by Denise Lynn
All of this was so foreign to her, so strange. She’d never let a man into her bedroom. She’d never been so swept away by a kiss that she’d lost the ability to think. She’d never met a man who could willingly fill her life force and live.
Never before had she desired, longed for, lusted after a man who possessed an inner strength that was on a level she couldn’t quite understand, and while it excited her, it also frightened her.
Though she could remember the feel of his touch, the taste of his kiss, she couldn’t pull his name from her memories. It was an odd time to ask, but she wanted to know.
Caitlin took a breath, looked at him and asked, “Who are you?”
He tugged on the sheet, dragging it down to her waist, and sat up far enough to slide his tongue along the curve of her breast. “Ladies first.”
She shivered. How many times had he done that the last few days? Caitlin swallowed her moan. Had she enjoyed it as much as she did now? “Caitlin St. George.”
The man froze, his eyes widening for a split second before he moved away from her. His smile faded into a deep, menacing laugh, wiping away her desire to lean in to his caress.
Fear slid in behind her lingering passion, pushing it away, flowing over the warmth to bury it with a cold, foreboding chill. Maybe she should have asked what he was, instead of who.
Before she could part her lips to voice her question, he shifted into the form of a smoky dragon and was gone.
Chapter 2
Dragon’s Lair, Drakes’ Resort
in East Tennessee—today
“Sean, we have a problem.”
Without taking his attention away from the lines of coding on his monitor, Sean reached out to absently hit the button on the intercom. “What now?”
“The security alerts are going insane. Again.”
“Be right there.” He saved the program he’d been debugging, shrugged into his suit jacket and headed out of the private office in his suite.
Sean reminded himself to be patient. Harold was doing the best he could. The security tech had called in sick this morning, and he didn’t have time to sit and watch the monitors himself.
The rest of the family had left for the family’s medieval stronghold on Mirabilus Isle a few days ago, and he wasn’t about to call either of his brothers, or his aunt, home for something this minor. Not when this was the first time since his return they’d left him in complete charge of the Lair.
So when Harold, the family’s right-hand man, sometimes chauffeur, mechanic and occasional handyman, had volunteered to watch the cameras, Sean had accepted his help.
Of course, today was the day when everything that could go wrong, did. Now, for the third time this morning, Sean’s new tweaks to the system were having fits.
Walking into the basement security room, Sean glanced at the half-round bank of monitors. “Which one now?”
“The lobby.” Harold rose and moved out of the inner circle.
Well, at least it wasn’t in the kitchen again. Sean sat down and swiveled the task chair back around to glance at the screen to the lobby.
The temperature bar at the bottom of the monitor was blinking red—something very hot, or on fire, was in the lobby. He knew if he turned the sound on, that the alarm would be barking in time with the blinks.
“I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.” Harold leaned over his shoulder, pointing at the check-in counter. “But it went off when she entered.”
A woman stood at the counter. Either the modified alarm system was a total bust, or it was finally doing its job correctly.
Sean tapped in another view of the counter and cursed softly.
The system was working just as it should—monitoring the temperature of the guests’ bodies and alerting the security staff to the presence of a nonhuman.
She hadn’t changed much since he’d last seen her. A little paler, with lines of distress marring her forehead, making her appear drained and weak. Shadows of worry framed her amber eyes. If anything, her apparent vulnerability made her more enticing now than before. Caitlin St. George—the magic dragon slayer—was checking in to Dragon’s Lair.
When she’d first told him her name, he had gotten the impression that she didn’t realize what her name even meant. But then, since he’d refused her entry into his thoughts, she hadn’t known who, or what, he was, so there’d been no reason for her to put two and two together.
Actually, other than her name—which could be nothing more than a strange coincidence—he’d had no reason to vanish the way he had. Granted, she was a St. George and he a Drake—the dragon slayer and the dragon—but as far as he knew, the days of killing dragons had ended centuries ago.
Yet at hearing her name, something sharp and menacing had poked at his dragon, enraging it beyond reason. So he’d done the only thing he could upon discovering he’d been sleeping with what his beast seemed to distrust—laughed at the complete irony of the situation and then vanished from her life.
What was she doing here at the Lair? Something was obviously wrong. But why would she come to him? After the way he’d deserted her so abruptly, it made no sense for her to be here.
Sean cleared the event from the system and reset the lobby’s alarm. “There you go, Harold. It’s all reset now.”
The man frowned at him and asked, “Who is she?”
He brushed by Harold, answering on his way to the elevator, “An old friend.”
“How old?”
Sean knew what Harold was asking in his roundabout way. He wanted to know if this was someone he’d met during those long, endless months his family all referred to as “Sean’s dark time.”
Knowing Harold wouldn’t like the answer and that the man wouldn’t be able to keep the information to himself, Sean hit the close button on the elevator’s panel and said, “I met her at a bar in town.” It wasn’t exactly a lie—he had met her at a bar, in a town, just not a bar in this town.
Checking his reflection in the smoke-tinted mirrored wall, he straightened his tie and raked his fingers through his hair. Why his appearance mattered was beyond him. It wasn’t as if his beast was going to let either of them remain dressed for long.
Stepping out of the elevator when it stopped a floor above, he crossed the resort’s lobby, almost missing a step as a nearly forgotten bolt of raw lust surged through him, awakening the slumbering dragon within.
He could feel the beast turn its head to stare intently at the woman. He heard the ragged chuff as it picked up her scent and recognized the mate it had hungered for, yet oddly wanted to avoid.
He rolled his neck, fighting the urge to give in to the heated desires washing through him and leaned over the counter next to Caitlin to tell the clerk, “I’ve got this one, Brandy. Give me a suite key on thirteen.” He glanced at the floor, then asked, “Do you have any bags?”
St. George was cool, collected—unlike her response at their last encounter. She didn’t flinch, didn’t even bat an eyelash. However, she stared at him, her eyes shimmering, and swallowed hard, apparently as affected by his presence as he was by hers. “My luggage is in the car. I don’t need a room, but we do need to talk.”
Sean placed the keycard back on the counter and nodded toward the row of elevator doors. “If you’ll follow me?”
She seemed hesitant, not moving until he placed a hand on her shoulder. “Come on, Red, I’d really hate to embarrass both of us right here in the lobby.”
That, too, was a lie. At this minute he didn’t care where they were, or who was around. He wanted nothing more than to shred the clothes from her body with his talons and taste every delectable inch of her naked flesh.
Beneath his touch he felt her flare of lust roar to life, only to cool just as quickly. Sean wasn’t fooled by her controlled disinterest—it was a method of self-preservation that she’d obviously learned, and perfected, during this last year.
Damn shame, actually.
She let him guide her to the elevator. Once the door
slid closed behind them, he moved in, stalking her, backing her into a corner. “Welcome to Dragon’s Lair.”
She pushed against his chest. “I said we need to talk.”
Talking was the furthest thing from his mind. Sean leaned against her, his chest pressing into the softness of her breasts. He narrowed his eyes as the heat of her body drifted into his. “Talk about what?”
“You do remember what I am, don’t you?”
With a soft throaty growl, Sean nodded. “Yeah, mine.”
“Really? Your abrupt departure said the exact opposite. Trust me, I am not yours.”
Sean settled his thighs more firmly against hers and feathered his lips against her neck. “You’ll soon forget that I ever left so hastily.”
Caitlin closed her eyes at the reminder of their last encounter. It had taken days, but eventually all of her memories had flooded back and she’d remembered every second of the time they’d spent in her bed.
She hadn’t been as uninvolved as she’d first hoped. In fact, if her memories were accurate, she’d urged him on a time or three and had begged—begged!—him to stop teasing her, to end his achingly hot torment of her body more than once.
Never before had any man satisfied her so completely—and lived.
Her body seemed to hum as it, too, remembered and hungered for a command performance. She placed her hands flat on his chest, biting back a sigh at the feel of his muscles beneath her palms. “Please.”
He clasped both of her hands with one of his own and dragged them down the length of his chest and past his waist. “You don’t need to beg—at least not right now. We can save that for later.”
When he bent his head to once again feed her shivers with his lips, she turned slightly and sank her fangs into his neck.
He pulled free from her bite, still smiling. “New trick?”
“A gift from my father. You should be grateful that unlike him, I don’t suck blood.”
“Oh, sweetheart, there isn’t anything you could do to me that I wouldn’t like.”
“Sean, please.” She shoved him farther away and paced along the back of the elevator. “I’m not here on a pleasure run. I need your help.”
Her worry settled cold in his blood, effectively cooling the wayward desire. He watched her carefully. Her stride as she paced was brisk and determined. Yet she repeatedly curled and uncurled her fingers while shooting him brief darting glances. Nervousness was mixed in with her worry.
Sean silently swore. How did he so instinctively know that without delving into her mind? What was this thing between them? Why the instant attraction before and again now, and why did he so easily pick up on her moods? And why was his beast so conflicted between desiring her and wanting to tear her to shreds?
The only thing he understood about any of it was that he didn’t like it—at all. It was an interruption in his life that he didn’t need right now. This was something he couldn’t control. And the safety of his family and his own life depended on his ability to control the vile urges demanding their deaths that still haunted him at times.
Without looking, he reached over and hit the stop button. When the elevator bounced gently to a halt, he asked, “I haven’t heard from you in nearly a year, what sort of help do you think I’d be willing to offer?”
She paused to look at him with narrowed eyes. “I gave up trying to contact you after about four months.”
“I never received a call or any other contact from you.”
“If by other contact you mean telepathy, I can’t do that unless I can see you. So summoning you with my mind was out of the question. Since you’d shifted into a dragon, it wasn’t that hard to guess your identity. There aren’t that many dragon clans left, and the way you reacted to hearing my name made it fairly obvious you were a Drake. After that, finding the phone number to Dragon’s Lair was easy.” She resumed pacing, her arms crossed against her body. “Unfortunately, I kept getting the wrong Drake. I spoke to your aunt. The last time I called she told me that you were recently engaged and to leave you alone.” The look she turned on him was frigid. “So I did.”
He felt her rising anger. However, it was nothing compared to his own. Engaged? That was the best Aunt Dani could devise? “When was this?”
Caitlin shook her head and sighed as if bored with this conversation. “The first time was about a month after you disappeared from my bedroom.”
She’d called while he was still debating whether to come home or not. Which explains why he had never received word that she’d called. However, he’d returned to the Lair shortly after that, so why hadn’t his aunt mentioned the calls?
That was something he’d take up with Danielle later.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t living here then.”
“Ah.”
He was taken aback by the shortness of her answer. “I am not engaged.”
She rolled her eyes and shrugged. “That doesn’t matter.”
“What did you—”
She turned to face him, throwing up her hands to stop him from talking. She screamed in frustration and then nearly shouted, “Our son has been kidnapped!”
The beast reared back and growled with enough force to send him stumbling backward. The growl turned menacing as it vibrated inside his chest. Between that unexplained bout of temper and the sudden roaring in his ears, he wasn’t certain he’d heard her correctly. After taking a deep breath and shaking his head, he asked, “Our what?”
“Son. Our son.”
“That isn’t possible.”
“Yes,” she shot back. “It is possible.” She covered her face with a shaking hand for a second before adding, “I don’t have the time, nor the inclination, for this.”
He repeated, “It’s not possible.” He would have known. The beast should have known. This woman had been marked as its mate, why hadn’t the beast known, or at least sensed this had happened?
“Damn it!” she yelled. “Do you think I sleep with so many men that I don’t know who the father of my child is?”
“No.” His mind swirled with an effort to make sense of this. First, however, he needed to defuse her anger before she managed to give the beast a reason to be uncontrollably enraged. “That isn’t what I meant. Calm down. Give me a minute to—”
“Would you like a calculator?” She jerked her purse from her shoulder, rummaged inside and slapped her smartphone against his chest. “Here. We were together a little over a year ago. He’s three months old. You do the math.”
Sean cursed and pushed the phone aside. “I assumed you were on the pill.”
Not only was it lame, it was the flimsiest excuse he’d ever used. Especially since he knew what her response would be.
“Oh, of course you did. And I suppose you also assumed that human birth control pills would somehow be effective?”
He closed his eyes at the expected reply. He’d never had to worry about any type of danger inherent with spur-of-the-moment sex, since his beast had the uncanny ability to sense when something wasn’t quite right and would steer him away from the encounter. As for birth control—his brothers had assured him that it was a nonissue since he could only impregnate his...mate.
Sean wanted to kick himself. Once they’d walked into her bedroom he’d been so wrapped up in lust, need, desire and her that he’d never given a second thought to the fact his dragon had marked this female at the bar. How had he let himself get so out of touch with reality? It wasn’t as if he could blame the alcohol—he’d only had two beers. Regardless, intoxication wasn’t an acceptable excuse for anything. Especially not for this.
Caitlin dropped the phone back inside her purse, and then she grasped the lapels of his suit jacket. “I don’t care if you believe me or not. I know he’s your son, and he’s in danger.”
Sean looked down at her as he willed the snarling dragon to calm down enough for him to think. “I never said I didn’t believe you.”
“He’s just a baby.” Tears welled in her eyes. Her chin qui
vered. “Please, help me.”
He could hear the beast’s roar in his ears, saw it thrash back and forth in his mind. The dragon was feeling trapped and angry, but the woman in front of him was afraid and worried. His beast would soon get over its hissy fit. However, Caitlin couldn’t be expected to do the same. He stroked her cheek and brushed away a falling tear. “Yes. Of course I will.”
She fell against his chest with a cry. “Thank you.”
Ignoring a sudden bout of heartburn caused by the dragon’s displeasure with this entire situation, Sean restarted the elevator and then, against his better judgment, he wrapped his arms around her. “It’ll be fine. We’ll get him back safely. Have the kidnappers asked for a ransom?”
She nodded against his chest.
“That’s good. Money isn’t an obstacle.”
“The ransom isn’t money.”
The kidnapper didn’t want money? Then what was the demand? “So you’ve talked to the kidnapper?”
The elevator doors whooshed open, and Caitlin stepped out of his embrace. She shrugged one shoulder and then said, “In a manner of speaking, yes.”
Sean frowned at her elusive answer. “My suite is right around the corner. We can talk there.”
He escorted her down the hallway in silence. Once inside his apartment suite, Sean crossed the living room to open the sliding door to the balcony. A blast of cool, late-autumn air flowed into the suite. He breathed in deeply, hoping the crispness of the air would help to quell the uneasiness in his chest.
Stepping away from the door, he motioned Caitlin toward the sofa. “Would you like something to drink?”
She shook her head as she settled into a corner of the couch.
Instead of taking a seat himself, he perched on the arm of the chair across the room from her. “Why don’t you start at the beginning.”
