Hoarding Secrets

by C. I. Black

  He deepened the kiss, unable to control his hunger for her, for the feel of her lips and tongue against his, and slid a hand down her back, drawing her tighter against his body. She shifted, and her knee brushed his thigh, sending a bite of pain.

  Ah, crap. He was still covered in blood and could still be expelling pieces of shrapnel. That wasn’t sexy at all.

  “I think I should get cleaned up first,” he said into her mouth.

  She drew back and frowned. A hint of uncertainty flashed through her eyes, and his heart stuttered.

  “I still might have shrapnel in me. In the very least, my back is caked in blood.” He skimmed his hands around her waist, brushing the bottom of her breasts with his thumbs and drawing a shiver. “It won’t take long.”

  “It’ll be faster if I help.” She leaned close, her breath feathering across his jaw, then stood, sliding her body up his, her breasts a whisper from his lips in the most erotic, languid move he’d seen in his life. His breath hitched as if in one simple action, she’d stolen all the air from the room. Then she turned her back on him and stepped to the mouth of the glassed-in shower stall.

  He jerked to his feet, unwilling to let her get even a few steps away, seized her waist, and drew her back tight against his chest. Her silky hair tickled her lips and her scent, fresh and green and warm, flooded his nose.

  “That wasn’t fair,” he murmured against her neck, drawing in more of her delicious scent.

  “Getting me all worked up then taking a shower without me isn’t fair,” she said, her voice trembling with another purr.

  “You’re right.” He nuzzled her neck and teased his fingers under her shirt. Gooseflesh pebbled her skin and she melted into him, tipping her head back to give him better access.

  “This isn’t getting us into the shower,” she groaned.

  “No, it’s not.” He turned her, his lips finding hers again, and backed her into the glassed-in stall.

  With a purr, she hit the tiled wall. “I can’t really remember if I’ve done this before, but I’m pretty sure we’re still doing this wrong.” Her hands skimmed down his chest to the waistband of his pants.

  “You mean you don’t know if you’ve showered before?” he asked, unable to resist teasing her.

  “Yeah, sure,” she said, her gaze simmering with desire, turning the tease back on him and making it sexual, “the shower.”

  His libido surged into overdrive, and he tugged her coat off and let it drop to the stall floor.

  She grabbed the bottom of her shirt and pulled it off, revealing firm, plump breasts barely contained in a white lacy bra. Her dusty pink nipples, erect with desire, peeked through the lace in a tantalizing tease he couldn’t resist. He slid his thumb inside her bra and dipped in, stroking his tongue over her.

  A tremor swept through her, and he drew her into his mouth and brushed his thumb over her other nipple. Another tremor shook her. She gripped his shoulders and threw her head back, exposing the length of her body. He trailed his mouth from her breasts, his hands following, to the waistband of her jeans, and unhooked the button.

  She groaned, her hands, unable to reach his shoulders, pressed against the tile behind her as if she needed the wall to keep standing. He undid the zipper and slid the heavy fabric from her hips and thighs, then seated her on the bench, pulled off her boots and socks, and finished removing her jeans, leaving her in her white lace bra and panties with a small gold locket hanging around her neck.

  Desire flushed her cheeks and her breath came fast, making her breasts rise and fall, taunting him to return. Her aura pulsed in time with her breath, strong, sure, and radiating calm. Always calm. The center to his writhing universe, the foundation stone to his soul. He couldn’t fight this. Tomorrow he could pray she’d forget him. But right now, she was everything he needed and everything he craved, and she was alight with a dragon’s ferocious desire. He’d never imagined he’d meet anyone so incredible and in his two thousand years of life, he’d never seen anyone so spectacular. “God, you’re gorgeous.”

  “Even as a human?”

  “It would be hard for me to do this if we were dragons.” He captured her mouth again, kissing her with the ferocity consuming him.

  She matched him, her own dragon spirit meeting his, exceeding his as she stood and urged him deeper into the stall.

  This time his back hit the tiled wall. Her hand snaked out, and she flipped on the shower. Cold water slammed into his skin, but he didn’t care. There was only her. There would only ever be her.

  “If you keep this up, I’m going to go insane,” she growled against his lips. “If I have to wait for you to clean up before you satisfy me, you’re cleaning up. Now.”

  He purred back at her, turned her, and pinned her against the wall. “You’re looking for satisfaction?”

  “I thought we’d agreed on that.” She hooked a leg around his waist and drew him tight against her, only flimsy pieces of wet lacy fabric covering her.

  God, he was wearing too much. Another purr rumbled through him.

  “Didn’t we agree on that?” She fumbled with the button on his slacks.

  “We did.” He undid the button for her and she eased the zipper down. So God damned slowly.

  His erection bulged against the front of his boxer briefs, and her pupils dilated, making the pressure within him, the desire to drive into her, even stronger. Her tongue darted over her lips, and her fingers danced along the edge of his waistband, a hint of uncertainty creeping into her eyes, then her thumb brushed his sensitive tip and that electric snap, that explosion of libido, surged through him, making him groan.

  Her eyes widened and she brushed him again, a little stronger, snapping more electricity and drawing another groan. Sensual realization narrowed her eyes, and she dipped her hand inside his briefs and wrapped her fingers around him. Just that and his legs were shaking. His whole body was shaking.

  He had to lean in, drawing closer to her, and pressed a hand against the wall beside her head to keep standing. With his free hand, he teased his fingers inside her panties and skimmed her folds.

  She gasped and her grip on him tightened. Holy Mother! He bit back a purr and concentrated on satisfying her. Her first. Always her first. If this was all they had, he wanted to know she’d been well and truly satiated — and a part of him, a small part, wanted it to be so satisfying that she’d be unable to forget.

  He brushed her again, this time rubbing his thumb against her clit and drawing a full-body tremble from her that tightened her grip again. A purr rumbled from her throat. He matched it and teased a finger inside her, circling her clit with his thumb.

  Her head tipped back and her eyes fluttered shut.

  “Oh, my,” she breathed, her trembling growing as he worked in another finger and increased speed and pressure with his thumb.

  Her breath came faster, making her gorgeous breasts rise and fall, the lacy fabric scraping against his chest. Her grip on him tightened as if holding him was all that kept her together, and he stroked her until she was writhing against the wall and moaning.

  “Please, Grey,” she gasped, and she drew him to her entrance.

  He eased inside her, her muscles clenching around him, drawing him in, and straining his control. He needed to go slow— wanted to go slow. But she tightened her leg around his waist and drove him further inside her.

  “Oh, yes,” she purred, her muscles quivering around him.

  He eased out until just his tip was inside her and plunged back in. She moaned again and locked gazes with him, her eyes filled with searing desire. He thrust again and again, faster and harder, driving her pleasure higher and higher until her orgasm tore through her.

  She roared his name and dug her nails into his shoulders. Her body shuddered as waves of pleasure crashed through her, and his orgasm ripped into him. Bliss seared every nerve in his body, leaving him breathless and his knees weak.

  “Holy Mother!” he gasped.

  “Holy Mother, indeed
.” Her eyes opened and her gaze locked onto his, capturing his soul.

  Her stillness burst through him on another wave of pleasure, giving him glorious clarity, and he let his magic sear this moment of her into his memory forever.

  She was mesmerizing. Gold flecks caught the light in her dark eyes. Strands of wet hair teased curving lines along her neck and sent rivulets of water over her breasts. Pleasure parted her lips, and her body, hot and wet, clamped around him.

  His soul purred. He purred. This was the way it was supposed to be. He was hers. Forever. And he would hold this memory close, with the perfect clarity she’d gifted him, forever.

  CHAPTER 26

  Nero, his head pounding, stepped into his freezing living room with its broken, tarp-covered windows, and headed to the bar. He didn’t bother with the light. His night sight was strong enough for him to see clearly in the dark and he knew where his thirty-year-old fine oak scotch was hidden.

  His bottle of ten-year-old fine amber sitting on the shelf with the other bottles of liquor — the ones he used for those infrequent guests who visited this house — was half full. It had been three-quarters empty last time he’d looked at it. None of the kids had expressed an interest in it — he had no doubt they’d experimented with everything they could find in the house and with their enhanced abilities and magic, it was futile to lock the liquor up. Which was why he’d been forced to move the fine oak’s hiding place from his office to under the sink. It also meant Diablo must have finished off the amber and replaced it.

  Nero bit back a growl. They were going to have to have a talk. And not about the scotch. Challenging him in front of Grey and Ryan was behavior that couldn’t stand. Any other doyen would have grounds for rebirth. And while Grey and Ryan weren’t going to see Diablo’s challenge as a weakness in Nero, if Diablo did it at Court, he endangered Nero’s position as Regis’s favorite and a doyen to be feared by other doyens.

  It was such a God damned shame, too. If Diablo wasn’t so headstrong, he would have been given the position of Third in Command of both of Nero’s coteries. But Diablo had challenged his word as if he’d wanted Nero to put him in his place. Which wasn’t as ridiculous a thought as it would have been a month ago. The Diablo who’d been in his office a few hours ago was more like the young, wild dragon who’d changed allegiance 203 years ago from the Minor Black Coterie to Nero’s to protect his sister, Raven, after she’d been reborn and the doyen of the Minor Black Coterie had wanted nothing to do with another hatchling in bad standing with the prince.

  That Diablo had been angry, and Nero wasn’t sure if he’d even known over what. Together with Raven, Nero had been making slow progress with Diablo’s rage, but the breakthrough hadn’t come until they’d welcomed Pete Matthews — who became Andy Reynolds — an awkward seventeen-year-old human mage with an out-of-control empathic power that was mentally and emotionally crushing him. Somehow that human and Diablo had forged a connection, and if either of them had inclinations toward the same sex — which neither had that Nero could tell — he would have been certain the connection had been of the soul variety.

  But Andy’s murder had shattered that and while Diablo hadn’t completely returned to the beast of his youth, there were moments that made Nero wary. He couldn’t afford to lose his best hunter. Not with even one of those unnatural human mages Zenobia had created for her coup still running around, or the leak in the Asar Nergal still unidentified, and certainly not with Regis growing more mentally unstable by the minute.

  The door to the living room opened and the tarps covering the windows snapped. Raven stood in the doorway, the light from the hall creating a hint of warm halo around her and throwing her face into shadow.

  “I thought we were supposed to meet in your office.”

  “I was just grabbing my scotch first.” Nero opened the cabinet under the sink and grabbed the box hidden at the back.

  “The good stuff?”

  “I think all dragon souls hanging in the balance demands the good stuff.” That, and his head just wouldn’t stop pounding.

  “You don’t think it’s that bad,” she said, but she didn’t sound certain.

  “I think I don’t know enough about Grey and I know nothing about Tobias’s agent to properly assess the situation.” He tucked the box under his arm, grabbed two glasses, and headed to the door. “And my head still hurts.”

  “With your healing, that alcohol isn’t going to do much to take the edge off.”

  “It’ll do enough.” Even if all it did was take the edge off his Handmaiden-given magic that made him dugga. He’d managed to keep the power to sense human magic under control while Zenobia had built her army and the evidence against her was the most damning, but it was as if holding back, ignoring the spikes of awareness as those mages were created had broken his control and warped the magic. He could sense there were mages out there… sometimes — he hadn’t been warned about Ryan — but it felt as if there were more than there should be, certainly more than what he’d sensed after he subtracted the bodies from those he’d felt Zenobia making. And unless the mages used their magic in a big way, he was having a hard time pinpointing any of them, which wasn’t usual, either.

  “I don’t think Grey should be a worry. He has too much at stake with us to endanger our puzur.” Raven fell into step beside Nero as he headed back to his office.

  “I had assumed Grey was loyal to Hunter and the Handmaiden, but bringing Ivy here gives me pause.”

  “I’m pretty sure he didn’t have any choice. He couldn’t even stand when they came through the gate. From what Diablo says about free gating, I’m surprised he didn’t gate them to the main anchor at Court.”

  “That would have been better for us and the kids.” Nero set the box and glasses on his desk, opened the bottle, and poured two quarter-full glasses. He eased into one of the low-backed leather tub chairs facing the desk and offered the second glass to Raven. “I think she thinks I’m Grey’s doyen. One word of that at Court and we’re all in Regis’s prison and the kids—” Mother, he didn’t want to think about how Regis would kill his kids.

  The original Asar Nergal — and he’d been a part of it from the beginning — had been ruthless. He’d been ruthless. He and all the other drakes had been more dragon than human in those early days, and filled with fear. They’d slaughtered man, woman, and child, anyone who held a hint of earth magic aura, all in the name of self-preservation.

  Raven took the offered glass and eased into the chair beside him. “You brought me on as your Third because I can offer a different perspective.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short. I made you my Third because you have a special gift with the kids. You can connect with them in ways I can’t and they trust you.” It had been a pure accident that Raven had stumbled across his puzur, his secret second coterie. She’d been newly reborn and her coterie had disavowed her. The Handmaiden—

  Nero snorted. Okay, so maybe it hadn’t been an accident. The Handmaiden had opened a gate and told Raven to petition Nero for acceptance into his coterie. Raven had gated into the middle of an awkward dinner where Nero had been trying to calm the tears of a crying teen whose family had tried to kill her because they’d thought she was possessed by the devil.

  Raven had known right away what the kids were and hadn’t cared. The sting of her family’s betrayal had been too raw, and she’d embraced these misfit humans with an affection Nero hadn’t known was possible for a dragon. Her instincts with hatchlings — human and dragon — far exceeded his and he didn’t doubt, even though she denied it, that she had at least a hint of empathic earth magic.

  “I didn’t spend much time with Ivy, but I’ve spent a lot of time with Grey in the last two weeks. After helping Hunter and Anaea and Capri and Ryan, I have no doubt he’ll do anything to protect his friends.”

  Nero took a sip of his scotch. The liquid, rich with hints of orange and spice, slid over his tongue, but he couldn’t bring himself to focus past the immediate pro
blem and enjoy it. “But are we his friends?”

  “I think so and so do you. You would have killed him if you thought he was going to endanger the puzur.”

  Which was the real truth. Somehow, in just a few weeks, his coterie had changed, and Anaea and Grey and now Ryan and Capri had become part of it. And it all felt right. It felt like family.

  It still didn’t ease the two-thousand-year-old ache in his soul, but then, nothing would. His inamorata hadn’t survived the Great Scourge. And there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.

  That was the hard truth about being so unlucky as to be cursed with being inamorated, and two thousand years had done little to alleviate the hurt. Time did not heal all wounds. He couldn’t help but feel sorry for Hunter and Anaea and now Capri and Ryan.

  The only thing that seemed to fill the void was gathering and helping these dragon and human misfits. It didn’t fix that missing piece in his heart, but it helped distract him enough that he’d managed to survive and protect his puzur for centuries.

  Except now his puzur, his kids who couldn’t protect themselves against the full wrath of the dragon prince, were in danger… maybe. “This still doesn’t help me figure out what to do with Tobias’s agent.” Light flickered across his sight and pain snapped through his skull. Yes. There were mages out there. He knew that already.

  “Anaea said the moment you demonstrated your dominance over Diablo, Ivy became submissive.” Raven stared into her glass. “It can’t be easy being a young drake in the royal coterie as well as being in Tobias’s employ. Most of the dragons working for Tobias are at least four or five hundred years old or older.”

  “You think she’s eager for a change?” Maybe he could work with that.

  “I think she’s scared. And given how she was ready to shoot all of us to protect Grey, she trusts Grey.”

  “So if Grey trusts us, she’ll trust us?” Okay, he could work with that.