Crouching Tigress Horny Dragon (Fire Mates #3) (5 page)

Higher, higher, each stroke of his massive wings driving them closer to the stars and wispy night clouds.

Imprisoned in his right foot, his Fire Mate screamed.

Screamed.

Ryan couldn’t fathom it. Terror and fury tore from her. He could feel her scratching at the scales of his toes. Could feel her body quaking and thrashing.

Wave after wave of emotions radiated from her, crashing over him.

Stop it
, he demanded wordlessly, leveling out as the moisture of the clouds licked over him.
Stop it, Deanne. There’s nothing to be afraid of.

Deanne? The name filled his head again. Was that her name?

She grew still in his grip.

Oh God…he’s in my head now?
Her thoughts lashed at him.
I don’t…oh God, Julian…I don’t…what has he done to me? I don’t… What’s he going to do to me?

Nothing,
he growled back silently.
I’m not going to do anything to you. And I’ve done nothing but claim my Fire Mate. What the hell is going on? And who the hell is Julian?

“Get the fuck out of my head,” she screamed back at him, once again thrashing in his grip.

Ryan screeched. The inhuman sound tore through the silent sky.

Deanne echoed it. He couldn’t miss that hers was equally as incensed. A part of him wanted to laugh. This wasn’t exactly the romantic union he imagined his joining with his Fire Mate would be like, but it sure as hell wasn’t a clichéd one either. The rest of him was too angry about the situation to do anything but thrust his wings with more power and hold her tighter in his foot.

He needed to get somewhere isolated. Somewhere safe and as far from humans as possible. Whatever was going on with Deanne, they needed to get it sorted out before—

If I bite the fucker, what will he—

Try it, babe
, he thought back.
Go on.

“Oh my God,” she shouted beneath him, her voice almost inaudible. “Will you stop listening to my thoughts, you scaly freak?”

Ryan screeched again, although this time it had nothing to do with anger and everything to do with laughter. A dragon’s chortle, complete with a lick of flames escaping from his nostrils.

He’d never heard such indignant irritation in a person’s voice before. She might be completely insane, but his Fire Mate sure had a feisty spirit.

He didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing. If nothing else, the next few centuries weren’t going to be boring.

“Put me down,” she yelled, writhing once again. A distant part of his mind detected faint pain in his foot, like something was trying to stab through the plated scales covering it.

He dipped his head to cast her a glance.

Sure enough, she was scratching at the claw circling just beneath her breasts like a crazy woman.

Ryan blasted a stream of hot air at her.

Stop that
, he instructed, letting his mental chuckle accompany the command.

“Bite me,” she snarled back, throwing him a glare as she dragged her nails harder over his toe.

Ryan sent another spear of hot air at her.

Her hair rippled around her face. She flashed her teeth at him, her eyes burning with what he could only describe as wild fury, her fingers digging at his scaled toes with increased fervor.

If this is some kind of kinky role-playing
, he thought, thumping his wings faster against the night sky,
I’m not into it
.

“Give me a whip and a knife and I’ll show you how kinky I can get,” she shot back, venomous anger thick in her voice.

Ryan threw back his head and laughed, the sound like a rumble of thunder.

Returning his attention to the world blurring far below them, he sought out an area of blackness. A park, a nature reserve…he needed anything remotely devoid of human occupation.

Somewhere to land so he could kiss some sense into his Fire Mate. And then fuck some sense into—

“I’m never having sex with you again,
dragon
.” Deanne’s shout tore at the night…
and
in his head.

Whoa. Stereo put down. Damn.

Ignoring her renewed efforts to hurt him—really? Surely she knew there wasn’t a hope in hell a dragon’s scales could be torn by mere hands?—he scanned the expanse below.

There.

A large area of blackness sat amongst the lights of Chicago. A park perhaps. Hopefully this one far less populated by the homeless and frat boys up to no good than the park he’d landed in over in Philadelphia a week ago. He could still see the shock on the old homeless guy’s face who was being harassed by a group of idiot teenagers when he’d swooped low over them.

The wind from his wings had sent the frat boys tumbling.

The old guy had landed on his arse, mouth a stunned O, stare locked on Ryan as Ryan shimmered into his human form inches from the ground and dropped to his feet.

He’d grinned at the old guy, and then shouted in his best American accent, “Fuck, the cops are coming! Run!’ before sprinting into the concealing protection of the park’s trees.

The frat boys had scattered. The old guy had peered into the shadows for quite some time, no doubt trying to figure out if he really
had
seen a blood-red dragon turn into a naked man before running for the trees.

Ryan had kept a watch over that old guy every night for the three days he was in Philadelphia. The frat boys hadn’t returned. Before Ryan left for the next leg of his U.S. adventure, he’d bought a shitload of warm clothing, a sleeping bag, and as much non-perishable food as he could carry, and presented it to the old guy in the park.

“Take care of yourself, mate,” he’d instructed with a warm smile.

Recognition had filled the old guy’s face just as Ryan began to turn away. “You’re…you’re
him
!”

Ryan had grinned and raised his finger to his lips. “Shhh.”

Even then, as he’d walked away from the homeless man, the very primitive, very ancient part of what he was—a beast capable of death and destruction—wondered how easy it would be to find the frat boys. He was itching for a fight…and hungry.

An hour later, with a belly full of cheeseburgers, he’d said goodbye to Philadelphia through the window of an Amtrak train.

Cheeseburgers didn’t satisfy the need for reckoning that eating a group of dickheads terrorizing a homeless person would have, but despite being a dragon, Ryan had never eaten a human.

To the best of his knowledge, the rumor they tasted like chicken was a load of shit.

“Did you really buy that homeless person clothes?”

At Deanne’s question—a faint shout from beneath his belly—Ryan bent his head and cast her a steady look.

She was no longer fighting against his hold. Her hands rested on his talon; her gaze met his. Curiosity and confusion swam in their mesmerizing depths. A frown pulled at her forehead.

I did
, he answered with a thought.

Did she hear
everything
that passed through his mind? Was that how the mental connection worked? That could get a tad inconvenient, if so.

You are quite literally the most gorgeous female I’ve ever met
, he thought.
Of course, I expect you to massage my feet every night, now that we’re mated
.

He waited for the detonation of incensed rage he had no doubt such a notion would produce.

It didn’t come.

Huh. So not every thought. Hmmm, this really was going make for an interesting life.

“Why?”

The single-word question whispered in his mind as well as in his ears.

Gliding on the air, his wings still, the clouds cool kisses of moisture on his scales, he bent his neck and looked at her again.

Her hair clung to her cheeks in damp strands. Her expression was unreadable. “Why did you buy all that stuff for a homeless man?”

Because it was the right and decent thing to do
, he answered.

A puzzled frown tugged at her eyebrows. Her chest swelled with what he thought was a shaky sigh, and she looked away from him.

“That’s Marquette Park down there,” she said, pointing at the dark expanse below that he’d noticed. This time her words didn’t tickle his mind. “If you’re looking for a place to land, it has a golf course on it.”

Do you know the area well? Are you from Chicago?

She didn’t answer. Instead, she smoothed her arms over his toe as if hugging it closer to her body. Was she cold?

If he released her, she could shift and fly with him. What would it be like to fly beside his Fire Mate, their wings beating in perfect rhythm, gliding on the wake of each other’s air…

He reached out to her with his mind.
Deanne?

Yes?
she answered, her voice husky in his head.

I’m going to release you now.

He uncurled his toes from around her waist.

Her scream tore through the night, loud and terrified and stunned.

And then it began to fade as she plummeted downward at an alarming rate.

Ryan hadn’t paid enough attention in the years he’d spent in human high school science classes to know if it was some form of Doppler effect, but he had spent enough centuries alive to know the fear in that scream was real. Absolute.

His heart slammed up into his long throat and, with a powerful stroke of his wings, he propelled himself into a downward loop.

…he let me…oh God…I’m falling…to die…to die…please, Ryan, don’t let me…

Deanne’s petrified thoughts shrieked through his head as she fell through the sky, a dark, screaming blur of flesh.

Tucking his massive wings into his sides, Ryan speared downward and swooped beneath her.

Why hadn’t she shifted? Why was she—

Her scream grew louder; her thoughts in his head did the same.

Because I’m not a fucking dragon, you fucking prick!

The enraged mental cry yanked a startled grunt from Ryan, the sound accompanied by a lick of flame from his nostrils, and then—as Deanne fell past him, he extended his right wing, banked onto his side, and snatched her out of the air with his foot.

“Are you fucking insane?” she screamed, clinging to him.

The shout filled his head with equal parts fury and fear.

He didn’t answer. He didn’t know what to say.

Holy crap, he could have killed her. She could have died.

Drawing his legs up closer to his belly, protecting her as much as he could from the cold night air, he beat his wings with stronger strokes, propelling them faster toward the darkness of the park.

Deanne cursed him and called him names the whole way. He wasn’t even sure what some of those names meant, or in what language they were spoken.

A few feet from the ground, in an open expanse of grass he could easily imagine someone zooming across in a golf cart, Ryan positioned his body and wings for a back-feet landing.

It wasn’t as graceful or as smooth as he would have liked. Partly because it had been some time since he’d landed on only two feet, mainly because he was worried sick about what he’d just done. And what it meant for them.

Why hadn’t she shifted? Why was she so stubbornly sticking to the ridiculous notion she wasn’t a dragon? What the hell was going on?

The second he released her, she ran away from him.

Not all the way, just far enough to be out of his reach.

She turned and stared at him, her chest heaving.

He stood on all fours, motionless, wings relaxed by his side, tail curled around his back feet, waiting for her to make the next move.

It had to be her.

He had to let her set the tone for what came next.

She sucked in a slow breath, her expression completely unreadable. He reached out for her mind, not even sure if he could do so.

Nothing. Whatever mental connection they had, he couldn’t manipulate or control it. Maybe that came after years together?

She did nothing, said nothing. Standing motionless, she studied him, waves of tension and uncertainty rolling from her like a tangible fog.

Focusing on his human form, he braced himself against the tsunami of piercing fire that came with the shift, and transformed.

The air around them crackled with the magic of the change. A shudder rippled through Deanne. He saw it as clearly as he saw the mist of their breaths in the cold night air.

For a long moment, neither said a word. If someone were to stumble upon them in the park—two naked adults, regarding each other like statues—they’d have a hard time explaining what was going on.

One or both of them would likely end up arrested for public indecency. Neither could get dressed in a hurry, that much was certain. Ryan’s clothes were miles away back in the small park near the bar, and Deanne’s were…

Hell, where were his Fire Mate’s clothes? Had they incinerated from her body when they were engulfed in the flames of the mating fire? Or been cast aside in the park like his? He couldn’t remember.

“Does it hurt?”

Ryan blinked at her unexpected question. “Does what hurt?” he asked.

The chill on the air tickled at his senses. A dragon rarely felt the cold, even when in human form, but damn, Chicago at night in autumn was cold. Colder than it ever got in Sydney, that was for certain.

“When you change?”

He frowned. Could he be wrong? Was it possible she wasn’t a dragon?

No. It couldn’t be. He felt it in his heart, his soul. She
was
a dragon. She was. “You know what it feels like,” he said.

Angry impatience twisted her lips and she crossed her arms over her chest. The move drew his attention to her breasts and for a split second the dire need to destroy the distance between them and worship those breasts with his mouth and hands almost overwhelmed him.

“How many times do I have to tell you I’m not a dragon? The whole turn-into-a-dragon-and-fly thing? I
can’t
do it. I don’t have wings. I’ve never flown in anything other than a plane. I’m sure as shit not scaly. My mother? Human. My father? Human.
Get it?
I’m. Not. A. Fucking. Dragon!”

Ryan’s own anger lashed at him. He ground his teeth, pulling in a steadying breath between them. “And how many times do I have to say bullshit? You smell like a dragon. You taste like a dragon. You fuck like a dragon. And you survive fire like a dragon. Ergo, you’re a dragon.
My
dragon.
My
Fire Mate.”