The Seven: Four tales of passion, danger and love

by Ciana Stone

  Nyah.

  Longing and loss swelled inside Grace. Nyah had created her and then abandoned her, leaving her to discover what the dragon would do to her and who she could become because of it.

  “Take off your coat,” he said again.

  “Who are you?”

  “Walker.”

  “Just Walker?” She stalled, despite the sudden insistence of her body to be divested of the garments covering her.

  “Ellis Walker. I go by Walker. And you?”

  “G̶race. Jennings.”

  “Take off the coat, Grace Jennings.”

  This time the lure of his voice could not be denied. She peeled off the coat and let it fall to the floor.

  “Turn.”

  Grace executed a slow turn, and when she faced him again, looked up, meeting his eyes.

  “Where did you get that?” he asked.

  “A woman. Nyah. You?”

  “Orelia.”

  Disappointment flared inside her. He’d not been inked by Nyah. There was no connection she could follow to find the woman who had changed her life.

  A look of something akin to pain crossed Ellis Walker’s handsome face. Grace moved toward him without thinking, reaching out to place her hand on his chest, on the side of the dragon’s face.

  Another mistake. She literally felt the skin beneath her hand grow scaled and hot. Her eyes shot up to his and this time, the heat within them was all flame.

  Grace knew instinctively that she had to move away. Break the connection. Run. This man was dangerous. Feelings were fighting to claim her—hunger, the desire to rip the rest of the clothes from his body and feast on him sexually.

  She felt it as if she were being invaded by it. The skin of her body bearing the wings of the dragons abruptly pulsed, a bright searing pain that had her crying out. Walker’s hands moved to take hold of her waist and the pain blossomed like a radiant explosion into agony. She had no control. Her arms flew out wide, her back and neck arched against the anguish. She felt something tear from her body, a swift rip that sent white hot shards of pain lancing through her.

  She thought she cried out, but could not be sure because almost before the sensation crested something washed over it, eclipsing the pain with something far more powerful.

  Pleasure. Intense, astonishing pleasure.

  And something else. The feel of new appendages. She knew without having to see that the wings from her dragon were now hers. She could feel them, feel the connection of muscle and bone, feel the air as her wings rose behind her.

  Grace looked up to meet Ellis’s eyes and saw the scales that had formed around his eyes and along the curve of his jaw. She saw the shock on his face, followed quickly by a brief flare of pain.

  The wings caressing his torso separated from his body, taking on depth and form, unfurling and rising. He was magnificent. Power rolled off him, filling her senses, her mind. She felt herself—the woman she knew as Grace—slipping away and that shot her with panic.

  She reached for him, needing something to anchor her to reality, something to keep her from slipping away in favor of whatever was trying to claim her.

  Walker knew what was happening to her. It was obviously new to her, the awakening as he’d come to think of it—that moment when the dragon took on life. It was disconcerting to say the least. Overpowering.

  He remembered the first time it had happened to him. It’d scared him more than anything that had ever happened. He’d thought he was dying, falling into oblivion.

  But oblivion was not where the transformation took you. It wasn’t being taken over—it was being merged. Merged with something of power, strength and abilities almost unimaginable.

  He felt that now but this time there was something new. Need. Searing, demanding need. For her.

  Walker knew it was the call of the dragon, not the man. The dragon within Grace beckoned and Walker felt himself losing the battle to resist.

  Her eyes changed, becoming hooded with lust, with irises the color of flame. Delicate scales with an iridescent gleam like firelight covered her forehead and the sides of her face, the disfigurement an amazing and otherworldly enhancement.

  “I’m sorry.” It was all he managed to say before he pulled her to him, claiming her lips.

  Walker knew better than to believe he could override the power that gripped him. He was not yet able to hold sway over the power of the dragon. It could propel him into a building that was an inferno of death, or over the side of a building in a freefall that should spell certain doom.

  And right now it drove him to mate. He fought it with everything he had, and even felt like he was holding it at bay.

  Then she moaned into his mouth.

  That did it. All control fled. It defied description. All he knew for sure was once the sound emerged from her, he was consumed with need so strong that all traces of civility and reason were stripped from him.

  Grace had one fleeting thought to flee. Then he seized her breasts in his big hard hands and squeezed them. Not hard enough to hurt, but definitely hard enough to deliver a thrill and a promise of pain.

  A yearning jabbed her in the gut. Something primitive and powerful claimed control, demanding obedience. She involuntarily moaned and he released her breasts to yank her to him.

  That hard mass he crushed against her pelvis shattered what remaining defense she had against the relentless hunger that battered. With a low sound in her throat that was part growl and part moan, she slipped a hand inside his fly and wrapped her hand around him. Hot, hard. Ready.

  Walker waltzed her backwards, pressing his thick chest against her to pin her to the wall. She knew what was coming. Some part of her wanted to put up a fight, but Walker twined his fingers with hers and forced her hands out wide, grinding them into the sheetrock and pinning her to the wall.

  He moved his mouth to her neck, biting and sucking. “Come on,” she urged with a pelvic tilt that pushed him some.

  His lips glistened with something dark when he pulled away to look down at her. He licked his bottom lip.

  “Make room for me.”

  With her eyes locked with his, she spread her thighs. He released one of her hands so that he could move his hand to cup her sex.

  “Mmm. Wet. I like that.” He tore the G-string away.

  Grace would have replied, or at least grunted, at least if her brain had been able to process. Right now it was focused on the fireworks bursting behind her eyelids when she blinked. Walker’s middle finger circled her, just rough enough to have her panting. When she sensed him about to slide his finger in, she bucked and took him up to the knuckle.

  “Whoa, babe,” he growled against her throat. “Slow down.”

  “Fuck slow.” Christ, was that her voice? She didn’t know. He stole more than a few heartbeats when he started thrusting in and out, quick and hard. Whoa. The guy had serious aim. Her abs burned from matching his cadence but she didn’t care.

  The burn intensified. So did the speed. She heard herself scream like a banshee, bump her head back against the wall and dig her fingernails into the top of his shoulder.

  “Oh, damn, damn, Walker. Walker.” She panted his name, which seemed to fuel his rhythm.

  He growled and crushed her mouth under his.

  She gasped when he abruptly abandoned her sex. “What—”

  For the life of her, she couldn’t form another word. Walker snaked an arm behind one of her knees and hoisted her up against him as if she weighed nothing. He pinned her once more against the wall. Hard.

  She had barely enough time to grab hold of his neck before he curled his spine. Normally when a guy first entered, he went at it like he’d either forgotten how or was afraid he might hurt her. Not this man.

  He took her the way she wanted. Like a man who knew exactly what he was doing. He rodeoed her up higher against the wall so he could tilt his pelvis underneath. Then he took her.

  Once, twice, three times, he rammed himself in to the hilt. With his chest
crushed against hers, she wasn’t going anywhere. Not that she wanted to. Grace wrapped her legs around his waist and rode.

  Breaths whooshed out of her shallow and fast, pushed out of her by Walker’s muscled torso and his ferocious hip-work. His thighs pumped like pistons as he took her. Hard. Fast.

  Grace kept her legs locked around his middle like a bear trap, one hand digging into the top of his shoulder and the other curled into his skull, fingernails digging in at his nape.

  She felt every nerve-ending in her body about to be set on fire. With his thick shaft and the angle, she was stretched to the limit. Still he pounded away.

  “Don’t…stop.” Her growl seemed to have the same effect a red cape did to a bull.

  He hammered so hard the wall shook behind her back. Her head banged back and sheetrock dust floated down. Walker widened his stance, grabbed her butt in two clawed and scaled hands

  “Grace,” he snarled in a voice that no longer sounded fully human. “Grace. Grace. Grace.”

  The utterance of her name became a metronome to his thrusts. He pushed. Deep. Deeper. She took. Damn, she took and wanted more.

  And then there it was. The abyss. That place where nothing mattered because there wasn’t anything else in the world she wanted but this moment.

  Oh god, take me there.

  He did.

  She felt his muscular shoulder twitch, felt the grips on her ass dig in painfully deep. Not that she cared. Not one little bit.

  Take me there.

  “Ahhh.” His voice was the roar of a beast, his great wings rising behind him while fire flamed around them.

  Fire, sweat and juices connected them, linked them. With a shove that must have rattled every table in the bar, he roared his climax.

  And she fell. Plummeting in a freefall that was nothing less than bliss.

  After a few moments, he slackened his tempo, lengthened the pushes to take her slow while she squeezed her inner muscles around him, milked him.

  The second orgasm hit without warning.

  “Ohhh…ohhh…”

  He drowned the rest, stole it with his mouth against hers, his tongue doing wonders and his teeth serious damage. Her lips throbbed and burned. Both sets.

  Slowly, by one small increment at a time, he lowered her so that she could unlink her feet and put one down. He kept one of her legs tucked under an elbow.

  A long kiss later, he bit her bottom lip, sucked at it, then released both her mouth and her leg. Wetness dribbled down her thighs when Walker pulled out.

  Grace watched in surprise as his wings receded, folding down into position and once again melding with his body to be nothing more than ink on skin.

  She felt her own wings contract, merging back into her body. Walker kept his eyes on her, an unreadable expression on his face.

  “Well," she said, feeling acutely uncomfortable now that the power of the dragon had receded. “What now?”

  He shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me. Jesus!”

  “What?”

  She followed the direction of his eyes. Holy mother of god. What had they done? The room was destroyed. The walls, ceiling and floor were scorched and blackened, the table and lone chair in the room nothing now but a smoldering pile of rubble, along with their clothes.

  How the hell had that happened?

  Her eyes returned to his. “We’re never going to explain this.”

  He looked around. “Is there a way out we won’t be spotted?”

  Grace shook her head, then brightened and gestured to a door on the opposite wall. “Yes, there’s a window in the bathroom. We can get out.”

  “Then let’s go.” Walker started in the direction of the private restroom.

  “Wait.” Her voice stopped him and he turned to look at her.

  “What?”

  Her hands made a sweeping motion indicating her state of dress—or undress, as the case was. “We can’t exactly run around naked.”

  Walker gave her a smile. “We don’t have to. We just have to get outside, then we can fly.”

  “Fly?” Her voice was little more than a squeak.

  “Yeah, fly.”

  Grace stood there for a moment, feeling like the proverbial deer in the headlights of an oncoming car. Finally she snapped out of it. “Fuck it, let’s do it.”

  “That a girl.”

  She followed him into the bathroom and watched as he basically pounded the window out of the wall with his fists. Thankfully, it was not high off the floor. He went through and a couple of seconds later, she heard him. “Come on. It’s clear.”

  Grace climbed on top of the toilet and grabbed the window ledge, grateful she was limber enough to hold onto the top of the opening and swing her legs through. Walker caught her as she slipped through.

  “Now what?”

  “Like I said, we fly.”

  “And how, exactly do we do that?”

  He grinned and all at once, her world tilted crazily. His face elongated and distorted, scaled skin forming. It took a split second for her mind to register what was happening, but even realization didn’t ease the shock when there was no longer a man standing before her.

  The reality of it hit her as the dragon stood before her. He really is a dragon! That thought delivered a stiff enough mental punch that consciousness fled.

  Walker caught her when her eyes rolled back in her head and her body went limp. He had no idea where she lived, no clue where to take her. So he did the only thing he could think of.

  He took her home with him.

  Chapter Five

  Grace jerked awake. What met her eyes had fear spiking. Where was she? A soft knitted throw covered her naked body and the sofa she lay on was deeply padded and comfortable, a warm brown microfiber material.

  The room was not big, and not overpopulated with furniture, but arranged in a pleasing manner. Decorated with abstract art in varying earth tones, the room blended into a harmonious whole that spelled warmth. Home.

  She wrapped the throw around her as she rose and wandered to the door. It opened up onto a fair-sized front porch that appeared to run the length of the house.

  A framed opening on the wall adjacent to the front door displayed the kitchen. Grace made her way to the sink and looked out the back window at the small back yard. Tall oaks provided shade and a fence circled the yard.

  Grace looked around, spotted the coffee pot and noticed that a note was propped in front of a cup.

  Gone to get my truck. Be back soon. There are clothes on the dryer you can wear. Help yourself to coffee. Walker.

  And thanks for the mind-blowing, burn down the house sex. She thought with a whiff of annoyance, but brushed it aside and went in search of the clothes mentioned in the note.

  She expected to find a woman’s clothes on the dryer. Instead was a pair of gym shorts and a T-shirt. She hurriedly dressed, rolling the waistband of the shorts over four times to keep them from slipping off.

  Grace poured herself a cup of coffee and wandered out back onto the deck. There were two wicker chairs with cushions and a small metal table between. She took a seat and sipped at the coffee.

  Last night was off the charts crazy. Almost unbelievable. Just thinking about what she’d done with Walker had heat rising in her body and her dragon twitching. God almighty, that was beyond anything she ever imagined. She wasn’t a novice to orgasms, but what she’d experienced with him was something in a class by itself.

  And he could transform. Completely. From man to dragon. God, did that mean she could? She’d spouted wings for crying at loud. The thought made goosebumps rise on her flesh, excitement battling fear and disbelief.

  What if she really could become a dragon? What if she could truly fly?

  A sound from one of the oaks had her looking up. It took her a second before she spotted it—an enormous golden eagle was perched in the upper branches. It gave another call and she looked in the direction its head turned.

  Next door a small black puppy dug frantic
ally at the dirt along the base of the chain-link fence that separated the yards. It was well on its way to having an escape route. Grace watched it for a few seconds. At the rate it was going, it would dig its way free before long.

  The sound of a man’s voice had her gaze moving to the back of the neighboring house. “Phobos! Here. Phobos!”

  Rather than heed the call of the man, the puppy dug more frantically. Grace chuckled as the puppy flattened out and started squeezing through the hole.

  “Phobos, no!” The man shouted as the puppy made a beeline for Walker’s deck.

  Grace got up and walked down the two steps to the grass. The puppy wiggled, barked, and jumped up on her legs. She bent down and scooped it up, laughing as it practically crawled up her chest to lick her face.

  She started for the fence, her attention on the puppy more than the man who approached from the neighboring yard. When she reached the fence, she stopped to look at the man.

  Her heart nearly stopped.

  It was him. The man from that night. The night she met Nyah. The man who kissed her.

  “We meet again,” he said with a sensual smile that called to her with uncomfortable power.

  Despite the power in his eyes, she held his gaze. “Who are you?”

  He ignored the question. “She cannot be trusted, Grace. She’ll destroy you and never blink. Please, it’s not too late. Let me help you.”

  Grace clutched the puppy to her chest, its whimpers making her loathe to return it. “You’re crazy.”

  He shook his head. “Am I? Is it crazy that I know right now you wonder if perhaps I am telling the truth? Maybe you should have gone with me that night in the storm. Maybe you made the wrong choice. Maybe it’s exciting to be part dragon, but also terrifying. Maybe this man whose dragon nature calls to you fills a need, but maybe he will be your undoing. Maybe the attraction you feel for me right now is as strong as that you have for him. Maybe you fear that if I touched you, you would succumb.”

  Grace felt sweat trickle down her back, fear twist her gut. The sudden insistent call of the eagle and a yelp from the puppy added to her panic and had her backing away from the fence. “No, you’re wrong. About all of it. Wrong. Stay away from me.”