Salem. Errol. Razik. I played their names over and over in my head as I observed them. They stood around the map together, mugs in hand. The way they tilted their heads evoked memories of Ked too.
How I could reminisce about him yet feel nothing was perhaps a blessing, but I felt everything for these three. More than fascination, it was desire, need, hope, all rolled together.
Then the moment of silent observation ended. They slipped up to the roof and shifted, one by one launching themselves off the widow’s walk and into the air to soar above. I willed myself into the air after them, my incorporeal body able to defy gravity, but I only got to the tops of the trees before an invisible tether yanked me back.
Try as I might, I could only stray so far from the tree, from my small glass prison. Each time I stretched out far enough, I snapped back down into the ashy cell.
Enraged by my confinement, I banged and cursed at the glass until I exhausted myself into sleep.
I woke to the gray, colorless plane of my current existence and didn’t move, too demoralized by my own impotence to bother rising. The world outside was bustling with activity now, with familiar voices.
After several seasons within this prison, I’d learned that the tree I was bound to was on the grounds of an art school and that new students arrived every month, stayed for three weeks, then departed again. The place was quiet for a week, the permanent residents alternately relaxing and preparing for a new group of students.
I’d come to enjoy the rhythm, even though I wished I could participate more actively, to learn the skills the students were so excited about discovering, the powers they learned to hone and strengthen. I’d had powers once, as an Elite. I wasn’t a dragon, but I had been infused with dragon blood. It had given me the ability to wield dragon fire, to slip into the shadows like one of the black dragons, to obscure the thoughts and feelings of a human until only the one thing I wished them to think or feel was at the forefront.
Now I was only a memory, trapped among my own ash and bone. Forced to watch from inside a bubble as the world moved on around me.
I didn’t hear their voices that next day, but when it grew dark, I sensed a presence just beyond my cell wall and sat up, looking out into the night. Razik, the brooding one, stood beneath the branch of the tree, solemnly staring up at me, though I knew he couldn’t see me. He had a look of pure longing in his eyes before shaking his head with a sigh and walking away.
I ran to the tree at the edge of my prison, the replica of the one outside that acted as a portal, and shoved my essence through it, emerging in the darkness outside. I chased after him, hoping to catch up, though I didn’t know why. Something about his look made me long to try again. As if simply willing him to see me, to hear me, might be enough if we both wanted it.
“Razik, wait! Please stop. Please see me. Hear me. Please!”
He was nothing more than a shadow up ahead, slipping silently through the trees down to the edge of the water like a panther on the prowl. I wouldn’t be able to chase him far. I could already feel the tightening of my tether like a noose around my neck.
“Please stop. Just look at me. I’m here!”
He disappeared, and my leash snapped taut. I fell to my knees, unable to go farther but unwilling to go back. Near tears, I swallowed the lump in my throat, closed my eyes, and tilted my face to the sky with a low wail of despair. They’d seen me once. Why couldn’t they see me again?
Razik
The prickling sense of being followed dissipated the farther I got from the house, but my agitation grew. I couldn’t shake the conviction that the woman I’d seen the night before was still here, that the globe was connected to her, and that she wanted something. As a Shadow dragon, my instincts were honed to fine points, so I couldn’t ignore the sense of being watched. Even last night, when Salem had surrendered to Errol and me, and the three of us had finally broken that barrier between strangers and friends, I’d sensed another presence in the room and hoped it was her.
When I reached the edge of the water, I squatted down and pressed my palm to the glowing rune. It was at full power, which I’d expected, but this was a habit I needed to build, even though we’d just recharged the barrier the day before. I stared over the water into the darkness, then back over my shoulder where some sixth sense heard the keening wail of someone in despair. It was a ghostly sound that made ice race up my spine, but at the same time, my body came alive with awareness.
It was the same presence I’d sensed last night but hadn’t seen. Could it be the woman from the tree? We’d been forced into the shadows when we’d first seen her, so perhaps that’s what it would take now.
I exhaled a shadowy breath, expelling the air from my lungs and more, until every cell of my body had dematerialized into the darkness around me. Then I slipped back the way I’d come, winding my way through the trees back toward the house. I paused at the edge of the clearing where the house sat, frozen by the sight of the kneeling woman crying in the middle of the flagstone path.
She was beautiful and sad, her face tilted to the sky as if her answers lay among the stars. Her face flickered between perfect porcelain flesh and stark, bleached bone. The black lace gown she wore fading to the cracked black of charred flesh.
I slipped closer, wondering if she would notice me, but she remained oblivious. Her haunting wails had ceased, and now she only wept silently. I moved close enough to scent her, to fill my nose with the sweet aroma of gardenias with an undertone of fire.
Stopping a few feet back, I drew the shadows into me as tightly as I could without resuming my physical form. I didn’t want to risk losing sight of her.
“Why are you crying?” I asked. Her eyes flew open, and she rose and turned with a swirl of ghostly white smoke. She was more lovely now, despite her shock. I couldn’t help but chuckle slightly at her expression. “I’d say you look like you saw a ghost, but honestly, I think you are the ghost in this scenario.”
She scanned me from head to toe and took a step closer, hand reaching out. “You see me?”
“Clear as day. And I take it you see me too, which is a feat for mortal eyes. Who are you?”
She didn’t seem to hear, her eyes wide with wonder and fascination. She closed the distance with her hands out, and I remained still, bemused by her behavior. When her fingertips met the planes of my chest, she inhaled sharply, eyes darting to mine, then she flattened both palms against my pecs and slid them up.
“You’re solid. I can touch you. Why can I touch you? Oh, but this is wonderful.” Her eyes remained on mine only briefly before she dropped them again, examining me with curiosity, hands sliding up over my shoulders and down my arms.
I remained still, curious to see what she’d do. She made a slow circuit around me, hands roving over my skin in a way that made me feel like little more than a specimen. But when she disappeared behind me, I was startled by the feel of her arms slipping around my middle and her cheek pressing to my back as she embraced me with a deep sigh.
“Oh gods, you are really here, aren’t you?” she murmured against my back. My skin prickled with goosebumps at her contact, so real, so solid, so very warm. Her full breasts pressed against the center of my back had my cock rousing with interest, and her hands seemed unable to stop caressing as if she was completely unaware of the effect she had. I didn’t want her to stop, so I had to brace myself, my stomach tightening and my jaw clenching as she slipped her hands lower.
I was entirely nude in this form, since even conjured clothing had enough weight to make noise if I moved, and she was extremely close to discovering the state she’d put me in. But I couldn’t bring myself to stop her, to turn and face her yet. Some part of me wanted to let her have me however she wished, as if she had earned the right to objectify me, and it was my duty to allow it. To indulge her.
I’d have never endured this kind of pawing interest from any other woman. I had no idea why she was so special, but I knew she was, nonetheless. Some deep part of my sou
l burned with the certainty that this was what she needed, and I had to give it to her.
So I only stood there, blood on fire with the heat of her roaming hands that grew bolder with every stroke, her breathing quickening against my back as she grazed them down over my hips and slid in a vee to my crotch.
I couldn’t suppress a groan when she grasped my hard, aching shaft in both hands and stroked. One hand reached the tip and froze, toying with the row of small barbells that pierced the ridged head of my cock. There were four adorning the upper side of the head, plus a fifth through my frenulum, and she made a point of touching each one, the deliberate nudges sending jolts of need deep into my balls.
“Careful,” I growled in warning.
She answered by digging her teeth into the flesh of my shoulder then releasing with a delicate lick.
“You feel good. So good,” she rasped, her earlier sadness evidently forgotten.
“I want to see you,” I said, finally regaining some focus over the desire to let her keep doing what she was doing. “We’ve barely been introduced. This is…a little unconventional.”
She released my cock, and I turned. Her face glowed with pale light, as if she were pure aura, pure energy, pure fire, based on the heat she emitted.
“You’re a dragon. I know you don’t dislike sex; I saw you with the others last night. Are you mated to them? Is that why you three were so comfortable with a tangle out in the open like that?”
“So you were there. I had a feeling we had an observer. And no, the three of us were strangers until yesterday. We just needed to get acquainted fast. Call it a bonding exercise.” I smirked, thrilled by the knowledge that she’d watched us.
“Then why is this unconventional? I’d like to bond with you too. Have dragons changed so much that they only do that with each other now?”
Her comment made me tilt my head. “Changed? Not really. Wanting sex is kind of our M.O. and always has been. But if you mean why I wanted to talk to you more than have you jerk me off, it’s more to do with curiosity.” I reached out and touched her cheek, grazed my fingertips behind one ear and down her neck, marveling at her solidity and warmth, even though she was no more than a translucent figure, the opposite of a shadow with her pale glow. “What are you? I couldn’t see you in my human form, but I can touch you now. Are you some kind of tree nymph, bound to April’s magic tree? Is that it?”
Her grimace answered for her, and she shook her head. “Nymphs are vile things who’d sooner hypnotize you for sex if that’s what they wanted. Never trust their kind.”
The bitterness in her tone struck me as odd. She knew of nymphs at least, so that suggested she was more than familiar with the higher races in general, not just dragons. And she wasn’t wrong about how they had the power to hypnotize. But the nymphaea also preferred their partners willing when it came to sex. Their powers of hypnosis were usually used to gain information or compel other behavior from their targets. It wasn’t enough to incite her level of hatred and disgust.
“What’s your name?” I asked again, more insistently now. “Seriously, I have to know who you are. Maybe I can help somehow. This can’t be your entire existence.”
She darted a haunted look at the tree, then back at me. “Who I was is not important. I want to be someone new. If it’s even possible to live again.”
“So you are some kind of ghost. But one I can touch, at least on the shadow plane. What killed you? Who killed you? Do I need to avenge your death? Is that what needs to happen to resurrect you? A little help here, please.”
With a pleading look, she closed the short distance between us again, hooking her hands around my neck and looking up into my eyes. “You can’t kill him, so don’t waste your time trying. What you can do is make me feel alive again. Touching you was akin to igniting a flame inside me. I need more.”
She arched her body against me, and my cock twitched with interest. I could take her. She wanted me to. I stared down into her eyes, hands resting at her waist. My fingers clenched with the urge to hoist her up and press her against the nearest tree as I plunged into her. Instead, I dipped my head and kissed her, one slow, deep kiss before I released her and murmured in her ear, “Tell me your name if you want me to fuck you.”
The agony on her face told me I wasn’t going to get my answer. I clenched my jaw and stepped back. If she couldn’t do me the courtesy of sharing that one little piece of information, I wouldn’t indulge her. I had work to do and needed to get on with it.
“My name is Razik,” I offered in one last attempt to nudge the detail out of her. “But if you were watching us last night, you probably know that already.”
She nodded and gave me a half-smile. “Razik is a good name.”
“But you won’t give me yours. Why?”
“Because it means nothing but pain and suffering for dragons. And for me. I’d rather forget it.”
I frowned at that comment. Who the hell was she? “Then give me something. Make one up. What do you want me to call you?”
I was getting frustrated, as much from the need to follow through with what she wanted as to learn something about her that I could use. She was an enigma, and it was my nature to want to solve whatever mysteries haunted me. She was by far the biggest one I’d ever encountered.
She sighed and took a step back. “You are as stubborn as he was. And every bit as beautiful. But I can’t let you see me for the woman I was. Better that you don’t see me at all.”
When she turned, I lunged. “Wait! Just tell me! What harm could it do? It’s just a fucking name!”
My anger at her intransigence got the better of me as I grabbed her elbow and swung her back around. Heat welled in my throat before I could tamp it down. I’d meant to merely ask why again, but the next thing I knew, black fire surged out on a frustrated roar.
Her eyes went wide, and she cried out, yanking free of my arm and stumbling back. The edge of her bodice burst into flame, and she smacked at it frantically. Eyes wild, she stared at me and in a shaky voice, said, “This is why! Because this wouldn’t have been an accident if you knew, and I’m done being burned alive by the men I love!”
With that, she simply disappeared, leaving me in darkness. I caught a brief flash of pale light coming from the direction of the house, and the tree in front of it.
I’d mean it if I knew her name? How could anyone mean to burn her alive?
I had to force myself away from that spot, staring after her. The part that kept playing on repeat was the very last thing she’d said: “I’m done being burned alive by the men I love.”
Was I one of those men? And what man—or dragon, because that was the only possibility—had done it to her to begin with?
As I shifted into dragon form and rose into the air to finish my nightly round of the island, I couldn’t shake the sense that even though she refused to give me her name, I should have known who she was.
Salem
The creak of floorboards beside my bed roused me just enough to sense Razik hovering in the pre-dawn darkness.
“The fuck, dude? It’s Errol’s shift. Go to bed and let me sleep.”
“I know. Roll over.”
I cracked one eye at the gruff reply. He was in shadows, but the flare of desperation in his aura was as clear as day. I’d bet my left nut he wasn’t here to snuggle.
Pondering the wisdom of obeying him and risking this becoming a habit apparently took too long for his taste. The next thing I knew, he ripped the covers off and climbed on top of me, shoving my legs apart and hovering over me. He was naked and hard as steel, light faintly glinting off the jewelry adorning the head of his cock. His balls softly grazed my flaccid dick, which hardened in two seconds.
“We can do it face-to-face if you’d rather,” he growled.
“What the fuck’s gotten into you?”
“Nothing. Just end of shift frustration.”
He leaned down to try to kiss me, and I twisted, grabbing him around the shoulders and flipp
ing us both. He landed on his back with an “oof,” and I pinned his wrists above his head.
“Bullshit. I may not know you that well yet, but this isn’t just blowing off steam. Our job isn’t that hard. Unless…” My eyebrows shot up. “You saw her again, didn’t you? She’s what got you all riled up.”
My cock hardened fully at the thought of the mysterious woman. Razik’s grimace answered the question.
“Tell me everything and my ass is yours,” I challenged.
“Don’t fucking torture me. I can’t think straight right now, much less talk,” he grumbled.
“Is she that big a cocktease? You poor thing.” I reached between us and gripped his shaft, and he let out an unholy groan, jacking up into my hand. Wow, he was desperate, and I really wasn’t down with inflicting torture, especially not to someone I actually kind of liked.
I squeezed, and he uttered another plea, stretching his arms above his head and gripping the bars of the bed frame. I stroked him, engrossed in the way he surrendered so fully.
After our little get-to-know-each-other session last night, I expected he’d always be the dominant one, but this told a different story. It was kind of endearing to see the war hero falling apart at the seams over a woman, to the point he’d probably let me do just about anything to him. I was a little envious that he’d had contact with her, but clearly, it hadn’t been particularly satisfying contact, or he probably wouldn’t have run to me this way.
But the faster I got him off, the sooner he’d spill details, so I went for broke. I scooted down, grabbed him behind the knees, and pushed his legs up as I dipped down and swept my dragon tongue around his pierced cockhead and down the shaft. The skin of his balls tightened as he groaned, then relaxed when I took them both into my mouth and sucked, salivating until he was coated with my saliva sliding down his crack.
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