A flood of golden warmth crashed over him, followed by a confused chill.
He ground his teeth. Wherever Garrison had her, she—
A chorus of chanting filled his head. His dragon roared, the mysterious sound igniting something brutal and savage within him.
“I gotta go,” Ari gasped, and killed the call from Tyson.
The chanting in his head rose to a deafening song, throbbing through him. Louder. Louder.
His blood turned molten, no longer human but dragon. His heart hammered. His muscles, his bones, began to tear…
And then the connection to Jilly vanished. Gone again. Replaced with a void that stole all the heat in his body even as it fed the ancient creature he truly was.
Ari squeezed his eyes shut.
But it was no use. The shift had begun. And he couldn’t control it any longer.
4
“Where…” Jilly stopped the question before it finished forming on her lips. Her throat felt lined with hot gravel. Her heart seemed to be banging its way out of her chest via her ears.
She licked her lips, looking around the dimly lit room Derek had brought her to. She assumed it was Derek. The last thing she remembered was being in a taxi with him, confused as to why she was there. How did she get from the taxi to here?
Come to think of it, how did she get to the taxi in the first place? When had she left her apartment?
Movement in the shadows to her right drew her eye, a moment before a warm yellow light spilled from a table lamp, eating up the dark.
Derek smiled at her from his perch on a plastic chair. Worry swam in his eyes. “How do you feel?”
Jilly frowned. “My head feels…weird. Light. Fuzzy. Like someone has stuffed it full of cotton wool.” She licked at her lips again, parched. “I’m thirsty. And my eyes hurt.”
She looked around the room, seeing more of it in the lamp’s glow. It wasn’t a living room, more like an office of some sort. She could make out a desk in the dimness, a filing cabinet and what might be some sort of sofa. “This is not your place. Where are we?”
“Somewhere safe,” Derek answered, leaning his elbows on his knees. “The weirdness will go away soon. What do you remember?”
She frowned again, scraping at the fog in her head. What did she remember? She was in her living room, talking to Derek, making a cup of tea. He offered her a job…then she had a shower. Or thought about having a shower. Or maybe…something about a TV show…
“You told me about a job. At a pet store.” She swallowed and rubbed at her face. Her eyes felt full of grit. “And we were talking about a television show. But I don’t remember which one. And then I was in a cab. I think.”
Derek studied her for a moment, his expression unreadable. “Would you like a drink of water?”
Jilly nodded. “Please. I feel like I’ve been eating sandpaper. How did I get here?”
Without answering, Derek straightened to his feet and walked out of the lamp’s muted glow.
The sound of glass chinking wafted out of the darkness, followed by running water. “Derek?” She peered after him, trying to make out the shapes beyond the light of the lamp. “Where are we? What happened?” She paused. Something he’d said earlier itched at her, but she couldn’t remember.
“Man, I feel funky,” she muttered, slumping back in her seat and smoothing her palms over her thighs.
Fabric. Silk. Skirt. Where…
Stilling her hands, she studied the silken emerald-green fabric draped over her legs. It wasn’t familiar. She didn’t wear skirts, preferring jeans. Her curves didn’t like skirts. Or more accurately, she didn’t think skirts liked her curves. Although Derek always said he thought she should wear them more—
Ari.
The name whispered through her head.
Jilly frowned. Ari? Why did the name sound—
A memory of the man, of Ari, slammed into her. And then another, and another, his name growing louder in her head with each one.
Ari. The Harley hunk with the dragon tattoo. The man who’d stormed into her home and kissed her and gone down on her and told her she was his Fire Mate and he was a—
“Dragon.” The word fell from her in a raspy whisper.
She sat up, spine snapped stiff, breath ragged.
Oh God, she remembered. She remembered it all. The man, the sex, the heat, Derek. The purple cloud of mist.
Derek shouting for the dragon to get away from her, that she was his.
Ari snarling in return, asking the druid what the fuck he was doing there.
“Dragon,” she whispered, heart racing. “Druid. What the fuck…?”
Pushing herself to her feet, she rubbed her hands on her thighs again. She’d been naked. Derek had dragged her from her apartment naked, covered her in his jacket and bundled her into a cab. And brought her here—wherever here was—and dressed her.
She looked down at herself. It wasn’t an emerald-green skirt covering her, but a dress. A soft, silken shift that clung to her hips and breasts and belly and floated around her thighs. A dress with a deep neckline that revealed half her boobs. A dress covering a body clearly not wearing underwear. Oh God, she could see her nipples pushing at the fabric. She could see her—
Stop it. You’re freaking out about nipples? Derek drugged you. Abducted you. Took you away from Ari and—
“Ari,” she burst out, an undeniable sexual hunger igniting in her core. “Oh God, Ari.”
She couldn’t fathom why she’d called out to the stranger. Nor did she understand how she knew his name. None of what had happened to her in the last God knows how many hours made any sense. She just…just…ached for him. Needed him.
Ari, she cried in her mind. I need—
Derek arrived back in the room, water-filled glass in his hand. He studied her, expression once again unreadable. The golden light reflected in his eyes. “Did you let the dragon fuck you, Jilly?”
Jilly blinked at his question. Calm control radiated from him.
She balled her fists. Her stomach roiled. She’d never been more angry. Or more scared. “Did I what?”
He walked closer to where she stood. Derek. Her best friend. The person who made her laugh the most. Who’d sat beside her during her first year at university, when she’d been alone and lonely, and started talking to her about Game of Thrones as if he’d known her forever.
Derek.
Druid.
That’s what Ari had called him. A druid. And Derek had called Ari dragon.
“Derek,” she whispered, watching him stop on the other side of the low coffee table positioned in front of her. “What the hell is going on?”
“Drink this.” He held the glass out to her. “You’ll feel better.”
Taking it, she frowned. “You think water is going to help?”
He had the audacity to shrug, a relaxed grin playing with his lips. “You did say you were thirsty.”
With a huff, she took a sip—and coughed as a strong acidic bitterness filled her mouth.
Derek reached over the coffee table and plucked the glass from her hand.
“What was that?” she asked, swiping at her lips with the back of her hand.
“Vodka.”
Jilly coughed again. “Serious? Where the hell do you buy your booze from, Derek?”
He placed the glass on the table, his gaze locked with hers. “The dragon, Jilly. Arriman Drake. Did you have sex with him?”
She threw up her hands. “What fucking business is it of yours if I did? And what the hell do you mean, dragon? You’re kidding, right?”
“Tell me, Jilly.”
“I’m not telling you anything until you tell me what the hell I’m doing here.”
Derek lowered himself onto the plastic chair. “You’re here so I can keep you safe.”
Jilly narrowed her eyes. Safe. That was what he’d said earlier that had itched at her brain. Keeping her safe. From who? Ari?
“Who is Arriman Drake?” she asked, refusing to sit. “Is that who
you’re keeping me safe from?”
Derek’s jaw bunched. “Did you have sex with him?”
She shook her head. “I told you I’m not telling you until I know what’s going on. Why did he call you druid?”
He studied her, silent for a heartbeat, and then let out a slow breath and sank back into the chair. “I’ve loved you from the moment I saw you at uni, Jilly. Did you know that? You called to me. I felt the pull of your spirit on mine.”
Jilly couldn’t stop her dubious snort. “My spirit? Really? I didn’t realize you were so New-Agey, Derek.”
He smiled. “More like ancient-agey. The blood of the ancient Celtic druids runs through my veins. And yours is just as ancient. And as powerful.”
She blinked. “Are you being serious? Tell me you’re not being serious.”
“I traced your family history. All the way back to the Norse pagans. There’s a reason you’re so fascinated by Norse Mythology and history. You were born to it.”
“Oh my God,” she whispered. “You are being serious.”
Exasperation twisted Derek’s lips and he scowled at her. “Your line is the most powerful Norse line there is, Jilly. Your ancestors were the first humans to ever bond with dragons.”
She blinked again, a hot lump filling her throat.
The longer she sat still, the clearer her head became. As the fog of whatever had shrouded her dissipated, her earlier ravenous sexual hunger began to make itself known again. The desire to press her fingers between her thighs, to rub her clit, tormented her, even as Derek spoke of what was surely a ridiculous fantasy on his behalf. He’d always been one for Dungeon and Dragons and high fantasy books.
“So ,what?” she said, resisting the urge to skim her fingertips over her nipples. “My great-great-great-great-grandfather had some kind of lizard fetish? That’s kind of gross, Derek.”
Fire Mate.
The deep voice growled through her head, followed a heartbeat later by an animalistic screech. She sucked in a breath as an image of a massive dragon filled her head along with a choir of chanting.
Ari.
His name caressed her mind. She shivered, her body reacting.
Hurry. I need…
“No,” Derek said, the contempt in his voice dragging her away from the licentious heat building within her. “Your ancestral mother was sacrificed to the dragons. Given to them as a virgin to become a sexual slave. She was the first to be bonded to their species, the first of many.”
Jilly frowned. The chanting in her head grew louder. She wished it would stop. She couldn’t concentrate with its rising noise. “I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head at Derek. “Did you just say ‘sexual slave’?”
He nodded, leaning his elbows on his knees once again, his stare intense. “And Arriman Drake—who’s an abomination, by the way, both man and dragon, who shifts between forms—is trying to do the same to you now. Enslave you. Bind you to him. Make you his. But I can stop him. I think I’ve figured out a way to terminate the sexual frenzy the dragon shifters call the mating fire. I think I can sever the connection between you and—”
Jilly jolted to her feet, shaking her head once more. “This is ridiculous. You’re being ridiculous. I can’t believe any of this. The whole notion is absurd. Druids? Dragons? I don’t know what either you or Ari have been smoking, but I want both of you to leave me out of your fucked-up Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying. It’s not funny or clever or…or…nice.”
Derek looked up at her. His jaw bunched again. “From the moment you first saw Drake from your window, you were sexually drawn to him, correct?”
She didn’t answer. The chanting, the screeching in her head faded to silence, replaced by the hammering of her heart.
“And when he arrived at your apartment?” Derek went on, stare holding hers. “You were instantly ready to have sex with him, correct? It was an imperative you couldn’t deny?”
Jilly’s stomach roiled. A hot flush crept over her. Her eyes burned. “I don’t… I want to go…”
“They call it the mating fire. It is an ancient magic, older than even the druids and pagans. Older than the oldest of gods. Fated mates. Fire Mates.”
Her breath caught in her throat.
Fire Mate.
“Did you have sex with Arriman Drake?”
“I’m not going to tell—”
Derek straightened to his feet. “Did you. Have sex. With Drake?”
She stumbled back a step, her heart slamming in her throat. “I…didn’t.”
A smile stretched his lips and a slow breath escaped him. “Good. All is not lost then. As long as Blade can keep him away from you long enough, I can destroy the magic binding you to him and we can be together.”
“We?” Jilly frowned. Fear licked through her, hot and cold at once. “There’s no we, Derek. We’re friends. Just friends. You know that, right?”
Something dark flickered in Derek’s eyes. His nostrils flared. “Oh, Jilly.” His Adam’s apple jerked up and down his throat as he shook his head. “I wanted you to fall in love with me. I waited, hoping you would. But now…now I can’t wait any longer.”
He raised his hand, palm up before his face, and blew.
Most large cities on the planet with a dragon-shifter population contained safe houses. The apex alpha of most cities maintained the safe houses, along with the area’s Cleaners.
As the Cleaner for Sydney and its surrounding districts, Ari knew the location of every safe house, although he’d always thought the term house ridiculous, given the buildings were large warehouse-size constructions with no external windows, reinforced, flame-retardant steel walls and bio-scan security systems.
Ari never thought he’d need the protection of those reinforced walls himself.
However, the moment he grasped the nightmarish fact he’d lost complete control of his dragon, that he could not stop the shift from occurring, he headed for the closest one.
At his most controlled, he knew he’d be able to delay the inevitable by a matter of minutes. Ten if he was lucky. Those ten minutes could save him, or end a secret kept from humans for thousands of years.
Daylight in the middle of Sydney, with ten minutes to reach the closest safe house, would require more than just control. It would require pushing his Harley, the laws of physics, his body and his mind to the limits and beyond.
Damn it, if Kellan Donovan found out, he’d never let Ari live it down.
He rode through the busy streets like a demon, the speed limit a distant joke.
His muscles and bones tore and reknitted beneath his flesh, the internal war between his two forms a molten inferno of excoriating agony.
Every breath he drew into his lungs turned to fire. Every air particle lashing against his skin incinerated.
He rode, ducking and weaving through traffic, no longer a man, but not a dragon, either. Shit, he needed to get to the safe house.
A distant part of him heard people shouting and car horns blasting at his dangerous riding. A siren wailed somewhere behind him. Cops? Pursuing him?
He ignored them all, focused on getting to the safe house a few blocks away ASAP.
Banking a sharp left, he shot down an alley, relief rushing through him at its emptiness. No people. A few parked cars, all empty. That was it.
Hurry. Hurry.
He gunned the hog’s engine, sweat trickling into his eyes. The shift threatened him, so close now. Too close.
In his head, the surreal chanting grew louder, louder. So loud he could no longer hear the enraged screech of the dragon he was on the verge of becoming.
And through it all, the void, the emptiness left by his severed connection with Jilly, grew thicker. Colder.
When he found Garrison, he was going to kill the fucking—
Ari…
Jilly’s voice flooded his head the very second a bitter taste coated the back of his throat. A whirlwind of images lashed at him in a whipping frenzy. Images of ancient ceremonies, robed priests. Images o
f dragons circling a massive pyre.
Images of a naked woman of ethereal beauty reaching her hand out toward a dragon with golden scales.
Images of a dark room, a lone lamp…
Images of Garrison, smiling, raising his hand, palm up…
Not again, Jilly’s mind snarled, a heartbeat before the dark room blurred and Ari’s head exploded with fury and pain.
And fear.
He lost control of his bike. The world tilted in a sickening blur and he went down, his Harley spewing sparks as it—and he—slid sideways across the asphalt.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
He didn’t know whose voice screamed in his head, his or Jilly’s. Maybe both. Frantic panic flooded through him a second before he crashed into the wheel of a parked car.
The bones of his shoulder snapped, the sound detonating through him like a gunshot. His body erupted in pain. He heard Jilly shout something in his head, and then the world turned red and he transformed.
Human no more.
His massive wings collided with the brick walls of the buildings, slapping against them as he flailed in the narrow space. His tail whipped about, smashing into the walls, garbage bins, a car. He careened side to side, his dragon form incapable of fitting in the confined area. The agony of his shattered human shoulder sheared through the rage of his entrapment, the magic of his species reknitting the bones, healing the shoulder even as his dragon’s fury burned through him.
He threw back his head and screeched, wings and tail and one leg scraping against brick and car and ground.
And in his head, Jilly’s fear and anger screamed louder.
Louder.
Loud—
“For the glory!”
A smug human voice slid over his senses, accompanied by a sour scent Ari knew all too well.
Colin.
The fucking inept Extraho Venator.
Behind him.
Shit.
The distinct sound of a crossbow being cocked filled the alley. Colin’s rapid breathing and pulse joined it.
“For the glory,” the dragon hunter whispered again.
Screaming against the ripping pressure on his dual existence, Ari forced the shift back to human form.
Dragon, Interrupted (Fire Mates Book 5) Page 5
