“Listen,” I said, “Gina says that you want to be thanked, and I thought about it, and I don’t mind doing it at all. I think it might even be nice, so… go ahead.” I pushed my chest out at him.
“What are you talking about?” He was thoroughly confused now.
I tried to adopt my sister’s casual attitude about it all. “Jesus Christ, Logan, do I have to spell it out for you? I want to have sex with you.”
His eyes bulged. He scooted backwards on the bed, away from me.
That wasn’t the reaction I’d expected. I picked at the hem of my shirt. “You don’t want to?”
“Uh… it’s first thing in the morning for me here,” he said, his voice choked.
I slowly raised my gaze to look at him again. He was all muscles and strength and sturdiness. “Gina says if I don’t, you’ll get annoyed eventually. I didn’t know that. I’m really dumb about all this stuff. I didn’t mean to annoy you.”
“You don’t annoy me,” said Logan, his voice still strained. “At all.”
“Gina says that if I don’t let you do it, you’ll stop helping us.”
“What?” Logan shot to his feet and ran across the room. He flung the door open. “Gina!” he bellowed.
She was in her bedroom. He went in there, shut the door, and the two of them argued for at least ten minutes. But I couldn’t hear what they were saying, even with my ear pressed to the door.
When he came out, he got all his stuff and left. He wouldn’t even look at me.
Gina looked me up and down and said, “You can’t do anything right, can you, Clarke?”
Logan and I never talked about it, not for years.
It wasn’t until one night in the summer, when he showed up out of nowhere, as he often did, and I was feeling horrible because Gina had disappeared nearly a week ago, and I couldn’t find her.
I didn’t call Logan or anything. That time with the vampire, that was the last time I called him. When he left… I know now that he left because he was just a kid, like we were kids, and because he was horrified at the implications of what Gina had proposed. That he thought of his feelings toward me as pure, and that Gina had tainted them, cast aspersions on everything he stood for. Logan was always very grandiose about morals and stuff like that.
But at the time, I only thought that Gina was right. That I’d screwed up, that if I’d done the sex part right, he would have stayed.
Anyway, I didn’t call him again. Instead, I got smart. I sought out people who would teach me. I made friends among slayers, got lessons on how to shoot arrows, how to fight. I figured out how to protect myself.
So, that night in the summer, when Logan showed up. I was probably eighteen at that point, and I’d been looking for Gina myself. I was prepared to slay any monsters that might have been trying to hurt her, but I couldn’t find her. I was afraid she was dead.
And then Logan was there.
He helped me look too. He was always there to help.
But when we came up empty, we went back to my place, and I broke down. I started crying. I was already starting to mourn my sister, because I didn’t think I was ever going to see her again.
Logan rubbed my back, murmured reassurances.
I climbed into his lap. He was warm and sturdy and strong. He wrapped his arms around me. And then his wings around both of us, cocooning us in darkness and warmth. And I cried into his shoulder while he held me.
And then… I don’t know…the sobs were subsiding, and I kissed him.
He kissed me back for a minute. His tongue danced with mine, and sensations shot through me like rockets, leaving smoking trails in their wake.
And then he pulled away and extricated himself from me, and set me on the couch.
He got up and went to the other side of the room. He stood, looking out the window into the night.
I hugged myself.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and he wasn’t looking at me.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “You’re the one who always says that you love me. Or don’t you mean it that way? Do you only mean that you love me like I’m your sister or something?”
“I don’t think of you like a sister.” His voice cracked, but he was still facing away. The light of the moon poured in through the window, and I could only see his wings. They were trembling.
“So, then why’d you stop?”
“You’re upset,” he said. “You’re not thinking clearly.”
“I wanted to kiss you,” I said. “I’m clear on that.”
He was quiet.
“If you didn’t want to kiss me, then all you have to do is say that,” I said.
“Clarke.” He turned to look at me, and his face was half-illuminated by the moonlight. “Of course I want you.”
And then he left again.
It was like that for two more years. He’d show up. He’d be agonized about taking advantage of me. There would be stolen kisses, and then he’d disappear. (Gina eventually came back on her own that time. It wasn’t the first time she went missing for weeks.)
It was frustrating, but it was also romantic in its own desperate way. I was so young then, and he was so conflicted, and that drew me in. I liked that he was scarred and confused and hurt. I wanted to heal him.
Thought I could, I guess. I still wonder if I could. Wonder if we could heal each other.
So, we didn’t actually have sex until I was twenty. He was twenty-one. He was just barely old enough to buy beer, but he wouldn’t do it for me, I remember. He said no, that it wouldn’t be right, that he’d be corrupting me.
I told him I wasn’t a kid anymore. I told him I was already pretty damned corrupt.
“What do you mean by that?” There was fear in his eyes, I remember, and I think he must have realized that I wasn’t going to wait around, saving myself for him forever.
“Just that I kill things,” I said. “Maybe the things I kill are bad things, but that’s who I am, deep down. I’m a killer.”
“No,” he said. “You’re not. Deep down, you’re good.”
Instead of drinking beer, we heard about a dragon attack on the police scanner, and we went out together and shot the rogue out of the sky.
Then, high on the adrenaline of the hunt, we started making out in my living room.
I’d kicked Gina out at that point, I remember. I was always kicking her out. It never stuck, and she always ended up back at my place, crashing with me, until she started stealing from me again, and I had to kick her out again. It was a vicious cycle.
But she wasn’t living with me, then, and I wasn’t worried about her coming home, and I felt bold and powerful because I had slain a dragon that night. And the kissing seemed different anyway, like Logan was spurred on by what we’d done as well. There was something underneath his kisses, something urgent, something… stony and determined.
I took off my shirt. I remember that I just did it. I yanked it up over my head and tossed it behind me, and I laughed.
Logan sucked in breath audibly.
I kissed him again, giggling into his mouth, the laughter bubbling up out of me like champagne.
But he pushed me back and looked at me. Stared at my skin, his lips parted, his eyes half-lidded.
The way he looked at me gave me shivers.
He touched me. His fingertips were soft against my bare skin, but his fingers were solid, like granite. He slid them under my bra straps very, very slowly. “Are you sure about this?” he murmured.
“Yes,” I gasped.
He peeled the straps down my arms, exposing me. And when he saw me bared to him that way, he let out this tiny little sigh.
The sigh made me feel dizzy.
He touched me with reverence. Touched me and teased me and made me moan.
I pulled off his shirt too. I kissed him again. When I pressed my naked chest against his, I could feel how hot and firm he was. He was living, breathing stone, and I ran my fingers over his shoulders and arms and pecks and stomach and back.
I wanted to touch him everywhere. He was exotic and exciting, and he loved me.
He kissed me and he whispered it. “I love you. I love you.”
I whispered it back. “I love you too.” And I sighed and gasped and twisted against him, and everything was ecstasy.
And when I couldn’t bear it anymore, he lifted me and took me back to my bedroom, carried me like I didn’t weigh anything at all. He spread me out on the bed in front of him, and he gazed at me.
I basked in his gaze. I liked being looked at. I didn’t feel shy. I felt adored.
He leaned over me, bracing himself with his fists, one on either side of my shoulders. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You don’t hurt me,” I said. “Don’t be silly.”
He swallowed. “Have you done this before?”
“No,” I said. And then I remembered that I’d heard that. That it hurt the first time.
“Me either,” he said, and he looked worried.
I pulled him down and kissed him hard. Something about the fact that he was just as new to it as me made me feel even closer to him. “It’ll be okay. I don’t care if it hurts. I want to do it.”
He pulled his lips away from mine. He was breathless. “I don’t know, Clarke.”
I unbuttoned my pants. I kicked them off. Now, I was completely uncovered in front of him.
He looked down the length of my body and his jaw worked.
“Logan,” I murmured. I reached for the button on his pants.
He stopped me. “Wait.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t want to wait anymore.”
But then he put his fingers on me, between my thighs. He grazed them over the lips of my sex, and I felt myself starting to fall apart. I cried out.
“There?” he whispered.
“What?” I said.
His fingers moved.
I grabbed his wrist and moved him higher. “There,” I said.
And his touch was feather-soft. Amazing, because he wasn’t soft. He was stone. But he touched me softly, and he made me writhe and buck and moan against his strokes, each one fueling the fervor that was growing inside me.
Until I was a ball of fire waiting… waiting…
And he urged me, he coaxed me…
To explode.
While I was still in the throes of my climax, he spread my legs and climbed on the bed, and then he was inside me.
And he was stiff and huge and invasive in the sweetest of ways, and I groaned when he slid into me because I’d never felt anything so amazing in my entire life.
I wrapped my legs around him. I clung to him.
And we moved together. And—
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A beeping noise awakened me.
Beepbeepbeep. “Self-destruct engaged,” said an electronic voice. Beepbeepbeep.
I sat up straight. Where the hell was I? Oh, right. In the lab. Here in the lab, and there were rogue dragons out there, and everyone was dying, and—
I swallowed.
Naelen was sitting up already. He was looking at me.
“What the hell?” I said.
Beepbeepbeep. “Self-destruct engaged.” Beepbeepbeep.
Naelen arched an eyebrow at me. “What were you dreaming about?”
“I don’t remember,” I said, pushing to my feet.
“No?” he said. “Because you were making these little moans…”
Beepbeepbeep. “Self-destruct engaged.” Beepbeepbeep.
“God,” I said. “Is that thing ever going to shut up?”
Suddenly, it was silent.
Naelen was still grinning. “I liked the moans, as a matter of fact.”
Oh, God. God. Dreaming about sex with Logan? Did it mean anything? It couldn’t mean anything, right? Because, after all, I couldn’t control what I dreamed about. And then Naelen, here, looking at me like—
Well, that should make me feel ashamed of myself, but…
Instead, the juxtaposition of both of them only gave me a delicious, wicked jolt.
They were both very, very attractive men, after all.
Oh, God, what was I thinking about?
I dragged a hand over my face.
Naelen chuckled.
“Shut up,” I said, putting a finger in his face.
He pressed close to me. “Get us out of here, Clarke.”
I looked up at him, feeling hot and confused and still a little bit wicked. Before I could stop myself, I reached up and raked a hand over his chest. “You got it.”
And then I pushed myself past him and started on the barricade on the door.
He was behind me. “Wait a second.”
“No time to wait.” I pushed the table away from the door and opened it. Wait a second. Hadn’t there been other people in this room with us? Nicole, for one. And Rose, I thought. Or maybe Celia.
But no, Rose and Celia were in the hallway. So were Kinsie and Shay.
But I didn’t see Doyle, Nicole, Jameson, or Foster. “Where’s everyone else?” I said.
“I don’t know,” said Celia. “Obviously, off turning on the self-destruct mode.”
“What’s the self-destruct mode?” I said.
“We don’t know anything about it,” said Kinsie.
Naelen cleared his throat. “Um, it’s a fail-safe that was built into the lab in case it was necessary for any reason. It’s an explosion. Whole place blows up. Levels everything.”
“Oh, God,” said Rose.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” I said. “I mean, that would have been a great way to kill all the rogues.”
“What do you mean a great way?” said Naelen.
“Well, we’d get everyone out and then flip the self-destruct,” I said.
“There’s a lot of expensive equipment in this place,” said Naelen.
“Are you serious?” I said.
“It doesn’t matter, does it?” he said. “It’s engaged now. And we have about four hours until the entire facility blows up.”
“The killer did this,” said Kinsie.
“The killer?” I said. “I don’t see Jameson anywhere. Are we still harping on this?”
“It didn’t turn itself on,” said Celia.
I looked at Naelen. “Could it turn itself on?”
“No, it has to be engaged,” he said.
“See?” said Kinsie. “Someone wants us all dead. Someone wants to cover their tracks. They killed Ezra, and now they want to destroy all of us. And it’s obviously someone who isn’t here. Probably escaping right now, as we speak.”
“I thought there was no way to escape,” I said. “I thought the storm blocked off all the exits.”
“Well, the killer knows something we don’t,” said Celia. “It’s probably Doyle.”
“Yeah, the killer has gotten out,” said Rose. “And left us in here to die.”
Abruptly, the lights went off. We were plunged into darkness.
Rose screamed.
“Naelen?” I said. “What’s going on? Is this part of it?”
“I think the power went out,” he said.
“Does the self-destruct make the power go out?”
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“Does the power going out stop the self-destruct?”
Beepbeepbeep. “Self-destruct engaged. Emergency power diverted to self-destruct.” Beepbeepbeep.
“Guess not,” I said. “Okay, okay, okay. We need to turn this self-destruct off. Can we do that, Naelen?”
“I think so,” he said. “I’m fairly sure.”
“You don’t know how?” I said.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said. “The control room is on the top floor. We can figure it out there.”
“Okay,” I said. I turned to the others. “You guys stay here, and we’ll—”
“I don’t think so,” said Shay. “We can’t trust anyone.”
“It’s true,” said Kinsie. “It’ll be better if we don’t split up.”
I sig
hed. “No, it won’t, because I don’t know if I can protect everyone here.”
“We’ll take the cattle prods,” said Celia.
“Fine,” I said.
And within five minutes, we were all leaving the labs, heading down the hallway to the stairwell. No elevators without the power.
We tried to lock doors behind us, to cut off pathways for the dragons to follow us, but the locks were electronic, and they no longer worked.
It was dark in all the hallways now. We all had our phones out, using the flashlights to navigate.
The door to the steps burst open, and Foster tumbled out. “Dragon!” he shrieked, running through us.
Behind him, the door lit up hot, flames coming out around the edges.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I dropped my phone and yanked out my arrows. “Everyone get back,” I yelled.
Naelen was beside me. “You want me to try to hold the door closed with magic?” he asked, one arm extended as if he was already doing that very thing.
“For a minute,” I said. I raised my voice. “Foster? Where the hell were you?”
“Doyle, Jameson, Nicole, and I heard this noise, and we went out to investigate, but we got separated,” he said.
“Oh, a likely story,” said Kinsie. “You probably just got back from turning on the self-destruct.”
“What is that?” said Foster.
“You know what? Forget it, Foster.” I turned to Naelen. “Okay, let it out, just try to keep its mouth closed.”
“Got it,” said Naelen.
The door was flung open and the dragon came forward, flapping its wings. But its jaws were sealed shut. No fire.
At this close range, it was easy work to put an arrow neatly in its eyeball. The dragon fell to the ground with a thud. Two columns of smoke rose from its nostrils, a death knell. I tugged my arrow free from its body and wiped it against the wall to get rid of the gore before depositing it back in my quiver.
“Let’s go,” I said.
We trooped up the steps in a clump, everyone frightened and clinging to each other.
“You know,” said Celia, “I think you’re right, Clarke. I don’t think they can be cured. All our research was coming up with nothing. You know the shift doesn’t require magic, right? It’s done with a certain hormone. It’s biological, and it’s found in all shifters, whether they’re in dragon form or in human form. But the rogues don’t have it.”
Embers (The Slayer Chronicles Book 2) Page 12
