by Lora Leigh
He was a stupid, possessive bastard, he thought, because who saved her shouldn’t matter. She was fine, unharmed, just a few bruises.
“He reminds me of Nik when the two of you first met,” her friend Deidre drawled. “All in love and unwilling to accept it. I love watching it.” And that was pure glee in her expression too.
Redheads just had an odd sense of humor, he decided.
“Be nice, Deidre.” Mikayla bumped her friend’s arm with her elbow as she gave a little roll of her eyes. “I’m certain Ilya doesn’t need to be told when he’s in love. Not all men are as stubborn as Nik, you know. Are they, Ilya?”
The innocent, all-knowing expression was such a ruse, he thought. It would pay to never forget that this woman had made a tame housecat out of a man who had been called Russia’s tiger in another life.
“I’m certain I would know if I were,” he assured both of them.
Of course he knew he loved her, he just knew the man he was. Nik was able to walk away from the blood and death. Ilya didn’t have that option. He would never have that option.
“Did you know that dragon on your face is kinda weird?” Deidre’s voice was at least lower. “Watch it, Mikayla. I swear it’s glaring at me.”
Ilya tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling. Yes, he knew that sometimes the ink at the side of his face seemed to have a life of its own. Not that he had ever had proof of it. It was the skill of the artist who inked the iridescent scales, red eyes, and proud expression that gave the image such life. It was a talent that ran in the Dragonovich family.
His grandfather had taught his father and he’d taught Ilya. The proper muscles to target, the color added to each scale, the depth of the eyes and where they were placed. It was simply the tricks of master artists.
Gustov Dragonovich had cried when he’d inked Ilya’s face, covering the scars that marred it and giving him the only protection left that he could claim. That was his place as the dragon-heir.
The families had searched for him, the old man had sworn, but Ilya’s father was taken from life before he could return home and tell them the name of the woman who had tricked him into impregnating her.
She’d wanted to be the dragon’s mate, but she’d refused to accept that her dragon felt no love for her. That much Ilya’s grandparents had known. It was the identity of the woman they hadn’t been able to learn. Until the old cook in his mother’s employ had overheard Ilya’s identity. Her son had wed a young girl from one of the Romany families many called gypsies, and she’d heard of the search for the missing heir. A boy suspected to carry a mark resembling a dragon in flight, on his lower back. And she had seen that mark.
Within days six men had slipped onto the grounds where Ilya was kept, and carried him away with them.
They couldn’t strike against her though, no matter how much they wanted to. Only Ilya or the woman he marked as his own could take the life of the woman who gave birth to him.
Fucking traditions. Multi-layered, often confusing to the logical mind, and a pain in the ass for the most part. Yeah, so why hadn’t he killed the woman who had given birth to him, who had condoned the hell he’d lived in for so long?
He wasn’t insane enough to even think she’d suddenly find a mother’s love. The woman was a rabid psychopath.
No, he had no illusions of motherly love, what he had was that voice that whispered that only a soulless man could kill the dam who whelped him. And he wasn’t that man yet.
What would Emma Jane think of him, to know that even his mother had been unable to love him? When he’d seen the love her parents spilled over her, he’d been thankful, for her. To know she wouldn’t be alone.
“Would you stop whatever you’re thinking?” Deidre hissed, causing his head to jerk down to allow him to glare at her.
“What?” She made no sense.
“That dragon looks like it’s going to take flight right off your face and bite me. Go back to Emma Jane before you completely freak me out,” she demanded.
He turned to Mikayla as she fought to hide her grin.
“Nik warned me before I met you,” she confided. “Said it only happened when you were really pissed off or upset.”
He grunted at the information and rose to his feet to find a chair on the other side of the room. He just needed to keep them in sight, he told himself.
Maybe he should borrow Ronan’s cap.
“Ilya.” Mikayla followed him, sitting next to him now, petite and delicate, he understood why Nik called her his fairy. “Go be with Emma Jane. That’s where your heart is. Deidre and I are fine. My parents and all the heathen brothers and one very outraged child will be here soon driving the hospital staff crazy. I promise, I won’t feel the least abandoned.”
“I know you wouldn’t,” he breathed out heavily. “Emma Jane’s room is filled with family. She’s safe with them.”
“And it’s so very hard to breathe with them crowding around,” she answered for him. “Yes, very much like Nik.”
He nodded slowly.
“I knew him, long ago,” he said, the words only loud enough to reach her ears.
She watched him with interest, knowing there was nothing about her husband that she wasn’t already aware of.
He couldn’t help but grin.
“Has he mentioned Dragon’s Blood?” He lifted a brow as he asked the question.
“Very pricey vodka, very exclusive, and sold only to those the owner agrees to sell to,” she recited the information. “He’s been trying to find a bottle for years.”
He pointed to his dragon. “When he comes around, tell him to be watching for a very special delivery. And even that doesn’t pay the debt I owe him for keeping my Emma Jane safe. His name, those of his wife, their child, and her family, will be listed among those that all dragons, from now till the last one falls, will consider under our protection.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“I know who you are, Ilya,” she said just as softly. “And Nik would never ask for such a thing. One bottle of the vodka will suffice. He’s been unable to get any from his sources.”
Because Ilya hoarded it. Those with money bought enough to keep the business making the Russian alcohol that was so highly prized making more than it needed. The rest Ilya kept in storage, unwilling to allow his enemies to purchase it from him.
Dragon’s Blood was a recipe centuries old. A merging of an old recipe held by the head of a family of Romanian gypsies and another rumored to have been stolen from a tsar. The name was newer, only a few centuries old, but more prized than ever before.
“He will never have such a problem again. And had I known, he would already be supplied. He saved my life, Mikayla, when he shielded Emma Jane and ensured hers. It won’t be forgotten.”
She touched his arm, the pressure light, comforting. “Would you do the same for me, Ilya?” she asked. “I believe you would, so no debt is owed.”
“Regardless,” he told her as the elevator opened and her family began pouring out, “your family’s here now. Please, give my regards to your husband, as well as my message.”
Shit, she had a lot of family too, he thought as the wave of parents, brothers, and cousins rushed toward her, filled with questions.
Ilya slipped away, to check on Emma Jane again, found the room empty but for Elizaveta and Maxine, and slipped to her bedside.
Maxine rose from her chair, her short, compact body and California blond prettiness deceptively unthreatening. As the door closed behind her, Elizaveta turned her gaze to him, watching him for long moments.
“The doctor is releasing her this evening,” she told him then. “Her family went to find dinner while they await the paperwork.”
Reaching out, he slid his hand beneath Emma Jane’s, the warm silk of her palm resting within his much larger hand perfectly.
“She has a large family.” Laughter teased at Elizaveta’s voice. “They’re very loud and the males are very flirtatious.”
He cast he
r a teasing look despite the pain filling him.
“They flirted with you?” he asked.
He knew she often despaired because most men could sense the fact that she could kick their asses. That gave her few opportunities to practice her feminine wiles.
“They did.” She nodded with a smile. “And her brother was actually quite good at it.”
It was apparent she was impressed with Ronan’s skills in that area.
“Ronan’s a good man,” he assured her. “Someone’s trained him as well. He’s no slouch at protecting himself.”
“Nik often trains the men in the family, Emma Jane told us. He told them they needed to be men who could protect their women, not pussies needing protection.” That was almost a giggle in her voice. “He does a have a way with words, does he not?”
“He does,” Ilya agreed, but Nik had always been like that, even in his other life as a Russian soldier. “He’s always been a damned good man too. An honorable man.”
Even in the world of thieves, cutthroats, and assassins, there was a code. There had to be, or only anarchy would reign. Those who didn’t respect that code found themselves cut out, permanently.
As he caressed Emma Jane’s knuckles with his thumb, he marveled at the softness of her skin once again, the way it shimmered with life, almost begging for an ink master’s art. He could see his dragon curled about her wrist, iridescent, scales gleaming, eyes warning, as though it would lift from her skin and sear anyone who would dare harm her. And around his wrist, he could see the image of her dragon, sinuous and filled with fire. Slate gray eyes would stare from an inquisitive face as it lay protected on the underside of his arm.
Others could ink dragons, many had tried to duplicate the dragon such as the one Ilya wore, or the one he would have placed on Emma Jane’s wrist if it were a different world. They had tried, but only those of Ilya’s line had known the proper ink, the needle, and the exact placement when forming the image to create that look of subtle life. It was an art the first Dragon son had created and passed down to his son until Ilya’s grandfather had passed it to him.
“She loves you, Ilya,” Elizaveta stated somberly. “She looked for you after you left. She was very sad you were gone.”
“Nik’s wife was in the waiting room alone waiting for him to come out of surgery.” He gave her the excuse he had given himself. “I sat with her until her family arrived.”
Elizaveta nodded. “That’s what she said, and she understood your need to make sure Mikayla was safe. Still, she was frightened without you.”
His head jerked around. “She was frightened? Her family was here with her.”
Why would she have been frightened?
“You weren’t with her, Ilya,” Elizaveta pointed out as though to a child as she got to her feet. “It was not her father, her brother, or her cousins that make her feel safest. It is the arms of her dragon she needs.”
With that, she left the hospital room, closing the door softly behind her and leaving him there with Emma Jane.
Moving the chair closer to her bed, he rested his head next to her fingers, closed his eyes, and let himself just feel her. He found himself drifting, found sleep sneaking up on him, his body relaxing in the chair, his head on her bed, hand gripping hers.
“Oh, Dragon,” her soft whisper eased past slumber and wrapped around him like the warmest blanket. “I love you enough to let you go, but how I wish I could hold on to you…”
His hand tightened on her, his fingers sheltering hers, but he slept on. A moment out of time when gentle fingers sifted through his hair, stroked his brow, and the sound of love, not the words, the love, stroked the ragged pieces of his soul.
* * *
They released Emma Jane that evening just as Elizaveta had told him they would. With Sawyer and Tobias flanking him, he carried her from her room to the reinforced SUV waiting at an exit at the back of the hospital.
He slid into the back seat with her, buckled her in, and gave Tobias the order to pull out when Sawyer slid into the driver’s seat of the vehicle behind them.
“Sawyer, pull ahead. You, Elizaveta, and Maxine secure the house, Ronan and Eric can cover us,” he spoke into the speaker wand of the comm link as he kept his gaze on the traffic Tobias pulled into, and he kept Emma Jane in the middle of the seat, cushioned against him.
“It would take a dumb ass to attack right now,” she observed, though she was tense, her fingers holding on to his wrist tightly.
“How does she expect you to impress her, Ilya?” Tobias snorted, flashing a grin in the rearview mirror. “She doesn’t understand your need to show off yet?”
She slid the younger man a doubtful look but only gained a chuckle in response.
“Us younger agents are still in training?” he tried. “He likes to make sure we know what we’re doing.”
This time, Tobias kept his gaze on the road rather than the mirror until he took the exit and headed out of town. Traffic was reasonably light, flowing easily, a little above the speed limit. Nothing seemed to be following them other than Ronan and the sheriff in the vehicle behind them.
It was fully dark now, which actually made it easier for Ilya to tell if they were being followed. Sometimes it felt as though the dark, the shadows, were his greatest strength. He moved through them with an ease few others could match.
“Take the exit ahead, Tobias, and take the next left,” he told the agent. “We’ll go in along a more direct route, see if everything stays clear.”
The look Tobias flicked him showed the agent was feeling the same thing Ilya was. Not a sense of a coming attack, but a sense of something coming. And there was a difference. One was a surety that danger would touch them, the other was simply the possibility.
“What’s wrong?” Emma Jane asked, her fingers gripping his tightly.
“Not wrong exactly,” he assured her. “I’m just being careful, baby. It’s just that easy.”
It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t exactly the truth.
“House and grounds secured,” Sawyer spoke in the link. “Nothing’s disturbed, nothing’s moving.”
“Location secured, Tobias,” he told the other man.
“Entrance is secured,” Elizaveta reported from where she was parked in the other SUV at the entrance to Emma Jane’s driveway.
“Route in secured,” Maxine reported. The road to the house would be free of vehicles parked anywhere but where they should be.
“We have a clear,” Ilya stated, feeling Emma Jane’s hold relax marginally. “Proceed in. All converge.”
They’d all meet in the drive leading to the front door, where he’d make damned sure she was covered like a baby in a blanket, into the house.
He could feel something nagging at him, a certainty that he was missing something now and couldn’t figure out what. What could he have possibly forgotten or overlooked?
“Here we go,” he told her as Tobias pulled into the driveway. “Hang on one minute, we have protocol for this when we have more than two agents on-site.”
Yeah, that was true enough, but still, not the whole truth.
Once the agents as well as Ronan and Eric, who had been given directions before leaving, were at the back passenger door, he told Elizaveta to go ahead and open the door.
Maxine and Elizaveta helped Emma Jane from the seat and began rushing her to the door. Ilya and the male agents surrounded them, weapons drawn until they were all inside. From there, all but Ronan and Ilya broke off and began rechecking doors, windows, pulling shades and dark curtains to ensure no shadow appeared in the darkness beyond the house.
“What’s going on, Ilya?” She sounded far too calm. “And don’t bother to lie to me or give me some half-baked version of the truth.”
Turning, she glared up at him, the dark gray of her eyes the color of newly minted steel.
“I’m not lying to you, Emma Jane,” he assured her. “We’ve had no new intel, no answers, no hints, period. And I’m not taking chances, it’s
that simple. I won’t lose you because I wasn’t prepared.”
He kept his expression implacable, but he noticed it was that damned tattoo she took in for long moments. What did she see? He never saw what others did in the tattoo, and most of the time he was damned glad of it.
“What’s your gut telling you?” she asked then.
That was the one question he wished hadn’t parted her lips.
“My gut? My gut’s telling me to get ready, something’s coming. I don’t know what, I don’t know how dangerous it is, but I damned sure am likely to get pissed over it,” he growled. “Now, are you hungry, sleepy, or in the mood to watch TV? Because standing here in the entryway isn’t one of those choices.”
The second the sharp words left his lips guilt seared him even as fear and regret flashed in Emma Jane’s eyes.
“Goddammit,” he muttered.
Before she could make a choice, he picked her up and carried her up the stairs to her bedroom. There he laid her in the bed Elizaveta was turning down as he stepped into the room.
“Pillows.” Elizaveta hurriedly propped pillows behind Emma Jane and Ilya eased her back against them.
“Ronan called moments ago. He is bringing her soup she likes from her favorite Mexican place. He will be here within the hour,” Elizaveta told him as he let Emma Jane settle.
“Let me know when he arrives,” Ilya ordered, staring into soft, filled-with-hurt, gray eyes. She was pale, tired, and he knew, carried so many bruises beneath her clothing that if he could weep, he would have already shed tears.
As the door closed behind the bodyguard, he touched Emma Jane’s cheek, the bruise discoloring it causing his chest to clench.
“Who would do this to you?” he whispered, suspecting he already knew. “Matt Lauren is no explosives expert.” His fingers trailed to her neck and her collarbone, where he traced another deep bruise. “Who do you know, Emma Jane, who would want to kill you in this manner and who has the skills?”
She shook her head, closing her eyes briefly to blink back her tears.
“This is my fault,” he whispered. “I don’t know how or why, love, but this isn’t about you, or anything you have done. This is a strike against me. When I learn who has done this, you will not try to stay my hand. You will not allow your eyes to fill with tears until I fear for my sanity if you cry. Do you understand me?”
