by Paula Quinn
Marrkiya knew the voice and with one swift, lethal movement, spun on his heels and snatched Padgora by the throat. His fingers closed around his neck before any of the others could make a move to stop him. He squeezed and one corner of his mouth curled into a deadly grin while Padgora clutched wildly at his throat. “But I am neither weak nor puny, am I, Padgora?”
“Marrkiya!” Tomias took a step forward. “Please,” he implored in a soft voice.
But Marrkiya was Drakkon. He didn’t know mercy, so he impaled his most hated enemy with a gaze that pierced Padgora’s soul. He wouldn’t kill the elder now. He wanted him to see what would become of his family when Marrkiya was done with them. He mentally probed deeper until he saw the women in Padgora’s life. He smiled at the thought of one in particular.
The elder closed his eyes, breaking their contact. When he opened them again, he clenched his teeth. “Marrkiya, if you harm my family—”
“What?” Marrkiya urged, ruthless in temptation. “What will you do, man of peace?”
“Enough!” Jarakan of the Ninth shouted. Boldly, he approached the Aqua and faced him fully. “Marcus, we are prepared to destroy you. ’Tis something we have avoided at all costs, but if you continue on your path toward carnage, you will leave us no choice. We have sentries at the ready.”
“You think you have not destroyed me already?”
Jarakan shook his flaxen head. “We did what we had to do.”
“You destroyed the last of the Drakkon, fool!” Marrkiya glared at him. “You let Padgora annihilate our race for his own greed. The Drakkon are no longer.”
Just saying the words made Marrkiya want to retch. He hated every one of the cowards before him, especially the one still clutched in his hand. Newly altered, he still possessed more Drakkon strength than they did. He let Padgora go with a shove. He would have charred them had he any fire in his poor, useless body.
“Not necessarily and you know it,” Jarakan said.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Your reign of terror is over, Marcus.” Padgora said rubbing his throat. He was the oldest among the Whites, though with his white-blond hair tied into a neat queue, he looked no older than a man of forty years. “You are no longer a threat to us.”
The gleam in Marrkiya’s eyes was no less lethal than it had been as a Drakkon. “Change me back, or I promise the end of your days, along with your family’s, will come quickly and mercilessly.”
“And if I do, what is to stop you from coming after us with your fire?”
“Patrick,” Jarakan stepped forward. “You swore on the Amber that you would restore him after he turns over the treasure.”
“Ah, my treasure,” Marrkiya growled. “You are a greedy whoreson, Padgora. You do all this for my hoard.”
A thought, elusive and guarded, passed across Tomias’ mind, drawing Marrkiya’s attention. What was it? What was he hiding that frightened him so?
Padgora raised his head and arched an eyebrow at Marrkiya. The smile that laced his lips made the newly transformed man wish he had his claws just for one more moment. “On the contrary. Your hoard will be combined with ours. How else do you think we have survived all these years? We need riches to live in this world, to provide for our many families.”
“Very well,” Marrkiya conceded on a strangled groan. “Take mine then, and live your meaningless existence here.”
“I fully intend to take it, and to keep my promise to return you to your natural state,” Padgora told him. “But your hoard is not enough.”
Marrkiya felt his blood scoring his veins. He stared at Padgora, wanting to kill him.
“You think me a fool, Marcus? The instant you breathe fire again we will be dust. I want more than your hoard to ensure your compliance to leave us alone. I want what you treasure most.”
Marrkiya turned and aimed his most lethal glare at Tomias. Tomias had warned him. “Aye. The treasure you believe I possess. The treasure worth more than a thousand hoards.”
“We want it,” Padgora told him.
“I don’t have it.”
“We know you do, Marcus. Hand it over and be changed back. Refuse and remain a man.”
Fury rose up in Marrkiya like bile, but he did not strike this man he hated. He wanted to kill them all, but even without having to look around him, he knew there were sentries along the cliff edge, probably armed with arrows aimed straight at his heart. Besides, the thought of taking revenge on them, especially on Padgora, was too sweet. You have taken everything from me. What else do you want?
I want what you hold most dear, Drakkon. I want you to know and understand that should you seek revenge once you are given back your true form, I will destroy that which you value above all else.
The murderous snarl lifting Marrkiya’s mouth sent terror through every Council member. Then I will give you nothing, he told Padgora telepathically. Aloud, he said, “If you desire my hoard, then find it.” He unfurled his wings and hovered over the small congregation. “But know this, Padgora, I will take that which you value above all else. And someday, whether I am a man or Drakkon, I will return and kill you. You will not be gathered back to the stars as the Drakkon have been for centuries. You will rot in the ground, receiving neither heaven nor hell as your place of rest because you are neither Drakkon nor man.”
For a moment, Marrkiya saw true fear in Padgora’s eyes, but it was replaced quickly with a look of harsh, satisfying revenge. “Marcus, you are hereby banned from appearing before this Council again until you are ready to relinquish your treasure to us.”
“You will have lost all by then,” Marrkiya vowed. He flapped his mighty wings and disappeared into the clouds.
Chapter Six
Amanda White lay in her bed, absently curling a long wheaten lock of her hair around her finger while she watched Marcus stand up and pull his snug black jeans over his hips. He was, she’d confessed to him all night, the sexiest, most brutally handsome man she had even encountered in all her life. Her body still ached from the almost terrifying passion he called forth when he made love to her.
She moaned, thinking of it. He cut those wicked aqua-colored eyes her way, smiled, and winked. Her body craved him, craved being ravished every way possible by a beast with little mercy in bed.
“Do you have to leave, baby?” Her heart palpitated merely watching him zip up his jeans. Her gaze rose to his bare, upper body crafted of stone.
“Do you want your husband to find me here?” he asked, sitting on the bed again and reaching for his Gucci trek boots, one of her many gifts.
Amanda shivered at the thought of being caught, but her lover’s thick, sultry voice burned her flesh. His glance mesmerized her. She wanted nothing but to give in to him, to give everything she had to him. She’d met him a month ago, while jogging in a park just outside of Aberdeen. He was an artist, and asked if he could paint her.
Never in her wildest dreams did she think she’d be sleeping with him that same night. But God help her, he had lips sculpted for the most wicked of pleasures and he used them in ways that made her want to leave her husband, her life, everything she knew. He was worth every penny she’d spent on him.
And she had spent a fortune. True, it was all her husband’s money, but he had plenty to spare, while poor Marcus was a struggling artist with no cash of his own. The least she could do was dress him well. She leaned up on one elbow, swept his hair off his shoulders, and ran her fingers over the swirling tattoos on his back and arms while he slipped his feet into his boots.
“Where is the Armani sweater I bought you?”
“Brought it back,” he answered vaguely, then stood up and looked down at her. “I finished your painting, Amanda.”
Her green eyes opened wide. “You did?” She sat up, covering her bare breasts with the sheets. “Where is it?”
“Downstairs. Wait until I leave before you look at it.” His smile was almost boyish, softening the smoldering heat of his eyes when he traced his thumb over h
er cheek, then bent to kiss her. “What a treasure you are, Manda,” he whispered and swept his tongue over the seam of her mouth. He withdrew just enough to peer into her eyes and set her heart tumbling over and over within her ribs. “Know that I have enjoyed you thoroughly. But now I must go.” He tossed his hair and the long, black overcoat she’d bought him over his shoulders and turned one last time to look at her. “Tell your husband that the Drakkon thanks him for his riches.”
He left her room without another word, his flowing coat tails snapping around his calves like the wings of a menacing bird.
*
Marcus stepped out of the house and looked at his Rolex. He waited a few moments and then began to walk. He felt a rush of adrenaline course through his veins knowing he had timed everything perfectly.
His smile inched into a wide grin when he saw Padgora pull up in his driveway.
The White’s silvery eyes grew to such horrified proportions when he saw Marcus, that Marcus almost laughed. And then Patrick White of the Sixth looked at his house and paled to a sickly white that matched his hair. He didn’t stop Marcus, but hurried to his front door.
The flavor of her passion still lingers on my tongue, Padgora. Would that I could have taken her essence, but it seems there were at least five other men before you.
I will see you charred if you’ve harmed her, Marrkiya!
I’m called Marcus now, if you remember. I am a man after all. Just ask your wife. Marcus smiled at Patrick’s blasphemous response pounding through his head.
*
Patrick White walked slowly into his living room where his young wife, whom he adored, knelt before an enormous painting. He fell into a chair behind her, weak in the knees and sick to his stomach as understanding tore like sharp talons at his soul. He stared, mute and heartbroken at the painting of an Aqua Drakkon flying against the velvet, star speckled night sky, it’s great iridescent wings carrying it higher and higher. Clutched within its enormous claws was Patrick’s beautiful Amanda.
“He doesn’t love you and he isn’t coming back,” Patrick told her in a voice now void of anything but sorrow. She spun around, shocked and pale to see him there. “You were revenge against me and nothing more.”
*
Revenge. It was just as sweet as a man as it had been as a Drakkon. Marcus removed his Rolex and shoved it into his pocket, then slipped his overcoat off his bare shoulders and tied the sleeves around his waist. The muscles in his back constricted and the dark markings along his spine and arms shimmered before his wings unfurled behind him. Not caring who saw him, he flexed his muscles, flapped once, and lifted himself off the ground.
Soaring above the clouds, he let the wind break over his victorious smile. He was free when he flew, with no boundaries such as gravity to confine him. He still longed for the power of his original size and he missed the way his tail had sliced the air behind him. But at least he still had his wings. For now. And he had to admit after living as a man for the past month and a half, that skin, in certain situations, was a bit better than scales, though far less beautiful.
Still, according to Patrick’s delectable wife, Marcus was not hard to look at, and not as lacking in his nether regions as he’d first feared. He’d known the moment he’d met Amanda that he would have taken her even if she hadn’t been Padgora’s wife. The desire to eat her had vanished as sure as his scales had, but the need to ravish her tender body had remained as strong as it was when he was a full-fledged Drakkon.
And having her, driving his human body into hers, was even better than chomping his teeth into the virgins of old. Aye, the sensations that skin provided delighted him. Ecstasy was not a Drakkon emotion, but the powerful instinct to mate, to dominate and conquer, was. Marcus smiled, ecstasy and mating complimented each other quite nicely.
Loneliness was not a Drakkon emotion either. A solitary race, Drakkons could remain alone for centuries without ever feeling lonely. Not so for man, Marcus had discovered. At first, he didn’t understand the emptiness gnawing at his innards when he walked among the men and saw them holding hands and laughing with their women, but as the weeks passed, the emptiness grew like a diseased sore until it pained him. Taking Amanda eased that pain a little, but he still felt lonely.
Marcus clenched his jaw, deciding that being a man had more drawbacks than advantages. The need to shave his face every other damned day had nearly driven him mad. So, he’d stopped. Thanks to Amanda, he sported a short, well-groomed stache and beard. He hated the constant hunger for food and having to rely on others to provide it.
He’d sold everything Amanda had bought him, save his Rolex, Gucci boots, and a few other things, and pocketed the paper. It was flimsy currency to be sure, but necessary to the daily, dreary routine of living. Why men put such value in something that could be torn to shreds, burned, or lost, he didn’t know. Nor did he care. He knew he could live quite comfortably by retrieving his hoard from where he’d hidden it from the Council, and selling a few of his jewels. But he would part with none of them, especially knowing now that they were not enough to pay for his transformation.
How could they not be enough? Taking them from him would be almost as cruel as altering his body. He’d kill anyone who tried. Had becoming men turned the elders into such black-hearted beings that they sought to strip him of his very soul? He hated them, and would take what they treasured most, one-by-one until they agreed to turn him back. He’d just proven to Padgora that he could do it as a man as easily as he could as a Drakkon. Next, he would concentrate on Jarakan.
He veered off to the right and up above the clouds to avoid being seen by an airplane.
A strange, familiar feeling swept through his veins making him look down. From this height, he could barely make out the shape of the castle below, but he vaguely remembered falling…falling into the roof of a stable and waking up a man. It was, for all intents and purposes, his place of birth. He would have flown right by it, having no desire to remember such a woeful day, but he remembered something else. A virgin. A virgin who sang like an angel.
He tilted his body, folding his wings back at an angle that would give him greater speed, and dove toward the earth.
Chapter Seven
Sam looked up from her garden as a shadow passed over her head. She saw nothing but the clouds rolling lazily across the autumn sky and went back to her planting. She hummed while her fingers worked the soil, tilling the small patch of garden she had labored over. “You guys better grow next spring,” she ordered the hyacinth bulbs while she covered them with soil and patted the mounds with her hands. “I need to see some kind of improvement around here.” She wiped her brow with the back of her hand and turned to cast the hole in her bailey wall a fed-up look. Something huge and draped in shadows landed beside it. Was that a bird—?
The scream that welled up in her throat choked her until a slight squeak popped from her parted lips. He was back! Oh no! She’d convinced herself that he’d been a dream and then was afraid to fall asleep for almost two weeks. She fell back, her rump landing in her meticulously cared for garden. He had to be a dream. But there he was in all his glory, wearing nothing but black jeans, boots, and a long overcoat tied around his waist and swaying around his ankles. He took a step toward her and those silky, raven waves she dreamed about fluttered behind his neck.
“Greetings, Sam,” he said with a seductive smile that painfully reminded her he was something more than normal. His voice hypnotized her and made her blood burn.
“Stay away!” She held up her dirty palm to ward him off. “I mean it. Don’t come any closer.”
But he did, and he grinned as if daring her to run. She would have done just that if the terror she felt wasn’t rooting her feet to her garden as securely as an ancient oak tree. She squeaked again when he squatted beside her just as gracefully as a falcon landing on its perch.
“Nothing lands with more grace than Drakkon,” he corrected her, reading her thoughts and angling his face close to hers. Closing
his eyes, he inhaled her scent. “You haven’t changed.”
“What?” She barely breathed watching the sooty sweep of his lashes as they fell, and the slight flare of his nostrils. But it was when those lashes lifted again and she found herself gaping into the deep wells of his eyes that her breath completely halted. She remembered those eyes, could think of nothing but them for the last six weeks. And now, in the bright light of day, they shimmered with color even more dramatic than she remembered.
She blinked, feeling lightheaded, then lowered her gaze away from his. She quickly learned what a mistake that was when her vision fell to the lush fullness of his lips. “What are you?”
His gaze moved over her face, brooding, moody, with a hint of menace. “I’m Drakkon, remember?”
“Oh, dear God!” She covered her eyes with her hand, hoping, praying that when she looked again, he wouldn’t be there. “Please go away. Please go away,” she chanted. “Oh, please, please go away.”
She felt his large hands cover her much smaller one and froze as he pulled her fingers gently away from her face. “I will not hurt you,” he promised in that sensually husky, sorcerer’s voice; a voice that had plagued Sam since he had disappeared.
He swept his gaze over her face and then her wispy, chestnut locks secured to her head by various little clips in haphazard places. “I did not realize how fair you were when I first saw you, Sam.”
“You’re not real.”
“But I am.”
She shook her head. “I dreamed of you.”
His smile set her heart pounding.
“Why…why did you come back?”
He tilted his head upward and the sun sparked his eyes with dazzling shades of blues and green, shot through with shards of pale violet. “I remembered falling.” He brought those incredible eyes back to her and effortlessly captured her gaze. “And then I remembered you.” He released her hand and wiped a smudge of dirt off her cheek. His mouth quirked into a slow, sexy grin that made Sam swallow three times in a row.