Property of the Fae

by Laxmi Hariharan

  She reaches out and places her hand over mine. “Does it hurt?”

  Yes. “No.”

  “Lying again to me, Chef?”

  I incline my head, then turn my hand faceup and weave my fingers with hers. I bring it to my lips and kiss her knuckles, skin so soft I can lose myself in her touch. So sweet, she tastes of everything forbidden.

  “The girls, Fire, whose are they?”

  Her lips part. Her scent deepens, laps at my nostrils. I breathe in the smell of her, and that sweet seduction of her arousal sinks into my blood.

  “My sister’s.” She gulps. “They are my sister’s daughters.” She tugs her hand, but I hold on. I don’t let go.

  She straightens, then edges her legs forward, until they dangle over the table and on either side of my lap.

  “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” I feather my fingers over her jaw.

  She swallows, “You didn’t ask.”

  “I’m asking now, Fire.” My voice deepens, and there is an ache in the back of my throat. I hate the fact that I cannot hold back my dominance. That the alpha in me is straining at the leash, wanting to be let free. To yank her to me and kiss her senseless, then punish her for holding back such a big part of herself from me. I dig my feet into the floor. “What happened to their mother?”

  She drops her head forward so her hair half flows over her eyes. I reach out to push it aside, then stop myself.

  Remember, she can do what she wants. You are not going to command her. Not going to tell her what to do. Not going to push her hair away from her face just because you want to see her features, want to gaze into those gorgeous eyes, want to lick those lips, suck on that tongue.

  A low growl grumbles up my throat, and I swallow it down. Let her speak, asshole. This is not about you. Focus on her. Only her. “Tell me, Fire.” I resist the urge to roll my shoulders. “Please?” The word hangs on a soft breath between us.

  Her chin wobbles, and I almost pull her to me then. Almost.

  “My father abused my sister. He groomed her over the years, raped her repeatedly." The color fades from her cheeks, "Then he killed her. She was only thirty when she died.”

  “Fuck.” The expletive escapes me before I can stop myself. "

  The violence shimmers around us. So, I can’t rein in what I am, okay? Bloodthirsty warrior, and I use force as my first call of defense. So whatever. That’s me, and I won’t change. “If I could get my hands on that bastard...!”

  “Yeah.” She half laughs. “I did it anyway. I came across him standing over my sister’s bloodied corpse. He was laughing and dancing around her. Charley was thirteen years old then. She was standing in a corner, watching everything with those wide eyes. Sweta had just been born, and she was bawling in a cradle in the corner.”

  “They were…” My voice hitches. “They were your sister’s…and your…”

  “Father’s, yeah.” Her voice drops to a monotone, the kind that hints at the fact that she’s had these thoughts circling in her head over and over again, and now when she’s saying it out loud, it doesn’t mean anything to her.

  But I know better. I know it hurts her. I know she’s weeping inside for her sister and the girls.

  “It’s okay, Fire, you don’t have to tell me anymore.” I haul her into my lap.

  She burrows into my chest. "That was five years ago yet the memory never fades. The images seem to be burned into my brain," She wraps her arms and legs around me.

  Her skin is hot, as if she’s running a temperature. Yet her shoulders quake. I hold her close and rub her back. "It's not easy being a parent."

  "How do you know?" She looks up at me.

  "I may be an asshole but I know it's not easy bringing up a young child and a teenager—"

  She winces, "Charley is going to be eighteen and Sweta, she's just a child."

  I frown, "You were much younger to your sister?"

  "We had a ten-year age gap. We used to be close until...my father tore us apart." She melts into me with a sigh.

  I bury my nose in her hair, cradling her against my chest, sharing as much of me as she needs.

  “When my mother realized what was happening, she left my father and took me with her. My sister opted to stay behind. She was born human, and physically weaker. Or perhaps she didn’t want to leave him. She let herself be abused…but her children…” Her breath hitches. “Her girls are the best thing to have come out of all this. They are smart and beautiful, and despite everything they’ve been through, they are still incredibly together. So resilient.”

  “They are your flesh and blood, Fire.”

  She hiccoughs, then presses her nose into my throat and inhales. Her entire body seems to lengthen, as if she’s absorbing my essence into herself. “You accepted them without question. You saved them, gave them a new life, without judging them or me.”

  Blood rushes to my cheeks. Yeah, she does that, makes me blush, and you know what, sometimes it’s okay. It’s fine to wear your feelings, your heart on your sleeve if that’s what it takes to finally get Fire talking and comfortable. Hell, I’ll make sure she knows how I worship the very ground beneath her feet, if that brings a smile to her face. “Now don’t go giving me all the credit, Fire, else I’ll think you’re softening toward me already.”

  Her lips curve against my throat, and damn if that doesn’t feel good.

  “That’s not quite what I’d say about you.” She unhooks a hand from around my neck then slides it down between us to grip my arousal.

  Desire thickens my blood. My dick leaps forward, that fucker. Doesn’t care that this time is all devoted to her. It’s not about me. Not. About. Me.

  She squeezes her fingers around my shaft, and all my nerve endings seem to fire at once. The hair on my forearms rises, the tips of my ears tingle, and my canines break through my gums.

  “Stop, Fire.”

  I rise to my feet and try to place her back on the table. She simply locks her legs around my waist so the soft flesh between them pushes into my hardness.

  Sweat beads my forehead. “Maybe we should get some clothes on you.”

  “Maybe we should get the clothes off you?”

  She loosens her grip on my crotch only to drag down the zipper on my pants. Then she wraps her fingers around my cock.

  Liquid lust radiates out from her touch; the ribbed skin of my dick thrusts against the soft skin of her palm. Reverberations of pleasure whip down my spine, shooting straight for my crotch, and I am locked in this ceaseless cycle of heat and pleasure and her. All her.

  “You are making this very difficult for me.”

  “No one said rutting a dragon shifter through her first heat cycle was going to be easy.”

  41

  Jess

  Did I just say that? Rutting? Okay, blame my heat-cycle-addled brain for calling it as is…and just when he’d tried to be all considerate and sweet. Maybe I’d said it just to shock him out of that strange polite persona that had begun to take refuge in him.

  His muscles go rock-hard, and he seems to be considering what I’d just said. “Your first…heat cycle?”

  I cringe, then squeeze my eyes shut. Of all the things, he had to pick up on that? “Didn’t you hear anything else I said…?”

  “Don’t change the topic.” He clicks his tongue.

  The sound rasps over my skin. My thighs squeeze together. Every pore in my body seems to be poised on the edge of something…needing, wanting to get closer to him.

  I tighten my hold about his waist and dig the soles of my feet into his back.

  His chest rises and falls, and the planes of his back ripple. Seems I am affecting him, too, only he’s damn good at hiding his response to me. But why would he want to do that? Why does he want to have a conversation of all things now?

  I sigh aloud, then bang my forehead against his chest. “You are not going to let this go, are you?”

  I sense him shake his head. “I made the mistake earlier of just jumping in and tak
ing what I wanted and—”

  “You hear me complaining about that?” Another shudder of heat crawls down my back, chased by a cold feeling that pinches through my veins. My blood seems to boil one second then freeze the next. My bones feel brittle. I wriggle my body and try to get closer to him. If I could I'd crawl into him and draw in his skin over mine…okay, sounds gross, but it's true. if I could I’d simply fuse myself to him and never let go, I would.

  He rubs my back in slow circles. The touch of him shoots straight to my core.

  “Don’t do that. I know you are trying to help, but honest, it doesn’t, it only turns me on, and since you are not in any mood to oblige, you may as well as leave me here to pine away,” I pout.

  “Dramatic much?” He chuckles but then hooks an arm under my butt and hitches me higher, so I fit into that notch over his hips, and my core is lined up exactly over that growing bulge of his.

  A groan mewls out of me. A snarl tumbles from his lips.

  “Why are you torturing both of us this way?” The words are torn from my mouth.

  My skin itches. The back of my throat seems to have been scraped raw. The soles of my feet tingle, my claws slide out, and I dig them into his back and hold on. But, of course, he doesn’t flinch.

  “Does that help? Hurting me?” His forehead furrows. He makes no other move, doesn’t touch me or suck on my nipples, which are erect and straining into his shirt, or bury his fingers in that moist center of me that aches for his ministration.

  I rake my nails down his back. There’s a tearing sound. I rip off shreds of his shirt and fling them aside. “And no, that didn’t help at all.” The words come out rough. I hear the frustration in my voice, and maybe it’s that which sends me over the edge.

  I move back enough so I can tip my head up to meet his gaze. “A dragon shifter only goes into a heat cycle when she meets her mate. Any relationship before that? It doesn’t really matter, because its only proximity to ‘the one’ which has set off this chemical reaction inside my body. And your knotting me only accelerated what had been coming since the moment I laid eyes on you.”

  “So I am the first man to…rut you through a heat cycle?”

  “Yeah.” I toss the hair out of my eyes.

  “And you’ve never gone into a heat cycle with anybody else?”

  “What have I been trying to tell you, Soldier?” I grit my teeth. “I’ve never felt like this, hot one second, cold the other; my guts feel as if they are being torn apart inside, even as every inch of me splinters with need. There is a crawling emptiness inside me that grows bigger by the second, and it’s going to tear me inside out. It’s going to rip me apart, unless…”

  “Unless?” His eyes spark that strange blue-amber fire. His features grow cold. Of course, the alpha-hole wants me to spell it out for him, every single word.

  “Unless you ruin me, first.”

  “So let me get this right. You want me to fuck you?” His ears pull back and elongate.

  I swear they grow longer at the tips, and why does that turn me on further?

  “Yes.” I whine out the word.

  He yanks his fingers around my hair and tugs my head back, so my neck is exposed.

  “You want me to knot you?”

  I tilt my head.

  The skin around his eyes stretches, and a vein throbs at his temple.

  “What if I want something else?”

  “Huh?” I swallow and shoot out my tongue to lap up any moisture left on my lips.

  He drops his gaze to my mouth and follows my every move.

  “Wha…what do you want?” The words come out on a whisper. And I am not sure when the power equation shifted. He’s still not done anything. Unless you count the way, he’s stalking me now. Watching me, waiting for me to make just one move, one, and he’s going to pounce on me and swallow me whole. I gulp. Gone is that gentlemanly persona he’d been striving so hard at to get across. The barriers just fell apart, and the beast is about to leap forward.

  His cheekbones stand out, and the hollow under his eyes seem more prominent. The tendons of his neck bulge. “I want to make love to you. Can I do that, Fire?”

  The energy of my dragon spills over, reaches out through the mating bond, and hooks onto that telekinetic blue of his that sparks all around me. He’d been so close, so with me all this time, and I’d not noticed.

  He’d saved my life when I was shot, then saved my kids, and I’ll be the first to admit he’s not exactly the kind of prince charming I had in mind; but then I’d never thought I’d be mated to someone who I’d fallen in love with as soon as I’d seen him either.

  “Umm.” I drag the heel of my foot over that tight, luscious butt of his. “Why don’t you do what feels right to you, and I can reserve judgement for later?”

  42

  Tristan

  Okay, I lied. I’d turned and seen her naked, and it had taken everything in me to not march up to her, fling her down on the floor, pry those curvy thighs apart, and bury myself balls deep in her. And the lies keep coming; the extent of my self-delusion would fool anyone else, but I know better. I’d wanted to do more than that.

  I’d wanted to eat her out first, then turn her over on her front, on all fours, and ram into her pussy while I slid my fingers into her ass and rutted her out. But then she’d clambered onto the table and offered herself to me. I’d looked into her eyes and seen the vulnerability in them. Had seen the hurt that still licks at her nerves, the need to trust that claws at her. Bet Fire has no idea that her gaze told me what she’d never confess to. “You’re afraid of me.”

  Her body jerks. She cranes her neck up and licks my lips. “Do I look afraid of you, Soldier?”

  My fucking balls go rock-hard. I will not be distracted. Will not.

  “You’re afraid of what I make you feel.”

  “What do you make me feel?” She tries to chuckle, but the sound comes out all shaky.

  Her shoulders tremble, and she squeezes her thighs around my waist.

  The gesture draws my attention to the very naked, sexy, curvy, turn-on of a woman clinging to me, as my cock will stand testament to. Ha! ‘Stand’, get that joke? Lame one. Very lame one. Still, no disputing that my shaft is growing harder by the second. My thighs firm, and the turgid flesh inside my dick pushes out, wanting to extend, wanting to slam into her soft center and hook her and knot her to me and never let go. Soon, very soon. But first, I need her to acknowledge what I have known since my essence mingled with hers, since I saved her life…no, I saved my own. Oh, she knows it, too, but she doesn’t want to admit it. My chest constricts.

  “Vulnerable. I make you vulnerable. Make you want to open up yourself to me, body and mind and soul. Make you want to throw me down and lick me all over, then crawl inside my skin and—”

  She slaps her palm over my mouth. Her pupils snap vertical.

  “I make you feel, Fire. For the first time in your life, I make you want to be with someone else, make you want to trust someone with your heart, your life, your family.” I speak the words against her palm, because I have to. I must. Besides, once I start it, seems I can’t stop. Maybe some of Fire’s wordiness is catching on. Maybe she’s impacting me as much as I am her. And why does that surprise me? “Funny thing about the mating bond.” I lick her fingers.

  Her hand shudders. She drags her fingers down, leaving a trail of moisture over my chin.

  “You mean other than the fact that it’s a constant thrum in my chest, a reminder that you are always there, with me, wherever I go, that I am never going to be alone again?” She rests her palm over my heart.

  I support her shoulders with one arm, then cup my other hand around her breast and squeeze the flesh. I pinch her nipple, and her heart thunders. The beat mirrors the vein pulsing at my temple, the pulse at my wrists, the blood pounding in my balls. I am one big mass of throbbing energy that needs to home in on her…home inside her. I need to come home to her. To bury my seed in her. To see it take root, see her swe
ll with my child.

  “What are you doing to me, Fire?” My voice is hushed, and I can’t stop the awe that threads my tone. I mean, it’s not every day that an asshole like me gets inundated by these emotions, this primal need to procreate that I have never felt before. Will never feel with anyone else.

  She lowers her forehead to my chest. “I feel it, too.” Her voice is low. Her chin wobbles. “It scares me more than you can imagine. I never wanted children; you know.”

  “You don’t?” There’s a ball of emotion in my throat, and I swallow it down. If that’s what Fire wants…then, fuck me, but I can’t deny this woman anything. She could ask me for my heart, and I’d carve it out and offer it to her.

  “That was before.” She licks my skin.

  My shoulders bunch.

  She bites her way down to my nipple, then loops her tongue around the nub. Every pore on my body flares to life. The telekinetic energy pulses, then winds around the amber of her dragon. Flames of red and blue and amber flicker at the edges of my vision, then die away. Well, hell. Is this how it’s going to be when you make love, when mated? When you’re so in tune that every caress is a promise. Every touch sinks straight into your core. Your heart feels like it’s going to burst because it’s so full, as your groin hardens. Your dick pulses to be inside her. With her. Only her.

  My heart hammers. I hook a finger under her chin and tip up her face. “Before?”

  “Before I met you. Before I saw how you were with my girls. Before my dragon all but abandoned me to dance with your energy. My beast is addicted to you. And I cannot live without you, you were right…Tristan.”

  My dick lengthens, and my ears draw back. My canines pierce through the flesh of my gums.

  “Did what I think just happened, happen?” She frowns.

  A low growl rumbles up my chest, and I cradle her closer.