She who is born of fire she who is born of flight she who is born of…
The babbling thought made fuck-all sense but Rick didn’t care. He had to claim her. Now.
“Rose?” His receptionist’s name sounded more like a yelp in his throat. She sat behind the front counter, and Rick was thankful for the fact it was chest-high. If it weren’t, Rose would be getting a damn good look at his trapped erection. “Rose, I need you to drive Mrs. Beaumont home.”
The command—for that’s what it was—tore from his throat in a strangled growl. Rose’s eyebrows shot up. “You don’t want me to print her paperwork first? Get her payment info and all?”
Rick shook his head, refusing to let himself look at Officer Mackay and the still-hugging Mrs. Beaumont. Not until we’re alone. Not until we’re alone.
She who is born of fire she who is born of flight she who is born of…
“We’ll bill her later,” he ground out, heart smashing hard against his breastbone. “After you see her home, take the day off. I’ll take care of the remaining appoint—”
Rose shook her head before he could finish. “You don’t have any. It’s Saturday, remember? I’m only here because of the emergency.”
He blinked. Saturday? How had he forgotten what day it was?
She who is born of fire she who is born of flight she who is born of…
“Come along, Mrs. Beaumont.” Rose’s voice sounded as if it was coming from a distance, and Rick frowned. His head felt fuzzy. He felt hot. Sucking in another desire-drenched breath, he watched Rose cross to Mrs. Beaumont and curl her fingers around the elderly woman’s upper arm. “Let’s get you home, shall we?”
Rick’s breath grew short. Shallow. From the corner of his eye, he could see Officer Mackay but he couldn’t look directly at her. Not yet. Instead, he kept his focus on Rose. If he looked at…
She who is born of fire she who is born of flight she who is born of…
…the other woman…
…Druid’s dragon…
…it was game over.
Dragging Mrs. Beaumont away from the officer, Rose shot him a look over her shoulder, her expression telling him loud and clear she thought he was insane. She knew Rick well—she’d been his receptionist for close to ten years now—and had seen him at work with more than one unattached female pet owner, but the way she was looking at him now said one thing.
Hitting on a cop? Really?
If only he could tell her he had no choice.
Need her need she who is born of fire she who is born of flight need to claim her need to mount her need to…
With a smile at Officer Mackay, and a quick smirk at Rick, Rose led Mrs. Beaumont, still gushing her thanks to Barney’s saviors, across the waiting room. Rick stared hard at them, his heart slamming faster and harder in his chest as they neared the clinic door.
Closer. Closer.
The door swung open, the small metal bell attached above it dinged with inordinate volume once, twice, and then, with another smirk over her shoulder at Rick, Rose pulled the door shut behind her.
“Oh boy.”
Officer Mackay’s soft exclamation, barely more than a whispered breath, sank straight into Rick’s chest. He turned toward her, not even remotely knowing what he was going to say.
And was driven back a step as she slammed into him.
Her lips crushed his as she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her hands in his hair, balling them into fists then plunging her tongue into his mouth.
The kiss was savage. There was no control, just raw, ravenous hunger. Her tongue slid over his, mated with it. Her teeth nipped at his lips, his chin, his jaw. She bit his earlobe, lashed her tongue into his ear and then claimed his mouth again.
It was the most untamed, uninhibited kiss Rick had ever experienced.
Christ, it was amazing.
He raked his hands up her back, snared her no-nonsense ponytail in a tight fist and yanked her head backward. She let out a moan, her hips thrusting against his as Rick’s mouth assaulted her throat. His cock strained against his jeans, nestling against the softness of her mound. Her police-issue belt dug into his waist, her walkie-talkie drilling into his hip. He didn’t care. Not when she was making such raw sounds of lust as he kissed and sucked on her throat. Not when her hands scraped at his chest, searching for his shirt buttons.
He pulled away a little, just enough to grant her fingers access to his collar. She fought with his shirt, growling low in her throat. Rick heard the soft pop of a button tearing from material, the sound sending carnal jolts of heat into his groin. She was wild. Fuck, she was wild and savage.
His cock pulsed at the thought, aching for attention.
It would have to wait. Rick wanted more of her first. Releasing her ponytail, he grabbed her police cap, pulled it from her head and tossed it aside, all the while covering her throat, her jaw, her lips in frantic kisses. Her flesh tasted like smoke-infused honey. It was intoxicating.
He dragged one hand down her back again, squeezing the firm curve of her backside as he hauled her sex harder to his. She moaned at the punishing contact, her nails scraping over his chest, around his shoulders.
A rational part of Rick’s mind told him this was insane. He told the rational part to fuck off, yanking the hem of her shirt from her trousers and shoving his hand beneath the stiff polyester. Her skin felt like hot velvet under his palm, and fresh jolts of tight need sank into Rick’s cock.
Christ, he was so fucking hard.
And she was so damn perfect. Reclaiming her mouth—he couldn’t seem to get enough of it—he let his hand explore the dip of her waist, the ridges of her rib cage. When his fingers found the swell of her breast, contained by a bra as no-nonsense as her ponytail, she groaned into his mouth and ground her sex against his rigid dick. His head swam.
“This is…oh God, this is so…” she moaned against his lips, her nails dragging over his chest until her fingers captured his nipples. “Touch me, touch them. Now.”
He didn’t need to be begged. He wriggled his fingers under the cup of her bra and squeezed the heavy perfection of her breast.
“Oh yes!” she cried, her nipple beading under his palm. “Squeeze it, pinch it.”
Exquisite agony throbbed through Rick’s cock at her commands. He yanked his hand free of her bra, silencing her shouts of dismay with a kiss nowhere near gentle. He fucked her mouth with his tongue, taking utter possession of her sweet lips as he hooked his fingers at the edges of her collar and tore her top open.
She threw back her head, begging him to kiss her tits, suck them, bite them. Rick shot her face a quick look, the feverish pleasure flushing her cheeks making his heart miss a beat. God, she was gorgeous. Stunning in her raw sensuality. A creature of pure response and unchecked desire.
And his. All his.
Dropping his gaze to her chest, he snared the thin straps on her shoulders, pulling them down her arms along with the sleeves of her top, lowering the bra to rest just beneath her breasts.
“Yes!” she cried, her hands fisting in his hair, tugging his head down. “Suck them now. Hard, please. Hard!”
He did, closing his lips around one tight nipple and sucking with fierce pressure. She bucked against him, her nails scraping over his shoulders, across his back, back to his shoulders again. “Bite it,” she growled.
Rick caught the puckered nipple with his teeth, rolling it back and forth before sucking again. She whimpered, a keening noise he’d never heard before. Wild and feral and thoroughly feminine. Christ, he could die a happy man listening to the sound. He wanted to hear it again.
He switched to her other breast and, once more, Officer Mackay filled the waiting room with low, throaty moans of pleasure. But it wasn’t enough for Rick. He wanted to taste all of her.
Returning his lips to her mouth, he reached for her belt.
She stopped him with a hard shove.
He staggered back, his stare flinging to her face, his throat growing t
ight at what he found there.
Crazed lust filled her eyes. Her lips were parted, glistening from his kiss. Her cheeks were pink with a high flush. Her breasts rose and fell with each heaving breath she took, her open shirt and bra hanging from her body as erotic a sight as Rick had ever seen.
Oh Dian Cécht, I have found…
The nonsensical thought didn’t finish. It couldn’t. Not when Officer Mackay released her belt and stripped her trousers from her legs, taking her underpants with them. Not when she stood before him half naked and completely exposed.
Rick didn’t hesitate. He destroyed the tiny distance between them, hauled her off her feet and spun to face the reception counter, depositing her on top of it.
She gasped, the granite surface no doubt cool on her pussy. And gasped again when Rick wrapped his hands around her knees and yanked her forward, enough to slide her wet sex to the counter’s edge. He flicked her a quick look, reveling in the passion blazing in her green, green eyes.
“Rick…” she murmured, shifting on her perch. Anchoring her fingers around the counter’s edge and lifting her hips, spreading her thighs wider.
It was all the request he needed.
He draped her legs over his shoulders and thrust his tongue into her sodden sex.
“Oh…y-yes…God…oh that’s so…”
Her whimpers turned to cries, her cries to groans. Rick lapped at her labia, her clit. He sucked on her folds. The louder she groaned, the more he tortured her with his tongue and teeth. Her clit grew fat against his lips and he sucked on it with greedy want. She bucked against his mouth, her booted heels driving into his back. It hurt, a gloriously wonderful pain of raw lust and demanding need. He continued, laving his tongue over and over the button of sensitive flesh. Flicking it, biting it. Sucking and flicking it again.
And with every swipe and thrust of Rick’s tongue, Officer Mackay begged for more, begged him to claim her, fuck her. Begged him to keep going, keep going, her cries growing wilder, her hips bucking higher, higher—until a shudder racked her body. Until her legs contracted around his shoulders and she came, her cream gushing over his lips and tongue and chin.
“Oh God, Rick, yes…yes…”
Rick’s cock strained against his fly, the metal teeth of the zipper digging into his engorged length. If he didn’t sink into her pussy soon, he was going to blow. And even if he did manage to get inside her, he wasn’t going to last long. He was feverish with his need for her. He was on fire. He was burning up.
Smoothing his hands up her waist, he lapped the last of her juices from her folds and straightened, gazing at her pleasure-etched face. “I need to fuck you now, hon. I can’t hold on any longer but I have to tell you, I haven’t got a condom and I don’t want—”
Her throaty chuckle stopped him. “Condom?” She hooked her legs around his hips and jerked his groin hard against her sodden folds, her eyes hazy with pleasure. “Since when do dragon shifters use condoms?”
Rick’s heart missed a beat.
He blinked, a frown knotting his forehead. What did she just say?
“Dragon what?”
Officer Mackay laughed again, her legs grinding him even harder against her spread sex. “Ha ha, very funny. Now fuck me, Fire Mate. Before I shift and destroy your—”
Fire Mate. The word sank into Rick’s brain like a piercing finger of blinding light. Fire Mate. “What’s a—?”
The living electricity sizzling through his veins turned to molten heat and, in a rush of color and sound and smells, Rick was assaulted with vivid memories. Memories that weren’t his but the—
The Druid’s dragon she is beautiful join with me dragon join with me and I shall…
The force of the memories hit him like a wrecking ball. His memories. His, but not his. The Druid’s memories.
The Druid? Who the fuck is the Druid?
He staggered backward, breaking free of the officer’s hold, his eyes wide, blood roaring in his ears.
The Druid’s dragon she is beautiful join with me dragon join with me and I shall…
“Holy fuck.” He gaped at her, his heart well and truly punching its way into his throat. Druid? Druid? Holy Christ, was that the source of his mysterious power? Was he a Druid? In some former life? Was he—
“Rick?” He saw confusion twisting the pleasure in her face. “Rick, what’s going on?”
He swallowed. The tingling in his body reached his head, the memories lashing at him even as the throb in his still-engorged cock grew stronger. “Did you say dragon shifter?”
The confusion in Officer Mackay’s face turned to something else. Something close to terror. “Oh my God. Oh my God, you’re not a—”
She didn’t finish. Face bleaching white, she flung herself off the counter, snatched up her trousers, her belt and gun and ran to the clinic’s public toilet on the far side of the waiting room.
The door swung inward with violent force and, with a bang louder than a gunshot, slammed shut just as violently behind her.
Rick stood stock-still, every fiber in his body thrumming. Fresh memories smashed into him, wave after wave. Memories of his own hands, his own voice performing ancient rituals of life and death. Memories of the mystic energy of those rituals pouring from the earth into his soul.
Memories of cosmic spiritualism.
His heart hammered faster. His groin throbbed harder.
“Holy shit.”
A Druid. He was a Druid? Well, had been a Druid? In a former life?
“Holy shit,” he repeated on a murmur.
He dragged his hands through his hair, staring at the closed toilet door. He was a reincarnated Druid and he’d just given head to a—
Dragon.
“Fuck a duck, the Asterix comic books did not prepare me for this.”
Chapter 3
You can’t stay in here forever, y’know.
Kenna ground her teeth, pacing the tiny washroom. She refused to lift her head, knowing what she’d spy in the mirror above the basin if she did. She wasn’t ready to see the shame in her eyes. She sure as hell wasn’t ready to see the disgust.
How could she have done that? Gods, how could she have confused some kind of…of natural human attraction with the mating fire? Was she that out of touch with her other existence she couldn’t tell the difference between a chemically induced physical response—even a mind-blowingly hot one—and a fated bonding of mythical proportions?
No, it was more than just thinking Rick Hayes is cute. It had to be. You felt—
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Kenna. You heard him. He’s not a dragon.”
The words burst from her in a snarl. Her cheeks turned hot with fresh shame, her stomach knotted and, deep within its prison, her dragon roared with frustrated rage.
Kenna ground her teeth. Horny. The dragon was still horny. Still convinced the man outside the toilet was not only a dragon shifter, but her Fire Mate.
At the thought, a ripple of hot, hungry lust sheared straight through her core. She bit back a growl. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be. She was controlled. She was disciplined. She didn’t let her dragon out anymore. She didn’t think like a dragon anymore.
You just did, Kenna. You just gave yourself utterly and completely over to the mating fire without fight or hesitation.
Kenna’s stomach rolled. Her sex throbbed. She had. Decades of refusing to succumb to even the most basic urge to fly—to fly, for God’s sake—and she’d just gone and completely surrendered to the ridiculous, disgusting behavior of a rutting beast. Triggering something that couldn’t be stopped.
Oh God, she was pathetic and weak and—
She dug her fingernails into her palms. No. She’d turned her back on that side of her existence, thank you very much. She’d turned her back on it and she wasn’t succumbing again. None of that primitive, instinctual carryon. None of that animalistic, base behavior. None of the ridiculous shifting forms that made her vulnerable and exposed her to shit she didn’t want.
She was a cop, not a flying damn lizard. She was a woman with free will, not a beast incapable of finding a partner without Fate and freaky genetics. Not a mindless creature instantly bound and irrevocably joined to some stranger the moment they swapped saliva.
She wasn’t like that. She wasn’t. That’s what her sister had been, and look what happened to her. Betrayed by her Fire Mate, her own damn kind, and given to the Extraho Venator. Handed over to the dragon hunters by the dragon who was meant to love her beyond comprehension or condition.
Kenna wasn’t going to let that happen to her. And if the guy outside with the oh-so-clever tongue and cheeky grin and wicked dimples thought otherwise, he was in for a damn surprise.
She stopped pacing, snatched her Glock from where she’d dumped it in the basin, pulled it from its holster and cocked the hammer. “Right.” She swung to the door and yanked it open with her free hand, not even bothering to dress. “That’s it.”
Rick Hayes’ mouth fell open as she stormed toward him across the waiting room. Possibly because she still wore nothing on her bottom half. Possibly because she was leveling her police-issue weapon at his chest. Possibly both.
Kenna didn’t care. Or stop.
Not until she was inches from where he stood, gaping at her.
She rammed the muzzle of her gun under his chin, snaring a fistful of his collar to stop him from fleeing. “Tell me who the fuck you really are, Dr. Hayes, before I blow your goddamn head off.”
“Err…”
Kenna let out a choked roar. “Don’t ‘err’ me!” She drove the gun harder into his chin, balling her fist tighter on his collar. Disgust surged through her, but for Rick Hayes or herself, she didn’t know. “I want answers and I want them now. You have until three. One…”
His mouth worked. Sound, however, didn’t.
“Two…”
“I really don’t—”
She narrowed her eyes, ignoring the exquisite fire licking through her veins, the eager throbbing in her sex and the hungry cry of her dragon at his close proximity. Damn, was that an erection she felt bumping against her stomach? “Three.”
How to Love Your Dragon Page 3