The Dragon's Lover (Elemental Dragons Book 2)

by Emilia Hartley

  “I should take you back to the hotel,” Isaac said into the dreary storm around them. “You need to get out of the rain. This is the second time in a week that you’ve walked around in the middle of a storm.”

  “I’m not leaving Casper.” Her voice was harsh and brittle. She knew she was close to breaking, close to tears that would get lost in the rain.

  “I planned on coming back for him. This is my fault. I lost control. I didn’t think things through, didn’t check the radar.”

  Quinn shuddered to a halt. She turned her attention toward her mate. Not once had she considered his pain. In her mind, he was still standing on the outside of everything. She felt as though he had nothing to do with this, no stakes in their mission. Yet, when she met his eyes, she could feel the weight of the guilt he was carrying on his own.

  Her shoulders slumped. The chill inside of her crept deeper. Turning to face the road, she scanned the trees around them. There was no evidence of Casper to be found anywhere, not that she’d expected it. Behind them, the second GOE agent was probably calling for back-up.

  Quinn was going to have a talk with Casper if they found him. She was going to make him swear never to run from help again. She was going to make him swear to always find her.

  But, that wasn’t fair. She was only human. What good did it do him to run to her side when she could barely defend herself. The GOE agent had grabbed her with little trouble. Sure, she’d landed a good hit on him, but if she hadn’t been there, if she hadn’t been grabbed by the agent, then Isaac would have been able to protect Ruby before she was shot.

  A shudder passed through Quinn. It shook her from head to toe and her teeth began chattering. The chill had gripped her now and not even wrapping her arms around herself could fight against it.

  Isaac growled. He stepped off the road and set Ruby’s body gently on the wet ground. Quinn was about to ask what he thought he was doing when the shape of his dragon emerged where he’d been standing. The dragon’s nearly silver eyes stared her down with a challenge. Was she going to fight him? Was he going to have to wrangle her into leaving?

  Her heart sank. Casper was nowhere to be seen and the storm was, undoubtedly, going to get worse. It was only a matter of time. The world wanted to destroy everything she seemed to hold dear. Or, at least, everything she wanted to protect.

  Isaac picked up Ruby’s body and opened his claws for Quinn, watching her with a questioning expression. She spent a moment, watching his body begin to ripple with the colors of the world around him before stepping into his grasp.

  They pushed off from the ground and Isaac quickly escaped the offended storm system above them. The skies opened up to clear blue, but Quinn was already soaked through. The oppressive winds as they flew only made the chill in her bones worse. The wind pressed the cold fabric into her skin so that she couldn’t escape it.

  She tried to keep her gaze down and eyes peeled for Casper, tried to keep her mind off the chill that made her tremble. It was easy to say that it was the adrenaline wearing off that was making her quiver, but she was starting to get scared. She worried she really would get sick. Finding Casper would be nigh impossible.

  Yet, every time she blinked, the scene was there. Every time she breathed, the GOE agent’s arm was across her chest again and the gunshot rang in her ears. Ruby had hesitated. She’d wanted to help the little girl she’d once babysat. She’d wanted to help the poor human girl, but, it’d gotten her killed.

  Quinn saw the scene over and over again. Ruby cried out. The hole in her forehead appeared and blossomed red. If it hadn’t been for the rain, there would have been blood on Quinn’s face and neck. Her heart clenched at the thought of it. She’d promised Ruby they would be safe where they were.

  Under the open skies, Quinn found a reasonable open plot of land below. There were no houses or farms around them for miles, as far as she could see, so she tapped Isaac’s claws and pointed toward the ground. They couldn’t take Ruby back to the hotel room and Quinn wanted to give her friend a proper burial.

  They landed with a thump that shook the ground. Isaac cast a glance into the sky above them, as if he expected the storm to be hot on their heels. When he decided it wasn’t, Quinn pointed to a space on the ground and asked him to start digging. His long, curved dragon claws made it easy to dig up the ground below them.

  Quinn’s knees were starting to shake. Was it the fact that she was burying a friend that was making her knees shake? Or, was it the chill morphing into hypothermia? She was long overdue for karma to catch up to her. How many promises had she broken in the past week? She’d let down Ruby. She’d lost Casper. She’d ran away from Kenji and pushed away Isaac.

  Quinn was a piece of work. That’s what she was.

  The dirt was pushed over Ruby’s pale face and Quinn felt a scream rising in her chest. Then, a dragon head bumped her. Isaac’s massive head nudged her abdomen and he looked up at her like a pleading puppy with his silver eyes. The scream dissipated into nothing as her hand rose to sit between his eyes. He let them drift closed and leaned into her touch.

  Why fate bound her to this man, she’d never know. She almost deserved the lying Kenji. Even he was too good for her. Her fingers trembled atop his head and his eyes snapped open, narrowing in on her. She yanked her hand back and wrapped her arms around her middle to keep from giving away her chill.

  Isaac wasn’t fooled. He snatched her up and his wings beat at the air in a mad dash to get back to the motel room.

  Chapter Seven

  Isaac was angry. He was pissed at the dragon that ran away from their attempt to rescue him. He was pissed that his mate didn’t tell him sooner that she was cold. He touched ground behind the gas station, listening to the distant shouts of the few people around them at the sight of a dragon nearby, and launched into a run for their room.

  They would come back for the motorcycle later. It was the last thing on his mind while he held his shaking mate in his arms. He kicked the door open and went directly for the deep, jacuzzi tub in the room. It was still loaded with pillows from earlier and he barely had the patience to toss them out of the way before setting her into the tub.

  Isaac turned the tap on full force, sending hot water spraying everywhere, and turned to help Quinn peel out of her frigid clothes. He kicked himself for not thinking about the cold winds in the air. He kicked himself for not considering that she was already soaked through. This was his doing. If he’d looked at the weather radar, none of this would have happened.

  ***

  “You know,” Quinn said from the warmth of her tub as she looked through her lashes at Isaac. He’d been watching her with heat in his eyes, a heat that battled with the emotions he was trying so hard to push back. “There are other ways to raise my body temperature.”

  Isaac swallowed. He looked away from her as if trying to keep himself from giving in. It wasn’t taking advantage of her if she wanted it. They were together from here to forever, Quinn thought. They were bound by fate, and there was little use for arguing with fate. No matter how far and wide she ran, Isaac would always be her home. He would always be the arms she happily fell into.

  At her invitation, pulled in by her beckoning eyes and her floating breasts, Isaac slowly eased off the edge of the bed and came closer. He’d eschewed most of his own clothing after running her through the rain and now inched toward her with a bare chest and legs. She watched the muscles of his legs stretch and pull taut and felt the urge to run her hands up them to feel the hard strength beneath, to feel the soft fuzz of his light hair.

  She pulled him down to her by the curls at the base of his neck and claimed his mouth. They were both beating themselves up. They were both hating themselves down to their very souls in that moment, when they should have been acknowledging the fact that they tried. They very nearly succeeded in rescuing two dragons from GOE.

  Her teeth pulled at his lower lip, sucking it into her mouth so that she could roll it around, so that she could taste it. He
tasted like the air before rain. He tasted like a cool wind on a hot day. She reached up to wrap her arms around his neck and pulled him closer to the tub.

  Watching Ruby die in front of her would always haunt Quinn, but when Isaac’s hands reached into the water to cup her bare breast, her world narrowed down to the simple touch. Quinn moaned when his thumb flicked over her nipple. The sound was lost when his tongue plunged past her lips.

  Isaac’s other hand broke the water and dipped low to touch her. His fingers parted her folds and she found herself arching into his touch. His teeth grazed her lip, his thumb and forefinger pinched her nipple, and his fingers slid inside of her. Quinn squirmed in the warm water of the tub. She wished she could reach out and pull him in with her, but her body was under his control. Waves of pleasure radiated from every place he touched her. It was like nothing she’d ever felt before.

  His fingers slid in and out of her opening, earning a moan into his mouth. His thumb reached upward and found the small, sensitive place hidden inside her folds. At first, his touch was gentle, but he broke away from the kiss with a mischievous smile. After that, his touch became rougher. His thumb made quick circles over her sensitive spot while his fingers dipped in and out of her at a faster pace.

  She leaned back, her nails dragging across his bare skin while the pleasure rose and built up inside of her. The small pain from his hand around her breast morphed into a feeling of pleasure that sang alongside the pleasure growing in her core. He rolled her nipple between his fingers.

  “Do you want…?” Quinn could barely form the words, but Isaac caught on quickly.

  “I want you in every way possible,” he growled. “But this, right here and now, isn’t about me.”

  Her nails dug into his skin in an effort to keep her anchored, to keep everything outside that door from catching up to them. Her pleasure peaked and sent her over the edge. Quinn slapped her hand over her own mouth to muffle her cries as the pleasure exploded inside of her. The waves of it rocketed through her body, from her head to her curling toes.

  Once they started to fade, she settled back down in the water with weak limbs. They deserved this moment, a small point in time to explore what fate had given them before the world came to break that door down.

  As if beckoned by her thoughts there was a knock on the door. Isaac broke away from the kiss with a feral growl on his lips. He still held her breast in his hand and rubbed his thumb around her nipple. They both waited with baited breath to see if the person on the other side of the door would go away.

  There was another, hurried set of knocks. When the person on the other side of the door devolved into slamming on the door, Isaac prowled toward it. Quinn wanted to scream with frustration. She’d finally given in to her desire, found herself ready to see what fate had given them, and they were interrupted. Her fists opened and closed with the effort to keep quiet as Isaac peered through the peep hole.

  From the look on her mate’s face when he turned away, whoever was on the other side was not a friend. Quinn had a good idea when Isaac stepped toward the tub with a fluffy, white bathrobe. She eyed the robe, knowing that it came from the cheap motel and wondering what someone else might have done in it before she came along, but stepped out of the tub and shrugged it on anyway.

  Away from the heat of the tub’s water, she found her body slowly sinking back into the chill. It was nowhere near as bad as it had been before, but her muscles were still tight despite the looseness they’d had only moments ago. Perhaps that was the guilt, she thought. Maybe that cold feeling was the guilt she was still trying to reason with.

  Isaac turned back to the door while Quinn settled on the edge of the bed. Ruby wouldn’t have wanted to go back to the GOE facilities. She would have wanted Ruby back with the family, but if she couldn’t go home, Ruby would have wanted this. Even all of her reasoning didn’t appease the ache in her body.

  The door flung open the moment Isaac opened it and Kenji marched past her mate. Isaac wasn’t in the mood, it seemed, because he grabbed Kenji by the back of his collar and swung the thinner dragon man back around. Kenji’s back slammed against the wall and Isaac’s arm braced him there while a growl thundered in his body.

  Quinn rubbed her face to try to ease away the last of the chill, the last of the desire induced fog that gripped her before she looked up at Kenji. The two men were staring each other down. One she’d already slept with and one that she desperately wanted in that moment. Realization hit her. That was why Isaac was so moody. It wasn’t the day they’d had, or that wasn’t the whole of it. It was the fact that they’d gotten close and her ex decided to show up.

  Isaac was being territorial and it left a warm feeling in her chest. Quinn knew she shouldn’t like it, but she did.

  “Can you tell your puppy to let me go?” Kenji snapped.

  “Oh, fuck off. He’s not my puppy. I don’t tell him what to do.” Although she’d done a lot of that lately. Still, Isaac was not a pet. He was her equal. He was protecting them. “Why are you storming into our room?”

  Kenji bared his teeth at Isaac before turning back toward Quinn to respond. “Because my family is steadily going missing and you didn’t answer any of your calls after I saw on the news a GOE vehicle had been assaulted, with one agent dead.”

  “About that,” Quinn began. She pulled her arms around her middle.

  Isaac let Kenji drop and turned toward Quinn. “We wanted to hit the truck before it made it back to the facility, but things quickly went sideways. It’s my fault.”

  “Like hell it is,” Quinn stood up as she spoke. Her eyes narrowed at her mate. They both needed to stop beating themselves up over what happened. It wasn’t going to change anything. It wasn’t going to bring Ruby back from the dead. It wasn’t going to find Casper. “We both knew attacking a GOE truck wasn’t going to be safe or easy, but we wanted to do something when no one else would.”

  She turned her glare on Kenji as she said the last few words. If anything, it was their family’s fault. They’d gone rushing in to save Luc and his human mate, but none of them wanted to lift a finger for the two, lower ranking dragons in their care. That wasn’t fair. It wasn’t the kind of thing leaders did. Kenji had made a small step in letting her go, but other than that he’d done nothing to help Ruby or Casper. Now, Lucia was in the hands of GOE as well.

  Was the family going to step up for the wife of one of their leaders? If they did, Quinn was going to have a meltdown. The world would shake beneath the words she was going to have with her council.

  Isaac moved toward her when he saw the tremble set back in. She wasn’t sure if it was her anger that made her shake, or if it was the chill still in her bones. Kenji saw it, saw the way Isaac rubbed his hands over her skin.

  “Are you alright?”

  She sucked in a deep breath, but before she could unleash what she was feeling, Isaac spoke.

  “It started to rain and I didn’t think about how flying while wet would be a problem. She’s doing better now, but it’s Ruby and Casper you should be worried about.”

  Kenji’s brows lowered as he took in the scene. Clearly, Ruby and Casper were nowhere to be seen, even after their attempt to stop the truck. He hadn’t asked about the two missing dragons since he’d stepped into the room.

  “Ruby is dead,” Quinn announced.

  Kenji deflated. It was as if everything he’d been made of had dissolved and his body crumpled in on itself. The dragon man staggered to a chair beside the door and slumped in it. For a long moment, his gaze was stuck on the floor, as if what played in his mind refused to set him free. Then, he looked up to Quinn and Isaac before him. If Kenji was about to get mad at them for failing, he had another thing coming.

  But, his words surprised her.

  “I didn’t even try to help.” Kenji’s voice was small. “I did nothing.”

  Damn right, Quinn thought, but didn’t say it. “She’s not in their hands right now. That’s what I keep telling myself. They can’t hu
rt her anymore.”

  Empty, Kenji nodded. He ran his hands over his face and rubbed at the scruff growing on his chin. Quinn watched his nails claw across his skin and she pushed back the urge to go over to him to pull his hands away. That was no longer her place.

  “Now that you’re here, will you help me run a search for…” Isaac looked back to Quinn. “Casper?”

  She nodded. The thin and quiet dragon had made a run for it. She couldn’t blame him. Ruby had stayed and look where she ended up. Quinn couldn’t help but wonder what Casper was up to. Where could the dragon man have gone? He knew nothing about this part of the states, as far as she knew. They’d gotten him from a facility south of D.C. whereas this was the west.

  “What kind of dragon is Casper?” Quinn asked Kenji as she reached for her stack of maps.

  “He’s a Welsh ice dragon. Why?”

  Isaac snorted, drawing Kenji’s attention and earning a scowl from Quinn. The dragon man shrugged and hid his eyes beneath his floppy curls. “That explains why the man is damn near ghost-like. I’m just thankful he’s nothing like his cousins over in Wales. We went over to help the red dragons with a kerfuffle involving the white dragons.”

  Quinn swallowed her laugh. “Kerfuffle?”

  “Okay, so maybe it was more than a kerfuffle. That uprising was how Liana earned her black scales.”

  Kenji’s head perked up. “Your family has black scaled dragons? I was under the impression that only happened to dragons who survived intense trauma.”

  Isaac smiled with pride. Quinn now knew how similar the two families really were. Her family had thought themselves the worst off, thought themselves deserving of what had been so easily handed to the American Territory family. But, they’d gone through just as much horror and pain as the family she’d grown up in.

  It was high time they started to work together and see each other as what they really were, equals in this battle against human prejudice and GOE avarice. The three of them spent the next half hour pouring over the maps Quinn had pulled out to see if they could narrow down where Casper might have gone. Isaac messed with the radio he’d pulled from the GOE truck. It was a little beaten up and wet, but after some time and a little help from Kenji he got a crackly station to play over it. It warmed her heart to see the two men, her friend and her mate, working side by side. She could only hope that would continue after this was over.