by Lauren Smith
“A massage sounds nice.” She started to crawl forward on the bed on her hands and knees, but he tugged her hips back, and she felt his pelvis bump against her backside.
“Oh no, you little tease. I demand more.” His words came out rough and sexy.
She jerked when he pressed his cock in at that angle. It felt different from before, and it stretched her in a new way. She dropped her head on her arms against the bedding and moaned, absorbing the soreness of her channel and a whisper of pain mixed with the building pleasure of this new way of lovemaking. She’d fantasized about this, a man taking her from behind, someone who was completely in control, but she’d never imagined the reality would be so much more intense. Rurik thrust his hips, pushing deeper into her. They both shared a moan.
“More,” she begged, shifting her ass, encouraging him to move faster.
Rurik gave her a little spank. “I’m trying to be gentle. You are still sore,” he reprimanded her.
“I don’t want gentle,” she replied as he withdrew until he was almost fully out. “I want you to let go of your control. Take me hard. Hard as you want.” She lifted her head and met his burning gaze over her shoulder.
“You don’t know what you’re asking.” His voice was gravelly, and his eyes swirled with that honey color. She now knew this meant his dragon was fighting to get to the surface.
“I know what I’m asking,” she promised. “We’re in this together, remember?” She pushed back, driving him a little deeper into her.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “Tell me if I’m too rough.” He drove into her, his hands digging into her hips as he penetrated her over and over. The feel of him so deep inside her was heaven. She hissed out a breath as he moved faster, harder, but she didn’t want him to stop. It felt amazing.
He reached around her hips and teased her clit with the pad of his finger, causing her to explode. He kept fucking her, his hips pumping even as she sagged on the bed, her body limp.
Rurik thrust a few more times and gave a guttural cry as he pulled out of her, and something hot splashed down her thighs. He retrieved her towel from the floor and set about cleaning both of them, with surprising gentleness given the way he’d just claimed her. She collapsed on the bed, stretching out on her stomach.
“Wow,” she gasped.
Rurik chuckled as he ran a hand from her shoulders down to her bottom in a soothing caress.
“Scoot up on the bed,” he ordered, but his tone was gentle.
Charlotte clawed her way up the bed and collapsed when she reached the pillows. The bed dipped behind her, and large warm hands settled on her shoulders while Rurik’s knees settled on either side of her hips. He began to massage her, just as he’d said he would, rubbing deeply into her muscles. It felt so wonderful that she couldn’t…keep…her…eyes…
Rurik knew the moment she fell asleep. He carefully picked her up and pulled back the covers before tucking her in. He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, watching her, feeling like the most blessed man alive. He had a mate. The one thing he’d believed he would never have. He could have had this with Nikita, but he’d enjoyed a gentle contentment watching her work alongside him at the nightclub, and he’d convinced himself that was enough. And it had been, until she’d died. Losing Nikita had changed him in a way he hadn’t expected and had driven him to throw caution to the wind. His heart ached at the thought of what might have been with Nikita, but he couldn’t regret that he’d found Charlotte either. The complexity of the situation left him feeling lost until he looked down at his mate and the turmoil inside him eased.
He’d risked his family’s future, but he’d spent the last thousand years thinking of others. Wasn’t he due some measure of happiness? She was perfect. He hadn’t lied when he told her that. She was perfect in every way. Rurik brushed a lock of her hair back from her face and drank in the sight of her.
My mate…
He collected his jeans and sweater, putting them on before he searched for his cell phone. He’d shut it off to better enjoy the day with Charlotte, but now he need to call his brothers. There was much to discuss.
He saw he had missed several calls from both Grigori and Mikhail. He also had half a dozen messages.
Rather than listen to them, he called Grigori back. He answered on the first ring.
“Where the hell are you?”
His brother’s panicked tone scared him. “What’s wrong?”
“Is Charlotte with you? Just say yes or no.”
Rurik answered carefully. “Yes.” He knew the drill. When there was a risk of being compromised, everyone answered questions in a way so no one could overhear and understand the subject of their conversation.
“Can she overhear you?” Grigori asked in Russian.
Rurik replied in kind. “No. She is asleep. What’s wrong?”
“She’s a hunter for the Brotherhood.”
The words were a punch to Rurik’s gut. “How do you know this? I know of her ties to the Brotherhood, but I swear on my life she isn’t a hunter,” Rurik said quietly. She couldn’t have lied to him, not after the way he’d questioned her. She was chemist, not a hunter.
“You can’t trust your instincts. Your dragon is blinded by desire. Remember what happened to Mikhail five hundred years ago? He got too close to the queen of England and ended up in an English prison for forty years.”
Rurik didn’t care for the reminder of their brother’s suffering. He wasn’t Mikhail, and this wasn’t the sixteenth century. He trusted Charlotte. If she said she wasn’t a hunter, she wasn’t.
“I know you don’t want to believe Charlotte could lie to you, but it’s true. Drakor called. He has been monitoring the Brotherhood, something he reminded me I’ve been failing to do. We have to take care of this. We need to—”
“First of all,” Rurik interrupted, “since when do we listen to Drakor? I’ve never trusted that bastard. And second, we can’t do anything.” Rurik closed his eyes and prepared to confess his mistake to his older brother.
“I understand, but I trust Drakor on this. This is the Brotherhood we’re talking about. That issue transcends all our rivalries. And what do you mean, we can’t do anything?” Grigori snapped. “We can restrain her and get the truth out of her.”
“We can’t because I mated her. She is mine. She’s part of our family now, hunter or not.”
There was a long silence, so long that Rurik started to wonder if Grigori had hung up on him.
“Then it is too late. They have what they came for.”
“What?” Rurik didn’t understand what his brother was talking about.
“If you’re mated to one of them, they can control you through her,” Grigori said with a growl. “Think about it. They’ll have a leashed dragon as a weapon now. If you don’t comply, they can use your own mate against you.”
“She’s not what you think, brother. I’ll just have to convince her to leave that life behind.” There was no way Charlotte would be used against him, not like that.
“It won’t be that easy, Rurik. She’s a MacQueen.”
The name was one that sent witches fleeing to their covens, vampires deep into their nests, and werewolves running off to their packs. In the past, the name MacQueen meant death to the creatures in the supernatural realm. It was a name that brought fear and panic, even to dragons, even today. Damien’s grandfather had been ruthless in the 1950s.
“How could she be a MacQueen?” he asked. From what little he knew of Damien MacQueen, he couldn’t imagine Charlotte being anything like him. She was sweet, sensitive, and open to trusting someone like him.
“She’s Damien and Jason’s younger sister. Even if you convince her to leave them, they will come looking for her. And we have no idea of her true purpose in finding you in the first place. They may have trained her as a secret weapon. This bond is exactly what they wanted.”
“What do you suggest we do?”
“Until we know more, I want Charlotte secured. Act normal and con
vince her to come back with us tonight on the plane. I’ll slip a knockout drug into her bottle of water. Then we’ll figure out what to do with her. We can’t take any chances. Do you understand?”
Grigori was right, and Rurik hated that more than anything. He’d surrendered his heart and soul to a woman who was most likely there to betray him. But the thought of drugging her made him sick nonetheless.
“We will see you at the airport in a few hours. Text me the flight time.”
“Be careful, brother.” Grigori hung up.
Rurik set his phone down on the table. He was halfway back to his bed when the door chimed. He met the hotel staff member at the door and took the cart from him, slipping him a handful of bills that would tide the man over for at least two weeks.
Rurik took the tray with the two plates and carried it over to the bed. Charlotte was still sleeping. She started when he set down the tray and lifted the metal lids, sitting up without thinking, and her bare breasts were exposed as the blankets fell away. Rurik had to remind himself that even though she was his mate, he could no longer trust her, couldn’t just take her back to bed, not when he needed to find out if she really was a hunter after all. If she really did plan to betray him.
“Eat,” he encouraged, sitting beside her. Only when she was finished did he speak. He cupped her chin, controlling her enough that she had to look at him. “Were you ever going to tell me the truth?”
Her eyes widened, and she opened her mouth but didn’t speak.
“You are a hunter, and you’re MacQueen’s little sister—two very important facts you left out of your confessions.” He wanted to see if she would deny it. There were flashes of fear in her eyes, but they were tempered by an unexpected resolve.
“Damien is my brother, but I am not a hunter. I’ve never been a part of the Brotherhood or its mission.” She reached out and touched his chest. He barely resisted the urge to pull away and had to remind himself she was his mate—he shouldn’t want to pull away from her.
“I’m not a hunter,” she insisted. “Mesmerize me. Make me tell you the truth. Let me prove it to you.”
Rurik considered it. He could use his power on her, but he didn’t want to. He still wanted to trust her. He also worried that she might have a way to resist him. It was possible hunters had trained themselves against this power. Yet he didn’t think she could be so cold, so heartless to lie to him this entire time. She’d made him feel so happy, so full of hope, and his brother had crushed that joy with a single phone call. How could he ever trust her now?
He rose from the bed and collected her clothes. “Get dressed. We fly back to Moscow in a few hours.” He couldn’t look at her—it made his stomach coil into knots.
“Rurik, stop!” she shouted. “You want the truth? All of it?”
“Yes,” he snarled as he spun to face her. “Tell me every damned detail. Leave nothing out.” He clenched his hands into fists as he glared at her.
Charlotte, to her credit, didn’t cower. But he would never hurt Charlotte, not even if she betrayed him to his worst enemy.
“I am just what I said. A biochemist. A lonely woman whose brothers left her out of everything. They refused to let me join the Brotherhood because it cost my parents their lives. But a few weeks ago, my friend Meg, who is a hunter, told me about a serum that someone had created that suppresses the dragon shifting ability. She asked me to try to re-create it. But I wanted more…” She paused, her face falling. “I wanted to show my brothers I have value, that I could be a part of their world. I thought I could help prevent a dragon war from spiraling out of control. So I took the serum I made and left for Moscow. My plan was to catch you, but the moment I met you…I couldn’t use it on you or take you to my brothers.” She pointed to her purse. “You will find two syringes inside. You can pour the contents down the drain and throw the syringes in the trash. There’s a third one in my hotel room in Moscow. I don’t care anymore. You matter too much to me. I couldn’t hurt someone I—” She halted abruptly, wiping a stream of tears from her face.
“Someone you…what?” he asked. His dragon had been ready to fight, just as he was, but now he and his dragon were both confused and panicky.
Tears rolled down her cheeks as she met his gaze and said the only words that could change the way he felt.
“I couldn’t betray someone I was falling in love with.” The pain in her eyes was unmistakable. No one could affect that level of fear unless they were telling the truth.
Rurik held his breath, trying to process what she’d just said. She was falling in love with him.
Charlotte stumbled away from the bed, wrapping a sheet around herself. She looked so vulnerable and small as she approached him and the table where her purse sat. She held the small bag up to him.
“Please. Take the syringes and destroy them.” His dragon paced inside his head, still puzzled. His enemy…his mate…what was she really?
12
I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, till you gave it back to me. —Ursula K. Le Guin
Rurik dug through Charlotte’s purse, his dragon tense inside him, as though afraid of what he might find. His animal side wasn’t used to fearing anything, but the idea of a drug that could suppress that part of him, even temporarily, was terrifying.
There were no weapons, no magical tokens or talismans to help her inside. Just…there it was…
He pulled out a black case out and unzipped it. Two small syringes with gleaming green liquid were tucked in elastic straps. He removed them from the pouch. Without a word, he walked over to the bathroom sink. He depressed the plungers on the syringes and drained their contents. The third one in Moscow would be handled soon. There was bound to be more of this back at the Brotherhood labs, but he felt a small bit of relief destroying the immediate threat.
Rurik flipped the taps on, splashing water to wash down the remnants of the drug. Charlotte stayed where she was, sheet wrapped around her body like a loose toga. Her blonde hair was in a wild tumble around her shoulders, and the light from the lamps illuminated the drying tears on her cheeks. It was a shock to his heart, strong enough that for a moment he couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. He recovered at last and approached her, stopping just inches away.
The apprehension in her eyes cut his heart. She had no reason to be afraid, but she had no reason to believe that. The mistrust between their worlds ran deep.
“If you are being truthful to me, if it is your intention to stand by my side, then from this moment on, we are in this together. No more secrets, no more lies, from either of us. Do you understand?” He needed to hear her say yes. If she couldn’t, it was going to rip him apart.
She nodded. “Yes. No more lies or secrets,” she vowed, and he knew she was telling the truth. The defenses around his heart crumbled. He wrapped her in his arms, holding her against him, her feet dangling off the ground. She curled her arms around his neck and choked on a sob as she nuzzled him. Their emotions, so close to each other in their bond, were only magnifying.
“I’m so sorry, little one. So very sorry,” he murmured over and over again as he carried her back to the bedroom.
He felt her heart, like a faint gold glimmer through a thick silver curtain. She was falling for him, and she wasn’t going to keep any more secrets from him. In that moment, knowing she was in love with him was all that mattered. He would face the problem of her family and his tomorrow. Right now, he needed to hold her and reassure himself and his dragon that she was all right.
“How did you find out?” she asked. “About my brothers, I mean.” Charlotte cuddled on his lap as they settled back on the bed. He pulled the comforter up around her, wanting to keep her warm. They had a few hours yet before they had to leave.
“Grigori received a call from another dragon. An enemy to our family. His name is Dimitri Drakor. I don’t trust that bastard, but Grigori had his reasons for believing him.”
“Drakor? I know that name. His house is in control of eastern R
ussia, right? Or was, anyway. Didn’t you kill most of them recently?”
Rurik gazed at her in surprise. “Yes, how did you—”
“That’s what got me involved in finding you. The power vacuum the Drakors left is what’s got the Brotherhood worried. The idea that whoever is left might ally themselves with other houses, or others might try to move in. Russia’s a powder keg right now,” she said. “I had to know everything I could about dragons before I came over.”
Rurik was torn between smiling and frowning. He liked that his mate was resourceful, but he didn’t like that she had access to files on him and his family. They worked hard to stay undocumented and off human radar.
“How much information do they have on us?” he asked.
She shrugged and told him as much as she knew from the files. “You have to believe me—the Brotherhood is more worried about you fighting each other and causing harm to civilians than fighting you themselves. Those agents they sent after you before were just going to bring you in for questioning. They never planned to kill you. They hoped you had answers about the war with the Drakors, and they needed to know how serious the situation was from your perspective.”
As she talked, she ran her fingers up and down his chest, seemingly unaware that she was stroking him in a soothing way. It felt good, really good. It would have felt even better if she’d wrapped her fingers around his cock, but now was not the time for that, much to his body’s disappointment.
“The problem is, your people close ranks and vanish whenever we try to get close,” she added.
“It is hard to blame us. It wasn’t that long ago that we were hunted down by your people for the mere crime of existing,” Rurik countered. “And it wasn’t that long ago that the name MacQueen meant death for shifters.”
Charlotte’s head dropped. “I know. But things have changed in the last fifty years. My parents and my brothers have made sure of it. My grandfather’s way was half a century ago, born out of the same fear as McCarthyism at the time. The rules have changed. They don’t kill anymore. Not without cause. They observe. Hell, my brother has even helped negotiate peace treaties.”