by Eden Robins
He wanted her.
But it was so much more than that. He admired her dedication to her work. Dragons. They were so much a part of her life. They meant so much to her. When she spoke about the topic her whole face lit up. She loved what she did for a living and it showed.
Her intelligence and enthusiasm always got to him. The way she became so animated, so alive, drew him closer like a moth to the flame. She added color to his world, color that he had lost so long ago. His gray existence turned into a virtual rainbow when she was around. Summer days and rainbows. That was Sabrina. Everything about her screamed life.
She was a great woman. An intelligent, beautiful, vivacious, sexy, caring woman who had devoted her life to something she loved. She was strong and lived her life with meaning, grace and dignity. He knew all of these things about her because he had witnessed them firsthand while they dated.
Eric had craved being with her from the beginning. The way he felt with her had been addictive. It had been so different from everything and everyone he had known. Just being with her made him take a hard look at himself, and he had discovered something important. Sabrina made him want to be a better man. And she helped him realize that he could be just that.
Once he’d had a taste of that, he hadn’t wanted to let go. He had tried to see her every day. The times she had said she couldn’t meet with him, he would persuade her that she could.
“I want to see you, Sabrina,” he would demand arrogantly.
Inside he would be desperate to be with her, see her, touch her.
“I can’t meet with you today, Eric. Between my lectures and the papers I still need to grade, I have way too much going on.”
Then he would say something that became an ongoing dialogue between them.
“There’s no such thing as can’t, Sabrina. You mean you won’t meet with me.”
“No, Eric. I would see you if it were possible, but I just can’t.”
“You don’t want to see me. No such thing as can’t,” he repeated stubbornly.
He’d known he had been acting like a petulant boy, but he hadn’t been able to stop. During that time his need to see her had outweighed almost everything else in his life. Yet he had never openly communicated this desperation to her, always trying to play it cool, as if what they had was not as important as it was. But he knew his need to be with her was very real.
“Eric, I do want to see you. I’m just really busy. Don’t do this to me,” she had pleaded, but he kept at it because he knew she would give in. She almost always gave in. It was as if she didn’t know how to handle his overwhelming attention. It was something she wasn’t used to.
Eric had wanted to see her as much as possible. He craved spending time with her. So he pushed himself into her life, he couldn’t seem to help it, but at the same time, he had tried to make it clear that he wasn’t up for a serious commitment. He had told Sabrina on various occasions that he wasn’t ready for that. And when he had asked if she was okay with that, she would smile at him and nod her head.
“I understand. I’m in no hurry either,” Sabrina would say with a casual smile, but he could see a different message in her eyes, in the way she touched him and in the way she responded to his touch.
At some level, Eric had known she wasn’t being honest. That she didn’t have the capacity to be this close to someone and not care. She had been falling in love with him. He’d known it and she’d known it, but neither of them had talked about it.
He had let it happen. He had cared more about the way he felt with her than what he was doing to her. He had been incredibly self-centered and selfish. He knew that now. The more they’d spoken, gotten to know one another, the deeper his need had become. He drank her up like a man dying of thirst. And he remembered everything she told him. He treasured her words, and he kept every note, card and letter she had given him.
The connection became so strong that he sometimes spoke to her five or six times a day on the phone, in addition to seeing her.
He had been obsessed with Sabrina.
And she had fallen in love with him.
The time they had spent together had been like no other time in his long, lonely existence. Rainbows and summer days. That was Sabrina.
And it would have lasted even longer if Eric’s conscience and fear hadn’t kicked in. He was taking so much from Sabrina, and she gave it willingly, sometimes to her own detriment. Yet he had just kept taking and taking. He had been selfish. He had wanted her all to himself.
He had been wrong.
And once he’d realized it, he had known it was time to stop. Time to let Sabrina go. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, need someone that much. It made him weak. And he couldn’t be weak. His life had to be what it was, purpose-driven. He had a duty to fulfill, a price to pay, a debt that wasn’t satisfied. His life needed to be gray, lonely and honor bound. Not colorful, filled with laughter, rainbows and summer days.
It had been time to move on.
Her proclamation of love only reinforced that in his mind.
He couldn’t, no, wouldn’t, love someone. Not again. Not even this incredible woman who touched something deep inside him.
Sabrina was all that was gentle and good. He was all about violence and death. A slayer didn’t just slay dragons, they also killed humans and other creatures who got in the way of their mission. He felt strongly that those he had slain deserved to die, that they were minions of the evil dragons he hunted. Though there was no code of conduct, no rule book, a dragon slayer learned early on that dragons determined to cause chaos, death and destruction often had others helping them. That meant that Eric had sometimes been forced to hunt down and end the lives of more than one kind of creature. In fact, he had killed more humans, dragons and other nonhumans than he could remember. Over time, the faces and events had just blurred together. Other than a few, he could no longer remember who and what he had killed. And he no longer cared. After hundreds of years of slaying, dragons and their minions were nothing more than prey to him. They had no life, no feelings, no meaning. They just needed to die. That’s all he knew, all he cared about as he killed again and again. Eric had no sense of triumph, no sense of goodness as he rid the world of these creatures. The only thing left for him was a gray world of death and duty, his duty as a slayer, protecting the world from evil. He was nothing more than a killing machine now. Nothing more.
To not only expose Sabrina to that, but also to risk his death with every dragon he met, as well as the instability his work entailed, just wasn’t fair to her, or any woman for that matter. And to top it all off, Eric was immortal, destined to walk the earth forever until a dragon or another dragon slayer killed him. He was one of the oldest slayers and probably the most experienced still alive. He had cheated death from a dragon more times than he could count, and the likelihood of another slayer killing him was small, since they were solitary soldiers, rarely in contact with one another. All of this added up to one thing—he would most likely live to see Sabrina die. And there was no way in hell he wanted to go through that again. He was too selfish for that. His family and friends had died without him once—he would not go there again. No, rainbows and summer days were not for him.
After what he had become, Eric didn’t deserve it.
And he definitely didn’t deserve Sabrina.
“So you see there is a common theme concerning dragons, but there are also many related bones, remains, fossils scattered all over the world to bring about such similar theories.”
Sabrina concluded her discussion of dragon myths with a pleased smile.
Eric slowly nodded his head. “That could explain some of the common myths around the world concerning dragons.”
“Do you have any other questions for me?”
“Just one. What is it about your book that would make someone want to kill you?”
Chapter Five
Sabrina thought more about Eric’s last question later, as he drove her back to ASU. She hadn’t been able to a
nswer it directly. Not without giving away too much. So she gave him several theories that sounded weak even to her own ears.
They hadn’t spoken since getting in her car, and her mind raced with thoughts his question had conjured up.
She knew why someone might be threatened by her book, especially those within certain religious communities. Her book would take away the scapegoat mentality some religious zealots had concerning dragons. They would no longer have the dragon to blame for the evil deeds human society sometimes perpetrated.
But even that answer left her feeling like it was something more, something that she should be aware of. It was like an object you see just within your peripheral vision, but not enough for you to identify it. She was missing something, some part of this puzzle.
Eric cursed under his breath
Sabrina’s thoughts came crashing back to the present. She glanced sharply at him then followed his gaze. Two police cars, a fire engine and an ambulance were parked around a car, or what remained of one. Smoke curled from under the charred hood in a black swirl toward the sky. At first she thought it was just an overheated engine or something like that, but as they drove closer and the flashing lights illuminated the area, she realized that wasn’t the case. The car was smoking because it had been on fire. And not just the front, under the hood. The charred remains showed her that the whole vehicle had been engulfed in flames not too long ago.
Sabrina cringed and looked at Eric.
“Is that your car?”
He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration.
“No, that was my car.”
Stopping the car a distance away from the scene, Eric got out.
“Stay here until I get back,” he ordered, slamming the door harder than necessary.
Watching his angry strides as he approached the closest policeman, Sabrina could see just how agitated he was. He spoke to the officer for several minutes, throwing his hands into the air as he became more animated. Eric rarely used his hands when he spoke. He was more controlled than that.
She remembered how some of their many discussions would end up with him throwing his arms into the air. She had loved seeing that, seeing him so passionate about something. It had brought him to life. His eyes flashed, his perfectly articulated words became more rough, basic and direct and the air around him seemed to sizzle with energy.
If she could have filmed those moments, she would have. If she could have captured those times when he let his control slip, when he let the man inside him free for the world to see, she would have done so again and again. It had incited her own passions and excited her beyond belief.
A good, heated discussion with Eric had almost felt like sex to her. The back-and-forth parry of words, the intruding of personal space as they got right into each other’s face, the sharp body movements, all of it had turned her on. And at the end of the debate, when it had been settled one way or another, she had felt satisfied and at peace.
Sabrina had never felt that way with anyone else. Talking with someone had never felt so intimate, so sexually charged or so intense. She missed that. She missed talking to him, debating with him and arguing with him.
She missed loving him.
Missed loving him?
Whoa, where had that last thought come from? It was time to back up, back way the hell up. Watching Eric leave the officer and walk toward her car, she knew that she needed to get a hold of herself.
She did not, no, would not, do this again.
Eric had sent her to hell and back when he dumped her and dropped out of her life. And it was a place she never wanted to visit again. She may have been naïve about him, but she wasn’t stupid. She had learned her lesson well. She’d only needed to feel that intense pain, heartbreak and loneliness one time to know she so didn’t want to go down that path ever again.
Sabrina watched him stop right before reaching the car and make a call.
She loved to look at Eric. He was so incredibly, irresistibly, naturally male. It was in the way he stood, the way he moved, the way he talked. Everything about him screamed the word “man”. It brought out an answering primal female urge in her to get as close to him as possible. To touch him whenever and wherever she could. It had always been like that between them. She wasn’t the touchy feely type, or so she’d thought until she and Eric started going out. Then she just couldn’t get enough of touching him. Any opportunity to feel his skin and she would take it. She had always been amazed at how such a rough, hard man could have such soft skin. Her fingers would glide over its satiny texture and she would almost lose her mind with desire.
Stop!
She wasn’t sure if she had said that aloud or screamed it in her head, but it did the trick. Her mind was wandering to somewhere it didn’t need to go. She had to stop it before she let it carry her to that dangerous place.
Eric may be exciting, sexy, intelligent and good-looking, but he was also trouble. Trouble with a capital “T”, and she wanted nothing to do with that. Miss him or not, she would not let him sneak under her radar and into her heart again.
Sabrina was a different person now. She had changed. For the better as far as she was concerned—more grown-up, less naïve. And she liked that. She liked feeling in control of herself and her feelings. No one would pull her around like a puppet on their string ever again.
Eric got back into the car and turned to her. His face was tight and angry, but she could tell his anger was directed at the circumstances. Not her.
“It seems someone decided to pour gasoline all over my car and light it up like a giant torch. The police are looking for clues, but as of yet they have nothing.”
Sabrina gasped. “What? Oh Eric, I’m so sorry. This has something to do with my stalker, doesn’t it?”
Eric looked grim as he nodded his head.
“Yeah, I’m sure it does. Whoever is after you knows I’m on the case and they aren’t happy about it.”
“What about your car?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t have any files in there, and the equipment I keep for the job can easily be replaced. My insurance company will raise an eyebrow at this one, but since all of our vehicles are insured through the agency, it’s pretty wide coverage due to the nature of the business. I’ll just rent a car until I get a new one.”
“Do you need me to give you a ride home?”
“No, I’m not going home.”
Sabrina felt a tingling at the back of her neck. In the past that had served as an instinctual warning to her that she was in danger. She always followed that feeling, but in that moment it left her confused.
“What do you mean, you’re not going home? Do you want me to take you back to the agency?”
“No, I’m going to your place.”
Hackles rose along her spine.
“No, you’re not. What are you talking about?”
“I was debating on spending the night in my car outside your home for surveillance purposes, but now that this has happened,” he said, looking back at his smoldering car, “I need to stay with you from here on out until we find your stalker.”
Sabrina shook her head adamantly.
“No you don’t. You’re not staying with me. No way. Absolutely not.”
Panic had truly set in. Sabrina’s heart sped up to a hectic pace and she could feel herself shaking. There was no way Eric was going to stay with her at her house. No one stayed with her, unless they were family—period. She valued her privacy and rarely had visitors to her home.
Besides all that, this wasn’t just any visitor. This was Eric. A man who tempted her at every turn. A man who had put her through hell. A man who wanted to play but not stay around. She wouldn’t let him put her in this position. Just the image of him sleeping down the hall from her, in her guestroom, made her temperature rise.
“I am staying with you, Sabrina, for your own safety. So get used to the idea,” Eric said calmly as he started the car and pulled out of the parking lot. “My friend Malcolm is g
oing by my place to pick up some of my things, and then he’ll bring them to your house.”
Okay, now she wasn’t just panicking. She was angry.
“I will not get used to the idea!” she said shrilly. “Damn it, Eric, I will not have you invade my life like this. I understand that you need to protect me. I understand that we need to be together for you to do that, but I will not allow you to stay in my home. You lost the right to enter that domain the day you dropped me like a hot potato because the oven was getting too steamy for you.”
Where had that come from? She hadn’t meant to say that. And she had sounded so bitter. Sabrina barely held back covering her mouth with her hand.
Eric reacted immediately. Pulling to the side of the road, he stopped the car. Swinging around, he grasped her shoulder in his hands and brought her closer. The seatbelt kept them from touching, but just barely.
“Too steamy? You don’t know anything about steamy, Sabrina. But I can show you if you’d like. I can make it so steamy that you’ll barely be able to breathe. Would you like that, gatita?”
Eric’s eyes had narrowed to dangerous slits.
Sabrina had little warning before his mouth descended on hers. She wanted to fight it, she wanted to pull away, but it felt too damn good. It felt right. It felt like a place she belonged.
His lips were hard and demanding at first but soon softened and wooed rather than ordered. She responded as she always did, opening to him like a blossom to the sun. His tongue danced a seductive dance with hers, and soon the seatbelts separating them became a nuisance rather than protection.
Unbuckling hers, she scooted closer and wrapped her arms around Eric’s neck. He always made her like this. So needy for his touch. So lost in their embrace. Nothing else mattered when they touched like this.
Eric unbuckled his own seatbelt, wrapped his hand around her waist and brought her flush against him. Her breasts hardened and tingled where they touched his chest. A pool of heat started low in her belly and began to spread.