by T. S. Joyce
“I’m not,” Kane murmured, pulling her palm onto his chest, right over his racing heart. “I’m really not good, Rowan.”
“I can tell you are—”
“You’re wrong. I’ve killed people. I’ve hurt people, ruined people’s lives. You shouldn’t get attached to someone like me.”
“But I’ve hurt people, too—”
“Not like me.” Kane shook his head and leveled her with a look. “I’m not special, Rowan. I’m not important. Don’t convince yourself otherwise, or I’ll hurt you, too.”
He was wrong. Kane didn’t see himself the way she did. Okay, he’d killed people. War was ugly. War brought death, and he had been recruited to be part of that machine. But the Kane she saw—the one who helped her on the plane and at the airport, the one who picked up her plane ticket and who defended her at the restaurant—that Kane wasn’t a pretender. He’d given her real peeks into himself. She just knew it.
Before she could change her mind, Rowan dipped down and kissed him, her lips perfectly still on his. She hadn’t done this in so long, and Kane lay like a fiery stone beneath her. They were both shaking like leaves, and she didn’t know what to do now. Pull away? Maybe he didn’t like this. Maybe this wasn’t what he wanted.
Rowan softened her lips and eased back with a quiet smack. Kane’s eyes were wide and so intense, as though she’d shocked him. Maybe he hadn’t closed them during their kiss. His chest heaved with his breathing.
She’d just kissed the last Blackwing Dragon, and she should be terrified being this close to him. But instead, she felt safe. She felt happy, and deep inside, Dragon was practically purring.
Kane wasn’t reacting, though. He wasn’t blinking, and now a soft rumble was working its way through his body. With a baffled expression, he dipped his eyes to his chest. He drew a harsh breath, and the noise stopped. “What was that?” he asked in a ragged whisper.
His question hurt. “A kiss. I’m not very good at them. It’s been a long time—”
“No, I mean…what was that noise?”
Rowan frowned. “That’s your dragon, silly.”
A loaded second passed, his eyes blazing and locked on hers, and then his lips crashed onto hers. He pushed and rolled her on her back, gripped her neck as his lips worked against hers. God, the man could kiss. He knocked the rust off her in three seconds flat, and then she was with him, kissing him back, making soft smacking sounds, making soft helpless sounds as her body lit on fire. And when he pushed his tongue past her lips, she was gone. Kane’s body was graceful against hers, grinding once against her side before she turned toward him. Draping her leg over his hip, she gave him access, and he used it. He settled perfectly between her thighs and rocked his erection against her. Fucking shorts.
“I’m on birth control,” she whispered, fumbling with her buttons.
Kane shoved her hand out of the way, slid his hand down the front of her pants, and ooooh. She rolled her hips to meet his touch. When Kane cupped her, slid his finger through her wetness, the feral sound was back in his throat. Sexy dragon. She’d never been with a man like this. One who she wasn’t afraid of hurting. One who she could be herself with. He wasn’t grossed out by her glowing eyes. Every time he pulled away far enough to meet her gaze, his expression became more determined, and it made her feel beautiful and sexy.
He'd found her clit, was working it gently while he swallowed her moans.
“Kane, please,” she begged against his lips.
“Please what?” he growled.
“Inside.”
Kane slid two fingers inside of her, stretching her with pleasure. God, this was too much. She was already close. So close, but she wanted more. Needed to touch him while she finished. Needed to bite him. Stop it, Dragon.
Rowan ran her fingertips down his chest, down his abs, down to the waist of his briefs and slid her hand into the band. His dick was thick and hard, swollen and ready for her. She eased out of the kiss just so she could watch his eyes roll back in his head when she gripped him. Kane didn’t disappoint. How were his eyes so light? So bright? She drew a long stroke of him, and then another, and reveled in the fact that he was bucking against her now, their bodies crashing against each other like waves.
Rowan cried out as release exploded through her body, pulsing around his fingers. Kane was thrusting into her grip so hard now, so fast, like he was close, too. So damn sexy, but she wanted more. She wanted another orgasm, but better. She wanted him inside of her more than she’d wanted anything in her life. Rowan shoved her shorts down her hips in desperation, and Kane was there, on top of her, cradled between her legs, briefs shoved down his hips, his erection so long, poised at her entrance, and all he had to do was slide into her and end her agony.
But he stilled, arms locked on either side of her face, his triceps bulging, his eyes blazing like green fire, his black hair draped in front of his face, the swollen head of his cock resting against her entrance. Why was he stopping? No! Rowan wiggled lower, chasing him, but Kane flinched away, stumbled off the bed. “Fuck, what are we doing?” He was holding his chest as though he felt the same burning sensation that was filling her heart right now.
“W-what do you mean? I thought we were…” Rowan sat up and covered her breasts with her arms. “I thought you wanted to be with me.”
“I’m a fucking Blackwing, Rowan.”
“So?”
“So you don’t remember half an hour ago when you saw my eyes and got terrified? Terrified, Rowan. I could smell it on you. And now we’re gonna do this?”
Anger blasted through her like a cannon ball. “You sleep with women in bathrooms but you don’t want to be with me? I like you!”
Kane grabbed his jeans off the floor. “Don’t, Rowan. Don’t compare yourself to a quickie bathroom-fuck. You don’t want to be one of those women.”
“I do, too! I want you.”
Too loud, he asked, “You want to be someone who adds to the emptiness?”
Rowan gasped at the pain those words slashed at her heart. In a rush, she pulled the comforter over her because, right now, she’d never felt so exposed, so vulnerable.
Kane only bothered with jeans before he strode for the door. He threw it open, but stopped before he disappeared. “Rowan, you and I can’t be. We can’t. And I can’t push us that far and expect us to be friends after. I made a mistake. I’m sorry.”
In the instant before he let the door swing closed behind him, he lifted his gaze to Rowan’s, and his eyes were so sad she had to look away. She didn’t want to see that kind of pain in anyone, and especially not the man who already felt like so much more than a friend.
Something small and warm splatted against her wrist, but she knew what it was before she even looked down. A small drop of damning crimson sat on her pale skin. It had begun.
The Sickening was here, and it had reared its ugly head in the moment her heart had been damaged by Dark Kane. Warmth trickled down her lip from her nose, and a sob wrenched up Rowan’s throat.
Her treasure was lost, The Sickening had begun, and she was alone, far away from the safety of Damon’s Mountains. All she wanted was for Kane to hug her and tell her everything would be okay, but one broken dragon couldn’t fix another broken dragon.
And Kane had made it perfectly clear.
They weren’t friends.
Chapter Six
Shit, what was he doing? Kane gripped his T-shirt harder and paced in front of room 10B. Everything in him, every instinct, every desire, wanted to go back in there and fuck Rowan. No, not just fuck her. She wasn’t one of the other women she was comparing herself to. She was more. So much more.
He couldn’t breathe. His chest was so damn tight he couldn’t draw a full breath, and now he was panting in desperation. When a soft, heartbroken sound drifted from the room, Kane hated himself. Hated everything. Hated his past, hated his future, hated the man he’d become. Hated the man he was born to be.
Rowan was crying because of him. Crying ov
er a man who didn’t deserve her tears.
What was it about her? He’d planned on going to the pool and sitting in a plastic lounge chair until morning so he could give them both space, but here he was, staring at the window of their shitty hotel room, completely helpless to leave.
She’d done something to him. Bewitched him maybe. He’d never believed in that stuff, but Kane had known Rowan less than twenty-four hours, and she felt like the damn moon, and he was the tide, affected by her whims, her moods. If she’d told him to stay…if she’d demanded it, he would’ve. He wouldn’t have been able to say no.
What the fuck was wrong with him? And why did his chest hurt so goddamn bad? He pressed his palm over his heart to see if his skin there was as hot as it felt. Another sob, and he couldn’t fucking breathe! This wasn’t how he’d seen the day going. It wasn’t how he saw his life going. He was supposed to be alone for always, but Rowan came in, busting up his walls like a bull in a china shop. She’d shattered him in a day.
And the noise in his chest? The one she’d drawn from him? That wasn’t supposed to exist. He didn’t control the dragon, didn’t have access to The Darkness anymore. But there had been the rumble there, so familiar. It had felt like home, and something deep inside of him had told him Rowan was to blame, or perhaps thank, for a glimpse of himself again. He’d lost his mind in desperation to hear that sound again. To make that sound. He’d kissed her in a silent plea for her to fix what was broken inside of him, but Rowan didn’t have that power. No one did. It wasn’t fair of him to attach to her. It wasn’t fair on her, and it wasn’t fair on him, because the second she figured out what was wrong with him, and how weak he really was, how useless, she would leave, and he would be full of nothing but infinite hollowness.
Hope was a slow and painful death to a man like him.
He was a shadow, at home with loneliness. At home in the dark, but Rowan was light. She was happy and loved people. She was social and mirrored strangers’ smiles without effort. She was jokes and laughter and constant happy chatter, and he was a stone gargoyle that would shroud her life in darkness.
He’d known her for less than a day, but already he wanted better for her. Tomorrow, he would take her to the airport, make sure she got her rental car, and let her go. And when she was safe, far away from him, he would go to work finding her treasure. He would make sure she was okay. And maybe when she was in Nantahala and he lived near, he would do little things for her to make life easier. Little things she would never notice. Pay for her drinks at the bar, or cover her coffee if she was in the drive-through behind him one day. Maybe he could put in a good word and help her get a job in Bryson City, so long as she didn’t know it was his kindness helping her out. Rowan didn’t need to attach, but he could tell here and now, as her soft sobbing shredded his insides, that she was his. Not his to keep, but his in the only way he could have a woman—from afar.
Determined not to listen to whatever instinct was screaming to go in there and fix her, Kane squatted down and narrowed his eyes at the door to 10B. He could still smell her on him. Rowan’s pheromones had been off the charts calling to him, filling his head, filling his damn jeans. Here she was breaking down, and he was outside her room thinking about the way she’d felt when he slid his fingers inside of her. Of how she’d writhed against him and begged for more. Of how her mouth tasted and her hair smelled like roses. Of how gold her eyes had turned when her inner dragon was riled up. Of the easy way his fingers had slipped through her blond waves, the way her lips parted right before he kissed her.
She was inside, crying, and he was thinking about how fucking sexy she was. Monster.
Kane wanted to spit, but stood and linked his hands behind his head instead. His leg hurt again. Rowan had made it better for a while, or maybe it was the adrenaline from the fight, he didn’t know. He wanted more relief, though.
She was inside crying, and he was wishing she could make him feel better. Monster.
Was it wrong that he already wanted her forgiveness? Was it wrong that he wished he could just walk in there and she would open her arms and pull him in close and tell him he wasn’t an asshole? He was shit at apologies.
She was inside crying, but he wanted her to siphon the bone-deep regret from him so he could breathe again. Monster.
Debating on going for a drive to clear his head, Kane grimaced at his Bronco, but when he did, his lip didn’t hurt like it should have. Kane ran his finger over the split that asshole had punched into his bottom lip. He couldn’t find it. Frowning, he strode to his truck and leaned down, searched for the cut in the driver’s side mirror. Where the fuck was it? Rowan had been kissing him just as hard as he’d done to her, so it should be looking like crap about now, torn to hell and maybe still bleeding, but nope. The bruising around his mouth was already gone, and there was no split. Kane searched his face desperately, looking for any sign of the fight, but there was none.
Stunned, he stood up and stared at the door to the hotel again. His healing was shit, but Rowan had done something to him. Maybe kissing her had healed his face faster, or being around her, or…something.
She was a witch. That was the only logical thing that could explain the way he felt about her, and now this? Witchcraft. Some Supes had extra powers. Vamps did for sure. Super healing, speed, strength, agility…why would it be out of the realm of possibilities that Rowan was a dragon and a witch? There was heavy magic in the Bloodrunner line, and clearly some of that had passed down to Rowan.
Maybe that’s why Damon had tucked her away in his mountains like a princess in a tower for all those years.
Kane should be wary as hell right now, but instead, Rowan had somehow demanded even more curiosity from him. That saying “curiosity killed the cat”? Well, curiosity was going to get his ass burned alive by Damon and eternity in the belly of the blue dragon himself.
Kane needed to get away from Rowan. He needed to separate them, put distance between them, and get ahold of his damn mind before he lost it completely. All he had to do was get in the Bronco and drive away. His keys were in his pocket.
But he couldn’t. He tried, but he couldn’t force his hand to open the door. Rowan was still crying, he couldn’t move, and he was going to be pinned here all night, waiting for her to release the hold she had on him. And he still couldn’t breathe.
He hadn’t felt this powerless since that night at Jeremy’s house when The Darkness had taken over. But this was different. It wasn’t The Darkness controlling him now. He was alone in this body. No, there was another dragon to blame for this paralysis.
Anger flooded him, black and roiling. He wasn’t just some plaything.
Kane took a step toward the hotel room and then another. It was easy moving this way, he just couldn’t move to escape her. Fucking traitor body was fine walking back into danger, but not to flee to survive.
Kane threw open the door, ready to strip her down for controlling him like this, but the second he did, the weight lifted as though it had never existed. His lungs filled with oxygen and he felt…relief.
Rowan had her back to him at the sink, her shoulders shaking with her crying. When she looked up at him in the mirror, his stomach dropped to the floor. The tissues she was holding up to her face were soaked with blood. Shit.
“You left, and then I felt something warm, and I already know what this is,” she cried, her face crumpled and desolate. “It’s The Sickening. I have to find my treasure, and no one can help me.”
“Shhhh,” he said, taking the tissues from her. “Let me see.”
Her face was covered in smears of red, but her nose didn’t look to be bleeding anymore. “Look, it’s done.”
“It is?” she asked in a pitiful voice.
“Yeah, princess. It’s over. Tomorrow we’ll track down your suitcase, and this will all just be a bad memory. You have time.”
“How much?”
Kane shook his head helplessly. “It took months for Harper.”
“Did she blee
d this bad in the beginning? Did she get headaches?”
“I don’t know,” he whispered, wiping her face with a wet washcloth. “I’m not a Bloodrunner, and she wouldn’t ever share that information with me.”
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“What is your treasure?”
That question gutted him. He would’ve given his other leg for the instinct to find a treasure, but he wasn’t okay. “Princess, I’ll never need a treasure, and I’ll never undergo The Sickening.”
Rowan’s pretty blue eyes got so round. “Why not?”
And this was the moment when he admitted something awful. When he admitted his greatest shame. When he told Rowan just how beyond help he was.
“Because,” he murmured, “my dragon was taken from me.”
Chapter Seven
Kane’s dragon was taken? Rowan didn’t understand, but he’d cut off her questions as they’d readied for bed. His eyes had dimmed, and he had shut down. Now he was lost in his head, oblivious to everything around him.
Kane had taken one of the pillows off the bed and spread a thin blanket on the floor for himself, but while he was taking off his shirt, Rowan had pulled the pallet back up onto the bed.
“What are you doing?” he asked in a tired voice.
“Making history.”
Kane sat on the edge of the mattress and unhooked his prosthetic leg. “What do you mean by that?”
“Think about it. Blackwings and Bloodrunners have been enemies for centuries, but here we are, best friends—”
“Acquaintances,” Kane corrected her.
“And diddle buddies—”
“I finger-banged you once.”
“And now we have two sides of an ancient war sleeping in the same room. Fate led us here, Kane. Let’s snuggle.”
Kane didn’t even fight her, just set his prosthetic leg on the chair by the bed and climbed under the covers with her. “You’re relentless,” he muttered.
