It was nice, he supposed, that Neko had sprung a baby from her loins tonight, even if it had been something akin to torture porn for the Guild’s collective ears. Nice for Neko, nice for Lumen. Perhaps he would even find a moment to feel happy for them later, when he was alone and the sound of her screams had temporarily deserted his memory. The new family deserved the blessing of each Guild member.
But right now Neko’s and Lumen’s joy, their success in love, and their young family were nothing more to him than ugly reminders of his own failures. He had no mate. No prospects for parenthood, for the life that most shifters dream of for themselves. Hell, even Aegis, the Guild’s resident nerd-clown, had managed to find a lovely Dragon shifter partner and he seemed happier than ever, the lucky wanker.
Stop torturing yourself, a booming internal voice commanded, reprimanding the man for his petty resentments. Be pleased for your fellow shifter. Be grateful to be part of such an event.
Quiet, you, Minach retorted to the beast inside him. Your job is to get us home safe, not to tell me how to live my damned life.
Reluctant to let the flight end, he landed a few minutes later with a soft thud under the pale light of the street lamps lining Devonshire Street. He quickly threw off the shackles of his shifted form before striding over to his front door. It had to be three a.m. by now, and for the first time he realized how much energy he’d expended over the last few hours, a yawn stretching his mouth wide. His damned ordeal had taken a lot out of him.
Well, to be fair it was Neko’s ordeal, but at this point he could scarcely imagine that she’d suffered more than he had. So, as a reward for the excruciating agony he’d managed to endure, his greatest wish was to ensconce himself in a set of clean sheets and shut his tired eyes.
Okay. Second greatest wish.
There was one thing in the world that he desired more than sleep, and from the smell of things, she was close at hand.
He sniffed the air, catching a hint of her sweetness, the petals of a rose wafting on the breeze about him. As he drew in a long inhale, Minach’s lips curled into a rare smile. Ah, yes. The one thing he could never have had come to torture him with her presence, and like a masochistic fool, he welcomed the torment.
For all his gripes about women, there was one whose company he always welcomed. Craved, even, though he had never admitted so much to her or to anyone. Her gentle, sweet perfume filled him with frustrated arousal every time she was close at hand. But frustrating or not, he’d come to need her as a man in chronic pain needed his painkillers.
When he’d hiked the two sets of stairs up to his flat, he pushed his key into the lock and eased the door open, stepping softly inside to sniff the air again. His mind immersed itself in a swirl of emotion and arousal as her heavenly aroma hit him in a new wave.
Perhaps he would find a little bliss tonight after all. Better to be frustrated than to feel dead inside, he liked to tell himself. At the very least, she reminded him what it was to feel alive. She was the one joy in his life, one that came to him far too rarely, and always left him too soon.
Slipping down the hallway to the sitting room at the front of his elegant flat, he could see the dim glow of a table lamp casting a long shadow across the floor.
“Tell me how everything went,” she said before he’d even entered the room. Sweet voice. Sweet woman.
Devious woman, breaking in like this.
“Fine, aside from Neko’s wretched banshee-wails,” he said, stepping into the doorway to face her. Pressing his massive arms against the frame, he leaned forward. He was aware of the outline of his muscles, aware that her scent altered as her eyes met his powerful torso. Perhaps she deserved to be tormented by desire, just as she was tormenting him.
“Childbirth is painful, from what I understand,” she said.
“Yes well, pain is one thing. But you’d have thought the world was ending, given the horrific cacophony.”
“The world wasn’t ending at all. It was beginning, for one little shifter at least. Tell me more.”
Minach stared across the empty space between them, his eyes studying the beautiful woman who sat in the large, richly upholstered armchair by the window, warm lamplight giving her high cheekbones the illusion of a healthy glow. Her exquisitely expressive eyes were open wide, questioning and curious. An almost innocent expression inhabited her features in contradiction to years of what Minach knew had been a difficult life, fraught with pain and conflict.
The Dragon shifter could tell that Amara hadn’t slept in some time, but her insomnia likely had little to do with her concern for Neko. She seemed troubled, but by what, he would probably never know. She was too private, too reclusive a soul to let him into her heart. An enigma that he’d always wished to decipher. In that sense they made a good pair, or would have done, perhaps, in another lifetime. In this life he’d all but given up hope of ever getting close to her; she’d made it clear too many times that such a thing would never come to pass.
She rose to her feet and took a few steps towards him but didn’t touch, despite the fact that they hadn’t seen one another in over a month. No, of course she didn’t. She never touched him. She was too fucking virtuous to give in to desire for a Dragon shifter, or for any man. A sexy fucking celibate nun, that’s what she was.
“She—they—had a boy,” he said.
“A little boy,” she replied softly. “That’s good, isn’t it?”
“It’s good, I suppose, if Lumen wants to teach him to play football, but not so good for the ongoing survival of Dragonkind,” Minach replied. “Better to have more females about, as they’re in short supply these days. With Tryst betraying us, we still have only one female Dragon shifter around. We could use a few more to increase the herd.”
“Right, of course. You need more women to mate with.” Amara peeled her eyes away, fixing them on a street lamp outside the window. “More women for your sexual pleasure.” The words came as a sort of afterthought, a wistful observation about a world in which she would never live.
Minach stepped to the window, looking out to see what she was studying so intently. “Quiet out there tonight,” he said softly, ignoring her words.
She glared at him. “You’re avoiding my question.”
“It wasn’t a question, Amara, it was a statement.” Minach pressed his hands into the windowsill, tension visible in his broad shoulders. “You’re implying that we men are led by our dicks, or at least that I am.” The erection that pressed against his clothing only proved her point.
“All right, then, I’ll turn the statement into a question. You’d like more females about for your sexual pleasure, I take it? And yes, I’m using ‘you’ in the singular.”
“Nicely done.” He turned back to her and narrowed his eyes, hunger eating away at his body and mind. How dare she enter his flat at night and tease him with her intoxicating presence? Not to mention her cruel talk of sexual pleasure. If she only knew how much he craved her above all other women.
Cruel half-breed.
“The answer to your question is that I have no desire for a Dragon lady,” Minach said. “My own kind is of little interest to me, happily. Otherwise I’d be a desperately horny man, given that there are none of my kind about.”
Amara locked her gaze on his, challenging him with her dark eyes. “It’s a shame that you haven’t had an opportunity to mate,” she said, “because you’re a powerful man. Powerful men tend to create powerful offspring. You would be doing the Guild a great service.”
“Yes, well, this powerful man has always been content alone, and I don’t consider it my duty to put a baby in a woman’s uterus as a business venture.”
“Content alone? You have never seemed particularly content to me, Minach.” There was pain in her words, but its source remained a mystery. Had he been a better man, he’d have asked her to tell him what troubled her, would have offered to help. That was what decent men did.
But he wasn’t decent. He was guarded and suspicious. He w
as difficult. The last thing he wanted to do around Amara was to reveal his proclivity for worrying about others, including her. He didn’t want her to think well of him, because he didn’t deserve it.
Nevertheless, he softened a little.
“I am content when you’re here, Enlightened,” he said, the hard edge of his voice disappearing temporarily. A rare moment of fragility overtook his features. The truth was that he wished she were there every day. She gave him a sense of peace. She was his only vice, his only pleasure, even if she was a walking cock tease. “I wish you would spend more time with me, for both our sakes.”
“You know very well there are reasons that I can’t,” she replied. “As for time, I should go. Thank you for telling me about the baby. That’s the only reason I came.”
Hurriedly, she picked up a jacket off the arm of the chair and strode towards the door.
Minach was quick, though, and reached her in under a second, wrapping his fingers around her arm in a commanding grip. She was so thin, so delicate, a beautiful porcelain doll who could kill with a look. Shatter him with a word.
“Don’t go,” he breathed, his mouth too close to her neck. Her scent was wonderful, her arousal palpable in the air particles around him. God, why the hell couldn’t he have her? Why couldn’t he just open up and tell her how badly he wanted her?
“I must. It’s late, and I need to head home. Some of us have to seek work for a living, whether we’re members of an endangered species or not,” she said. “I have a meeting tomorrow morning.”
“You wouldn’t need to work if you stayed here, with me,” Minach growled, too consumed by arousal to confront the depth of meaning behind his words. “I would give you riches, Amara. I wouldn’t ask you to take on menial jobs.”
She stared straight ahead, her features tense as she tried to maintain her composure. “I know you don’t mean that. Besides, it’s not your riches that I desire, Minach,” she said. “I only wanted to know if Neko and the baby were all right, and now I know. You should go to bed; your mind is clearly exhausted.”
He pulled away abruptly, releasing her from his grasp. “No, Amara,” he growled, crossing his arms in a show of hostile body language. “My mind is just fine. I’m sorry that I spoke spontaneously; it was stupid. You’re quite right; I didn’t mean it. You are your own woman and as I’ve said, I’m very…content…on my own.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” she said, a slight quiver in her voice. “Good night, then.”
His body taut with a sensation that wanted to explode from his chest, Minach whispered an inaudible reply and watched her walk away, as he had so many times before. So many nights she’d left him frustrated, alone. Part of him wanted to ask her not to return, not to torture him like this anymore.
But he knew that if she disappeared, it would kill him.
Amara
Amara slammed her back into the stairwell’s wall and tried her best to inhale deep, filling her lungs for the first time since Minach had brought his arousing scent with him into his flat. God, he made her so tense. Insane with a desire that reached deep to her core and far beyond. Every inch of her body tingled with excitement in his presence, a deep longing catching the oxygen in her chest before she could make use of it.
“Keep moving,” she told herself, grabbing hold of the hand rail. “Get away from him before you change your mind and go back for more.”
Sometimes the allure of the Dragon shifter was almost too much to bear. How ridiculous was it to think she’d hated him when she’d first met him under Glastonbury Tor? His haughty expression, those piercing blue eyes of his, even his black hair had seemed too sleek then. But now that amazing mane had become a gorgeous frame for what she’d realized over time was an incredibly handsome face.
She’d once thought him the most arrogant bastard that she’d ever met. Cocky, rude, disrespectful. But hatred and lust had quickly proven that they lie a mere hair’s breadth away from one another. Something in Minach had always called to her for companionship, like a kindred spirit making its way into another’s soul. She knew all too well that he was a broken beast, his churlish manner a means of concealing what truly ate away at him. He had been this way, no doubt, since he was a child, since the incident he refused to speak of. The incident that had cost his brother his hearing.
That alone should have been a red flag, a warning to shy away and avoid him at all costs.
But not for Amara. If it was possible, she was even more broken than he was, which only drew her to him more. At least for Minach, there was a shred of hope, the real potential for a normal life. He could be fixed with the right sort of care, or, perhaps, the right sort of mate.
An Enlightened, on the other hand, was beyond repair. Amara was a half-breed who had been born broken. Those with flaws in their blood had little choice but to live with them in a chronic cycle of misfortune. Half shifter and half blood-seeker, she’d spent her entire life sacrificing one side of herself to fight off the other. Her Wolf, which had once been so strong and graceful, had lost her fight and retreated into a state of near-perpetual hibernation in recent months.
She pulled away from the wall and forced herself to keep moving down the stairs. Always moving, like a prey animal. Always on the lookout for threats. Foolish woman, she thought. You walked right into the lion’s den tonight. You put yourself in the presence of the greatest threat in the world. She’d rendered herself vulnerable to Minach’s charms, desire flooding her like salt water pouring into a boat riddled with holes. But she hadn’t sunk. If anything, he’d lifted her higher. It was a beautiful, cleansing feeling, reminding her that for all her weakness she was still alive. Still whole, more or less.
Even the déor who lay dormant inside her sometimes stirred when he was near, though never enough for her to imagine shifting. Her Wolf approved of Minach’s presence; such a creature was always attracted to strength, and Minach had it in spades, flawed though he was. His was the mentality of an Alpha; cold, emotionally closed off and powerful. He did what needed to be done, sometimes at the peril of others’ feelings.
To be with a man like him would have been challenging, yet so, so rewarding. But it wasn’t to be. It was too late for such thoughts; hell, it had always been too late. She would never be a balanced shifter like most of the Dragon Guild’s members; not while ceaseless cravings ate away at her mind.
It was her blood-seeker side, the vampire inside her, who had really stolen her Wolf from her. She may have been a half-breed, but half of her—the half that she’d always loved most—was all but dead now.
As she strode towards her home through London’s darkened streets, she longed to run as she used to do. She longed for her Wolf, her natural defence against the world around her. The only weapon she had these days was a Dragon bone blade, stuck in a sheath at her waist. She’d come to hate what it symbolized. For too long she’d relied on knives as her defence, but she wanted her déor’s fangs back. Wanted to be able to sprint like the wind, to rip and tear at any enemy that threatened her or her allies. To unleash blood-curdling howls at the moon in a display of feral freedom.
Instead she was trapped in a delicate human body, pale, thin and growing weaker by the day.
Seeing Minach had reminded her what strength and power were meant to look like. Perhaps that was one reason she was so drawn to him; he embodied everything that she wasn’t. His shapely arms were massive, beautiful sculptures of rippling muscle. His shoulders were so broad that when he stood in a doorway he barely had space on either side to move through. And his face—his handsome, perfect, serious face—was the most gorgeous thing on earth. Amara could see further than what lay on his surface. In his eyes she saw deeply hidden emotion, a kindness that he rarely dared to reveal. She saw his potential to love, to care, to caress.
Minach pretended that he considered kindness a weakness, damned frustrating man. He was an aggressor, a snarling, feral beast of a man, concealing a sweet, purring softie somewhere deep down. Amara knew it, but s
he hardly dared try to extract his kinder side for fear of falling entirely in love with a treasure that she could never claim.
Reaching for her arm, she rubbed the spot where he’d touched her, recalling the sensation of his fingers on her flesh. Though he’d grabbed her aggressively, he hadn’t hurt her, of course; he never would. For all his bluster, Minach would have thrown himself in front of a speeding train to protect her. Somewhere deep inside him was a perfect, loving goodness. But she wouldn’t be the one to uncover it. She couldn’t. The task would be best left to another woman. A half-breed with the genes of a blood-seeker was too great a risk for any relationship. If she and Minach grew too close she would want more than just his body. She would want to taste him, to consume him in a way that would destroy them both.
Stop thinking about the Dragon man, she told herself as she passed under a flickering overhead street light. A new day would dawn soon, and she must move on with her life, such as it was. In a few hours she’d talk to Trix, the one person with whom she felt comfortable speaking openly. Trix was an ally who also happened to be mated to Minach’s twin brother.
As Amara contemplated the morning meeting, her body reminded her that it had been too many hours since she’d last dosed. Every ounce of her energy was currently being spent fighting the chronic thirst that parched her from somewhere deep inside. The curse of the Enlightened, always to want that which she could never have.
With a shaky hand, she extracted a small flask from her pocket and unscrewed its silver lid before taking a quick swig. Pig’s blood. Disgusting stuff, it was. Humans often complained about cough syrup and the like, but they had no real idea how foul medication could be.
As she felt the strength reenter her body, for the first time in her life Amara longed for more than a treatment.
She wanted a cure.
She wanted to be fixed, to be whole. To be strong.
Dragon's Curse: A Dragon Shifter Romance (Dragon Guild Chronicles Book 4) Page 2
