“You have a past,” she said, moving closer until she could feel the heat from his body through the front of her dress. “All the most interesting people do. We should get along just fine.”
He released a relieved breath. “I think plenty of interesting people don’t have the little childhood of horrors I had.” He exhaled slowly, his palms coming to rest on her shoulders and sliding down her arms to her wrists. “But if it’s the key to making you look at me like that, maybe I should have mentioned it sooner.”
The fact that he still had a sense of humor after everything he’d been through and had revisited tonight was her undoing. Her dragon roused, and Rowan closed the tiny gap between their bodies, nothing but the thin material of her dress barring skin from skin. He did not disappoint. The long, lean muscles of his arms wrapped around her, his large hands burrowing into her hair. She loved the feeling of being in his arms. He made her feel wanted, adored. Her chest rose and fell quickly, her head tilting back as she circled his neck with her arms. One of his hands pressed into the curve of her back, his touch igniting an electrical storm within her.
“You don’t need to tell me stories about your past to win my heart,” she said, so close her lips brushed his.
“No? What’s the trick then? Knock down three bottles with a single ball? Ring the bottle? Shoot ducks?” His voice was a gritty whisper.
“You can have it for a kiss.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Lucky me.” He brushed his lips against hers.
“Wait.”
He stopped, backing off a hair’s breadth from her lips.
“Does Rosco need to go out?”
“No. I walked him before you arrived.”
“Is the door locked?”
“Yeah… when you came in. Why?”
She looked at him through her lashes. “The last two times I’ve been in your arms, we’ve been interrupted.”
He laughed, his eyes dancing in the soft light.
“If you kiss me now, I don’t want you to stop.”
“Deal.” His mouth met hers.
Rowan had never been kissed the way Nick kissed her then. Not by a dragon, or a shape-shifter, or another human. His kiss was a free fall, a stomach-dropping descent into madness. A swirling, spinning, star-filled fantasy with fireflies and pounding hearts and heat that threatened to burn her dragon skin.
Nick flipped all of Rowan’s switches. He was strong but kind, handsome but genuine, unspoiled and unpretentious. He was everything she’d been denied when she was princess of Paragon. There, she’d been viewed as little more than a designer brood mare. She was courted by every stuffed shirt, power-craving social climber in Paragon, all with their perfectly tailored clothes and perfectly manicured hands. All they’d ever cared about was winning her hand and the power and privilege that came with it. None had cared to win her heart.
Nick was different in all the right ways. He might be human, but his draw for her was anything but. Dragons couldn’t combust, but he was a man whose mere presence threatened to consume her. He was her own personal accelerant. She couldn’t get enough.
Burn, baby, burn.
Rising on her tiptoes, she licked along the seam of his mouth. He opened for her, lips parting and tongue stroking inside. Deeper. He kissed her like he was claiming her, his big body seeming to completely envelop her. His hand fisted the back of her hair.
Her inner dragon roused and stretched. Mine. One hot palm trailed down her back and landed on her ass. He tasted of wine, a hint of mint, and warm, healthy male. And his smell. Oh goddess, his smell was a heady perfume that filled her lungs. It wasn’t until he pulled back from her that she realized her wings had extended while they were kissing and had partially wrapped around them.
“Sorry,” she said, tucking them behind her.
“I like them,” he said quickly. “And I like the sound you make.”
“What sound?”
“Like a purr. Like the sexiest fucking purr I’ve ever heard in my life.”
Her face burned. Her mating trill. Her dragon had never bothered to trill with the other men she’d dated. When she’d dated Verinetti, her inner beast rarely even woke up. “It’s a, um, dragon thing.” She tucked her hair behind her ear and lowered her voice. “I can’t control it.”
He brushed his lips from her jaw to her ear. “I love it. Let’s try to make it happen again.”
His mouth trailed down her throat, and then his hands were on her ass, lifting, spreading. She wrapped her legs around his hips.
“I want you, Rowan.” He stroked along the place her wing met her back as he held her to him. His touch sent fine tremors through her that seemed to end at the peak of each breast. “It’s been a long time for me.”
“Me too. But I won’t hurt you.”
He chuckled. “I think I’m supposed to say that to you.”
“I didn’t know there was a script,” she said into a sliver of space she made between their mouths. With one beat of her wings, she lifted his feet off the floor and moved him into the bedroom.
His eyes widened. “Definitely ad lib,” he mumbled breathlessly.
Rosco jumped up from his dog bed, startled by the strange movement.
“Go lie down, Rosco.” Nick kicked the door closed behind them.
His scent was even stronger in this room, the navy-blue comforter on his full-size bed seeming to be the source. She desperately wanted more, wanted it all over her.
He backed her toward the bed, and his lips found hers again. Deeper. Hotter. The long, hard length of him pressed into her belly and she ground against him, enjoying the moan she elicited. Drawing back, he grabbed hold of the bottom of her dress and pulled it over her head. Large rough hands stroked along the rose-colored lace that ran from a band around her waist to her breasts. It was backless, all the support coming from the stiff material that ran up and under her breasts at the front of the garment. His thumbs stroked across her hardened nipples.
“This is fucking hot,” he said, tips of his fingers playing over the delicate material.
“One of my oread’s most ingenious designs. Doesn’t get in the way of my wings.”
“What’s an oread?”
She laughed. “Like a, um, servant, but not human. She’s a type of mountain nymph.”
His chin lowered. “In that case, let me take a closer look.”
His lips trailed down her neck as his hands slid along her sides to the band of the bra. She felt his fingers work at the base of her back, unfastening the clasp. Her nipples hardened at the feel of the cool air when he finally tossed it aside, and then came the slick heat of his tongue flicking against one rosy peak.
Her trill came again, but this time the instincts of her inner dragon exponentially increased her need. Her fingernails scraped along the back of his shoulders. She felt his muscles shift under her fingers and his mouth move to her other breast, drawing her nipple out and sending fire licking the underside of her skin, straight to her core. Every cell in her body was flooded with the desire to mate. He was human. He was vulnerable. She should be wary of any permanent connection that might form between them. But she needed to make him hers. It was a deep, carnal need that sent her hands coasting down his abs to his waistband, her nails grazing through the trail of hair that led to… Yes, there he was, heavy and warm in her hand.
“Damn, baby. Take it slow.” He nibbled on her bottom lip.
Slow was not what she had in mind. Trailing kisses along his collarbone, she guided his hand to her sex, placing his fingers right where she needed them.
He cursed. “Fast then.”
With a thrust of his body, he spun her around and pushed her facedown on the bed. Her panties were off in her next breath. And then he had her by the hips, lifting her onto her knees. His fingers found her core again, but it was his other hand, stroking the underside of her wing, that made her pant in earnest. By the Mountain, she might combust.
“Yeah, like this. You love it when I touch
these.” His hand stroked along her wing again, and all her limbs trembled. A moan escaped her lips.
She felt him press against her, flesh to flesh.
“Do you want this, Rowan?”
“Yes,” she begged, breathless with need.
The sound of tearing paper made her glance back to watch him roll on a condom. He slid into her then, slowly, working himself in and out until he completely filled her from behind. Her body pulsed around him, adjusting to his size, his girth. Deep inside her, he paused to lean over her back, his hands stroking out along her wings.
“What do you like?” He pulled back slowly, then thrust in, hard and fast.
She released a soft mew. He massaged the base of her wing, then reached under and around her waist, up between her breasts, and plucked at one of her nipples with his fingers.
He thrust into her again and again. She could feel the sweet tension build within her, her inner dragon rolling, coming alive. And then he lowered himself across her back and licked along the most sensitive part of her wing.
An orgasm rang through her like a bell.
“Oh yeah, baby. I like that,” he whispered into her ear in a deep voice that seemed to stroke her from the inside. “Let’s see if we can do it again.”
He gripped the edge of her wings with both hands and started to move again. The gentleness he’d exhibited before was gone. He thrust into her hard and fast, finding a rhythm with his body that left her breathless. The pleasure she’d felt before was a shadow of what was building in her now. It flowed from all directions and collided at the apex of her thighs in a supernova of heat and pleasure that made her cry out. Rowan found herself completely lost to it. She rode the aftershocks, her wings straightening, going rigid as one orgasm after another rocked her body.
And then his hands were in her hair and she felt him buck inside her. She reveled in his release. Mine, she thought. Tell me. Tell me I am yours.
But he said nothing.
They collapsed onto the bed, his arms gathering her against his chest.
“Nick, tell me what this means to you.”
He buried his face in her hair. “That was… incredible.” He kissed her gently on the temple.
She wanted more. She wanted him to claim her, to say he wanted her and her alone. But she didn’t get a chance to broach the subject. Just then, a high-pitched beeping sound tore through the apartment and he pulled away from her.
“Smoke alarm,” he grumbled. He bounded off the bed and out of the room.
The pyrotechnics stopped going off in her torso and she blinked rapidly, trying to regain her composure. On shaky legs, she climbed from the bed and pulled her dress over her head, then found him in the kitchen removing a smoking, crispy black chicken from the oven.
Flashing her a sheepish grin, he said, “Dinner’s ready.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
This was dangerous. Nick washed down bits of blackened chicken and couldn’t stop himself from replaying the best sexual experience of his life in his head. Only moments ago, he’d had Rowan under him. It was all he could do not to throw down his fork and carry her back into his bedroom for round two. She might be willing. God knew the chicken wasn’t keeping her at the table. Only, a familiar fear had crept into Nick’s thinking, and it curled prickly and cold over his heart.
It would be easy to love Rowan. Too easy. If he were being honest with himself, he might already be halfway along that journey. And he wasn’t worth loving. A person whose own mother left him was not a person capable of being loved long term. Committing to someone like Rowan—especially Rowan, who would live forever—was signing up to be left, to experience abandonment all over again. That particular terror ran deep. No, he needed to keep this relationship in the casual zone and not allow his brain to tempt him with this thing inside that wanted a ring on her finger.
“You don’t have to eat that,” he said to her. “It looks like I pulled it out of a volcanic pit in the earth. We should call it Mount Vesuvius chicken.”
“It’s not that bad,” Rowan said lightly. “Once you scrape the black part off, it’s delicious.”
He ran a hand over his face. “Okay, so cooking isn’t exactly in my wheelhouse, although usually I do better than this. At least you had the cold potatoes and broccoli to keep your charred meat company.” He rolled his eyes at himself.
“We were distracted,” she said softly. “I think it was totally worth it.”
“Definitely.” He smiled and looked away, the panicky feeling coming back with a vengeance.
“We have a dish like this in Paragon,” she said. “Only we don’t use chicken. They don’t exist there.”
“What do you make it with?”
“It’s called krilpon. It’s like your pig but with gills and webbed feet. It’s traditionally thrown into a fire and eaten after it is completely charred like this. The meat is different though, more like the dark meat.”
For a moment Nick tried to picture what she was describing but couldn’t wrap his head around it. “Your world is so completely different from this one. It must have been a big adjustment for you to come here.”
“It was.” She stabbed a piece of broccoli with her fork. “In some ways it’s better though. Life for me in Paragon was difficult. I never got along with my parents. If it weren’t for my brother Alexander, I would have probably run away a long time before I was thrown out.”
“Is that why you run Sunrise House? Because you had a rough childhood?”
She sipped her wine. “Not exactly.” She balked, and he got the sense she was hiding something.
“You don’t have to tell me. I know the feelings can be complex.”
“My childhood was different from yours,” she said softly. “I wasn’t physically abused, but my parents had unreasonable expectations for my behavior and decorum, and my constant punishment was solitary confinement. My brothers were my only confidants and friends. I wasn’t allowed girlfriends. I was rarely allowed beyond the palace walls. Alexander, he’s my younger brother, he taught me to paint as an escape from the rigors of palace life. It was my only oasis from a constant desire to slit my own throat.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I wasn’t happy.” She sighed. “Not at all. To me, my future was a tragedy. Art was my escape. And Tobias. He never failed to lend an ear when I needed one. My brother Gabriel was harder to get close to. He and Marius trained constantly. As the oldest, they were true warriors. A two-man army. Nathaniel, Xavier, Sylas, and Colin were kind enough to me but loved to try my parents. Practical jokers, the four of them. Known for causing trouble. I remember Xavier once made me a small cake for our birthday celebration, and when I bit into it, a live parlor mouse jumped out and hit me in the face.”
“Our birthday. You and Xavier were born on the same day?”
She shrugged and laughed nervously. “The details of our birth may seem strange to you. All nine of us were born on the same day. Dragons lay eggs. The first male to hatch is considered the eldest and the heir to the throne. That was Marius. After that, succession goes by who hatches next. Gabriel, Tobias, Alexander, Nathaniel, Xavier, Silas and Colin. I, as the only girl, was destined to be queen even though I was born third.”
Nick tensed. “What now? You said Marius was the heir to the throne. Wouldn’t that make you a princess? Why would you be queen?” He bristled at the idea of her being forced to marry her brother.
“Dragon reproduction is often unsuccessful and females are very rare. In order to ensure there is an heir to the throne, the firstborn male and female rule side by side. Each take a consort outside the royal family. That doubles our likelihood of producing heirs. But because I was the blooded female, my young—we call them whelps—would be first heirs to the throne. That’s why it was so important that I be mated. My future pregnancies were the preferred future of the bloodline.”
“You talk about it as if they were breeding you? Did you even have a choice?”
“A choice among
the highest bidders. I was only allowed to meet men of my station, the ones from wealthy households. When my uncle murdered Marius, my mother cast us all out of Paragon to protect us. That was around three hundred years ago. I came to this world with nothing but the clothes on my back, and to be honest, it was a relief.”
“Three hundred years ago,” Nick said incredulously.
“Yep—1698. The eight of us arrived in what is now Crete.”
“And somehow you all made your way here, to New York.”
She laughed. “No. Our mother warned us to split up lest our uncle find us and eliminate us like he’d done Marius. We traveled by boat to Italy, then split up at the port of Genoa. As our knowledge of this world grew, we all agreed it wasn’t safe for us to remain in the same country. If we kept moving, we were safe. Even if my uncle found us, by the time he traveled here we would be long gone. But when we settled, we needed to be apart, to dilute our magic enough that he couldn’t trace our whereabouts.
“Colin, Nathaniel, Xavier, and Silas hired a guide to take them north by land. I assume they are somewhere in Europe now, but we lost contact soon after. Gabriel, Tobias, Alexander, and I traveled along the coast of Europe for a time. We boarded a merchant ship from the Isle of Wight to the port of Philadelphia in the autumn of 1699. An indigenous guide helped us settle in this new world. I ended up in New York; Tobias, Chicago; and Gabriel, New Orleans. Alexander, well, he’s in Sedona now.”
Nick shook his head. “So you came here with seven brothers, and you never see them in person. Never hug them. Never share turkey and mashed potatoes and stories around the Christmas tree, ever?”
“I haven’t seen my younger brothers or Gabriel in centuries. I met with Tobias once or twice when he was visiting the city at the turn of the century and in the 1970s. We were careful not to stay together long. And Alexander sends me his paintings to sell in the gallery.”
Manhattan Dragon Page 15
