Forbidden Embers

by Tessa Adams

  No, it was better for him to stick to the game plan. To do what he’d come here to do. Even if it would give him an incredible amount of satisfaction to turn Remy’s brains into pudding, especially with what he was thinking. Though a part of the asshole’s brain was focused on bringing down Logan, another part was wrapped up in thoughts of Cecily. He wanted her naked, tied up and at his mercy, and fantasized about keeping her that way until she figured out who was boss.

  Logan’s dragon’s talons punched through his fingertips and he could feel himself on the brink of losing control. Though he could definitely see the pleasure to be had from keeping Cecily bound and naked, he would never do anything to hurt her if he had her that way. This asshole wanted to rape and beat and threaten her into submission.

  He had a particularly blatant fantasy that involved Cecily and a whip, one that flayed the skin off her tender back until she bled and begged him to stop. Only he wouldn’t until she was a bleeding, quivering, humble mess.

  The beast inside Logan roared in outrage at the image, and his human side wasn’t far behind. He wanted to crush the bastard, to rip him apart for even daring to think that he had the right to imagine touching Cecily, let alone hurting her.

  Infuriated, he struck without thinking, ripping through Remy’s mind with the finesse of a jackhammer. Over his dead body was this motherfucker going to get his hands on Cecily. Over my dead fucking body.

  Remy screamed, his hands clutching his head as Logan tore through his brain like a conquering army. By the time the man had fallen to his knees, Logan had shredded his nucleus accumbens—the pleasure center in his brain, responsible for sexual arousal—and done a damn good job of messing with parts of his cerebellum, namely the areas responsible for coordination and making the muscles work together. Let the sadistic motherfucker try coming at Cecily—or any other woman—now.

  Acel and Thierren stopped to help their friend, but he could feel the suspicion rolling off them in waves. He’d been a good half mile in front of them, and while they’d thought he was unaware of their bumbling attempts to follow him, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t put two and two together sometime soon. Which was the last thing he needed right now.

  Figuring he should beat it from the vicinity before he blew whatever semblance of a cover he had, he sped up a little bit. Swerved onto a side street, then swerved onto another one, until he was all but buried in the maze that made up the area of the compound that housed civilians.

  As he walked down the streets, he felt his skin crawl, especially when he glanced in the lit window of one of the houses and saw a man walking the floor, his infant daughter curled up on his shoulder. There was a look of such love on the man’s face that Logan had to turn away.

  A few doors down another light was on, and a couple sat snuggled on the couch, drinking wine and watching something on TV. They looked really happy together, completely content.

  He started to walk even faster then, made sure to keep his eyes on the road directly in front of him. He didn’t scan the area around him while he walked—even though not doing so was a rookie mistake. But he couldn’t stand the idea of getting inside these dragons’ heads, not when he knew he was on the brink of shredding their nice, normal, little lives for good. And why? Because they’d had the bad misfortune of being born Wyvernmoons.

  Pissed off at himself and the whole fucking world, he didn’t let himself think or relax—hell, he barely let himself breathe—until he was out of the neighborhood and back on the main road that worked its way through the compound. He had to stop doing this, had to stop second-guessing himself. Had to stop feeling guilty. He’d lay a hundred-to-one odds that not one of the bastards he was up against had ever felt guilty when they sent that damn virus over to the Dragonstars and murdered hundreds of his people in the most horribly gruesome way he could imagine.

  Logan glanced at his watch. It was close to one now, and he knew Cecily was expecting him. His dick hardened at the thought of her, warm and willing and waiting for him. Not that his reaction was unusual. From the second he’d met her, he’d been aroused most of the time.

  He found himself speeding up even more, anticipation beating through him with every footfall. He felt like a total pansy, but there was something inside him that wanted to see her.

  He’d almost made it to Cecily’s street when he heard them. Two dragons. Their words were spoken aloud at a distance, undetectable to a human ear, but manifesting as a steady, consistent buzzing in the back of his mind. He’d ignored it, tuned it out, because he was so caught up in thoughts of Cecily, but his dragon obviously thought it was important, because it kept dragging his attention back to the sound.

  “Your plan isn’t working. She isn’t backing down. And now she’s brought that mutt into the equation,” the first man said.

  “He’s nothing to worry about. In fact, he could be good for us. If she’s distracted by sex, she’ll be less likely to clue in to what we’re doing,” the other said.

  Logan closed his eyes, blocked out all the other background noise, and focused on trying to pinpoint the voices. It took a minute, because the two men had thrown a few stumbling blocks in his way. But like everyone else out here in this compound, they were too complacent, too sure of their own power and superiority to really worry about whether they were being overheard.

  “But if she didn’t end up with you, I wanted her to be mine,” the first voice said. “I don’t want her being fucked by that rogue. God knows where he’s been!”

  Anger helped him arrow in. Eriq. A face rose in front of him, smarmy and rodentlike, and his first impression of the factionnaire came back to him in a rush. Pretentious. Spoiled. Weak. Easily led. Not much of a threat, in the grand scheme of things.

  But he must have misjudged the little weasel if he was out here in the dead of night, plotting against Cecily. But who was he plotting with? Logan waited for the other man to speak, to give away his location. When he did, Logan slipped inside his brain with the most delicate of touches.

  “Can you stop thinking with your cock for two seconds?” the second man asked. “This is serious. We’ve finally got the chance to make our move, and you’re worried about who the ice princess has taken into her bed?”

  Julian. The second man was Julian. The realization sent ice slamming down Logan’s back. He hadn’t liked the man on sight—hadn’t liked any of them, obviously—but not liking Julian didn’t mean he was blind to the fact that he was one of the most accomplished factionnaires the Wyvernmoons had. The plot against Cecily, whatever it was, suddenly got a whole hell of a lot more concerning.

  Eriq made a sound of discontent and Logan ran with it, filling his head with thoughts of how idiotic Julian was being, of how he thought he was entitled to so much more than anyone else. Truthfully, it didn’t take much of a push from him. Eriq was weak enough that the accusations were right there on the tip of his tongue, anyway. He’d just needed the extra push to get them out.

  “You want me to be the one to do this because you think you’re so much smarter than I am!” Eriq whispered fiercely. “You’re just going to sit back and watch them crucify me, and then you’re going to get Cecily, the crown, everything.”

  “Don’t be absurd.” Julian’s voice was bored, but there was an underlying tension to it that hadn’t been there before. Maybe Eriq’s paranoia wasn’t misplaced after all. “What would I want with the crown, anyway? I’m quite happy working behind the scenes.”

  But he isn’t, Logan realized, doing a quick scan of his thoughts. Julian was the kind of man who wanted all the accolades, all the praise. Nothing short of being king would satisfy him.

  The thought of Julian married to Cecily enraged him, even more than the casually vicious way he spoke about her. As if she was nothing more than a means to an end. There was no way this guy was going to get that close to Cecily, no way he was going to be the next one in her bed after Logan vacated it. He’d kill the bastard first. Slowly and painfully.

  Julian was s
kating on the very thin edge of his control and Logan knew it, but that didn’t make him pull back as it normally would have. He pushed a few thoughts into Julian’s head, and if he pushed a little too hard, then who was around to know? He did the same to Eriq, until the two partners were at each other’s throats, accusations and curses flying between them, until he began to wonder if one of them was actually going to take a swing at the other.

  He hoped so, and regretted that he wouldn’t be around to see it. But he couldn’t afford to be caught near them, not after what he’d just done to Remy. Besides, Cecily was at home, waiting for him, and he was in the position to know just how wrong Julian had been when he’d called her frigid.

  Furious, guilty, besieged by the need to mark Cecily as his even as he worked to destroy her, he walked the last few blocks to Cecily’s house in an agony of need. His dragon was right below the surface, ripping and tearing at him from the inside in an effort to get out. To get to her. The man might be confused, his loyalties torn, but the beast had no such compunction. It wanted nothing more than to lose itself in Cecily forever.

  He slammed into the house with one thought on his mind: to get inside her as quickly as he possibly could. To fuck her as hard as he could, until he could no longer feel the different sides of his loyalty pressing in on him. He wanted to lose himself in her arms, in the pleasurable oblivion she brought him to so easily.

  But he was barely in the door before he realized Cecily wasn’t alone. She was sitting in the small, fussy room to the right of the foyer, her head bent low and her hands on the lap of a man who was sitting across from her.

  The beast went insane and he didn’t even try to hold it back. He couldn’t. He was right behind it, ready to rip the intruder limb from limb for having the nerve to touch what was his. If this was another factionnaire trying to convince her to marry him, he was going to leave here in a body bag.

  He’d only been in the compound for a little more than twelve hours and already he’d had more than enough of the sneaky bastards. The next one who so much as looked at Cecily cross-eyed—and this one is definitely doing more than looking, his dragon seethed, as the man brought her hand to his lips—was going down.

  He leaped across the foyer in one bound, and landed at the doorway to the parlor with a solid thump. Cecily glanced up, startled, and he froze as he realized there were tears in her beautiful violet eyes. His dragon saw red, and so did he. He reached for the man, prepared to kill now and ask questions later, when a look of alarm flitted across Cecily’s face.

  She slipped between him and his prey, and the dragon snarled. Or maybe it was him; he didn’t know. They’d become one—a red-hot, seething creature full of jealousy and animosity. He wanted the man across from him dead, and it only stoked his rage that Cecily had put herself between them to save the bastard.

  “Logan.” Her voice was low and urgent, but the hand she put on his chest was both cool and steady. “This is Sebastian. He’s a waiter at the Dracon Club, where I took you earlier.”

  He didn’t care if the guy was the winner of the year’s Nobel Peace Prize. He had touched Cecily, kissed her, and he was going to pay for it.

  He reached for Sebastian again, but the look in Cecily’s eyes was so trusting, so much about him, that he calmed down a little. Or maybe it was the way her thumb moved in feather-light strokes up and down on his chest. Either way, her focus on him calmed him down enough that he could think. Rationalize. And smell the despair that was literally rolling off the other man.

  Something was going on here, all right, but it wasn’t what he’d first imagined. Putting a choke chain on his anger—and his beast—he wrapped an arm around Cecily’s shoulders and pulled her tightly to his side. He was calm enough now to listen, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to make sure that Sebastian knew exactly who Cecily belonged to.

  “He came to ask me a favor. I need to take care of it.” She slipped out from under his arm and crossed the room. The dragon watched her intently, but she didn’t touch the other man, didn’t even come within two feet of him.

  For the first time, he realized she held a small prescription bottle in her hand. As she dialed the number on the label, he finally trusted himself enough to relax the agonizing stranglehold he had on his beast—and his own emotions.

  He relaxed even more as he heard her speaking quietly into the phone.

  “Jacques? This is Cecily Fournier. How are you?”

  She paused. “Good. I’m calling about Sebastian LeCroix’s account. Do you know what I’m referring to?”

  Another pause, longer than the first. “Good. I need you to help him for me. Whatever he needs. You know I’m good for it. Yes, for everything. I’ll take care of it.”

  A short pause. “Thank you, Jacques. I appreciate all your help. Yes, you have a good night, too.”

  She hung up the phone and turned to Sebastian, who had tears running silently down his face. He grabbed her hands, kissed them again, and this time Logan realized he wasn’t actually kissing Cecily. He was kissing the ring on her finger. He’d noticed it earlier, but hadn’t made the connection, as Dylan didn’t wear one and it had been centuries since he’d seen a ruler who did. Sebastian was kissing the royal ring, as subjects had in days of old.

  “That’s enough, Sebastian.” Cecily brought her hand up to his hair, tenderly stroked the strands back from his forehead. But there was nothing sexual in her touch. It was more maternal, though the dragon standing in front of her looked like he was probably about fifty years older than she was. Still young, but nowhere near as young as she was.

  “Go pick up the prescription,” she continued, pulling her hand away from him when he seemed unable to let her go. “Then go home. Your family needs you.”

  The man nodded, mumbled his thanks again and again as he backed out of the room. At the front door, he bowed low before slipping out into the night.

  Cecily turned to him as the door closed behind her visitor. “His daughter—” Her voice broke, and the tears from earlier were back. “His daughter is sick with the same genetic disorder his wife has, and the pharmacy wouldn’t give him the medicine that helps keep her out of pain. He’s in debt because of how much his wife’s medicine has cost him through the years. His daughter is suffering, has been suffering for weeks, because he can’t afford to take care of her.”

  She turned to him, buried her face against his chest even as she wrapped her arms around his waist. “How has it come to this?” she demanded. “How the hell did my father let our clan get into such bad shape that our people can’t afford the most basic necessities? I can’t believe all this has happened in just the five months since he died. He must have known about it, must have let it happen long before his murder. But why? What could possibly be more important than the people who depended on him?”

  Her shoulders started to shake and he could feel her tears, warm and wet, through the front of his shirt. As she cried—not for herself or her father, but for her suffering people—the last ounce of resistance he had melted into nothingness. His arms came around her and he rocked her slowly, soothingly, as he tried to figure out what the hell he was supposed to do now. How the fuck was he supposed to betray a woman he not only liked and desired, but whom he also respected?

  But how could he not, when doing nothing meant he would be betraying the king and the clan, who had given him refuge for nearly a century, made him one of their own?

  Not sure what he was doing or why he was doing it, Logan pulled away slowly. Settled himself on the couch and then pulled Cecily down next to him. He turned so that he was looking straight in her eyes and then told her, “That’s not the only problem you’ve got.”

  As he spoke, he felt his entire world—everything he’d always believed or stood for—come tumbling down around him. He was in uncharted territory, and it promised to be a very bumpy ride.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Cecily stared at Logan, confused. “What do you mean?”

  “Your def
enses are shit. A child could find his way onto this compound without so much as raising an alarm.”

  “But that’s impossible. My father’s always had the best defense. Our safeguards are impeccable, and the factionnaires—”

  “The factionnaires are too busy fighting over you and the throne to pay any attention to whatever duties they might once have had.”

  She shook her head. “That can’t be. They couldn’t be that stupid.”

  “Oh, sweetheart, I don’t think you have a clue just how stupid those men are.”

  She flinched inwardly at his tone, and at the sarcastic way he’d called her sweetheart. She wasn’t sure how she felt about this version of Logan. He’d come back from his walk annoyed—she’d seen it the second he’d walked into house. And then he’d caught sight of Sebastian and she’d really thought there was going to be bloodshed. He’d calmed down, but even as he’d comforted her, there’d been something different. Something missing from the fun, tender lover she’d had up in the Black Hills earlier that morning.

  But that didn’t mean she was going to let him see how disconcerted she felt, especially as he was ripping away the last bastion of security she had. If the factionnaires had really stopped guarding the compound, if they were really leaving all of her people unguarded, that meant she was way worse off than she had ever imagined. It meant that every single one of them—Gage, Dash, Wyatt, Dax—were all guilty of treason. And maybe even worse. She wouldn’t know until she investigated.

  Clearing her throat, she pushed away from Logan. She might be young and she might be naive, but she wasn’t a little girl who needed to be comforted from bad news. If she ever had any hope of being queen, she was going to have to show everyone that she could stand on her own two feet.

  “Tell me.”

  Logan raised an eyebrow at her harsh tone, but didn’t comment. Instead, he launched right into a laundry list of security problems. “The safeguards were once excellent. I agree with you there. But times have changed. Areas have been breached, unraveled from within, maybe; I can’t be sure. But they’ve never been reinstated, so there are huge gaps in the main protection surrounding the compound. Plus, there’s no evidence of any patrol going on.”