by Kayla Wolf
”What would a woman like her want with a creature like you?” Caleb snarled. “You’re deluding yourself, dragon. She’s mine, she’s meant to be mine—“
”You can leave,” Quinn said furiously, taking a few steps forward as she realized what this fight was about. “You can get out. Now.”
”Quinn—“ Caleb turned his yellow eyes to her, suddenly desperate. “You don’t understand—this dragon, he thinks he’s your mate, he thinks—“
”And you think I’m some piece of property to be bickered over,” she snarled, her eyes flashing. “Go. Now. Before I think of another way to get rid of you.”
Caleb stared at the three of them for a long moment, and the look in his yellow eyes was truly frightening to behold. For a moment, she was concerned that he wasn’t going to go—that he was going to start fighting again. But instead, with one last, lingering look towards Quinn, he turned his back on them. In a heartbeat, he’d shifted—and the coyote had vanished into the dark of the night, paws kicking up dirt as he ran.
The tension in David’s posture eased, and Quinn made a sound of dismay as she saw the blood pouring from his nose. She ran to his side to support him, helped to guide him into the house to lie down, her heart pounding with apprehension. She had a horrible feeling she knew what Caleb had been digging for in the garden. No wonder he’d been so interested in all the plants, in the lake, in the little life they’d hollowed out here… he wanted to steal their artefact. She shuddered to think what would have happened to them if he’d succeeded. And David had predicted it. He’d been there when they needed him—even keeping guard outside the coyote’s room. If that wasn’t proof that his so-called Oracle was legitimate, what was?
She settled him into the bed, despite his protests, and returned to the kitchen to get some ice for his wounds, her heart beating with a dizzy combination of adrenalin, gratitude… and something else.
Chapter 9 – David
David hadn’t been in a fight for a long time. He had to admit—he didn’t like it as much as he had when he was younger. A sign of maturity, he thought with amusement as he explored the ache in his face—probably a broken nose, by his estimation, but at least the rest of the bones were intact. He’d been much stronger than the coyote and gotten him in a few good places. As a younger man, fighting had been a way to assert himself. Now, he had other sources of self-confidence. Still, there were things you didn’t forget, and he was grateful for his misspent youth. It had helped him handle the threat of Caleb without anyone getting hurt. He’d scared the coyote off, sent him running with his tail between his legs—and all without even shifting forms. It was a shame Caleb had managed to break his nose on the way out, though. The quantity of blood pouring from it was… unsettling.
Quinn was beside him—she’d looped his arm around her shoulder like it was the most natural thing in the world and was supporting him inside, murmuring to him about what a stupid idea it had been to pick a fight like that. Somehow, he couldn’t hear much actual anger in her voice—but that might have had something to do with how thrilled he was to be making physical contact with her like this. Every single part of his body that was touching her—his arm, his side, his hip—was tingling as though it was being subjected to an electric current. She was so warm, so alive, so present right there—those blue eyes fixed on him, trying to figure out how badly injured he was.
”I’m okay,” he tried to tell her. Because he was—aside from a few bruises and a black eye, the broken nose was the worst of his problems for now. And when it came to shifters, broken bones weren’t much of a problem. Unlike their human cousins, shifter wounds healed incredibly fast—a day or two for a broken bone, maybe a little more if it was a very complicated or compound injury. He knew his nose would mend soon. It probably looked much worse than it was. Still, part of him was loath to protest too much about the attention he was receiving from Quinn, the gentle way her fingertips were dancing across his face. She’d gotten hold of an ice pack and some cool, wet cloths—the icepack she’d put on his eye, the cloths she was using to gently daub away the blood. He could already feel the flow of blood from his nose beginning to lessen.
”This is going to hurt,” Quinn said to him. At some point, she’d settled him into his bed, the bed he’d only spent a couple of minutes in before something had told him he needed to be elsewhere. Keeping guard. Shame he’d fallen asleep before the coyote had come out of his room, he thought with a flare of resentment. The guy must have been walking pretty quietly to have gotten past him. Still, he’d been there when it counted. Been there, fought him—
”Ahhh!”
He yelled, shocked into motion by a splitting pain ricocheting through his face. Quinn, perched on the bed beside him with her hands on his face. He stared up at her in hurt disbelief. What was she doing to him? And then, to his great consternation, she giggled, quickly covering her face with her hand as though to hide her amusement from him.
”Sorry,” she said in a choked voice. “I had to reset your nose, or it was going to heal off-center.”
”That hurt more than the hit,” he complained, reaching up to delicately probe at his nose.
”You’d have preferred a lopsided nose for the rest of your life?” Quinn challenged him, raising an eyebrow.
”I don’t know. I might have looked cool.”
”You didn’t,” she assured him, pressing the icepack to his nose. He had to admit—now that the nose was straight again, it felt better.
“Nobody’s ever broken my nose before,” David grumbled. “Caleb’s got a mean right hook. Thanks for resetting it.”
”Thank you,” she corrected him. “I saw you keeping guard over Caleb. How did you know he was going to try to rob us?”
”I didn’t,” he admitted, the adrenalin making him honest. “Just a hunch. But I’ve been running on hunches since I met the Oracle, so I figured I’d follow it. What was he digging for?”
She tilted her head. “You don’t know?”
”Should I?”
There was a smile playing about her lips, and he realized with a dizzy lurch how close to him she was. He was sitting up in bed, propped up against the headboard, and she was beside him, her hip pressing against his as she dabbed gently at the blood on his face. It must be nearly all cleaned up now, he thought vaguely. Why was she still so close to him? Why was she looking at him like that? He’d never seen her eyes look so soft.
When she kissed him, he hardly realized what was happening, it felt so natural. Not like a first kiss with someone at all, he thought dizzily. It was more like kissing someone after a long absence—someone you loved, someone you’d known for years and were finally coming home to. Kissing her—because he was kissing her, now, leaning into her touch, feeling the feather-light caresses of her fingertips against the side of his face, his neck, combing through his long hair—kissing her felt like home. What did that mean?
He wasn’t going to worry about it. There were other things to be considered—more pressing things, more important things. Things like the feeling of her hair as he ran his fingers through it, ever so softly. As though at any minute she was going to pull away, scold him for being so improper with her. But all she did was deepen the kiss, uttering a little hum of pleasure as his fingers brushed against her scalp. He curled his fingertips through her hair, gently cupping the back of her head, pulling her closer to him as their kiss deepened.
She broke away for a moment, and he sat back as she rose to her feet and turned her back to him. He felt his whole chest seem to collapse in on itself like a souffle as she headed for the door. Then she closed it, turned back to him with a devilish smile playing across her beautiful face, and he felt himself harden.
”Are you sure you’re okay?” she murmured, crossing the room towards him, her voice low and sultry. “Are you sure this is—“
”I’m fine,” he said a little too quickly. He sat forward, reaching for her, wanting to get her back into his arms before she could change her mind. �
�Completely fine, absolutely healed, you’ve healed me, I’m the picture of health—“
”Your nose is still bleeding a little,” she pointed out, and he grabbed a tissue from the bedside table and swiped it across his face without looking.
”There. I’m healed.”
She laughed, and somehow it was the sexiest sound he’d ever heard. “I’m a better nurse than I thought.”
”Miracle worker. Come here.”
This time she was a lot less gentle with him—he exhaled hard as she threw herself on top of him, surprised by the sudden weight of her—but not at all unhappy to have the full length of her body pressing against him. They kissed again, hard and hungry, and he let his hands roam across her body, move down her neck to her shoulders, her lower back, where even through her thin pajama shirt he could feel the powerful muscles in her back flexing as her hands explored his body, too. God, she was unbelievable. It felt so good to have her there, right there, so close to him—he could smell the shampoo she used in her short hair, the scent of the heavy-duty hand cream she used to keep her hard-working hands soft, and under it all something that was all her. Something like the smell of rain on a cold day, like the feeling of cool water on warm skin, like cool air and starlight and the feeling of the wind under his wings. He breathed her in, and before he knew it, there was a new urgency in their movements, a kind of escalation in each kiss, as though the more he touched her, the more he wanted to touch her in a never-ending, spiraling feedback loop.
And she could feel it too—he could tell by the impatient way her hands were moving, by the way her breath was catching in her throat with every kiss, by the drumming of her pulse in her throat as he kissed it. Suddenly she was tugging at the hem of his shirt, and he pulled it off. She seemed pleased enough at the sight of his body, running an appreciative hand across his chest as her gray-blue eyes gleamed in the lamplight.
”Not bad,” she almost purred.
”Surprised?”
”Don’t think I didn’t see your muscles working under that shirt today.”
”It’s all that carrying water buckets,” he said, and she giggled as she pressed herself against him. With his shirt off, he could feel more of her body against him—but not enough. He slipped his fingertips under her shirt, his hands roaming across the warm skin he discovered there, and she shuddered delicately, her eyes sliding shut as he caressed her. His hands moved up, almost of their own volition, and in the same moment as he realized she wasn’t wearing a bra, he found himself caressing her breasts, drawing a moan from her.
Her eyes flicked open, met his, and something in them slowed his caress. “You okay?”
”I haven’t done this before,” she said quickly, as though trying to get it out of the way. “Just so you know.”
He almost laughed. “That’s a relief. Neither have I.”
”Really?”
”You seem surprised.”
”I don’t know, handsome guy like you—” He grinned, ducking his head. It wasn’t as though nobody had called him handsome before, but coming from a creature as enchanting as her…
”I could say the same to you,” he pointed out, gesturing at her. It was her turn to blush a little, a smile playing across her face.
”I live on a farm in the middle of the desert.”
”And I spent most of my life in a cabin staring at the sky.”
”Well, we’re perfect for each other, aren’t we?” she laughed. He wasn’t quite sure what to say to that—it was a conclusion he’d hardly dared even think about—so instead he pulled her into another kiss, deeper this time, more serious. Quinn pulled her shirt off over her head, breaking the kiss for only a second to do so, and he took the opportunity to kiss a line down her throat, across her chest, over the sensitive skin of her breasts—and all of a sudden she was beneath him, her body stretched out on the bed and her eyes glowing as she looked up at him, and he felt more elated than he’d ever felt in his life.
Slowly, deliberately, almost as though she was taunting him, she reached down and pulled the track pants she was wearing down over her hips, not breaking eye contact with him. He felt her kick the pants off, knew without looking that she hadn’t been wearing anything under the pants—he could feel the heat of her body against him, and for a dizzy moment he felt almost like he didn’t belong here... There was a stunning naked woman lying on his bed, and she seemed to want him as much as he wanted her.
Thank god, his body seemed to know exactly what to do. He lowered his head to kiss her, and she pressed her body up against him, and before too long his hands had roamed, lower than before, ghosting across her hipbones as he pressed kisses into the hollow of her throat, and her lips were against his ear, so he heard the way she whimpered as his hand caressed her sex. She rocked her hips up against him again, impatient—emboldened by the reaction, by the way she was panting in his ear, he parted her folds to more fully explore her body. He paid close heed to her breathing as he touched her, finding the more delicate spots, the places that made her gasp and the places that made her groan, places to press and places to just ever-so-lightly brush past.
”Are you sure you haven’t done this before?” she demanded breathlessly, and he grinned against her throat, tracing the outline of a tendon there with a line of kisses.
Before long she was moaning in his ear, a sound that was threatening to drive him completely insane—he could feel his own body responding, impatient, still trapped under layers of unwieldy fabric. But he had other priorities to be getting on with. There was something so intoxicating about the feeling of her sex, about the way she squirmed and groaned as he touched her, about how easy it was to make her gasp and buck her hips with the lightest of touches… and emboldened by his success, he pressed two fingers inside her, felt her whole body clench down around him as though trying to draw more of him inside her—
”God, I’m—” she breathed into his ear. “I’m—I feel—that feels—”
She was usually a lot more eloquent than that, and he couldn’t help but grin at the thought that he’d been able to reduce her to such incoherence. But his triumph was short-lived—she seemed to sense his smugness, and before he could react her hands were on him, pulling his pants down, pulling his cock finally, blessedly free of its confines and—
”Oh,” he breathed, feeling her touch, a little unsure but absolutely, excruciatingly good. “Wow—”
“Okay?”
”So okay,” he murmured. Somehow, their positions had reversed again—she was above him, flushed and exquisitely beautiful, her gorgeous naked body lit up by the lamp on his bedside table and her hand wrapped around his cock, and before he knew it, she was straddling him, lining herself up, and he had to fight to stop his eyes from rolling back in his head when she slid him to the hilt inside of her.
They stared at each other for a long moment. Was she holding her breath too? It felt so unbelievably good—he could hardly believe he was still alive—and then, just carefully, she rocked her hips, and he made a choked sound in his throat that brought panic to her face.
”You okay? Did I hurt you?”
He reached up, curled his hands around her hips, rocked her against him—her eyes fluttered shut at the feeling of him inside her, and he took a deep, shuddering breath at the friction. It was a strange feeling—they were so intimately connected, he could feel every inch of his body tingling with his connection to her, and yet she seemed so far away from him. So he sat up, bringing their torsos together, and as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she folded her legs around his back, drawing him deeper inside her—
”That’s unbelievable,” he ground out, burying his face in her throat and kissing it hard, steadying her with his hands on her hips. “That feels—I’m—”
”Yeah,” was all she’d whisper back, her lips sending lightning shooting down his back as she spoke straight into the curve of his ear. “Yeah, me too—”
She drew him closer, her legs digging hard into his back,
and her face was so close that he could kiss it, again and again, tasting the sweat clinging to her skin, feeling every gust of breath that escaped her as they moved together. At some point he’d broken a sweat, too—he could feel the cool night air against his damp skin, the way her body slid across his as they touched one another, moved together in the night. And there was a curious acceleration in the way they were moving, a sense of escalation, like there was no way back, only forwards to whatever dizzying peak awaited them.
She got there first, to his delight—he’d been dreading the idea that he’d finish first, leaving her wanting. And besides—it was an unbelievably hot sight to see, the way she threw her head back, clearly biting down hard on a scream. He groaned as her body clamped down around him, almost—but not quite—pulling him over the edge with her, pressed kiss after kiss against her throat as she shuddered in the grip of her climax.
She half-fell, half rolled back, and he followed her, supporting her body with his arms, maneuvering them carefully until they were lying down, his body still inside her somehow—and after a moment, those gray-blue eyes flicked open, full of peace… and something like mischief. She bucked her hips against him, and he groaned, still painfully hard and not needing any more encouragement than that. He moved inside her, feeling her hips rocking up to meet him, encouraging him deeper with every stroke, and it wasn’t long before he felt the white-hot climax rushing up to eclipse his vision, too, carrying him over the edge she’d beaten him too and leaving him in a sweaty, sticky heap of limbs, tangled up with her.
In the dizzy seconds before sleep claimed him, Quinn’s beautiful face swam into view before him, her gray-blue eyes sparkling with satisfaction.
”Beat you,” she whispered, and though he’d have liked to protest, he couldn’t stop himself from falling, falling, into the deepest sleep of his long, long life.
Chapter 10 – Quinn