Breath of Desire (6 page)

Aurik accepted the glass she poured for him and sat at the edge of her bed, resting his elbows on his knees. His gaze traveled over her slowly, seeming to take her in with as much thirst as he showed his drink. He swallowed the wine in three long gulps and held out the glass for her to refill it with chilled golden liquid.

“You’re still leaving, aren’t you,” she whispered, and her heart seemed to clench at the realization. “Please tell me why?”

He glanced away, focusing on her stacks of notes. His eyes fixed on the image of the illuminated manuscript that was still displayed on her screen. “Who’s Rosenkrantz?” he asked, suddenly seeming to forget why he was there.

“Nobody, just stay focused here. You were saying something about leaving, and I want you to come out with it already. Tell me the truth. Tell me why you think you have to go!”

Aurik tore his eyes away from her screen and seemed to struggle for a moment to focus. “Thea, I’m not human. I’m a dragon,” he began, and took a deep breath. She stared at him blankly for a moment, waiting for the punch line. What he shared after that caused the world to slide out from beneath her.

Her hand shook as she poured another glassful of wine and drank it down quickly, willing the alcohol to hurry and obliterate what she’d just heard. But her body wouldn’t cooperate. Her mind raced over all the research she’d done that week, and all the out of place details suddenly fit. The oddly anachronistic names of some of the linked families made sense. Not the families in direct lineage to the one she was searching for, but employers. Until about five centuries before when the last line of names of an employer that had seemingly gone back for generations was eventually severed.

She hurried to her desk and began rifling through her notes, hunting for that name.

“Did you hear me, Thea? I need your answer.”

“Not a fucking chance,” she said, still irritated at his proposal but too distracted by what she’d learned to give him the courtesy of a full response. “Why the fuck didn’t you guys tell me this to begin with?” She shot a glare at him and went back to flipping through her piles of notes.
Third century, come on, come on. Yes!

She snatched the dog-eared piece of paper out of the stack and peeled off the small Post-It note with her question on it. “
Saint George?”
the note asked. She’d dismissed it as unrelated considering most accounts of the historical figure were likely fabricated. Turning to her laptop, she clicked her mouse on the image files one at a time, going back several centuries from the date on the paper until she found it.

“Does this image mean anything to you?” she asked.

Aurik stared at her, mouth agape. Thea tapped the screen impatiently. He nodded. “Yeah, tha
t’s a dragon named Sutylutha. He was killed long before my time, though. He was one of the reasons we have such strict laws in the first place, and why the Verdanith was dismantled. He was a brutal killer.”

“Yet he had a mate and offspring. Do you know what happened to them?”

“It was his son who killed him. I believe the son attained Court status at the beginning of his generation’s hibernation as a result. Sutylutha supposedly murdered the son’s mate, so he retaliated. Suty’s mate had her magic bound and lived in servitude to the Council after that. That would have been the first Hibernation, actually.”

“Has something like this happened since? A dragon execution, I mean. More like third century.” Her mind spun with the understanding. The structure of the research she had been sent had the sense that it paralleled human history, only intertwining with it in key spots, though there were many names that seemed to correspond precisely with ancient legends and mythology.

“It’s happened a few times,” he said, looking put on the spot as though he were being administered a college quiz. His bafflement at her insistence would have been amusing in any other circumstance, but once she caught the thread of truth during her research she felt compelled to keep tugging and tugging until the entire story was unraveled.

“Just the most recent one. About sixteen centuries ago, or thereabout.” She almost rejoiced when he creased his brows and nodded slowly. The excitement of the discovery had her blood flowing hot. She felt flushed, but perhaps it was more from the wine than anything. She reached out and unlatched a window, pulling it open to let the breeze blow in and cool her off before turning back to Aurik to hear the story.

“It was a similar situation. A dragon named Silene went mad and was put down by her son. This time he was in human form, however. Of course the Council and the other dragons knew the son’s identity, but it was a strategic execution, meant to protect our secrets since most of dragonkind were attempting to assimilate with humans by then. Not to mention no human alive could have stood up to her.”

“And the son? Did he live to sire offspring?”

“The fight rendered him impotent. It’s said he passed his wealth down to the servants bonded to him, elevating them to noble status, but I have no idea who they were. Why, did you find something?”

Thea sat down at her desk and pulled up the image that had been displayed when Aurik arrived. “This is the key, I believe. It’s taken me centuries’ worth of checking through the local archives to find the connection, but I believe this is it. Whoever these
Rosenkrantz
people are, were the last known family name in this line we’re hunting down.”

“They have the Verdanith?”

Thea jerked slightly at the warmth of his hand on her shoulder. His touch was light, but sent an unexpected zing through her bare skin that made her lose focus for a moment when her nipples pricked against the soft fabric of her tank top.

“I don’t know what that is, but if that’s why you guys want to know where this family ended up, that’s possible.”

Aurik squeezed her shoulder, the touch a subtle reminder that she’d succeeded in cutting him off entirely after his confession. Work had always been her diversion of choice when there were other things in life she just didn’t want to deal with. She’d spent the last year or so since Dimitri had left avoiding the issue of her grief. It hadn’t been until that evening with the Twins that she’d final begun to feel human again. She took a deep breath, bracing herself for the confrontation that she knew needed to happen, especially now that she’d had that breakthrough on her search.

“So…Dragons, huh?”

She swiveled her chair and looked up at him. Those impossible eyes gazed back, their golden depths resolute and tinged with sadness. She could divert the conversation just a little longer. He owed her a little more of an explanation, at any rate. Not to mention an opportunity for her to talk the damn fool out of his ridiculous plan.

Aurik nodded.

“Prove it,” she said. Not that she didn’t believe him. Even as mind-bending an assertion as it was—she’d seen pieces of Alex’s research before he’d died that made it easier to accept—but tangible evidence was always preferable.

Aurik squatted down in front of her, holding her gaze. The jeans he wore stretched tight over his toned thighs and his simple black cotton t-shirt was just snug enough to highlight the outlines of his muscles. The scent of tropical fruit reached her nose, bringing back with a vengeance the flavor of the mangoes she’d shared with Aurin and the way that fruity taste had mingled so perfectly with the flavor of Aurin’s own juices.

“I can see your arousal like an aura around you, Thea. It just got a little brighter. What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking I need to see what you look like, as a dragon.”

He glanced around and shook his head. “I can’t here. Not enough room. I can show you these, however.” He lowered his head slightly and she watched in fascination as a pair of shimmering gold horns coiled back from his temples.

“Can I touch them?” she breathed.

“Please do,” he said. He rested his hands gently on her thighs and held his head a little lower for her. They were warm to the touch—almost hot—and as hard and smooth as they appeared. They weren’t quite like the bonelike protrusions she normally associated with horns, however. These were semi-translucent and seemed to shimmer with inner light. Her fingertips tingled when she touched them.

“Does that feel good to you?” she asked.

His hands gripped her bare thighs a little tighter and a low rumble emerged from low in his chest. “Yes.”

She gave both horns another gentle, suggestive stroke, noticing he quivered slightly, then gripped them tightly in both hands and forced him to tilt his head back.

“I will absolutely
not
let you leave Dimitri, do you hear me? He’s lost too much in his life to lose you, too. You leaving would destroy him. Not to mention what I’m sure it would do to your sister.”

“You can fill the void for them, Thea. He’s told me you’ve done as much before, and Aurin is adaptable.”

She leaned in a little closer, growing more pissed by the second at how stubborn he was being. For some reason just then the horns seemed entirely appropriate. Bullheaded was one way she’d describe the man, but what he didn’t realize was how adept she was at getting what she wanted. She clutched his horns and shook his head. “They won’t survive it, and asking me to step in would be like putting a band-aid over a gaping chest wound. It isn’t fair of you to ask
any
of us to go through that, and you’re a selfish bastard if you think you’re doing us any favors.”

“I’m out of choices. If I stay, I have to find a new mate, and nullify my mark on Dimitri. I would rather die than lose that connection to him.”

“And if you exile yourself, he can keep it?”

“If I agree to leave him, yes. The Council only cares about punishing me. If I leave, he gets the benefit of both marks, while I get none.”

“Please tell me you’ve at least
tried
to find a new mate.”

“We all tried. It’s rare for me to find a woman I connect with on that level and impossible for me to fake it in any event.”

Thea bit her lip, mulling over the questions she wanted to ask, but hesitating. She’d misread men before, but sex as good as she’d had with him
never
happened the first time she was with a man. It hadn’t even been that good with Alex their first time. It
had
been that good her first time with Dimitri, but then she’d had both brothers and he’d merely seemed like an extension of Alex at the time.

“Did you connect with me?” she whispered, searching Aurik’s eyes. She hadn’t come looking for any kind of emotional validation or even a relationship, plus she’d almost entirely discounted his interest after his dismissal that first night. Having more insight into his motivations changed her perception of that night quite a bit now, however.

His eyebrows twitched and he glanced down at his hands. Thea released his horns and sighed, taking his failure to answer as a negative.

Aurik’s voice sounded rough with tension when he answered. “You belong to him first. I could see it in your eyes that night, and in his when he kissed you. The depth of your feelings was so strong you may as well have been dragon marked. I could never interfere with that.” His anguish sank into Thea so deep her heart ached for him.

“That’s not an answer. Aurik, did you or didn’t you feel a connection with me? Because I sure as
fuck
felt one with you. As for Dimitri, let me remind you that
he
came to my bed second. He would understand if you told him how you felt. Assuming you do feel that way.”

Chapter 7

A
urik shook his head, baffled at her reaction to his proposal. “I’m offering them to you. You can have again what you had once before. Why are you fighting me?”

Thea gave him an exasperated look. “Because what we
all
want is for you to stay. To never leave. Why did you say that to me that night? I had only just gotten there and we’d only just met, yet something made you say that. You were honest with me about why you think you need to go, so come out with it. Why did you tell me that?”

He opened his mouth to speak, but found the truth difficult, as contrary as it was to everything else he’d said to her tonight. He would sound like a capricious idiot if he confessed it. Yet all she asked for was honesty.

He swallowed thickly and cleared his throat. “You affect me like Dimitri does. The magic—the energy we subsist on is drawn to you more than it is to other humans. Dimitri is the same. It makes it difficult to keep my distance, even though I must, because of how deep my need is to pull that magic from you.”

Thea looked down to where his hands still gripped her thighs. They’d moved higher without him being entirely conscious of it and now his thumbs idly teased at the edge of her cotton shorts. The magic that surrounded her shifted, became less a steady swirl and more a winding coil, the thread of it reaching toward him. Was she even aware of what she was doing? It was a wonder no other dragons had found her yet, but she may not have been so potent living alone and in grief. If he left, would Dimitri’s own well shrink as a result?

“What would it take to make you stay?” she asked. Her hips shifted toward him and the heat of her sank into his fingertips.

The magic teased at his skin, promising fulfillment but he had to draw it from her completely to have it. His answer was instinctual, pulled from his lips before he could think. “To have you both every day. To mark you, too. To fill you with my seed and have it mingle with his in your womb.”

“What about Aurin, does she get to mark me?” Thea’s breath quavered with the slow strokes of his fingers against the moist, hot velvet between her thighs.

Aurik shifted to kneel between her legs. He was eye-level with her and close enough that the warmth of her breath caressed his face. The question took him a second to process. Of course Aurin should mark Thea, too. Thea should have every privilege offered to Dimitri. The Council be damned. If that’s what it took to keep Thea here, that’s what should be done.

Aurik shook his head trying to clear it of the magic seeping its way in, confusing him. No, she had asked what would make
him
stay. He forced himself to pull back from her, aware of the fullness of her heaving breasts and the tight peaks of her nipples pressing against the fabric. Thea’s eyes were low lidded and glazed, but fluttered and opened wider when he moved away. He shook his head to clear it of her magic, her lush scent. She really was the perfect mate for him, all this time. The Council’s decree had been to find a new mate and nullify the mark on Dimitri, but what if he didn’t? What if he and Aurin both marked Thea to provide the balance the Council asked for? The entire point of the ultimatum was to ensure he found a mate he could breed with.

Thea sat forward, her expression troubled. “Don’t go, please,” she said.

Her need inundated him with full clarity. The magic was the answer, as was her potent, fertile scent. All of it combined woke him up to the truth. He could have them both if he proved to the Council his intention to give Thea his offspring, and for Dimitri to do the same for his sister. There would be no loose ends. Once they understood how special she was, there was no way they would object. Or so he hoped.

“Call them,” he said in a rough voice.

“What? Why?”

“Because I mean to mark you in a moment and we won’t have the breath for calls afterward.”

He didn’t hear what she said on the phone a moment later, too single-minded in his mission to consummate the plan. She graciously lifted her hips to let him pull off her shorts and panties and nearly fumbled the phone when he sank his tongue between her slick lips to taste her. He had to mark her now to know if she was primed for mating. Maybe they wouldn’t need the aid of the Verdanith like the others, as strong as the magic was drawn to her already.

He lifted his head and aimed his tongue at the nearest patch of bare, creamy skin over her hip. With hurried strokes and a breath of his magic the pattern grew visible, the circle growing brighter with each pass of the tip of his tongue.

The phone thunked to her desk and she moaned when he bent back to her luscious folds. Her fingers threaded through his hair, pulling him tighter against her. The fresh mark pulsed brightly at the edge of his vision, the same way Dimitri’s did.

Thea’s orgasm surged forth like a tidal wave, the rush of magic through him leaving him breathless and gasping for air. Her thighs quivered on either side of his face. Aurik lifted his head to look at her.

“Will you take my seed? Mate with me for a child?”

“I thought you couldn’t…”

“Not if you say no. Please tell me you want this, Thea.”

Her mark gleamed brightly, almost blindingly between them and she gasped when she saw it for the first time. She glanced back up at him and nodded.

“Yes. Oh God, yes.”

He stood and stripped quickly, helped her out of her top and carried her the short distance to her bed. The magic was already coalescing around her in a tight knot when he slid into her to the hilt. He arched his back while he fucked her, bending his head to pull at her nipples with his tongue, enjoying her rough cries in response to each tug. Then he bent and captured her mouth again, letting her feel the texture of his tongue, hoping she enjoyed it the way Dimitri did. Her hips surged beneath him, her heels digging into his ass, urging him deeper.

The room glowed from the shimmer of magic coursing over his skin. Thea seemed bottomless, each time her orgasm burst forth from her, he soaked up the power and more seemed to replace it. The tingling pull in his balls made it clear he had plenty to give back, and give he would, now that she was his. He slammed his hips against hers, shuddering within the clutch of her thighs and moaning against her lips as the hot pulse of his semen shot from him into her waiting depths. He urged as much of his own magic to follow the life-giving fluid, wishing for it to take so they could have tangible evidence of their union, should the Council feel any skepticism about how they felt. To have that evidence for himself was an even greater need and he would try again and again until it happened.

He slipped out of her slowly and fell to the side, pulling her into a tight embrace. They drifted into a contented doze. The worry of separation disappeared and his dread at losing everything was replaced by the satisfying hum of the magic she’d given him.

Sometime later a knock at the door woke them both. When Aurik opened it, Dimitri’s angry face greeted him, followed by instant relief and soft lips pressed against his own, tongue invading insistently. Aurik was conscious of his sister slipping past them and giving him an admonishing smack on his bare ass.

“Thought you could get away so easily? You’re a fool, Brother.”

“I was afraid you had gone without saying goodbye,” Dimitri said. “I need to go thank Thea for figuring out how to make you stay.”

Aurik quashed his own apprehension. Choosing this path may have been another mistake to add to their growing pile of demerits, but he hoped to at least have canceled some out. He closed the door and turned back to the room.

Dimitri had climbed onto the bed and held Thea desperately, thanking her profusely until she laughed and silenced him with her kiss. Aurin was doing the same from Thea’s other side. It was a large bed, but there was only just enough room for Aurik to slip in behind Dimitri.

His lover’s need pulled at him the same as Thea’s had. Aurik tugged at Dimitri’s pants, soon joined by Thea pulling at Dimitri’s shirt.

Still half-dressed a moment later, Dimitri sat up. “We want you between us.”

Aurik went, sliding against Thea and wrapping his arms around her from behind while Aurin embraced Thea from the other side. Dimitri’s smooth, hard body pressed against Aurik’s back. The pulse of Dimitri’s cock against his ass made Aurik push back. He pulled Thea’s lush, round cheeks against his own cock. Wordlessly she shifted back, lifting her leg to slide it along the top of his thigh and give him access to her. Aurik could sense his sister’s movements on the other side of Thea and only knew they were finding pleasure in each other as he was finding pleasure with both their human lovers.

The four moved in tandem, Aurik losing himself amid the tangle of limbs and the brighter tangle of the magic that clung to them like the sustaining light of the sun that began seeping through the window. Thea’s cries of pleasure set off a chain reaction. Dimitri’s hard length pulsed deep in Aurik’s ass, his final thrust pushing Aurik over the edge. He gripped Thea’s hip tightly, holding her against him while his orgasm jetted into her.

Aurik opened his eyes just long enough to watch his sister give in. Heat throbbed beneath the hand that gripped Thea’s hip. He looked down at the twin to the mark he’d given her, glowing brightly enough to rival the sunrise.

Another perfect mate for them both, and never again would he entertain the thought of giving either of them up.