Naked Dragon

by Annette Blair

  Bastian caught up to her at the back of the store. “McKenna, you’re shaking. Are you all right?”

  “Huntley made me another offer. It scares me that he’s so sure of himself.”

  “You should be scared. He has a black heart.” Bastian clasped her arms. “Listen to me. Stay away from him. I am not kidding. He is evil.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  Bastian herded her back toward the registers and, for once, she let him be the boss, appreciated it.

  “Why did you leave me?” he asked. “I looked around and you were gone.”

  “I ditched you because I didn’t want Huntley to know that I hired a strong and capable man like you.”

  “That makes sense. Tell me, did Huntley know that Steve was your contractor?”

  “Sure. They’re both contractors, and Steve had to take out a permit.”

  “How long after getting the permit did Steve fall off that roof?”

  “The next week. Is that Huntley writhing on the floor? What’s wrong with him? It looks like he’s having some kind of seizure.”

  Bastian shrugged. “He seems to have gotten some toxic, self-defense type smoke in his eyes.”

  Jock circled them, trailing a spiral of red celebratory smoke, saluted, and disappeared.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Bastian helped her put the cans of paint they bought in the back of the truck. “Until we met Huntley,” she said, “I enjoyed bargain hunting with you, but now I’m worried about Steve and Lizzie. Are you going to tell them what you suspect about Steve’s fall?”

  “Not until I have some proof for the insurance company.”

  “Good. I’d rather not give them false hope.”

  He followed her to the driver’s side to open her door, but pinned her against it instead, leaned in, and kissed her. Not quick, but openmouthed and hungry, his hand riding her hip, her side, then splayed against the edge of a breast, his thumb stroking too close. Not close enough.

  Kissed outside in front of God, general contractors, home-goods enthusiasts, and toilet shoppers.

  McKenna lost her breath. Sanity fled. She kissed him back, and by the time they were forced to come up for air, she could pretty much admit to herself that she was in trouble.

  “You are a good friend to Lizzie and Steve,” he whispered against her lips.

  And you are a good kisser, she didn’t say. “Is that why you kissed me?”

  “I kissed you because I wanted to.”

  “Because I’m good to my friends?”

  “Because you are you. I like everything about you. True, you are giving your friends a home. But I would not kiss you for that reason alone. I can move their furniture, by the way. I am strong.”

  “I know. You can ‘leap tall buildings in a single bound.’ You’re Super Dragon Boy.” She climbed in the truck and shut her door.

  “McKenna,” he said, climbing into the passenger seat. “I am a man.”

  And didn’t she know it. Her hormone level had volcanic eruption written all over it.

  He watched her with such intensity, she had trouble concentrating on the road. “Super Dragon Man, then,” she said, but her words came out in a telltale whisper of lost breath. Fortunately, he wouldn’t understand.

  She pulled into her favorite junk-food joint. “Think we have enough paint to finish the job?” she asked to change the subject.

  Bastian shrugged. “I hope not. I like to bargain hunt with you, but we will get to shop for other supplies, yes?”

  “You are so different from most men—oh, yeah, I suspect why, maybe. Anyway, wait until I take you to your first yard sale.”

  “Why do you think I am different?”

  “You know, guys who like guys and all that.”

  “I like Steve.”

  “You understand that he’s taken.”

  “Where? Where has he been taken?”

  “Up the aisle—a walk that ended with a big ‘I do’? I mean, he’s married.”

  “Good for him. I like Lizzie, too.”

  McKenna gave him a double take. She couldn’t help herself. “You make no sense to me sometimes.”

  “Ditto. Good word, eh, ditto? Wyatt taught me that.”

  McKenna chuckled and got out of the truck. Damned if she wasn’t heart-sunk and terminally attracted. Hot and getting hotter, though there wasn’t a shot in hell—talk about hot—of getting him, for so many reasons. “Welcome to Fried Harry’s. Best cholesterol factory in Salem.”

  “Harry has been fried like your potatoes? Should this not then be French Harry’s?”

  “Of course it should.” She didn’t know whether to leave or roll her eyes. “What do you feel like eating?”

  “I like corn dogs, Creamsicles, brownies, and cherry wine best,” he said, as they sat in a chrome-trimmed raspberry-and-peach plastic booth, “but I have learned the error of my ways. Creamsicle sticks are not for eating.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Wyatt was playing with craft sticks. They looked the same, so I ate a few. When he finished rolling on the ground laughing at me, he told me that they were not food. He taught me that pizza rocks and a lot of neat words.”

  McKenna chuckled. “When you understand the world of Dora and Diego,” she said, “you’ve spent too much time with the rug rats.”

  The waitress came to see if they were ready to order.

  “I am ready,” Bastian said, but he hadn’t picked up his menu. “I would like a Baloney Sunday, please.”

  McKenna and the waitress exchanged glances.

  “What?” Bastian asked. “Wyatt said I should try one.”

  “I’ll deal with the boy wonder later. Meanwhile, we’ll have the appetizer sampler with buffalo wings,” she told the waitress.

  “Why did she not look at you as if you are crazy? Buffalos do not have wings, McKenna. If I had an old nickel, I would show you.”

  She tried to explain the concept of recipe titles, also known as talking in circles, until their food came.

  Bastian asked for the name of each item and picked up a wing. “See? Too small to come from a buffalo.”

  “It’s a chicken wing. There’s not much meat on the—”

  Bones, McKenna heard breaking as Bastian chewed. The sound made her shiver worse than nails across a chalkboard.

  She looked around to see if anyone else noticed Bastian’s eating disorder, but the drooling females saw only the hunk du jour himself. She raised a finger to call her waitress. “Can you pack the rest of this to go? We’re running a little late.” Plus she was embarrassed out of her bleeping mind.

  On the way back to the farm, McKenna watched from the corner of her eye as Bastian finished the junk-food sampler, and she shivered in advance every time he picked up a wing. Every crunch made her wince. “Only boneless chicken for you from now on,” she snapped.

  “Do people put honey on chicken or beef?”

  “In some recipes, yes. Why?”

  “I’ve been craving honey. It used to be part of my daily diet.”

  “So that sweet tooth is inbred.”

  “Okay.”

  “How do you feel about water?”

  “It’s drinkable but not very sweet.”

  “No. Change of topic. We finally have a sunny summer afternoon. Let’s take a swim in my lake . . . with our clothes on,” she added. “I can’t, in good conscience, let you climb back up on that roof in this heat. Besides, you worked hard carrying everything we bought, a new luxury for me. It would have taken me ten trips at each store to get all those paint cans to the truck.”

  “I am enchanted by water,” Bastian said. He headed for the lake but stopped beneath a tree.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, reaching him, the drone of insects a reminder of the beauty in the day.

  He pointed upward, his eyes fairly glazing over with glee. “Honey.”

  “That’s a bee’s nest.”

  “That’s what I said.” He reached into the hive and pulled out a honey
comb crawling with bees.

  She ran. He didn’t. From a distance, with hands on her hips, she watched the gorgeous idiot start eating the honey, comb, bees, and all, while waiting for him to howl.

  “Don’t you want a taste?” He waved his prize.

  “You’re going to get stung!”

  “Nah.” He practically inhaled the honeycomb as the bees swarmed and charged. Yet he stood there, ignoring them, savoring his treat.

  As the bees began to disappear, and the hum died down, McKenna stepped closer, and closer, until she saw the carnage at Bastian’s feet.

  He licked his fingers and grinned. “Bees are allergic to me.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  Still shaking her head, McKenna shucked her shoes beside her unpretentious spring-fed lake and went in still dressed. “It’s freezing, probably from all the hail we’ve had lately.”

  Bastian stepped in wearing black boxers—bless him for the view. She appreciated his discretion. Most men would just get naked. But, frankly, she couldn’t bear to know what she was missing.

  Gorgeous, despite his scars, his bronze body looked as if someone tore at it with teeth, swords, claws, and pitch-forks at one time or another. And he didn’t have a tan line that she could see.

  He did, however, have a tattoo wrapped around his upper arm, and when he reached her, she circled him to see the whole of it. “You have a dragon tat starting on your right shoulder and curling around your arm. I guess we’re both hooked on dragons.”

  He tilted his head. “Hooked on, possessed by. Same difference.”

  “A sense of humor and a good kisser.” After that parking-lot kiss, she was more turned on with every minute in his company, shamelessly so. “The dragon tat is sexy.” Not to mention the naked muscles she’d like to explore. Small waist, tight butt, nothing left to the imagination.

  Up to her waist in water, which seemed to be warming, likely from the sexual heat she was generating, she took off her skirt beneath the water and threw it to shore, aware that if she were in her right mind, she would never have done it, Bermuda shorts or not.

  Was she in her wrong mind?

  This was more than a turn-on, much more, given the buzz of molten heat simmering her blood, making her dizzy, her treading water, him swimming around her, putting her in some kind of weird sexual trance, like a mating dance. Foreplay. No hands. “Something weird is happening to me,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I’m tingling, everywhere, with . . . hope, happiness. Joy. Elation. Uber-bliss. Like I’m on drugs. Hallucinogenic drugs. And the water is getting warmer.” She blinked and blinked again. “This is bad. I swear that I can see—okay, don’t have me committed, but there’s a tiny blue dragon hovering above you puffing purple smoke.”

  Bastian swiped his hand over his face.

  “Bastian? You’re supposed to be surprised.”

  “Water magick,” he said. “You’re in water with me, so my magick is flowing from me to you. I wonder if you will lose your abilities and forget about them once you get out of the water.”

  He might as well have been speaking in tongues. “Holy mother of pearl, is that Whitney’s flying Barbie? One of my hallucinations has butterfly wings and a buttercup hat.”

  Bastian waved Barbie away as if he could see her, too. “Dewcup, go take a nap in some clover, and Jock, go smoke-test the pig.”

  “Bastian?” McKenna said, swimming slowly, as if weighed down by doubt. “You said Dewcup. Whitney called her imaginary friend Dewcup when she gave her a thimble of milk. Who’s Jock?”

  Bastian came closer, clearly intent on calming her. He reached for her but she stopped treading water, stood, and stepped away.

  He raised his hands so she could see them. “Jock is smitten by you, and I do not blame him.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Purple is the guardian dragon smoke color for love. Jock is my guardian dragon.”

  McKenna couldn’t move, though Bastian approached her like an animal stalking its prey. Focused. Possessive. Hungry. “Are you planning to eat me?” she asked. “Because if you are, I’m okay with that,” which sounded wrong when her words echoed over the water.

  She shrugged. “I’m floating, but not on water.” On lust, maybe, and she was okay with that, too. She so would have sex with this man. She looked toward shore but didn’t want to go there, even though panic swirled along the fringes of her awareness, but not deeply enough to make her move away from Bastian. “What is wrong with me?”

  “You’re perfect,” he said.

  She laughed, not believing a word of it. “Your eyes are so violet. Darker than usual. Dilated. Ravenous. Like, if you had big teeth, I’d be lunch.”

  “You would be delicious, McKenna Greylock.”

  “You frighten me, Bastian Dragonelli, but I don’t want you to turn or look away from me. I know I should be worried about the blond pixie and the little blue dragon, but strangely enough I’m not, probably because I have you to protect me.”

  “Can I touch you?” he asked, his voice a caress skimming through her veins, bringing her womanhood to flower. A simple question, words she thought she’d never want to hear, yet she reeled with elation at hearing them from him.

  She wanted his lips, felt her own parting, saw him coming for her. They were both treading water now, getting closer until a kiss would be inevitable.

  “You’re gay,” she whispered, his breath against her lips. Warm breath. Hot. Hot enough to raise her temperature and steam her hair from the roots out, hair she had purposely not gotten wet. Too late.

  She shivered at the contrast between his heat, the warming water, and the cold air, as the temperatures met, crackled, and upped her lust factor to infinity. “Seriously, what are you doing? I thought you were gay.”

  “I am gay. I have been ever since I met you.”

  “Oh, great, I’m so undesirable that I turned you?”

  “What is wrong with being happy? Sometimes I don’t understand you people.”

  “No, gay as in you’re attracted to Steve. Men who like men, are, like, you know, gay.”

  Bastian’s head snapped back as if he’d been socked in the jaw. Awareness changed his expression to disbelief. He’d understood gay to mean the literal happy, she realized. Of course he had.

  “I am not that kind of gay. What made you think I was?”

  “Your concern about Steve. You touched his knees—for a long time, Bastian. Lizzie saw you. And you’re a painter and decorator.”

  Bastian stood, bringing her up in the water with him. “I touched my own back for a long time after I fell from the roof, remember, Kenna, to heal myself? I touched Steve’s knees to heal them. The fact that I love color should not influence your thinking.”

  “Shame on me for stereotyping,” McKenna said. “You really are a healer?”

  “I will look up stereotyping later, but yes, a happy healer. This is how happy I am,” he said, cupping her cheek in one hand, tracing her brows, her nose, the shell of an ear, the length of her neck with a finger, to her pulse, to the V of her blouse.

  At every new sensation, McKenna shivered, icy and on fire at the same time.

  Bastian slipped his hands beneath her shirt at the waist and skimmed his palms up her torso.

  “I should object,” she said, throwing her head back. “You’ll know my flaws after this.”

  “As you will know mine,” he whispered against her pulse, where he planted small biting kisses, making her shiver.

  With his thumbs, he teased her beneath her bra, and he drank from her lips, but not against her will.

  By the time he circled her nipples through her bra with both hands, McKenna thought she might jump from her skin. She unhooked it, slipped the straps off her arms, pulled the bra out through her cleavage beneath her blouse, and tossed it to shore.

  His head disappeared beneath the water, beneath her blouse. He popped buttons, literally and metaphorically, as he placed hot, slow kisses
from her waist upward. “I hope you can’t see under there,” she said. “Try to keep your eyes closed.”

  Bubbles rose and released his chuckle.

  “I hope you’re not laughing at my flaws. Ah, screw them, you feel too good for me to care. Oh, yes, go there.” With his lips near a nipple, she’d catch fire.

  When he closed his lips on her and pulled on an aching bud, she shouted with shock and pleasure.

  Bastian shouted with her, as if he felt the same rush.

  Not sex-starved or anything, not her. How embarrassing, and yet, she didn’t care. Not yet, anyway.

  She nearly came knowing they were sharing pleasure. “Keep doing that. Wait. How can you stay down there so long and not drown?”

  He resurfaced with a twinkle in his eyes. “I would appreciate making love to you without the comedy routine,” he said. “Yes, I have been doing my language homework . . . as well as my sex lessons.”

  “You did read the dictionary last night, didn’t you? What kind of sex lessons?”

  “On DVD. Instructional lessons. I’m a bit . . . rusty. And there was nothing better to do. From now on, you can only have enough wine to make you horny. I learned that word, too.”

  When she opened her mouth to deny her reaction, he closed his own over hers. Desire quickened and jarred her with the surge of an active volcano. Lava flowed through her veins. His, too, it seemed. She half expected the lake to take to boiling. His mouth was so hot. He was hot.

  The phrase making love had never made so much sense.

  His sex prodded her entrance, and she wished, despite being outdoors, that she was naked with this man.

  Something slithered against her and up her thigh. “Snake!” she screamed, taking a fast swim for shore. “Snake, snake, snake! Come out, Bastian, or it’ll get you.”

  He swam her way, his breath coming fast, but he stopped and stood up where the water met his waist and bent over double for a long time, his hands on his knees, while he took deep, deep breaths.

  When he straightened, he shook his head. “For one blissful minute, McKenna Greylock, I thought that snake was going to get you.”