Dragon Lord

by Dragon Lord (NCP) (lit)

  “I keep meaning to look them up, but somehow I never seem to find the time. It’d probably take a while. I don’t know if they’re even around here anymore. Honestly, I don’t know if I’d even recognize them if I saw them. It’s been ….” She paused, frowning. “God! Almost ten years! My how the time flies when you’re working your ass off!”

  She looked at him, smiling faintly. “You didn’t understand any of that, did you?”

  He frowned faintly and then smiled apologetically. “Some.” He touched his lips. “Accent.”

  Raina chuckled. “What? You’ve got a problem with the southern accent? I hate to break it to you, but I have trouble with your accent, too!”

  He grimaced. “I work on. No good yet.”

  Raina sighed. “I wish you could. It would be so nice to have somebody to talk to. Not that it matters now, I suppose. It’s just as well I got something out of the accident--a good laugh--because I guess I’m going to get the boot.” She glanced over her shoulder at the garage apartment. “Which sucks. I was really looking forward to living in that apartment. It’s the nicest thing I’ve been in since I left granny’s house.”

  He took her hand. Staring down it as he settled it in the palm of his, he stroked her fingers. Surprise flickered through Raina at the warm, tingling sensation that ran through her at that simple gesture. She watched a little breathlessly as he lifted her hand and brushed his lips along her knuckles, feeling another pleasant gush of warmth.

  She saw his bruised knuckles then, though, and it distracted her. “Oh! Your poor hands!” she gasped. Shifting to face him, she grasped his hands in both of hers and examined them and then, impulsively, leaned down to kiss the injuries. “Poor baby! Did you miss his face and hit the wall?”

  He was studying her intently when she looked up at him. Disengaging his hands from hers, he settled them on her shoulders and drew her toward him. She smiled, lifting her face readily for his kiss. She’d thoroughly enjoyed it the first time he’d kissed her even though it had been way too brief in her opinion because she’d just begun to get really warmed up when he stopped. She liked him, a lot, and more than that she found him very desirable, and sweet, and she felt so guilty about him getting beat up. She wanted to do something to make him feel better as much as she wanted the kiss for herself.

  Their lips met, brushed.

  “Ow!” he muttered, leaning away and sucking at his bruised lip.

  Undeterred now that she’d set her goal, Raina came up on her knees as he released her. Leaning toward him, she steadied her hands on his shoulders and brushed feather light kisses over his cheeks and then, very carefully, pressed her lips to his. He let out a hissing breath. Sighing with disappointment, Raina sat back on her heels.

  His eyes were glittering with desire, she saw when she looked at him. Her belly responded by tightening hopefully, but she could see he was stiff and sore besides the bruises.

  On the other hand, shy of actual death, men didn’t seem to have a problem with sex if they got the chance of it, no matter how injured they were. She waggled her brows at him. “Want to fool around?”

  He smiled faintly at the expression, but his dark brows drew together. “Fool around?”

  She was always forgetting his limited vocabulary. “Fuck,” she clarified baldly.

  He looked startled.

  She couldn’t help but blush. She looked down, studying the definite ridge in his pants with a good bit of disappointment. “Never mind. I was just thinking I might be leaving soon--like to tomorrow--and I haven’t gotten laid in a while, and I have a feeling you haven’t either. And everybody’s sure we already have anyway.”

  She heard him swallow.

  “Make love?”

  “Are you ask …? Shit!” She caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure near the house as she looked up at him.

  She’d thought they were alone.

  She wondered just how clearly her voice had carried to the man standing near the house and how long he’d been there. Completely disordered by the possibility that it might be Simon, since it occurred to her forcefully that he might have come looking for her to speak to her about the ‘disaster’ at dinner, she scrambled off the bench. “I have to go in now.”

  Since the man was standing in the shadows near the back door, she headed toward the front, moving briskly in the hope that she could make it in the house and upstairs before he could head her off. It wasn’t that she thought she could actually put off a termination speech by running to hide. If he had that in mind, he was going to corner her sooner or later, but she thought later might be better. That might give him time to forget she was in the garden trying to hump his brother directly after the disaster at dinner, because she was pretty sure that wasn’t going to improve his mood.

  She almost skidded to halt when she came through the door and saw Simon advancing toward her from the rear of the house. “Uh oh,” she gasped and headed up the stairs at a gallop.

  Any hope she’d entertained that he wasn’t actually following her died when she heard his swift ascent on the stairs behind her. Throwing a panicked glance backward when she reached the landing, she sprinted toward her bedroom, hoping he’d decide not to follow her there. He caught the door with his hand as she leapt inside and turned to close it. She stared at him warily and gulped.

  Simon tried to steady himself, struggled to reclaim his reason, dimly aware that he was perilously near his limit and running more on instinct than reason. He hadn’t wanted to go any where near Raina, hadn’t trusted himself to do so and retain his wits, but the woman had Tedra quivering on the verge of a nervous breakdown and she’d wrangled a promise from him to speak to Raina.

  He shouldn’t have followed Audric. He’d suspected immediately that he knew where Raina had disappeared to and, moreover, that it was probably a prearranged assignation between them. In point of fact, it was that suspicion that had goaded him to follow. Otherwise, he would gladly have dismissed his promise to Tedra and waited until he was in a better frame of mind to speak to Raina.

  All of which was a moot point. He had gone and instead of turning around and leaving when he saw his suspicions had been confirmed, he’d been rooted to the spot. He hadn’t heard much, or registered it in any event. He’d been far more focused on the sound of her voice, her husky chuckles, the way she looked at Audric--touched him, offered herself to him. And equal parts rage and lust had battled it out inside of him and grown hotter and hotter until, together, they’d deprived him of any ability to do anything but act on instinct.

  And then she’d seen him.

  And she’d run.

  If she hadn’t, his hunting instincts might not have kicked in, but that was a moot point, too. With rage and lust already goading him past the ability to reason, he’d had nothing to stem the instinctive urge to give chase.

  As he stared down into her wide green eyes, he saw the uneasiness in them and a flicker of doubt went through him, but he saw the other, too. The look he could never completely fathom. The look that made him feel as if he was the center of her universe, that made him want to be. The look that made him want to hold her and caress her with infinite tenderness. And at the same time made him want to tear her clothes off of her and ravish every tender inch of her flesh until she was screaming his name and begging him for more.

  That look that had made him want to run, made his heart beat so hard he felt like it would choke him to death.

  The look that had compelled him to try to drive her away because with every fiber of his being, worse than he’d ever wanted anything in his life, he’d wanted to grab what she offered with both hands and nothing had ever terrified him as much in his life.

  He hesitated, wavering as he felt that gut wrenching tug again to go in two diametrically opposed directions at once, and then he took a step toward her.

  And she took a step back.

  He advanced on her, stalking her step for step until he had her cornered, knew he’d cut off her retreat as he slung the door
to behind him. She jumped at the sound, her gaze flickering from his face to the door and back again. The look of uneasiness slid through her eyes again, this time more pronounced, impossible to ignore.

  She hadn’t looked at Audric like that.

  But then Audric hadn’t been making a complete ass out of himself, trying to scare her away because he didn’t have the guts to take her or run.

  And he didn’t give a fuck. It still pissed him off. “You do not mean to offer me what you offered him?” he growled.

  Confusion filled her eyes. He folded his arms over his chest and leaned back against the door instead of doing what he wanted to do, which was to grab her and shake her till her teeth rattled. How dare she look at him that way, the way she’d looked at him from that first day, make him want her when he didn’t want to and then offer herself to Audric? “No, let us fuck, Simon?”

  She blinked at him rapidly as she assimilated that and then turned bright red. Only part of it was embarrassment, though. The dreamy, worshipful, faraway look left her eyes to be replaced by anger.

  Good, he thought with satisfaction. He wanted a fight. He realized he’d been spoiling for it ever since he’d kissed her--that and a good fuck. “If you had it in mind to use him to intervene on your behalf, why not go straight to the source?” he ground out, deliberately goading her. He knew very well that wasn’t what she’d had in mind, but he would have preferred it to what she had done--offered comfort, affection--because he could have felt contempt then instead of raging jealousy.

  The anger in her eyes gave way to hurt, and then resignation, and then more anger. She lifted her jaw at him. “That was none of your fucking business!” she growled at him. “It had nothing to do with you at all!” She clamped her lips together, staring at him in quivering rage for several moments and then whirled away from him and stalked to the bed. Dragging her suitcase out from under it, she opened it and stomped into the bathroom. When she came out again, she had an armload of cosmetics. She dropped them into the open suitcase and glared at him. “And I don’t have to take this shit from anybody! I don’t care if you are my boss! I quit! You can go to hell and everybody else in this damned house can go to hell, too! I’m sorry you lost your wife, but you might consider not being such a complete asshole to everybody!”

  If she’d said anything but that he would’ve accepted defeat and left because he realized the moment she started packing that he’d pushed her too far, that he’d succeeded in driving her away when it was the last thing in the world he really wanted. That stab went right through him, though, like a knife. “I did not lose my wife!” he snarled.

  She froze, staring at him in confusion, her anger effectively diffused, though he was too raw to fully register it.

  “She was murdered, right in front of my eyes … and not cleanly, not quickly. I had to watch her die by inches, had to because I could not help her, could not stop it, and because I could not, I had no right to look away and spare myself the pain of watching when I could not spare her the pain of dying.”

  He came away from the door abruptly, intending to leave--he thought. Instead he surged toward her, grasped her upper arms. “Do not look at me like that! I do not want your pity! I do not need your pity, damn you to hell!”

  “What do you want?” she asked quietly.

  He stared down at her upturned face blankly. Everything inside of him stilled. He swallowed with an effort against the rawness of his throat and forced his fingers to ease the bruising grip on her arms and then release her.

  He wanted her to make him whole again, to drive the nightmares from his mind and the emptiness from his soul, he realized, feeling a swell of panic.

  Because he knew there was only one way she could do that.

  And he could not handle that, not again.

  He turned away from her, strode toward the door, feeling weak and cold and sick with the emotions churning in his belly. She followed him. He froze with his hand on the doorknob as her hand skated along his back, seductive, warming. He wavered again between retreat and attack. Turning on her abruptly, he caught her and shoved her away none too gently, but then, instead of running while he could, which every instinct inside of him was screaming for him to do, he followed her as she stumbled back against the wall. A taste, he thought mindlessly, just a taste of her and I will stop.

  Chapter Ten

  Those eyes of hers stopped Simon cold even as he dragged her head back, bent on making her stay away from him if he couldn’t stay away from her. They were soft, filled with trust, warm with her own desires. He stared into those green depths for several moments and knew defeat. He drew a shuddering breath and dropped his head to rest his forehead against hers. “Do not run from me anymore, Rainie,” he said raggedly. “I am sorry, so sorry … for all the things I said to you.”

  He heard her swallow. “Ok,” she said breathlessly.

  He drew a ragged breath. “I am so tired of fighting this.”

  “Then don’t.”

  He eased away to study her face, staring at her while that slowly sank into his mind. Abruptly, he realized that she was right. Instead of fighting the temptation, he should have yielded to it, expunged it by indulging it to the fullest until he’d sated himself on her. A red haze of lust flooded him, released abruptly by his certainty that he could expend it. He felt a tremor begin deep inside of him and work its way outward until he was shaking with it. A deep hunger flowed with it.

  Slipping one hand to her cheek, he lowered his mouth to hers. The hunger intensified as his lips met hers, clung, and he absorbed her warmth, her taste, her desire. Spearing his tongue past her lips, he raked it possessively along hers, branding her with his taste and touch, taking her essence for himself. As he swallowed it, sucked it into his lungs, it fed the hunger like aged kindling fed fire. It made him drunk with need. The little sound she made, of want, of surrender, made it blaze higher.

  For an endless time, all he could think about was absorbing her taste and scent forever, reveling in the hot, wet feel of her mouth as he explored it possessively.

  And then that wasn’t enough.

  And he still didn’t want to let go of what he had.

  With great reluctance, he withdrew his tongue from her mouth, sucked gently at her lips and finally broke that point of contact, promising himself he’d taste it again, once he’d tasted and touched the rest of her. His hands were shaking when he grabbed her shirt and dragged it off over her head. He skimmed his hands down over the thing she wore beneath it that imprisoned her breasts, and then across the expanse of bare skin beneath that until he reached the waist of her pants.

  He would never have believed a woman could wear pants and still look so womanly all he could think about was how quickly could he peel them off of her to find his prize. He met her gaze as he slipped his hands upward again, spearing his fingers beneath the thing that covered her breasts and peeling it upward and off of her as he had her shirt, tossing it away blindly as he had her shirt. “Your breasts are beautiful,” he said hoarsely as he stared down at them, mesmerized by the pert little pink tips, feeling his mouth go dry with the need to taste.

  He cupped a breast in either hand, squeezing the soft globes gently, relishing the weight of them in his palms, the silkiness of her skin, the yielding of her flesh to his touch, and then slipped his hands to the center and caught the tight little buds he wanted to taste so badly between his thumbs and forefingers, plucking at them, rolling them to examine the contrast between the taut little buds and the soft swell of her breasts.

  She made a sound, released a shuddering exhalation of breath, and he flicked his rapt gaze from her breasts to her face. The pleasure he saw there captured his attention for a handful of seconds, and then he looked down at her breasts again.

  Dilemma. He couldn’t reach them to suck them into his mouth and explore them like he wanted to. The top of her head barely reached his pecs. He stared down at her, abruptly disconcerted by how tiny she was next to him, but he was far mor
e troubled by his dilemma.

  Get down on his knees? Lift her up? Lay her down?

  The glint of a tiny ring in her belly button caught his eye. He skimmed hands that shook with urgency down her body, stroked one finger over it and then abruptly began tugging at the fastener of her pants, anxious to see the rest of his prize. Shoving his hands inside the moment he had mastered the closure, he peeled her pants from her hips as he followed the curvature of her hips, then explored the shape and tautness of her buttocks and finally stroked her belly, threading his fingers through the bright curls on her mons.

  He met her gaze again as he was swept up in a feverish need to possess her that moment. Spearing his hands beneath her arms, he lifted her straight up, shifting one arm beneath her buttocks to support her once he had and opening his mouth over the tip of one breast. The sound she made when he sucked the turgid peak, the taste of her that flooded his mouth, sent a dizzying rush through him, shredded the last of his reason.

  Pushing and tugging at her pants as he suckled feverishly at first one breast and then the other, a sense of profound relief filled him as he felt them drop to the floor at last. Freed from the fetter, she lifted her legs to wrap them around his waist. The hot dampness of her cleft on his belly, the light, musky scent of her arousal drove him over the edge. He wedged her body between his and the wall behind her, groping for the fastening of his own pants blindly, so mindless with need, so shaky, he was ready to rip the thing open before he finally managed to unearth his cock and guide it into her opening.

  Her heat seared him as he wedged the head of his cock inside her opening, crushing the air from his lungs. Releasing his hold on her breast for a moment, he sucked in a harsh breath and curled his hips, straining to press himself more deeply inside her channel. His heart, thundering deafeningly in his ears, muted the little sounds she made, but they whispered over him, sending shudders through him. Tightening his arms around her and pressing down on her in counter, he glided deeper, feeling the squeeze of her body around his shaft in his chest until he began to think his heart and lungs would explode.