She pushed it aside and felt her hips protest. She was still wearing the red dress that Clary had stuffed her into, but the night was a blur. No matter how much she tried, she couldn’t remember what happened after she’d left the man at the bar.
Her heart thumped and panic rose inside of her. Had her drink been spiked? It would explain the fuzzy memories, but she didn’t know why her hips hurt the way they did. The panic created a lump in her throat. Tears burned her eyes. She wrapped her arms around herself.
Someone had put a drug into her drink and kidnapped her. She prayed that nothing else had happened while she’d been out, but she had no way of knowing. That terrified her.
The sound of footsteps approaching made fear rush through her. The door ahead of her cracked open and she instinctually scrambled to the head of the mattress. The man from the bar appeared in the doorway, his hair mussed with a mug in one hand and a white bottle in the other. She stared at the bottle, fearing that he was going to try to drug her again. Fear wasn’t going to get her out of here alive, she told herself.
“You’re awake,” he said with clear surprise. “You must feel like absolute shit.”
“Where am I?” Her voice trembled despite her attempt to control her fear.
“You’re at my home,” he said, softly. “Would you like a cup of coffee? I also brought some pain killers. Nothing strong, just the stuff you can get at any drug store.”
She shook her head. She pulled the blanket over herself as though it was some kind of shield. He ran a hand through his mussed hair. She realized at this point that he wasn’t wearing a shirt.
“Oh, right. You have to be really confused right now.” The man sat down on the floor across from her. “My name is Wesley, if that helps you at all. Wesley Taniff. We met last night.”
“I remember that,” Dakota snapped.
He nodded, surprisingly patient with her. “After you accused me of lying you went to your friend’s table and took her drink from her. I think one of the men she was flirting with had spiked her drink. Instead of giving up, one of the men took advantage of the situation and carried you out of the bar. I found him…” She watched his jaw clench as he looked past her. He was angry, she thought. “I found him… trying to hurt you. I put an end to it, but I didn’t know where to take you that you would be safe other than here.”
“And where is here?” Dakota asked nervously. She glanced around again, taking in the cozy setting that the room really was. It would have been a lovely place had she come in on her own terms. Now, she marked where the door was, where the windows were and readied her body to run. Still, a little voice in the back of her mind told her that there was no threat. It whispered to her that she was as safe as she would ever be.
“This is my home,” he said before standing. His jaw was still clenched tight and he fisted a hand in his hair. She noticed that he fought to look anywhere but at her.
“What is wrong with you?” Dakota asked, inching forward, off the bed.
He closed his eyes before turning to her. When they opened again, they were no longer the soft blue that had entranced her the night before. Instead, she looked into golden eyes, the pupils narrowed into slits. He dragged in a breath through his nose.
Dakota’s blood ran cold. She couldn’t be here. This was absolutely the last thing that she needed. Her future was ruined. Once she set foot out of here, the school would have her on a plane back home and her grant to study abroad would be lost.
Her life was over.
His eyes changed again. The gold swirled away and the blue flooded back in. The tension that had been gripping his jaw dissipated and a look of concern flashed over his face. He stepped forward before stopping himself.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said, his voice unusually small.
“You don’t understand,” Dakota snapped. “Do you have any regard for the lives of others? What you’ve done has ruined my life.”
“I saved you from being hurt, from being used and left in an alley,” he roared.
Dakota didn’t flinch. She didn’t back down. She stared the man that was really a dragon in the eye. Anger burned inside of her. It consumed her, a better feeling than the lost desperation that had flooded her a second ago. She wanted to be angry at this beautiful man, Wesley, as he called himself.
Instead of arguing, he took the wind out of her sails by spinning around. He left, slamming the door behind him. She was suddenly alone in the room. She let herself fall down onto the mattress. She hadn’t believed that dragons liked to kidnap women. She thought of the dragon that she’d run across the day before; how playful it had seemed. She hadn’t been afraid of that dragon, hadn’t thought that it would run off with her. It had made her stupid. That dragon had come back for her.
Her eyes fell on her small purse, leaning carefully against the side of the bed. She reached down and found that her cell phone was still inside of it. If she really had been kidnapped, wouldn’t he have taken her cell phone? It seemed logical. Why would he have left it with her?
There were several messages and missed calls waiting for her when she punched the home button. Nearly all of them were from her new roommate, Clary. They told a story of how Clary realized the man she intended to bring back from the dorm had been a sleaze ball. The man had tried to push her into a cab with him and she very luckily managed to score a well-placed kick before running to safety. Her roommate asked where she was, expressing concern because she realized that her drink had been drugged.
She opened a message to reply to her roommate. Once her fingers hovered over the screen, she realized that she may have over reacted. Wesley hadn’t lied to her about how he’d found her, how he’d rescued her. The night may have been a blur to her, but now she knew there was a reason why. She remembered grabbing Clary’s nearly full drink and throwing it back.
Instead of asking for help, she told her roommate that she was safe and okay. She moved on to the messages from her mother. What would Bea think if she knew where her daughter currently was? Her mother would lose her mind. She sent her mother a vague update, leaving out many of the large events of the day before.
After the messages were sent, she sat on the edge of the mattress and stared at the screen. If she called for help now, the school would know where she’d been. They would know who she had been with. Dakota found that not only did she not want to lose her chance to study abroad, but she didn’t want Wesley to get into trouble.
So, she tucked the phone back into her purse and stood up.
Chapter Nine
Wes had hardly been able to control himself in that room. Just the sight of her on his bed had drove him mad. Without the band of silver to drive his dragon back, the beast inside of him roared to claim the young woman as his own. He demanded that Wes take her at once, to make her scream their name, to mark her as theirs.
He worried that he knew exactly what was wrong. If he learned anything from her fear it was that she did not feel the same way about him. The moment that she had learned what he really was he had smelled her spike of fear. She practically scrambled away from him. In a flash, that fear turned into anger that he did not understand. She directed it at him and it stabbed him through the heart.
Using what little control, he had left, he forced himself out of the room. He couldn’t bear to feel his mate’s wrath.
Mate.
That was the only explanation for the emotions that he was feeling. A growl rumbled through him. His mate had nearly been raped and he hadn’t killed the man responsible. It was tempting to give her space and go back into the city to hunt the man down. He shook his head.
Inside of him, his beast agreed. His beast wanted blood or sex.
Not right now. We need to convince her to trust us.
Wes went outside to his work space. The pieces of the bed frame he had been working on the day before lay in a pile. It was a project that he didn’t foresee truly needing when he worked on it. The project had only been a way to busy his
hands while his mind went off on its own path. Now, he looked down at it and he yearned to see Dakota laying beneath the branches.
Which, he may never actually be able to do. She likely hated him for whatever reason she felt she couldn’t share. It was likely that she would only come down from his room to ask him to take her back. And he would. He would do whatever she asked. He only wanted her happiness, even if that meant a life without him.
He gripped a piece of metal. The beast inside of him lashed his tail at the idea of giving up their mate. Behind him a shelf of tools clattered to the floor. He heard the crack of the wall breaking. Beneath his hand, the metal started to melt. He was about to turn and throw it when a small voice startled him.
He spun to find Dakota standing in the doorway to his workspace. She was barefoot and her hair was mussed as she leaned in the doorway. Inside, his beast growled appreciatively. The urge to take her into his arms was overwhelming. The beast pushed him forward, but he tried to hold his ground.
“I may have over reacted earlier,” she said, looking at the ground. “You have to understand why I was so angry. I wasn’t mad that you saved me from a dangerous situation. In fact, I’m forever in your debt.”
“It was no problem,” he choked out.
She raised a hand for him to stop. “I am a student at the University. Their policy for students from abroad states that if any foreign student is so much as sighted by a dragon, they are to be sent back home. They take dragons very seriously. The fact that I’m here…”
Her voice trailed off, the fiery emotion from earlier dying with barely a fizzle. He hadn’t known. He had no idea that he was risking something that she seemed to hold so dear. He knew someone that could help, should it come down to that. He wasn’t about to admit to anyone that he left the territory last night. Not if there was any other way to help her.
Dakota looked up at him finally. “I guess, since I didn’t know what you were at the bar last night, people aren’t likely to recognize you if you take me back. I should be… I should be okay.”
Wes let go of the breath he hadn’t realized that he was holding.
Never let her go. The beast whispered demands into his mind. Wes swallowed hard.
“Would you like breakfast first?”
She looked up at him, his heart stopping for a brief moment, and nodded. She would stay just a little while longer. Maybe he could earn her trust over pancakes and bacon. The least he could do was learn more about her. Just because his beast had laid claim to the woman didn’t mean that mates were always compatible. His great uncle had loved an evil woman and when her evil deeds got her killed, it had driven him mad.
If this woman wasn’t the love of his life, then maybe letting her go was best for both of them. Inside of his head, his beast thrashed with an intensity that made his skull throb. It was almost unbearable. The beast urged him toward Dakota, urged him to take the woman in his arms and press her against the wall.
“Are you alright?” she asked, her hands touching his arms.
He looked up and gave her a lopsided smile and watched her face falter. His pants grew tight when he realized what kind of effect he had on her. “Just a splitting headache is all.”
“I thought that your kind were damn near impervious to everything.”
“Not to silly girls who can’t make up their minds on how they feel,” he teased.
Her lips curved into a frown and she slapped his arm, but he could see the spark that was in her eye. This close, he wanted to lean forward and take a deep breath of her. The smell of irises was driving him mad. Instead, he reached out and ran his fingers through a knot in her hair, detangling the strands. They felt like silk over his skin.
She froze for a second and the air between them was charged. His heart thumped inside his chest. It would take little effort to capture her chin in his hands and press his lips to hers. Would they feel soft and pliant? Or would she be filled with fire?
Before he could decide, she ducked away from him. She wrapped her arms around herself and turned back toward his tower. Inside his head, his beast thrashed once more. The metal pieces of the bed rattled beside him.
Before his beast could do any more damage to his work space, he followed Dakota back to the tower. Inside, she stood in the center of the room, her arms still wrapped around her body. She looked around nervously. Wes realized that she was still wearing the meager dress from the night before. While it wasn’t too cold outside, the stone of the tower made his home chill.
“I’ll start a fire then grab you some clothes. I don’t think anything I own will fit you properly, but it will cover you much better than that little slip of nothing does.”
She turned slowly. “I appreciate it.”
Wes didn’t tell her that the idea of her wearing his clothes made him hard. Instead, he quickly turned away from her to hide his growing cock and set about getting a fire going in the hearth. He didn’t know how she was going to feel about it, but using his breath was the quickest way possible to get a reliable fire going. He hunched over and felt the fire stirring inside of him. How it didn’t burn his human body from the inside out was beyond him. He didn’t look at things too closely. He tended to try to enjoy what life had to offer.
Like the woman standing behind him. He would enjoy every inch of her. The fire in his stomach bubbled up through his throat and blasted into the stack of kindling and logs. Behind him, Dakota let out a small gasp. Slowly, he turned around so as to not scare her. She was standing, staring with wide eyes at him. The look on her face was one that was more wonder than anything else.
“Well, that is a nifty trick,” she said to cover her awe.
Wes couldn’t help but laugh. He twisted, grabbing an ottoman and pulling it in front of the flames. “Sit. I’ll bring you back some clothing.”
She brushed past him to sit on the threadbare ottoman. The beast inside of him lurched, pushing him closer to her. He stumbled. She turned, attempting to catch him by putting her hands on his chest. His body collided with hers.
“Still trying to throw yourself at me?” she asked and let out a small, nervous laugh.
“It’s a bit hard to explain,” he said as he looked down at the woman. His arm moved to hold her almost reflexively. She was small in the circle of his body. His mouth moved while he tried to find the right words to give her an explanation to what she’d fallen into, but came up with nothing. “I’ll be right back.”
Wes pushed himself away from her despite the roar of the beast inside of him. It roared and thrashed for their mate, but Wes had to remind the beast that she didn’t trust them. They had to win her over, little by little, in order to have a real bond. He didn’t want this sudden claiming to drive a wedge of resentment between them.
In his room, the smell of her skin had touched everything. It sank into the sheets thrown across his bed. He would sleep in his own room for the first time in months if only to smell her each night. It drove him mad, knowing that it would fade with time. Quickly, he snatched a tee shirt and a pair of sweats from his dresser. He almost didn’t want to cover her beautiful legs, but he knew she would be cold if he brought down shorts.
***
Dakota let herself fall onto the ottoman that he’d pulled out for her. Her heart was racing inside her chest. She’d pulled all the snark she had to keep him from knowing just how he affected her. More than once she’d thought about touching the planes of his chest and letting her hands run lower. She told herself that she was losing it. Was it the remnants of the drug in her system that was making her act so unlike herself?
Distantly, she heard his heavy footfalls coming down the stone stairs. His soft, blue eyes fell on her and lit up with joy. Probably because she hadn’t tried running away. He handed her a lump of fabric that she assumed was clothing and directed her to the door to her left, telling her that it was a bathroom.
Keeping her eyes lowered, she took the offered clothing and ducked into the bathroom. A clawfoot tub that could have e
asily fit two people, or maybe just Wesley, sat before a stained-glass window that depicted a dragon flying over a castle. The light coming in through the window cast dazzling colors about the room. It was beautiful and serene.
Dakota set aside her borrowed clothing and reached to pull the zipper on the back of her dress. Her shoulders barked in protest. No matter how she reached, the zipper remained out of her grasp. Her muscles throbbed with the effort. She fell onto the toilet lid and felt her eyes burn with tears of frustration.
No, she would not cry. She swallowed and looked to the door. There was another option, she told herself. She could be an adult and ask for help. There was nothing wrong with that.
Chapter Ten
She shoved herself up and opened the door. Wesley was no longer in the living area. The fire burned and crackled without him. Watching him create the fire had been a breathtaking experience. It had defied all forms of science. It should have terrified her, but instead, she was awed.
Distantly, she heard noise coming from around the curve of the hearth. She followed the sound and found herself in a small kitchen. Wesley stood with his back to her. She watched the muscles of his back flex and dance as he carefully chopped potatoes. She could have done it all day, mesmerized by muscles she hadn’t even known existed.
His head shot up and he turned around. Dakota squirmed, wondering how he’d known that she was there. Could he smell her? Did she smell awful? She resisted the urge to lift her arm and sniff. She could do that in the bathroom later.
“You didn’t change,” he said. His voice sounded strained, like his throat was tight.
“I, uh, can’t seem to reach the zipper.” She pointed redundantly at the back of her dress. “Do you mind helping me?”
Wesley shook his head. His long legs closed the space between them in a few steps. She turned, her heart thumping inside of her rib cage. She swore that it was only moments from spreading wings and flying around the first floor of the tower. She felt the soft tug of his fingers when he found the zipper pull. Her breath caught in her throat.
The Dragon's Woman (Elemental Dragons Book 3) Page 18
