You Slay Me (30 page)

"Perdy?" she mumbled, her eyelashes fluttering.

"No, it's just me," I said, looking up when the door opened. "And Drake and Fiat, and Pal and Istvan, and I think that's Renaldo and another one of Fiat's bullies in the hall, although it's a little hard to see with everyone in the way."

The two wyverns stood silent in the doorway, both staring with apparent surprise at Perdita's body as it slowly turned.

"Who?" Ophelia shrieked, pushing me back as she got to her feet. She pointed a finger at Drake, huge tears rolling down her cheeks as she stabbed the air in front of him. "It's him! He killed Perdy! He killed her just as he killed the others! He killed my ... my ..." She dissolved into heart-wrenching sobs, her hands covering her face.

I helped her to a chair, glancing back at the two men who blocked the doorway. "Unless you want everyone in the club to troop in here and have a look, I suggest you set your men as guards at the end of the hall and close the door."

Drake nodded at his men, who immediately left. Fiat was slower to send his men off. but eventually he did. The door closed with a soft click that was the only sound in the room. Ophelia was sobbing silently into her hands, her body shaking as she wept. I squatted next to her, offering what comfort I could.

Drake circled Perdita's body, his bright green eyes noting everything, I was sure. Fiat leaned back against the door as if keeping intruders out, but his eyes gave him away. They were coolly speculative ... the eyes of someone truly surprised by what he saw before him.

I cleared my throat, the noise unusually loud in the close confines of the room. "Drake, you've been accused of murdering Perdita. Did you do it?"

His gaze met mine over the slowly rotating body. "No more than I killed Aurora or the Venediger."

I smiled a sad little smile. Why had I expected I would get a straight answer out of him? I turned to Fiat. "You haven't been accused, but you were here when Ophelia and I arrived, so you had opportunity. Did you kill her?"

"I do not kill women," Fiat said stiffly. His shoulders made an odd sort of jerky motion of denial. "Well, not often do I kill them."

"How reassuring that is. Can I ask another question?"

"If it would please you," Fiat answered.

I stood up and yelled at the top of my lungs, "WHY CAN'T ANY OF YOU DRAGONS ANSWER A SIMPLE QUESTION WHEN IT'S ASKED?"

I'll be the first one to admit that I might have been showing a wee bit of stress what with people trying to kidnap me, and arrest me for murder, and steal things from me, but is that any reason for Drake to march over and slap me as if I were hysterical?

"Oh! You are going to be so sorry you did that," I snarled, making a fist and swinging it. Fiat plucked me off Drake, but not before I got in a really solid right jab to Drake's nose. "No one hits me, no one!" I yelled as Fiat dragged me backwards. Drake gingerly touched his nose, staring in patent surprise at the blood smeared across his fingertips.

"If I were you," Fiat said softly in my ear, "I would run."

Drake's roar of anger shattered the only two windows in the office. It also summoned both his and Fiat's men, all four of whom burst into the room just as Drake started toward me.

I didn't wait around to debate the issue. I ran. Straight through the men at the door, across the hall, and into the Venediger's office, trailing bits of crime scene tape behind me as I whirled around and locked the door a hairbreadth before Drake reached it.

It took him all of five seconds to kick it open. I backed away as he stalked into the room, pausing only to close the door behind him.

"Look," I said, my hands up in self-protection stance number seven. "I know you're a bit pissed right now, but—"

He was on me before I could even scream. One second he was at the door; the next he was fifteen feet across the room, dragging me up against his chest. For one brilliant, crystalline moment in time, I stared deep into Drake's eyes and beheld the dragon within.

My resistance melted into a river of passion.

I opened my mouth to remind him that he couldn't kill me without killing himself, but it wasn't death Drake had on his mind. He slammed his mouth against mine, his tongue not waiting for an invitation to come visiting; it just shoved its way into my mouth and took immediate possession, stroking, teasing, tasting every last square inch of my mouth, forcing me to submit. I fought him, not because I wasn't suddenly just as aroused and filled with desire as he was, but because I wanted him to know right from the start I would never again submit.

"You can woo me," I said against his lips as I grabbed the front of his dark green shirt, literally ripping it right off his body. "You can court me, you can seduce me, but you will
never
force me into submission again. What happened in the dream was a fantasy, a figment of our imaginations. This is real, and on
my
terms."

He growled into my mouth as he grabbed my thighs,

hauling me up until I locked my legs around his waist. I grabbed his hair, pulling on it as I gave him a taste of his own treatment, plundering his mouth as he had plundered mine. He tasted spicy, hot, like he had been drinking Dragon's Blood. He lunged to the wall behind me, smashing me between his body and the cool wooden paneling, his teeth nipping at my tender flesh as he buried his face in my breasts.

"Gold," he breathed as he licked the rise of one breast. I had just enough presence of mind to remember the Eye tucked into the lining of my bra.

"No! Not here!" I cried as his head dipped to the valley between my breasts. He brought his head up, the dragon talisman clenched between his teeth. I took it back, replacing it with an offering of my lips as I tucked the jade back into my bra, shivering at the look of molten desire in his eyes.

He jerked my dress up, his fingers hot and hard on my thighs as he shredded my underwear. I flexed my legs around his hips, squirming when his fingers parted me, testing me, teasing me, absorbing the burn his touch had started and building it to an inferno of desire, arousal, and consuming need. I dragged my nails across his back as he tormented me with his body.

"You're mine," he ground out through clenched teeth, the heated tip of him edging into me.

"Not even close.
You,
however are mine, mine, mine." I grabbed his hair and arched myself against him, desperate to feel him within me, desperate for his heat, his fire, his hunger. My soul burned for the touch of his; my body wept tears of passion that only he could stop.

"Mine," he snarled as he lunged, pinning me against the wall as his body became the invader, spreading me, impaling me, touching me in a way that no mortal man could. His fire swept through me as I moved against him, reveling in the feeling of his body moving in mine, embracing the conflagration of our souls, riding great waves of fire that spiraled around us, fusing us, firing us, binding us together until we exploded together in a million dancing sparks. Drake's eyes opened wide as ecstacy overtook him, and for a moment, for the breathless, endless length of time it takes to pass from one second to another, his form shimmered between Drake the man and Drake the dragon. His lips closed on my collarbone, and I jerked against him as a fire hotter than anything I'd felt yet burned the skin beneath his mouth. I moved against him, spun into another orgasm, my body tightening around his until he arched his back and roared his triumph to the heavens.

"We are sick people," I said later, after breath had returned to my lungs and reason to my mind. I unlocked my legs and slid down his thighs, various and sundry parts of me making me aware that Drake liked to play harder than I was used to.

"Sick?"

I straightened my poppy dress before managing to gather enough courage to look him in the eye. "What else would you call having this sort of a reaction to finding a dead body?"

His eyes were hot, remnants of his dragon fire still visible as his gaze licked down my body. "I would call it fated. It was inevitable that we would mate again."

I fussed with brushing out the newly made wrinkles in my dress. "Yeah, well, I have another word for it, but as it's not complimentary to either of us, I'll keep it to myself."

He retrieved the shirt I had torn off him, giving it an odd look. Luckily only a few of the buttons were ripped off. "I take it this means you love me."

I goggled at him, a good old-fashioned "What the hell are you talking about?" goggle. "Not even close, dragon boy!"

One ebony eyebrow rose as he turned to retrieve his tie. I flinched when I saw the scoring my nails had left on his back.

"You said you engage in sex only with men you love. You refused me in the last dream. Thus, you must now be in love with me."

My face flushed as I adjusted my upper story, which had been dislodged in his quest for gold. "What happened a few minutes ago was an exception to the rule. It was purely a physical reaction to the stress of finding Perdita's body. Life asserting itself in the face of death and all that. I'm sure psychiatrists have a name for it."

Drake slipped into his shirt. "So do I—desire. It had nothing to do with Perdita and everything to do with our bond."

I turned to look in the other direction, unable to face the knowing (read: smug male) look in his eyes. "Ow! What the devil?" I touched the side area on my collarbone he had kissed. It was the same spot he had burned in my first dream. The skin was tender, very tender. I tried to look down at myself, but the sore spot was up too high to see. I glared at him as he tucked his shirt into his pants. "What did you do to me, bite me? Are you part vampire, too?"

He buckled his belt, giving me a look that went a long way to cooling the still-burning fires deep within me. "We mated. I marked you. It wasn't a bite."

"You marked me?" I said in disbelief, spinning around to see if the Venediger had a mirror anywhere. He did, I discovered after a few moments of searching in his topmost desk drawer. "You marked me like I was your laundry? Or a cow you'd brand? That sort of a mark? Oh, my God, you did mark me! Ow! It hurts!"

He took the mirror from me, gently touching the burn that stood out on the right side of my collarbone. It was curved-edged triangle with a line twisted around the three sides, a symbol that bore an enormous resemblance to the curved dragon's tail on my aquamanile. "It will heal."

I pushed away from him. "That's all you're going to say, it'll heal? I'm going to be left with a big ole herkin' burned hickey on my collarbone, and all you can say is it'll heal? Thanks a whole heck of a lot, Drake. If you don't mind, I think I'd like to return to the room across the hall where everyone is probably wondering what happened to us."

"They aren't wondering," Drake said with an arrogant look that my palm itched to remove from his handsome face. He grabbed me as I stormed through the door, keeping me from plowing into Istvan and one of Fiat's men, who were standing in the hall. Istvan started to grin, but looked away when I glared at him. Fiat's man outright smirked. Behind him, in the open doorway of Perdita's room, Ophelia stood clutching a box of tissues as Fiat and Renaldo lowered Perdita's body to a blanket on her desk. Drake's voice growled into my ear. "Aisling, much as it distresses me to say this, we must talk."

I jerked my arm out of his grasp. "What we just did changes nothing, dragon.
Nothing!
There will be no talking," I said loudly, turning to stomp into the other room. I went to Ophelia and put my arm around her. "You OK?"

Her cheeks were still wet, and her chin quivered, but she managed a nod. She plucked at my sleeve, her eyes filled with pain. "Please, Aisling, don't let him get away with this. Don't let him kill anyone else."

"Don't worry," I said, leveling a look at Drake that would give him something to chew over for a couple of days. "The person who killed Perdita will be punished. I swear that."

'Thank you," she whispered, and went to pieces again. I led her back to her chair and let her sob out her agony.

"We will not, of course, inform the police of this matter," Fiat said as Renaldo covered Perdita's body. "This will be taken care of by those in the
L’au-dela
"

"Agreed," Drake said.

"Not
agreed," I said, marching over to where the two of them were warily watching each other. "We can't keep a murder from the police—they'll have to know about it. I just want to wait a day, until I have the proof to convict the person who killed her and the Venediger and poor Mme. Deauxville. Then we'll contact the police and tell them everything." I fingered the burn mark on my collarbone. "Well, almost everything."

Fiat froze as his eyes followed my hand's movement. His eyes narrowed. "You mated with him just now?"

I fisted my hands to keep from punching out his lights. I'm not normally a violent person, but the last few days were enough to make a sinner out of even the purest of saints. "I don't think
everyone
in the club heard you. Maybe if you used a microphone, then the whole of the Otherworld could know the intimate details of my sex life."

Fiat's lips quirked. Drake looked bored.

"You mistake me," Fiat said. "I am not surprised that you were in the other room mating with Drake—it is the way of dragons to seek their mate in times of strong emotions. I am merely surprised that you had not done so before this. If I had known that you had not yet mated with him when you were in my apartment, I would have been doubly careful that you not escape me."

"You were in his apartment?" Drake asked in a velvety soft rumble. It sent shivers of apprehension down my spine. "When was this?"

"None of your business. The question is, what are we going to do with Perdita until tomorrow?"

Ophelia moaned softly. One of the blue dragons was patting her on the back as she clung to his shoulders and sobbed into his chest.

"Sorry, Ophelia, I didn't mean that to sound callous, but it is summer, and... er ... without getting too gross, things are going to start going stinky really soon if we don't get some ice or something."