“Not in my line of work. You, yourself, a former Roman warrior, are older than dirt. Besides, humans tend to name their children after parents and grandparents. Zachary is Bronte’s nephew; they inherited the building from another Zachary Tucker, likely a son or grandson of the man who rebuilt the place. You’re too suspicious.”
Of a cat, he thought. “I’ve been locked in the body of a dragon for centuries, looked after by a white witch, stalked by an evil witch. Suspicious? Me?”
“Bronte is also suspicious,” Vivica said. “Do you think she’ll buy into your dragon background? Seriously?”
“Your point?” Darkwyn asked, slipping stacks of black jeans and T-shirts into his duffel bag.
Vivica handed him an open book. “You haven’t learned enough, yet, not to stumble over your own weird truth. Knowledge would make you less clumsy about your past.”
Darkwyn zipped his bag. “With age comes wisdom?”
“One can only hope.”
“I already have enough wisdom to wonder why Bronte doesn’t have a man.” A grating unease ran through him. “She’s too beautiful not to have a protector.”
“I would have told you if she did when you claimed her as your heart mate. By the way, never call yourself her protector. She would be insulted on so many levels. Having a protector is, in some cultures, the mark of a kept woman.”
“I intend to keep her.”
“You tread dangerously. At least learn about how to treat a woman of today.” Vivica handed him the right DVD, and he took it.
Vivica nodded her approval. “Bronte is free to be yours, if she wishes.”
“She does.” Truth was, he did not know as much as he should, but he planned on-the-job training. Yes, he read every night, quite fast, and found pleasure in what he learned in those books. Computer lessons, not so much. “I will catch up with your culture in my own way in my own time.”
Vivica raised her hands in defeat. “What are you planning?” she asked. “I can practically see your mind racing.”
“Does that mean thinking while running?”
“Darkwyn, you need enough knowledge to get past your own weird truth. You’re scaring me. Leave too soon and someone could get hurt.”
“I will apply wisdom to new and old truths.”
“I mean that Zachary or Bronte could get hurt, because of what you do not know.”
“I would never let that happen.”
“I don’t worry about you. You have the strength of ten, heightened hearing and sight, the powers to heal, read minds, and shape-shift, to flee skyward in an extreme emergency. Mind you, try to fly, and you’ll be shot down like a UFO, but that’s beside the point. I’m not sure you would know how to stop if your inner dragon took control, though you do have a keen instinctual insight.”
“Exactly. I sense when someone’s in trouble. Bronte is in trouble.”
“I won’t argue that. What other lessons do you take with you?”
“The basics to live by on this plane. I liked biology, especially the reproductive system, but not theory. I need hands-on experience.” He opened and closed his fists like claws.
She swatted his arm. “You’re such a man.”
Puck made a clucking sound from his cage. “Bronte practice. Grab, grab, grab. Kiss, kiss, kiss.” He squawked in the trumpeting way that announced a pending quote. “Weakness: Certain primal powers of a Tyrant Woman wherewith she holds dominion over the male of her species binding him to the service of her will and paralyzing his rebellious energies.”
Vivica gave the bird a thumbs-down and turned her back on his cage, brow raised. “The cock’s opinionated.”
Darkwyn scoffed. “Do humans eat parrot?”
Puck squawked. “Well shut my mouth!”
Vivica opened his portfolio. “Incredible, you aced the art course. These pictures—Whoa. Provocative. Bronte in a red corset dress, a black mini.”
“I copied them from her website. It says she’s the ‘Vampiress’ who runs Drak’s.”
“True.” Vivica shuffled through his sketches. “You didn’t get these off her website.”
He snatched them from her hand. “Sorry, no. Those came straight from my imagination.”
“She’s nearly wearing clothes, but I can see how you’d get there so fast. Her costume is meant to draw customers, and yes, those customers are mostly male. Do you think you can watch Bronte interact with other men who enjoy her body as much as you do? They ogle her, you know.”
“ ‘Ogle’? I have to look that up. Is it sexual?”
“Almost. Stay a few more days, Darkwyn. Read a dictionary or ten. What’s the rush?”
“Bronte’s in danger.”
“From what? Her customers? Outside sources?”
“I wish I knew.”
“Know your friends and enemies. Did you open this DVD on vampires and witches?”
He packed that lesson as well.
“Witch,” Puck said. “An ugly and repulsive old woman, in a wicked league with the devil.”
Vivica gasped. “Shut it bird before I roast you on a spit, or worse, before I take your voice. I’m a witch. No devil.”
Puck fluffed his feathers. “Rewind. Witch: a beautiful and attractive young woman.”
Vivica nearly smiled as she opened Darkwyn’s door to leave. “Stay,” she begged one last time, but she did not expect him to listen, because, as she’d often said, he rarely did. “If you go,” she added. “When you go, take your lessons and your cell phone, and call if you have questions.”
“Will do.”
“Please remain circumspect about your situation.” Slipping her business card into his T-shirt pocket, his mentor stood on her toes to kiss his cheek. “I’ll be here when you need me, because you will.”
His bedroom door closed as he opened the bird’s cage. “Puck, remind me to look up ‘circumspect.’ Now, I’ll hear the rules, please.”
“Don’t sit on your head.” Squawk. “Don’t poop on the girl.” Squawk. “Don’t kick the cat.”
ELEVEN
Bronte surged up and out of her nightmare with a scream trapped in her throat.
Her room, she saw, not the pitch-black inside of a closet.
Silence, she heard, not the approach of a killer.
Alone, she thought. No Darkwyn with a bullet in his chest.
She released her breath and fell against her pillows, hand to her thumping heart. “Blessed be.”
The Phoenix had looked different, like a church, Scorch the cat, at first evil, turned tame. A threat, but not to her. Yet.
Another phoenix rose up in her mind’s eye. Darkwyn. Nearby. His heart beating with worry beneath a tattoo that, to her, symbolized victory. If only . . .
Her tricky psychic gifts in play, Bronte rose to put on her mask and wrap, and she went to the balcony, her emotions at war.
Joy trumped anxiety, layering her fears in an odd sort of way, anticipation at the base of it all.
Opening her mind, she sensed Darkwyn’s yearning as she watched him hesitate when he saw her.
She stopped fighting fear to give him a sense of her positive reaction to seeing him. And how did she know he’d catch either nuance, unless he was as empathetic as her. Well, more empathetic, hopefully. He must be.
Darkwyn Dragonelli could make her open to him, a stranger who should frighten her, though he seemed more like a friend. Odd, his affect on her. Troubling.
Everything she’d experienced in life—including a mother who’d been battered before and after her birth—trained her to hide in every possible way, emotions included. The more mysterious she remained, she believed, the more power she wielded. Yet this invader coming her way turned determination to dust scattered like dry leaves in the autumn wind.
She should . . . see a psychiatrist first thing in the morning, which wouldn’t help her now.
Maybe a twenty-four-seven Internet shrink would do, but did she close the French doors and go find one? No.
She waited on he
r balcony for Darkwyn Dragonelli—tall drink of stud-sculpture, atypical Greek god, broad, straight-spined, regal bearing. Interested in helping her; the paradox.
His effect: mouth-drying, knee-weakening, womb-pulsing, so stimulating, she must try not to pounce.
She should grab her stash of vibrators and lock herself in the bathroom, though she’d probably still emerge wanting him.
As he came closer, taking a breath became an act of will: inflate lungs, deflate. Heart, don’t stop pumping now.
Her flowing white wisp of a robe billowed around what must appear to be her nakedness in the chill predawn air, this pink baby doll nightie, her least substantial item of night clothing. She’d worn it for a reason she hated to admit, though she didn’t know why exactly. Yet here he came.
Finding her waiting here on her balcony at the hush of the hour, her yard in shadow, should give Darkwyn the impression that she, and the universe, welcomed him.
A swirl of leaves waved him closer, the ripe scents of apples, pears, and pumpkins, as the earth prepared for a winter sleep, welcomed him.
On this amazing night, she’d try a bit of magick, utilizing the witchcraft she’d been trying to learn from her friend Vickie Cartwright and Vickie’s triplet sisters to help protect herself and Zachary.
In her room, she lit a candle to raise a flame, and set it on the floor of the balcony. She sprinkled salt around herself, protection, as she hoped to open to a man she knew nothing about, though Vivica approved him. Even now, Mother Nature brought him on a current of sea air and a swirl of winged maple seeds.
“Earth, air, water, fire,
Pure of heart, make him aspire.
Match his needs to my desire.
One in flesh, two go higher.
Bless this man ringed in fire,
Sent by fate as head vampire.
Crazed in doubt, I am mired,
Ease my mind as I require.
This I will, so mote it be.
And it harm none.
Bring him to me.”
Fizzle and hiss! Her spell tossed bullets of bright light that popped at Darkwyn’s feet. She just didn’t have a witch’s talent. But at least her magick hadn’t turned him away. If anything, he closed his fists and proceeded more determined.
He skirted the bright blighted fireworks and kept coming, despite her half-baked spell. She could only hope that he ached for her as much as she did for him.
The steady crackle of crisp leaves beneath his feet told her that the closer he got, the faster he walked.
No more doubt then. She would attempt to trust the universe, trust requiring a superhuman effort on her part. Then again, she awaited someone that seemed rather superhuman himself.
Yes, she was going to do this.
Goddess bless them both, somehow his heart matched hers, both of them pulsing in the air around them, thumping a sexual beat.
He set his bags down and began climbing up the building, toward her balcony, taking the direct route, as if a door and stairs would be too much in his way.
But oh, if she had known how vulnerable the Phoenix was to being climbed, she would have locked her balcony door from day one. So why did she believe that with Darkwyn around, she would never have to lock them again? Why did she believe he’d stay, Goddess help her, when few people ever did?
Empathetic instinct, she had it in spades, when she had it, unlike the magick that failed her time and again. Then she heard that dratted bird squawk somewhere nearby.
“Woman,” it proclaimed. “An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man and having a rudimentary susceptibility to domestication. A species . . . lithe and graceful in her movements . . . can be taught not to talk.” Squawk.
“Shut it, Puck,” Darkwyn grumbled. “I’d like to teach you not to talk.”
“Don’t touch her, dragon. She’ll drink your blood!”
“Fly away, bird. I’ll eat her for breakfast,” Darkwyn said, eyeing her, his words having to do with promise not threat.
Gazing on him, she knew she was lost. Or found. Saved, perhaps, however improbable, her psychic instincts right on the mark, in this case. No second guessing needed.
With him outside the railing, lit by the moon, she examined his five o’clock shadow, the violet of his eyes, his yearning literally stroking her in the most intimate places. “I had a nightmare,” she admitted.
“So did I,” he whispered, and with forethought and purpose, he took her hand in his.
His confidence, rare for her, probably stemmed from being so big. As for her letting him take her hand, chalk one up to extraordinary circumstances, and chemistry.
He jumped the railing. “I dreamed the Phoenix looked like a church.” He stood before her, kissing close, without lowering his head, learning her fingertips with his thumb, moving it over the tips of her nails and back, the silk of his skin against hers a wonder.
“It was a church first, a long time ago.”
“And in my dream, you were in danger, past or future, I couldn’t tell.” He slipped a hand to her waist.
“I know. It’s like—We dreamed past and present mixed together,” she suggested.
“We?”
She touched his cheek. “Scorch the kitten was evil and struck you with lightning. I was with you every step of the way, even before you found me. Zachary didn’t mean to shoot you. I half expected to find cat scratch marks on your cheek.”
He covered her hand on his face. “I came to save you, even if it meant getting shot.”
“I need no saving at this moment.”
“Then I will have to make love to you, instead.”
Her legs turned to jelly and he had to hold her up. “You are safe then?” he confirmed.
“At the moment. Am I safe from you?”
“No.”
“Fair enough. Darkwyn, do you believe in destiny or karma? You see, I have always believed it existed and that mine blows.”
“ ‘Blows’?”
“Sucks,” she clarified, delighting in his eye twinkle.
“We shall see which of us wins the sucky karma prize another time,” he said. “Despite your past, I am here to prove you wrong.”
“Do you know my past?”
“I know from Vivica that you will be a good employer, and that is all I need to know, in addition to the way you affect my man parts. You should know about them. I am flawed. You already know that I want to be more to you than a bodyguard.”
“I’m flawed, too,” she admitted. “Your flaws don’t bother me. Mine do.”
Darkwyn raised a hand to trace her lips, and Bronte shivered, first on the outside, then deep at her core.
“You have a generous mouth kissed by nature’s reddest berries and sculpted by an artist’s hand,” her blind knight said.
“I am too tall.”
He ignored that, she noticed, in all but expression. “I like the way your brows curve like a seabird on the wing.” He stroked her top lip. “The way your lips rise in the center like a heart. I would make turning them into a smile my life’s work.”
“Goddess help me, I would let you. But be warned, I arrived on this earth wearing a frown.”
“As did I. You were there. You saw me arrive.”
She tilted her head, confused, but inclined to let it pass so as not to break the spell. “I barely know how to smile,” she admitted.
“I will teach you.”
“So you do know how, then?”
“Not really. Let us teach each other.”
The red sheers at her French doors embraced them, gently forced them closer together, dancing and wrapping them in a cocoon of the North Wind’s making.
The wind of death blew from the north. Death of the old meant new beginnings.
Death courted her, yet Darkwyn’s presence let hope flicker, though only a miracle would allow her to see hope bloom.
“Your nose turns up the least bit. I know because I have been sketching you to keep my sanity until I returned.”
&nbs
p; “Returned,” she said. “Yet we barely know each other.”
“I know your heart is open to mine. You, Bronte McBride, are my heart mate.”
“I should be afraid,” she whispered, her lips against his, against her good judgment. “Is heart mate anything like . . . employer?”
“In this case,” he said. “Yes.”
“In for a penny,” she added, having revealed her fear. “Do you know Sanguedolce?”
“No, but I remember that you mentioned him in our dream.”
She tried to pull her hand from his. “Why do you suppose we had the same dream?”
“As a way for the universe to bring us together?”
“I suppose that’s as good an explanation as any, but it smacks of destiny, and you know how I feel about that. And bring us together with a positive force or a negative one? I mean, where did it come from?”
“I do not know. I am not from this country.”
She tried to step away from Darkwyn, but he wouldn’t let go of her hand. “Neither is Sanguedolce,” she said. Neither was she.
“I know four places, Rome, Scotland, an uncharted island a million miles away, and Salem, Massachusetts, for nearly a week.”
She stepped closer. “Name your island.”
“The Island of Stars. Who is Sanguedolce?”
“Never speak his name.”
Darkwyn took her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “You spoke it first. I am going to kiss you now.”
Her amusement was lost to the supremacy of his kiss, his cool lips authoritative, his open mouth ravenous, his hands and body vigorous and greedy for hers.
She didn’t know him, she reminded herself. But she wanted to.
“You know me,” he said, devouring her lips, scary appropriate in his response. “You are my missing center.” He lifted her in his strong embrace, and she wound her legs around his waist, mostly so she wouldn’t fall when she fainted, and he crushed her in an openmouthed kiss so wild, so filled with rapture, that she became more helpless to resist.
As they stepped into her bedroom off the balcony, Lila and Scorch raised their sleepy heads, quick to observe her riding Darkwyn like a breathless spider monkey. “No man has ever stepped foot in this room.”
Vampire Dragon Page 6
