“Okay, then…four very long years.
“Always nightshift?”
“Pay’s better. Slightly.” She took a bite of lobster that’d been swimming in herbs and butter. He wasn’t lying—the food was divine. But it was weird to be eating in a restaurant and have it be just them. She looked around at the space, and at the vault’s closed door. Her, him, here—it didn’t feel right. Then again, she had no idea what going out on a theoretical date with a dragon-man—or man-dragon?—ought to be like.
“What’re you thinking?” he asked her.
“Will you walk into my parlor?” she quipped honestly.
Damian snorted and took a sip of wine. “I’m a dragon, not a spider.”
“I notice you’re not saying I’m not a fly.” She tilted her head at him again.
His gaze swept over her as though inspecting her for himself. “You’re definitely not a fly.”
She fought not to flush under his attention. “I bet you say that to all the girls you bring here. Or…lady dragons?”
He set his wineglass down and considered her. “You might be surprised to find out that there are very few people like me.”
“That must be so rough for you,” she began, like she meant it, and then impishly added, “to have even a shred of competition.”
He grinned at her, eyes glittering. “Oh, and just who is my competition, Andi?”
“I don’t know. How thorough was your background check? I mean…did it list the three doctors I’m sleeping with?”
There was the smallest flicker of movement in his jaw as his teeth clenched, although nothing else in his smug, confident, smoldering expression changed—and she knew she had him. She covered her face with her hands and began cackling. “Oh my God, you actually thought I would date a doctor!”
His golden eyes widened in confusion. “Why not?”
“Says someone who has never worked with a doctor in their life,” Andi snickered, and she shook her head at him. He only thought he had the upper hand. “So…have you always lived here?”
He made a thoughtful sound before answering her. “Mmm…here like on this mortal plane or here in this particular incidence of time and space?”
Was he finally going to tell her the truth? “Remember, I’m a nurse, not a physicist,” she said, leaning forward.
He grunted and rearranged a series of smaller bowls on the table. “Let’s say this is Earth, eh?” he suggested, centering his steak on the plate. “This, here, is another Realm, and this is another, and this is another.” He went on, setting the roll plate, the butter dish, and a demitasse plate adjacent to ‘Earth,’ around them. “Most Realms, like most other planets, are useless—except for some travel considerations—but certain ones contain alternative forms of life and run off of non-scientific principles.”
“Dragons…and magic?” she guessed.
“Your words, not mine,” he said, still coy.
She squinted at him. “Then what happened the other night?”
“My people and I watch out for gates.” He took a fingertip and stroked some of the blood from his plate out over its edge and onto the butter dish. “Gates let things that shouldn’t be here through. They’re like rifts between different Realms.” He touched the butter, then streaked it back onto his plate, before licking his finger.
How much was safe to tell her? It was the first time Damian had ever tried explaining the gates to a normal human aloud. He couldn’t help but be aware of how crazy it sounded—no matter that it was accurate.
But just this afternoon, Jamison had managed to predict one of the smaller ones. He and Mills had rushed out to a rural grocery store while Damian’d been sleeping, and they’d sealed it off just as it started to leech Unearthly matter through. No one had been the wiser, although they’d bought the entire contents of the soda aisle just in case any of it had become contaminated—and Damian had a suspicion that even that was just because Jamison really, really liked Dr. Pepper. It was the first success they’d ever had on that front, and he hoped the first of many.
If he had met Andi in a few weeks—or a few months—would they even be having this conversation?
“So,” she asked, pointing to his steak and butter in turns, “what are you?”
He settled back into his chair and observed her. How best to answer? It was hard to keep his defenses up when she was in that dress. The silk hung off of her in all the right ways, suspended by skinny straps he longed to reach over and break. He hadn’t expected to open the door to a dream made flesh tonight, but he had.
His dragon roused. She still smells good.
Shush.
“What do you think I am?” he asked her.
He watched her gasp for air while thinking, and then stir the food on her plate. “Well, I don’t think you’re a vegetable,” she said, pushing out a piece of broccoli. “And you’re not a mineral,” she said, dashing the table with salt. “So, you must be an animal. But there’s a lot of different types.” She pointed to beef, chicken, and crab in quick succession. “And I don’t see Godzilla here on the table, sooooo…”
Was he just an exotic animal to her? He’d never considered that he might be. “Yes. So few places serve authentic nuclear reactor lizard these days, it’s a shame,” he said, snarking to cover up the flush of shame he felt. “Any other questions?”
“How long have you been doing this?”
And all of a sudden, she’d disarmed him again. He paused to think. There was the true-truth answer of twenty years, and then the just-truth enough. “Too long.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
Such a good question, after so many dark nights. He took a longer sip of wine, considering. “There are…aspects of it that I enjoy. But it has its downsides. Like most jobs, I suppose.”
“Why do you do it?”
Her tone was so earnest, he blinked. It’d been an eternity since he’d ever considered other options—and as far as he knew, they didn’t exist. “Because someone has to. And I’m the best suited for the job.”
Her lips twisted to one side. “Because of your thick skin?”
“Something like that, yes.”
She sank back, looking at him. She’d been so intense, and now she was frustrated. “You still haven’t told me anything I can Google.”
Which was true, but it was for her own good. She had to know that, didn’t she?
She needs to eat, his dragon murmured. Damian hadn’t even realized his dragon was still paying attention. It was right. She’d stopped eating three questions in, and an entire table full of the most exquisite and expensive food in the entire city was growing cold as she tried to pump answers from him, and what was worse was, there was no way for him to not disappoint her. “Andi…it’s not my fault that most humans don’t think I’m real.”
Her perfect lips pursed as her gentle brow furrowed. “But I do.”
Andi’s answer echoed in the room around them as he swallowed, feeling his carefully collected armor start to crack. Like scales sliding over scales, he felt a rearrangement of the space he held—as a man and a dragon—making room for possibility. He had known hunger, and he had known lust, but now what he wanted was something more, and he wished the table were narrower so he could reach across it and catch her hands with his, as she went on.
“And that’s why I deserve the truth from you,” she went on. “You’re not normal—and I know that. So, don’t lie to me, and don’t pretend. I may not need to know everything, but I don’t have time in my life for someone who holds back. I’ve had too many of those relationships before—they’re not healthy.”
The pain of something that hadn’t shown up in his background check clearly arced across her face. “And what if I’m holding back for your own well-being?” he asked her.
Her full lips fell into a pout. He’d already noticed how often she would bite them when she was nervous—little did she know how that tempted him to bite them too. “Remember what you said earlier about patriarchal bullshi
t?”
Damian was forced to laugh. “Andi—” he began, ready to defend himself, which was becoming harder and harder in her presence, and then her phone rang. She blanched, and then reached for her clutch quickly.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be. Take your time,” he said graciously. He rather liked it when she was disconcerted.
“So, not now…” Andi said, instead of answering the phone.
“Are you rambunctious?” blurted out the person on the far end of the line, and Damian would’ve had no problem hearing them even as a human. Her next sentence was a little softer, though. “He was hot, so I gave him an extra thirty minutes to murder you, if you know what I mean.”
“Thanks, and I’m fine,” Andi said definitively, hanging up her phone and setting it far away from herself on the table before returning her attention to him. “My roommate was worried you were a serial killer.”
“Well, she isn’t wrong,” he said. “To be worried, that is,” he added, when her eyes widened.
“I guess that makes sense—considering what I saw.” She stared at the table, likely remembering his dragon and the shimmer-tiger.
“It was fairly intense, and you were up close,” he pressed. “All that blood and fear.” If she was going to break, he wanted it to happen now, when he could escape with only paying in money.
She seemed to consider things for a long while and then looked up at him again, her gaze steady. “You’d be surprised how used to danger I am.”
His dragon had heard the challenge in her voice and longed to answer. Leave this place. Go and take her.
Damian let his eyes trail over her, remembering the heat of her lips, the smooth sweep of her skin. She had to know what she was asking, didn’t she? He could feel his urges, filling him up, making him ache. It felt like he’d done nothing but ache since he’d met her. And he knew if given half the chance… No, he told his dragon, feeling it roil in anguish before he finished his thought. I’ll take her here. His dragon purred and settled in, waiting just underneath his skin.
“Is that so?” Damian asked aloud, staring across the table at her, waiting for her to back down or take back her words.
She raised her chin in defiance. “It is,” she said with certainty. He grinned, and stood and grabbed the table between them, sending it spinning to the side, revealing her sitting in her chair. Glasses crashed, the wine bottle toppled, its red liquid pouring out, and dishes careened to the floor.
“Damian!” she gasped, clutching her napkin to herself like she’d just been exposed.
“How dangerous was that?” he asked, advancing on her. “On a scale from one to ten?”
Her eyes were wild. “I…I don’t know…”
He lowered himself to kneel on his heels in front of her. “I thought you were used to dangerous things?”
“Are you trying to frighten me?” She frowned, looking down at him.
“If I am, is it working?” he asked while circling each of her ankles with a hand.
She gasped at his touch, and he could see her blood pulsing at her throat and breast, read the beating of her heart, and scent the smell of her sex—all before he started to slowly move his hands up. The only thing that could’ve made her more beautiful to him—if such a thing were even possible—would be if she were helplessly tied to the chair. She was panting now, small sharp breaths, and she whispered his name. “Damian.”
“Yes?” he responded, like everything he had done and was doing was as normal as could be. Her skirt was up to her knees now, his hands barely higher. He kissed the side of her exposed inner thigh and felt her shiver.
She reached down and pushed a hand through his hair. “I think you should know,” she began.
Oh Goddammit, this was going to be when she confesses that she’s a virgin, and I’m going to have to rethink everything and go slow…
Her fingers curled in his hair and pulled him subtly in. “That on a scale from one to ten, this is only a two.”
He looked up at her and laughed in delight before lightly biting her.
Chapter 16
Andi knew she was not the type of girl that things like this happened to. Because above all else, Andi never—ever—lost control. She had to protect herself and other people at all times—like it was her job—because it was her job.
And yet, here she was, spread-eagle on a chair in front of Damian Blackwood with his mouth coming inexorably for her clit, and now that she was here, Andi realized, she wouldn’t change a thing. She didn’t know what would happen next, or how he was going to take her, only that he was—and that she wanted to let him. The loss of control—her inability to know quite what he’d do to her next—was strangely thrilling. She rose on her tiptoes, sliding shamelessly lower to expose more of herself to him as he took his time kissing up, up, up, until his hands reached underneath her dress to grab her ass and make her present herself at the edge of her chair for his mouth, pulling the fabric of her panties out of the way with his thumb.
Andi gasped as his lips found her, nuzzling against the light trim of her hair, bringing fingers up to spread her open so that he could kiss his way inside.
“Oh my God,” she whispered as he kissed her hottest part. His lips were soft and teasing, brushing over her gently as she watched him, waiting with her heart in her throat until he opened them, and his tongue came out and pressed her there and made her gasp. His tongue stroked, his lips sucked, and suddenly every nerve in her body wanted to report in—like a wash of lightning over her skin—prickling up to her fingers and down to her toes. Her nipples felt hot like there was a direct current between them and his mouth, and the space between her legs where his chin ground in wanted more each time he kissed her. But there…there…there…his lips and tongue were so insistent and the sensation of electricity didn’t stop. It only heightened. One of her hands curled on the chair’s armrest, the other wound tight in his hair, and her hips ground up of their own accord. “What’re you doing to me?” she whispered.
She’d meant the question rhetorically, but that didn’t stop him from pulling himself away from her to answer. “I’m big. I want you ready,” before rolling his tongue across her clit again and starting to push two fingers inside. Andi felt her body tighten and then give against him, letting him in.
“Yes,” he purred, watching his fingers disappear inside her as she moaned.
“I hardly know you,” she said, looking down at him. This truly was dangerous, even if she’d been the one to ask for it, even if she was loving every moment of it now.
“You know everything you need to,” he said, watching her face as he pushed in and pulled out, like he was testing her, before slowly turning his hand palm up as he kissed her clit again. His fingertips started stroking deep inside her, making a come-hither motion, and she shuddered as they found the exact right spot. “I’m a man…I’m a dragon…and I want to make you fucking come.” He whispered the words against her clit and then gave it a salacious lick. “Just…like that?” she breathed. “You think it’s so easy?”
“You think I’m in a rush?” He chuckled into her; she could feel the rumble between her thighs.
It usually took her so long, unless she was just with herself, but there was something otherworldly about being here with him, and she gave herself completely over to the moment. She arched against his hand with a whine, and he purred again against her, following her with his mouth—his tongue sucking at her clit again before pulling back.
“I’m going to put another finger in you, okay?”
Andi nodded helplessly—anything to get his mouth back on her clit—and felt herself stretch as he pushed another finger deep inside. “Oh God…”
He instantly stopped pushing. “Oh God, yes, or oh God, no?”
“Yes,” she whispered, bobbing her hips, begging for him to continue. He made a satisfied sound, as though pleasing her pleasured him, and started stroking her again, only this time while twisting his hand inside. Andi g
asped. It’d been so long since she’d had sex, and Damian’s hand made her feel so good and full and tight—and then his mouth found her clit again, and she arched back against the chair with a moan. She looked down, watching him watch her with his golden, glittering eyes, and reached down to run her hands through his straight black hair to pull his mouth tight to her. He growled, redoubling his efforts, speeding up his hand, running his tongue up her clit again and again as she felt everything start to tremble.
“Don’t stop,” she pleaded, putting one of her legs on his shoulder, opening even more of herself to him. “Just…whatever I do…don’t stop…”
Whatever words he growled back were lost against her as her hips began to arch. His hand and tongue had wound her so tight so fast, and she was so…close…and ready to…let go…
Andi cried out, curling forward as her orgasm hit. Damian made a moan of satisfaction against her, burying his face between her legs, following her as she roiled, licking up every drop as his fingers fucked her through.
“Oh my God…oh my God,” she breathed. Her body wracked with waves. His hands and mouth riding her, as all of her shuddered, her silk dress slippery against the leather dining chair, until she was just in the final twitches, suddenly aware of all the places that were slick from her, and all her exposed skin where she wasn’t. She had just let this man—this dragon, take her—and she had come for him, around him, and small parts of her were coming still, and everything about her felt undone. “Oh my God,” she said again, and finally meant it, realizing where she was and what had happened.
Damian rocked back and slowly pulled his fingers out of her, licking them clean before giving his mouth an aggressive swipe with his arm. “Did that rate above a two?” he asked, the corners of his lips quirking up.
Andi swallowed. “Definitely.”
His smile became even more feral. “Then let me show you, say, a seven.” And in an instant, he was on her, picking her up, carrying her to the wall behind her, kicking the chair she’d been sitting on aside.
Dragon Called: A Slow Burn Sexy Paranormal Romance Page 13
