by Tessa Adams
“Not everything it’s cracked up to be,” she answered immediately. “Until recently, my only job was to look pretty and smile at the right times. So now that I’m involved in the day-to-day running of the clan—or trying to be, anyway—things are different.”
“Harder?”
“God, yes.”
“So would you give it up if you could?” His lips were right next to her ear now, so that when he spoke, the soft exhalations of air danced over her sensitive earlobe and sent shivers up and down her spine.
She melted at the sensation, her body sagging against his as need, fresh and overwhelming, wound its way through her. “Would you?” he asked again.
“Would I what?” Her voice was shaky.
“Would you give it up?” There was an underlying seriousness to his tone—and the question itself—that snapped her out of her sensual fog.
“No. It may be difficult and terrible and like herding rabid wildebeests most days, but it’s my duty. My family is dead. I’m the last Fournier alive. I have to take care of my clan.”
He didn’t say anything to that, didn’t do anything, and she couldn’t help thinking that the game had turned awfully serious awfully fast. Part of that was her fault, but at least part of it was his. What was it she’d said that he hadn’t liked?
But when she started to ask him, he distracted her by lifting up the hem of her shirt far enough to bare her breasts. “What are you doing?” she squeaked.
“Fulfilling the rules of our agreement, of course. I asked three questions, so I get to kiss three parts of your body.”
“I thought you were joking about that.”
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
No, he didn’t. He looked more intense than she had ever seen him, and when he blinked, she swore she saw his dragon staring out at her. But before she could comment on it, his mouth was on her nipple, and he was rolling it gently between his teeth.
She gasped, and he raised his head to grin at her. “That’s one.”
“I might not make it through two more.” There was no way to hide the fact that she was wet and trembling, not when she was on his lap and he was so attuned to every sigh and gasp.
She had just begun to hope he was going to press his advantage when he pulled back and dropped a chaste kiss on first her right cheek, then her left.
“Your turn to ask a question.”
She blinked at him, still a little hazy from the feel of his mouth on her breast. She forced herself to get it together. “How old are you?”
“Three hundred and ninety-seven.”
She nodded, having expected as much. Though he didn’t seem to have the old-fashioned attitudes shared by much of the Conseil, there was something about him that said he’d been around for a good, long while.
“How many of those years have you been rogue?”
He stiffened against her, and she figured he was going to refuse to answer. But he surprised her when he said, “I left my clan when I was ninety-six.”
“Why’d you leave?”
“Because they wanted me to do something that went against what I believed in.”
The words hit her like arrows, reminded her forcefully of the battle she was presently waging with her clan, or at least parts of it. “Was it wrong?”
“Wrong?” he asked with a furrowed brow.
“What they were asking you to do. Was it wrong?”
“It wasn’t right. At least not in my opinion, and I couldn’t go along with it.”
“So you left.”
He nodded. “So I left.”
She liked his answer. Partly because she knew exactly what he meant, and partly because it was honest, forthright and moral. She hadn’t had contact with any of those virtues in quite a while, and though she’d known she’d missed them, she hadn’t realized how much until he’d given them to her again.
“It’s my turn to touch you,” she said, her fingers itching to explore his gorgeous, golden skin.
“That’s not how the rules work.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t really like your rules. So I’m changing them.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Watch me.” She leaned forward and licked him from his navel to the hollow of his throat. She nearly moaned at the fresh, salty taste of him, and when his cock twitched beneath her, she wondered if he tasted the same there as he did everywhere else.
He groaned, thrust his hands into her hair and tugged. Not hard, but just enough to let her know that he was still in control of the situation. She hid her smile against his chest and decided not to disabuse him of that notion. At least not yet.
Though she did whisper, “It’s your turn to ask a question.”
“Thank God,” he rasped. His hand ran in circles on her back, giving her goose bumps but comforting her at the same time. It was a weird combination, one she had no experience with whatsoever.
“What’s it like to be a Wyvernmoon?”
She was surprised by the question, especially coming from him. He’d chosen to be rogue, had spent the past three hundred years on his own. So why this interest in what it was like to be a member of her clan? Unless . . . “Are you asking about my clan in particular, or do you just want to hear about what it’s like to be a part of any clan?”
“Both, I guess.” He paused, cleared his throat. “What’s it like to know where you fit? To have absolutely no doubt about where you belong?”
She would have laughed if the look on his face hadn’t been so absolutely serious. She was the last one to talk about belonging. Most days she felt like she’d been dropped in the middle of her clan by an alien ship, and knew that many of her factionnaires felt the same way about her. Fitting in wasn’t exactly her strong suit these days.
But it had been once, and she could tell Logan’s question had been serious. He really did want to know.
“It feels like home, I suppose. Warm, welcoming, a little stifling at times. But a clan is like that, isn’t it? They have a series of expectations for you, and sometimes you meet them and sometimes you don’t. But no matter what, you belong.”
“So you belong with the Wyvernmoons?”
“Absolutely.” As she said the words, she reaffirmed that they were true. “I spent a long time living down expectations of me, and now that I’m living up to my own expectations for myself, it’s difficult. But it’s worth it—it’s so worth it—when I think about the members of the clan who don’t have a voice, and how I have to be that voice for them. I may not fit in right now, I may still be searching for my spot among the Wyvernmoons, but I know it’s there. It has to be. They’re my clan and I belong with them.”
He nodded, but didn’t ask any more questions. She waited for him to take his “toll,” but he seemed too wrapped up in his own thoughts to go there right now. Which was fine with her, because the control he had over her body was, frankly, a little scary. A part of her felt like she would follow him anywhere as long as he kept giving her such amazing pleasure.
“Is it my turn to ask a question?” she asked.
“It will be,” he answered, coming back to reality. “As soon as I kiss you.”
It was the only warning she got before his lips descended on hers, devouring whatever she was going to say.
She responded instantly, like her body was wired for the taste and feel of his. Parting her lips, she smiled a little as his tongue slipped inside to tangle with hers. Gone was the urgency from earlier, the blind desire to mate. In its place was a tenderness she’d never felt before, a need to please him in the same way he had pleased her.
But before she lost herself in him completely, there was one more thing she wanted to do. Reluctantly pulling away from him, she took a deep breath. Waited for her heartbeat to settle and her brain function to come close to approaching normal.
Logan smiled at her, all heavy-lidded eyes and dark, dangerous desire. But when he started to kiss her again, she forced herself to hold a hand up and say, “Wait. I don’t want
to stop yet.”
“Believe me, darlin’, stopping is the last thing on my mind.”
“No, I mean I have one more question.”
“Now?” he demanded incredulously.
“Yes, now! If I don’t ask now, you’ll have me naked in ten seconds and then I’ll forget my own name, let alone anything else important.”
“Fine, go ahead. But just to clarify, I would have had you naked in two seconds.”
“I look forward to experiencing that,” she said, then paused as she tried to gather her wits about her. She was going to need them here, now and certainly by this time tomorrow. But there was no easy way to say this, especially since he was probably going to laugh her off the mountaintop. But she wouldn’t be able to let the idea go if she didn’t at least ask. “Do you want to come home with me tomorrow? I mean, to try out the Wyvernmoon clan? To see if maybe you could find a place with us?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“What did you just say?” he asked, incredulity in his face and voice, along with something else. Something she didn’t quite recognize but made her nervous all the same.
“I said, why don’t you come back to the Wyvernmoon compound with me? Not to stay, I mean—I know that you don’t want to stay anywhere too long. But while you’re here in South Dakota, for however long that may be, you’re welcome to come home with me. Well, not with me, but to the compound. We have a few different places you could stay. There’s a small bed-and-breakfast, or you could stay with . . .” She was babbling. Completely, one hundred percent babbling—and making a total fool of herself.
She hadn’t meant to, but he’d looked so surprised and then so amused that she hadn’t been able to stop herself from filling up the silence between them before it could grow awkward. She hated awkward silences, hated how they made her feel and really hated how they made other people feel. In fact . . . In fact, now I’m babbling in my head, she told herself. How ridiculous was that?
“Never mind,” she told him. “It was a stupid idea. I just figured if you were going to be here longer than a few days, you might appreciate a bed. It’s getting colder every day now, and soon there will be snow on the ground—”
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Long and sweet and leisurely, it shut her up like nothing else could have.
When he lifted his head a minute later, she breathed out a huge sigh and said, “Thanks. Sometimes I have a hard time stopping once I’ve started.”
He smirked. “I noticed that. In fact”—he reached down, cupped her ass and brought her lower body into stark contact with his—“I have the same problem.”
“I meant talking. I have trouble stopping talking.”
“I knew what you meant, I just liked my interpretation better. And”—he laid one finger on her lips when she started to interrupt—“I really appreciate the invitation. I would love to come stay for a few days, if you’ll have me—and if you’ll let me stay with you.”
“Oh. Right. Of course.” Giddiness worked its way through her at his words, calmed her down, even as excitement burst through her like the cork in a champagne bottle. “I would really like it if you stayed with me.”
“Now, isn’t that a coincidence? So would I.”
“I suppose I should warn you: things are kind of a disaster right now.”
He stilled, looked at her with inquisitive eyes. “What do you mean?”
“It’s just that since my father died, everything has been really messed up. I’m trying to fix it, but we’re not like a lot of the other dragon clans. Women can’t inherit the throne, and so no matter what I do, nobody takes me seriously. They know I don’t have any real power.”
Logan didn’t answer, just stroked a soft hand down her spine that she knew was meant to comfort her. It only made her feel more awful, though, for dumping all over him. When he’d fucked her, he probably hadn’t figured he’d have to listen to her whine about her problems, as well.
“I’m sorry.” She pushed away from him. “You don’t want to hear this. The only reason I brought it up is I figured you’d probably pick up on some of it, anyway.”
“Don’t worry about what I want to hear. If you want to tell me, tell me. I’m a good listener.”
She studied him for a moment, trying to decide if he was sincere. But he looked genuinely interested, not to mention concerned, and she so wanted someone to talk to. Not someone to solve her problems, necessarily, just a sounding board she could vent against. Someone who didn’t care about her clan one way or the other and was a neutral party.
So she told him—not everything, obviously, as she would never reveal any information that could hurt her clan. She might like Logan, she might trust him with her body, but trusting him with her clan was an entirely different thing.
When she told him about choosing a husband, he drew back a little and she laughed. “You don’t have to look so scared, you know. You’re safe. My husband needs to come from the Wyvernmoon.”
“I wasn’t scared,” he answered, but his shoulders relaxed quite a bit.
When she was done, they sat in companionable silence for a few minutes. And then he said something so quietly that she had to strain to hear it. “I can help, you know.”
“Help? What do you mean?”
“I’m good at bringing order to chaos. I’ve pretty much spent the past three hundred years as a kind of security specialist. I can help fix some of the problems with your clan, if you want me to.”
He didn’t look at her when he was talking, and she didn’t know whether that was because he really wanted to help her or if it was because he didn’t. She started to dismiss his offer—the last thing she needed to do right now was muddy clan politics even more—when the little devil she was just discovering inside herself sprang to the surface.
Why shouldn’t she muddy the waters? Why shouldn’t she stack the deck a little bit in her favor? The factionnaires were complacent, power hungry, and completely certain that they held the upper hand. And while they might be right, wouldn’t it be interesting if she threw another man into the mix? One who was strong and virile and intelligent. One whom she was obviously sleeping with.
It would upset the dynamics, get the Conseil thinking, which just might give her an advantage for a little while. If they thought she was wrapped up in her new boyfriend, they might let some things slip that would help her figure out how to defuse the tensions with the other clans. Or they might see Logan as a threat to their own bids for the throne. And if that was the case, all kinds of interesting things might happen.
She looked at him thoughtfully. “What kind of help are you offering?”
“What kind of help do you need?”
“Being a princess is pretty isolating—I hear only what they want me to hear or what they think I want to hear, not what’s really going on. If you’re a security expert—”
“I am.”
She nodded. “Could you help me figure out what is really going on? I know my Conseil is lying to me. I know there’s a lot more to the stories they’re telling me than what they’re admitting. I need to know what else there is. And I need to have someone at my back who I can trust.”
She leveled a serious, take-no-shit look at him. “Can I trust you to be on my side? Can I trust you not to fuck me over?”
“I’m sleeping with you, aren’t I? Not them.”
“This has nothing to do with who I’m sleeping with, and I think you know that. If I bring you in, not just as a lover I’ve invited to stay for a few days, but as someone who can help me unravel the lies and conspiracies that are all around me, you need to be loyal.
“I’ll pay you whatever you want, but I’ll expect you to stay until I no longer need you—even after we’ve stopped sleeping together. If you’re not interested, I understand. But if you want to stick around for a while, maybe rest up from all your wandering, then this might be a way you can do that.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time, then asked, “If I say yes, how do you kn
ow you can trust me?” His voice was studiously casual, but she heard the steel underneath it.
“I’m a pretty good judge of character. And besides, it’s not like I’m going to give you the keys to the kingdom on your very first day. We can try it for a few days, see how things go, and then we can both decide if it’s something we want to continue with. How’s that sound?”
“It sounds good.”
“Okay, then.” She held out a hand to shake, but he smirked at her.
“Business or not, I think we can do better than that, don’t you?”
And then he was pulling her into his arms, and pulling the shirt she was wearing over her head. “Hey!” she said a little breathlessly as desire slammed through her. “I liked that shirt.”
“I’ll give it back. I promise.” He fastened his mouth on her collarbone. “Later—I promise. Much, much later.”
“But we should probably talk about things. You should know what you’re getting yourself into.”
“Right, absolutely.” He skimmed his mouth across her throat, over her shoulder to her breast, where he pressed small, hot kisses all the way around her nipple.
“Are you—are you even listening to me?”
“Of course I am. You want to tell me what I’m getting into.”
“Yes. Exactly. I—”
“What you’re not understanding, though, is that the only thing I’m interested in getting into right now is you.” His mouth fastened on her nipple, and her legs buckled. She stumbled against him and he grabbed on to her upper arms, held her in place while he rolled his tongue back and forth over her. Sensual heat streaked through her at the contact, and she closed her eyes, nearly lost herself in him. Only the fact that she wanted a chance to make him as crazy as he was making her gave her the strength to push him away.
