Twin Dragon’s Destiny

by S. E. Smith

  The second stage was a little trickier. Her bladder was telling her it was time to take care of business. She barely remembered pushing the warm, silky cover aside, much less padding to the bathroom and then back to the bed. The dogs were curled up on their side. A glance out the window showed her that it was dark. She mumbled for Moonshine to scoot over when he stretched out.

  “Move your hairy ass over, Moon,” she grumbled, crawling back in the warm bed and pulling the soft, silky golden blanket back over her.

  A section of her mind replayed her journey to the bathroom, noting that there was a piece of furniture in her room that she didn’t remember adding. Since when did she have a huge dragon in the corner near the fireplace?

  She shook her head. Her brain must be still in a sleep-induced fog. Lifting her head, she saw that the dragon was gone. Rolling over, she wrapped her hand in the golden blanket and fell back to sleep.

  In the third phase, she sat up in bed with her hand over her thumping heart. She sat still, trying to catch her breath. The remains of a vivid dream replayed in her mind like a scratched record.

  “Damn, but that seemed real,” she whispered in the darkness.

  She turned her head when she heard a soft creak, as if someone was shifting in a chair. She scrambled back on the bed when she saw a shadowy figure rise from her rocking chair in the corner near the window. She reached for Moonshine and Rum, only to discover that they were gone.

  “You’re real,” she choked out.

  A tall man with the scars running down his face stepped into the dim light cast by the fireplace. She swallowed when he walked closer to the bed. Her fingers curled around the thin, warm golden blanket draped over her.

  “You tricked us,” he stated, stepping forward.

  Irritation flashed through Delilah’s eyes. “Well, duh! You broke into my house,” she retorted. He sat down on the edge of the bed and she nervously swallowed. “What are you doing in my room?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Making sure you don’t do anything stupid, like jumping off a roof or going outside in a blizzard,” he replied.

  Delilah looked out the window. Even though it was pitch-black outside, she could see the accumulation of snow against the window. It was nearly twice as high as it had been before and snow was still coming down. She could hear the howl of the wind.

  “I’ve never done that before,” she defended, turning her gaze back to him. “You’re Brogan, right? The other one is called Barrack?”

  A pleased smile curved his lips. “Yes,” he nodded.

  She narrowed her eyes. This guy was way too full of himself. Who cared if he was tall, dark, and looking good enough to eat? She’d read more than her fair share of romance novels in the library to know what they were really like!

  The real men were like Bubba Joe. They were the guys who came with a beat-up truck, played country music, and could install a door that didn’t squeak. Guys like this treated the woman like shit until the last few pages, and expected the heroine to be all lovey-dovey and apologetic for wanting to kick their ass. Plus, they wouldn’t know how to change a light bulb, much less a door!

  “Well, Brogan, you and your sidekick can get out of my house,” she snapped, pushing the cover aside and rolling to the far side of the bed to stand up.

  “There is a storm outside,” he said, waving at the window.

  She gave him a biting smile and shrugged. “Not my problem,” she retorted in a sweet voice.

  He gave her an assessing glance. “You would kick my brother and me out in a storm that came close to killing you?” he asked, nothing but curiosity in his voice.

  “In a heartbeat,” she bluffed, placing her hands on her hips. She wasn’t exactly sure where she was going with this, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to let them off the hook for breaking into her house. “I didn’t invite you in. Just remember to watch the bend in the road as you go down or you might end up in the creek.”

  “We saved your life. Surely that deserves some appreciation,” he countered.

  Delilah didn’t even hesitate in her reply. She had figured he’d try to play the ‘save-the-heroine’ card. All the heroes did in the novels, and so far, this was following the old Mills and Boon formula like a movie on the Lifetime channel. She wasn’t falling for it. She liked the romances that made their own formula.

  “Which wouldn’t have been in danger if you hadn’t broken into my house,” she pointed out. “So, you can add almost killing me to your list of bad decisions.”

  He folded his arms across his chest. Delilah tried to ignore the thick muscles straining the material of his white shirt. Hell, even his clothing looked like something out of a costume shop! What guy wore so much leather?

  The white, long-sleeve shirt was tucked into a pair of dark-brown leather pants, which disappeared into knee-high black leather boots with thick straps running down the sides. An elaborate leather utility belt crisscrossed his chest. His black hair was tightly braided in several rows along his scalp and a carefully groomed mustache and goatee set off his strong jaw. What threw her a little – until she decided he must have ordered some contacts online – was the color of his eyes. They were almost the same color as the highlights that Janie down at the salon had added to her hair.

  “I am not keeping a list of my decisions,” he said, exasperated.

  Rolling her eyes, Delilah decided either Cuello really was dead or he’d hired some really dense hitmen. Whatever the case, she wouldn’t go down without a fight. There were some really great books on boxing in the library, and she had read those too!

  Boredom might be what saves my life! she thought.

  She decided offense was the best defense. Lifting her hand, she started to tick off every offense that she could think of. Who cared if some of them might be a little far-fetched?

  “You broke into my house. You put my dogs in a cage, terrifying them half to death…,” she began.

  Brogan scowled. “They were not afraid. They were jumping all over us,” he interjected, his eyes narrowing. She blithely ignored his interruption, waved a dismissing hand at him, and kept going.

  “They were so petrified that they passed out. Moonshine and Rum are very sensitive,” she snapped. Lifting another finger, she continued. “You tracked snow onto my front rugs. You unlocked the front door and left it partially open, allowing cold air in. You bent the end of my shovel with your forehead.”

  “You did that when you hit Barrack in the face,” he pointed out.

  “His face was in the way of me hitting you,” she disagreed with a toss of her head and a dainty sniff. “You threatened me. Your presence forced me to jump out of a second story window into a pile of snow.” She paused to take a deep breath and to think about what else she could lay on their shoulders.

  “Are you finished?” he dryly inquired.

  She tilted her head and glowered at him. “No, I’m taking a breath so I can continue,” she retorted. “You made me forget my cell phone in the kitchen – which by the way reminds me, I hope you or your brother put the groceries in the refrigerator, or I’ll really be pissed.”

  “Pissed? Why would not placing food in the cold device make you have to relieve yourself?” he asked.

  “Not that kind of pissed, the other one,” she huffed, clenching her fists by her side as her cheeks flushed a delicate pink. Thank goodness for her darker coloring and the dim light. Her face assumed a stern expression, “The pissed as in I’ll be mad. You don’t want to make me mad. I know Judo,” she lied.

  Her hope of intimidating him faded when his lips tightened into a straight line and his eyes flashed with an eerie glow that reminded her of what Barrack had said earlier about being from another world. A sense of unease filled her. What if they had been serious and they were from another world? Even worse, what if they were and that meant that all of her dreams were destined to come true?

  Perhaps I shouldn’t have thrown the psychologist’s card away so soon, she thought as doubt began to
build inside her.

  Her mind flashed back to the events of her escape from the collapsed smokehouse. The image of a warm massive body trickled through her mind. Her brain had become foggy by the time she made it to the shed with the dogs. She’d never been that cold in her life.

  The few hundred yards to the shed had felt like miles in the deepening snow and the horrific wind that had cut straight through all the layers of clothing she had on. Her fingers and feet had gone from a painful tingle of cold to numb. It didn’t help that she had fallen several times.

  The dogs had given up trying to go ahead of her and had followed the best they could in the tracks she left behind. Just when she’d thought she was lost and doomed to die, she had stumbled again. When she looked up, she could see the outline of the shed not more than three feet in front of her.

  If she hadn’t been afraid of the tears freezing to her skin, she would have cried. Instead, she barely remembered crawling and staggering to the old, rickety wooden door. She had pushed the door in, uncaring if there were other critters inside.

  The interior of the shed hadn’t been much better than being outside as far as the cold was concerned, but at least it was a buffer against the wind and there was no snow. She and the dogs had staggered to the corner and sank down. Remorse filled her when she remembered how Moonshine and Rum had been shivering. Huddling together, she’d hoped their combined body heat would keep them alive.

  Within minutes, the fog that had been forming in her brain had settled to a thick whipped cream, so dense that she swore she could see the swirls in it. She didn’t know how long they had been in the shed or how the men had found them in the raging storm.

  She shook her head when she remembered Barrack talking to her and her arguing back. Trying to communicate had finally been the last straw for her frozen body. She remembered laying her head down on her knees in the hope that her breath might warm her. Everything after that blurred and she decided she must have started to hallucinate.

  She looked up, startled, when she felt Brogan’s warm hand under her chin. When did he move? she wondered, blinking in the dim light.

  “What?” she asked, her mind still focused on her memory.

  “I asked who this Judo is?” he demanded in a soft, dangerous voice.

  Who was Judo? For a moment, she didn’t understand the question, then comprehension finally dawned on her.

  “Judo isn’t a person. It is a form of self-defense, like boxing or karate,” she muttered, pushing against his chest. She grunted when her hands encountered only hard muscle. “You… are in my personal space.”

  The wry grin that formed on his lips made her even more nervous. She quickly decided that retreat and strategic planning were her best courses of action for the moment.

  She ran her hand down his chest, surprised when she heard what sounded suspiciously like a purr, and stepped away from him. Delilah flashed him an easy grin to cover her nervousness before she turned on her heel and retreated to the bathroom.

  She slammed the door harder than she’d planned and twisted the key in the lock. Leaning against the door, she tilted her head back and fanned her face. Damn, but he was hot.

  “Why are the bad guys good-looking, while the good guys end up looking like Bubba Joe?” she groaned, thinking that baggy pants and butt-cracks could become all the rage if Brogan were wearing them.

  “Who is Bubba Joe?” Brogan demanded from the other side of the door.

  Delilah bit her lip to keep from laughing. Shaking her head, she elbowed the door to let him know she had heard him. She glanced at the window. It was getting light outside.

  “Go away, Brogan. Better yet, make yourself useful. You can make sure all my groceries are put away and make some breakfast before the power goes out,” she ordered, her voice laced with amusement.

  “You are hungry? I will get Barrack to prepare a meal for you. Do not try to escape again,” he warned.

  She peered out at the mass of solid white and shivered. “Don’t worry. If anyone is leaving the next time, it will be you and your brother. And don’t hurt my dogs!” she added, wondering where in the hell her missing canines were, and hoping that her imaginary dragon hadn’t eaten them as a snack.

  “They are annoying Barrack. I believe they like him better than me,” Brogan stated.

  Delilah chuckled. “I can’t imagine why,” she sarcastically muttered under her breath.

  She waited until she heard the bedroom door open and shut again before she unlocked the bathroom door and peered out. Satisfied that the bedroom was empty, she hurried over to the dresser and retrieved fresh clothing.

  She wanted a hot shower before the power went out. A quick glance out of the window told her it would only be a matter of time before a tree snapped and landed on the lines. She’d had a generator installed for the whole house along with a separate propane tank, but she wouldn’t run it except in an emergency.

  Retracing her steps, she returned to the bathroom and locked the door again. She turned on the water, thankful for the unending supply of hot water to melt the last of the chill from her bones. She undressed, stuffed her dirty clothes in the hamper, and crammed her hair into a plastic shower cap to keep it dry.

  Sliding the door open, she stepped inside the steamy shower stall. She would have loved a bath, but decided a shower would be quicker. It wasn’t until she reached for the bar of soap that she noticed the gold bracelets wrapped around her wrists.

  She touched their intricate designs in awe. Three dragons wrapped around each other. On each side of them were stars and a planet. Warmth spread through her fingertips where she was touching it and flowed up her arm, bringing with it a vivid vision of the two men.

  “Weird, totally weird, Delilah. I think you have frostbite on the brain, girl,” she muttered before her stomach growled. A soft laugh shook her and she grinned. “You’d think if I was going to imagine something, it would be food. I’m starving!”

  She hummed under her breath as she soaped her body. She scowled when she felt the hair stubble on her legs. She needed to shave. She was unaware that her simple, daily ablutions were causing such devastating frustration and growing need in the two alien warriors who were monitoring her every movement. If she had known, she might have had a bit more fun tormenting them.

  Chapter Ten

  Barrack looked up when his brother stepped into the kitchen, then went back to studying the food packaging. He wished there was a way to retrieve the food replicator from their ship. He turned the package over, trying to decipher how to prepare the food by the images.

  “We should have learned to read our mate’s language. This makes no sense to me,” he grumbled.

  Brogan looked over his shoulder and wiggled his nose in distaste. “It was difficult enough learning to speak it. There is not enough in that package to feed one, much less three people,” he noted.

  “I did not hear any screams,” Barrack casually commented. “I assume that means she is no longer afraid of us.”

  Brogan chuckled and Barrack glanced at him with envy. He had sat with Delilah the first part of the night before changing places with Brogan. Delilah’s two beasts had become animated and tried to play with his dragon, and Barrack had decided it would be better to leave the room so they didn’t disturb their mistress.

  “She has fire in her,” Brogan said with a chuckle. “Where are her beasts? She has a great attachment to them and warned us to care for them.”

  Barrack nodded toward the front sitting room. “They like lying in front of the fire,” he said.

  He looked up when he heard the sound of an alarm. That alarm had sounded nearly a dozen times, mostly when a large gust of wind buffeted the house. He had traced the noise to a large box that was obviously used to generate power.

  “Her power source is in danger,” he commented.

  Brogan nodded. “I noticed the same thing last night before I came up. The thin lines we saw leading to the house must supply it. I am surprised it has not
gone off before now. I was thinking…,” he said before his voice faded and his eyes glazed.

  Barrack stiffened at the same time as his brother. The connection with their symbiots now included Delilah. By the time he had lowered her onto the bed last night, he and Brogan’s symbiots had already been fluttering over her, claiming her. There was absolutely no doubt that Delilah was their mate. Even if Aikaterina hadn’t shown them, their reaction to Delilah, and that of their symbiots and dragons, sealed their fates.

  He bowed his head, focusing on Delilah through his symbiot wrapped around her right wrist. Brogan’s symbiot graced her left wrist. Half of his symbiot was also upstairs on her bed. It had formed a warm blanket that monitored her comfort throughout the night.

  Their symbiots were the reason that they could give Delilah a little more space and time to adjust to their presence. If she tried to trick them as she had yesterday, their symbiots would alert them and then prevent her from doing anything that could endanger her life.

  “Goddess, every time she brushes my symbiot across her skin I can feel it,” Brogan hissed, his eyes closed.

  “I know,” Barrack replied in a strained voice as he experienced the same pleasure-torture.

  Barrack turned his back to his brother, pressed his bent arm against the cold device that stored the food, and rested his forehead against his arm. He moved his other hand to his cock, which had filled until he was afraid he’d embarrass himself. Closing his eyes, he concentrated on the images his symbiot was sending to him, for the moment uncaring that what he was doing was probably wrong.

  After centuries of waiting, he justified his invasion of Delilah’s privacy with the promise that he would confess – one day – about his lack of control. Until then, he was going to enjoy every nanosecond of his misconduct. In his mind, he replaced the image of the symbiot and Delilah’s hand with his own hand.

  His symbiot warmed with delight, understanding his need to experience this first moment of exploration. A soft groan slipped from his lips and he fought the urge to charge upstairs. He unconsciously rocked his hips forward when she slid her hand down between her legs. At that moment, he wished he was a bar of soap.