by Meg Ripley
Her fingers stilled, but didn’t move away, lying flat on his flesh instead.
He tried to take a deep, calming breath, but it only enhanced her scent. A scent he wanted…needed.
Without conscious thought, he tore off her skirt and the sexy thong beneath in an innate struggle to get to his goal. God damn she was beautiful. He wanted to stand back and look at her, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t bring himself to put any more distance between them than necessary.
The tug on his fly alerted him to what she was up to just seconds later. His cock sprung free and the last thin barrier that had stood between them was gone.
A gasp escaped her lips and she reached out tentatively, sliding down his long length.
Something low rumbled in his chest—a growl or groan, even he didn’t know which one it was. With his last thread of self-control, he pulled away and grabbed her wrists once again, yanking them high above her head. He saw her flinch, and he knew he’d hurt her.
Get a grip, he demanded of himself. He was always self-possessed, never out of control like this. He just needed to get a grip. So he breathed in deep, and regretted it. He tore his gaze away from her body, and realized his mistake too late. His eyes met hers, and even if their combined desire hadn’t been washing over him in tidal waves, he would have known exactly what she was feeling by the wildfire in her eyes. And she looked so god damned hot; her arms stretched above her head, her breasts thrust forward…
He tried not to think about every wicked thing he wanted to do to her, but he was losing the struggle. He could feel the fire inside gaining more ground with every second that passed. His muscles shook with their effort to hold it back.
“Claire…”
“I want you, Noah,” she whispered, staring back at him with a certainty that made it abundantly clear she had no idea the danger she was in.
No, this was just too god damned dangerous. He forced himself to take a single step back. If he could just put some distance between them, maybe he could find some thread of control.
“Don’t you dare walk away,” she said, her eyes bright, and she lunged for him, stretching against her wrists bound against the wall, to press her lips hard against his.
She couldn’t know what she was asking for; she just couldn’t. But it didn’t matter. He couldn’t have stopped now if his life depended on it.
He moved in fast, lifting her with his free arm and settling her over top of him. In the same breath, he thrust upward, pulling her down on him and driving home in one frenzied thrust. She cried out as she struggled against his hold on her wrists, and a jolt of guilt went through him. But oh fuck, god damn it, she was so tight. Her inner walls gripped him so snugly, it was the most exquisite thing he’d ever felt.
And the connection between them had deepened; he could feel it all and he knew she couldn’t hold any of it back in that moment even if she wanted to. He could see the pleasure coursing through her from her throbbing bundle of nerves, and the ache caused by his cock stretching her. He could see her frenzied need to join him, and at the same time, her body’s need to adjust, to accommodate his girth.
He gritted his teeth and forced himself to remain still, but too quickly he couldn’t wait any more. He needed to move, to fuck, to hear her scream in pleasure. He withdrew as slowly as he could and thrust back in, shaking with the effort it took not to increase his pace. Once…twice. By the third time, he was just about ready to snap. He couldn’t control his movements and the dragon burning inside at the same time. But she was ready. She wrapped her legs around his hips and began to move against him.
He lunged for her mouth, capturing her already swollen lips and muffling her moans and breathless cries. But he didn’t want her erotic sounds muffled. He wanted to hear her, and so he released her lips, leaving a frantic trail of kisses down her jaw while he plunged in to the hilt over and over again, his pace increasing with every thrust. The world around them disappeared as he released her wrists, running his hands over every inch of soft skin he could reach. Nothing existed but her body and his; there was no scent but their combined arousal, no sounds outside of their labored breathing and her moans, growing louder every second. He could feel her climbing higher, and he knew it wouldn’t be long. She was almost there. He struggled to wait for her, the sheath of her warm flesh making it near impossible. Just a little longer…
She clung to him, her nails digging deep into his shoulders and her legs wrapped tightly around his hips. They lost all sense of rhythm, frantic with deep need for one another. And then he felt it; he could feel the tightly wound coil spring loose inside her just seconds before she flung her head back against the wall and screamed as she contracted around his length. He followed her over the edge, thrusting in to the hilt one last time, coming deep inside her as lightning bolts of pleasure shot through his body.
She collapsed against him, her cheek pressed against his shoulder while she drew in long, deep breaths. Aftershocks of a cataclysmic orgasm rippled through his body as he tilted her head and kissed her lips gently.
It wasn’t over. It was far from over. He’d barely done more than whet his appetite for her, but he released her lips, trying to ignore the way his body was already revving up. New ripples of desire were making him hard again and he hadn’t even left her body yet. He’d thought that having his way with her would ease his overwhelming need, but it hadn’t even taken the edge off.
But he had to give her a break. The strange connection made him keenly aware that while she was reeling pleasantly in the aftershocks of an earth-shattering orgasm, her body also ached from his rough ministrations. If he didn’t let her go now, he’d be fucking her senseless within seconds.
Reluctantly, he withdrew from her body, the movement making him grit his teeth against the urge to plunge back in. But as he lowered her feet to the ground, her abdomen rubbed against his cock and her lips left feather-light kisses across the planes of his chest.
He clenched his fists at his sides, but he knew there was no sense in fighting; the battle was already lost. It had been foolish to have thought otherwise. He reined it in long enough to grab her arms and move her backward toward the bed. That was the gentlemanly thing to do, wasn’t it? If he was going to fuck her senseless, at least let her lay down for it? He could feel that she wasn’t done with him either and he almost bent her over to take her right there. But he could also see the way his fingers digging into her arms hurt, and he did the only thing he could, pushing her away.
She stumbled back two steps and the backs of her knees bumped against the low mattress. She lost her footing and sat down hard. He knew he should leave. It had been difficult enough to battle the beast for dominance once, but to continue to struggle was a dangerous game.
Still, he crossed the distance in a single stride and towered over top of her, breathing deep, seeking some semblance of control. She reached out for his hand and it was comforting to see she was still completely engrossed, too, but at least for her, there was no way she could physically harm him.
And then she swooped forward, using her hold on his hand as leverage, and took the tip of him in her mouth. Oh god, he was wrong. The effort to keep himself restrained scorched every fiber of his body. He was burning from the inside out in exquisite torture. His hands clenched—hell, every muscle in his body was clenched tight—against the desire to thrust forward, which he couldn’t do without forcing his cock down her throat.
Thinking as fast as his muddled brain would allow, he opted for the lesser of two evils. He grabbed her arms and shoved her flat on her back, pulling her to the edge of the bed by her ankles. He lifted her ass up off the bed to meet him and drove in to the hilt. And he knew right then as her walls clenched him tight that twice would never be enough. Three times…four times…no.
It would never be enough.
Chapter 6
Claire felt the steady rise and fall of his breathing beneath her cheek, though she knew he wasn’t asleep. Every inch of her body ached, but she didn�
��t care. It was a miniscule price to pay for what she’d just experienced.
The connection between them had eased some, as if it had revved up and relaxed along with their arousal. It was far from gone though, the same way the desire for one another had far from dissipated. Just a few moments of calm, like a smoldering fire in the minutes before a new breath of oxygen brings it to full blaze once again.
It was different now, though; clearer. From the first time he’d touched her, it had been more intense, as if it were a vision more in focus than any sight she’d seen before. And so she knew exactly what he was talking about when he inclined his head to look at her and said, “Tell me.”
Her body stiffened automatically; it was accustomed to lies and secrets, not opening up to anyone. But she could do this; she wanted to do this. Why she wanted Noah to know the truth was a mystery even to her, but she suddenly wanted it desperately.
“I was born in 1914,” she began, pausing to see how he would respond to that.
“Would it be inappropriate of me to say you’ve aged well?” he smiled, seemingly unperturbed by this revelation.
“And when were you born?” she asked back, curious since she knew absolutely nothing about how a dragon aged.
“1476.”
What was she supposed to say to that? Here she was thinking she was ancient, and he was several centuries older than her.
“I guess I should be saying the same to you then, shouldn’t I?”
“Maybe, but we’re talking about you, remember?” he teased.
She smiled back, but leaned up and propped her arms against his chest. “My parents died on January 12, 1920. They drowned when the SS Afrique sunk not far from Olonne, France.”
“I’m sorry, Claire.”
She nodded, but pushed aside the sadness that came with the thought of her parents’ death. “I was sent to live with my uncle—Uncle William—the only living family member I had. I don’t think he was pleased at first, to be saddled with a six-year-old girl when he was just starting out in his career, but he tried to make the best of it. He intended to enroll me in a boarding school, but I refused to go, and so, not knowing what else to do, he took me with him. We traveled all over—Egypt, India, Africa, Scotland. I wasn’t always allowed to go with him to dig sites, but usually he let me come because I was good about staying out of the way.”
She was silent for a moment. Of course she wanted to tell him the rest, but years of keeping silent made for a difficult habit to break. And yet, she wasn’t afraid to tell him, she just had no idea what to say. It wasn’t something she’d ever rehearsed. Finding no pre-written script, she waded in the best she could.
She told him about the rock with the strange glow, the haze that developed and the strange things that began to happen. And she told him how she’d spent her life ever since trying to track down whatever it was she touched, realizing only hours ago that the Creag Bruadar had anything to do with it.
“Why?” he asked simply.
“Why, what?”
“Why have you spent so much time searching for it?”
“In hopes of undoing it, of course.”
He was silent for a moment, but she could feel that he was not pleased with her answer for some reason, though she couldn’t see exactly why.
“I hated being able to…see so much more than everyone else, Noah. Not just see it, but feel it. And nearly a century of never touching people…of never being touched…it isn’t the same with you as it is with most people,” she confessed shyly. “I don’t know why it’s different with you, but usually it’s…painful. And everyone I knew kept aging so fast…and I didn’t. I haven’t aged a day in more than eighty years. I still looked the same when my uncle died as I did when he published his first major article. I’ve been alone for a very long time.”
“You’re not alone now.”
She was about to reply with some glib comment about his never-ending string of female conquests, but something stopped her. He wasn’t joking, and he wasn’t only talking about this moment, either. But as tempting as the thought was, she couldn’t negate the fact they’d known each other for such a short amount of time. He would eventually grow tired of her. It was inevitable for a man who could have any woman he wanted—and did on a regular basis.
“You stopped aging when you were in your early twenties, right?” he asked, drawing her back to their present conversation.
“Yes.”
“And you see people in a way others can’t? You see deeper?”
“Yes. Why?”
He was probing for something, making sure dots were connected.
“It’s like touch transfers pieces of you and them?”
“Yes, but…”
“I don’t think you can undo it, Claire,” he said with a certainty she could feel came from past knowledge. “I didn’t know whether I should tell you or not, but I think you have a right to know, and you may not find out on your own.”
“I have a right to know what?”
“You’re what is known as a Venefica Eis. It’s Latin, and loosely translated, it means ‘enchantress.’ No rock made you this way.”
“You can’t possibly know that. I touched that rock, and soon after, that’s when I started to see things. I’m sure of it now.”
“It’s possible something about that rock sped it up, but it didn’t cause it. Nothing ‘caused’ it. You were born this way, Claire, but it usually lies dormant until one starts to approach adulthood. For some reason, whether it was the rock or something else, you simply developed your gift faster than others.”
This wasn’t happening. He couldn’t be right. He didn’t know her, so how could he possibly know what she was or how she got this way? But he was so certain.
Still touching him, she could feel that his knowledge came firsthand; she could almost see an image of the young woman. A thrill ran down her spine, thinking that she might finally have the answers she sought, and she wasn’t the only one, but she squelched it quickly. There were no guarantees, after all.
“You’ll never age; you’ll never get sick,” he said matter-of-factly. “And you’ve believed that your gift is a passive one, but it isn’t. You have no idea what you’re capable of, Claire.”
“I don’t understand. You call it a gift, but it’s not.”
“It’s a gift that takes time to develop. Your parents should have been the ones to help you learn to use it, but they were taken from you. But when you hone it, you won’t just see what a person feels or what they’ve done. You’ll be able to see what they’re going to do. And you’ll also learn how to segregate it from your own thoughts and emotions.”
He paused, but she could tell there was more.
“You don’t just see into them, Claire. Your gift allows you to do so much more. You can settle your own emotions into any human, turning them away from any number of evil things.”
It was just too unbelievable, wasn’t it? But she could see he wasn’t lying. “Where do these Venefica Eis come from and how can they do so much?”
“There is an ancient myth that the Venefica Eis were created as the ultimate peacekeepers, to keep humans from committing the very atrocities they have,” he told her easily. “Some of them started to take advantage of their power, though, using it for their own selfish gain instead, and they were hunted. It wasn’t easy, since they are likeable by nature; they’re mesmerizing creatures, but humans employed the help of other beings, and thus brought the Venefica Eis to near-extinction. It’s nothing but a myth, though, and it’s difficult to know what truth to gleam from it.”
Likeable, mesmerizing creatures? Did that really describe her? And if they’d been brought to near-extinction, what was the likelihood she happened to be one of the remaining few?
He smiled knowingly, as if he could tell exactly what she was thinking. “Since you stopped aging, everyone you’ve come in contact with has liked you, haven’t they? And you’ve been picked out of a crowd more times than you can count?”
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But if it was true and people were only drawn to her because of what she was…
“Then you’re only here because—”
“No,” he cut her off before she could finish the thought. “It’s different, Claire. Your gift gives you sway over humans, not dragons. I don’t know what this is, but I can tell you it isn’t just because you’re a Venefica Eis. You and I…the connection between us isn’t the same as it’s been with other people, is it?”
“No, it’s nothing like it.”
Her head was swirling with all the things Noah had told her; things that had the potential to completely change the way she thought about herself. And it was too much to process all at once.
She forced her thoughts elsewhere, and it didn’t take them long to latch onto something else; a thought that had been lingering in the back of her mind since she’d woken up in Noah’s bed.
“I want to see you,” she said, arousal tingling through her veins.
He was silent, but he knew what she meant. His eyes met hers for some time until he finally nodded. He seemed reluctant to get up, to put any distance between their bodies, but he did, and she immediately regretted asking. But he grabbed his pants from the floor and shrugged into them while she went to follow suit. It didn’t take long for her to realize her clothes were in shreds; what Damon hadn’t destroyed, Noah had ripped off her in his hurry to get her naked. She wondered if she shouldn’t just lunge for him and banish all thoughts of going anywhere but back to bed, but he opened a dresser drawer and tossed her a long-sleeve, button-down shirt from it.
“Don’t worry. We won’t be going anywhere you’ll be seen,” he told her when she stared down at the shirt in her hands dubiously. “If you don’t cover up, though…”
The heated look in his eyes told her what he meant. She slipped into the oversized shirt and followed him out the door and onto the boat’s deck. He seemed to be taking great care not to touch her and she was taking equal care not to think about the floating hunk of metal beneath her feet.