Dragon Rising

by Rush, Jaime

  “Call the Raphael and ask for Grayson’s number. He’ll know what to do. You’ll have twenty-four hours.”

  Chapter 8

  Archer let the cool rush of absinthe tickle his tongue as it swirled around his mouth.

  Lyra sat next to him at the kitchen counter. “You drink that stuff for breakfast?” she asked, fascination more than disgust in her voice.

  “Technically it’s still night. The sun hasn’t come up yet.” He nodded to the expanse of dark sky to the east. “Would you like one?”

  “Gods, no. Are you still trying to get rid of me?”

  “Get rid of you? By offering you a drink? Wouldn’t that be counterintuitive?”

  She regarded him with a curiously suspicious expression. “If you say so. But what I need is food.”

  His stomach grumbled. “I suppose sustenance would be appropriate.”

  She gave him a funny smile. “Yes, sustenance would be highly appropriate.”

  He opened the refrigerator. “I have eggs.”

  “Hot sauce?” she asked, coming up behind him.

  “No.” He pulled out a jar of olives. “Will this do?”

  “Olives and eggs. Yum. Not.” She nudged him aside and took in the contents of the refrigerator. “Caviar. Capers. Dark chocolate truffles. I heard you Caidos lived high on the hog, and it’s true. I can work with this.” She grabbed up several items and set them on the counter.

  He eyed the box of truffles. “Don’t tell me you’re making caviar chocolate eggs.”

  “The chocolate’s for me. After what we just went through, I need it.” She popped one into her mouth and pulled a pan from the rack hanging above the stove.

  After breakfast, he flipped through the pages of Jeremy’s address book, looking for a name of interest.

  She sat beside him, a mug of coffee in front of her, eyeing her cell phone. “I feel like I should call Kirin and update him. Even though he sure as heck hasn’t been sharing information with me. But I don’t know what I’d tell him at this point. I know he’d yell at me for consorting with dangerous individuals.” She flashed him a wry smile, then set the phone on the counter and leaned closer to the book. “Find anything?”

  Her heat pulled at him. Why was he so sensitive to it? So drawn by it? Now he was aware of her physically, the smell of her shampoo and her unique scent, and the way her blond hair curved around her neck. When he’d held her, protected from pain by his wings, he’d gotten lost in her.

  He focused on the book again. “I know some of these names.”

  She pointed, her finger drawing an imaginary line beneath the name Silva. “Ooh, Jeremy was pissed at this guy. He scribbled his name out. Is Silva powerful enough to change the orientation of a fetus?”

  “I’ve never heard of him.” Which was odd considering how small the Caido community was. Archer flipped through the rest of the pages. “He’s the only name in here that Jeremy crossed off. Something big made him do that.”

  He grabbed up the phone. When a man answered, Archer said, “Silva, please.”

  “He’s busy,” the man snapped. “If you care to leave a message—”

  “No, I care to talk to him. I understand he can perform…services.”

  Had the man coughed or snorted? Archer couldn’t tell.

  “Silva is not currently performing services. Call back another time.”

  Lyra had moved close to hear, surrounding him with her heat and scent. He could barely think.

  “I understand that his abilities are beyond any regular Caido’s, and I’m prepared to pay handsomely if he can provide this highly sensitive service. I’ve heard great things about him, but you know what…it’s probably beyond his skills anyway.”

  Silence for a moment. He knew some Caidos had egos that knew no bounds.

  “It’s an advanced service?” the man pressed.

  “A very unusual one. So unusual I can’t discuss it over the phone. But if he’s busy—”

  “Who is this?”

  “Grayson Winter.” Just in case this Silva knew who Archer was.

  “Wait a minute.”

  Archer turned to Lyra, who was smiling her approval. Embers flickered in her eyes. Even her Dragon was beautiful.

  The phone clicked. “He’ll see you at two. You can tell no one you are coming here.”

  “Understood.”

  “If you have pen and paper ready…”

  Archer wrote down the address and hung up.

  “That was brilliant, using his ego against him. So we…” Her voice trailed off as she saw his intense gaze. “Your eyes are glittering.”

  He brushed her hair from her face, leaving his fingers resting against her cheek. “There is something else I haven’t told you about Caidos.”

  She leaned slightly into his touch. “What?”

  Pain throbbed at the nerve endings of his skin, his desire, hers, twining together like barbed wire.

  “Being in angel form inures us to pain. There’s a nice side effect: I can feel desire without pain, too. But I can’t hold it for long.”

  Her pupils dilated. “You mean I can touch you, want you, and it won’t hurt?”

  “If the wings don’t bother you.”

  “Hell, no.” She shook her head, but her expression darkened. “But it hurts you when you transform, as you call it.”

  “It’ll be worth it. For one time.”

  He slid off the stool and removed his shirt, then bowed and willed his wings to come. They drove through his skin, but he didn’t care about the pain. When he straightened and opened his eyes, she was standing, too, watching him.

  They stepped toward each other simultaneously. He ached, but not from desire. From a need for her touch, her heat. He was so cold inside. He hadn’t realized it until he’d held her earlier and felt it seep into his soul.

  Her blue eyes were wide as she placed her hand on his chest, gently trailing her fingers over his pecs, watching him for some reaction.

  “No pain,” he assured her. He didn’t tell her that the form muffled his feelings.

  She smiled and put her other hand on him, too, running them across his shoulders, biceps, even down his forearms. She stepped around him, letting her fingers follow to his back. Her movements stilled.

  “Can I touch them?” she asked.

  No one had ever touched his wings, other than in combat.

  “Yes, but you’ll feel an electrical pulse.”

  He held his breath as her fingers dipped into the energy of his wings. While combatants tried to cut or damage each other’s wings, Lyra’s touch was gentle. Every feather transmitted her touch right down to his core. She breathed softly, tickling her way across the width of both wings.

  She came around to the front again, her fingers working the buttons of her top. It slipped to the floor, followed by her bra, and he had to keep from sucking in a breath at the beauty of her. Beauty he could touch. She slid her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek against his chest. “Touch me,” she whispered, as though sensing his thoughts.

  His hands trembled as he ran them down her silky hair to her bare shoulders and back. So soft, smooth, so female.

  She held tightly to him, her fingers splayed on his lower back, her breasts crushed to his chest. “Take my heat.”

  He closed his eyes at her offer. He pulled it into his body, her heat and everything about her. He drank in the feel of her skin, the bumps of her spine, and then the beauty of her face as he tilted it back and kissed her. All he could taste was the absinthe, but her mouth was warm and wet and everything her body would be if he buried himself inside her.

  Even muffled, he felt enough to know that this would taunt and claw at him for the next hundred years. That he would want more, would want to feel everything in vivid Technicolor. That he would be tempted to do the Essex. He should stop this now. His fingers tangled through her hair as he devoured her. Gods, her tongue, the way it swirled through his mouth and sparred with his, and the purring sound she made. />
  He picked her up and carried her to the kitchen, setting her on the counter, never breaking the kiss. His body tingled as it came to life. Her legs wrapped around his waist, pulling that feminine part smack up against his erection. That was the only painful part of his body, throbbing, pushing against his jeans.

  His hands explored her breasts, across her stomach, everywhere he’d wanted to touch earlier when she’d slept. He slid his hands down her back and beneath the waistband of her pants to cup her ass. She groaned and pressed even closer, rocking against him.

  His wings contracted, pulling in with a pinch. The pain returned, pounding like the beat at the Deuce nightclub. He dropped to his knees, hands on the floor, and had to catch his breath with the suddenness of it.

  “What happened?” she asked, breathless herself.

  “I couldn’t hold the form any longer. Damn it.” But her heat still swirled in him, even as he got to his feet.

  She remained on the counter, gripping the edge, beautifully half naked in the soft light, with the glitter of Miami behind her. Her Dragon tattoo shifted on her skin. Its yellow was even deeper than it had been, its eyes as heavy as Lyra’s.

  “I wish it had lasted longer,” she said.

  He couldn’t speak, couldn’t say he did, too, or that he was glad it hadn’t because he had enough trouble letting her go even with the pain.

  “So was this”—she winked—“premature transformation?”

  “You’re trying to make light of it?”

  “It’s better than crying.”

  He laughed then. “Too true.” He snatched her shirt from the floor and pushed it at her. When she didn’t cover those beautiful breasts, he settled against the back of the couch, a safe distance away.

  She held the shirt in her hands, making no attempt to put it on. “I want more, Archer. More of you. If I give you a little of my—”

  “No, not even a little. It’ll never be enough. I would suck you dry, Dragon Girl.”

  She shivered, though he couldn’t tell if she was afraid or aroused. He was far enough away, thankfully. She did, however, pull on her bra and shirt. Everything about her, her heat, her essence, curled through him still and accompanied the thrum of pain at his wanting, at the will it took not to close that distance.

  He walked to the wall of windows, pressing his body against the cool glass, arms spread. In the reflection, he saw her watching him. Take the heat away. Take it away, because I can never have it again.

  Chapter 9

  Do you always drive this fast?” Lyra watched the needle rise above one hundred.

  “Yes.”

  “Ah, back to that, are we? One-word answers. Sinking into deep silence. That’s not going to change what happened between us, you know.”

  “I know.” He flicked her a glance. “There, two words. Happy?”

  “Delirious.”

  She couldn’t keep her mouth from turning up, though. He hadn’t closed up completely. Watching him pressed against the window, sinking into his misery, had torn her apart. She’d given him space, and eventually they’d succumbed to exhaustion and fallen asleep on the couch.

  He turned up the car stereo, and a soft rock song filled the car. Queensrÿche’s “Silent Lucidity” scrolled across the screen, and the guy sang about the dream being over…or was it just begun?

  The words filled her chest. “We let ourselves have something, Archer. Maybe we’ll never have it again—”

  “We won’t.”

  The needle went higher, but he said nothing.

  “Because it hurts too much to not have it. I know. I felt it, too, and, well, you probably felt me feeling it. I’m trying not to unleash everything I feel.”

  “Don’t repress your feelings.” His order came out harsh. “It makes you cold and dead inside.”

  It hurt that she couldn’t touch his arm, or any part of him now, that he couldn’t let himself feel.

  “Is that why you’re so cold inside?” At his surprised look, she said, “I feel your cold, like stepping into the cooler at the bakery. Is that why you were craving my heat?”

  “I let you get too close. Nothing good comes of that.”

  She turned toward him, hands gripping the seat. “Something good did come of it. Look what we shared. It was beautiful.”

  “And it hurt like hell.”

  “But you said it wouldn’t hurt when you were Caido.”

  He kept his gaze ahead, which was good since he was going ninety-five. “Not physical pain.”

  “Heartache? Is that what you mean?”

  “I’ve spent my life feeling others’ emotions, taking in their pain and suffering as my own. I have never felt my own heartache until you.”

  She had made his heart ache. The thought made her flop back in her seat.

  A whoop sound definitely wasn’t part of the poignant song pouring from the stereo. Archer’s gaze flicked to the rearview mirror as blue and red lights flashed behind them.

  She twisted around, seeing a police cruiser closing the gap. A Mud, of course, because Crescent police, the Guard, didn’t concern themselves with minor offenses such as speeding. They came in when someone used their magick abilities inappropriately. Or fatally.

  Archer pulled over, the cruiser right behind him. The officer spent a couple of minutes running the tag, most likely.

  “We’re okay with time, aren’t we?” she asked, looking at the clock.

  “We’re fine. Just a minor delay.”

  “How often are you stopped for speeding?”

  Lights pulsed against the dashboard and Archer’s face. “Just about every time I get on the interstate.”

  The cop approached, and Archer rolled down his window.

  He was young, Hispanic, and very annoyed. “What in the hell are you thinking, that just ’cause you have some hot car, you can go as fast as you want?”

  “Officer, I appreciate that you’re going to give me a warning, because you made an error. I was only going sixty-five.”

  The man’s angry furrows on his face smoothed. “Yes, sir, and have a nice day.”

  He walked back to the cruiser, and Archer pulled away.

  “I wonder how much money they lose by you mesmerizing them.”

  “A couple thousand…a month.”

  Dragons could hypnotize somewhat, and yes, she’d used it to get out of a speeding ticket once. “Why do you speed all the time? Just because you can?”

  “Because it’s a safe thrill.”

  Ah, because metal and gears didn’t emit emotions, but only tempted a Caido into visceral thrills.

  Poor Muds, as good a job as they did, they had no idea what was going on in their city. Dragon fights, magick wars, and demon attacks, all beyond the scope of their law. And sight.

  Archer drove across the MacArthur Causeway and into a residential island neighborhood that had been developed before the age of enormous mansions. Tightness grew in her chest as she searched for the address. All she could think of was that dust on Jeremy’s floor. She had touched Archer’s wings, felt the light and energy emanating from them. The thought of them being torn from him—

  “Stop whatever it is you’re thinking. I know I told you not to repress your feelings, but right now I don’t need you worrying about me.”

  “Sorry.” She pointed to a gated entrance nearly hidden by thick, unruly trees. “There it is.”

  He rolled down his window, pressed the intercom, and identified himself to the person who answered. The gate slowly swung open.

  She looked from side to side as they drove through the arch. “I feel like we’re going to see the Wizard of Oz.”

  “Silva could potentially be much more dangerous. I think he’ll turn us down, but I’ll sense whether Jeremy, Anika, or your father are in the house.” He pulled up to the circular driveway with a defunct fountain in the center. This house looked a bit run-down, in need of paint and repairs. Mature vegetation sprawled over what was likely a double lot.

  Archer surp
rised her by taking her hand as they walked up the terraced steps. For show, in case Silva was watching them approach the double doors just beyond the Greek columns. His fingers sliding between hers gave her both a sense of security and a jolt of awareness.

  Before they reached the doors, they opened. A thin man with sharp features sized them up with ice-chip eyes, finding her distasteful, judging by the slight sneer of his elegant mouth. He didn’t have much more respect for Archer.

  “Come in.” Said with the most unwelcome tone.

  He led them across a marble floor in a foyer that went up two stories and contained a massive, curving staircase. The house had been spectacular many years ago, and in here, it tried valiantly to hold on to its former glory. The man directed them to a parlor that was cold in temperature and design.

  “Silva will be with you shortly.”

  The doors closed with an ominous thud. Archer had warned her not to say anything incriminating once in the house. They also had to be ready in case Silva suspected they were the very two people he’d targeted. If he was the enemy.

  Archer wandered the room, pretending to admire the abstract artwork. She knew he was probing for energies. His body stiffened, and he slanted her a look and a nod. He’d felt something. Someone. Her fingers curled into fists, and her Dragon trembled. She was hoping to find her pop here and terrified to find him here, too.

  Pop? she mouthed.

  The door opened, and a man who looked to be in his midtwenties entered. With Crescents, that guess didn’t count for much, as they aged slowly once they reached puberty. He wore the tight kind of shirt and black pants a bodybuilder might don, his black hair brushed back from his face. His steel-blue eyes took in Archer first, sizing him up.

  “You wish my attention?” he asked in a refined voice, now looking down his patrician nose at her.

  “Thank you for seeing us,” Archer said.

  Silva eyed their linked hands, and his expression tightened. “You presented a challenge, and I like challenges. But if you are here to find a way around our curse, I can’t help you.”