Vampire Dragon (10 page)
Fizzle
and
hiss
! Her spell tossed bullets of bright light that popped at Darkwyn’s feet. She just didn’t have a witch’s talent. But at least her magick hadn’t turned him away. If anything, he closed his fists and proceeded more determined.
and
hiss
! Her spell tossed bullets of bright light that popped at Darkwyn’s feet. She just didn’t have a witch’s talent. But at least her magick hadn’t turned him away. If anything, he closed his fists and proceeded more determined.
He skirted the bright blighted fireworks and kept coming, despite her half-baked spell. She could only hope that he ached for her as much as she did for him.
The steady crackle of crisp leaves beneath his feet told her that the closer he got, the faster he walked.
No more doubt then. She would attempt to trust the universe, trust requiring a superhuman effort on her part. Then again, she awaited someone that seemed rather superhuman himself.
Yes, she was going to do this.
Goddess bless them both, somehow his heart matched hers, both of them pulsing in the air around them, thumping a sexual beat.
He set his bags down and began climbing up the building, toward her balcony, taking the direct route, as if a door and stairs would be too much in his way.
But oh, if she had known how vulnerable the Phoenix was to being climbed, she would have locked her balcony door from day one. So why did she believe that with Darkwyn around, she would never have to lock them again? Why did she believe he’d stay, Goddess help her, when few people ever did?
Empathetic instinct, she had it in spades, when she had it, unlike the magick that failed her time and again. Then she heard that dratted bird squawk somewhere nearby.
“Woman,” it proclaimed. “An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man and having a rudimentary susceptibility to domestication. A species . . . lithe and graceful in her movements . . . can be taught not to talk.”
Squawk.
Squawk.
“Shut it, Puck,” Darkwyn grumbled. “I’d like to teach you not to talk.”
“Don’t touch her, dragon. She’ll drink your blood!”
“Fly away, bird. I’ll eat
her
for breakfast,” Darkwyn said, eyeing her, his words having to do with promise not threat.
her
for breakfast,” Darkwyn said, eyeing her, his words having to do with promise not threat.
Gazing on him, she knew she was lost. Or found. Saved, perhaps, however improbable, her psychic instincts right on the mark, in this case. No second guessing needed.
With him outside the railing, lit by the moon, she examined his five o’clock shadow, the violet of his eyes, his yearning literally stroking her in the most intimate places. “I had a nightmare,” she admitted.
“So did I,” he whispered, and with forethought and purpose, he took her hand in his.
His confidence, rare for her, probably stemmed from being so big. As for her letting him take her hand, chalk one up to extraordinary circumstances, and chemistry.
He jumped the railing. “I dreamed the Phoenix looked like a church.” He stood before her, kissing close, without lowering his head, learning her fingertips with his thumb, moving it over the tips of her nails and back, the silk of his skin against hers a wonder.
“It was a church first, a long time ago.”
“And in my dream, you were in danger, past or future, I couldn’t tell.” He slipped a hand to her waist.
“I know. It’s like—We dreamed past and present mixed together,” she suggested.
“We?”
She touched his cheek. “Scorch the kitten was evil and struck you with lightning. I was with you every step of the way, even before you found me. Zachary didn’t mean to shoot you. I half expected to find cat scratch marks on your cheek.”
He covered her hand on his face. “I came to save you, even if it meant getting shot.”
“I need no saving at this moment.”
“Then I will have to make love to you, instead.”
Her legs turned to jelly and he had to hold her up. “You are safe then?” he confirmed.
“At the moment. Am I safe from you?”
“No.”
“Fair enough. Darkwyn, do you believe in destiny or karma? You see, I have always believed it existed and that mine blows.”
“ ‘Blows’?”
“Sucks,” she clarified, delighting in his eye twinkle.
“We shall see which of us wins the sucky karma prize another time,” he said. “Despite your past, I am here to prove you wrong.”
“Do you know my past?”
“I know from Vivica that you will be a good employer, and that is all I need to know, in addition to the way you affect my man parts. You should know about them. I am flawed. You already know that I want to be more to you than a bodyguard.”
“I’m flawed, too,” she admitted. “Your flaws don’t bother me. Mine do.”
Darkwyn raised a hand to trace her lips, and Bronte shivered, first on the outside, then deep at her core.
“You have a generous mouth kissed by nature’s reddest berries and sculpted by an artist’s hand,” her blind knight said.
“I am too tall.”
He ignored that, she noticed, in all but expression. “I like the way your brows curve like a seabird on the wing.” He stroked her top lip. “The way your lips rise in the center like a heart. I would make turning them into a smile my life’s work.”
“Goddess help me, I would let you. But be warned, I arrived on this earth wearing a frown.”
“As did I. You were there. You saw me arrive.”
She tilted her head, confused, but inclined to let it pass so as not to break the spell. “I barely know how to smile,” she admitted.
“I will teach you.”
“So
you
do know how, then?”
you
do know how, then?”
“Not really. Let us teach each other.”
The red sheers at her French doors embraced them, gently forced them closer together, dancing and wrapping them in a cocoon of the North Wind’s making.
The wind of death blew from the north. Death of the old meant new beginnings.
Death courted her, yet Darkwyn’s presence let hope flicker, though only a miracle would allow her to see hope bloom.
“Your nose turns up the least bit. I know because I have been sketching you to keep my sanity until I returned.”
“Returned,” she said. “Yet we barely know each other.”
“I know your heart is open to mine. You, Bronte McBride, are my heart mate.”
“I should be afraid,” she whispered, her lips against his, against her good judgment. “Is heart mate anything like . . . employer?”
“In this case,” he said. “Yes.”
“In for a penny,” she added, having revealed her fear. “Do you know Sanguedolce?”
“No, but I remember that you mentioned him in our dream.”
She tried to pull her hand from his. “Why do you suppose we had the same dream?”
“As a way for the universe to bring us together?”
“I suppose that’s as good an explanation as any, but it smacks of destiny, and you know how I feel about that. And bring us together with a positive force or a negative one? I mean, where did it come from?”
“I do not know. I am not from this country.”
She tried to step away from Darkwyn, but he wouldn’t let go of her hand. “Neither is Sanguedolce,” she said. Neither was she.
“I know four places, Rome, Scotland, an uncharted island a million miles away, and Salem, Massachusetts, for nearly a week.”
She stepped closer. “Name your island.”
“The Island of Stars. Who is Sanguedolce?”
“Never speak his name.”
Darkwyn took her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “You spoke it first. I am going to kiss you now.”
Her amusement was lost to the supremacy of his kiss, his cool lips authoritative, his open mouth ravenous, his hands and body vigorous and greedy for hers.
She didn’t know him, she reminded herself. But she wanted to.
“You know me,” he said, devouring her lips, scary appropriate in his response. “You are my missing center.” He lifted her in his strong embrace, and she wound her legs around his waist, mostly so she wouldn’t fall when she fainted, and he crushed her in an openmouthed kiss so wild, so filled with rapture, that she became more helpless to resist.
As they stepped into her bedroom off the balcony, Lila and Scorch raised their sleepy heads, quick to observe her riding Darkwyn like a breathless spider monkey. “No man has ever stepped foot in this room.”
“No man belongs here, but me.” He shooed the cats out with a directive hand and they obeyed.
She placed her head on his shoulder as he carried her—all parts touching, flawed or not. She breathed deeply for the room to stop spinning before she could speak. “You’re pretty sure of yourself.”
Disproving her theory, he had a one-handed fight with the bedroom door, mumbling something she didn’t quite catch. “Jagidy?” she asked. “Who’s Jagidy?”
“Imaginary friend. Don’t want him watching.”
“Have you seen a shrink?”
“Shrink. I looked up this word. Vivica said I needed one. It means to make smaller. But tonight, since I saw you from outside, I have experienced a continued enlargement; no shrinkage at all.”
He lowered her to the bed so she lost interest in word games, though she got his meaning loud and clear. How could she not, given its pulsing presence? She kept her legs around Darkwyn when he would straighten and yanked him down on top of her. She could tell from the befuddled look on his face that he hadn’t expected to lose his control or his breath.
“Bemusing Bronte, you’re quite the seductress.”
“What? My clothes didn’t give me away the first day?”
“I saw only your heart.”
“Hah! Tell me another.” She shoved his shoulder. “Before we do anything,” she said. “We do have a couple of big problems.”
“No, I have only one. If I had two, I might not have come here tonight. Would two feel twice as good, I wonder? Or would the extra just get in the way?”
Bronte raised herself on her elbows. “What?”
He seemed to come back to himself. “Oh, you think
you
have problems?”
you
have problems?”
TWELVE
“I do have a problem,” she said, “and it’s a biggie.”
Darkwyn didn’t care. “Is it because you’re ugly? I mean, I don’t care, but—”
Like being splashed with ice water, she rose on her elbows. “You think I’m ugly?”
“I think you’re the most beautiful woman in the universe, but you wear a mask, so either you are scarred or you think you’re ugly.”
She shoved him so hard he fell from hovering above her to bounce against the red striped wall beside her bed. She hoped he sprained his perfect head.
“I’m not ugly,” she snapped, getting up. “I’m
old
. Years older than you, more than a decade, maybe fifteen years older. You’re about twenty-three, right?”
old
. Years older than you, more than a decade, maybe fifteen years older. You’re about twenty-three, right?”
“Give or take a millennium or twenty.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her down on top of him, then he tilted his head to nibble and lick that spot low between her breasts. “A decade is ten years, yes?” he confirmed, peeking up at her.
He’d come up for air when she least wanted him to, leaving her nipples standing and shouting, “Here! I’m over here.”
Slow on the uptake much?
“Yes, a decade is ten years. You don’t have to rub it in.”
Slow on the uptake much?
“Yes, a decade is ten years. You don’t have to rub it in.”
His head came up fast, his eyes wide and eager. “Rub? What would you like me to rub?”
She huffed, horny and achy and frustrated as hell. “Stick to the point!”
Darkwyn did what she wished but not what she wanted. He didn’t explain his point about being millenniums older but raised his hips so they met at exactly the perfect place, and if she’d stopped sniping she might have a big surprise in store. She ground her hips against his generous offer. “You have a pretty impressive point there.”
He fingered her hair, brought it to his lips, romantic and sweet, and getting her hotter. “Ah, my impressive point,” he said, sliding her hair against his cheek, then tickling her chin with it. “My impressive point is our
other
big problem.”
other
big problem.”
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