Bonded to the Dragon: The Lick of Fire Collection: Dragon Lovers

by Lockharte, Kara

  I followed her lead and stepped onto the matting with my black socks. It wasn’t as terribly uncomfortable as I thought it would have been, in fact, it was oddly soothing, in a strange foot-massage-ish way.

  I watched her walk to one wall. Panels slid at her touch, opening to a closet filled with what seemed to be several large and fluffy pillows. Was this entire house full of fake walls?

  “This room is more of a Japanese-style bedroom, with the traditional futon that you fold up and put away in the closet each morning.”

  She walked to the other white wall and placed her hand there. A massive screen blinked into existence, gradually revealing a gradual swirl of stars in space.

  “Perhaps this program can help you figure more about your powers. There’s a series of video lessons here that will lead you through magical meditation and exercise steps…”

  “My name is Zoe,” said the sort of calm, relaxed female voice one might expect from a hippie yoga teacher. “I am pleased to be your guide in this journey.”

  “Zoe is an…artificial intelligence of sorts,” said Sophie.

  I held up my hand. “Hold up. First of all, are you telling me this is a computer program for magical training?”

  Sophie laughed and shrugged. “In a sense, yes. Zoe was created by my grandmother, to help me try and figure out and achieve the magical potential she was sure I had.”

  The screen had turned into a slow spinning flower pattern that was gradually making me dizzy. I looked away. “Did it work?”

  Sophie shook her head, frowning at the screen. “I never liked this pattern,” she muttered. “Zoe, can you change this, please?”

  An image of an upward-looking perspective, surrounded by tall towering trees, replaced the flower pattern. Interesting how she wasn’t answering my question. “Why do you think it will work on me?”

  “It’s worth a try.” She looked at her hands, the fingertips which were stained pink, perhaps from the goo in those teapots she had been cleaning. But what kind of teapots had pink goo in them? “The dragons trust my knowledge of shen magic. But honestly, I'm not a very good practitioner of it. There are others far more well-versed, far more advanced than I. But to ask them… Shen rarely share their secrets. And those that would know what you were? Would ask you to sign your soul over to them before they would ever even deign to help you.”

  “So why are you helping me?”

  “I know what it's like not to have any idea of your purpose or potential. Plus your Devourer-killing ability needs to be explored further.”

  “I didn’t even know what I was doing.”

  “Exactly. You need to learn, and be conscious, so you can control…whatever it is you do.” Sophie put a hand on her belly, yawned, and straightened up. “If you have any questions, just ask Zoe to call me.”

  “Hold on, wait.”

  “I know it seems lame, and you don’t want to do it. But this can only help you. The room is heavily warded, so you don’t have to worry about hurting anyone. And with the artificial intelligence, you can turn yourself loose without worrying about what others may think of you.”

  “I got it,” I said. “But does it have to be the hippie-lady voice?”

  “Would you prefer your own voice?” said Zoe, using an oddly pleasant version of my voice. It sent a chill through my spine. Ugh, who in the world would want to hear themselves telling themselves what to do?

  Sophie cracked a smile. “I used to use the voice of a little green wizard from a space movie.”

  “Talk like this, would you prefer?” said Zoe, in the wizard’s grumbly voice.

  “Yes,” I said, even though I was sure I would regret it.

  “Then proceed we will.”

  * * *

  I landed on my ass in the most painful way possible. Above me, a ninja raised his sword. I instinctively brought my arms up to block, even knowing that it would be useless.

  “Alligator enchiladas!”

  Immediately, the ninja froze, its blade a fraction of an inch above my bare forearm.

  “Tired now, are you?” said Zoe. “The true warrior—”

  “Oh, shut up.” I sat up. My ribs ached, my legs ached, and my head felt as if I had tiny gnomes running wild and drilling random holes into my skull. I was tired; I had meditated and gone through martial-arts exercises designed to control my magic with my breathing.

  The ninja disappeared.

  “Well you have done, my apprentice.”

  I looked at my hands, at the smoky dark tendrils that I could now call forth at will.

  Sophie’s program might have sort of kind of worked.

  “I still don’t know where I brought the Devourer,” I said out loud. “I can’t even go back to that place.”

  “A requirement may be a living, sentient being on the verge of death,” said Zoe.

  My forearm prickled with a pins-and-needles sensation as I absorbed the dark smoke back into my skin.

  “That's enough for now.” I was getting tired of this space wizard voice and the strange way it convoluted sentences. “I just want to be left alone.”

  The screen disappeared. I crawled over to the futon on the floor that I’d pulled out of the closet during another training exercise and flopped backward.

  To my surprise, the futon was quite comfortable. I closed my eyes.

  I heard footsteps in the hallway. A door opened and closed. Water started running.

  I blinked.

  Probably Grant.

  Taking a shower.

  I had seen hints of his flesh, his naked skin, a flash of the rippling muscles underneath that ridiculous white suit he had been so intent on wearing everywhere.

  I imagined the water running down the rivulets along all his masculine lines along his arms and down the shallows and contours of his back. How would he react if I skimmed my fingers along the planes of his chest, down to the ladder of his abs?

  I could almost imagine the touch of his skin on my fingertips. I shuddered at the strangely tangible feeling and tried to brush it away.

  The strange sensation only traveled inward to my wrists.

  I shook my hand, but the touch only moved up, along my inner arm, hot on my skin.

  Oh shit. Grant still had my ring on.

  8

  Was he rubbing my ring all over his damn self while he washed?

  I should march toward the bathroom, hammer at the door, and demand that he stop.

  But instead, I closed my eyes, letting myself feel the imaginary warmth.

  Grant wasn’t there, and he wasn’t touching me. And because of that, it somehow was more…okay for me to savor the feeling because it wasn’t real.

  The touch grew warmer, the sensation slowly trailing down my neck, between the valley of my cleavage. It drifted and followed the curve of my breasts.

  I let out a breath as the warmth slowly closed in on my nipple. A twisting sensation of desire pinged my core.

  What the fuck he was doing in there?

  I rolled over, trying to get up. I felt another hand caress the inner skin of my thighs, drawing patterns of warmth. Goose bumps rose, loosening muscles I hadn’t even known were tight.

  I stumbled to my knees as if moving away could diminish the sensation as if he were there.

  But he wasn’t. The warmth slid upward in a sweet, unhurried tease. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had had a partner that had taken their time to tease my flesh.

  That was a lifetime ago.

  The heat reached the seam between my legs, and need unfurled within me. My knees buckled. I fell back to the futon, still hearing nothing but the sound of running water.

  Invisible fingers began to tease my clit.

  Fuck, there was no way he was just washing taking a shower.

  Was he imagining this?

  The idea of Grant thinking of me like this shocked me with desire.

  I could feel his lips at the curve of my neck, trailing downward. I was entirely clothed, yet utterly bare to t
he invisible sensations of him. His hot mouth closed around my nipple and sucked hard. I gasped, trying to find a hold on something, anything, but there was no Grant there. The need for him took me by surprise, not just for these…feelings but for his physical presence.

  I wanted him, even as I knew it would be so dangerous.

  It was better this way because this wasn’t real.

  Did he know what he was doing to me?

  I gasped at the touch of a heated finger at my clit.

  Fuck, even if it felt real.

  My body trembled as his finger began to rub wicked little circles. I thought that would be the beginning of the end as that delicious gripping sensation began to bloom at my core.

  But silly, logical me hadn’t realized that invisible hands weren’t bound by the laws of reality: while huge hands squeezed my breast, pinching both my nipples hard, my legs were shoved open by another pair. My hips arched, and I fought not to cry out, because I would die if he stopped.

  I felt him, the huge blunt head of him painting the seam between my legs, even as something kept swirling around my clit in lazy, maddening circles. I didn’t know what the fuck this was, because the motions didn’t logically match up to washing at all, but maybe he was jerking himself off—

  Something hot and hard thrusted inside me. My eyes opened wide, and I was clearly as alone as I had ever been, but my vision was lying to me, ignoring the undeniable sensation of a hot, thick cock slowly pushing inside me. Against my will, I cried out. How could it feel this damn good? It was too good, so good it had to stop, because otherwise I would be undone.

  But there was nothing physically there for me to escape, nothing but the sensations of him against me, forcing my thighs wide and open.

  He thrust inside me again, hard, fast, and delicious. I let out a cry. It was too damn good, and I didn’t want it to stop. Not the circles around my clit, the pinching fingers on my nipples, and the unmistakable rhythm of a huge, thick cock filling me, moving inside me.

  I couldn’t remember anything, anyone feeling as good as this…nothingness filling me, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted him, wanted to feel his weight on me, his muscles bearing down on me. I wanted to smell him, see his face as he took me.

  Fantasies so dangerous I could never give in to them.

  I arched my hips at stroke after intense stroke. Every thrust drove me higher and higher, bringing me closer to the release I had refused to ever acknowledge I needed.

  And just as I was on the brink of an explosion, the sensations vanished.

  I opened my eyes.

  All I could hear was the sound of my panting breath.

  No more water.

  Fuck.

  My heart was pounding, my body twisted with erotic tension.

  I touched myself, needing relief, but my hands were no match for the feel of him. It was useless, of course. “Fucking bastard,” I said with gritted teeth.

  I had to get up, move, do something to stop this…desperation. It was just chemicals, I told myself, hormones produced by a flesh body, a totally irrational distraction from what was important.

  I glanced at the door.

  Insanity seized my mind. What if he came to my door now? Would I let him in?

  Or worse: What if I went to go find him?

  I stared at the white wall that didn’t remotely resemble a door. My cheeks turned red. Fuck, if he knew, I’d never be able to look at him the same way again.

  I staggered to my feet, trying to shake off the remnants of whatever had been happening. My skin still buzzed, my limbs were still unsteady. “Zoe!”

  The wall screen blinked on. “I need a rigorous training exercise, something that will certainly kill me over and again.”

  The room disappeared. I found myself in a back alley of some large foreign city with strange smells. In the shadows, glowing red eyes appeared.

  “Perfect.”

  I ran at the shadows.

  * * *

  As requested, death came for me again and again, but never was it the death I wanted.

  The program would simply bring me to a white room, ask if I wanted to continue, and then give me a lesson on how I could stay alive. At first, I ignored the lessons, preferring merely to die, but at some point, I got tired of losing. I started fighting back.

  And I learned how to call my power at will, sort of.

  Sort of. In the program, the monsters died at my touch, but Zoe warned me that real life wouldn’t necessarily work that way. It was her hypothesis as to what would happen.

  Not to mention that there was still a deep core of stillness, of strangeness, that I couldn’t seem to touch. It was there, but no matter what I did, I still couldn’t touch it, couldn’t move it.

  I don’t know how long I was in the program, nor did I care, until Zoe finally said something about needing time to process information to prepare for the next stage of training. There was a mechanical beep, and the wreckage of the surrounding city dissolved in to the white, spare room that Sophie had left me in.

  Sunlight streamed in through the windows.

  Hadn’t it just been nightfall? I couldn’t have been in the program all night? But without the need for sleep, I had very little sense of time.

  I put my ear to the door. I had no desire to run into Grant. No desire to say or hear anything about what had or had not happened. In fact, nothing had happened, I reminded myself. I straightened my spine. There was nothing to be embarrassed about because literally nothing had happened.

  But the warmth of his invisible touch still lingered on my skin.

  I gingerly slid open the door a fraction of an inch and listened for any sounds.

  What if he had been thinking about me like that?

  I opened the door a little more.

  That need at my core I thought I had worked out of my system? Came right back as if I hadn’t just spent what felt like hours trying to pretend it had never existed.

  I went to the hallway, saw the bathroom door was open, and dashed inside. I closed the door behind me, locked it, and braced myself against the door.

  I stared at the bathroom.

  When was the last time I’d had a shower?

  I turned on the water. The shhh sound of the shower was almost soothing. I forced myself to step into the cold water. The icy shock was what I needed. I stood there, until I was properly numb, and normal.

  I made a face at myself in the mirror. Brown skin, brown eyes, shockingly messy brown hair. I looked as I had in my original life. It would have been nice to be brought back with a smaller nose, fuller lips, a little more in the chest department, but no. Apparently this was going to be the face and body I was stuck with. Bodies were such stupid animal things, putting feelings and thoughts in your head that had no right to be there. Physical responses were merely that, and once I shoved that aside, what was I left with?

  Nothing had changed. Except for the fact that I had made a huge mistake in letting him hold my ring.

  This time, wrapped in a towel, I opened the bathroom door and promptly strode across the hallway, back to my bedroom, just in case he happened to be around and looking.

  Which of course he wasn’t.

  In the closet, I found a neatly folded pile of clothes. Stretchy dark yoga pants, a black long-sleeved shirt that had a faded Union Jack on it, and even a silver package with “disposable underwear” written in English and French on it. I wondered just how many people came here needing new clothes that Sophie and Hunter had them stocked in their guest room.

  I got dressed, squared my shoulders, took a deep breath, and stepped out into the hallway.

  The very silent hallway.

  I casually walked past the other bedroom. The door had been left open and I could see the rumpled sheets.

  There was no one else in the rest of the house.

  I was finally alone.

  And it was a little unsettling.

  I went to the front door and stepped outside. The sky was covered with thick omin
ous clouds, and yet, birds chirped and bees buzzed. The air was damp, and dew glinted from the leaves of the nearby bushes.

  It was morning.

  I wasn’t sure what to think of this.

  I followed the strange stone path back to Sophie’s back door, but both doors were locked and the windows were dark as if no one was home. Still, I knocked and called their names, to no response.

  Where had everyone gone?

  As I circled her house, I saw the red barn down the other hill. White smoke pumped from the chimney of the red barn while golden sparks shimmered around it.

  Maaaagic, whispered the weird fifth sense I apparently had now.

  Sophie had told me not to go by the red barn, but didn’t I tell her that her warning was going to make me more likely to go?

  With my luck, they wouldn’t be there either.

  That, I realized, was even more disturbing.

  This could be my chance to leave. Could I just walk off the property? Somehow, I knew it wouldn’t be that easy. Titania’s lands looked like you could just walk off of them too, but you’d just end up walking around in circles.

  Not to mention where the hell would I go?

  I made my way down the hill toward the barn. As I got closer, it looked more and more like an ordinary red barn. I was facing the back, so I walked around, looking for the door.

  Only when I got to the other side, there was no door.

  That was ridiculous. How could there be no door?

  But then I hadn’t realized that the sliding door to my room was a door either.

  What if I knocked?

  I stared at the big red barn, all of which looked the same.

  I randomly picked a place, feeling dumb, knocked, and waited.

  Nothing.

  I knocked again, waited longer.

  Still nothing.

  I turned away, and then I heard something swing open.

  A square opening appeared in the barn at chest height. Sophie was wearing thick goggles and had her big curls tied up in a messy bun, and there was what looked like a smear of grease on her forehead. She wore a massive, thick apron that looked like it was covered with a variety of grease paint.