Kenna smiled. She couldn’t help herself. “I’m pretty damn certain I’ve fallen in love with you too, Dr. Hayes. Although I’ll make you sleep on the sofa if you come home with a speeding fine.”
Rick’s dimples flashed. “Deal. Now let’s get you inside so I can make love to you. Long, luxurious, wicked love, after which I’ll fuck your brains out and then make love to you again. Is that okay?”
“Perfectly.”
Rick grinned. “Glad to hear it. After we’ve done all that, you can tell me how you know Tyson Conley. Something tells me, however, it has something to do with wings, scales and Sera’s lifetime obsession with reptiles.”
Kenna’s smile stretched wider. “Deal. And yes, I suspect it does.”
Rick pulled a smug face. “I thought as much. He’s way too good at cooking a barbeque.”
She laughed, leaning into his body. The action bumped her wounded shoulder against his arm and she hissed as hot pain lanced through her.
“Let me look at that, babe.” Rick was pushing the baggy black shirt away from her wound before she could stop him. Impatient frustration ate at her. She didn’t want to waste time on a scratch. She wanted Rick inside her. Now.
“It’s nothing,” she murmured, trying to pull away.
But he wouldn’t let her. His eyebrows creased together, his fingertip dancing over the torn gash with gentle confidence. “This is going to need stitches,” he said, and Kenna couldn’t help but smile at the professional tone his voice suddenly took. “And some—”
He quieted abruptly, his gaze fixed on her injury, a calm stillness falling over him. His nostrils flared, his jaw clenched and, as Kenna watched, he closed his eyes and pressed one palm flat against the wound.
“Ri—”
His name didn’t even finish forming on her lips. A wave of heat radiated through her shoulder, as hot as molten lava and as pure as the fire of true rapture. She wanted to cry out, she wanted to scream. The smell of burning flesh filled her nose, white pain filled her head, a climax began to build between her thighs, thick and potent and powerful—and then it all vanished.
Gone.
She looked at Rick, her heart hammering against her breastbone, her breathing shallow and rapid, her shoulder…
Kenna frowned. She snapped her stare to her wounded shoulder, her eyes widening when Rick slowly pulled his hand from her flesh.
“Well fuck, eh?”
His laughed exclamation couldn’t drown out her stunned shock.
Her shoulder was healed. Rick had somehow, without medical equipment, sealed the wound with his hand alone.
And the Deities gave him the ability to heal her…
She looked up at him, his words whispering through her head. He’d healed her. With just a touch, he’d healed her.
A soul-deep awareness blossomed within her, teasing licks of a life she’d once lived with the very man holding her. Her dragon purred and flexed, bathing in the warmth and joy those licks awoke.
Rick studied her shoulder, a long, thorough inspection before lifting his stare to her face and cocking an eyebrow. “Looks like I can charge four hundred bucks an hour now, doesn’t it?” He snaked his arms around her waist, pulling her back to his body. “How do you fancy spending the rest of your life with a filthy rich vet?”
Kenna laughed, pressing her hips closer to his. “I don’t need a filthy rich one. You’ll do just fine.”
He chuckled. “Glad to hear it. Never been one for ostentatious wealth.” His hands worked their way down the length of her back and beneath the loose waistband of her stolen camouflage pants, his fingertips brushing the swell of her ass cheeks.
Little ribbons of delight unfurled through Kenna’s core and she pressed herself closer. That she’d been foolish enough to try to deny herself this man made her head spin. That she’d been deluded enough to believe it possible made it spin some more. From the second she’d seen him, smiling at her from behind the wheel of his pickup, his blue eyes shining with roguish charm, his dimples creasing his cheeks, his voice playing with her senses, she’d known her fate had been sealed.
Their fate. A lifetime together. A lifetime already spent together. And if the old lore about Druids was true, that lifetime would be long.
She was completely, utterly okay with that.
Rick’s lips found hers, his kiss searing. And abruptly short. “Oh, and one more thing,” he said, sliding his hands down her ass until he cupped her cheeks completely, his expression no longer smug but boyishly hopeful once again. “What are the odds of you taking me for a ride one night?”
Kenna laughed, dragging her own hands down his back, over his hips until she tugged open his fly and wrapped her fingers around his very hard cock. “About as good as the odds of me riding this in the next half hour.”
His dimples flashed. “That good, eh?”
Kenna nodded. “That good.” She squeezed his thick shaft once more. “Now take me inside before I arrest you for public indecency.”
Rick’s lips curled into another grin, the same grin as the first he’d ever given her, a grin that said, “I’m sexy and charming and will rock your world.”
Kenna’s belly flip-flopped. How right that grin was.
Eyes twinkling, he lowered his head to hers and brushed a teasing kiss over her mouth. “Will you cuff me if I don’t?”
She nodded. Once.
He chuckled. “Well, in that case…” And with one fluid move, he yanked her shirt over her head, dropped to his knees and captured her right nipple in his mouth.
Kenna threw back her head, buried her fingers in his hair and held on, a deliciously scorching heat razing her willing flesh as the rising sun bathed her in golden light.
Damn, being a dragon shifter had never felt so good.
The End
Preview the next book
Tigress and the Dragon
Fire Mates, Book 3
Lexxie Couper
Chapter 1
“So this is Chicago,” Ryan Conley murmured, letting his gaze slide over the dimly lit, crowded bar he’d found himself in.
All of the tables were occupied, mainly with couples in varying stages of “getting to know each other”, and the small square of polished parquetry that passed as a dance floor was packed with bodies writhing against each other to the sensual sounds of the jazz band to his left.
The perfect place for a traveling dragon shifter to chill for a few hours.
Lifting the bottle of Miller to his lips, Ryan took a sip. He’d been in the U.S. of A for three weeks now—in an attempt to escape the craziness caused by his brother, Tyson, back in Australia—and he had to admit, American beer wasn’t half bad.
He’d tried a different brand in each state, Blue Moon in Nevada, Shiner Bock in Texas, Sam Adams in New York and now, here in Chicago, Illinois, Millers. It didn’t have quite the kick a Tooheys Blue back home had, but it did the job. Cooled his throat, tempered his thirst, and gave him a nice little buzz if he had more than a few.
He wasn’t having more than a few tonight. Tonight he was going to find himself a nice warm, soft body to dance with, maybe play a little tonsil hockey, partake in a little mutual feeling-up, and then, after the band had packed up and the bar had closed, head back to his hotel room alone and take care of his needs with his hand.
For some reason over the last few days, he’d found himself in a state of perpetual semi-arousal. He’d considered letting any number of the willing women he’d met during his trip tend to the urge, but something about the rising heat in his body didn’t feel…controllable.
Better a quick wank alone than run the risk of turning into a walking, talking, groaning barbeque when he climaxed. One of the more inconvenient aspects of dragon-shifter sex: igniting in blue fire when a truly soul-shattering orgasm claimed you. Something like that was hard to deal with if the other participant of sexual congress wasn’t a dragon.
Also fairly fatal to them as well.
“Buy you a drink?”
A low female voice on his right caressed Ryan’s senses, slamming his heart up into his throat. The smell of honeyed sulfur filled his every breath. His body grew hot and motionless, a statue of molten steel wrapped in an inferno of prickling heat. And yet at the same time, he’d never been colder, like he’d been encased in a glacier of ancient ice.
What the fuck?
The urge to shift into his dragon form lashed at him. He resisted. Just. Another wave of heat razed his body, a blistering caress that seemed to flood his cock with rigid fire. Christ, he was in agony. An agony more pleasurable than any he’d experienced before.
Pain and fire and pleasure and ice…
Ryan’s chest squeezed tight.
“One drink?” the woman beside him said, a seductive laugh in her voice.
No, not the woman: the dragon.
The owner of the voice was a dragon shifter.
An inferno engulfed Ryan again, an exquisite onslaught of pain and pleasure.
It wasn’t just his heart beating fast and his body burning up. His dick was growing thick and hard in his jeans. The desire to fist his hand in the woman’s hair and take possession of her lips with a savage kiss surged through him in a tsunami of hot lust. The need to fuck her mouth with his tongue as he sought out the junction of her thighs with his—
Mating fire? Shit, are you experiencing the mating fire? Is the woman beside you your—
Ryan ground his teeth, killing the unsettling question. He needed to shut this down right now before it got out of hand.
He wasn’t in the market for his Fire Mate. No siree. There wasn’t a hope in freaking hell he was ready to be mated for life, regardless of whether it was fated destiny or not. Screw that. Or not screw that, as the case were.
Keeping his stare on his beer, he fought the hungry inferno demanding he turn to the woman and claim her as his. “Got one, thanks,” he pointed out, giving the Miller bottle a jiggle.
Just as he didn’t need to look at her to know she was a dragon, he didn’t need to look at her to know she’d slipped onto the bar stool beside him. He could feel every move she made in his very core. It was intense.
Ryan didn’t do intense. Ryan did flippant, laid-back, casual fun.
“You sure?”
His whole body reacted to her question. His dragon reacted to her, period.
That hungry fire licked through him, from his groin to his chest and up to the back of his throat, growing more insistent, more impatient. His scalp crawled, as if alive with a million fire ants. His balls throbbed.
That same need to crush her mouth with his, to own her pleasure and to burn up in it, rushed through him again.
He ground his teeth and shook his head. Damn it, he wasn’t going to succumb. He wasn’t. Casual bonking with a dragon was always wild fun, but something about the way his body and his dragon were reacting to the woman beside him screamed the complete opposite of casual.
And if it wasn’t casual, it was something far more significant, and Ryan wasn’t in the market for significant.
But if she is your Fire Mate…you’ve got no choice in the matter. You know that. If the woman beside you is your destined mate, the one you cannot ignore, reject, or deny, the second you make physical contact with her the clock starts ticking and you both need to consummate the relationship before things get—
“Dance then?”
A low growl rumbled deep in Ryan’s chest—his dragon making itself physically known—and he stiffened. All of him stiffened. Including his already semi-stiff dick. It stiffened all the way to an engorged pole straining against the imprisonment of his jeans.
Fuck.
He should have stayed in Australia. He should have stayed put and dealt with the fallout of Tyson being spotted in dragon form.
Fuck. Again.
“One dance,” the woman said, leaning toward him.
Her scent—delicate and heady at once—filled his breath and, incapable of stopping himself no matter how hard he tried (and he fucking tried so hard it hurt), Ryan turned to face her.
The second his eyes connected with hers, the potent need to shift, to fuck, to mate, blasted through him. His heart quickened. His lungs turned hot, seared by the very breath inside them. His head roared with a cyclone of raw lust.
She studied him, still, expression unreadable. Her silver-blue eyes held his. If she was burning up in the mating fire like he was, she didn’t show it.
How could she not be overwhelmed by it? How could she—
“One dance?” she repeated, an accent not quite American, not quite anything else, giving the question a sultry lilt.
Ryan’s body reacted some more. At this rate, he’d shift inside the bar and claim her there and then.
Probably not the best thing to happen, given how packed the bar was. That and the fact the majority of the world still existed in a state of ignorance when it came to dragon shifters.
He couldn’t keep the moral high ground with his brother about exposure if he shifted here, now could he?
Maybe if he ignored her, she’d just go away and the mating fire would be guttered and he could just go back to drinking his Miller?
Drawing a deep breath, the woman’s intoxicating scent tickling what little control he had over his fevered dragon and hungry libido, he shook his head. “Don’t think that’s a good idea, do you?”
A soft chuckle slipped past her exquisite lips. “Actually, I think a dance is a very good idea.”
Despite his best efforts to return his attention to his beer, he ran a slow gaze over her.
She sat perched on the stool with artful sensuality, her long, sublimely toned legs exposed by an emerald-green leather mini-skirt, her equally sublimely toned belly bare thanks to the snug black crop tank that hugged her small breasts like a second skin. Her hair—a thick dark brown bob—brushed her dark straight eyebrows and jaw, as she smiled. Her lips were blood red and full and made him hunger to kiss her. Apart from the smattering of freckles on her upturned nose, her skin was creamy pale and exquisite.
“Nice ink,” he commented, trying to sound as calm and relaxed as she appeared as he took in the tiger preparing to pounce tattooed above her right hip.
“Thanks,” she said, trailing her fingertips over the tiger’s spine.
A shudder of ravenous need rocked Ryan. He bit back a growl, the urge to shift becoming almost impossible to deny. Staring into her eyes once more, he let out a ragged breath. “Think you should go now,” he suggested through gritted teeth.
Christ, if she didn’t… If she touched him…
She leaned closer to him. “Dance with me,” the woman whispered in his ear, her breath a warm kiss on his skin.
Ryan closed his eyes and let his head and shoulders slump forward.
Ah, fuck, who was he kidding? For better or worse, his Fire Mate was on the stool beside him; she was stunning, gorgeous and sexy as all hell; and they were going to have the most intense, incredible sex of their lives within the next twelve hours.
C’est la vie.
“Let’s go,” he said, straightening his shoulders and turning to face her.
As before, his heart quickened, his prick throbbed and a rush of molten heat engulfed him when he looked at her. She truly was gorgeous.
Christ, he hoped her soul was equally gorgeous.
“We need to find an isolated spot far away from humans ASAP,” he said. “Do you know of one?”
She blinked. For a split second, confusion flickered in her eyes. And then her pupils dilated and she let out a shaky breath. “We…we could just go to the alley out the back?”
Ryan laughed, fighting to temper the impatient, demanding heat spreading through him. He’d been horny more than once in his one hundred and forty-two years, but not this horny. Tyson had mentioned the mating fire was like being possessed by concentrated lust while being hurled into a volcano, but Ryan hadn’t really believed him.
Guess he owed his big brother an apology when he got back to Aust
ralia.
“The alley out the back?” he said, raising an eyebrow at the woman. What was her name? His brother had also mentioned something about dragons being able to hear their Fire Mates’ thoughts when the mating fire began, but at the time, Ryan hadn’t really been paying attention. Of course, the whole conversation had taken place over a hundred years ago, and Ryan had been checking out two very lovely human women practicing yoga on the beach as his brother talked. In fact, hadn’t he responded to Tyson’s info-dump with an incredulous, “Why the fuck would you want to hear their thoughts?”
Another apology he owed the bastard, it seemed.
What was her name? He concentrated on her eyes, seeking out her thoughts…
De…Dea…Desi…D…D…
Nope, he wasn’t getting anything much yet. Was that because they hadn’t touched? Kissed? Exchanged saliva? Man, he really should have paid more attention when Tyson was doing the whole “sex talk” thing. Of course, what little brother listened to his big brother when said big brother was in pretentious lecture mode?
The woman studied him, her expression enigmatic. “Why not the alley? It’s big enough for you to shift in, if you want.”
Ryan frowned. “For me to shift in? What? You planning to ride me away from here?”
She threw back her head and laughed. The sound detonated a raw hunger in the very core of Ryan’s existence. If he’d still doubted she was his Fire Mate, his soul’s reaction to that laugh would have ended it.
He hadn’t anticipating finding his destined mate this trip, but found her he had. Now they had to figure out how to proceed. After they found somewhere isolated and—
“Of course I’m planning to ride you,” she said, smoothing her fingertips along the top his thigh.
Kaboom. Just like that, Ryan was on the cusp of shifting.
She’d touched him. She’d slid her fingers up his leg and his dragon was surging to the surface, ready to take her, claim her, brand her as his, and fill her with—
“Oh fuck!” she whispered, reeling back from him, her eyes wide, her lips parted. “Wh-what…what was that?”
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