by Lily Cahill
And then, suddenly, the overwhelming feeling of too much oh god turned into yes yes yes. She let her legs fall open wider. He was so deep inside her.
“I’m going to come,” he said.
“Good ….” she moaned. She wanted him to have that, to feel the pleasure that was still ricocheting across her nerves.
He gasped and quickened his pace. “Ladies first.”
There it was again, that feeling that made her whine in her throat—she was nearly there again, so close, meeting movement of his hips with her own.
The orgasm crashed over her, and she let it take her, let it fill her with the satisfaction of fulfilled desire. Her muscles clenched around Blayze, who gave a shout, his mouth falling open as he found his own bliss.
“Ramona ….” he groaned. She loved the way he said her name.
She felt unspooled, every part of her undone and happy about it. Blayze fell down on top of her and wrapped her in his arms.
“I think we’ve made ourselves late,” he murmured into her ear.
Ramona glanced at the clock. “We don’t have to be in New York until this afternoon. The invitation was very clear: Felicity and Damien’s rehearsal dinner doesn’t start until 7. We have plenty of time.”
“Not if we take a quick nap and then do that all again.”
Ramona settled back into Blayze’s embrace. Sometimes, he had the best ideas.
Chapter One
Joy
“JOY. JOY. WAKE UP!”
JOY curled up against her pillow and groaned. If she just stayed in her bedroom, today wouldn’t happen.
Marta, apparently, had other ideas. She burst through the door and went to Joy’s bed, pulling off the comforter. A shock of cold hit Joy, and she whimpered.
“Nooo ….” Joy whined. “Why are you so cruel?”
“I’m paid to be that way. Now get up. It’s time to take your medicine. I got it all prepared for you in the kitchen.”
When Joy didn’t move, Marta went to the window and pulled back the curtains. The room flooded with light.
“You’re fired.” The words were a bit less effective when murmured directly into her pillow case.
“I’m really not. Come on, then.”
Joy sighed and sat up, pushing her sleep-mussed hair out of her eyes. Today was the day, whether she wanted it to be or not. With a sigh, she got to her feet and went over to her closet.
Her dress for the rehearsal dinner was hanging up on the inside of the door. Joy glared at it.
Damien and Felicity had gotten engaged two weeks earlier with some mad notion about getting married as soon as possible. Which was romantic, in a way—to see two people in a hurry to start their lives together. They’d even made sure to wait until she was out of rehab by a few weeks, so that she was more herself.
Joy loved her sister, and though she didn’t know Damien well, she had liked him every time she met him. But why were they in such a hurry?
Joy brought the dress out for closer inspection, and the tag just under the spaghetti strap turned so that she could see the size. She grimaced and flipped it away from her.
She’d been a pudgy teenager, but she’d lost the baby fat as she’d grown and had enjoyed having a tight, lithe body.
Unfortunately, it seemed now that that hadn’t had a lot to do with genetics, as she suspected. It was more from being consistently high on uppers, which suppressed her appetite so that she constantly forgot to eat. Rehab had helped her get healthy, and she was grateful for everything she had learned there, but their strict policy on three heaping meals a day—a policy her live-in nurse, Marta, also believed in strongly—had done her body few favors.
There was also the added benefit of her new medicinal regimen, which wreaked havoc on her hormones.
Being a Valdez was not easy. It required a lot of attention, both good and bad—which was always something that Joy had thought she liked. In the last few years, before Felicity had taken over as head of the family, that attention had been more bad than good.
Which was the way of any political dynasty, Joy had figured. She hadn’t thought of it much. Until, of course, someone had seen fit to poison her.
And, of course, they hadn’t been entirely politically motivated—Joy had been a partier. She liked having a good time. Naturally, when her sister had insisted they move to the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania, she had looked for someone with similar interests. She’d found just who she was looking for in half-pixie Tania Maxwell.
Tania had helped to enable Joy’s problems, but Joy had also enabled Tania’s. They were bad for each other, according to the Rules of Rehab. That didn’t make it any easier to just…lose the girl’s friendship so suddenly. But that’s what happened when someone’s parents tried to poison you, Joy figured.
Not that their motives made total sense. There were a hundred ways they could have approached everything more reasonably. Not that Tania would have listened to them if they had told her to stay away from Joy, or that Joy would have listened if they’d spoken to her instead. She and Tania were both adults and could make their own decisions. Still, to jump straight to murder?
The Maxwells had apparently really hated Joy, and when they’d found some book on their doorstep with the perfect poison ….
Pixies were always one for rash decisions.
The fact that no one knew where the book had come from—or who had left it there for them—was something that Joy tried not to let herself think about. She knew Ramona Jones was looking into it, but she wasn’t expecting much to come from that investigation.
Being a Valdez meant she had no shortage of enemies.
And to add insult to injury, the medicinal potions Marta gave her were making her gain weight like crazy. Why should she have to be poisoned AND lose her body?
“Are you obsessing again?”
Marta. Her nurse’s light Eastern European accent drifted into the room, and Joy scowled at her dress even harder. She liked Marta, she did, but the woman was a morning person, and that was just unacceptable.
“I’m not obsessing,” Joy said, even though she really, really was.
“You won’t be on these potions forever, you know. Just until you’re fully recovered. If you work hard and eat well, you’ll probably go back to a smaller size eventually.”
Joy grumbled. “I never had to work before.”
“Well, you were also shoving a lot of money up your nose, so.”
Even though Joy gave an offended scoff, she didn’t really mean it. She kind of liked that Marta never minced words. Marta was round and pale and had the blondest hair of anyone in the entire world—she looked soft. In reality, she was tough as nails.
Still, this wasn’t the day for hard truths. It was the day of her sister’s rehearsal dinner, and the weekend of her sister’s wedding, and Joy was going to be forever immortalized in wedding photos at her absolute worst, rather than her best.
“No one will be looking at you,” Marta chimed in again. “Everyone’s eyes will be on the bride.”
Honestly, Joy wasn’t sure if that helped or hurt more.
“I’m being selfish,” she said aloud, with a sigh. “Aren’t I?”
“Definitely.”
Joy tried to glare at Marta, but it was useless. It wasn’t like Marta was wrong, after all. This wedding was not about Joy Morningstar Valdez. It was about her beautiful, wonderful older sister getting exactly the man she deserved and starting an incredibly happy life with him.
Besides, Joy didn’t ever have to look at the pictures if she didn’t want to.
She closed her closet door and turned to Marta. “All right, then. Let’s get the potions out of the way.”
Two hours later, she was sitting on the curb in front of the former Witch’s Brew, a garment bag laying over her legs. Her small Louis Vuitton luggage case was next to her with the clothes and potions she’d need for a weekend of travel. Marta had offered to come with her, and Joy had insisted she should take the weekend off and have
fun. She worked too hard.
Every time a car drove down the street, Joy perked up. Every time it kept driving, she grew a little bit angrier.
Blayze and Ramona had told her that she could get a ride. They’d promised. They’d also promised they’d be on time, so reflecting on it, now, Joy wasn’t sure why she believed them. Ever since they’d hooked up a couple of weeks ago, they’d barely left Ramona’s house.
She’d seen them a few times, after the whole thing with the Maxwell’s had come to light, once or twice for a meal and to catch up. They were nice, but they weren’t family to her. Not yet. Joy missed Felicity. As it turned out, having a sister who was pretty much a queen meant not seeing that sister as often as she liked.
Which was a reason to be excited about the wedding. Except, of course, that her ride was over an hour late.
Where r u guys, she typed. The card with Ramona’s number had come in handy, which she had not expected.
She followed it up with a string of angry looking emojis, for good measure.
No reply. Of course.
She dialed Ramona’s number, and it went to voicemail. She dialed it again. And again. And again and again and—
“Hello?”
Ramona sounded breathless, which—ew. Joy so didn’t have to know that was the reason they were late.
“Are you two done yet? We’re probably too late to make it for the pre-wedding prep stuff that Felicity wanted help with, but if we leave now we should be fine for the rehearsal and—“
There was a lot of crashing and swearing, and then Blayze’s voice came over the line. “Shit. Joy. Hi.”
Joy fought back a sigh. “You have to be joking. How do you forget your own brother’s rehearsal dinner?”
“We didn’t forget!” Blayze sounded offended. “We just…aren’t quite ready yet.”
“You told Damien and Felicity you’d give me a ride!”
Although Damien and Felicity had initially been angry when they’d found out that Blayze had gone behind their backs to hire someone to look into Joy’s case, they’d changed their tunes when the two of them had managed to find out who had poisoned her. Now, they seemed to trust the pair of them with all of their Joy-related favors.
That trust was apparently very misplaced.
“Can’t Marta do it?” Blayze asked. There was rustling, like he was putting on a shirt. Or, knowing the two of them, taking it off. It was hard to say.
“She’s already left. She has the weekend off.” Joy let her forehead fall against her knees for a second, and then sat up. “It’s fine. I’ll just…call Felicity and see if she can magic me there and back, or whatever. Teleport spells take a lot out of her, and she didn’t want to have to do it before the wedding, but I know she will.”
Shuffling, and then Ramona was back on the line. “We’re sorry, Joy. What if I make it up to you?”
Joy picked at the garment bag. Her rehearsal dinner dress and her bridesmaid dress were both inside. Hopefully they weren’t horribly wrinkled. Hopefully there was a spell to fix that if they were.
“How do you plan to do that?”
“Let me make some calls. I will text you within the next ten minutes.”
The line went dead, and it was all Joy could do not to hurl her phone into the street.
She’d give them ten minutes, and then she was calling Felicity.
Nine minutes and thirty-six seconds later, she got a text from Ramona. All it said was you’re welcome with a string of winky faces.
Joy stared at the screen suspiciously. Nope, she no longer trusted these two to get anything done. She opened up her address book and found her sister’s number. The call only rang once before it connected.
“Joy!” Felicity sounded so happy that she regretted being so miserable about this weekend. “Are you guys on your way? How much longer until you get here? I cannot wait for you to see my dress, you’re going to lose your mind.”
Joy smiled. “You texted me a picture of it, Lis.”
“It’s different in person, though!”
It was nice to see this part of Felicity: young and bubbly and in love. Joy was so used to her sister being the serious one, the one who made the big important decisions, who took care of everyone and everything around her. She did it all the time, and she was good at it.
There weren’t many times in Felicity’s life when she’d simply had free reign to let go. Instead of becoming a controlling bridezilla, she’d let her happiness buoy her as she’d planned a last-minute wedding. Every picture and text Joy had received in the past two weeks had been overflowing with bliss.
“Well, I have some bad news. Ramona and Blayze are completely unreliable whenever they have at least five minutes worth of access to a place that allows them to be naked—“
“Joy!”
“—so now I’m stuck with no way of getting to the…”
A sports car that had been coming down the road slowed in front of Joy, and the window rolled down. Vincent Dragomir leaned out of it, the sun cutting lines across his face, his dark hair blowing lightly in the wind.
“Joy?” he asked, smiling. “I was told you needed a ride to New York.”
Felicity was babbling away, talking about teleportation spells and whether or not she knew of a witch who could help them last minute so she wouldn’t have to drain her energy.
“Lis. Lis. Problem solved. See you in a few hours.”
“What? But Joy—“
Joy hung up.
“You’re sure I’m not bothering you?”
Vincent shook his head. “We’re going to the same place, aren’t we? Come on.”
He popped the trunk of his car.
She turned her best smile on Vincent, the one that she always gave to the cameras, when the cameras had stalked her ever movement. She stood, gathering her things around her and then throwing them in the back. She made a mental note to text Ramona a thank you for sending the cutest Dragomir boy to her rescue. She took back every bad thing she’d thought about the other woman in the past hour. Clearly, Ramona Jones was a better friend than she had thought.
Chapter Two
Vincent
VINCENT’S GRIP ON HIS STEERING wheel was white-knuckled as Joy Valdez slipped into the seat next to him.
There were a million reasons why he should feel anxious about this—her parents had killed his and overthrown their rule, he’d lived in fear of her family for twenty years, until he had been exposed as one of the four remaining dragon shifters in the world. If he were honest, though, he’d adjusted to all of that pretty quickly. After a lifetime of fear and hardship, it was hard to be upset about no longer having to live in fear.
What was bothering him was how gorgeous Joy Valdez really was.
He’d spotted her sitting on the curb, head down as she stared at her phone, hair in her face—but when he’d rolled down the window and she looked up, his heart had stopped in his chest before kicking back up at double speed.
She had a heart-shaped face and a full mouth and long, long legs. She was full-figured, with curves that made his mouth water, and when she’d smiled back, bright and happy, he’d barely managed to keep his head on straight.
Which was ridiculous.
Vincent had never been great at talking to women. Or to people in general. He’d only been eight when the coup had happened, just a kid who’d barely gotten control of his wings. He’d grown up angry at the world for taking away his parents, for hating his family for their power. Dragon shifters had always been rare. Now, they were all but extinct.
So he’d retreated to that form. Men were the ones who had torn apart his family and forced him to hide, fearful. Men were duplicitous and power-hungry, they couldn’t be trusted. Vincent cared for his brothers, but they were the only people he had any faith in.
When he was a dragon, things were simple. There was the fire in his heart and in his veins, the spread of his wings as he cut through the air, the feel of his claws in the ground. There weren’t politics t
o consider. It was just him and nature, and he liked it best that way.
And now he was going to spend hours alone with a perfect stranger. Not just any stranger, either—a stranger he felt like he should hate (even though he really didn’t), a stranger he was attracted to.
Attraction was usually easy to ignore. Vincent wasn’t interested in creating ties to humanity, if he could help it. He wanted wind and sun on his scales, not on his skin.
Now, however, he couldn’t retreat. There was no escape. There was just Joy Valdez, sitting next to him and obliviously gorgeous, and him, stewing in having to deal with it.
When Blayze had called, he almost hadn’t answered. He’d almost said no to his request. He’d almost done a lot of things, including calling Damien. Damien would have not hesitated to give Blayze a piece of his mind, really let him have it.
But in the end, Vincent hadn’t wanted to ruin his oldest brother’s wedding by being stubborn and refusing the maid of honor a ride. Damien was under enough stress and pressure as it was, without Vincent causing some sort of family rift.
So he’d begrudgingly agreed to this fiasco.
Everything he knew about Joy Valdez came from bits and pieces he’d heard from his family—she was a recovering addict who’d only been home from rehab for a few weeks. She was a bit of a spitfire, and had quite a reputation around the gossip rags. According to Felicity, she was a sweet girl who had gone down the wrong path and now saw the error of her ways. According to Ramona, who had met Joy a few times, she was having a hard time adjusting to her new lifestyle.
Living in hiding had left little time for interpersonal relationships—spending all his free time as a dragon had dwindled that time to nothing. Although not quite as focused on debauchery as Blayze had always been, Vincent had always thought there was a certain logic to his brother’s actions. People made too big a deal about sex and relationships. There was something to be said for some release, some fun, and no attachments or hurt feelings.
There was no way he could act on this attraction to Joy. Not only was she in a particularly fragile emotional state, but she was Felicity’s sister. If he did something wrong, it would make things awkward at every family gathering for the rest of their lives.
