Dragon Blood

by Madelaine Montague

  John was entirely different. He wasn’t shy and he wasn’t just guarded. He was a stone wall. She didn’t have a problem with the fact that they all seemed to be measuring her up. Aside from their bedroom gymnastics there was still a lot more they didn’t know about one another than there was that they did, and she’d been measuring them up if it came to that.

  And she was impressed. There was a lot more to them than pretty packages. It was clear that their lives hadn’t been easy. They didn’t trust people in general and, to her, that meant they’d been given reason not to. It could’ve been a lot little things, or one or two big screwovers, but she didn’t think they were jaded for no reason.

  John almost didn’t seem to go with the ‘set’. If not for the fact that Gabriel not only did, but seemed to be top dog, she might’ve thought it was because he looked so different from the others. She might’ve thought he’d caught hell both from outsides and his brothers. But she couldn’t see that that was the case. He seemed to make even his brothers a little uneasy—which was strange considering very little ever seemed to faze him. She could’ve understood it if he’d had a short fuse, but he seemed to have the longest of all of them.

  As he’d told her himself, he was the reasonable one.

  She supposed it was just the sheer contrariness of her nature that the very fact that he seemed determined to hold her arm’s length, seemed focused on putting just as much distance between them as possible that made her determined not to be ignored.

  That and the fact that when he did unleash his passions, he was just about the scariest, most exciting man she’d ever met—except for Eli. Eli’s emotions were closer to the surface, though, and he was a lot easier to read. She felt like she was playing a dangerous game of Russian Roulette whenever she teased John. It was the game of ‘will he explode and knock my socks off like he had before?’ or ‘will he not?’.

  She thought it was the very fact that she’d had to work so hard at pushing his buttons, with no results, that made her more and more incautious—sort of like the person that lights three sticks of dynamite and discovers they’re all duds until they get to the last one.

  Apparently, it was John’s day to stay home and babysit her. They rotated daily, which was almost as insulting as it was irritating—as if it was such an ordeal in sheer boredom they didn’t think it was fair for anyone to be confined to the house more than one day at the time!

  Except her, of course.

  She’d been trying to focus on the mounds of paperwork that had backed up—all hand written and in need of skilled deciphering before the data could even be entered on the computer—but most of her mind had been on John who was moving around the house restlessly.

  She’d conjured and discarded a half a dozen lame scenarios that might end up in getting her bones jumped and had finally given up on the idea and actually focused on her work. Hours had passed by the time she emerged again and she’d been so deeply engrossed she’d completely forgotten that she’d spent most of the morning trying to get John worked up.

  Stiff from sitting so long, she got up from the chair and bent down to touch her toes, bouncing a little to thoroughly stretch the muscles and then straightened and lifted her hands above her head in an all over stretch.

  She’d dressed for bear, though, or more accurately underdressed for wolf. She hadn’t bothered to put on a bra or change out of the loose t-shirt she’d slept in and she’d unfastened her jeans and unzipped them as soon as she’d sat down in front of the computer. The tail of the tshirt hit her on the chin when she touched her toes and then rose up to her waist when she straightened and lifted her arms while her unfastened jeans slid halfway down her hips.

  Grabbing her jeans, she hiked them back up and glanced around self-consciously.

  Showing off her far-from-flat, oh-so-unsexy belly hadn’t been in the game plan at all. The moment she glanced around, however, she discovered John hadn’t missed a thing. He lifted his head from studying her belly and met her gaze.

  She cleared her throat uncomfortably and said the first thing that popped into her mind.

  “I forgot I was supposed to help in the kitchen tonight. I think I’ll just go take a quick shower before the guys get here and put on something more comfortable.”

  He didn’t move from the spot where he was standing near the stairs when she passed him, but he didn’t attempt to stop her either. Sighing with a mixture of relief and disappointment when she reached the top, she glanced back. A jolt went through her when she discovered he was mounting the stairs.

  Unnerved, she headed toward the bedroom she’d been using. John caught the edge of the door with his hand before she could close it behind her, however. “Uh … did you want something, John?” she asked a little shakily.

  His gaze flickered over her face. He propped one shoulder against the door frame. His lips curled at one corner but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I had the impression you did.”

  Marlee felt her face heat but there was no way in hell she was about to admit that she’d been trying to get his attention for days. It was really annoying to finally succeed when she hadn’t intended or expected to and felt so damned awkward she couldn’t think of any way to turn it to her advantage! “Oh! Well … hmmm. I can’t think of anything. I was just going to take a quick shower to get rid of the kinks from sitting so long,” she added a little hopefully, thinking he might offer to wash her back—and her front!

  He straightened away from the frame. “I think a massage would probably work better for that. Why don’t you lie down?”

  Her heart rate quickened but at the same time reluctance moved through her. The massage might turn into something interesting, but what if he really meant massage? Or worse, he’d decided to tease her for a while?

  Smiling with an effort, she nodded and moved to the bed, kicking her shoes off and then climbing to the center and laying down on her stomach. It wasn’t terribly comfortable. Her breasts were swollen and tender with her advancing pregnancy and her belly was already round enough to add to that discomfort.

  Pushing up, she grabbed a pillow to prop on.

  “Do you have any lotion?”

  She glanced at him. “On the dresser,” she said, pointing.

  He nodded. “You should get undressed.”

  The mixture of reluctance and hopefulness assailed her again. She was going to be seriously pissed off, she decided, if she discovered the massage was just a massage!

  She decided, just in case that was what he had in mind, to pull off the jeans and t-shirt and keep her panties. At least she wouldn’t feel so exposed!

  He straddled her hips when he returned and squeezed an icy glob of lotion out between her shoulder blades. She sucked in a sharp breath and tensed all over.

  “Lift your hair,” he murmured in a low voice as he began to rub the lotion over her back.

  She gathered it in one hand, twisted it and held it on the top of her head, straightening her head when he began to massaged the back of her neck. The tension eased from her at the slow, mesmerizing glide of his hands over her back, shoulders, and neck. The only time she’d ever had a massage before the guy had tried to separate the tissue from the bones. John applied the pressure of his hands and fingers evenly, warming and relaxing the muscles deeply without the pain she associated with the word ‘massage’.

  He squeezed another dollop of lotion into the palm of his hand, moved her arms so that they were perpendicular to her shoulders, and massaged them. She felt the warmth of his breath along the back of her neck as he leaned closer. It lifted the fine hairs along the base of her skull and created a rash of pebbly skin along her back and arms.

  He returned his attention to her back after a moment, rubbing down the center and then up along her sides, brushing the sides of her breast. He paused and then leaned down and nibbled a string of kisses down her spine. Her belly fluttered and tensed, quaking harder as he reached the small of her back. She waited tensely to see what he do next.

/>   Hooking his fingers in the waistband of her bikini panties, he dragged them down her hips and then her legs. He bent her legs upward and then she felt a splat of cold lotion on the sole of her foot. The warmth shimmying in her belly heated up as he kneaded her feet. It felt more wonderful than anything she’d ever felt in her life. She’d had no idea how good it could feel to have her feet rubbed.

  She was sorry when he stopped, but then he began kneading her calves and that felt wonderful, too.

  “You have the most wonderful hands, John,” she murmured almost drunkenly, so relaxed by that time she felt like hot wax. The tension returned when he reached her thighs.

  Chapter Eleven

  Marlee held her breath every time John stroked up to the tops of her thighs and lightly brushed the lips of her sex, hopeful that he would part the nether lips and stroke her there, and each time she was disappointed. Her hopes rose again when he began massaging her buttocks, but he teased her unmercifully, brushing close enough to set off waves of anticipation and then moving away again.

  She’d decided she’d been right all along and his only intention was to torment her a while when he moved off of her altogether. He slid down on the bed beside her as she turned onto her side. Cupping one breast, he bore her down on the bed and covered her mouth in a torrid kiss so ravenous it curled her toes. The warmth he’d already generated burst into flames.

  Having thoroughly ravished her mouth, he broke from her lips and wove a path of open mouthed kisses along her throat to her breast. She dug her fingers into his shoulder, sucking in a sharp breath when he captured the peak of the breast he’d been kneading. He gentled the kiss instantly, stroking her tender nipple almost apologetically. It sent pleasurable currents through her and she cupped his head to her, stroking him a little feverishly.

  He nuzzled his face against her breast when he released the bud at last. “Tender?” he murmured huskily.

  She was instantly torn. Her nipples were more tender than she’d realized, but she didn’t want him to stop. “Don’t stop,” she whispered after a brief hesitation.

  He nuzzled her other breast, lathing the tip with his tongue and finally took it into his mouth and lightly suckled it. When he shifted upward to match his lips to hers again, he slid one hand downward to lightly stroke the rounded mount of her belly and then pushed his hand between her thighs and gently parted the sensitive petals, stroking her cleft. She spread her thighs for him and began to search a little frantically for the fastener of his jeans as he teased her clit. He allowed her to fumble for a few moments and then broke the kiss and rolled into a sitting position to peel his shirt off and unfasten his jeans.

  Marlee sat up anxiously, stroking her hands over John’s muscular back and nibbling along the crook of his shoulder and neck. A shudder when through him. He turned, bearing her down onto the mattress once more as he wrestled his jeans and shorts from his hips and finally kicked them off. She pulled at him, eagerly parting her legs to accommodate his narrow hips as he shifted over her, positioning himself.

  A mixture of relief and anticipation filled her as she felt the probe of his thick flesh, felt the connection as he found the mouth of her sex, and the pressure as he cupped his hips to enter her. She clutched at his shoulders, arching her back to brush her breasts along his muscled chest.

  The faint abrasion of his hair roughened chest sent fresh tingles of warmth through her to raise her fever higher.

  Impatience began to war with her delight as he surged into her in shallow strokes, driving a little deeper each time until he’d claimed her completely and she could feel the weight and thickness of his cock. She squeezed her eyes tightly, focusing on the friction of his flesh rubbing along her channel as he sawed in and out of her, sending pleasurable currents through the nerve bundle there that gathered strength with each pass until she neared the peak. She struggled with the urge to reach for it and to stave it off for a few moments longer to enjoy the feel of him inside of her, but the tension increased until it abruptly burst its boundaries, broke free of her control.

  She sucked in a sharp breath as her body began to quake with release, for many moments so swept up in the powerful expulsion of energy that she lost touch with all else.

  His groan as he drove deeply and shuddered as he was caught up in his own release penetrated that heavenly fog of inner focus. At the same time, it seemed to expand the pleasure still rocking her. She tightened her hold on him as the warmth expanded to her chest, making it ache with a confusing mixture of emotions she couldn’t even sort let alone identify. Joy dominated, however. He’d found pleasure in her and at that moment it seemed to be for her alone.

  ———

  Gabriel was propped against the kitchen counter, his arms folded, as John entered the kitchen. John sent him a cool look and moved to the refrigerator to search for something to cook that wouldn’t take too long since everyone had arrived to eat before he’d made it back downstairs.

  “I see you’ve given up the idea of breaking the bond,” Gabriel said dryly.

  John’s lips tightened. He hadn’t admitted, even to himself, that he was trying to erect a barrier Marlee couldn’t breach. Grabbing a package of steaks, he pulled it out and shut the refrigerator with just a little more violence than was necessary to close it.

  “Luke had a point, you know,” Gabriel said after a moment, not without empathy.

  “Not much of one,” John said evenly. “As you pointed out, she isn’t bound to any of us.”

  Gabriel frowned. “Not in the way we think of it, I don’t suppose. She seems happy enough to say, though.”

  “Now. She feels the need to protect the babies and to nest. Even human women feel that. It doesn’t have anything to do with us beyond the fact that we’re offering protection she needs … at the moment.”

  Gabriel’s lips tightened. “We have her desire.”

  John gripped the edges of the counter when he’d seasoned the meat. “That won’t be enough to hold her here once she finds out what we are, Gabe.”

  “She’ll stay until the babies are born. We have time to win her affection.”

  John sent him a look of repressed violence. “You think that’s going to outlast the discovery that we’re monsters? How much time do you think we have, Gabe? She has three babies in her womb and she thinks there’s only one. They’re growing fast. She’s going to want a doctor—Humans go to doctors. What the fuck are we going to do about that?”

  “I don’t have all the answers!” Gabriel growled. “All I do know is that she’s accepted that they’re there and she seems content to stay. Granted that isn’t a hell of a lot, but it’s a hell of a lot brighter picture than we’ve had before. I don’t know anything to do but take it a day at the time … and enjoy it while I can if that’s the way it ends.”

  “Find another topic,” Eli snarled from the living room. “She’s finished her shower.”

  ———

  Marlee frowned when she heard the sliding glass doors close and looked around the partial wall that divided the kitchen from the great room just in time to see Luke disappear in the darkness that shrouded the rear deck. She didn’t have to look around to know that she had the house to herself. The guys had vanished one by one after dinner as they did fairly regularly.

  What they did out in the barn, she had no idea, but she was beginning to suspect that the reason they disappeared was the need to blow off steam.

  She hesitated and then put the dish down that she’d just washed, dried her hands on a dishtowel, and headed for the glass doors. She stopped again when she reached the great room, however, indecisive, and glanced up at the overhead light. They’d be able to see her snooping if she went to the patio doors, she realized. Turning around, she headed to the small downstairs bath and peered out the narrow window.

  Luke had already crossed the backyard, but he wasn’t heading toward the barn as she’d expected. Instead, he strode toward a well worn path that led up the rocky slope behind the house. She’
d explored part of it when Gabriel had finally lightened up enough about ‘security’ to agree with an occasional outdoors excursion, but she hadn’t gone far before Eli had caught up with her and distracted her by hauling her back into the house and fucking her stupid.

  She had gone far enough, though, to see that the steep trail appeared to wind all the way up to the peak.

  As she watched Luke curiously and finally flicked a gaze past him, following the trail with her gaze, she saw movement a good bit further away. Light gleamed on his hair as he flicked a glance back toward the house and she knew it was either Gabriel or John—probably Gabriel since he’d disappeared shortly before Luke had.

  So—they didn’t congregate in the barn to duke it out so that she wouldn’t be any the wiser? What in the world would they be doing up on the hill?

  Looking for a more dangerous place to work out their hostilities toward one another?

  Or was she flattering herself? Was it nothing more than a regular exercise routine?

  Coincidence that they usually decided to go out for a climb after there’d been an ‘incident’?

  Like the one earlier when she’d nearly run Luke down, literally, coming out of the laundry room?

  He hadn’t embraced her! He’d caught her to keep her from falling, she thought angrily.

  She’d known it had pissed Eli off. She could see it in the deadly look he gave Luke, but what was he supposed to do? Let her fall in the floor?

  She thought she’d glossed over the incident when she’d thanked Luke for catching her, but now she wondered if Eli had decided she’d only said it to ‘cover’ for him.

  She would’ve been willing to keep her nose out of their business if she’d thought it had nothing to do with her, but the suspicion that it did was enough to spawn the urge to at least find out. If she discovered it was just … a pow wow or something like that, she could always turn around and come back, hopefully without them noticing she was sticking her nose in where it didn’t belong.