“Stop it with the ‘love’ stuff. I love Emmanuel.”
“He is dead.”
I pulled away from him, and he let me. My own power buoyed me. “He will be back.”
“So you keep saying.” His eyes narrowed. My gaze fell back on that tattoo. And suddenly it was hard to think again.
“You played the song, Darling.” My name in his voice made it hard to swallow, hard to move. Hard to do anything but press up against him like a cat in heat.
I’m no kitty.
I met his gaze and hardened my own.
“Do you ever wear a shirt?”
He laughed, the sound so seductive I had to fight to keep my eyes from rolling back in pleasure. “Not around you.”
I shook my head and turned to walk away. I had a lot to do. Like figure out his name and tame this damn dragon. Maybe it was in one of Issa’s books.
He grabbed my arm just above the elbow and turned me to him. The back of his knuckles grazed my stomach before his hand slid around my waist, spanning my lower back.
I met his eyes. “I’m not going to—” He kissed me. Nothing but feeling, nothing but space, nothing but everything…
Music rose. His feet moved, and I followed. His arm at my elbow moved down to my hand. Dragon’s fingers twined with mine. He lifted our joined hands and stepped back.
We were dancing.
Smooth. So smooth.
He spun me around. I came back into his arms like a bee returns to the hive. This is where I belong.
“You can’t marry him.”
I shook my head to clear it. The song changed, faster this time. We glided across the clouds, my feet following his, effortless… and fun.
My heart rate increased as we danced. “Are you using your influence to control me?” I asked. Dragon spun me away, and I hung there for a beat, my free arm outstretched, before whirling back into him. “How can I dance like this?”
He grinned. “Oh, baby—”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Okay, babe.”
“Not that either.”
“You can call me anything you want.” He stepped back, and I followed. His hips swayed. Dear Lord, this nameless man from my dreams was hot.
“I can call you anything except your name.”
“You can try to guess it.”
“Bob.”
He laughed again.
The music slowed, and Dragon pulled me close. He took my hands and wrapped them around his neck. He trailed his fingers down my arms and sides until they landed on my hips. A gentle squeeze and he moved into me, his hips leading mine.
“Why can’t I marry Emmanuel?” I asked, staring at Dragon’s throat.
“Because you haven’t even given me a chance to woo you.”
“Where have you been?”
“In prison.”
“That explains the tattoos.” He laughed, the sound vibrating through his chest to me. “I love Emmanuel.” His laughter cut off.
“You can’t.” He dipped his face down to my neck. When I shied away, a breathy laugh tickled over my skin. “You’re in love with me.”
“I am not.”
“You were. You just don’t remember.”
“That’s the kind of thing a girl would remember.”
“Not if her deity boyfriend wiped me away. I’m not the one who uses my influence on you. He is.”
“I don’t even know your name!” I stopped dancing, pushing him back. I wouldn’t let him talk about Emmanuel that way. He’d never used his powers on me. Emmanuel always tried to help me, even when he didn’t agree with me.
There was that one time he almost annihilated a human population because he was upset, but we’d moved past it. And, sure, he could be egotistical. But he was a god!
“You won’t help me,” I said, sounding petulant.
Dragon moved into me again, and I stepped back. He followed. When I glided to the side, he mirrored me, then moved forward so that I retreated. We were still dancing.
“I thought Emmanuel was the man in my dreams.”
Dragon shook his head. My eyes dropped to his torso; his tattoo danced over his muscles as they contracted and loosened with each hip sway.
“Will you help me get the instrument?” I asked. “Help me break the spell?” I raised my eyes to meet his.
“I am sworn to protect the realm.”
“Am I a danger to it?”
“No, you are its queen.” His hand found my hip again, and our bodies floated together. Dragon dipped me back, my hair falling away. Smooth.
“So then will you let me pass?”
“You can pass, but I won’t let you tame me, and without that, the instrument will not play for you.”
“We are at an impasse.”
“There is one way out.”
His hand found mine, and he slipped the ring from my finger.
“Hey!”
He stepped back, holding my engagement ring.
“Give it back.” Petulant child, take two.
“Dragons love jewels, you know?” He raised a brow. “I will accept this as payment for your passage.”
“It’s not mine to give away.”
“It is not just a jewel, but also a promise. A promise that I want for myself.”
“You want to marry Emmanuel?” I crossed my arms.
He slipped the ring into his back pocket. “I want you to take your place as queen of this realm. Then the instrument will be yours, along with everything else that you see.”
He waved his arm, brushing away the clouds. The wild earth lay below us. Small fires from the pixies’ settlement were the only light in the moon-drenched landscape.
Everyone wants a commitment.
“I’m not a one-dragon kind of girl. You don’t even feed me.”
He shook his head. “If you mate with me here, then the land itself will nourish you, as it nourishes me.”
“I’m devoted to my cause. I will end the zombies.”
“And then you will come back and rule with me.”
I surveyed the land below us. “Will the pixies let me pass if I am your queen.”
He grinned. “The pixies submit to no royalty but their own.”
“But climbing the Mountain of No Return, that will be easier as the queen?”
Dragon shook his head. “No.”
“So, all I get for agreeing to be your queen is the instrument will be willing to play for me without me taming you.”
He nodded. “If I am your king, then I am yours—we are each other’s. Just as your song declared.” A hint of frustration entered his voice.
“I kind of get where you’re coming from here. According to you, I called you to be my mate, and now I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Emmanuel wiped your mind; I do not hold it against you. If I had been able to bring you here earlier, things would have been better.”
“What do you mean?” I stepped closer, curiosity overwhelming me.
“Emmanuel had me imprisoned. He freed me so that I could help you escape Seventh.”
“He knew you could help.”
“He knows I am your true mate.”
I shook my head, not willing to believe any of this. Dragon stepped closer, his knuckles brushing my cheek. “You feel it, my love. I know you do.” His touch sent tingles through me. “We do not feed each other as you and Emmanuel do—we are true equals. True mates.”
“Emmanuel says I am his destiny. How is it possible I can be meant for both of you when you won’t share me?” And I had a feeling Emmanuel would not be cool with this guy turning me into his queen. Feeding for survival was one thing. Committing to rule a kingdom with some other dude, not cool.
Crap.
“I need to speak with Megan.” Dragon blinked. “Girl talk,” I explained. “Trust me, it’s vital.”
“If you wish.”
We began to drift toward the ground. The valley of the pixies, the volcano, the entire gauntlet still lay bef
ore me. All I’d managed to do was get another eternity long commitment proposed. Megan was going to laugh.
Chapter Fourteen
I was wrong. Megan did not find Dragon’s proposal amusing.
“What an arrogant asshat.” She stalked away, her boots crunching on the sandy ground.
“Maybe that’s his name,” I teased. “I guessed Bob, but it wasn’t.”
“What else did you guess?” She turned to me so quickly, her hair whipped around, hitting her in the face. She growled in frustration, pulling it back and securing it into a bun.
“Just Bob.”
She frowned. “He said you could have three guesses.”
“Yeah, but, Megan, how am I going to guess his name?”
“Did you try Rumpelstiltskin?”
I coughed out a laugh. “Glad to see you’re getting your sense of humor back.”
She came to where I sat on a large rock. We’d climbed down the hill a ways to avoid being over heard by Dragon, Dimitri, and Issa. “Girl talk doesn’t work if boys can hear it,” I’d explained.
Issa had managed to suppress a smile while Dimitri and Dragon just believed me—it was basically true.
“I’m not amused,” Megan said, sitting on the rock next to me. “I’m annoyed. I’d rather stab him in the back with the feather sword. How was that such a bust?” We’d left the sword with Dimitri, climbing down to this spot with just our packs.
“The sword might work, but he’s fast and powerful. I can’t see how we’d get it in his back.”
“You distract him with your feminine wiles, and Dimitri sneaks up behind him and stabs him?”
I looked over at her. She was staring into a copse of trees. “Um, that’s actually kind of a good idea.”
She turned to me. “You think it would work?” Megan sounded like she did not think her plan held water.
“I’d have to do more than distract him… I mean, I’d need to… you know.”
“Fuck him.”
“Crudely put.”
“What? You’re going to make luv with him.” I winced. “Oh, Darling.” She put her hand over mine. “Do you have feelings for him?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. It’s so confusing.” I sighed. “The thing is that…” I pursed my lips, searching for the words. “When you disappeared—”
“When my parents took me,” she corrected me gently. Megan didn’t leave me. Intellectually, I knew she hadn’t abandoned me, but the pain of her disappearance still lived inside me.
“Yes. Sorry. When your parents took you, I started having these dreams.” I chewed on my lower lip. I’d never told her about the dreams. For the months she was gone, they were the only break I had from the pain—the only time I didn’t feel utterly alone and abandoned. “He was in them. We made love. We laughed. We… he… it meant a lot to me.”
“You loved him.”
“I think so. I never remembered his name when I woke up. Basically, everything about him would fade away. But”—I shrugged—“he says that I called him with my music, that I played a song and that’s what drew him to me. That this is the way he… we mate.”
“You’re not a dragon.”
“No.” I shook my head. “But he awoke the power in me. Or at least that’s what he says. And I did, at first, think of it as a beast inside of me.”
“And now?”
I looked over at her. “Now, it’s just me.” She nodded, holding my gaze, silently encouraging me to keep talking. I leaned my head onto her shoulder. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Megan put an arm around me. “Me too.”
“I’m comfortable with my power now, but also recognize that it is a lot of responsibility. My ancestor helped create zombies because she thought of humans as so insignificant.”
“I know you’ve struggled with how to wield your strength. I think you’re doing a great job, by the way.”
I sat up and looked at her, a smile on my lips. “Of course you do.”
“You know I’d tell you if I didn’t.”
“Having you with me helps ground me. It’s a reminder of my history—of my humanity.” Megan nodded, her lips tightening. “You still have some of yours,” I assured her.
“Only because of you.” She met my gaze with her mismatched eyes.
“Dragon says that my hunger awoke because of him, that he let the dragon inside of me free. But I thought my hunger started coming to surface, forcing me to feed, because you were gone. Because I was alone, that we’d been feeding on each other. And that’s why you didn’t fully turn. And why I never went full soul sucker before.”
“Soul sucker?” Megan cocked her head. “Do you think you’re sucking on people’s souls?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I was just being obtuse. I’m pretty sure it’s life force I feed on.”
Megan grinned. “As long as we’ve got that straight, we should be cool.”
We both laughed. The sound tapered off, and we were left staring at each other in the moonlight, pixie valley before us, a dragon who wanted me as his queen above us. “What are you going to do?” Megan asked. I didn’t answer. “Do you think you can distract him enough for Dimitri to stab him?”
I looked down at my hand; it felt empty without the ring. But Dragon holding it didn’t make my promise any less binding to me. “So many moral questions, and this quest is only a few hours old.”
“Speaking of which, we don’t have that much night left. You better decide soon. Or we will have to seek shelter.”
“If I agree to be his queen, we can get going right away.” I looked down the mountainside. “We could reach the valley before dawn, take cover there, and then face the pixies in the morning.”
“If they don’t kill us while we rest,” Megan said with a smile.
“Pixies are pretty easy for me to control. I’m not worried about that part. I can put up a protection bubble. And then I can pull the lights of any that come at us.”
“You won’t just rip off their heads?” Megan said, referencing Dimitri’s advice.
I huffed a laugh. “Same difference. Either way, I doubt the pixies deserve to have their heads ripped off or their lights plucked out. They are parents, siblings—families. Why should they die?”
“Because they choose to protect an instrument.”
“I think the instrument compels them to protect it—to test me.”
“Then that is their fate.”
I stood up and paced over to a tree, resting my hand against the bark, feeling the life force inside of it. The energy tingled against my hand, but I could not absorb it. If I became the queen of this realm, I would be able to drain it.
I enjoyed feeding off conscious beings, having sex to survive. That was my nature. What Dragon wanted would change me. I liked me just the way I was—besides the whole harboring a lust for pain and misery.
I sighed, and Megan walked over to me. “Let’s look at this one thing at a time.” I nodded, keeping my attention on the tree in front of me, running my fingers over the grooves in its bark. “First, there is this Dragon fellow who wants you to be his queen. Second, the gauntlet still laid out before us, which we need to pass through in order to claim the instrument that can play the song that breaks the spell causing the spread of zombism.”
“That’s two of the things we are dealing with, yes.”
“The two most pressing at the moment.”
“Yes,” I agreed, giving her a weak smile. Let’s not bring up the deity I’ve agreed to marry who at the moment is dead, but I’m pretty sure will come back though I’m not sure in what form. Who was apparently imprisoning the dragon who I called to be my mate with music… and possibly wiped my mind of him.
“I think you should sleep on it all,” Megan said.
“Great advice. Why didn’t I think of that?” I laughed.
“I’m serious. Let’s get down the hill to the first cave, and we can rest for the day. When a new moon comes, there will be clarity.”
; I shook my head. “How do we get down the hill to the cave without taming the dragon?”
“We don’t need to tame him to rest. You can ask him to let you sleep on it. That’s just reasonable. If he says no, then you have more information. Do you really want to be the queen of a guy who won’t let you sleep on a huge decision?”
“I don’t really want to be a queen at all,” I pointed out.
“You’re an outlier,” Megan said. I laughed. “I mean, most girls pretend to be princesses—it’s a thing.” She nodded to herself.
“Princesses are not queens. They are young and protected, theoretically. A princess appears to have no responsibility. Everyone knows being a queen is work.”
Megan laughed. “Oh really?”
I gave a short laugh. “Yeah, but I think you’re right. I’ll ask him. No, I’ll tell him I’m going to sleep on it.”
“Good for you.”
Yeah, I’m sure he’ll take that well.
Dragon, still shirtless, that intriguing tattoo still super sexy on his rippling abs, leaned against a tree. He grinned when he saw me. “I’m going to sleep on it,” I said before we’d even fully entered the clearing.
His brows rose. “Excuse me.” Dragon closed the distance between us, and I stopped walking.
Dimitri stepped in front of me, blocking Dragon’s path. “She said she will sleep on her thoughts,” Dimitri said.
Dragon met his gaze—they were about the same height. But Dragon’s chi could crush Dimitri. It could crush anything. A shiver ran down my spine, and I didn’t know if I was afraid of him or turned on. So messed up.
The two men locked gazes for a moment longer before Dragon’s eyes returned to mine. “You need a day’s sleep to decide if I am the dragon for you?” I nodded. He smiled in a I know something you don’t know way. “Of course. Where do you plan to pass the day?”
“There is a cave we had picked, near the base of this mountain, in the grove of red oaks.”
Dragon nodded. “Yes, the pixies call that the blood forest because of the trees’ coloring.”
“Cozy,” Megan quipped.
Dragon glanced at her for a moment, his eyes narrowing as if he was trying to get a read on her. Megan raised her brows and crossed her arms, daring him to have an opinion.
Stolen Secret Page 16