by Jadyn Chase
She colored again and looked down at my mouth. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I had to kiss her.
This time, she dissolved to pure sugar in my mouth. Her tongue tasted of honey and orange blossoms. Her warm breath infiltrated my beard and enveloped my skin. Her delicate fingers crept around my ribs and under my vest. That feather touch woke all kinds of visions of her hair cascading over her face in the maelstrom of ecstasy, her sobbing noises succumbing to my….
Another high-pitched whistle echoed across the yard. Morgan stiffened, but I didn’t bother to check who it was. I eased back just an inch and whispered low. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Where can we go?” she asked.
“Back to the beach house. We’ll be alone there. We don’t have to worry about anyone interrupting us.”
“How will we get there?” she asked. “You don’t have your bike.”
I cradled her lovely face in both hands. My heart ached with love and desire for her. Poor precious lost child, she had no idea. “We don’t need no stinking bikes. We’re dragons, darling.”
I seized her hand and pulled her to her feet. In a heartbeat, I took to the air, screaming over land and sea, burning north into the dark. I didn’t bother to check if she followed me. If she hoped to master this dragon business, she better learn how to shift with a single thought.
I rocketed into the heavens beyond the glow of streetlights and traffic. I stooped down the wind on a headlong course for the open ocean when she hurtled up alongside. She took a position at my wingtip. When I veered around the coast, she matched me wing stroke for wing stroke.
I almost hesitated to descend. I wanted to show her so many things. I wanted to show her the midnight sun rising over the tundra. I wanted to show her volcanos burbling lava down scree slopes. I wanted to dive to the bottom of the ocean and show her the giant squid hunting whales and feeding on sharks.
All that would have to wait. She needed to build up her strength. She had to get comfortable with herself before she ventured out into the wild world of dragons.
I folded my wings against my sides and plummeted toward the dark headland of Malibu. A cluster of lights marked the town and I took my heading a few miles south of that.
She circled the beach with me and eyed the yard. The boys got rid of all the bodies, but the landscape still revealed the unmistakable scars of battle. Oh, well. The trees and bushes and grass would grow back. In time, she would come to consider them the badges of her own victory. She would appreciate them as well as her own scars.
I touched down in the backyard. I enjoyed the delightful memory of her transformation. I would never be able to look at this yard without remembering that moment.
Like Cisco, I replayed again and again the stark gaping astonishment on her enemies’ faces when they beheld her rising out of the ground to become their worst nightmare. It truly was a memory worthy to be enshrined in Los Diablos lore for all time.
A pang of nostalgia stabbed my heart. I wished her father could have been here to see it. He deserved to witness the fulfillment of his daughter’s destiny, but that would never happen.
Morgan alighted at my side. She shifted in the blink of an eye with no awkward stumble. She straightened up and grimaced when she cast a wary glance around the place. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”
I took her hand. “Come on. It’s too late for that now.”
I escorted her inside. The house rested in darkness. No sign remained of her death struggle with the tattoo artist. It looked exactly the way she found it when I first sent her here from The Zone.
We lingered in the dark listening and holding our breath, but no sound disturbed the night. No enemies leaped out to attack us. No danger threatened us in any way.
I rounded on her and she looked up at me at the same time. Could I? Nothing stood in my way. She was all mine in all her dragon greatness.
She wasn’t huge and deadly and dominant now. She was just little old Morgan, small, fragile, lonely, uncertain. I put my arms around her and she folded herself against my chest. She took shelter there from all the bad memories, all the nightmares, all the monsters outside.
I cupped her chin and lifted her lips to my mouth. I savored the heady wine of her taste on my tongue. A thousand images flooded my mind when I kissed her, but that dragon obliterated them all.
She draped back against my bicep. Her head drooped to one side and she whined soft and high. That sound shot straight to my crotch. She was mine, all mine. I could take her. I could taste her in every pore of my skin.
She drifted in my embrace, so supple and responsive and charged with captivating tension even as she relaxed into the moment. Her hair sizzled when it cascaded through my hands.
I built up power to overwhelm her with my dominance. She succumbed before the tidal wave. The harder and faster I kissed her, the more she panted and shivered all over with awakening desire.
I seized her by the back of the neck and my fingers tightened in her hair. She froze, but she didn’t pull away. She stared into my eyes from millimeters away. I read my fate unfolding in those eyes. This was my moment, our moment.
I tried to pivot her toward the bed and missed. She hit the wall and cried out. That cry sounded so like the spiking crescendo of orgasm that I couldn’t hold back. I rammed into her throbbing hard. I nailed her against the wall ready to tear her apart.
She gasped louder and mewed into my mouth when I kissed her. She didn’t fight me away. Her fingers gripped my shoulders in clasping motions. She wanted it, too.
My blood pulsed between my legs and strained to get inside her. How hot and wet was she down there right now? My heart and soul ached to find out, to feel her blistering channel clamping down on me in successive spasms of ecstasy.
I crushed her mouth in manic kisses. I shoved my tongue into her throat and gloried in the sobbing relaxation of her legs around me. I strapped both hands under her ass and picked her off the ground.
She welcomed me into her spongy folds. She glided up and down with my strokes, but our clothes still frustrated my efforts. I had to get inside there or die trying. I needed to belong there, to find rest there, even as her heat and her breath drove me insane.
I stripped my hands around to her front and ripped her pants open. I just didn’t care anymore about anything but satiating my unstoppable lust for her. She fed me and nourished me. She gave me strength I never knew I had. She anointed me with blessed relief from a disease I couldn’t name.
She landed on her feet just long enough to kick her pants away. I yanked open my fly and dove in headfirst. She screamed when the tip touched her engorged tissues. She caught her breath and stared at me in shock when I hefted her off her feet and rammed her into position.
She screamed again when I drove in hard, but just as fast, she arched her back and rode down on my shaft singing loud and long. Her juices bubbled around my veins.
I wanted so bad to close my eyes and sink into that hot, wet morass of sacred goodness, but I couldn’t take my gaze off her transfigured face. She cried and sobbed and wept and convulsed on my spike moving inside her. Her eyelids drifted half-closed before she hauled her awareness back to me. Her inner muscles stroked me so rock hard it hurt in the most exquisite possible way.
I chewed her lips in primal furious passion, but she never protested. She bucked her hips into my strokes and shrieked at every skewering penetration. I planted my hands on the wall for leverage, but only for a second.
I ripped up her shirt and exposed her succulent breasts to the ravages of my teeth. She screeched and pulled my hair. She thrashed in all her wild abandon against the force of my pounding rhythm, but her voice and her features told me all I needed to know. Her skin glowed in the dim light. Her screams pierced my flesh and stamped me as hers for all time.
15
EPILOGUE: Morgan
I poured coffee into two mugs and added a splash of milk and two sugars to one of them. I smiled to myself when I remembe
red my time in The Zone. I worked so hard to hate Brayden back then. At least it paid off in some ways. At least now I knew how he liked his coffee.
I tucked the package under my arm, took a mug in each hand, and padded barefoot to the porch. I found Brayden sitting on the step in his black tank top. He rested his arms on his knees so all his tats showed up dark and clear against his skin.
I handed him his cup and sat down next to him. He took a deep sniff and sighed. “Thank you, darling. To what do I owe the honor?”
“Just for being you.” I kissed his thick shoulder. “When you finish that, I’ll make breakfast. I thought we could sit here and enjoy the sunrise for a little while first, though.”
He chuckled under his breath and lowered his lips to the mug. “Here I thought I would be consigned the chore of housekeeper for life after waiting on your hand and foot at The Zone.”
I shot him a knowing grin. “I figured you did your duty to the cause back then. Now it’s my turn to wait on you for a change. You earned a break.”
“Thank you.” He took a sip. Then he nodded at the package. “What’s that?”
I set my cup down and rotated the bundle into view. “The courier just dropped it off while I was in the kitchen. It’s from Logan Melia.”
“What’s in it?” he asked.
I jabbed my elbow into his ribs. “How should I know, silly? I won’t know what’s in it until I open it.”
“Well? What are you waiting for?”
My hand lingered over the pull tab. What did I think I would find inside—a letter bomb? If it came from Logan, it must have something to do with my father’s legacy. Did I really want to find out? My father left me so many things, some good, some not so good. Which would this be?
Brayden turned away. “Suit yourself. If you don’t want to know, you better throw it in the incinerator now and get it over with.”
I smacked my lips and smirked at him. “Of course I want to know.”
I snatched the tab and ripped. It tore the heavy paper. When I tipped it up, a book slid out into my hands. A length of aged hemp twine bound the whole thing together.
“That’s odd,” I mused. “This looks like an old photo album.”
I untied the binder and laid it aside. A hand-drawn sketch of the beach house stared out at me from the front cover. Scant pencil lines etched out the trellis and the porch where we now sat, but no one could mistake it for a different house.
The book’s spine crackled when I lifted back the cover. A yellowed envelope drifted onto my knee and revealed a large black and white photograph of a young woman. A faint smile played on her lips, and she wore her black hair twisted into a knot behind her head.
Brayden leaned over and peered at the image. “Who is that?”
I swallowed hard to get my throat working. “It’s my mother.”
“Maybe the book will tell you who she was,” he suggested. “It looks like a bunch of old family documents and pictures.”
I moved the envelope to my left hand to turn the page. When I did, I spotted a curling word written across the thin paper. Morgan.
Dread crept into my heart when I read it. What was this envelope? How could anyone write to me from so long ago?
I rotated the envelope in my hands and found the back flap unsealed. I slid out a sheaf of paper covered in that same looping handwriting.
The very first line caught me by the guts. My Dearest Morgan….
Brayden whispered in my ear. “Read it.”
I took a firm grip on myself and braced for the inevitable tide of emotion.
My Dearest Morgan,
As I write this, you’re sitting on the living room floor playing with a dry leaf. You just started walking about a month ago and you’re very curious about everything. As I sit here watching you grow and learn and discover the world, I can’t help but wonder how life will unfold for you in years to come.
I love you more than a man’s heart has a right to love anyone, Morgan. I don’t know how I can live loving you this much. I can only pray I’m man enough to be the father you deserve. I hope I can give you everything you need in life.
You’ll probably think I robbed you and lied to you for not telling you about Los Diablos. You’ll just have to trust your old man on this one. I grew up in Los Diablos. It’s a good place with incredible people, but it’s a hard life full of violence and war and uncertainty. People die in Los Diablos all the time.
I don’t want you growing up the way I did. I guess every parent wants something better for their child. That’s why I decided to raise you outside the club. No one in Los Diablos knows about you. They don’t know about your mother, either, and your mother doesn’t know about them.
One of these days, you’re going to come to me and ask how I could keep all this from you. I’m prepared for that because I’m doing it to protect you, Morgan. I’m doing it to be the best father to you that I know how to be. I hope you can find a way to forgive me.
Don’t hold it against your mother. I never told her about the club. I wanted your little world to stay separate from all that. Maybe you two can hate me together when it all comes out.
I love you beyond words, my beloved Morgan. You’re everything a father could want from his daughter. I’m proud of you beyond my wildest dreams and I know you’ll keep making me proud for a long, long time.
I won’t try to stop you from joining Los Diablos. You’ll probably find a guy and raise a family, too. If you do that in the club, I’ll be happy for you. I don’t say I made a better choice. Heck, I don’t know what the better choice is, but this is the one I made.
Be happy, Morgan. Build a life you can be proud of and I’ll die satisfied. I can’t wait for the day I get to show you the world of dragons and introduce you to Los Diablos, and I’m sorry if my choice hurt you in any way. I never intended that.
I love you. Your father,
Josiah Hunter.
I wiped tears off my cheeks. Brayden hugged me into his shoulder, and I buried my blurry eyes in his shirt. So that was it, the voice from beyond the grave. He did it to protect me, to give me a better life.
Now that the whole thing wound to a close, I could pity him for what happened to him. He never got to see me grow up. He never got to show me the world of dragons or introduce me to Los Diablos. It took Brayden to do that.
My dad would never get to meet Brayden. He would never get to see me finally claim the happiness he left behind for me. I cried as much for the things he lost as for myself. I could put the past aside and realize just how happy I was, and I had him to thank for that.
The End.
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