The Protector (Fire's Edge)

by Abigail Owen

  “No. No way,” he said, trying his best to give them an easy grin. “Long faces are off limits around here. I’ll go win this war for the king and then be back before you even miss me.”

  “Who said we’re going to miss you?” Hall popped off from where he sat on a stool at the island counter. Snakelike eyes, barely passable as human, glowed lime-green against smooth, honey-bronzed skin.

  Hall’s sense of humor always was an acquired taste, but the comment seemed to signal the others to go back to their kind of normal. Which they sort of did, though the tension lingered in the air. An unspoken heaviness of loss. One more hit. They’d been taking a lot of hits lately.

  “Hey,” Levi said quietly to Attor who was closest to him. “Where’s Lyndi?”

  “Her room, I think.”

  Levi was out of the door before Attor finished speaking. Following Lyndi’s lingering scent, he moved into the foyer and up the grand staircase that led to the living quarters, right past his own suite to the one at the end of the second-floor hall. Forget knocking. She’d probably ignore him anyway.

  Trying the handle, he found it unlocked and let himself in.

  Then slammed to a halt at the sight of her standing, facing the door, eyes wide at his intrusion, tears streaming down her cheeks, glistening in the soft lighting.

  Holy hell. Tears for him?

  The breath in his lungs deserted him in a harsh whoosh, leaving him light-headed. With only a single thought—making those tears stop—he prowled across the room to cup her face in his hands, brushing at the damp streaks on her cheeks with his thumbs.

  “I thought you’d be happy I’m leaving,” he said quietly. “You hate me.”

  She huffed a laugh and rolled her eyes, the move so familiar he’d swear she was about to lay into him, only, vulnerable as she was, she could hide nothing of her reaction. He caught the slight quiver to her lips.

  Driven beyond the limits of his control, he lowered his head and kissed her. Soft and sweet, trying to offer comfort. Trying his damnedest not to act on instincts that screamed at him to take it further.

  With a whimpered sound, she scooted closer, wrapping her arms around him, opening under him, turning the kiss into something…desperate. Urgent.

  His entire body went hot and tight with instant, vicious need. Because she couldn’t deny him anymore. His dragon loosed a rumble that was both pure anticipation and warning. They’d both waited a long time for this. Too damn long.

  Levi jerked his head up and sucked in sharply. “Gods above, Lyndi.” But he didn’t yet claim what she was offering. “I want you so much I ache with it. Tell me you feel the same.”

  A flash of vulnerability set her eyes swirling with the molten crimson of her fire. “I have nothing to give to you,” she whispered.

  Levi growled and gave in, kissing her. Hard. He poured an almost violent need to shake her for saying that about herself into the kiss he ravaged her with. And Lyndi, usually all fire and fight, softened against him as though giving in, surrendering. An action that twined around his heart. With a groan, he tempered the kiss, turning it into something else. Something more. Something that drugged his mind and sent her moaning against him.

  A ripping sound pulled him up sharply to find she’d torn his shirt clean off.

  “Lyndi—”

  “Please,” she begged.

  He knew everything she was asking with that one word. For at least this one time together. To not talk about what it all meant or where it would or wouldn’t lead. Not yet. To just give in.

  Levi grinned, brutally satisfied—for the moment—and her pupils dilated at the sight, no doubt his smile falling on the predator side. In a rush of kisses and touches and backing her up through the suite, they managed to get her out of her clothes. Smoothing his palms over her skin, he cupped his hands over her bare ass to lift her up, fitting her against him. Without an ounce of hesitation, Lyndi wrapped her arms around his neck and undulated her body, grinding herself against the straining shaft of his cock, even through his jeans.

  Convulsively, his fingers dug into the toned flesh he gripped as he tried to keep from dropping his pants and pushing into her then and there. Damned if he wasn’t going to make this incredible for both of them. He wanted her so satiated, she wouldn’t have the energy to fly away from him the second they were done.

  Shoving that thought away, he focused on how he wanted to leave her…replete and filled with his seed.

  Fuck.

  When had he turned into a caveman?

  Needing to wrest back the control she’d taken with that grinding move, he slipped one hand farther around until he found the slick core of her. But he didn’t enter her with his fingers. Instead, he teased, feathering a touch through her folds, just barely avoiding the bundle of nerves at the top of her entrance.

  Over and over and over, mimicking the movement with deeper strokes of his tongue in her mouth, winding it with her own. Pressing, but not entering with his fingers, until she was moving her hips, seeking a deeper penetration, chasing his touch, frustration edging her moans.

  He wanted her full surrender. Needed it.

  She would never, ever give into him anywhere else. He needed this here.

  “Fuck me, dammit,” she demanded against his lips.

  Levi drew back to pin her with a look of total and utter command. “In here, I give the orders.”

  “The fuck you do—”

  In one swift move, he impaled her with his finger, sending it deep, and she choked off her words to toss her head back on a moan of pure pleasure that shot blood pumping into his already engorged cock.

  Sliding that finger out with deliberate, torturous slowness, he added another and slid back home. “I know you need to be in control in everything you do,” he murmured, voice gone dark and smoky with his need, his dragon, impatient and edgy, wanting to be part of the action. The sight of the pleasure flushing her cheeks, the way her mouth opened as she panted, was stealing his control bit by bit. “But when we…are together in this way…I need this.”

  She shook her head, her long dark hair that he’d released from the elastic binding at some point brushing the back of the hand holding her up. “I can’t,” she panted.

  “You can,” he insisted. “Give me this part of you. You’ll never regret it. I promise. But in the bedroom, you obey me.”

  Her head snapped up in defiance at that, even as her gaze remained hazy, and he stopped the motion of his fingers inside her, staring her down steadily. “Your choice,” he said.

  Dragonsteel bands seemed to wrap around his chest, cutting off his breathing as he waited for her answer. Her permission.

  For an interminable beat, she searched his eyes, for gods knew what. “You won’t hurt me?”

  The dragon in his head made a sound close to a purr. She was going to give in. Levi grinned, watching her through half-closed eyes. “Only if you want me to.”

  Deliberately, he crooked a finger, feeling for that spot inside her that would make her shudder. Ah, there it was.

  A whimper escaped her lips.

  “Agreed,” she said softly, that husky voice of hers wrapping around him as effectively as a fist around his cock.

  Everything inside him stilled. Bright relief spiked through him at odds with the moment, bigger than what he’d expected. Only he was far from confident that the surrender she was giving was anything more than her body.

  “Are you sure? I won’t ever take advantage of you. I’ll take care of your every need. Your. Every. Fucking. Need, Lyndi. But you need to be sure.”

  “I’m sure.” She wiggled, as though trying to kickstart him back into what he’d been doing.

  Instead, he pulled his fingers from her.

  “Hey—”

  “I’m in charge,” he reminded her.

  She snapped her mouth shut with a glare
but said nothing more. With a nod of satisfaction, he carried her through to her bedroom.

  Pausing on the threshold, he took it in, never having dared invade this space. Lyndi had eclectic taste. Plain black T-shirts and jeans were her usual mode of dress. But in here, she’d decorated full-on old-school with a massive fourposter bed human kings and queens of the Renaissance would have envied. Heavy red velvet curtains hung from the ornately carved wooden canopy, tied back with silky ropes of the same color. The carving was of dragons, undulating together, a beautiful depiction of what he was about to do to her. Giving him ideas.

  With a grunt at the images flooding his mind, he strode to the bed. There he lowered her feet to the ground and stepped away, backing up until he put the full distance of the room between them.

  This would be about taking the control she’d just given him and earning her trust. He’d worry about tomorrow—and everything else he wanted from her—later.

  Chapter Three

  She’d always thought it would be her. That she would have to leave. That she’d be “assigned” a mate and forced to go off and start a new life, back in Everest most likely, where the High King needed her to politically tie someone down or lift them up. Most likely the latter. Only another red dragon would do for the King of the Red Clan’s cousin. But never this. Never Levi going to fight.

  The news had hit her with all the subtlety of an atomic bomb, and any control she’d had over her reactions to him had flown right out the damn window like shattered glass. She knew they had no time, no future. But they could have this. This one moment together.

  Lyndi didn’t try to control her racing heart, didn’t want to, even though she knew Levi would be able to hear it with ease. She wanted him to. Wanted him to know that what he was doing was turning her on, because she’d never allowed herself to be that free with him. Not ever.

  He wanted to be in charge?

  She shouldn’t be surprised. He was always trying to boss her around. But out there, that annoyed the shit out of her. In here, damned if surrender wasn’t exactly what she wanted to give him. She spent her days proving herself, fighting to be heard, making tough decisions, guiding her boys, and generally being the adult who cleaned up the mess behind everyone.

  To be able to let go and let him determine her pleasure and his…

  They were still a complicated mess she didn’t want to contemplate, with a time limit now, and he tended to frustrate the hell out of her, but one thing was for certain…she knew he’d take care of her. Implicitly.

  Lyndi took in his expression—intense, blazing, with an edge to it that whispered of danger and sent wet, silky heat dripping from between her legs. Like she’d unleashed the animal within him.

  Holy hells. Where had this Levi come from?

  Her dragon purred inside her head, a guttural sound she’d never made before.

  Quivering with craving, hardly able to keep her legs under her, she stood before him, unashamedly naked, reveling in the way he watched her, the slash of color across his cheekbones telling her he liked what she was offering. With slow, deliberate moves, never taking his eyes from hers, he stripped the rest of his clothes from his body and she had to hold in a whimper.

  When humans carved images of the gods into marble and bronze, this was what they’d been trying to capture. Every part of him—every ridge of muscle, every line, every hard plane—so damn flagrantly male.

  Beautiful.

  For once, instead of the race of challenge in her blood, Lyndi gloried in her femininity. She was designed for him. Even his size… Her gaze strayed to the jut of his cock, swollen and turgid, golden hair curling around the base. Some women might consider Levi intimidating.

  Too big. Too hard. Too broad.

  But she wanted to feel the burn as he stretched her. Filled her. Fuck. She might just spontaneously orgasm from a simple look if he took much longer.

  Still he didn’t come to her.

  “Touch yourself.”

  Her eyes went wide as a knee-jerk protest at the command in his voice kicked in for a heartbeat, no doubt sending red sparks into her eyes for him to see. She opened her mouth as though to argue, then closed it again as the image of surrendering to him here had her pulsating with a different kind of need.

  Wild. Untethered. Where he was the rock she could break herself over and be swept away down the river.

  She swiped the tip of her tongue over her plump bottom lip. “Where?” she asked. Was that her voice? All husky, pure sex.

  The way he tensed, she knew he heard it, too. Heard it and liked it, his breathing increasing.

  “Your breasts.” A command. Low. Immediate. Compelling.

  Without hesitation her hands slid up her body to cup petite breasts and pluck at her dusky-hued nipples which hardened more under her touch, the perfect size to suck. Gods she wanted his mouth on them. His fingers. His teeth. She plucked at the tips roughly.

  Levi grunted, but still he held himself back.

  He wrapped his hand around his cock, and she dropped her gaze to watch with greedy interest as he gave it a brutal squeeze, turning the head purple and swollen in his grip.

  Her insides fluttered, spasming in stark reaction. Unconsciously, her lips parted as she pictured taking that thick shaft and sucking on it until he shot hot spurts down her throat.

  “Fuck, Lyndi.” He released himself and strode to her, crossing the room quickly, standing close enough that his heat mingled with her own, but still he didn’t touch. “I intend to take all goddamn day, but not if you keep looking at me like you want me to—”

  He cut himself off with a strangled sound and she jerked her gaze to his.

  “You do want me to,” he murmured.

  To fill her throat with his cock until black spots danced in front of her eyes? Hell, yes. But how could he see that in her eyes when the man had no clue why she was always angry with him otherwise?

  Suddenly Levi grinned, though there was no humor in it. More like the dragon baring his teeth in anticipation of prey, tempered by a tenderness that about took her to her knees. His pupils dilated, black voids in the center of copper-colored flames so intense, they could light the room on their own.

  “Show me.”

  Immediately, she dropped to kneel before him, her head swimming with the heady feeling of not having to decide, just act. Rather than play it safe by wrapping her hand around the base of his cock as a buffer, she grabbed him by the hips and slid her mouth over his length, lips stretching with his girth. Determined, she pushed forward, opening her throat and letting him lodge there, cutting off her air.

  His hands speared through her hair, fisting the strands, the slight sting anchoring her as he held her there, dick throbbing in her throat, the oxygen cut off making each pound of her heart feel fat and heavy. Then he pulled back, and she gasped for air, the sudden rush just as much of a turn-on, lighting up nerve endings all over her body, before he filled her up again. Three more times he did this, slow, stretching, filling, and holding just long enough, until she was drifting in a hazy world of sensation even as her entire body throbbed and trembled.

  He swelled even larger, and she whimpered with the knowledge that she had done that to him.

  With a curse, he pulled out of her mouth. “Not yet.”

  Then he was standing her up and positioning her. At first, still floating in that sensual, sexual world, she didn’t pay much attention, until silk wrapped around her wrist and tightened. Turning her head, she discovered the rope used to draw back the curtains of her bed was looped around her, crimson against her skin. Levi moved to her other side. “Give me your hand.”

  Without hesitation, excitement fizzing through the languid, hazy parts of her to set her body buzzing, she did as he ordered, and the other tie was slipped around her wrist.

  “Feet apart,” came the next harsh-voiced order.

 
She moved.

  “More.”

  She widened her stance until she stood before him, legs spread, arms out, at his complete and total mercy.

  “Good.” He stepped closer, lips hovering over hers but not touching. “The things I’m going to do with you…”

  He brushed the back of one hand across her sensitized nipples, enticing, but not enough.

  The word more trembled on her lips, but she held back, waiting to see what he’d do next.

  What he did was touch her. Everywhere.

  Everywhere but where she wanted. Soft, gentle caresses over every inch of her body—a brush over her shoulders, feathered across her collarbone, kisses to her fingertips, smoothing his big hands down her thighs and back up her calves to the spot at the back of her knees that sent her wobbly. As though he were memorizing her, worshipping her.

  His warm breath followed, swirling against her skin, hovering over where she wanted to be touched, over breasts, nipples, over the curls at the juncture of her legs. Teasing bastard.

  “More,” she pleaded, eventually unable to keep the word inside.

  He stopped what he was doing, leaving his hands against her hips, the heat like a brand, and raised his gaze to hers.

  “I’ll give you everything,” he promised, eyes serious and almost…worried. “But I don’t know your boundaries yet.”

  Boundaries? None. Take me hard and fast.

  “If I cross them. If I do something you don’t want—”

  “I’m not shy about speaking up.”

  His mouth tipped up on one side in a smile that she might’ve labeled adorable if it hadn’t been Levi. He smiled a lot, and so many different kinds, but every once in a while it caught her on the raw when his face transformed from the serious warrior, all cut lines and intensity, to something softer. More approachable.

  “Fair enough,” he said.

  She shivered at the dark promise contained in such innocuous words. Then gasped as he set his mouth to her clit and sucked.