Eventually the car stopped outside a gated driveway.
“Hey Brains,” I whispered to Quentin, “how much you wanna bet there’s a fountain?”
He snorted. “Taking on your wager would be a gross error in judgement on my part.”
I shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Inside the gate, a brick driveway curved along a hilly path. There wasn’t much to see with all the hedges. And the sunlight was just about all gone.
When the car stopped and we stepped out, I saw the fountain. It was a lot like the ones we’d seen back home, but this one looked older, and instead of fish or mermaids, this one had ugly little gargoyles on it. To each his own.
I grabbed the bags and followed everyone inside. The entry was big, with a vaulted ceiling and exposed wooden beams. It had the feel of an old castle. There were big, dark paintings of people wearing fancy clothes on the walls. But it was the fireplace that was the center of the room, with a giant mantel and furniture arranged all around it.
“First thing, will be dinner,” Hans said.
Those were words I always liked to hear.
The air was heavy with the smells of food. There was yeast and grease and meat. There was that herby scent that reminded me of the stuffing Mom cooked on Thanksgiving. My mouth watered.
“Go ahead and leave your luggage,” Hans said. “We’ll get you settled in your rooms after we eat.”
“Okay,” I said, dropping my bags. Food first was always a good decision.
Hans led the way to another big room that was all table. A fire roared in a hearth on the far wall. On top of the long table were huge serving dishes filled with all kinds of foods I couldn’t wait to try, even if I didn’t know what they all were.
A woman went right for Taylor, squeezed his arms in her hands and kissed both of his cheeks. She was shorter than Hans, with thin lips and squinty eyes. Her white hair was pulled back in a tight bun, and her loose gray dress ended mid-calf. She had buckles on her black shoes, like a pilgrim, and her face was as soft as Hans’s was hard.
Taylor kissed her back and smiled wide at her.
“This is my wife, Leonie,” Hans said. “Leonie, this is Ariana West, Slade Rouland, and Quentin Phillips.”
“A pleasure to meet you all,” she said. “Please pick a seat. Let us eat while dinner is hot.”
Sounded good to me.
Leonie and Hans sat at the ends of the table. I took the closest seat to where I stood, between Hans and Quentin. Taylor sat across from me and started chatting again with Hans in German.
Leonie and Ariana seemed to hit it off. Quentin chimed in here and there.
I was left without social responsibility. I was grateful. I took large helpings of everything before passing the dishes around to Quentin on my left.
There was lots of meat—sausages, chicken, beef. Each one had a different sauce or seasoning. There were potatoes and pretzels and Brussels sprouts. It all looked very fancy the way they were plated on the serving dishes.
With a mountain on my plate, I dug in. Everything tasted even better than it looked.
“You should get some recipes,” I said, and nudged Quentin’s arm with my elbow.
He made a noise that either meant that he was going to or that he was offended. I couldn’t tell.
A server came through and added wine to the glasses. She asked me a question, but I just blinked. I didn’t know German.
“She’s asking if you’d like wine,” Hans said.
“Ah. Yes, please.”
Hans rattled off something in German to the maid, who smiled back and poured some wine in my glass.
“This reminds me of when Taylor first began to learn German,” Hans said.
“Do we have to tell that story?” Taylor’s shoulders dropped.
Hans smiled wide, mischief swirling in his expressive eyes.
Ariana looked down at her lap. “Excuse me,” she said. “I have to take this call.”
I watched as she walked from the room, wondering who had phoned. I hoped it wasn’t Maisie about Princess Needleclaw. No, I reassured myself. Everything was fine. If something was wrong, she would have called me first. I checked my phone. No calls.
“Has Taylor told you about how we met?” Hans asked, looking between me and Quentin.
“No,” Quentin said. He set down his fork and turned.
I kept my attention on Ariana, who paced in the other room. Something was wrong, but I couldn’t hear who was on the phone over the noise in the dining room.
“Just wait for us,” Ariana whispered. “We’re in Berlin. Whitesong is more capable, Richard. We have an agreement. And you need a dragon to catch a dragon.”
My muscles tensed. My pulse throbbed in my neck. It was about my dad.
“He can’t kill them if they keep their distance,” she said.
With the way Quentin and Taylor tilted their heads, I knew that they were listening too. Hans and Leonie didn’t seem to notice. It was a good thing, because Ariana’s conversation gave away too much about the shifter world.
Fortunately, Ariana was too quiet for human ears to pick up.
“On his first day at the Wentuffel, Taylor was approached by a man,” Hans said. “This man was known to all the others on the staff. We called him Dieb, for we did not know his true name.”
“Dieb means thief in German,” Taylor said.
“But at the time, Taylor did not know a word of German,” Hans said.
“You will not send anyone else,” Ariana whispered in the other room. “You will let me handle the dragon.”
Taylor stiffened in his seat, a forkful of sausage halfway to his lips. I looked from Hans to Leonie. I knew they couldn’t hear her, but it was instinct to check. I caught Taylor’s eye, nodded. Everything’s fine, man, I tried to say with my eyes.
He gave me an imperceptible nod and focused his attention back on Hans.
“It was a test, watching how he would handle Dieb. The man returned weekly, each time with a new plan to attempt to steal the same piece.”
“A ceramic urn,” Taylor added. His voice was dry. He didn’t like this story.
“Dieb shoved Taylor before reaching for the urn,” Hans said.
Ariana returned to the table, wringing her hands together as she walked. She was tense, but she gave me a look that said she was confident. Everything would be okay. She sat and took Taylor’s hand.
“Taylor didn’t trip. He didn’t falter. He tackled Dieb to the ground.”
“Here it comes,” Taylor said.
Hans’s smile widened. “It turned out Dieb’s newest strategy was to bring along a taser. The end of which he used on—”
“Me,” Taylor said. “A lot.”
“The point of the story,” Hans said, “is that I liked Taylor right away. Our man here was shocked over and over by Dieb, yet he never gave up. That is the kind of man I wanted at the museum. So, I decided to teach him the German he needed so that—”
“Next time I’d know when someone yelled ‘Dieb,’ they meant thief. And when they yelled ‘Waffe,’ it meant weapon,” Taylor said.
I chuckled along with everyone else, but when I looked at Ariana, her face was clouded. Closed off. She was worried.
And if she was worried, then I was worried.
There was a bunch more talking and eating, but I’d lost my appetite. Me. I could hardly believe it myself. I needed this thing with my dad to be over. I didn’t want to think about him anymore.
Leonie showed us our rooms, and Taylor stayed downstairs with Hans. When my head hit the pillow, my eyes closed tight. I only hoped I could get some rest, and not dream.
Chapter Eleven
Ariana
I woke up in a bed that wasn’t mine, in a room that wasn’t mine. It took me a moment to remember that I was in Germany, and I remembered the job ahead of us. A feeling of dread settled in my stomach. Koenig wanted to change the game, change the rules. No fucking way. We’d come out here to do a job, and I wasn’t going t
o let that asshole renege on me.
Germany smelled different than Connecticut. It held a weight to it—stone and earth. Heavy buildings as blocky as the language. I wished we could stay here, visiting with Hans and his sweet wife, Leonie.
Curling on my side, I thought about Marc. He would have liked it here. He always wanted to take me backpacking around Europe, but then we’d gotten involved in the Lotus War and put off plans of traveling.
I didn’t regret a second of the time Marc and I had spent together. I only regretted the things we’d never gotten to do. My eyes pricked with tears, which I wiped away.
I hadn’t really had a big sob session in a while, which surprised me. I’d been pretty distracted with work lately, though. And now this trip. Thinking about it, the last time I’d really cried had been before I’d met Taylor, Slade, and Quentin. Spending time with them somehow took the edge off of my sorrow. They helped me focus on looking forward instead of dwelling on the past.
I sat up, wide awake. Checked the time. One a.m. That meant it was...seven a.m. in Connecticut. Shit. I wasn’t even tired. I punched my pillow and lay back, wondering if any of my guys were awake, too.
My guys—ha. What would Marc say, if he knew I was interested in three guys at once? I had a feeling he would laugh and tell me to enjoy myself, but maybe that was just wishful thinking on my part.
Low voices reached my ears, so I got out of bed and padded across the braided rug that covered the hardwood floor. Cracking my door open, I listened again.
All was silent, and then Quentin’s voice, followed by Slade’s. I listened harder, wondering if Taylor was up, too, but if he was, he wasn’t talking.
Well, if I was going to be wide awake in the middle of the night, I might as well have company. I grabbed my cardigan from the back of the desk chair and wrapped it around myself to fight the chill and render my sleep camisole a little more respectable. Then I made my way downstairs.
The portraits hanging in the hallway stared down at me. They didn’t look judgmental, but curious, as if to say, What is a dragon doing in our house? I wished I could answer them, but not even I knew the answers.
It was kind of Hans to host us. Taylor had told me Hans insisted, wouldn’t take no for an answer. A smile warmed me as I made my way down the stairs. Hans was a good man. It was just another sign that Taylor was a good man, too. One of my dad’s favorite sayings was, “A sign of a good person is the goodness of his friends.” The little piece of wisdom had held up in my experience through the years.
By the time I reached the middle of the staircase, Slade and Quentin went quiet. Then, softly, Quentin’s voice reached me. “Ari?”
He’d never called me Ari before. My chest felt lighter and tighter all at once. I liked it. “Yeah,” I said.
“I smelled apples and cinnamon. I knew it was you.”
I fought a blush. I couldn’t smell myself. The fact they seemed to have honed in on my scent was endearing. They noticed because they cared. I cared about them, too. Slade smelled like metal. Taylor smelled like hazelnut. Quentin smelled like peppermint.
I rushed the remaining steps to the living room, where a fire was blazing. A real fire, not the gas kind I lit in my office and penthouse. It crackled, and the flames went in all different directions and all different shades of orange, yellow, and white. I stared for a moment, mesmerized.
“Would you like something to drink?” Quentin said.
I turned, startled. “Yeah, that would be great. What are you guys having?” I sniffed the air. “Whiskey. I’d love some.”
“Rocks?” Quentin asked.
“Just straight, thanks.”
He poured and I took the glass from him, shivering when our fingers touched. And to think, when I’d first met him at Hiber-Nation, I’d thought we could go into the woods and fuck away the attraction.
Ha.
I took a sip and saw Slade on the large sofa, spread out like a giant. He held a glass of whiskey in one hand, too, with both his arms spanning the back of the sofa.
“Can I sit?” I asked.
His light brown eyes looked gold with the reflection of the fireplace. “Plenty of room,” he said.
Slade was one of the gentlest men I knew, despite his size and strength. But right now, the way his gaze was locked on me, he looked like a predator.
Tentatively, I sat on the edge of the couch, no longer sure if I should have gotten so close to him. In the strange firelight, in this strange house, with a strange job on the horizon, I didn’t feel certain about much at all.
But then Slade’s big arm came around my shoulders, tugging me gently back so I reclined against his chest.
And all seemed right in the world again.
“You know,” I mused aloud, “if I were a cat, I’d be purring right now.”
Quentin sat in a chair next to the fireplace, and his blue eyes gleamed when he smiled. “You do look utterly comfortable.”
Slade’s chest rose and fell as he breathed, and he absently rubbed my arm. His hand was warm through the fabric of my cardigan.
It felt so normal to sit here with the two of them. I took another sip of whiskey, felt the pleasant burn of it. “Where did you fly after you shifted the first time?” I asked.
“The mountains north of where I grew up,” Slade said. “Once I knew I could shift, I told my mom and she drove us up to the mountains. She waited with the truck so I could try my wings. It wasn’t that hard, I found.”
I squeezed his hand and looked over at Quentin. “And you?”
“Cape Wellsworth, in the woods.”
“That’s your family’s place in Maine?” I asked. Everything felt heavy and warm. I sipped my whiskey and watched Quentin, at the way his eyes locked on mine.
“That’s the place. My brothers wouldn’t come with me, but it didn’t matter. Like Slade, I could figure my own way.” Quentin nodded at me. “How about you?”
“I shifted a few times before I tried flying,” I said. “Not because I was scared...but because I didn’t want my dad to think I was going to leave him like my mom did.”
Slade’s arm tightened around my shoulders.
I took another sip of whiskey and said, “Finally, he told me I needed to find my wings and fly. He said he knew I’d find my way back. He’s a good man.”
“He sounds very honorable,” Quentin said.
“Yeah. He is.” I looked down at my glass—all my whiskey was gone.
“More?” Quentin asked.
“No, I better not,” I said. A pleasant buzz had taken hold of me, and already my inhibitions were lower. I kept picturing a quick swivel on the sofa so that I could straddle Slade’s lap. Then kissing him, rubbing my cheeks against the stubble on his face while Quentin watched from his chair by the fire. I kept to my spot on the couch, but it was hard to do.
“You smell good,” Slade said.
Shit, my arousal was evident. Sometimes it sucked being around other shifters—my emotions and reactions were too easily sensed.
“Is that just for him,” Quentin asked, “or is it for me, too?”
Another bolt of desire flooded my system.
“You smell even better now,” Slade said, his voice a steady rumble.
Quentin came over and plucked my empty glass from my fingers, then set it on the little end table. He sat on the couch on my other side and kissed the corner of my mouth.
Slade cupped the back of my head and turned me to face him. “I can’t stop thinking about the roof,” he said, before capturing my mouth with his.
Next to me on the other side of the couch, Quentin gave a sound of surprise, but then his hands were on my shoulders, pulling down the sleeves of my cardigan, his fingers blazing a trail of heat over my skin as he went. Slade continued to kiss me, his tongue exploring my mouth in a delectable way. I was surrounded by metal and peppermint and the cloudy, musky scent of male dragons.
Quentin slid his hand over my neck and into the top of my camisole. He cupped one of my brea
sts, rolling the nipple between his fingertips. I arched back against him, pressing into the contact, as Slade’s kiss muffled my moan.
“I wonder if you can come like this,” Quentin said, continuing to tease my nipple. “Have you ever done that before?”
I shook my head. “No,” I said, gasping. “I’ve never tried.”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind finding out if she can.” Slade flashed a wicked grin over my shoulder at Quentin, then returned to my mouth.
I clung to Slade’s shoulders, scarcely able to breathe as Quentin brought his other hand around. Kneeling behind me, he cupped both of my breasts and tweaked, pinched, and rolled my nipples.
Even though I’d never come from just having my breasts played with before, I felt ready to combust right here on the couch. The room felt a zillion degrees, and I couldn’t stop rubbing my legs together, trying to relieve the pressure building up in my core.
Quentin kissed my neck, his lips warm. He stopped pinching and tweaking my nipples and instead feathered his fingers over them, light touches that had me arching toward his hands, needy for more contact. He clamped his teeth over the spot where my shoulder met my neck, holding me in place. If he wanted me to come from just his touch on my nipples, why had he stopped?
Slade’s tongue delved into my mouth and I reveled in his taste, in the sensual feel of his hands locked on my hips. Quentin’s touches were faint on my breasts, barely there. But suddenly, they were all I could focus on.
I pulled away from Slade’s kiss and gasped. Sharp shocks of pleasure sparked through me, pulses of heat moving from my nipples, straight to my clit, and back again. The orgasm was short, but powerful.
I slumped back against Quentin, surprised. Slade leaned forward to kiss the corner of my mouth, then Quentin turned my head to the side so he could kiss me, too. I reached back for the edge of Quentin’s shirt, wanting to feel the ridges of his abs beneath my palm, wanting to move my hand farther down so I could grip his cock and Slade’s at the same time.
Something sounded on the stairs, and all three of us froze. Had we woken up Hans or Leonie? Embarrassment made my face hot—how rude would it be to get naked in the living room of our gracious hosts? How badly would they judge me for being with two men at once?
Dragon Unbroken_A Reverse Harem Dragon Fantasy Romance Page 7