She bit back another curse. Maeve was messing with her.
It was like the Dark Queen wanted Bree to fail. As she watched the dragon shifter awaken, Bree wished that didn’t seem to be such a likely possibility.
Kristofer awakened in his human form when something burned the side of his nose. He could feel carpet beneath his hands—instead of the grass or earth he might have expected in Fae—and the light was bright. That it was the heat of the firestorm made him smile and he opened his eyes, knowing who was leaning over him.
His mate looked significantly less pleased than he felt. Her hair tickled his arm and she was in her human form, too. She was wearing the same black skirt as when he’d first glimpsed her and a black turtleneck sweater. Her boots were gone. She was kneeling beside him and wrinkled her nose as she dabbed at his face with a cotton ball. It smelled like antiseptic and it stung.
“Stop squirming,” she said tersely but the way she caught her breath revealed that she wasn’t that angry with him.
“Changed your mind about kicking my ass?” he teased in a low murmur. He was reassured that she was tending his wounds and saw no reason to pretend otherwise.
“Just getting you ready for another round.”
Kristofer chuckled but her eyes narrowed.
“It’s not a joke. I made a deal to kill you.”
“Sorry I’m enjoying the process so much,” he said, just to needle her.
It worked.
“Stop moving around,” she said irritably. “You’ll get blood all over my new rug.”
“We’re at your place?” This was excellent news in his view, but she frowned.
“I didn’t choose the destination. The Fae dumped us here. Don’t start jumping to conclusions.” She held up a hand. “This is not romantic.”
“I beg to differ.”
She threw up her hands, obviously exasperated. “This isn’t the firestorm...” she began again.
“Of course, it is.” Kristofer sat up to argue his side and the blood ran onto his upper lip. His mate swore with an earthy thoroughness. “It’s like a paper cut,” he said, taking the cotton ball out of her hand and cleaning up. “Bleeds way more than it should.” He seized her fingertip and held it to the wound.
“What are you doing?” she demanded as the heat flared at the point of contact.
He closed his eyes and ignored the smell as the heat of the firestorm cauterized the wound. When he released her hand and opened his eyes, she was staring at him in shock.
“That can’t have worked,” she whispered.
“Of course, it did. The firestorm is good for everything.” He kissed her fingertip, watched her catch her breath, then sat up and peeled off his T-shirt. She made a skeptical noise in response to his comment, then surveyed him. Kristofer smiled at the appreciation that lit her eyes.
They were finally on the right track.
Then she took a step back, nodding at the large dragon tattoo on his chest. “A reminder in case you forget?” she asked and Kristofer grinned.
“Maybe a warning label,” he joked.
“Incendiary under pressure,” she suggested.
“Explosive in the presence of a firestorm,” he countered with a smile.
“At least you didn’t say you were hot stuff.”
“I’ll leave that for you to say.”
She scoffed, but he caught her hand in his when she might have walked away. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with passion.” He held her gaze as the light brightened between them and sparks flew. “And what could be better than a destined mate healing her Pyr?”
“I’m not your destined mate, and you’re not my Pyr...” She tried to pull her hand away but Kristofer held fast.
“The firestorm doesn’t lie.” He touched his lips to her palm and felt her quiver as the firestorm blazed to brilliant white. He watched her swallow, then kissed the inside of her wrist, moving slowly and touching his lips gently to her skin. He kept hold of that hand and slid his thumb across her palm, feeling her shiver.
The heat that resulted was unbelievable. The desire was incredible. He’d never gotten so hot just touching a woman’s hand before. He pressed his lips to the inside of her wrist and closed his eyes for a long moment, then opened them to meet her gaze.
She looked flushed and softer. Surprised, and in a good way. Her throat was working. Her mouth opened and closed, as if she was at a loss for words, and Kristofer watched her inhale sharply. He could see her pulse at her throat and her heart had to be racing. Yes, he could hear it. He slid his thumb across her hand and she breathed shakily, then he trapped her hand against his chest, under his own hand.
“Best thing for the rug,” he murmured.
“The wound should be cleaned first,” she protested. She was staring at the back of his hand and he guessed that she’d noticed his scars.
“I’m made of tougher stuff than that. I’m going to guess that you keep your weapons sharp and clean, and we know I’ve absorbed the sedative already. We also know that’s not what’s making me dizzy.” Kristofer held her gaze as he slid her hand toward the wound she’d made in his chest. He caught his breath at the stab of heat and winced at the brilliant flurry of white sparks. She whispered a curse as he tipped his head back and bared his teeth, feeling the healing power of fire race through him and hurting with the burn. He arched his back as the firestorm seared his flesh, not having expected the pain to be so intense.
When it faded, he opened his eyes and shook his head. He was shaking a little from the ordeal but it only increased his awe of the firestorm’s power.
“They warned me that a mate would blow my circuits,” he teased, mostly because she looked spooked, but she didn’t smile.
She abruptly moved away from him, folding her arms across her chest as she pivoted to face him from what she must have decided was a safe distance. She looked flustered and frustrated, a bit angry and very enticing. She was also cute. She was as aware of him as he was of her, but he respected that she wasn’t as convinced of the firestorm’s merit. “My rug is trashed,” she said as if that was the end of the world.
Kristofer pushed to his feet and surveyed the rug, which was pristine. Any blood he’d shed was on himself or in the cotton balls. He gave her a look. “I’ll buy you a new one if you want.”
“I need a coffee,” she said but didn’t move. She watched him, as if she didn’t think it was smart to turn her back on him.
Kristofer had the definite sense that she didn’t trust him. That was fair. She was tall and lithe but he was bigger. He had no idea what her relationship history was, but her attitude made him think it wasn’t good.
But he could think of one story that might reassure her. He studied her and noticed that her grey eyes still looked turbulent and mesmerizing in her human form. They had hundreds of hues in them, not as dramatic as in her Valkyrie form, but still arrestingly beautiful.
He could have stared into her eyes all day.
“The ocean in her eyes and death in her kiss,” he murmured, remembering.
She looked startled. “What?”
“That’s what my father used to say about Valkyries.”
She drew back a little more, proving that he’d done zip to reassure her so far. “What could he have known about that...that mythology?”
If she wanted to pretend that she wasn’t what she was, Kristofer wouldn’t argue with her. Not yet. He smiled, liking how obviously it agitated her. Color stained her cheeks and she flicked a glance at him, then away. “What’s wrong?”
“Men don’t smile at me, at least not...”
“Not the ones who know what you are,” Kristofer said, completing her sentence, and her quick hot glance proved he was right. “My father was fascinated with the Valkyries and the lore about them. He used to carve their images for stave churches.”
“No one does that anymore.” She sounded a bit breathless.
“It’s true. He’s been gone a while and he was probably one of th
e last.”
She gave him a quick look and he wondered if she remembered his father. “How old are you?” she demanded.
“Coming up on five hundred years.” He smiled at her, liking that she wasn’t astonished or skeptical. “Think I should throw a party? You could come.”
“Pun intended?” she demanded.
“My pleasure.”
“That is the issue.”
“Oh, I’ll make it yours, too,” Kristofer vowed, more than ready to do just that.
Instead of being reassured, though, her lips tightened into a thin line.
Good thing no one had told him that satisfying the firestorm would be easy.
Three
“The first time I saw a Valkyrie was when my dad died,” Kristofer said softly, trying a different approach to earning his mate’s trust. She stared at him, as if unable to stop herself, and he was snared by those incredible eyes. “She couldn’t have been anyone else, not with the ocean in her eyes. And then he called her by name, and I knew.”
“Who?” she asked quietly and he knew he had her attention.
“Eirene, peace and mercy, her fair hair billowing behind her. She rode a dark horse. I saw her come down out of the sky to him and was transfixed.”
“You shouldn’t have seen her at all,” his companion said. “Not unless she came for you.”
Kristofer shrugged. “I don’t play by the rules. My brother didn’t see her, if that makes you feel better. But I saw her, and she knew it.” He frowned. “I thought it meant that she’d come for me, but she told me it wasn’t my time. Then she knelt beside my father. He’d fallen from the top of the church and his back was probably broken. He wasn’t able to move and was in such pain. It was awful because there was nothing we could do.” He shook his head, knowing that his mate was watching him closely, but unable to keep from remembering his anguish on that day. He chose not to hide it, not from his destined mate, and his voice was husky when he continued. “Then she came and he smiled. She knelt down beside him and took his face in her hands like a lover. She was so gentle, yet decisive.”
“Yes,” his Valkyrie whispered.
“I heard him sigh with relief. He whispered her name and she murmured his, then she bent and kissed him, so very sweetly. Her tenderness brought tears to my eyes.”
“And then?”
“And then she stood and looked down at him for a moment, as if she wanted to remember him. He wasn’t breathing anymore and I knew he was out of pain. It was so still. Even the wind stopped. It was a moment out of time. Or maybe a moment that time stopped.”
“Yes.” Her voice was so soft that Kristofer wouldn’t have heard the agreement if he hadn’t been Pyr.
“Then she suddenly pivoted and returned to her horse. It was black, a huge stallion, and it pawed the ground in its impatience to run. She swung into that saddle with such grace: it was like she was taking flight.” Kristofer heard his own awe in his voice. “I thought she might, actually, but one bound and she was in the saddle. She turned the horse and, as it galloped away, my brother began to weep. He said that our father was gone.”
“But you knew that already.” She was watching him closely.
“I did. He couldn’t see her, though.” Kristofer met her gaze. “Why did I?” He wondered whether it was because he was destined to have a firestorm with a Valkyrie.
She didn’t answer him, but frowned and looked away. “You miss him.”
“Of course. But he died doing the work he loved, and he’d had a long healthy life until that fall. A Valkyrie came for him, just as he’d always wanted, even though he didn’t die in battle. He’d given up fighting and I think he feared sometimes that would mean that the Valkyries would forget him.”
“Valkyries never forget,” she said with heat.
“No. Of course not.” Kristofer waited but she didn’t say anything more. He thought that her features had softened a little, but she certainly wasn’t giving him a lot of encouragement. It was strange, because the firestorm licked at the edge of his thoughts, making him keenly aware of her every physical detail. That she fought it, and fought it so hard, meant she had to have a reason.
Why had she attacked him? Why would she make a deal to see him dead? He recalled that bartender’s insistence that Maeve meant to eliminate Others like the Pyr, but couldn’t figure out why a Valkyrie would ally with the Fae Queen.
His mate wasn’t going to rush in to tell him, though.
“Which one are you?” he asked finally.
She didn’t answer him, but then, he hadn’t really expected that she would.
Instead, she spun and went around the wall that she’d been standing against. Kristofer followed. It proved to be a dividing wall between the main room and the kitchen. She’d already filled a kettle and put it on the stove by the time he rounded the end.
It wasn’t a big apartment and the layout wasn’t complicated. There was a closet door between the kitchen and the door to the hallway; there was a counter with stools between the kitchen and the windows that faced the balcony; the windows and balcony continued across the living room. He guessed that there was a bedroom on the other side of the far wall and that the door was to a bathroom. The furnishings were minimal, but of good quality. Everything was white, meticulously clean and tidy. He liked how organized it was, but the white was a bit impersonal. Cool and remote, like his mate. Maybe even unwelcoming. The place needed a plant or two. A cat. A framed poster. Even a throw blanket in a bright color. A book.
On the other hand, the austere palette left the focus on the marvel that was his mate.
It was dark outside the windows, obviously well past midnight by the muted sounds from the street below. Kristofer guessed that her apartment was on the ninth or tenth floor, and her view was easterly, toward Queens. The morning light would be great, and without southern exposure, the apartment would never get really hot.
It was a sensible selection, even if it would never have been his choice. Just looking at all the buildings and windows made him yearn to be home, where his view was of rolling hills and trees.
She started to fill a grinder with coffee beans and Kristofer saw that her hands were trembling a bit. He might have moved closer but she gave him a fierce look that convinced him to stay put. He leaned against the end of the counter instead, leaving his shirt off because her gaze kept flicking to his chest. If being half-naked made her more aware of him and the firestorm, that could only be good.
“One more.” He indicated the smaller wound on his left shoulder. “Are you going to help me again?”
She glanced his way again. “I should leave it to fester.”
“That would finish what you started,” he agreed, wondering at her hostility. “At least it would have, once upon a time. I could get some antibiotics now.”
She shook her head but didn’t reply. She fiddled with the coffee, clearly avoiding his gaze.
Kristofer folded his arms across his chest, feeling his patience thin. “So, who’s Siegfried and why would you want to kill me for his sake?”
Give her lightning.
Give her drought.
Give her war.
Give her fetters of steel, or even pestilence. Bree could give the four riders of the Apocalypse a run for their money. She’d been wrong to hate magick most of all.
It was dragon shifters intent upon seduction that were trouble, and she wished that she could get rid of this one—or jump his bones. It had been a long time since she’d felt so conflicted and she blamed him, and this fake firestorm, for the change.
But he’d seen Eirene.
He’d described her so perfectly that he couldn’t have been making it up. Bree was shaken by that because she hadn’t expected it. He was breaking down her resentment of his kind so steadily that she couldn’t mount a defense. He kept surprising her and Bree wasn’t used to that. His effect upon her left her feeling weak and that made her prickly.
She did not like any suggestion of that she was vulnera
ble.
To anything. Or anyone.
Worse, she knew of his father, although she’d never guessed that that warrior was a dragon shifter. Maybe that was because she’d never met him. The old man had told her about Eirene’s conquest, the wood carver from the stave church, the one who knew all the old tales and had welcomed the Valkyrie’s kiss. He was a lovely man, by the old man’s account, a favorite of both Eirene and the old man himself.
A big part of that was that he had all the old stories memorized—his son clearly knew at least some of them.
If that wasn’t enough to threaten her resolve, now that son, a dragon shifter, was standing in her kitchen, appealing to her for help, filling the space with his masculinity and the heat of the firestorm. He was persistent, maybe even as stubborn as she was, and not going to just walk away.
Still, Bree couldn’t help but try to defend the secrets that were still hers. It wasn’t her nature to share.
“You don’t need to know about Siegfried,” she said, certain that the more she knew about this Pyr, the harder it would be to steel herself against him.
“I could argue that.”
He was so reasonable, so patient. He watched her as if he had all the time in the world, and she knew he’d wait. She heard a little edge in his voice, one that might have been a warning, and she was halfway tempted to provoke him. That little flicker deep in his blue eyes made her wonder what he’d be like when he lost his temper. It would be a slow burn before he really lost it and he’d probably be magnificent.
She might be completely lost then.
Maybe answering his question would diminish his interest and avoid that possibility.
It was worth a try.
“Siegfried taught me to hunt dragons,” she confessed, as if that was no big deal. She felt her dragon shifter get a little taller and realized his attention was snared. “He killed one and he was right: the only thing that monster deserved was to be slaughtered.”
“Whoa,” he said, clearly surprised by the heat of her tone.
Dragon's Kiss (The DragonFate Novels Book 2) Page 7
