Dragon Blood

by Madelaine Montague

  Marlee stared up at him, struggling with the excitement that swept through her like a potent drug, sending her entire system into chaos as carnal images of their night together filled her mind. She wasn’t certain whether his words had conjured them from her memories or his touch, but it didn’t seem to matter. The heat that rose in her was real and inescapable.

  Triumph and desire blazed in his golden eyes as he lowered his head toward hers. She struggled to find a barrier to throw up and came up empty as his hard mouth settled against hers.

  There was no blossoming of warmth as his scent and taste invaded her and took control of her senses. Fire erupted seemingly everywhere at once. It annihilated the last vestiges of rational thought.

  Before she was conscious of anything beyond the play of his tongue along hers, he’d shoved her blouse up, unfastened her bra, and had her jeans halfway down her hips. The sudden knock on the door they were leaning against jolted through both of them.

  “Gabe!”

  Dragging in a harsh breath, Gabe lifted his head. “Not now, Eli!” he growled.

  “Right now,” Eli snarled back at him.

  The heat that suffused Marlee’s face at the interruption had nothing to do with the passion of moments before. Escaping Gabriel’s clutches, she struggled frantically to set her clothing to rights as Gabriel shoved away from the door and opened it.

  Marlee was too intent on her clothes to actually see what happened. She heard a meaty thud, however, and Gabriel staggered back in her direction. Uttering a sharp gasp of shock, she leapt away and whipped a look from Gabriel as he hit his desk and rebounded to the man standing at the door—her Native American hunk!

  Her sharp gasp seemed to jolt through both men. The murderous intent in their eyes lost some of its potency as both of them jerked a look at her. She could see that both men were still furious, however, and stared back at them wide eyed, trying to grasp what had just happened.

  Gabriel and Eli dragged their gazes from her and exchanged a long look with one another.

  Gabriel rubbed his jaw a little ruefully, although anger still glittered in his eyes. “This is my brother, Eli,” he murmured.

  Marlee had already deduced his name was Eli, but at that comment, she whipped a sharp look at Gabriel. Setting aside the fact that they looked to be the same age, beyond having the same, strange golden eyes they didn’t look anything alike—not even close enough to be related much less brothers. “Your brother?”

  “You might remember him from the tavern brawl last night.”

  Eli’s lips tightened. “There was no avoiding it,” he responded tightly, although he’d already explained himself one time and it pissed him off to have to defend his actions yet again.

  “If there had been, I would have.”

  “You might have avoided it if you’d been paying more attention ….” Gabriel didn’t finish the sentence.

  Eli returned his attention to Marlee. “So you came all the way out here just to make sure I wasn’t in any trouble, huh?” he asked, surveying her appreciatively.

  Marlee felt her face heat, but she also felt warmth that had hard echoes of what Gabriel had just stirred up. “A waste of time, obviously,” she muttered.

  His dark brows rose. “I suppose that would depend on your viewpoint,” he drawled lazily. “I’m not averse to having a woman to keep me out of trouble. In fact I can think of a number of things you might want to try to accomplish that.”

  Marlee hardly knew how to react to the shocking, if amusing, innuendo. Fortunately, Gabriel, after glaring at Eli, decided not to give her a chance. “You might as well meet everybody.”

  He settled a large hand on her shoulder and urged her toward the door. Eli made no attempt to move until she was standing toe to toe with him and he’d taken the time for a slow, thorough appraisal. Marlee lifted her brows at him questioningly. A slow grin curled his lips that made her stomach perform somersaults. Pushing away from the door frame, he stepped back, allowing her and Gabriel to pass.

  ‘Everybody’ was waiting by the front desk. “Joshua you’ve already met,” Gabriel said, pointing out the man she’d first spoken to. “The one with yellow hair is John—you’ll probably remember him as the one that nearly got his face rearranged last night. The one with braids is Luke and the other is Aaron.

  “Marlee’s having dinner at our place with us,” he finished, glancing at Joshua as Marlee flicked a stunned look at him. “Transfer the calls and lock up, will you, Joshua?”

  “Did I miss something?” Marlee asked a little testily as Gabriel ushered her out of the building toward one of the SUV’s parked out front.

  “I don’t know. Did you?” Gabriel asked as he opened the passenger door for her.

  “I don’t recall you asking me to dinner and I certainly don’t recall agreeing.”

  He grinned at her but there was a challenging light in his eyes. “You will, though, won’t you? My brothers sure are going to be disappointed if you don’t when I’ve already told them you would.”

  And that was her problem? “Brothers?” she echoed blankly.

  He caught her elbow and urged her into the seat, shutting the door the moment she was inside. She was tempted to get out again but discarded the idea in favor of renewing their dispute of before. “This is … kidnapping!” she said tightly when he got in. “What about my car?”

  He nodded. “Give me the keys.”

  She stared at his open palm a moment and then met his gaze suspiciously. “Why?”

  “You want the car or not?”

  She fished her keys out and slapped them into his palm. He leaned out his open door.

  “Joshua!”

  When Joshua turned around, he tossed the keys. “Park that in a discrete location.”

  Catching the toss, Joshua nodded, flicked a glance at her and then got in her car.

  Gabriel started the SUV, leaving the others to divide up between the other two SUVs and her car. Marlee grabbed her seatbelt and fastened it as he shot backwards and slammed on brakes, shooting a rain of pebbles into the air as he jerked the vehicle into drive and headed out.

  “What in the hell is going on?” Marlee demanded when she’d caught her breath at the hair raising turn he executed out of the parking lot.

  He fished a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket and dropped in on the seat between them. “Maybe you could tell me,” he said grimly.

  Marlee studied the paper for a moment and finally picked it up and unfolded it. It wouldn’t have been completely accurate to say that she was greatly surprised. She’d suspected what it was before she ever picked it up, but it still sent a jolt through her.

  She was wanted as a person of interest in an ongoing investigation. What thoroughly pissed her off, however, was the suggestion that she used drugs and might exhibit delusional behavior.

  They were covering their asses just in case she tried to convince any other law enforcement agency that they were lying through their teeth. She struggled with her anger for several moments and finally wadded the paper up and threw it at the dashboard.

  “Have you already called them?” she managed after a few moments, staring out the window at the darkness beyond the car and trying to think how she was going to get herself out of the mess she seemed to be in.

  When he didn’t answer she finally turned to look at him. His expression was hard with anger. “They will have faxed that all over the country by now,” he said after a moment. “I asked you what it was about.”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” she said tiredly. “And the truth is, I really don’t fucking know.”

  “So tell me what you do know … or suspect.”

  She considered it for a few moments, but she didn’t see that she had anything to lose.

  Shrugging, she told him about the incident at the park. “I honestly don’t remember much of what happened. I was in and out of it. Some of it … well, I thought it was sort of a bizarre erotic dream, but I guess it wasn’t. I’m
pregnant and I certainly didn’t get that way by immaculate conception. I got pregnant then—when I was missing.”

  He didn’t say anything for several moments. “You think it had to do with some kind of alien abduction?”

  His voice was neutral, but she knew it sounded insane. It certainly did to her. “I said I thought that was what they were suggesting—or thinking. I don’t believe it. They were men.”

  “You’re certain of that? Even though you say you didn’t see or hear anything?”

  “I wasn’t numb,” she said dryly. “They felt human.” She thought about it for a moment.

  “They smelled and tasted human, too.”

  He sent her a startled look.

  She felt her face heat. “They kissed me.”

  “So … you came here to find the men who’d gotten you pregnant?”

  “Well, obviously only one did—but the men involved. It wasn’t exactly that, though.”

  “What, exactly, was it?” Gabriel probed when she fell silent.

  “There was something about the way the doctor said they wanted to run more tests ….”

  She shook her head. “Maybe it was because he’d asked me if I’d noticed strange lights or anything unusual. I suddenly felt like they’d found something in those tests that could be a threat to me and the baby. I guess I really came here for reassurance—and because I have a lot of questions about what happened.

  “I don’t honestly know what happened. I thought I was dying and then I felt … completely alright, I guess, except I felt like I’d been drugged and yet I’m as certain as I can be that I wasn’t. And they didn’t find any drugs in my system when they examined me. They saved my life. I not sure about too much else, but I am sure about that … and it wasn’t rape. I don’t know that I would’ve been willing if I hadn’t been so out of it, hadn’t felt … really strange. But that’s beside the point. I didn’t decide to ‘hunt them down’ because they’d gotten me pregnant and I had some kind of vendetta about it. I just need to know that there’s no reason for me to be afraid there’ll be something wrong with the baby. And … well, even if it wasn’t human, there’s no way in hell I’d let them experiment on it and I was afraid that was what they had in mind.

  “The first thing that crossed my mind when the doctor told me was getting an abortion. I don’t think it would’ve even then except that it was gut reaction to the news—and the fact that I had no idea how it had happened or who’d fathered it. Now … I just want to know that it’s alright. I want to do whatever’s right … and that means knowing who, or what, fathered this baby. If there’s even a chance that it’s … some kind of freaky hybrid, I don’t think it would be right to bring it into the world to suffer. And it would. People that are even a little bit different go through pure hell the way things are these days.”

  A wave of both nausea and anger washed through Gabriel. Not that he couldn’t see her point—she certainly had a very good one—but it did nothing for the resentment that welled him that she would consider destroying his baby if she knew what he was. It wasn’t an issue he needed to dwell on at the moment, though—they could face that later.

  He almost wished it had been a matter of chasing down the culprits that gotten her pregnant that had brought her back. The suggestion that the government had found something when they’d run tests on her sure as hell wasn’t good news—for any of them, him, his brothers or the babies.

  A fresh wave of anger flickered through him at the thought. He’d had a bad feeling Eli and John had seriously fucked up. He just hadn’t realized had bad it was. He didn’t think Marlee was imagining a damned thing, though.

  He tamped his anger. As pissed off as he was with Eli and John, he hadn’t done any better. He hadn’t been able to keep his hands off of her either. In point of fact, he hadn’t been able to think straight from the moment he met her. He’d been a totally lost cause the moment he caught the scent of her desire and that lonely little egg just waiting for him to snatch it up. He didn’t know what it was about Marlee, but there was no denying she had a powerful effect on dragons—at least him and his brothers and since, as far as they knew, they were the last of their kind, he supposed that effect was universal as far as dragons went.

  Unfortunately, that didn’t give him a damned clue of what to do. She might think she was only looking at one child, one father, but he knew better. He was as certain as he’d ever been of anything in his life that not only had Eli and John successfully bred her, but he had also.

  And he didn’t think she was going to be nearly as thrilled once she figured that part out—to say nothing of what had fathered her brood—as they were.

  So now three of them had finally managed the spawning that had been driving them just about as long as they’d been in the world and it might well bring them to the final eradication of their species. They’d spent their entire lives trying to blend in and avoid detection by the humans that had obviously already wiped out most of their species and ended up spawning on a human female who not only had no idea they existed but would probably be as eager to wipe them out as all the others.

  He didn’t think he’d properly appreciated the scope of the mess before.

  “Are you going to … report me?” Marlee asked tentatively, breaking the prolonged silence that had fallen between them.

  Gabriel sent her a long look before he returned his attention to the road. “What do you think?”

  Truthfully? She didn’t know what to think. He’d sent Joshua to hide her car, though.

  That might not have been anything but a ruse to buy time until he decided what he wanted to do—It might still be, but she had a feeling she was being offered shelter from a storm. She just wasn’t certain of how safe the shelter would be—from any direction.

  It didn’t take a lot of thought, though, to realize she trusted Gabriel and the others far more than she did her own government. Gabriel’s motives for helping might still be murky, but the flyer that had been faxed all over everywhere certainly supported her fears about the government’s interest in her. Unless she found out that their suspicions were totally groundless, she couldn’t afford to fall into their hands. The baby was liable to end up in a jar and she would probably disappear and never be seen or heard from again.

  She was too caught up in her worries to pay a lot of attention to where they were going, not that she could’ve told much if she’d been trying. It had been dusk when she’d arrived at the Reservation police station. It was full dark by the time they left and they’d left the small community fairly quickly and headed out into the countryside.

  She’d been too engrossed in her thoughts even to make any kind of note of the time, but she knew they’d been driving at least thirty minutes to an hour before the deceleration of the SUV finally penetrated enough to arouse her. She saw that they were pulling in to a ranch. Old fashioned split rail fence lined the narrow drive Gabriel had turned in to. Ahead of them, she saw a sprawling two story log home. One of the SUV’s had just parked. Eli, she thought, and John got out, paused to watch as Gabriel pulled in to park next to their vehicle and then headed inside.

  She hadn’t realized how similar in height and build the dark ones were until she discovered she wasn’t certain it was Eli or one of the others that strode across the wide porch of the cabin and went in. John was as unmistakable by his coloring as Gabriel was.

  She’d been more than half convinced when Gabriel had introduced them all as his brothers that he’d only meant in the sense of brotherhood—because they were all on the force together. It had flickered through her mind to consider the possibility that he was referring to their connections with the tribe, but neither John nor Gabriel looked like they belonged to any tribe—unless it was a Viking tribe.

  She hadn’t actually intentionally waited for Gabriel to walk around the vehicle to open the door for her—that was a bygone courtesy that few people observed anymore. He did just that, however, opening the door and waiting for her to get out and
then settled a hand at the small of her back as they mounted the stairs to the porch and crossed it.

  The front door opened into a great room that deserved the name with a high, vaulted ceiling emphasized by crisscrossing beams. The sound of running water and banging pots were already issuing forth from the large, open kitchen Gabriel escorted her to and she saw when they reached it that both Eli and John were busy preparing the dinner she’d been invited to.

  She’d forgotten that invitation—hadn’t really registered it—but she realized she was hungry as soon as she saw they had plans of eating as soon as they could throw something together.

  Actually, she revised that, not throwing. Eli and John both worked with the efficiency and skill of chefs, making it clear that they had a lot experience in the kitchen. Eli had five whole chickens lined up that he was systematically quartering. John was chopping vegetables with equal efficiency. As she watched, Eli cleaned, patted the pieces dry, seasoned it with a flick of his wrist and what seemed almost a complete disregard for where the seasoning landed and then began tossing the pieces into a waiting pan to sautéed them with the vegetables John rinsed and tossed in behind.

  “It’ll be about an hour before dinner’s ready,” Gabriel said. “Would you like to get cleaned up?”

  Marlee dragged her gaze from the ‘show’ with an effort. “I showered and changed before I drove up. Anyway, I don’t have anything to change in to … but thanks.”

  “In that case, I think I will while there’s still plenty of hot water,” Gabriel said, leaving her and striding across the great room to the stairs.

  Marlee watched him until he disappeared into a room at the top and returned her attention to Eli and John. “Is there anything I can help with?”

  Both men flicked a glance at her. “We’ve got it under control,” Eli responded after flicking a speculative gaze over her.

  Warmth tingled through her—and irritation, mostly with herself. She’d seen that look in a man’s eyes more than once and it generally ticked her off. It might be flattering in a way to know a man found one attractive, but at the same time it was demeaning in that it reduced a woman to nothing more than an object—even if that was an object of lust. She was more than a pussy on two legs!