Dragon Fall: Masters of the Flame 3 (Mating Fever) (5 page)

When he tilted his head, studying her, a flicker crossed his gaze—red and gold.

Flames.

She realized she wasn’t talking to just the lord of the castle, but to the beast in the moat as well. A shiver traced down her spine.

“A pearl, I think,” he said softly, the flames dancing higher. “To match your hair. A living gem that poets would write into their odes and pirates would die for.”

“Why…” The word broke in a whisper, and she cleared her throat to try again. “Why did you come down?”

He widened his stance, his broad shoulders blocking the rest of the view. “I’ve been watching over you for a few days now. And so, I feel…”

When he paused, she offered, “Sorry for me?” She imagined herself asleep in his cavern, vulnerable to whatever he wanted.

His scintillating gaze fixed on hers. “Possessive.”

The word sent a shock through her, the sensation as hot as the flames in his eyes. And as dangerous. “I don’t want to be possessed by anyone,” she objected. “I’ve had enough of that.”

“Ah, so you
have
had enough. Good. So let me escort you back to your suite.” He held out the crook of his right elbow, his left arm still hidden under the cape. “And make no mistake, Esme.” When he said her name, his voice vibrated through her. “You
are
a prize.”

She glanced around surreptitiously. But it was silly to think she could get away. The whole place belonged to him. And where would she go? She had the thousand dollars in her hand, but how far would that get her? Nowhere in her old world, and not very far in any other world either, she suspected.

Besides, she’d come down here to immerse herself in the lights and chatter, and that was gone now.

Because of him.

She shivered, just a little, and she tried instantly to hide it, but she knew he saw.

The sweep of his dark lashes disguised the fire in his eyes, but his offered elbow didn’t waver. “It’s late,” he said, all lordly solicitousness. “And you aren’t quite yourself yet.”

“It’s early, actually,” she countered. “And I don’t want to be who I was.”

She wasn’t a poet or a pirate to be bribed by his rare pearl collection, but he was inadvertently giving her something she
did
want.

To change.

She gulped down a shaky breath and slipped her hand through the crook of his arm. Because she thought she might know how to start being someone else.

Chapter 4

Just when Bale tensed every muscle, ready to throw off the disguise of his cape and physically haul her away from the temptations of the Keep, she put her hand on his right arm.

Her fingers almost scorched him through the heavy fabric of his shirt. The lights of the games and residual body heat of the gamers had nearly felled him when he stepped into the hall for the first time in more decades than he could easily tally.

But her touch, the whisper of shuddering breath when she stepped beside him was worse. Just her presence pained him as every frozen nerve yearned toward her.

To stand this close to the heart of his treasure and know that he couldn’t claim her without killing himself faster and risking the future of the Nox Incendi echoed like a hollow roar in his head.

But he was too far gone with the stone blight, and she was too fragile to fight on his behalf.

He might be doomed, but his clan was not if he could just hold on long enough for Rave and Piper to synthesize the treatment, hold the dragonkin together just a little longer. That was more than enough.

In the private elevator, he swiped the key card he’d taken from Torch and they started up. There’d been a time when he would’ve just flown…

As bad as elevator lighting was when it opened in his cavern, it was harsher standing right underneath. He closed his eyes against the sensation of needles puncturing his retina.

“It hurts you, doesn’t it?” Her voice was soft.

He’d heard her speak before since she talked in her restless sleep. But to talk
to
her…

He shrugged his right shoulder then wished he hadn’t when pain ricocheted through the joint down his spine. “You’ve heard enough about the stone blight to understand what’s happening to not only me, but to all of the dragonkin."

“Yes.” A pause, and then she asked, “So why did you come down?”

The tentative hitch of her voice—as if no one had ever sought her out—made the dragon gruff. “I told you.”

“Why do you feel possessive?” Another pause. “Of me.”

So she
hadn’t
overheard him telling Rave that she could be his solarys. Just as well. “My dragon feels everything in the Keep belongs to it.”

“Then you could have sent someone else to collect me.”

He opened his eyes to quirk a brow at her. “Would you have listened?”

Her pink lips pursed in a way that made him not care about the daggers in his eyeballs. “Probably not,” she admitted, then added, “Definitely not.”

He inclined his head. “And so.” Unable to stop himself, he prodded, “
I
came down to get you. The real question, however, is…why did
you
come down here? Were you looking for someone? Or rather…
something
?”

“I, uh, just wanted…” She sucked in her lower lip, chewing lightly as she considered her answer. When she released her breath in a short huff, the flesh was slicked and much redder. The sight of that vivid blood, so close to the surface, made his dragon twist hungrily.

“What if”—she dragged the words out as slow as the flowstone in his cavern—“I’m trying to remake myself for myself? I’m tired of being a good girl for the bad guy. Maybe I want to be the bad girl for the right guy.”

The flush of heat wasn’t external this time. It rushed through his veins like a bath of acid, and he clenched his teeth hard enough to spark. “Are you saying I’m the right guy?”

Her glance followed the arc of the tiny embers then arrowed back to him. “I don’t know what I’m saying right now, given the vodka, but…”

“But what? You do remember I am not a ‘guy’, yes?” He closed the distance between them in one step and looked down at her. She was tall for a female human, as if she’d sacrificed the curves when she’d stretched herself, reaching for something else. And still she had to angle her head to meet his gaze.

Her eyes were as dark as his with shadows.

But she didn’t retreat.

So very carefully, he put one hand under her jaw, tilting her head higher. Even to his half-deadened fingers, her skin was soft, yielding, and her pulse fluttered, all that blood seething in her veins.

“You were to be sacrificed to a dragon,” he reminded her. Unnecessarily. “Why would you want to continue down that path? Why are you teasing me?”

“I’m not a sacrifice, not anymore. And I’m not teasing you.”

“You don’t know the temptation…” He let out a shuddering breath. “What I need is beyond anything I would ever ask of you.”

She lifted her chin another notch in challenge, so his fingertips just grazed the hard bone at the edge of her jaw. “Just so we’re clear…it’s mine to give.
Mine
.”

Her virginity. As if the beast cared about that. The beast within him wanted only the purity of the flame that flickered in her—low, perhaps, unfed, but ready to burn.

The agony of
not
immersing himself in her solarys fire would kill him.

But she wasn’t strong enough to take his dragon. If he tried to claim her, they would find themselves immolated in a mating fever that knew no boundaries. Refusing her outright wasn’t in the cards either, though, not when the wary sheen in her eyes looked a little too much like tears. He knew what it was to yearn to change…

He brushed his thumb across the lower bow of her lip. “And how would one win this prize from you?”

Her frown thrust her lip against his caress. “It’s not a prize. It’s a pitfall.”

His own mouth curled. “A pitfall, hmm?”

She blushed, carmine staining her cheeks. “Not…not literally, I guess. It just made me a target for—”

He pressed his thumb down. “Don’t say his name. He gets nothing more of your life.”

After a moment, she nodded against his touch. “You’re right. I need to start living. My friends were always stronger than me. Bolder. I lived through them, a little. I lived
because of
them. Now I want to live for myself.”

She took his hand and stepped closer to him, her breasts a breath away from his chest. Meaning she was
very
close because her breasts were small, the soft cones of flesh not enough to fill his palm, even together. Her gaze fell to his mouth, and her pink tongue flicked out to wet her lips, tasting where his thumb had been.

Blood and sullen ichor curled and pooled in him, a treacherous whirlpool threatening to engulf him. Just one taste of her…

He angled his head.

And the door behind him dinged, startling her to glance away.

He officially hated elevators.

Esme didn’t let go of his hand. “This is where I start. Now. With you. Come with me.” Her whisper was half question, half demand.

Without a word, he nodded.

She led him to the doors of the Amber Suite which opened to her key. He was relieved he didn’t have to do anything because he knew his hand would be shaking too hard.

She’d left only the amber chandelier on low, and the golden light flooded the foyer and part of the living room. But the window beyond was a wall of blackness, the lights of the Strip invisible far below.

The unrelenting void froze him in his tracks.

What was he thinking?

“Esme,” he rasped. “Wait.”

When she turned to face him, her dark eyes were wide, as black as the night behind her. And as empty. As if she sensed his rejection and dreaded it. The loneliness in her eyes was worse than any shard of agony in his bones.

He reeled her toward him. Not trying to catch herself, she thumped against his chest with a startled breath, but when he skimmed his hand up her arm to bury in the long fall of her hair, she angled her head into the caress. Her lashes fluttered down.

Bale tightened his grip on her hair, just enough to tilt her head back, and she yielded with another breath, her eyes flaring wide again.

Not darkness there, this time, but flames, flickering higher.

Slower than the flowstone, he brought his mouth down toward hers. Her breath soughed across his lips, and her hands fisted in his shirt, holding him close.

He inhaled the scent of cherries, lush and dark and sweet as a summer night.

“You want this, knowing what I am?” He had to ask.

Despite the incipient kiss, she had not closed her eyes. They glimmered like subterranean waters. “You’re a dragon-shifter. I get it.”

“You haven’t seen the dragon.”

“Not…” She swallowed. “Not in real life, no. But I can imagine…”

“You can’t. And anyway, I am not that. The stone blight has ravaged me for too long.”

“I’ve seen better days too.” Slowly, she threaded her hands up between them to rest on his chest. “No need to be shy about it.”

Shy. There was something he never thought he’d heard a human call him. “It’s more than that. Understand that I can’t shift anymore.” Saying it aloud tore at him, sharp as the swords that seemed so quaint in this world. He angled his body away from her to keep his left side hidden. “The petralys has made that impossible. I’m trapped as you see me.”

She did not drop his gaze. “What I see still looks pretty good to me.”

His breath caught, locking the dark cherry scent of her deep in his faltering lungs. Ashcraft had been a fool to dangle her half-zombified with that hallucinogenic ring in front of a dragon. Left to her own devices, she was temptation given flesh. No male, of any species, would resist that unwavering, unfathomable stare.

She tilted up to her toes. Her gaze didn’t waver, but her legs did. Just a little, just enough that he felt honor-bound to steady her with a harder grip.

“Do you know what I see?” she murmured. “Someone who’s watched over me, kept the nightmares away. I remember…your eyes, shining in the darkness. I thought they were stars, so close I could have touched you.”

The quiver of her breath against his lips would’ve flattened him if he hadn’t locked his knees. “Why didn’t you?”

“I was afraid.” Her voice broke. “I’ve always been afraid. Nothing to do with you.”

The confession broke him where even the years of creeping blight hadn’t. “Esme…” He tried to pull back.

She anchored one hand behind his neck, pulling herself higher on her toes. “It was always made very clear to me that my value was only figured by what I was worth to others. I couldn’t step out of line, couldn’t do anything that might jeopardize my standing with my family or our community. I was afraid to say what I wanted, ever.”

He couldn’t keep retreating. Not only was her slight weight enough to knock him over, but her sharing made him determined not to deny her in any way. “You can say what you want to me,” he assured her. “I will listen.”

“I want someone who doesn’t need me for anything,” she said. “Who already has more than I can give. You are rich, powerful, beautiful—” When he huffed, she threaded her fingers up into his hair. “I am nothing to you.”

“That’s not true.” The tug to his heart hurt more than her grip on his hair.

“But that’s what I want,” she said. “Someone who wants nothing from me.”

He would be lying to her to say he didn’t need her. She had the potential to be his solarys, but he wouldn’t take what he needed when doing so might hurt her. Not when so many others had hurt her, making her believe she was only valuable for what she could give them.

Claiming her would do worse than break her spirit—it could kill her. And him.

“I only want what you can give me freely, with all your heart.” His voice was rough in his throat, but he knew she’d hear the sincerity. Because without its heart, a dragon’s treasure was nothing, worthless. He’d rather let every gem and coin sink back into the earth, buried and lost forever, than take anything from her she didn’t want to give.

She wavered again, canting forward so that her small breasts poked his chest. “I was told to wait, to hold myself back until I could use myself on someone—like I was a goddamned weapon or something.”