did you get hit? You were on top of me.”

  Sated like never before, Darkwyn very nearly glowed, himself, from the inside out. “Pardon me for acting cocky when you’re in pain. But sex with a human is not underrated.”

  “I hate to think of the alternatives.”

  “Deprivation is the alternative. Now shut your wild imagination, she who plays with vampires, and heal.”

  “Sex is not what we experienced,” she said. “Nirvana is, and I have a terrible feeling we can only get it with each other. I’m psychic that way.”

  “Sex only with each other is bad?” he asked. “Speaking for myself, my tired man part has never been happier.” Sure, it was dormant on the island for centuries, if you didn’t count spontaneous combustion, but payback was orgasmic. Speaking of which, he should not be turned on just because the blanket over Bronte’s breasts slipped.

  Change of mind-set. “What’s with not going to the hospital?” he asked, finding a subject to take his mind from sex. As if he could forget.

  She sat up, taking the blanket with her.

  Well damn. He gave her a “what’s this?” look and a wave of the hand, after all they’d seen and done together.

  “I have to dress and meet the paramedics,” she said.

  “Do you need help?” he hoped.

  “Stand with Zachary to deal with the medics?” she asked, no longer in the sex zone. The weather, or Killian, had intruded.

  He looked out the window. “The ambulance is here. See you at Ogden’s.”

  “Across the hall, back-facing apartment,” she said. “Thank you.”

  Darkwyn closed her bedroom door behind him, aware that he’d found home in her. His heart mate, indeed. Now to make her life quest his, whatever that might be. Her secrets included knowing why neither she nor Zachary would go to a hospital. What did “X-rays” and “dental records” mean? And who was Sanguedolce?

  Darkwyn met the boy and the paramedics on the landing.

  They treated Ogden on his sofa, barely conscious, but coming around. They “got his vitals” and said he would be okay, as Bronte arrived, a fresh Vampiress, all campy vampy in a red mask and corset over a short black and white striped skirt and slick, bloodred boots.

  Zachary gave the spot where her gash should be a double take, then checked the other side of her temple. “Great makeup,” the boy said.

  Dragon’s blood, he’d healed Bronte without thought to what anyone else would think, though he’d confessed his magick to her, but, of course, Zachary would be surprised. The boy knew nothing about him.

  Not that Zachary and Bronte didn’t have a few secrets of their own to impart. Their aura of mystery was obvious.

  Her mask, her shiny red boots, the way she dressed to attract attention—Always in hiding, yet always on display. Who are you, Bronte McBride?

  SEVENTEEN

  “What the Puck?” His missing bird landed on the round red and blue light of what Darkwyn now knew to be an ambulance. As the medics slid Ogden, flat on a wheeled plank, inside, legs and wheels disappeared, and the bird squawked, “Murder. Murder!”

  Weird world.

  “Misfortune,” Puck said. “The kind of fortune that never misses.”

  Misfortune, also known as Killian, Darkwyn thought.

  Puck flew over and landed on his shoulder, bird-blessing a paramedic on the way.

  Darkwyn growled low and lowered the cock to his shoulder. “Naughty bird!”

  “Cursers!” Puck clicked his beak. “I didn’t poop on the girl.”

  Darkwyn apologized to the paramedic and watched the ambulance leave. “What did I tell you?”

  “What? Don’t poop on anybody? That’s part of a bird’s alien rights.”

  “ ‘Inalienable,’ ” Bronte said, her lips quirked up on one side, a sight Darkwyn would like to see more often.

  “I’m beginning to understand that bartender snapping his towel,” Darkwyn said. Yet he liked the honest, funloving, no-words-barred, bird.

  “Ride in a coffin, drink some blood. That means you’re dead, peckerhead.” Squawk. “Run for your life. Die in your bed.”

  “Change your tune or you’re a quick-roast. We served bigger birds than you as appetizers where I come from.”

  “You know you like me.” Puck ran his beak through Darkwyn’s hair, a sign of affection. “Darkwyn’s got a giirl. Kiss, kiss, kiss.”

  “Shut it, bird.”

  “Miss,” Puck squawked. “A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market.”

  Bronte crossed her arms. “I am not looking for a husband.”

  “He’s got what you want. You’re what he wants. Sounds like a deal to me.”

  Bronte bristled. “Darkwyn, can’t you teach this bird manners?”

  “I’m trying. No sunflower seeds until you apologize. I’m sending for your cage.”

  “Scumduggers and what
thepucks, you can’t cage an American bird.”

  Zachary rubbed his chin as if he knew what a beard felt like. “Shouldn’t Ogden have somebody with him at the hospital?”

  Bronte nodded. “I’m calling his brother, at Ogden’s request.” She slipped her cell phone from her pocket and made the call.

  Darkwyn turned to go inside. Zachary caught up with him. “What happened to Bronte’s temple?”

  “You saw the scorch mark on the wall and the shelf hanging by a hinge. I believe the precise weapon was a bronzed cat bookend.”

  “It was deep, bloody, and purple around the edges when I left the room.”

  “Correct.” Darkwyn now understood the query.

  Zachary got in front of him and walked backward so he could see Darkwyn’s face. “You know she’s healed?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “Dental records, X-rays, that kind of thing.”

  “I don’t understand,” Zachary said, smacking the heels of his shoes against the porch steps, so he tripped and landed sitting.

  “Neither did I, but since that worked as an excuse for you and your aunt, regarding hospitals and doctors, I’m using it, too. My way, she doesn’t need to go to a hospital.”

  The boy narrowed his eyes, as if behind them hid a brain overflowing with wisdom. “A smart guy, hey?” the boy said, speaking like one of Vivica’s old black-and-white movies.

  Bronte caught up near the living quarters and checked her watch. “The Salem Trolley will bring the first tourists in a few hours. Between our shared nightmare, the lightning, and losing Ogden, if only temporarily, I need a Master Vampire and fast.”

  Darkwyn cupped the back of his head. “Tell me again what a Master Vampire does.”

  “He’s my bodyguard, hosts Drak’s, and keeps the peace, so he’s also sometimes a bouncer.”

  Darkwyn hoped “bouncer” had to do with mattresses and nakedness. “Define ‘bouncer.’ ”

  Zachary chuckled. “A bouncer picks up troublemakers by the seats of their pants and throws them out so they bounce on the sidewalk.”