Dragon Fever (14 page)

She eased her hand up his chest, flattening over his left pec, and tilted her head back.

It seemed as natural as striking flint to steel, to brush his mouth over hers, capturing her slow breath. Her lips parted, her tongue licking out like the first flame from a smoldering ember.

From there, the conflagration was inevitable and unstoppable.

Their clothes disappeared like smoke shredded by the wind, and all her gloriously dusky skin was revealed to his ravenous gaze. And hands. She was silk and heat and undulating curves of want that fired his own desires.

He laid her down in the soft moss of the grotto hidden behind the waterfall. But when she rolled to put him underneath her, he went more than willingly.

She straddled him, her breasts hanging ripe and lovely above him. He took one lush globe in his hand and tongued her nipple to a long, stiff peak. Her clit pouted almost as hard when he found the nub with his gently circling thumb. She rode his hand to a silent, shuddering climax, her head thrown back, eyes closed.

He thought maybe she was done with him already, but when she opened her eyes, glazed darkly with pleasure, he caught a glimpse of the fire burning deeper in her.

She took his rampant cock in his hand and tilted the turgid flesh toward her well-slicked pussy.

“Piper,” he murmured.

“I have an IUD, and I’m clean. And I trust you’re safe too, right?”

He wasn’t, not at all, but not for the reasons she meant right now. He nodded rigidly and groaned as she lowered herself slowly, taking inch after inch of his aching cock into her honeyed depths. The ancient rhythm she beat on his flesh had his heart pounding in answer.

But he clamped his jaw shut to hold back any awkward words.

When she came again in a violent rush, he flipped her across the moss. The crushed green smell and the musky sweetness of her satisfaction swirled in his head, soothing the inferno of his need.

For a few moments. He stoked her again, higher this time, until she wrapped her heels behind his ass and drew him all the way in. He cupped one hand behind her neck, forcing her to look up at him, to meet his gaze, to see…

No, she couldn’t see what he was.

“Rave,” she gasped. “Again.”

He thrust into her again and again until she was keening, the sweet sound echoing off the rocks and reverberating in his bones.

She bowed up, slamming her pussy around his cock, and came with a hoarse scream.

His roar matched hers, his dragon claiming her as the heart of his treasure.

Chapter 13

Reclining back in the warm, still pool, her head cushioned on Rave’s pec, Piper stared up at the late-winter sky high above the garden.

Everything was topsy-turvy here: a garden at the bottom of a deep well, and a cave in the penthouse of a skyscraper. Friends who left her, and a stranger who would let his brother die rather than demand her blood. Her determination at the beginning of this trip to fight for old dreams replaced by a tentative reach for impossible realities.

No wonder she was so confused.

She rolled to her side to sling her arm across Rave’s chest, sloshing blood-warm water across his tattoos, making them glimmer with life.

Just beyond the tip of her nose was the empty spot above his heart.

Bale had told Rave that
she
was the heart of his treasure. What did that even mean? She traced her finger over the hollow space.

Rave caught her hand and lifted it to his lips. “Piper.” His breath gusted hot across her pulse point.

His phone rang, and he let out a curse.

Their clothes were scattered on the far end of the pool, and he splashed hurriedly through the water to get to his jeans. She bit her lip to hold back a smile at the hint of a jiggle in his taut ass.

But as the call started to go to voice mail and she heard Torch’s first words—“We found them”—her smile cut out.

She scrambled across the pool with far more jiggling than Rave.

He was already talking to his cousin by the time she joined him. He held up one finger when she gestured for him to switch to speaker.

“All right,” he said while she jittered impatiently. “I’m on my way… No. Don’t make a move until I get there.”

Piper scrambled to pull on her clothes over her wet skin. “No what? Where are they? Where are we going?”

“No, meaning you aren’t going anywhere.” He clamped his hand on her shoulder, trapping her with only one arm through her sleeve.

She scowled at him. “Of course I’m going.”

“You aren’t. Because I’m not taking you, and I’m not telling you where they are.”

She sagged a little under the weight of his hand. “You’re being overbearing.”

But the hard set of his jaw told her he wasn’t budging.

“Torch said it’s possible Esme may have been trying to leave Ashcraft. And that Anjali may have stopped her.”

Piper wavered on her feet. “But… Ez was mad at me when I…” She thought back. It had actually been Anjali mad at her, mostly. But Anj didn’t like Lars any more than she did.

Or hadn’t.

When she stopped struggling, Rave lifted his hand so she could finish dressing. He donned his clothing easily, and it seemed as if all the water had steamed off his hot body.

He watched while she tugged on her shoes. “When you said Ashcraft is rich and controlling, did you mean dangerous?”

Piper stiffened. “You think he hurt Esme?”

“Don’t know. But that’s why you aren’t going. I’m not risking you.”

“Lars wouldn’t…” She put her hand over her mouth and realized she couldn’t say something she wasn’t sure she believed. Slowly she lowered her hand. “He might. He’s always gotten what he wanted. He wants Esme, always has.”

“Then maybe it’s time we see what Esme wants.” Rave gripped her nape, holding her fast as he stared at her hard. “You trusted me with your body, with your pleasure. Will you trust me to bring your friends back? Will you stay here while I do that?”

She curled her lips between her teeth and finally nodded, as much as she could considering his remorseless grasp.

“Good.” He leaned down and kissed her, one fierce, hot slant of his mouth across hers, then he released her. “I’ll be back. Wait for me.”

He turned and strode away, already talking on his phone again.

She sagged, bracing herself on the pool ledge behind her. Esme had tried to run away? Anjali had kidnapped her? But Lars had people—spies or jailers?—surrounding them. Where were they? None of it made sense.

And she was waiting around some grotto pool like a helpless princess.

That made even less sense when she’d always been the helpful, hardworking one. Princesses didn’t have calluses.

Worse, she didn’t have her cell phone. And secret gardens probably didn’t have landlines. What if Esme had been trying to call her? Or Anj?

What if Rave needed her?

Before the thought ended, she was heading for the elevator—and she couldn’t even believe she’d taken those ass-master marble stairs when there’d be an elevator—but as soon as she got her phone, she’d come right back in case Rave returned here.

As she hopped into the elevator though, she realized the buttons didn’t stop for every floor. Well, of course it wouldn’t since this was a private lift. But at least she’d get closer to the main floor—

The door closed and she found herself heading up before she’d selected any of the buttons.

Oo-kay.

She was only half surprised when the door opened into blackness.

This time she kept one foot firmly in the doorway; damned elevator wasn’t going anywhere without her.

“How’d you know it was me?” she asked the shadows.

“My brother and cousin are away. And of those remaining who know of this path, only you would dare use it.”

“Easier than the stairs,” she grumbled.

Bale rumbled; his version of laughter, she’d guessed.

“Why’d you summon me?” That was the word he’d used with Rave, though it sounded old-fashioned to her ear. But probably kings preferred old fashions.

“I have no doubt Rave told you to stay put, and yet you were roaming the Keep. Why?”

“I needed my phone,” she said. Then she admitted, “And I don’t like being told what I can’t do.” If she’d let that happen, she’d have dropped out of college. Hell, she never would’ve made it to college, never met Esme and Anjali. Never set foot in the Keep.

“That will be good for my brother. He can be imperious at times.”

She choked on her own laugh.

“You’re thinking we’re much alike.” His voice was wry.

She inclined her head. “I wouldn’t disagree with a king.”

“In that case, you’ll agree when I tell you to go after him.”

She stiffened in the doorway. “Go after Rave? But why? Torch said he found Esme. They’re going to get her and come right back.”

“It’s not going to be that simple.”

She took a jolting step out of the elevator, her heartbeat racing ahead of her. “Why not? What’s happening?”

“The ring you gave me. Esme’s ring.” The rasping voice dropped an octave in a way that sent a shiver down Piper’s spine. “There was magic on it. Alchemical magic.”

Piper shook her head hard. “I—I’m sorry. What?”

“I’ve been told you are a chemical engineer. Surely you’ve heard of the alchemists.”

Not in her chemistry classes. She had to dredge up memories of her undergraduate English requirement. “They weren’t chemists. They were wannabes, always trying to turn lead into gold.”

“Close. They were always trying to turn
everything
into gold. And they weren’t wannabes. They were warlocks.”

Piper groped for the frame of the doorway, for support or for escape she wasn’t sure. But somehow she’d gotten too far away from it. “Warlocks. Uh-huh.”

Had the petralys broken his mind?

Wait a second. She was willing to believe in a rare blood-born contaminant that turned men into stone and
another
more
uncommon substance that turned their blood back into rainbows, but she was going to quibble over the word
magic
?

In her consternation, she hardly noticed when the elevator door closed, shutting her in with the disfigured lunatic.

“Are you one of them?” Red eyes gleamed in the darkness, closer than she expected.

She staggered back another step. Her heel caught on something, and she went down hard, knocking her elbow on the concrete with a sharp twinge that sent tears rushing into her eyes. “I’m not a warlock.”

“You’d be a witch, actually.”

“What? I’m not!”

“Hold out your hand.”

Baffled, she did so. Although what it would prove to him—

The sunstone in her ring glowed, brightening the space around her, shining on the slick rock of the stalagmite that had tripped her.

A darker shadow twisted just beyond the reach of her ring. Something metallic rasped on the stone floor. Bale, pacing.

“So. Not a witch?”

“It’s never done that,” she whispered. “I’ve had it forever, ever since…”

“Ever since your friend Anjali made it for you. As she made Esme the obsidian ring.”

Piper nodded jerkily. “What did you find in Esme’s ring?”

“Darkness. Death.”

She stared in horror at her own ring, then frantically tried to twist it off. Her fingers scrabbling at it cast bars of shadows across the room.

“Stop it.” Impatience roughened Bale’s voice. “I don’t sense any of that from the sunstone. Yours has only light, warmth.” He hesitated. “And love.”

His longing resonated in her, but she pushed it away, needing to focus. “Then why—?”

“Something changed. Changed the stone. Changed your friend. I’m not sure which. And my brother will be in the thick of it.”

She scrambled to her feet. “You have to warn him.”

“I will. And you have to go to him. I fear he will need his true mate before the night is done.”

Chapter 14

The motel—accurately called “Mot-l” according to the broken sign—on the outskirts of town was as dark and quiet as the Strip was neon and gleeful chaos. The mottled stucco building seemed to squat beneath its two-stories of outside-access rooms, and the ubiquitous palm trees planted in the gravel beside the cracked asphalt of the parking lot all leaned away as if longing to escape.

Rave didn’t blame them.

“Of course she’d go dark,” Torch said, anticipation clipping the ends of his words. “Just like she did at the Keep. When Bale called with the vision he got through the ring, I instantly thought of this place.”

“How convenient you know all the worst dives,” Rave said dryly.

“Hey, sometimes you need to go somewhere no one asks questions.”

Rave didn’t want to know what those times were. Or what the questions might be. “You’re certain Piper’s friends are here?”

“Showed the desk clerk a picture from our security tape. For a mere twenty bucks, he confirmed they are both in room seven, bottom floor at the end.” Torch cracked his knuckles. “Couldn’t’ve made themselves easier to snatch if they tried.”

Rave sat back in the passenger seat of the gray work SUV. He’d never even seen this vehicle at the Keep. If he had, he would’ve asked Torch to keep an eye on it since it looked sketchy, but in the Mot-l parking lot, it blended right in.

“I assume we’re just busting in the door,” he said.

Torch gave him serious side eye. “Nooo,” he drawled. “That would be tacky. We’re going to wait until they order takeout and are all distracted by yummy fried things or pepperoni things.
Then
we are going to bust in the door.”

“I assume you’ll confiscate their takeout.”

“Wouldn’t want to leave evidence.”

They observed the room in silence a moment.

“Why did they come to the Keep at all, if they were just going to relocate here?” Rave mused.

Torch shrugged. “Bad taste. Ran out of money. Whatever. We can ask her all the questions we want once we have her.” He smacked his lips as if he already had the Chinese food
and
pizza
and
the females in his grasp.

Rave frowned at his cousin. Torch strutted in his black leather like there wasn’t anything else underneath—probably there wasn’t—but he
did
have a brain. It wasn’t like him not to be focused on the
why
along with all the other Ws when it came to the Keep’s security and the secrets of the Nox Incendi.