Dragon Bound (35 page)

“Tell me about it.”

“How . . . is he?”

“You know Rex Harrison in
My Fair Lady
?”

“The professory, growly son of a bitch?”

“Yeah, well”—she closed one eye, squinted at the skyline and grinned—“Dragos is a lot worse.”

That caused another rant that went pretty much along the lines of he’d-better-treat-you-right-or-I-don’t-care-who-thebastard-is-I’ll-kill-him-myself kind of thing. She bent over, put her forehead on the wall railing and endured it with as much patience as she could muster, making noises every once in a while to pretend she was actually listening.

Finally he said, “I want to see you in person. I want to make sure that bastard hasn’t addled you with some kind of beguilement.”

“He hasn’t,” she said. “But I’ll come to Elfie’s soon for a real visit.”

“You’d better.” Quentin sounded grim. “Or as allergic to the Tower as I am, I’ll come break you out.”

“Tell everybody I miss them.”

“I will. See you soon.” He stressed the last.

“Yes, you will, I promise.” At last she was able to extricate herself from the conversation and hang up.

She was wrung out. This starting a new life was a hell of a lot of hard work.

S
he and Dragos didn’t talk much after they had shared stories, and she didn’t see much of him after she had convinced him to go back to work. He was soon immersed in stabilizing some businesses in Illinois before he sold them, and he mentioned something about initiating a hostile takeover of an investor-owned utility company.

She wondered if the distance between them would be the definition of her life now. He slipped into bed with her every night and wrapped her up in his arms, and she derived a lot of comfort from his nearness. But they didn’t make love, or have sex, or . . . mate.

Changing and becoming full Wyr enhanced her healing capability. After three days of convalescence, she was climbing the walls. Finally Dr. Medina, who had been making daily house calls, cleared her for treadmill walking and other light exercise.

“Yes!” She’d been hoping for the go-ahead.

“No running until I say so, no matter how good you feel. And I’m not going to say so till at least next week,” the doctor warned. “That crossbow wound gave your respiratory system quite a knock.”

“No running. Gotcha.” She grabbed her clothes, black Lycra exercise tights and sports tank top, and put them on. “Thank you!”

“You’re welcome.” The doctor smiled. “I’ll let myself out.”

She sat on the edge of the bed to put on her running shoes—another new pair—as the doctor left the suite. After her last shoes were ruined in her flight through the rain-drenched forest, Dragos had bought her six new pairs.

The door opened. She looked up, ready to tell the guys they could hit the gym. Dragos strode in. As usual, he took total command of the air space in the room.

He gave her a long look, then shut the door. He had dressed that day in black jeans and a black silk shirt that emphasized the strong athletic lines of his massive body and the bronze of his skin—and did nothing to lighten the severity of his face.

Even in his human form he looked capable of ripping the Fae King apart with his bare hands. Should she find that as sexy as she did? She scratched her head. She wondered about herself, she really did.

“Hi,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Apparently you don’t expect much from me,” he said.

“Excuse me?” she said, taken aback.

He began a slow stroll around the large suite. It was his prowling stroll, his long muscular limbs moving like liquid under the silk and denim. She twisted to watch him with equal parts pleasure and uncertainty.

“The doctor has cleared you for exercise,” he said. “So I figure that means you’re strong enough to face other things now as well.”

“Oh-kay.”

“Go ahead and call me obsessive, but I have a bone to pick with you,” he said. He was frowning.

It made her forehead crinkle in response. “What’s wrong? What else did I do?” Hadn’t she done more than enough for a week? At this rate she was going to have to turn catatonic to make sure nothing else happened.

He turned to face her, hands on his hips. “Do you remember when you stepped in the rabbit hole?”

She snorted. “I’m not likely to forget.”

His narrowed eyes glittered like gold coins. “You remember what you said?”

She shrugged, her face and mind a blank.

He stalked over, put his hands on her shoulders and shoved her back. She fell back on the mattress. “Hey!”

Then he crawled on the bed until he was on his hands and knees over her. He glared down at her, every inch the dominant angry Wyr male. “You said and I quote, ‘I can’t tell you how glad I am that you came or how good it is to hear your voice.’ ”

“So what?” She smacked his shoulders with the flat of her hands. Didn’t quite work out the same way when she did it. Of course he didn’t move an inch. “Quit with the primitive crap already.”

“You might have noticed I’m a primitive kind of guy.” He showed his teeth and got into her face. “All those centuries of civilization? Just a veneer.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” She went lax and just stared at him, helpless as usual against the flood of arousal that swept over her. “Have you been sulking about what I said this whole time?”

He tilted his head, his eyes lava-hot. “You said it like I was some kind of visitor. Or like you weren’t sure I would come when
you had been kidnapped
. When you had just told me you were
pregnant
with
my child
. I don’t know what the hell you think of me other than I am a bloodthirsty monster.”

“Dragos!” Her eyes went wide. She touched his face. “I was kidding when I said that.”

“So? I am a bloodthirsty monster, and you are my mate.” There was not a hint of softness in that aggressive face. He growled, “And I am yours. What will it take for you to accept that?”

“I do. I promise I do,” she said. Incredibly, she had hurt him in more ways than one. She stroked his cheek. “I just don’t know how to be your mate. Somewhere between that horrible Goblin stronghold and when you flicked your tail at me on the plain, I fell head over heels in love with you. But I come from a strong human background. Love, being in love, making love—those things make sense to me. They’re part of who I am. And you already admitted you don’t know what love is. So I still don’t have that frame of reference I was looking for. Even though we’re together, I don’t know how to behave or what it means.”

His expression had eased as she talked. He kissed the palm of her hand. “It means, you stupid woman, that I am learning too. Now you listen to me. I never stop thinking about you. You’re with me everywhere I go but I miss you when we’re apart. I’ve already shown that I will kill for you. I would also die for you. You make me laugh. You make me happy. You’re my miracle and my home. If you as much as twitch, I get a hardon. I will always come for you, always want you, and always need you. We clear?”

She had begun to glow. “Sounds a lot like love to me.”

“I thought so too,” said the dragon. In a move too fast for her to track, he snatched her hands and pinned them over her head. She startled but made herself relax in his hold. His fierce raptor’s gaze flared in the light. He descended until he was nose to nose with her. He hissed, “So say it.”

She gave him a gentle, radiant smile and whispered, “I’m yours.”

“It’s about goddamn time,” he growled. He straightened off the bed and yanked her up with him. Then he took hold of her tank top in both hands and shredded it. “Say it again.”

She started to laugh. Even to her own ears, she sounded drunk. She reached for his shirt and tried to undo the buttons with clumsy fingers as she told him again, “I’m yours.”

He spun her until she faced away from him. The controlled violence in his movements jettisoned her laughter. Her knees started to shake. He tore the rest of her clothes away and pushed her onto the bed until she was on her hands and knees, facing away from him. He widened her legs until she was fully exposed to him. The sense of vulnerability was almost too much to take. She shivered spasmodically.

She heard the tiniest of sounds from behind, the catch of his breath and a rustle of cloth. She tried to look over her shoulder to see what he was doing.

Then he put his hot lips on her from behind and licked along the delicate folds of her most private, hypersensitive flesh. He tickled her clitoris with his tongue and mouthed against her, “Say it again.”

Arousal roared over and through her. It knocked her off her hands. She collapsed forward, turned her damp cheek into the bedspread and gasped it.

Her collapse exposed her even more to him. He licked, nibbled and suckled, coaxing pleasure from her with a soft and dexterous touch, then turning demanding and rough, gripping her by the hips and holding her in place as he feasted on her with a ruthless carnality that sent her squealing into a climax that peaked and peaked until she writhed, utterly helpless in his grip as she fought for enough breath to scream.

All the while he insisted she admit that she was his. She gave it to him every time he demanded. She moaned it, sobbed it, until finally she lay boneless on her back, a mass of quivering, exposed nerves.

There was no part of her he had not pleasured or taken when he finally moved over her body, positioned his cock at her drenched, inviting entrance and pushed his way inside. She stroked the strong curve of his back with trembling hands as he filled her and she whimpered, drugged with pleasure. Tears spilled out of the corners of her eyes.

He framed her face with his big hands as he came all the way inside, seated to the root. At last he had burned even his own ferocity away, until all that was left on his severe dark face was tenderness.

“I have learned so many things over the long years,” he whispered as he moved inside of her. “I’ve taken tribute from sovereigns and witnessed the end of empires. But you are my best teacher.”

She stroked his lean cheek. “I love you.”

A smile filled with simple wonder lightened those fierce gold eyes. “I know.”

Laughter threatened to take her over, but then he lost his smile and grew intent as he drove harder, deeper inside her. She arched up to him as he hit just the right pleasure spot, and his powerful body shook as he spilled inside her. She cradled him close as he gasped and hid his face in her neck. Afterward she stroked his hair as they drifted.

Then he roused just enough to shift his weight off her. He lay on his back and pulled her against his side.

“Good to have that settled,” he said with satisfaction. He ran his fingers through her hair and with a gentle pulse of Power smoothed the tangles out.

“What, that we’re mates?” She stroked his hard, beautiful mouth.

“Yes.” He kissed her fingers. “Because we’re getting married.”

“We’re—” She bit her lip. “That’s your proposal. Just like that, we’re getting married.”

“Oh.” He reached over the side of the bed, dug into his shirt pocket and then dropped a massive diamond ring on her chest. “There.”

She rolled her eyes and flopped onto her back. This was too good to pass up. “Well, Dragos, it’s one thing to agree that we’re mates, but I don’t know about marriage,” she said. “I read
Cosmo
. You eat people. I think divorce court might call that the definition of irreconcilable.”

He rolled onto his side. The sheet slid from his muscled chest as he propped himself up on one elbow and regarded her from under lowered brows. It was his moody, stubborn look. God, she loved that expression. She could just about see the wheels turning in his head.

After a moment, he said, “Please.”

“That’s better, big guy.” She nodded and put the ring on.

A special preview of the next Novel of the Elder Races by Thea Harrison

STORM’S HEART

Coming August 2011 from
Berkley Sensation!

M
otel 6 wasn’t so bad. In fact, it was kind of cute in a polyester sort of way.

Sure, it wasn’t the Regent, or the Renaissance, or the Ritz-Carlton. But the desk attendant had been cheerfully disinterested when she had checked in, the prices were affordable and, most important, they had smoking rooms. Score.

On the one hand, there wasn’t any room service or those darling little liquor bottles in a small refrigerator. On the other hand, there weren’t any assassination attempts or a pending coronation. Hm. Tricks wondered if they offered a twelvemonth lease.

She limped into the room. She pulled her new sunglasses down her nose and took a long careful look over the rim at the surrounding scene. The bright, warm afternoon sun toasted the asphalt of the motel parking lot, and a fitful wind swirled dirt and exhaust fumes into a toxic soup. The motel was located near some interstate exit, along with several fast-food restaurants, gas stations and a Walgreens. The sound of traffic was a constant in the background, but it shouldn’t be too disruptive once she had the door closed.

She couldn’t see or hear anything unusual in the motel’s immediate vicinity, and her sight and hearing, along with her sensitivity to magic, were inhumanly acute. She wasn’t up to a more strenuous inspection. A visual scan from the doorway would have to be good enough.

After she shut the door and put on the security chain, the first thing she did was kick off her stylish four-inch heels. Ah, thank you, god of feet. She set her sunglasses on the TV. The double room was either painted or wallpapered beige. It had bright bedspreads patterned with an insistent orange, a window covered with short, heavy curtains that hung over a long, thin, wall airconditioner unit, and a plain table and chair that were pushed against the wall. She dropped her shopping bags on the nearest bed, limped to the air conditioner and turned it on full blast.

Life had sure gone to hell since Dragos had killed her uncle. Oh, Urien had to die, without a doubt. She was
glad
he was dead. She just wished it could have happened in a couple of decades or so. This business about her becoming the Dark Fae Queen? She was so not in the mood.

She dumped out the contents of the shopping bags. The items chronicled a long, busy day.

She’d had a lot to do once she had killed her second cousin Geril and his two cohorts. First item on her agenda was to run away. The second item was to get stuff and keep running. She had walked into a twenty-four-hour pharmacy, bought bandages, a pair of sweatpants, sunglasses and a T-shirt, changed in their bathroom and walked out.

Sunglasses at midnight. Huh. Idiot.

Those had gone into her first shopping bag until daybreak. Then she stole a car and drove in aimless circles while she tried to think past the frozen tundra in her head. She stopped at a superstore and bought more stuff, left the stolen car in the parking lot and got a cab, took the cab to the airport where she got another cab, and here she was.

Her path had been so random, so erratic, made up as it was by stress-induced on-the-spot decisions, that she defied anybody’s ability to figure out where here was. Hell, even she didn’t know where here was, just that she was still somewhere in the greater Chicago area. Neither ride had been long enough to get her anywhere else, more’s the pity. She hadn’t wanted to imprint herself too deeply in the memory of either cabdriver so she had tried to keep both trips as normal as possible. She could always steal a car again and drive away from the area, but first she needed a few hours to recuperate while she considered what her next moves should be. At the moment she was too awash with conflicting impulses, pain and exhaustion to be sure of anything.

One shopping bag held her crumpled red halter dress and the matching evening bag that carried a compact powder, a lipstick, and her two small stiletto knives. She kept the tips touched with poison and had a variety of places she could wear or carry them, in the side pocket of a purse, strapped to her arms, or underneath her dress and strapped to her thighs.

Good thing the red color of the dress hid the bloodstains or she might have occasioned more attention at the pharmacy. She set that bag aside. Another bag held an unopened bottle of vodka, a bag of Cheetos, three packs of Marlboro reds and a lighter.

Say hello to tonight’s hot date. She set it all on the bedside table near the head of the second bed.

The third bag held a first aid kit, extra bandages, toiletries and underwear. The last bag had jeans, flip-flop sandals, a pair of shorts, a couple of tops, and a dozen wallets.

She sat on the edge of the bed and inspected the blisters on her heels. Should have changed into the flip-flops as soon as she bought them. Should have bought the flip-flops at the first store and the sunglasses later but all she could think after the attack was, oh gods, I can’t be recognized.

Shoulda, woulda, coulda. They were the Three Stooges of regret. All they were good for was saying
whoop-whoop-whoop
and smacking one another over the head.

She gritted her teeth. She had slapped a temporary bandage on herself when she had changed in the pharmacy bathroom, but she needed to clean and bandage her knife wound properly. Instead she picked up the wallets. They weren’t new wallets. They were other people’s wallets. They were from all the people she had bumped into today, when she had wrinkled her cute widdle nose at them and said sowwy. She bet every last one of them was very unhappy with her right about now.

Why did she pick pockets and start smoking and drinking when she was under stress? Can we say maladaptive coping mechanisms, class? If she wasn’t careful, she was going to go to prison where people would call her Light-Fingered Stinky.

She pinched her nose and sighed. She was good at a dog-and-pony show. She could clean up well and pretend to be respectable enough, often for hours, even days at a time. She had, after all, been excellent at her job as head of PR for Cuelebre Enterprises. It was all an act. She had known for a long time now that she was really nothing more than a Sackville-Baggins kind of hobbit.

She showered first. It was harder and more exhausting than she had counted on. Afterward she sat on the toilet and hissed as she blotted the knife wound with fresh cotton pads. She poked it to see if there were any cloth fibers from her dress or any other kind of dirt still in the wound. Gray stars bloomed in front of her eyes. Damn, that hurt. A deep puncture, it kept seeping a slow, steady stream of crimson.

She put antibacterial goop on it, doubled up on the padding and taped it in place as best she could. She smeared more goop on the blisters on her heels and put Hello Kitty Band-Aids on them. Then she put on her new underwear. Teeny-tiny little camo boxer shorty-shorts that rode low on the hips. Weren’t they cute?

The next bit wasn’t so easy. She grunted as she worked her way as carefully as she could into a sports bra. Structurally she may not be very big, but her perky pair of puppies made her a C-cup. Shoulda bought a bra with a front clasp, but today hadn’t been a shining example of her best thinking. Whoop-whoop-whoop, smack. After she managed to get the bra on, she eased on a matching camo spaghetti-strap T-shirt that stopped above her pierced navel.

Then she put her hair in pigtails. Because it was layered to fall in an outward-flipping bob, the pigtails stood up on her head like twin black starbursts. She pouted at herself in the mirror and said, “Sowwy.”

Yep. This look is good for several more wallets. NOT that I’m going to steal anymore, because I’m stopping right now. I’m just sayin’.

And now it was past time for that hot date. She limped to the bed and eased her sore, bruised body onto it, lit a cigarette and flipped on the TV. She started to look through the contents of the stolen wallets. Hey, some of these had good family pics. She pulled out the photos and started to lay them across the bed.

Then what was playing on the television registered in her tired brain.

She stared. Put the cigarette in the ashtray. Put down the wallets and photos. Picked up the vodka bottle, opened it and took a stiff drink.

That was the first time she saw the cell phone video footage of the attack in the alleyway, where she had kicked the crap out of her second cousin Geril’s dead body.

It wasn’t going to be the last time. Not by a long shot.

T
iago believed in giving credit where credit was due. The little shit had tried like hell to avoid being tracked down.

By the time he had reached Chicago, the SUV Rune had requisitioned was waiting for him, along with a detailed list of assorted supplies, including cash, a couple changes of clothes, a laptop and an assortment of his preferred type of weapons. Tiago picked up the vehicle in Lakeview from their Wyr contact, Tucker, who had already stashed the supplies in a large duffel bag in the backseat.

Tucker was, like his Wyr-badger nature, a short, powerful, stocky and antisocial male. He did well living in relative isolation outside the social structure of the Wyrkind demesne. The badger was content with a job that had sporadic, often strange duties and irregular hours, as long as he could live within walking distance of his beloved Wrigley Field.

Although Tiago hadn’t thought to ask for one, there was also a cell phone tucked into a side pocket of the large, heavy canvas duffel bag. He discovered it when it rang as he climbed into the driver’s seat.

He clicked it on. “What.”

Dragos said, “Preliminary autopsy report is in on the three dead Dark Fae males.”

His eyebrows rose. “That was fast.”

“With the next ruler of the Dark Fae demesne missing, the authorities put a rush on the job,” Dragos said. “All the Dark Fae males died of the same kind of poison Tricks favors on her stilettos.”

Tiago adjusted the seat and pulled into traffic. He grunted. “At least she kept her weapons poisoned when she left New York. Good for her.”

“The fucker who filmed the footage is cooperating with police,” Dragos said. “He’s claiming he didn’t see anybody else in the vicinity when she took off down the street.”

“I want to know where he lives,” said Tiago. He drove fast and aggressively as he glared at the other vehicles on the road.

“Later. Check out the airport. Security footage shows someone that looks like it could have been her climbing out of a cab.”

Dragos hung up without saying good-bye. Tiago turned off the phone and tossed it into the passenger’s seat.

When Urien had assumed control of the Dark Fae government, Tricks had taken sanctuary with Dragos in 1809. While young, she had already reached her adult size. She was small and delicate, even for one of the Fae. She had a mere fraction of the strength the Wyrs had. She also had her uncle Urien, one of the nastiest and most Powerful men in the world, who had been determined to see her dead.

The Wyr sentinels had proceeded to teach her every dirty trick they could think of in order to help keep her alive, which was where she got her nickname. Nothing was off-limits, or so Tiago had heard. He had been busy elsewhere, helping to keep the peace in Missouri when the Osage signed the Treaty of Fort Clark and ceded their land to the U.S. government.

Everything added up. She had left the hotel with three males, and three males were dead. She had either been taken from the site of the attack, or she was on the run. Logic said she had gotten away and was on the run.

But if so, why hadn’t she called New York for backup? Tricks was family. Any of them would gladly have rushed to help her, but she still hadn’t tried to call anybody and she hadn’t replied to any of the phone messages left on her cell.

Tiago planned on asking her that very question when he caught up with her. She might be hell to track down, but he was old and steeped in Power, and most of his talents were concentrated on the hunt. There wasn’t anything on this Earth he couldn’t track once he put his mind to the task. He recovered lost scent trails, made intuitive leaps no one else would think of, and shit, more often than not, luck just fell his way. It might take him a while, but in the end he always brought down his prey.

His prey, in the end, appeared to be holed up in a motel room off the I-294 Tri-State Tollway.

He paused for a moment outside the door and listened. Tricks’s scent was all around on the surrounding sidewalk, but it was close to midnight and he didn’t want to knock on the wrong door by mistake.

He heard her inside. She was singing in a clear, sweet, pure voice. His eyebrows rose.

“ ‘
Down in the valley, the valley so low, hang your head over, and hear the wind blow . . .
’” The singing stopped. He heard her mumble, “Can’t remember what comes next, something, something . . .”

He grinned as he relaxed and leaned against the doorpost. If she was singing and talking to herself, she wasn’t dead in a ditch. It was all good.

She said, “Oh, that’s right . . . No, wait, that’s another song. Crap, I’m too drunk.”

That sounded like his cue. He knocked.

Silence. He imagined there was a startled quality to it.

He knocked again. “Tricks, it’s Tiago. Open up.”

She said with the slow incredulity of the inebriated, “Is that you, Dr. Death?”

“Come on, open the door.”

“No, thank you for stopping by. I’m okay. Everything’s okay. It’s all taken care of now. Just don’t watch any TV for a while, okay? You can go back to New York, or wherever it is you lair when you’re not killing things.”

He scowled. Dr. Death? No, thank you and don’t watch any TV? What the hell did she mean by that? He muttered, “I do not live in a lair.”

He settled his shoulder against the heavy metal door that was constructed to meet fire safety codes and to keep thieves out. After pushing with a steady increase of pressure, the lock and chain broke.

Cigarette smoke billowed as the door opened. He coughed, waved a hand in front of his face and stared at the scene inside.