by Romi Hart
Finn barely had time to glance in her direction before the dragon took over, but those bullets did Claire no damage at all. They flew right through her and into the truck. They passed through her body like smoke.
The next instant, bullets smattered across his scales and he hurtled forth spewing fire and brimstone. He incinerated the bushes hiding the shooters from view.
The trees went up in rippling flames, but he didn’t slacken his fire in the least. He scorched the area pouring rage on whoever did this. He didn’t think or care who they were. They fired on him. That was crime enough.
The trees crackled and waved their flaming branches to the sky. Through the blistering inferno, he spotted a bunch of men crouching in the shadows. From here, they looked human and they didn’t try to shift or fight back when he spat fire at them. They backed away.
They retreated and he recognized their fatigues. At least half of them wore distinctive green berets with patches on the front. Green Berets. They were Army Special Forces—the elite of all the military armed forces.
The soldiers fired a few more times. The bullets ricocheted off his scales and didn’t hurt him. They only made him mad. He stomped after the men hounding them with his flame. He set the woods ablaze until the men bolted into the Quag.
He would have taken wing to track them down and annihilate every last motherfucking one of them, but Claire held him back. He rotated his long neck around to search for her.
The clearing was empty. He didn’t see Claire anywhere and the truck was gone. A dozen square impressions marked where its tires pressed into the soft soil. Other than that, no sign remained that it was ever there.
11
Claire paused to scan the Quag. She sniffed, but the stench of burning wood and smoke obliterated every scent trail. She couldn’t blame Finn for that. He created a big enough distraction that she got away with the truck without anybody seeing her.
She paused on the other side of the clearing. Enough trees and bushes and branches still hid her from the clearing, but she didn’t see anything out there.
She turned to leave when Finn burst from the thicket and charged her. He seized her arm and clamped his fingers around her elbow. “Claire! Where the fuck have you been? Where did you disappear to? I’ve been worried sick about you.”
She removed her arm from his grasp and he didn’t fight her. “As you can see, I’m fine, Finn. I had to get the truck out of here and you gave me the perfect opportunity to do that.”
He froze and blinked at her. “You…you saw me?”
“Of course I saw you, but you don’t have to worry about that. I already knew you were a dragon shifter.”
“And you….” He hesitated to ask. “You’re okay with that?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” She turned away. “You’re not the first dragon shifter I’ve known.”
His eyebrows jumped together in the middle. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means thank you, Finn.” She set off through the woods. “I better go.”
“Hold it.” He lunged after her, but he didn’t grab her this time. “Where are you going?”
“I have to find that guy who first came out of the woods. He tried to make us believe he was the driver. Too bad for him I knew Juan Diego so he didn’t fool us.”
Finn stopped. “You don’t think he tipped those soldiers off to attack us.”
“Those soldiers didn’t know we were anywhere around. They’re after the Omega Battalion.”
“How do you know that?” He shook his head and took his place at her shoulder hiking through the swamp. “Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.”
“No, you don’t. Come on. We can’t lose his trail.”
She walked away, but he didn’t follow her. He stood still for a second. Then he rushed around her and blocked her path. “Hold it, you. You’re not going anywhere until I get some answers here.”
She halted and raised her gaze to his face. He really was the most striking man she’d ever met. She could never get tired of looking at him. “What do you want to know?”
He clamped his eyes shut and shook his head again. “You said you got rid of the truck. What did you do with it?”
“I took it to a hiding place belonging to our Crest. It will be safe there. Juan Diego got it away from those idiots south of the border so we didn’t have to pay for it. Now, thanks to those soldiers, we won’t have to pay Juan Diego, either. It’s been a good day.”
She tried again to walk around him, but he blocked her. “Not so fast. How did you move the truck without driving it? It just…..” His head whipped up and he stared at her. His eyes widened to saucers and his jaw dropped.
She observed the realization crossing his features. She expected this. He was too smart not to connect the dots. “It just what, Finn?”
He shut his mouth, opened it again, and gulped. “You…. those bullets…. they didn’t touch you. You got shot, but the bullets didn’t hurt you. How did you….?”
He dropped his gaze to her chest, but he didn’t see her breasts or her body or anything else about her. He was seeing those bullets go right through her.
Her heart sank into her guts. She knew all about dragon shifters. She saw enough of them in Anarock. She didn’t have to worry about thinking or feeling differently about Finn after seeing him in his enormous, seething black dragon form.
She couldn’t be certain Finn would feel the same way about her once he found out the truth. She dreaded this moment, but at least she wouldn’t have to live with the anticipation hanging over her head.
He dragged his gaze up to her face. He tried to speak and wound up whispering. “What…what are you?”
She took a deep breath. “We’re element shifters, Finn. All of us are. All of SeamStream Crest is elementals. I’m an air elemental. I picked up that truck and carried it over the Quag to our hiding place. It’s safe there. In a few hours, Damien and some of our cousins will come along. They’ll change the tires and drive it back to Anarock. I just have to find that guy who tried to trick us.”
He didn’t register anything. He stared at her in blank shock. “You’re…..”
She drew herself up in front of him. The sooner he got it through his head, the better for both of them. “No one knows. None of the other Crests know what we are. You’re the only New Breed of another Crest who has ever found out.”
“I won’t tell anybody,” he told her, “not even Victor. You can trust me.”
She brushed her hair out of her eyes. “Thanks.”
How stupid and ridiculous those words sounded, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say. That was the first time in living memory that anybody from another Crest, or the wider human world for that matter, ever offered to do something to benefit her Crest.
Finn glanced over his shoulder toward the clearing. “Do you want me to help you find the guy? I could scan the area from the air.”
“You don’t have to do that.” She turned aside and started walking. “This is my job. You have things to do. I’ll handle it.”
He didn’t follow her. The farther she got from him, the more settled she became in her decision. She told him the truth. Maybe he wouldn’t keep his promise. Maybe he would skedaddle on home to Victor and blab to the whole Prometheus Crest that he found out the Novaks’ secret.
She didn’t regret telling him. He was the closest thing to a lover she ever had. He deserved to know the truth. Now he was gone.
She walked a mile and left the fight behind her. She got her truck. If she found the stranger, that would be the icing on the cake. She could go home satisfied with her own performance.
She broke onto a grassy bank following a muddy-brown river. From here, she could survey the countryside to the east and west. She got ready to shift into her air form. She could cover more ground that way.
Just then, a black shape crossed the sky. A jagged shadow pivoted over the grass. She looked up and spotted a wicked coal-black dragon tilting on th
e wind. It angled its wings to stall in mid-air. It arched its neck and squinted toward the ground.
It narrowed its eyes at her and she smiled up at him. He was helping her after all. She should have known he wouldn’t just let her walk away. He scanned the clearing and wheeled off somewhere else.
She kept her human form so she could enjoy the sight of him flying up there. He looked so alien and devilish in his dragon form. He resembled a monster out of a nightmare, but his very ugliness excited her out of all reasoning.
He was so different from anyone she’d ever known. He was cut out of the night itself. He breathed mysterious secrets she couldn’t understand. He was nothing like the rest of the Prometheus Crest and he certainly didn’t come close to anything from SeamStream Crest. He was in a class by himself.
A thousand ideas called her to leave here, to fly back to Anarock and report to her father, to travel down the river in search of her quarry, to make camp, to prepare the next stage of her operation, but she did none of those things.
She stayed where she was and gazed up at the blue sky. He was up there. He was up there for her. He was looking for her target. He didn’t have to do that. He could have taken off doing his own thing. Instead, he went out of his way to help her when he didn’t even know for certain it would do any good.
She didn’t want to go anywhere. She wanted to stand here and revel in the delirious happiness that he was nearby. He was keeping an eye on her at the same time he looked for her target. He was here. He was with her. He was doing this for her. He knew her secret and he promised to keep it.
A crash of breaking branches made her spin around. She stared at Finn striding through the Quag heading for her. He broke into the open. “I found him.”
Claire whipped around. “Where? Where is he?”
“I spotted him heading down the Little Tensas in a boat. He was past the confluence with Port Allen Lock.”
Claire reared back clenching her fists. “That’s miles away! We have to go after him. We have to catch him.”
Finn halted in front of her, but he didn’t react. “Don’t bother. He was heading for Pigeons Landing. He launched from there and he planned to get back to his truck and make off down the Bayou Pigeon Road. That was the only way he could get away clean without leaving a trail for us to follow.”
“That’s all the more reason we have to get after him!” She whirled away. She shouldn’t have waited this long. She should have taken off instead of getting all wrapped up in Finn. “We have to get to him before he reaches the truck.”
Finn stuck his hands in his pockets. “Keep your shorts on. He ain’t going nowhere.”
She froze. His quiet tone riveted her awareness on him. “Why not? How can you be sure?”
He sauntered to one side and propped his shoulder against a tree. He sucked his teeth and looked anywhere but at her. “There ain’t no truck for him to take off in. He’ll get back to Pigeons Landing and find himself just as sunk as if he never left. I made sure of that.”
Claire shivered at his tone. “What did you do?”
He took his hand out of his pocket and studied his fingernails. “When I realized where he was going and why, I flew on ahead. I found his truck and I lit it up like a Christmas tree. It made a big noise when the gas tank blew. I guess the smoke cloud attracted some attention from the Bayou Pigeon Fire Department. When our boy showed up in his boat, there was about fifty Fire and Police swarming all over the place. Come to find out they ran his license plate number and figured out he was out on parole with about six months overdue on his scheduled meetings with his parole officer. They took him into custody and he’s all cozy down at Belle River. I suspect they’ll ship him out to Lafayette in the morning. I’m sure you can get your daddy to track his movements. You can pick him up anytime you like and find out who put him up to tracking your shipment.”
Claire blinked at him taking all this in. He did all this. He did it for her and for her Crest. All at once, she couldn’t contain herself. She hurtled across the clearing screaming his name. “Finn!”
She hit him with all her weight. She hurled her arms around his neck and kissed him. She didn’t kiss him the way she should have kissed him back at her house. That kiss would have been slow and sensual and moist and unimaginably hot.
Now she attacked him in rabid gobbling fury. She had to kiss him so fast and so furious before the moment passed her by. She couldn’t go another second on this Earth without kissing him the way she needed to.
She plastered her mouth to his velvet-soft lips. He stiffened in her grasp, but the next instant, he received her delicious, slippery wet kisses that consumed her whole self. She laid her fevered body against his chest and stomach and crotch and legs. She savored the satin goodness of being with him again, of touching him the way he deserved to be touched.
She needed him so bad. She needed all of him. She couldn’t walk away from him without offering herself to him. If he turned her down, at least she would know once and for all that she went all the way. She went as far as she possibly could before she lost him.
She almost burst into tears when his hands appeared against the small of her back. His lips parted and his wicked tongue slithered into her mouth. It burrowed all the way down her insides to her pussy bubbling hot and dripping and twitching between her legs. That tongue tickled her nerves and thrilled her out of her mind.
He pressed her hips into his cock hardening under his pants. She tilted her head to one side and let her mouth sag open. She couldn’t take his tongue deep enough. She rubbed her swollen slit against his package. He dug the sharp point between her nether lips and encouraged her to delight her flesh on his granite hardness.
God, he felt so much better than she ever dared to dream! She needed so much more of him. She needed all of him in her mouth and her eyes and her pussy. She needed him filling her up and propelling her to the moon. She couldn’t live without this.
He crushed her to him. Inch by inch, he hefted her off the ground. Her boots left the soil and she crawled up his iron frame. Her legs circled his waist. Now nothing prevented his brutal spike from stabbing into her engorged flesh.
One enormous paw grasped her under the ass and supported her weight. He held her up even when she pumped her pubic bone against his cock driving herself out of her mind. Her mounting desire wouldn’t let her rest.
He commanded her to submit to his earth-shattering power. It wiped every thought from her mind. She could only feel the blissful silken sweetness of his lips swimming with hers, his tongue sizzling his saliva into her brain, and his meat pulsing between her legs.
She opened her eyes to find him staring at her. She could get as lost in those black pools as she always wanted to be. She was facing him, kissing him, swaying in his grasp.
His endless stare caught her in unwavering sway. She couldn’t tear her awareness off him. Her consciousness dwindled to a speck down deep in the black pupil where his heart and soul dwelt. He was down there looking back at her. He saw her in ways she couldn’t fathom.
So slowly it hurt, he pried her off him and set her feet on the ground. Her boots touched the grass, but he held her in his sure grip. Every move he made echoed out of the eons of time. He took hold of her jacket and peeled it over her shoulders. He dropped it to one side and lifted her t-shirt. He pulled it over her head and let it fall.
He moved in on her from a galactic distance. She watched him close on her and his lips took command of her very being. He kissed her to a whimpering sodden mess. She dangled from his neck sighing and weeping while he unhitched her bra. The clasp released and her skin screamed when he dragged it off her quivering breasts.
He tugged down her pants. He held them while she stepped out of her boots and he laid her clothes aside. Now she was stark naked in the middle of the Quag, but somehow, that fact didn’t bother her at all. It seemed right. It completed the destiny that began when he first walked into her father’s office.
He straightened up and she p
resented her nakedness to him, for him. He could do whatever he wanted with her. She was his. She always had been, but now she knew it in no uncertain terms.
He cupped her cheeks in both hands and kissed her for all time. When he finally released her, his eyes whispered a secret message that spoke to her very flesh. He draped his palm on her shoulder and she sank to her knees.
She gazed up at him from below. Her body shimmered with golden, glistening desire. Her pussy lips pulsed for him, but this moment overshadowed all else. She knelt before him the way she did before but not the way she did before.
She was just playing around before. She didn’t really know then how to do this right. This was her chance to redeem herself, to show him and herself that she knew how to do it the way it should be done.
His hand weighed too much on her shoulder. His bottomless eyes gleamed moist and fervent and his teeth showed between his lips. He didn’t do anything. He didn’t have to. He compelled her to do this of her own free will.
Dragging her gaze away from his face took all her living strength. Every trace of her eyes over his body required an extreme feat of concentration. Every passing second inhaled such life-giving meaning she couldn’t contain the overpowering intensity.
She brought her focus to his crotch. His fly swelled with the swollen flesh underneath. She had to summon all her courage to lift her hand to touch it. She would see it. She would smell it. She would taste it and it would enter her being. Could she survive the devastating power of all that he was?
Her fingers came to rest against the stiff canvas and it spasmed inside its little home. It was alive in there. She wanted it. She wanted it in her mouth. She wanted it more than anything, but she couldn’t do this. She couldn’t face it.
She had to do it. She couldn’t live without it. She concentrated everything she had on his belt. She wanted to burst into screaming climax just looking at it, but she had a job to do. She pulled the tongue free and the buckle clinked. She unfastened the button and the zipper slithered down by itself. It purred over the hot meat beneath. His pants fell apart.