Naked Dragon

by Annette Blair

  “What noise?” How dare she insult his beastly huff? Greater dragons than she had feared him. He had a mind to give her a roar that he did not control.

  “You got the fire started,” she said, arms full of wood, basket of tinder dangling from one. “What did you use, a blowtorch? It looks like it’s been burning for hours.”

  He brushed his nose, to be sure that no smoke lingered. “I have the knack.”

  “You must have been a dandy Boy Scout. Where did you learn to ride a horse bareback? And what’s with the war cry?”

  “Do not all boys play at war?”

  “I guess they do.” She set the wood in a large black ring, tall as her, beside the fireplace. The basket, she placed on the far side away from the fire. “I don’t have brothers. I’m the family disappointment,” she said. “Not a boy. I broke the family line, I did.” She wiped her hands against each other. To remove the wood dust? Or the memory of her failure?

  He needed books and a computer to research the new feelings and words she tossed at him today. “I have friends who are like brothers,” he said to cheer her.

  “My friend Lizzie is like a sister, and her husband, Steve, is like a brother. The three of us met in kindergarten. You’ll meet them when the weather clears. Are you hungry? You must be. You rode hard.”

  “Riding Toffee is like riding the wind. All I needed was . . . wings.” He had nearly said my wings. “I am hungry.”

  “I have a gas stove so electricity’s not a problem. But first you need clothes. The basement will be dark by now, and frankly we left too much debris for it to be safe to go down for your bag. Let me get you an old farmhand’s clothes. He was a big man so they should fit, though the jeans will be short.”

  She left him to dress, but when he came back to the kitchen, she tried not to laugh. The jeans were short, the waist big, but he kept them up with a belt that gave him a tail up front, like his man lance, and it hung there long and stiff like a reminder. The shirt fit his shoulders, but it did not have the length to be tucked in.

  McKenna worked in the kitchen, slicing something round and white into sticks.

  “What is that?”

  “A potato,” she said.

  While she was slicing, a sudden pain shot through his hand as McKenna shouted.

  His inner dragon rose up and his hand ached where hers bled, between the thumbs and pointing fingers on their left hands.

  “Why’d you yell?” she asked, holding a towel on her hand. “I’m the one who cut myself.”

  “Instinct. I saw what you did and I hurt for you.”

  “A big brute like you, squeamish?”

  “Define squeamish.”

  “Scared of a little blood,” she explained.

  Him? A dragon who hunted prey, tore it to bloody shreds, and ate it raw? “Hardly.” He might be amused if his dragon magick had not just gone so wrong. He never experienced the physical pain of another. He sensed emotions, like his brother dragons’ and Vivica’s, though not McKenna’s, which she must keep deeply buried. But to feel her physical pain? He’d thought it was his imagination when she bit her lip and his ached, but this? There was no mistaking this.

  She washed her hands, dried them, and put something from a “tube” on the cut before she applied what she called a plaster and went back to slicing. After she put the potatoes in a deep pan of liquid that crackled and steamed on the stove, a scent rose from it that made his mouth water. The best earth smell, so far.

  He grabbed a crackling potato stick, and snatched his hand from the pan. Fast.

  “Bobbing for French fries?” McKenna shouted. “Are you crazy?”

  “American food is new to me.” He covered his skinless fingertips with his other hand, and the pain receded as he healed. Afterward, he still hurt more where McKenna cut herself than where he burned himself. He wished he could heal her without revealing his magick.

  One thing he now knew: he might feel her pain, but she did not feel his. “I guess that was stupid,” he said.

  “Totally.” She tried to take his hand, but he turned away from her to put plasters on his fingertips, so she could not see the new, pink skin.

  She set the table. “Are you always that impetuous?”

  “I live dangerously.” Vivica had told him so, but it would not do to keep quoting his acclimator. Human employment agencies did not normally house people seeking jobs. If he said too much about Works Like Magick, McKenna would wonder why he spent so much time with Vivica, though it had not been enough. Vivica had warned him about leaving before he finished his lessons.

  True, he should have listened, but he planned to read before bed every night, all night if he had to, and learn as much as he could. He came here sooner than he should because of his connection to McKenna. His heart connection, he believed.

  She filled their plates, salted her fries, as did he, before he dove into them. “This is the best American food I have tasted.”

  “Thank you.”

  She cut into her meat. “I hope you don’t get sick of eating beef. I raise it. Chickens, too, but plucking’s a pain.”

  “I like beef.” Better raw, but he could get used to it this way. He had sometimes roasted his prey on the fly, in order to keep it from running away. Vivica’s eating lessons served him well as he wielded his pixie weapons.

  They talked, her about her farm. In the way she explained her dream for her family home, he finally understood her plans for her bed-and-breakfast. Her quest—the one he must make his own—encompassed fulfilling a deathbed promise made by her mother to her grandmother, righting the wrong of being born a girl, and honoring her heritage by keeping her home and land in the family.

  When they finished eating, and after she cleared the table, she handed him a cloth, showed him how to use it on the dishes she washed, and saw his tattoo.

  McKenna took his hand and turned it palm up. “That’s unusual,” she said. “It looks Greek, like two R’s back-to-back with a line in between.”

  “It is Roman, not Greek.”

  “Proof that you belong to some type of brotherhood or society?”

  He nodded. “A secret society.”

  She examined his face. “Within the law?”

  Bastian relaxed. “Yes. Ask Vivica.”

  “I might.”

  Once she let the subject go, an ease of spirit sluiced through him as he worked beside her. This feeling of contentment should not disturb him, but it did.

  He thought of Vivica’s huge feline, half tame domestic and half wild, like him. Did Isis hide its wild nature to keep Vivica happy? Or did keeping Vivica happy subdue its feral nature?

  Could subduing his alpha tendencies diminish his warrior strength?

  If so, he could lose his ability to fight Killian.

  Killian ate “tame” for breakfast.

  EIGHTEEN

  “Are you all right? ” McKenna asked.“Did you shiver? Maybe you caught a chill in that ice storm. An ice storm in August. How crazy is that?”

  Not a chill, he thought, concerned for his brothers’ and Andra’s sakes. Worry.

  After they finished in the kitchen, she tried to light a fire in her back parlor. Brick, beautiful, not with a hearth to cook in but with one to sit beside, the parlor fireplace had a wood-carved topper that made him go for a closer look. “This shelf is being held up by a sleeping dragon.”

  “It’s called a mantel. One of my ancestors carved it from an old oak tree that came down in a hurricane.”

  “Your ancestors liked dragons.”

  “I guess they did.”

  The mantel welcomed him in a way that enlarged his belief in Andra’s and Vivica’s magick. His belief that he belonged here with McKenna. “Amazing, as you say.”

  The room itself also radiated warmth, with a red sofa that he would like to sink into, McKenna in his arms, a high-backed chair of red and dark blue stripes, and a small, dark blue chair. The carpet in the middle had a splash of flowers in the same colors and made the room coz
ier than a cave.

  Home, it said, and welcome.

  McKenna struggled with the fire in her dragon hearth. He could have started it faster, but he liked watching her move.

  “I have another cure for your chills,” she said after she got a small flame going. “My mother swore by it. I’ll be right back. It’ll warm you to your bones.”

  She could warm him with her body, he thought, making his inner dragon raise its head, but he was able to fight his inner beast. Ah, like his inner dragon, his alpha drive slept when not needed. It would not disappear, he understood now.

  Of course, he also knew that his dragon would roar to life when he least needed it, during sexual arousal and especially during intercourse. He wanted no fight when his man lance was happy, but a fight was what he would get.

  Bastian sighed, lowered himself to the floor, and leaned against the blue-striped chair behind him.

  McKenna returned with glasses and a bottle of something dark and red, like blood, on a large, flat silver plate.

  “You’ll warm from the inside out, drinking this,” she said, setting the tray on the small table near them in front of the sofa.

  “What is it?” he asked as she poured, the sweet scent of the drink calling to him. Not blood but fruit.

  “It’s wine. Cherry Manischewitz to be precise, the sweetest wine out there, and the tastiest, as far I’m concerned. My mom loved it, too. It’ll make anyone with a sweet tooth smile and can be both medicinal and calming.”

  He would not refuse a bit more calm. “I am addicted to anything sweet.”

  “I know. You told me.” She poured them each a glass.

  Bastian took a sip and the taste did indeed make his sweet tooth happy. “This is like nectar from the gods.”

  “Didn’t I say?”

  Bastian refilled his glass while McKenna went to the kitchen.

  “Have you ever tasted key lime pie?” she asked, returning with two plates of green food.

  He finished his second glass of wine. “Never.” In his experience, green prey bore a pungent flavor and a kick like slime-jumpers in a dragon’s belly. True, this did not smell as bad, but he did not look forward to the kick.

  “You’re in for another treat.” She winked and his man lance twitched. “It’s tart and sweet at the same time.”

  Tart and sweet, like McKenna. “Good, because my sweet tooth is as big as a dragon’s tooth.”

  She sat facing him, and when she did, her ruddy swirled feline, still wearing its silly hat, curled in her lap. Freaky faery hopped on the silly-looking snack’s back, and when McKenna ran her hand down Jaunty’s fur, she sent Dewcup flying face-first into green slime pie.

  With a sucking sound, Dewcup freed herself and rose into the air, spitting slime and scraping it off her eyes, until she looked at him through wide rounds of blinking blue in a froth of green. “May it rot your innards as you swallow!” Dewcup snapped when she caught his amusement.

  Bastian coughed, and Dewcup’s chin came up. “Laugh and I will grind your man parts into dragon meatballs!” She flapped her wings in fury, splattering his face and clothes with bits of green glop. McKenna’s, too.

  He caught her watching him and sobered. “I apologize,” he said, knowing better than to react to a faery no one else could see. He poured himself another glass of wine and drank it right down so he would not have to answer questions.

  “You can laugh at my cat all you want. I do. Most don’t wear tissue boxes on their heads, though I don’t know how she managed to splash us with pie filling.” She checked her snack’s paws, then its swishing tail, and shrugged. “Guess she already licked them clean, and I don’t blame her.”

  “Nice cat,” he said, and by that he meant tasty-looking.

  “You called her a snack when you first saw her. I find that worrying. You stuck your hand in hot grease, and ate Popsicle sticks. What did you eat in your country?”

  Anything that moved? Best not say so.

  “Never mind,” she said. “I don’t want to know. First rule of the house: My cat is not for eating. She’s for petting, companionship, and sleeping at the foot of my bed.”

  “Lucky cat.”

  Bastian thought McKenna’s reaction to his words revealed a bit of surprised interest.

  Shaking her reaction almost visibly away, she, too, drank another glass of wine. “You may call her Jaunty,” she said, petting her cat, “if she’s agreeable.”

  “I would be honored.” He would feel foolish, but that was earth for you, and keeping McKenna happy counted for more than looking foolish.

  Dewcup recovered and, somewhat cleaner, made a beeline for the cat, whispered in its ear, and made it shake its head. Then the flutterbrat tweaked the poor cat’s whiskers till it meowed and paw-swatted his faery into the ashes. Could Jaunty see Dewcup? Or was that a lucky smack?

  “Cat,” Dewcup snapped. “Consider the battle lines drawn.” The flutterbrat made fast work of snuffing the glowing embers clinging to her clothes and hair, until she looked like a sorry bit of dragon bait. But like any other-worldly immortal, she would soon look like new. Having halted incineration, she chose retribution and climbed on the feline’s back to ride her the way he had ridden Toffee. Hard.

  Speaking of which . . . The more wine he drank, the more his man lance prepared for battle, and the more easily he could imagine sparring with McKenna.

  NINETEEN

  McKenna shook her head as Jaunty howled and disappeared around a corner. “I don’t know what’s gotten into her,” McKenna said, “but she seems to be having a good time.”

  She picked up her piece of pie and tilted her head at the faery shape in her piece. “Hmm. Looks like a big bizarro bug landed in it, but it got away, and I’m not wasting this.” She scooped away that section of green with her little finger, wiped it on the side of her plate, spooned some of the good stuff into her mouth, and made a noise he would like to hear while they tested his man lance. In the event his lance worked with a partner.

  “Hello?” McKenna called, pulling him from his thoughts. “Don’t you want your pie?”

  “Sorry. I got distracted.” He tasted it and liked it—a surprising new ambrosia from the goddess served with this earth-type nectar from the gods—though the pie’s name made no sense at all. “How do you get keys to look and taste like this? Aren’t they normally hard and gold and used for opening doors?”

  McKenna set down her pie, sounding like the owl that landed on him. Hoop. Hoop. Hoop. She held her chest, as if she had swallowed a gillybulb and could not control her mirth.

  Captivated, Bastian took the opportunity to observe her, while he imagined sliding his fingers along her body’s curves, outward and inward along every surface—no clothing necessary—to learn her and set in motion the process he believed would lead to mating. As to whether he should be mating with his heart mate, Andra had not said.

  Sticky question, that. Sticky sweet.

  He may not have been a human for as long as he lived as a dragon, but his mating instincts had returned full force. McKenna’s lips became another source of distress, or perhaps he meant interest, or both. He wanted them against his lips, his against hers, and against every other inch of her.

  With her presence, she called to his hands for touching.

  He sipped his wine and watched her over the rim of his glass. As much as he could not read her emotions, she must be able to read him, because she focused on him—like prey caught in his dragon claws. Their eyes met.

  Hers widened above her glass, but with trembling hands she set it down to lick her lips, and still their gazes held. She attempted to speak, failed, and straightened, bringing her knees up against her enticing front, her flowered dress touching the floor.

  She wrapped her arms around her lovely bent legs and stared into the fire.

  “I’m glad you do not wear a cape like so many in Salem,” he said in the way he would speak to a skittish colt, sensing that need in her to be gentled.

  She rega
rded him from the corner of one eye, lashes lowered. “Do you have something against witches?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Good, because I come from a witch.”

  “Ciarra, I know.”

  McKenna looked more closely at him. “How do you know?”

  “Vivica does, too. She told me. You both come from Ciarra, though Vivica inherited her magick from Ciarra’s brother.”

  McKenna refilled her glass. “It’s capes you dislike, then?”

  Bastian nodded and refilled his own glass. “Cloaks and capes, they hide too much. I like your clothes. They show your shape and make you look like a woman.”

  “You are such a man,” she said like that was a bad thing. To prove it, she inched closer to the fire and away from him.

  “I did not mean to make you uncomfortable.”

  “I am the boss.”

  “Yes.”

  He followed her lead and took up his pie to finish while the silence became comfortable and they finished the wine between them. The fire about burned itself out before McKenna grabbed a long black metal prodder and leaned forward to push the ashes to the back of the hearth for the night, giving him one last opportunity to admire her backside.

  “It’s time for bed.” She made an attempt at standing.

  His man lance prepared for duty. “Bed would be good.”

  “Help me, grunt. The room won’t stop spinning.”

  Bastian shot to his feet, grabbed his own head, and caught McKenna before she fell. “I’ve got you.”

  She made a merry, bubbly sound. “I can tell.”

  He walked her to her bed. Or she walked him. Or they walked each other, at least one of them tripping along the way.

  They had barely reached her bed when his knees gave out and they fell across it, arms and legs tangled. He might have tried to unknot them but McKenna reached for the buttons on his shirt.

  Taking that as a sign, Bastian reached for the buttons on her dress.

  Clothes flew in every direction, except for his shirt, which he immediately draped across his lap so as not to frighten her with his flaw while she pulled off his jeans. He pointed to her dragon-hardening globes, crowned by dark peaks and wide, rouge red edges, so beautiful they made his mouth water. “Breasts, right?”