“Thanks, man. And I’m...” He ground his jaw.
August clapped his shoulder and squeezed. “Go sleep it off. You’re good.”
And just like that August gave him the absolution he’d needed to hear tonight. Giving him a tight nod, he brushed past his brother and headed for the door. He had his hands in his pockets and his head bent, looking at the floor as thoughts of Madison continued to flood his brain.
What was he gonna do?
Phoenix was so deep in thought that he never saw the shadow that suddenly blocked his path, and he smacked headlong into a wall.
Or at least what’d felt like a wall.
“Ow, shit!” he snapped, rubbing at his nose, feeling as though it’d been shoved up his nasal cavity. With teary eyes, he looked up at a very sexy, very angry Madison.
She had her arms crossed beneath her breasts, and had them pushed up, looking like two, ripe juicy melons that immediately had his mouth watering and his cock twitching.
Dressed as she typically was in her black tank top stenciled with the Junk Yard’s name on it, and wearing a blue jean skirt that barely covered the goods and showed off her sexy, athletic legs, Phoenix wanted to claw the eyes out of every male in the place if they even dared so much as to look for longer than a second at her.
And though her body was rocking, her face was equally as stunning. She always wore her wild halo of dark hair down and tumbling sexily around her shoulders, so that it looked like she’d just been fucked and good. Madison wore hardly any make-up, but then she didn’t need to. The only thing she ever did was paint dark eyeliner along the tops of her eyelids, no doubt to accentuate eyes that looked like freshly melted gold, and apply a little lip-gloss so that her rosebud lips always had a wet sheen to them. Fuck me lips, he liked to call them.
Her nostrils flared, no doubt catching the whiff of his obvious interest. And those gorgeous golden eyes of hers narrowed into razor thin slits.
Not once in all the years he’d known her had Madison ever said anything to him about the women he’d flirted with.
Always she’d just toss him a tragic look filled with pain and the obvious question of “why?” And always, the answer for him had been the same thing: she shouldn’t have been saddled with him.
She should have had her own proud dragonborne to call her own. She should be sailing the skies alongside her brother, not grounded on land and forced to follow around some dickhead who’d been someplace he never should have been all those years ago.
Phoenix hadn’t ever realized he’d been sabotaging them, even though that’s exactly what he’d been doing. Because he’d seen her grow up. It’s not like he raised her, and he definitely knew she wasn’t his kin. But he’d watched her blossom from a child to a woman.
Knowing all along that because of him she’d been forced to troth herself to him. A bear. Breed rarely interbreed, but dragons never did. At least none he’d ever heard of.
And why would they, when their mate would be destined to die centuries, sometimes even millennia before them.
But tonight Madison wasn’t looking hurt or sad. No, she’d stopped looking at him like that recently. In fact, for the past year he’d felt her contempt for him twist like a knife in his gut. He’d wanted her to leave him, and now that he felt her pulling back the truth was the pain of it hurt a helluva lot worse than he’d expected.
“Whoring it up, Phoenix?” she asked sweetly.
Too sweetly.
This dragon looked like she wanted to skin him, eat him, and then play with his liver for dessert.
He grinned, feeling that old reckless mood take him. A sensation he’d not felt for years now. And he was just drunk enough not to question what he was about to do.
As though understanding that something had altered inside him, she rocked back on her heels, squeezing her hands into fists by her sides. “Grizzly, you’d better no—”
“Shut up,” he snarled, and then fisting her hair in his hand, he yanked her toward him, slid his palm up to cradle the back of her neck, and brought her face to his.
Claiming her lips in a scorching, possessive kiss full of raw, primal emotion.
There was anger. Humiliation. Rage. Repentance. Contrition. And deep down, in a tiny unexplored corner of his soul...need.
For her alone.
For the first time ever he opened that box. Her hands were on his shoulders, her claws sunk in tight to his flesh, but she wasn’t shoving him back. Madison was kissing him back with the type of angry fervor that matched his own.
And Phoenix forgot where they were or even who was watching. Forget about Urich glaring death at him. Or August no doubt looking at him with a mix of terror and confusion and wondering whether his brother had completely snapped.
Hell, Phoenix was confused too. He’d had no intention of shoving his tongue halfway down her throat. Or rubbing up against her so that she could feel the steel of his cock on her thigh. Hadn’t meant to move her back up against the wall, so that he’d have the leverage to cup her left breast in his palm and stroke her nipple to a tight point.
She was making the most adorable whimpers in the back of her throat, but mixed in with those heated, seductive purrs were deep bassy growls.
She hated him. And she should. He hated himself too.
But she tasted like lightning, and though he knew he was playing with fire, Phoenix wanted to drown in her. Forget everything. Forget who they were for just a second and pretend that she was someone else, anyone else...just a woman. Just an innocent, pure, unspoiled woman who meant nothing to him.
Who didn’t make his pulse pound like a drum beat, and made his head grow thick and fuzzy with lust and desire so sharp and cutting it felt hard to breathe.
But then Madison was twisting out of his arms and shoving him back against the wall; her eyes glowed molten and her hair framed her angelic face like a devilish halo.
Her face contorted into a mask full of pain and anger.
“Nothing to you! Is that all I am? All I’ll ever fucking be to you, huh, Phoenix! Well damn you!” Then she jerked her claws out of his shoulders and slapped him hard.
Hard enough for him to see stars. Confused by the sudden and shocking turn of events, he could only gaze at her. Stunned, he lifted a hand to his cheek and felt the rising welt, but also the wetness of his blood.
And though her anger should make him want her less, he wanted her more. Because he was no pansy ass male, he was a grizzly, and he liked her danger.
His lips twitched, and she was breathing heavy, hugging her hand to her chest and looking at him in befuddled astonishment.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Phoenix? What? Why wasn’t I ever good enough for you?”
Her words sounded broken, and it wounded him to hear it. Phoenix was still drunk off his ass, and didn’t want to take the time to corral his thoughts into some sort of order or anything that even remotely made sense. All he knew was that he was seeing Madison differently tonight.
He’d always seen her beauty. That was never the issue. His issue had always been the guilt that’d torn him in two. And maybe it was the drink, or maybe it was the knowledge that in a week’s time he’d be forced into a ritual that would, in all likelihood, turn his eyes to another, but for right now...he was so damned tired of fighting this.
So he cupped her cheek, and though she was as rigid and cuddly as a porcupine right now, she didn’t pull away. Instead she closed her eyes and half shuddered, half sobbed into his touch.
And when he leaned in to press a kiss to her lips, she didn’t fight him. This kiss wasn’t fire or electric or raw...it was tender, soft, and nothing more than the feathering of sensitized flesh against sensitized flesh.
He moved his lips across hers for a while, content to just breathe her in and let her fill his lungs, his body...and when he finally pulled away the only thing he could whisper was, “I’m so damned sorry, Madi. For everything.”
Then he turned and left, crushed by the weight of his own
guilt.
~*~
Madison
Urich grabbed her by the shoulder a little while after Phoenix had left. All she’d been able to do was stand there like an idiot and watch him go.
Both hating him, but also desperate for him to come back and do that to her again.
His first kiss had been punishing, brutal, and heart pounding. She’d taken his violence and given him back her own. She’d fed off it, loving it, loving him. Lost to him as she’d been from the very first moment she’d laid eyes on the idiot.
Her brother’s hard hand latching onto her elbow jerked her from her thoughts. He twirled her around, malachite eyes staring at her hard.
“You want me to kill him now?” Urich asked. His words were low, but shivering with a deadly thread of untamed violence.
From the very first day that Madison had lost her heart to Phoenix her brother had resented the grizzly for it. The only reason Phoenix still lived wasn’t simply because August had sworn an oath to keep Phe virginal for their wedding bed.
And what a fucking joke that was, knowing that the only male she’d ever want inside her body only kept himself pure because her family would kill him otherwise. Sure made a girl feel special.
No, the reason why Phoenix still got to talk, walk, and breathe was because Madison loved him.
True, the love was all mixed up with a lot of pain. And no, she didn’t know him on a visceral level the way she should know her mate, but the bond forged that morning of her birthing was an instinct she’d never overcome.
There was now and would only ever be Phoenix Hawthorne for her. That didn’t mean that a part of Madi didn’t hate him for making her want him as she did. Didn’t hate him for pushing her away as he’d done.
Didn’t hate him because he didn’t want her the same way she wanted him...
Or so she’d always thought.
Her fingers brushed along her still tingling lips and she took in a stuttery breath, still feeling the hot slide of his tongue, and the warm press of his lips on hers. She shook her head.
“Leave him alone, Uri.” She cut her eyes to her brother’s hard, but handsome face.
Urich was glaring at the bar door and clenching his molars, causing the strong muscles in his cheeks to visibly twitch. She patted his arm and slowly, bit by bit he began to relax beneath her gentle touch.
Her brother suffered too. Though he’d been firstborn, dragon society was matriarchal, meaning she was next in line to the Draconian kingdom. She should have been hand fasted by now to a strong, powerful male of the fire clan. Instead, she was grounded in this godforsaken land, bound by instinct so ancient and primal it was almost illogical, to a male who, up until today, hadn’t ever seemed to want anything to do with her.
Being the future ruler of her clan had meant Madison could not be grounded alone. Her father would have been forced to come be her chaperone if Urich hadn’t stepped up in his place.
By doing so though, her brother was not only forced to remain in his human form, but also be separated from his own mate—Alohmay. To say Urich hated Phoenix would be a slight understatement.
Urich’s massive hands cupped her face tenderly, turning her to look at him. The hardness that glinted perpetually in his emerald eyes, turned soft and tender when they looked at her.
“Sister, he will commit to the ritual next week.”
Unspoken were the words “what if he’s not bound to you as you are to him?” She trembled, closing her eyes as pain lanced through her heart.
Madison tried so hard to be tough, to not let anyone see just how deeply and desperately the thought of that hurt her.
She wanted Phoenix with a fire that consumed. And it killed her that she did. There were days she wished she could go back in time, to the moment of her hatching and tell herself not to look up, to never set eyes upon the idiot grizzly. But there were limits to what even a dragonborne as powerful as she could do. She shook her head.
“I am his mate, Urich. I know I am.”
She gazed lovingly at her brother, gripping his wrists tight and nodding. But she didn’t believe a word she said. And she knew he knew that, but Uri loved her and let her retain her pride.
Bringing her forward, he placed a gentle kiss on her brow. “I hope you’re right, sister. But I warn you now, if that male attaches himself to another, I will end him and make right once and for all the damage he did to you all those years ago.”
Heart fluttering manically in her chest, all she could do was give him a tremulous smile back.
No matter what happened, if Phoenix did imprint upon another she knew what she would do. As much as she sometimes hated him, she loved him. Deeply.
No one would hurt him. Not even her family. Madison would do anything and everything in her power to keep him safe, even if that meant doing something no dragonborne had ever done in the entirety of their kind.
Let him go.
Chapter 3
Phoenix
Thunder and lightning crashed.
Trees swayed violently in the storm.
Rain struck at Phoenix’s naked chest as he dangled a foot off the ground, swinging by the hooks and flooded by instinct as old as time.
The mating ritual was upon him, and he knew the moment he’d first struck hook to flesh who it was he’d see.
Her smell of lightning was everywhere. Under his skin. In his soul. And in his heart.
He didn’t pay attention to what his brothers were doing, or even if they’d gone. For the past week he’d been visited by nightmares. Knowing deep in his heart after that kiss that it would be her.
That it’d always been her.
That from that first moment he’d spied her in that ravine he’d always been waiting for her, he just hadn’t recognized it when he saw her.
Phoenix was a selfish, arrogant, and sometimes volatile bastard, and he’d never hated himself more.
Running like a chant through his brain was the piercing and driving need to get to Madison, to take her, claim her, and mark her as his.
And had he not done to her as he’d done all those years ago he’d have gone to her by now.
Instead, he flicked the hooks out from under the meat of his chest and watched as the blood drizzled down, fading into water from the lashing rain.
Sick to his stomach, Phoenix turned on his heel and ran for the cabin. His heart was a driving, pounding crescendo of want and need and so much damned guilt he thought he might die from it.
The need to go to her, to claim her, it was dizzying. Maddening. Overwhelming. Trying to drive out his ability to reason straight, because all his instinct knew, all it understood was need. Want.
But for once Phoenix was feeling the full effects of what this must have been like for her. Oh, he’d known she’d bonded to him. And intellectually he’d thought he’d understood what that meant.
But he’d had no damn idea at all. Because this was all-consuming. Every step he ran away from her, it was like a hammer fist to his gut. His breathing grew harder, and instantly he shifted form into his bear, roaring furiously at anything that crossed his path.
Not even saplings were immune from his rage. He trampled them down, desperate to flee his own emotions, to flee the magnitude of pain he now felt.
Recalling all the times he’d deliberately flirted with others, thinking in his own twisted mind that it was for her own good. That she’d be able to fight the primordial drive that’d claimed her. That she’d snap out of it and realize pledging herself to a bear was a bad fucking idea.
That he’d die long before her, that she’d be left alone for centuries, possibly even millennia without her mate. Because he’d been stupid enough to believe she had a choice in the matter.
But there was no damn choice in the matter.
He knew that now.
Crashing through the woods, he didn’t give a shit what he tore up, or what he pawed out of the way. Because now he finally understood it all.
The second the cabin was in sight
, Phoenix shifted, flung open the door and paced the floor like a madman, staring angrily at the walls. It wasn’t the fact that he’d have to make penance to her family for what he’d done and how he’d acted, how he’d repeatedly treated their daughter, no...it was so much more than that.
Because as much as he wanted Madison, and was even willing to own up to the fact that he’d always wanted her—that kiss had revealed the depth of his own longings—he knew this still wasn’t fair to her. She’d watch him age and die in what amounted to the twinkle of an eye for her.
How was any of that fucking fair?
So until he found the answer to that question he was going to ignore his driving need and stay secluded. It would be an act of god not to chase her down, to ignore the driving and relentless pressure consuming him, but he’d been stupid with her once before. He wouldn’t do it to her again.
So Phoenix sat down and stared at the walls and hoped to the gods that eventually he’d figure it all out.
~*~
One day soon rolled into two, then three, and then finally weeks. He’d not eaten, his bond to Madison grew daily so that he was almost half mad and pacing the floors of his cabin muttering beneath his breath as he continued to claw at his mind for an answer.
And just as he was sure that none would be had, that he would screw his woman over just as badly as he always had, the idea suddenly became crystal clear.
A witch.
Relief rained over him, and all that restless anxiety that’d kept him pacing and seeking for days on end with no rest suddenly vanished. He crumpled to the floor, panting and coated in a layer of sweat and grime.
He could still fix this.
Ignoring the aches of his body, and the pain in his gut from no food, he knew what he had to do. Forcing himself slowly to his feet, he decided to first bathe because he couldn’t go to Madison smelling like this, and then he’d tell her his plans.
But his plans were shot to hell not even a second later. The air suddenly seemed to quiver and smelled of ozone, and he knew she was there.
His heart, mind, body, and soul screamed at him to turn and take her. But he was weak, tired, and on the verge of collapse. Turning slowly, all he could do was suck in his breath at the sight of her.
Phoenix (Bears of Kodiak Book 3) Page 3
