by Abigail Owen
Delaney blinked. “You lost me at colonies.”
Lyndi grinned. “Sorry. I’ve never had to explain this to someone not our kind before. So…tens of thousands of years ago, the dragon clans were formed in Europe and Asia. Six clans in all—Blue, Black, Green, White, Red, and Gold—all based on our coloring. In human form, you can tell a dragon’s clan by his eyes. Blue eyes means Blue Clan.”
Which meant Finn was part of the Blue Clan. Delaney peered at Lyndi. “Your eyes are more brown.”
“With a hint of red, especially in the sun.”
“So, you and Drake are red dragons?”
“Yup. The best clan.” She winked.
“I heard that,” a male voice grumbled softly from across the room.
Lyndi chuckled. “Attor is a gold dragon,” she explained at Delaney’s confused frown.
“Oh. Are there differences other than coloring?”
“Sort of, though not set in stone or anything. Red dragons, for instance, tend to be smaller and leaner than both blue and gold, but we’re considered the best fighters—”
“Whatever,” came another grumble from Attor.
Lyndi rolled her eyes. “Gold dragons are the biggest among us and they are brutal fighters—”
“Damn straight,” came the swift agreement from the young man, and Delaney shared a smile with Lyndi who continued.
“—but red are faster. Think of a heavy weight boxer versus a quicker-striking martial artist.”
“I think I get it.” Mostly. “So why, if I’m looking at two dragons from the blue clan, for example, both of whom are blue when they’re dragons, do they look so different as humans?” Finn’s team and Lyndi’s boys certainly covered a multitude of ethnicities.
Lyndi smiled. “Our mothers are human. Dragon mates are found all over the world, and when they join a clan, they introduce their cultures and physical traits into the clans. We’d be pretty boring, otherwise. Each clan is based in a different region, and over time, they’ve taken on a lot of the human characteristics of the region.” She chuckled. “Our mothers are the only things keeping us from looking like clones.”
Good point. “Does that get tricky, though? All those different cultures blending into established clans?”
Lyndi made a face. “Not how you’d think it would. Dragons are more hung up on clan designation than human race or history. It’s part of what makes the colonies so difficult to govern. We’re a mix here, living in integrated groups for the most part, but still loyal to our individual clans and kings.”
She held up her hand, showing me the mark tattooed in the same spot as Finn’s and the other guys.
“We bear the mark of our king,” Lyndi said.
“Got it. So…gold are big, and red are good fighters, what about blue?”
Lyndi gave her a cockeyed stare. “Finn?”
Delaney shrugged. She wasn’t going to deny her interest when everyone involved, other than Sera, already knew she’d slept with the man. She was sure everyone in this house could smell him all over her.
“Blue are the fastest.” Lyndi angled her head. “He’s different with you,” she murmured.
That caught her attention. Lyndi had said much the same earlier in the mountain, but they hadn’t had time to get into it much. “Different how?”
Lyndi pursed her lips as she thought. “I don’t know. Softer in a weird way, but more possessive than I’ve seen him. Looser, too.”
Except he’d flown off to put out fires without a single glance in her direction.
“You know it can’t last though, right?” Lyndi broke into her musings. The other woman grimaced. “Sorry. Red dragons also tend toward bluntness. I just… You seem nice. I like you and don’t want to see you get hurt.”
Delaney pulled her blanket up over her shoulders to ward off the chill threatening to seep into her bones. “He already warned me. This is a physical thing. That’s all.”
Lyndi didn’t appear convinced, watching her closely. “But you like him.”
No use equivocating. “He’s a good man.”
“He’s a broken man,” came Lyndi’s swift warning.
At Delaney’s raised eyebrows, Lyndi sighed. “It’s not my story to tell, but he lost someone important.”
“He told me.” Sort of. “More like he’d alluded to it. But Levi mentioned that Finn had been married. Except…” Delaney frowned. “If both mates die when one dies, how is that possible?”
“If he mates the wrong woman, a woman not fated to be his, she dies in the process and he loses a part of himself.”
Holy shit. No wonder the man had issues.
“According to his brother, Fallon, who’s off in Europe right now, Finn shut down after it happened. He doesn’t let people in. Especially not women.”
Delaney shivered. The damn blanket wasn’t doing much to help her. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
Lyndi shot her a thumbs-up. “I’m sorry it’s not better news, but we women have to stick together.”
“Gods help the world if you really get organized,” came the dark mutter from Attor across the room.
Delaney grinned, then paused. Wait…gods? As in plural?
Chapter Eighteen
A faint glow of sunlight was turning the eastern horizon a softer shade of blue. The sun wouldn’t crest the mountain peaks to the east for another hour, but dawn was definitely breaking.
Damn.
“We need to work faster, men.”
A chorus of “Yes, boss” in several variations reached him through the telepathic link. Meanwhile, Finn concentrated on pulling in the flames of the wildfire, absorbing it into his body, dousing the inferno more effectively than humans could.
After he’d relayed instructions to his men, he’d flown directly to the largest fire and got started. Levi, Titus, Rivin, and Keighan had joined him, taking up positions in a circle around the already massive blaze, spaced out by hundreds of acres and working their way in as they reduced the size of the area on fire.
Of the four remaining smaller fires, Aidan, Kanta, Hall, and Drake each took one, removing those threats before moving on to join Finn and the others at the main fire. The nine of them had been working their asses off for hours and had reduced the fire by at least 70 percent.
In these heavily forested areas, if they got a blaze snuffed out fast, it made it unlikely humans would find any trace of it beyond smelling smoke in the air. The rangers who came out to investigate wouldn’t find anything but a doused fire. However, the longer it took, especially in daylight, the more likely they were to be discovered.
They didn’t have enough time.
“Levi, take Aidan. I need you to get in touch with Deep. Figure out what he wants us to do.”
“Got it.” Levi’s golden form off to Finn’s right immediately appeared over the tree line, coming out of the smoke and glittering like all the facets of a rare gem in the light of the fire.
“Aidan?”
“Yes, boss?”
“You did good tonight.” This was his first time out with the team handling actual fire.
“Thanks.”
Two hours later, the sun was over the mountaintops, casting the land in light and shadow. They’d gotten the blaze reduced by another 5 percent, but winds kicking up did not help.
“Boss,” Aidan’s voice came over their telepathic link. “Deep said to get out of there. The humans are gearing up to send out crews. He says the size we’ve reduced it to means they won’t need us to wrap it up.”
“Tell Deep, thanks. And contact Lyndi. We’ll rest for a few hours before taking over bodyguard duty from her boys.”
“Ten-four.” Aidan’s amusement came down the line.
Finn relayed his instructions to the other men, then tilted his wings for home.
An itch crawled under his skin like bugs, but it had nothing to do with actual bugs or the fire. He needed to see Delaney. Needed to touch her, confirm for himself that she was safe. An itch he did his damndest to force
into a semblance of something he could live with.
When this was over, he had to let her go.
…
Delaney dragged her butt into the house, hardly able to put one foot in front of the other. She was probably walking a drunken path. Any second, Titus, who was behind her, would accuse her of sampling the wine while she’d managed this afternoon’s tastings. They’d been given the go-ahead to open the tasting room only, though the barn was still taped off. Insurance adjusters and authorities still had to work through things there.
Word must’ve gotten out, thanks to their helpful orchard neighbors, because people had shown. Even without that business, getting everything ready to rebuild was a minefield of contractors, authorities, and red tape. Her brain and her feet hurt. After the sleepless night—between sex and danger—combined with working all day, she was exhausted.
And she had yet to see Finn. By the time Lyndi woke her up to tell her the team was safely home, it’d been time for both her and Sera to get back to the winery for work, and he hadn’t shown all day.
Shuffling her feet like a woman three times her age, Delaney made her way to the large great room and flopped onto the soft leather couch in front of the large-screen TV mounted over the stone fireplace. Most of the guys took up other seats in the room. Each acknowledged her arrival in different ways. Even Drake tipped his chin in a male version of greeting.
Football was on. Good, she could fall asleep to that.
“How’s it going, Peanut?” Levi rumbled from the recliner where he lounged.
She flicked him a glance. “Peanut?”
He shrugged. “Suits you. Just go with it.”
She shouldn’t find it sweet that the big man gave her a nickname, but she did. “I’m wiped.”
He huffed a laugh. “Join the crowd.”
Lyndi had said they didn’t quit last night until well after eight this morning. “Do dragon shifters have more stamina than humans?”
“Yes, but even we have limits. We’re already fully recovered for the most part.”
Right. So, Finn wasn’t sleeping then. Where was he? She’d sort of hoped—
Levi interrupted her thoughts. “Finn’s on the phone with Deep.”
Fantastic. Had her secret wish that he’d greeted her shown on her face or something? How pathetic could she get? “I didn’t ask.”
“I figured you’d want to know.” He picked up the remote and changed channels. More football.
“You figured wrong.” She did her best to make that come off nonchalant, rather than pissy. When he flicked her a speculative look, she wasn’t sure she’d gotten it right. “Who’s Deep?”
Another flicked glance. “State Fire Marshal, only he’s one of us.”
She absorbed that fact with a blink. “Inside man?”
“Yeah. Hey, do we get a meal tonight?”
“Not from me. Rivin’s on kitchen duty. Remember?”
“Damn,” Levi muttered. “Forgot about that.”
His sneer of disgust had her laughing. “I didn’t.”
With a grumble, Levi pushed up from the chair and handed her the remote. “This game sucks. Watch whatever you want.”
She decided to stretch out on the couch and have a nap. Surfing channels, she landed on a Christmas romance. Happy with that choice, she let her eyes drift shut.
She had no idea how long she’d been out when the scent of burnt meat penetrated the haze of sleep she floated through, pulling Delaney out of a wonderful dream in which she slept in Finn’s arms. Rivin must be cooking. She gave a drowsy chuckle. Only, as she came fully awake, a weight across her stomach and a wall of muscled male plastered along the length of her back, clued her in to the fact that it hadn’t been a dream after all.
She was in Finn’s arms.
The TV remained on, the clock on one of the many electronic devices below the TV telling her she’d been asleep for hours. The room had cleared out, except for the two of them, and was lit only by the flicker of the TV screen.
Content in the way a cat who’d lazed the day away in the sun might be, Delaney took a deep breath and stretched.
“About time, sleepyhead,” a gruff voice murmured in her ear.
Delaney turned her head enough to see his face, her heart kicking up in rhythm as she registered the sleepy desire in those blue eyes. “I didn’t take you for a cuddler,” she teased.
He snuck a kiss, one too brief in her opinion. “Normally I’m not.”
Delaney absorbed that comment for a quiet moment. She got the feeling that maybe sleeping together had changed something for him, though she had no idea what beyond scratching an itch. Levi had said that he used to be different, looser, happier. And Lyndi had mentioned something similar—that he’d lost a part of himself. Could he get it back? Was she getting a glimpse of how he used to be before? “How long have you been lying here with me?”
A shrugged shoulder told her she wouldn’t get a real answer.
“Did you sleep?” she asked.
“I dozed.”
“To the tune of Christmas romance on the TV?” She chuckled. “Why didn’t you change the channel?”
“I had something more compelling to watch.” That sleepy desire shifted, morphing into a blazing need that lit an answering heat in her.
She swallowed. “You didn’t want to do more than watch, if the view was so compelling?”
“As a matter of fact…”
He didn’t break eye contact, watching her with an intense alertness as the hand that rested over her stomach tugged her shirt up until he bared a swath of skin. Delaney quivered as he brushed those strong fingers over her exposed midriff, then held her breath as those fingers unsnapped and unzipped her pants. He pushed under the elastic band of her panties to find her warm, and wet, and definitely willing.
Unerringly, those teasing fingers found and brushed over her clit. Delaney shifted her hips, chasing his touch. And every torturous second was only heightened by the intent gaze that held hers trapped.
“We shouldn’t,” she whispered.
His smile hit her like a juggernaut. “We definitely should.”
“What if one of the guys walks in?” Only, the erotic image of being caught, being watched, kicked her heart rate up another notch and surged heat into her cheeks.
Finn cocked his head. “Would that turn you on? To have the guys watch?”
She shivered and licked her lips. “Of course not.”
Finn continued to play with her body, but now nipped at her lower lip. “I can hear your heart thundering at just the thought. Just like that morning after you shared my bed and I told you the other guys knew. There was a little part of you excited by it. Wasn’t there?”
“No—”
Another nip was followed by a long deep kiss before he pulled back. “Mmm. I think you like the idea of them hearing what we’re doing. Of them slipping into the room and watching me make you come. Would you like it if they jacked themselves off while your hot little body takes what I give you? While I show them you’re mine?”
Delaney gasped. Holy hotness, Batman.
Her breath came in pants now, both with what his fingers were doing as he stroked her slick core, slipping two fingers inside her, and with the images his words provoked.
Finn leaned forward, lips at her ear. “You at least like the idea, even if you’d never do it. Even if I’d never share you.”
Delaney moaned as his warm breath and those hot, possessive words triggered even more shivers down her spine.
“Admit it makes you hot,” Finn demanded.
She turned her head, dropping it back to his shoulder. “Yes,” she whispered.
He tugged her earlobe between his teeth. “Then keep quiet while you picture this…”
She waited for whatever came next, too far gone to protest, not that she wanted to.
“The guys would line up across the room, or maybe in this fantasy they’re hiding in the shadows, watching secretly.”
“Mmm-
hmm,” she moaned.
“Shhh. No noises.”
How the hell was she supposed to stop?
“They’d watch as I stripped you bare, all of them picturing themselves squeezing these breasts, sucking on your nipples.”
His free hand snaked under her shirt to pinch her nipples hard. No way was he getting away with this without joining her. Delaney snuck her hand behind her to encounter gym shorts with a loose elastic waistband. Score! She snuck under the band and wrapped her hand around his thick cock, pulling a groan from Finn that made her smile.
“Shhh,” she whispered.
He grunted. “We’d put on a show. I’d kiss you, lick you, tease you until you were so focused on me, you’d hardly notice them there.”
He trailed his lips down her neck, pausing to kiss the scar there, then sucked on the sensitive spot where her shoulder and neck met, but his fingers at her core remained lazy. She bucked her hips.
“More?” he whispered.
“Yes.”
“When you were hot and wet and ready for me, I’d bend you over the end of the couch so you could watch their faces, tight with need. Now they’d unzip their flies, pulling out their dicks, stroking themselves.”
Fuck, this dirty picture he painted was messing with her mind, because every nerve pulsed with the need to release.
“Then I’d take you from behind. I’d fill you with my hard, hot cock.”
He upped the pace of his fingers, pressing into her clit. Delaney closed her eyes against the build of sensation and followed his lead, pumping her hand over him faster.
Yes. Please, yes.
“The only sounds filling the room would be me slamming into your body, your moans, and the guys grunting as they kept pace with us.”
By now her hips were pumping into his touch as fast as she could move. Small whimpers escaped as she did her best to quiet her moans. At the same time, she continued to thrust her hand down his length, squeezing as hard as she could from the awkward angle.
He grew thicker and harder in her hand, and she tightened her grip.
