And she needed him. With Rick, she didn’t have to be alone or scared of who she was anymore. She could laugh, she could relax, she could just be herself. And for that, she loved him.
Love him. Oh God, I love him.
“Rick,” she gasped, her belly twisting, her sex throbbing. “Rick, I…I…oh God, I love—”
Before she could utter another word, Kenna’s orgasm detonated and everything turned blue with fire.
Chapter 8
He was on fire. But he wasn’t.
Flames danced over his flesh. He was surrounded by flames so hot they were a blinding blue, but he didn’t burn. His skin didn’t blister or melt, his hair wasn’t aflame. His desire, however? Damn, it was molten hot. Hot for Kenna, hot for the utter pleasure she gave him, hot for the undeniable sense of completion that came from being inside her body.
Her pussy gripped his cock in powerful pulses, her orgasm—the source of the magical fire licking his body—coming very close to blowing his mind. She was so tight. So tight and so wet and so, so responsive. With every stroke, she cried out, bowing her spine, her swollen breasts crushing harder to his chest. Every time he squeezed her arse, lifting her up and down his shaft as he fucked her with increasing force, she moaned and rolled her hips and rode him even harder. His name fell from her lips over and over again in gasping breaths. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders with inescapable strength and her sex squeezed his dick with such pressure he knew he couldn’t stop his own orgasm no matter how hard he tried.
This wasn’t about performance and satisfaction and ego. This was about love, about joining with Kenna, the woman who claimed his heart, and he willingly let himself go with the sheer, elemental rapture of their passion.
Every second drove him faster and faster toward release. His every sense was so hyper aware of his Fire Mate—of the exquisite heat of her sex, the sweet taste of her flesh, the husky music of her voice, the perfume of her pleasure, the beauty in her face as she lost herself to her climax—he felt undone. Undone and remade and more connected with…with everything than ever before. But most of all, more connected with her.
Fuck a duck, he truly did love her.
The realization pushed him over the edge. His climax smashed through him, exploding in his balls, up into his pumping cock. It shot up his spine, burst through his chest. It turned his strokes to graceless thrusts, his moans to shouts. He squeezed his eyes shut, his muscles thrumming, his nerve endings firing…
Firing…
Fire. He was on fire. Christ, how could he be on fire and feel so good? So good. Dian Cécht, he felt so good. Lugh Lamhfada, he hadn’t expected it to feel so maith. Ní raibh an tsamhail chéanna le dúirt leis go mbeadh sé bhraitheann chomh maith, mar sin—
Rick’s heart slammed into his throat. As his orgasm exploded from his dick, as Kenna’s sex milked him of his seed, the mellifluous words of a language beyond his understanding but his language all the same cried through his head. Calling to deities he didn’t know, offering thanks to gods he’d never heard of in a language as alien as it was familiar.
He continued to climax, hot ropes of come spurting from him, and with every scalding ejaculation, the memories of his past life, the memories of the Druid he’d once been, flooded his consciousness. Until the stench of blood and sage and burning flesh flowed through his nose. Until the cries of the woman in his arms, on his dick, became the screeching wails of a dragon. Until the heart beating against his became the heart in his hand and…
His hands glisten, his heart races. Lifting the sprig of sage, he shakes it over the dragon’s bowed head and with a single stroke, performs the final rite of the soul’s passage, the final thrust of the knife into flesh primed with trust and love and fire…
The memory took Rick. Assaulted him. Raped him.
He sees the dragon before him, her beautiful, serpentine body covered in flames so hot they burn blue. They lick over her, a living shroud of fire. The mating fire. She lies on the lush ground, her eyes—iridescent green—watching him with eternal trust and adoration. A she-dragon waiting for her Fire Mate to claim her, to love her.
He steps closer, his hands dripping blood, the wounds he’d sliced into her body doing the same. Slashes of his knife she bore without fight because he is hers and she is his and he’s promised her all will be well, all will be well…
“With your heart,” he murmurs, the words a divine song in the damp Samhain night, “I give life. With your soul, I give strength. With your life, I give…eternity.”
He strokes his dragon with the bushel of sage, paints her with its pungent magic—and plunges the knife into her chest.
Rick stumbled backward, almost dropping Kenna as he did so, his hands slipping from her body when her feet hit the floor. He tripped, his own feet tangling beneath him, and he’d barely recovered before the memory slammed into him again.
Her heart gushes blood and he cuts it from her chest. She wails and screeches and flails under his blade but he closes his ears to her grief. He has her heart. He is but an offering away from finishing the ritual. With the dragon’s sacrifice at the height of her mating cycle, he will ensure with every life returned after death, his soul will be stronger. Granting it eternal strength, fortitude and everlasting rebirth, until he, Oistin Raghnall, is beyond death, beyond time and connected for eternity with—
“Rick?”
He staggered again, his chest heaving. A distant part of his violated mind told him Kenna’s cream coated his dick, a dick still hard and still enduring the spasms of his orgasm.
He swiped at his mouth, scrubbed his hands through his hair. Christ, what had he done?
Sacrifice. Eternal life. The ritual. The death. The rebirth.
He squeezed his eyes shut, unable to look at Kenna. The Druid he once was looked back at him, face coated in blood, eyes direct and clear. Without pause, he raised blood-drenched hands and pressed the dragon’s heart to his lip, drenching his beard in—
“Rick! What’s going on?”
Rick snapped open his eyes, staring hard at Kenna. She stood but a few feet away, her sublime, naked perfection slicked with perspiration, her face etched in stunned confusion. He couldn’t see her belt anymore.
Of course not, you idiot. The fire incinerated it.
He barked out a laugh at the surreal ridiculousness of the thought.
He’d just discovered he’d slaughtered his dragon Fire Mate eons ago to give himself a stronger soul each time he reincarnated, and he was pondering the whereabouts of a belt?
Christ, Yorick. Who are you? How could you—
“Tell me what’s going on, Rick!”
Kenna’s voice, raw with unchecked fear, sliced into his feverish sanity.
Sanity? Are you sure?
He pressed his hands to his face, rubbed his eyes with his fingers.
Sacrifice. Eternal life. The ritual. The death. The rebirth.
Oistin Raghnall, defying the Kindred and Deities, his heart and his soul forever beyond the power of life, his spiritual soul connected to the Goddess Mother and the powers and all the creatures, and his heart forever with—
“Stop it!” The scream tore from his throat and he doubled over, his gut a churning mass of sickened lust. Lust for rebirth, for power, for immortality. “For fuck’s sake, get out of my head. Get out get out get the fuck out!”
“What are you saying?”
Kenna’s cry lashed at him. He jerked his head up and stared at her, pain and disgust and hate pouring through him. “Kenna…”
The dragon’s dying cries echoes on the silent night, and with them, he feels the rush of unfathomable—
“Kenna, I think…” He stopped. Swallowed the bile bubbling up his throat. “I think you’d better go.”
Kenna’s eyes grew wide. Her mouth fell open. “Go? You can’t be—”
“Kenna,” he ground out, wave after wave of nauseous contempt for himself nearly overwhelming. “You don’t…want to be near me. You don’t…”
> Her arms stole around her chest, and the part of Rick’s brain not being attacked by Oistin’s memories knew she was shielding herself, not fending off the cold of the room. The room wasn’t cold. It was a bloody hot summer night.
And she burns for you…
Make me burn…
I love…
She stared at him. “Tell me!”
Bile stung the back of his throat, acid on raw flesh. “I think I…”
The words choked in his throat. How did he tell her? The woman, the dragon, whose twin sister had been betrayed by her Fire Mate and slaughtered by hunters, that he too had slaughtered one of her kind? All to gain a little extra spiritual kick? And to what end now? So he could calm a wounded animal? Had he once butchered a dragon who trusted him just so he could now charge a trusting pet owner the premium price for curing a sick bloody dog?
Fuck, how did he tell her?
You have to, Yorick. You love her. How can you lie to her? Or keep it from her?
“Please…tell me what’s happening, Rick?”
It was her “please” that did it. A plaintive plea spoken from a heart already scarred too deeply.
He drew a shallow breath, knowing the pain he was about to cause.
“Kenna, when I was a Druid, I… I slaughtered a dragon—my Fire Mate—in a sacrificial ritual that I think gave my soul greater strength.”
Confusion turned Kenna’s face to a white mask. “What?”
Rick sucked in another breath. “I just relived a moment of my Druid life in which I sacrificed my Fire Mate while she was in dragon form and—”
“Wait. What did you just say?” The confusion twisted to something else. Stunned disbelief. Her eyes shimmered, no longer just green but iridescent. Luminous.
Reptilian.
Christ, Rick. She’s…is she… Christ, she’s changing!
“What did you do?” Her voice was a snarl. Hardly human at all.
Rick stared at her, his heart beating so hard his whole chest ached. “I killed my Fire Mate, Kenna. My name was Oistin Raghnall, I was a Druid, and I seduced her into allowing me to cut out her heart and—”
He didn’t finish. He couldn’t.
Not when he was being flung backward across the room. A room currently exploding outward as a massive dragon the color of virgin snow suddenly appeared within its walls where Kenna had stood.
God, she is beautiful!
The thought whispered through Rick’s head a second before he struck the splintering wall that once separated the living room from the hallway beyond. His breath burst from him in a fierce punch, shattered wood and ceiling supports showering down on him as he dropped to the floor.
Kenna’s wings swooshed open, knocking into anything not already destroyed by her abrupt transformation. Debris peppered Rick like bullets, the living room suddenly the most dangerous room in the house, but he ignored it all, scrambling to his feet, his stare locked on his Fire Mate in her dragon form.
“Kenna!” he cried, tripping over something, maybe his ceiling. “Don’t—”
The dragon’s elegant, horned head swung in his direction. Green eyes glowed with hate and pain and then, with a screech so loud Rick could do nothing but smack his hands to his ears, she took off. Effortlessly blasted through the debris that had seconds before been the exterior wall of his home and launched into the night.
Nothing but a white ghost of improbable size and speed in the blackness.
Leaving Rick kneeling amongst the rumble, watching her fly away. “Christ Almighty.”
The protesting groan of drywall falling to the floor somewhere behind him drowned out his whispered expletive. Nearby, a dog barked frantically, then another. In the distance, a siren wailed.
Funny how clearly you can hear everything when you don’t have any freaking walls to your living room, eh Yorick?
Beyond the rubble, he saw dark shapes moving about on the street. His neighbors, coming to see what was going on. Some ran, some walked, some called out to him, asking if he was okay, asking what happened. More than one expressed shocked disbelief in language not fit for such a family-heavy street. It was all muffled, surreal noise to Rick.
The dragon’s dying cries echoes on the silent night, and with them, he feels the rush of unfathomable power and timeless promise. He touches his parted lips to her severed heart, reveling in the wet kiss of her blood on his flesh, and sends a silent prayer to Dian Cécht, Lugh Lamhfada and the Kindred for the gift of immortality the ritual has—
Something wet touched Rick’s hand. He flinched, a yelp squeaking from his constricting throat as he snatched his hand away from—
“Hannibal.” He blinked at his dog standing at his side, long tail wagging in hesitant swipes, limpid brown eyes watching him warily. Collapsing to the debris-strewn floor, Rick let out a ragged laugh and wrapped his arms around his dog’s body. “Holy Christ, mate.” He pressed his forehead to Hannibal’s neck, ignoring the shouts and calls of his neighbors. “I always knew I was a piece of work, I just never realized—”
A bright light flashed in his eyes, which was quite stupid given his trashed living room wasn’t in complete darkness. Both table lamps were working, after all—if on their sides somewhere on the floor.
“You okay, Rick?”
Rick squinted up at the large shadow drilling the torch beam into his face. He waved his hand in front of the light in a weary attempt to shield his eyes. The voice was familiar, as was the gargantuan size of the speaking shadow. “Yeah, Bruce,” he answered his neighbor. “Guess I really need to cut back on the beans, ’eh?”
His neighbor shook his head. “Jesus, Hayes, do you ever take anything seriously?”
Rick raised his eyebrows. “It was a serious fart.”
Bruce snorted, though whether from disgust at Rick’s flippancy or the situation, Rick didn’t know, nor give a toss. It was low on his care-factor list. The memories of his Druid self were still trying to undo him as well, and he didn’t give a flying fuck about that either.
He looked over his neighbor’s shoulder through the gaping hole that used to be the side of his house, searching the night sky for Kenna.
Not a sign.
The screaming sirens grew to a deafening pitch out on the street, only to shut off mid-wail. There was a slamming car door and then another torch beam joined Bruce’s on Rick’s face, this one about ten times stronger.
“Mind telling me what went on here, sir?” a deep, male and thoroughly stern voice asked.
At Rick’s side, Hannibal began to growl, the fur under Rick’s hand bristling. Rick turned his squinted eyes toward the newcomer and his already churning gut churned some more. Awesome, just what he needed.
He gave the touch-bearer a lopsided grin, caressing his dog’s neck in an attempt to keep Hannibal calm. “G’day, Officer. Welcome to my humble a—”
And then Oistin Raghnall’s memory of the rest of the ritual pummeled Rick’s already overwhelmed mind, a tsunami of sounds and smells and inescapable images.
And Rick was lost to them.
* * * *
Kenna had no choice but to steal some clothes. She crouched behind a dense, unmaintained hedge, studying the back windows and doors of the only house in streaking distance of the Sydney Harbour National Park to still have clothes hanging outside on a line.
The deep gash high on her right shoulder throbbed, the wound still weeping blood. She touched her fingertips to it, biting back a hiss. It had been a while since she’d suffered any kind of serious injury, even longer since the injury had occurred in her dragon form. She’d forgotten how wounds responded during the shift from dragon to human—like metal hooks digging into the torn flesh and ripping it wider. Of course, she wouldn’t be injured now if she’d been able to control the shift back at Rick’s house, but no, she had to go and—
Stop thinking about it, Kenna. Get the clothes and get home. That’s your goal. After you’re home, after you’re safe and your wound tended to, then you can think about the
lying, deceiving, murderous—
She shut down the mental tirade. It would serve her no good now. The simple fact she’d shifted at all, in the middle of his living room, was enough to make her heart threaten to smash its way out of her body via her throat. Flying over Sydney, all those houses, all those people…what if someone saw her? A white dragon the size of a bus flying through a moonlit sky wasn’t exactly hard to miss. God, she’d never been so petrified.
And excited beyond belief.
She’d forgotten the sheer rapture of flying, of soaring through the sky, the wind streaming over her face, her wings, swirling around her tail. She’d forgotten the magic of her other form, the freedom, the beauty…
Stop it, Kenna. This isn’t you anymore. It can’t be. Look what happens when you give in to your dragon side? You get your heart ripped out.
Slight movement behind one of the dark windows made her stiffen. She narrowed her eyes, crouching a little lower. Since the shift into her dragon form, her senses had heightened to a preternatural point. She could smell the fleas on the dog sleeping at the back door of the house two doors away. She could hear the wild owls launching from the trees in the park in which she’d landed two kilometers behind her. She could see the faintest disturbance of the curtains in the windows of the house before her.
She could taste Rick on her lips, her tongue.
Stop it. Stop it stop it stop it!
Her belly twisted. Her sex constricted. Her dragon surged for release, so close to the surface Kenna wondered how she remained human. Every fiber in her body demanded she fly back to Rick now and beg him to make love to her. To continue their mating. Her flesh prickled with heat and her heart raced with want.
Her brain, however…well, at least part of her dual existence knew what to do.
Stay away from him.
Arrest him.
Kill him.
Her gut didn’t just twist on that last thought, it rolled. She couldn’t kill him. She knew that. But she could hate him. Hate him for what he’d turned out to be. And she did. Damn it, she did.
How to Love Your Dragon Page 9
