by Kendal Davis
“Kat,” he said soothingly. He met my eyes with an unwavering confidence. “I know that you might not be ready yet. I won’t press you. But yes, I am sure of where I will be from here on out. I will remain at your side.”
Anxious to deflect the conversation from the emotional pit of intimacy that we were currently teetering toward, I changed the subject just a little bit. “Does that mean you have permanently given up your job as Captain of the Guards?” I looked down for a moment at my glass of wine. “I hope that won’t be something that you regret later. If you did it to be with me, I mean.” My voice trailed off awkwardly as I dug myself further into the hole.
Cobalt leaned toward me. “No, that’s not the way of it. I was always glad to fulfill my duty for House Caeruleus. It was my honor to hold that position, and I have held it proudly. But it was never the dream of my life. I was...Well, I was constricted by the way of life on my home world. It is hard to say it aloud, but I felt that I was always in my cousin’s shadow.”
“What with him being the Count and the ruler of your House,” I said dryly.
“Yes.” Cobalt nodded to me in thanks for the summation, but I could see that he did not want to pursue the topic.
“Family is just complicated, isn’t it?”
Still leaning forward, he reached out a hand to encircle mine. “Not the way you do it, my Kat. I have only admiration for the way you have taken care of your own.” As he spoke, he began to rub his thumb against my palm, tracing lazy circles. That, combined with the heat of the direct look he was sending me, threatened to make me faint with desire. I might as well just rip of my clothes here and now and admit that I wanted him.
Well, I wasn’t even wearing all that much, so it would be a fast move.
I could feel my bathing suit growing wet with the heat that was building up in my core. This moment, just this second, I was so close to tackling the dragon man who had taken up residence in my life. I wanted to sit in his lap, running my hands through his hair, and pulling his face closer until his lips met my hungry kiss.
The heat within me felt like flames creeping upwards. They began at my center, and they licked up until they enveloped my heart and my head, preventing me from thinking straight. I was on the precipice of falling so hard for him that I knew I would never recover.
Trust it.
Trust him.
I heard my own heart giving my head some welcome advice.
Then, as if the universe had heard my thought and wanted at some level to make me think twice, I heard a different, foreign voice in my head. It was the same low, ingratiating whisper that had crept past my barriers while I was swimming in the ocean.
He doesn’t even trust you enough to tell you the truth. He is lying to you.
I pulled my hand away from Cobalt’s strong, tanned fingers with a start. Why was I having these thoughts? It was as if my subconscious, maybe my smarter self, was trying to stop me from acting on the impulses of my libido.
Cobalt shifted in his seat, as if he had heard the voice too. That didn’t make any sense. Why would he be hearing my subconscious? I was losing it.
Blushing with my feeling of foolishness at having ascribed too much power to something that was just in my own head, I tried to move past the unfortunate moment. My tone was tinny after the mellifluous sound of the words within my head.
“Seriously, though, what’s in the letter?”
Cobalt shot me a curious look at my persistent rudeness in asking. He must have thought I had better manners than that, but I didn’t.
He spoke reluctantly. “I will tell you, although I still believe I shouldn’t. It is a letter from your creditor back on Roatán.”
Without warning, the bottom fell out of my world. My right hand lifted to my throat. “You can’t mean that. How could he have traced me to Miami?” I was trying so hard not to look around the room, but I felt as exposed as a minnow in the wide ocean without a friend. “No, wait. That’s not even the real question. Is it?”
Cobalt watched me with a grave frown. “You are correct. Anybody could have traced you to Miami. That is not a surprise. The real question is how he could have found out that you were with me here, at this club that is exclusively the province of dragon shifters.” He continued to watch me after he finished speaking. He knew I would ask.
And he would have to answer.
“Cobalt, you need to tell me this. Do you know who it is that has been after me? Who had me sign that awful contract all those years ago?” It was so hard to say the last part that I almost could not force out the words, but in the end, I did. “Do you know who wants to make me marry him, even against my will?”
“Almost.” Cobalt held up the letter. “He is a member of this club.” He paused, looking like he would rather tell me anything else in the world than these last words. “More than that, I believe he is in this room with us right now.”
My dragon bodyguard stood from his chair. No longer was he the easygoing, relaxed man who was happy spending the morning reading classic novels on the couch in a t-shirt. Now, he was a towering, powerful shifter, who looked as if he would break anybody who opposed him. He gave every indication that he would snap them like a twig.
As he rose, swirls of light began to form around his head and shoulders. He was almost glowing with the magic he was summoning and wrapping about himself.
He was more angry than I’d ever seen him.
Chapter 10: Cobalt
Every logical fiber of my being warned me to tread carefully. There was danger here, for Kat, if not for me. There was something at work that was deeper than I’d realized. We were uncovering the pieces of a plan laid many years ago, though I could not say the purpose of the plot.
Tread softly.
Learn your enemy’s weaknesses before you strike.
Those were the precepts of my life’s training. I was the Captain of the Guard of the Caerulean dragons. I was no boy off the street, to rush into a conflict without a plan.
Yet I could feel my passion spiraling, far outstripping the logical side of me. I had to look at this from a different perspective. My actions would not be what endangered Kat. I was not the one who was putting her life at risk. She was already in that dire position. She had been for years, since long before I met her. Why?
I would not be constrained by caution, or by trying to avoid making any missteps. Her life was already shadowed by whomever had been stalking her for five years. Whatever I did next would be what saved her. But I had to be bold.
I would do anything in the world to ensure her safety.
Even battling one of my own kind.
Kat was still seated next to me. She clasped my hand and looked up at me with an expression of wariness on her face. “Wait. Don’t go after him until you tell me more. Please. I need to hear this from you before you dash off to fight somebody.”
I looked at her, seeing not only her fear about her future, but also her need to put her faith in logic, in information. She was right. If I left her to hunt down her enemy, she would be all alone here, without any inkling of what was going on.
I sat stiffly in my chair, allowing my magic to dissipate. “I don’t know the whole story,” I admitted to Kat. “All I can say is that it is a dragon, and that this letter is written on club paper.” I proffered it to her, so she could see the stamp of our club and take from it the message that was encoded therein.
As Kat looked down at the paper, I took a moment to sweep my gaze around the large reception room. The dragon shifters who had been in here, with all their different colored cloaks forming a bright array of rainbow colors, were all leaving. Without being too obvious about it, they were rising from their seats and making their way to the rooftop, from which they would fly elsewhere.
All had seen my outburst, and felt the magic that I had summoned. My hope for stealth was gone now. Perhaps, though, I’d sent a warning that was just as valuable.
I caught the eye of my second-in-command here at the club, Safyr. He
had been sitting on a burnished leather couch, in relaxed conversation with a dragon I knew hailed from House Viridian. Safyr had been laughing uproariously at something the other man was saying. Now that I had brought my magic to light up the room, however, he no longer laughed. Instead, he quirked an eyebrow at me, one part wary to two parts ironic.
He wasn’t worried. There was nothing on earth that worried that playboy expatriate of a blue dragon, as far as I knew. He took on no responsibility, save the social tasks here at the club. He never visited our home world anymore, not ever. But he was good at his job here, and he was my friend. He would back me up in any fight, I knew that.
Kat, however, was visibly disappointed that I wasn’t about to point out to her exactly which dragon was our foe. She handled the letter on the club’s heavy, cream-colored paper with an uncertain touch, eventually letting it fall onto the table rather than hold it any longer. “So you don’t actually know which dragon it is?”
“I have a strong suspicion. Two dragons have begun frequenting the club far more often than they used to do. Do you remember that I said that some dragons cannot access the club entrance from the roof? There was a time that I would have thought that impossible. Nobody from our world would arrive here through any method other than flight. Yet there are now members who enter on foot, from the street. That is unheard of.” I paused to see if she was following me, and she nodded.
“You said they can still be members,” she said. “But why would somebody have that problem? Are there dragon shifters who can’t fly?”
I saw her narrow her eyes as she thought it through. She was remembering the same thing I was. “Yes, there could be,” I answered. “Just before we left Elter, there were two red dragons who came through the portal to your dimension while it was closing. Do you remember?”
She nodded vigorously. “Yes! And then when the portal shut down, they were…” A light of understanding kindled in her eyes.
“They were trapped in their two-legged forms.” I finished the thought.
Kat was gripping the armrests of her chair. At first, I thought she was trembling in fear, but then I realized that it was the kind of energy that can only be quenched by seeking deliberate confrontation. She was ready to go looking for her tormentor. She was eager to go into battle, even with a dragon.
I made a sign to her to wait, but I wasn’t sure if she was going to follow my suggestion. “Those two red dragons have set themselves against my House. It is all out in the open now. I wonder if they are stalking you as a way of getting at me politically.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” she corrected me. “This plot, whatever it is, goes back too long. It was five years ago that I signed the contract, apparently signing over my entire future without even knowing it. And years prior to that, my parents took on the original loan for the boat, from the same secretive creditor. Whoever this villain is, he has been targeting my family for so long that I can’t believe it has anything to do with you.”
I watched her as she put the pieces together. She was so calm, so logical in her purpose. I could easily see how she had been a successful owner of her own business. She had taken charge of her life when she was so young. Many humans were helpless at that age. Well, at all ages, if one was to be honest. Very few of them could match a dragon in wits.
Kat had always been the Captain of her own destiny. What a woman to rely on. She was a mate that I would trust with my life.
With the lives of our offspring.
As I leaned closer to her, my eyes focused on the softness of her lips. As she thought through the situation, she bit lightly on her lower lip. The pink curve of her mouth was perfection itself. Her lips called to me, just as I felt the draw of her spirit. Her body was tantalizing me.
I knew she had only her bathing suit on under her blue cloak. It was hard to stay focused on the problem at hand, when all I really wanted to do was to slip the cloak from her shoulders and peel the suit downwards until it rested on the floor. I wanted to run my hands down her body to her waist and pull her in to me. Then I would cup her ass in my palms and hold her hips against the hardness that was under my own cloak. I would...
Too late, I realized that she had stopped talking. She was sitting very still, staring at me with a peculiar expression on her face. She did not look pleased with me.
“Cobalt. Are you even listening to me?” She raised her eyebrows in an arch question.
“I am...I was.” It was hard to keep a straight face when I knew I’d been caught thinking about stripping the clothes from her skin and ravishing her.
Her frown was not playful. “What do you think this is all about? Is it a joke to you? I’m being stalked by a massive, scaled, flying creature, and you are sitting there leering at me.” She stood in a swift motion. “I’m ready to go now. You said the dragon shifter in question was here, but look.” She gestured around the wide open spaces of the club’s rooms. “There is nobody here but us.”
I took to my feet, wishing I could apologize to her and mean it. How contrite could I really be for thinking about how much I wanted her? “I know. The moment I stood up and began to gather my magic, the other club members left. I knew they would. It was a warning. Just as your creditor sent me one by letter. But I issued my warning to him with a little more style.”
Kat finally cracked a smile. “You did, I’ll give you that.” She looked as though she might be considering stepping closer to me, but she wasn’t sure where to put her hands. Or her arms. She shifted her feet, clasped her hands in front of her, then fidgeted with a strand of her long hair.
Perhaps my favorite thing about her was that she had no idea how gorgeous she was. I knew she had been something of a partier before I met her, but I harbored a suspicion that she still had no clue that the men who flocked to her were genuinely awestruck by her beauty. She thought that people liked her when she was putting on a show of being fun and high-spirited. I needed to find a way to tell her that I would always want her, no matter her mood.
Just when I was certain that she was going to demand that we go home, she chose another direction entirely.
“I wanted to ask you something,” she began diffidently. “You have told me that you spend a lot of time here in my world. Apparently in this very city. And then it comes out that you actually run a very snazzy business here. If this club is truly yours, you must be insanely rich here in this world, even without the luxury of having all your magic.”
I answered her with a small, upward twist of my lips. “Perhaps, my lady.”
“So where do you live when you are here? Other than crashing my life in my new condo, that is. Other than lying on the couch reading Jane Austen novels all morning.”
I smiled, showing my teeth this time. “I live here, in this building, of course. Didn’t you guess that yet?”
“I was wondering about it,” she said. “It did occur to me. So, the thing is, here I am worrying about being creeped on by somebody who thinks I owe him something. Somebody who is a massive, scaled, flying creature.”
I moved toward her, beginning to guess where this was going. “When, in fact, you couldn’t help but notice that I’m a massive, scaled, flying creature.” My breath was ragged with desire for her.
“Yes,” she gulped, as my hands came to rest on her hips.
“And perhaps if you want to know more about how such beings think, you might come to me?”
As if she had been wrestling with making a decision, and had finally reached the right one, she lifted her face to me. She shot me a gleaming, sexy smile. “Yes. Perhaps I should.”
My voice was a low growl. “And what, exactly, is it that you want to ask?”
She lifted up onto her toes. Her lips grazed mine. It was the briefest of touches, but it sent a jolt of electricity through me.
“I want to ask you to take me back to your place.”
Chapter 11: Kat
Cobalt and I did not speak again until we were in his apartment. We left the breathtaki
ngly perfect lounge of the club with our hands still linked. His fingers were intertwined with mine, sending quivers of excitement up my arm. Somehow, I couldn’t bear the thought of letting go.
He silently led me down a hallway to an elevator that was tucked into a corner. It was clearly not meant for the public. If he was the owner of the club, he might need to have private access at any time, so it made sense that he would have his own elevator.
I tried my best not to look too impressed. I was acutely aware that I was more at home on the salty, creaking deck of a boat than in a luxury building on a snooty private island. I didn’t want him thinking I’d never been on an elevator before.
This building was significantly fancier than the place we’d moved into when we arrived to Miami from Roatán, and that was saying something. Well, I had thought that the three of us were staying there, but it was beginning to sink in with me that Cobalt had a permanent home in this city already. He really had been acting as my bodyguard, staying with me to ensure my safety.
I had thought I was falling for a wild outlander dragon man from another dimension. Maybe those things were all true about him. But in addition to that, I was finding that he was a resident of my world too, a business owner, and a billionaire.
It was a lot to take in.
When we stepped out of the elevator, we were in his apartment. I’d never seen anything like it. The arched entryway led to a wide living room that seemed to stretch from one end of the building to another. The exterior walls were made up entirely of windows, each one looking onto a more glorious view than the last. I could see that beyond the windows lay a massive, wraparound balcony filled with easy chairs and sunlight. The scale was so grand that it made the more modest balconies of my own building look tiny.