by Jadyn Chase
“Oh, really?” I whipped around to glare at him. “How do you feel about me? You never told me, so how could I possibly know?”
“I asked you out on a date, didn’t I?” he replied.
“What is that supposed to prove? Anyone can ask anyone out on a date.”
He shook his head. “Not me. Do you think I ask everyone out on a date? Do you think I kiss every girl I meet the way I kissed you? Do you really think I hauled my broken leg all the way up there on a whim?”
He pointed up at the mountain looming dark and foreboding over our heads. It looked a lot taller from down here. I never really thought about it since that night when he changed into a dragon in front of me.
Up at the lookout, up on top of Smokey Mountain, I understood. I realized then how much that date must have meant to him to go through all that suffering and work for my sake. Somehow, in the last two weeks, I let myself forget it.
Now he stood in front of me, and I couldn’t deny it anymore. He really cared. He cared more than anyone else I ever met. He proved it time and again.
I inhaled a long breath to steady my nerves. “What are you saying?”
He eased an inch closer. “Listen to me, Hannah. I know you’re scared and I know you’re mad at me, but just listen to me. You’re in danger. The Lynches and the Kelly’s are going to war, and you’re caught in the middle. Think back over what happened between you and Everett. He attacked me to get to you. He went after you that first night outside the bar, and he’ll do it again. I would be very willing to walk away if that’s what you want. I would do anything to make you happy, even if it means removing myself from the picture. I can’t leave you unprotected, though. I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to you.”
I locked my eyes on him. He walked me through the sequence of events. Now that he showed me in living color what it all meant, I couldn’t ignore his warning. “What are you suggesting?”
“We can protect you. The Kelly’s can protect you, but only if……” He took a deep breath. “I hesitate to say this. I don’t want to scare you off all over again, but I have to if it’s the only way to protect you. The Kelly’s can protect you, but only if you’re a member of our Clan.”
I knitted my brow. “How would I become that?”
He held up his hand and shook his head getting the words out. “Just listen to me. My mother is human. So is my sister-in-law. Every now and then, one of our Clan marries out. Someone falls in love with a human and they get married. They bring their partner into our Clan, and they become one of us.”
My eyes flew open. I didn’t want to believe what I just heard. “You want to marry me?”
“I didn’t say that. I’m saying we can protect you, but only if you’re willing to be a part of our Clan. We have to know you’re one of us, that you’re just as much one of us as if you’d been born one of us. You being human or being a dragon doesn’t mean anything. All that matters is what’s in your heart. Now listen to me, Hannah. I care about you. I never cared about any woman the way I care about you. I want you. I want you with us. I want you for myself. That’s the God’s honest truth as sure as I’m standing here. When we were at the lookout, I could have sworn you felt the same way about me. I just need to know if there’s any chance at all. If you tell me to walk away and never speak to you again, I’ll do it, but I won’t be able to protect you anymore.”
I blinked up at him as if for the first time. He was right. At the lookout, I really thought we had a chance. I thought he was it—the one who answered all my prayers and even some of the ones I never dared to articulate.
He was a dragon. When I looked at him this close, I saw the dragon overlaid on top of the man who crutched his way up that mountain for me. For some reason, the dragon didn’t haunt me anymore. I could look at him and see the dragon, and it no longer frightened me. It no longer disgusted me. It was just him.
He used his dragon self to protect me. He used his pain to give me a gift of the lookout. He did everything for me, and his being a dragon didn’t change that. He was still the same person.
My vision cleared, and I discovered him observing me. He watched the thoughts cross my face. The dread urgency drained out of him. He straightened up, and his countenance softened.
His fingers laced into my hand and he whispered under his breath. “Tell me to walk away, Hannah. Tell me to leave and never show my face to you again.”
I swallowed hard. A lump stuck in my parched throat. I couldn’t speak. I could only husk out a dry rasp. “I can’t.”
His face drifted closer. I couldn’t stop it. His hand seeped its warmth into my bones. “I really want to kiss you right now.”
I saw him coming nearer from a thousand miles away. Even that was written in the stars. I didn’t have to say anything. I didn’t have to agree. It would happen. In a way, it already had.
He kissed me, and that delirious bliss cascaded through me the way it did the first time our lips met. For the longest time, neither of us moved except for the delicious swirl of lips and tongues coming together. I swam in the hot wetness of his mouth, unsure where I was or what it all meant.
One thing I knew. I couldn’t let him walk away. I could never tell him to leave—not ever. Whatever happened, he would be in my life. I couldn’t think how. I didn’t have to. Just like that kiss, it would happen by itself without any help from me.
He eased back, and my eyes floated opened. His intoxicating blue pools swallowed me in their endless, bottomless depths. There was the dragon again in all its magnificent power. I stared up at it in a daze.
So this was what he was. I saw it once, and now I could never look at him again without seeing it. I would see the same thing every time I looked at any member of his Clan.
That must be what he meant when he said I had to be as much one of them as if I’d been born a dragon, too. I couldn’t look away, and I couldn’t walk away, either. This was my life now. My life was Kylen and his Clan.
Whether or not Everett Lynch came after me before today, he would come after me now. He would come after me for being a Kelly. The Fates determined that circumstance should make me one, and now I was one. No one could change that now, especially not me.
With no preconceived signal between us, our embrace evaporated. I took out my keys and walked up the stairs into my own room. I closed the door behind Kylen, and I put my keys and wallet on the table by the door.
When I turn around, those unstoppable blue eyes studied me. Did he sense the same inevitability leading us to this moment? Did he see the path stretching out before us?
I flashed back to the dark expanse of Riot Ridge high above the wilderness. That was where I was going. I knew it now. If I was going to be a Kelly, if I already was one, I belonged there.
His arms closed around me and I fell, down, down, down, into the vacuum without thought, without will, without resistance. I only knew I was going where I was supposed to go. I didn’t have to fight it. I was safe.
The watery, slippery tang of his kiss trickled down my skin to the secret hiding place between my legs. A delectable ache wormed between my tissues and flowed into my panties. His being enveloped me in softness too unimaginably satisfying to endure. I felt myself melting, liquefying, oozing into him without any barrier to hold us apart.
Did he feel it? Did he see the sparkles of light shimmering across my skin when he caressed my cheek? Did he sense the energy surging through me to meet his body?
His fingertips traced down my spine to my waist. I rocked on my heels in the effervescent rapture of falling. He tugged my shirt out of my jeans. The next thing I knew, he lifted it over my head. There I stood in my bra.
I collapsed into another mind-numbing kiss. In that kiss, I didn’t care when he unhooked my bra. I wanted him to see me and touch me. I wanted to stand before him, exposed and raw. I wanted him to see me the way I saw him when I looked at the dragon.
I held his secret. I would never violate that trust. Now I wanted him to s
ee me and know me. I wanted him to know and understand every secret and every poison memory from my past. I wanted nothing between us, not even daylight.
He dropped my bra to the floor, and the electric power of his presence inspired me to respond in kind. I wanted his skin, his tongue, his body. I couldn’t stand his shirt blocking my hands from touching him.
I went to work on his buttons, but my lips refused to release his mouth. I slipped my hands inside even before I got it off. I dove headfirst into the heat and silken velvet of his skin.
My mouth closed on the perfect softness of his sternum, and I laced my fingers into his hair. I mauled him with teeth and tongue in a desperate effort to taste all of him at once.
A ragged gasp greeted my efforts, and his strong hands found my breasts. He manhandled me upright, and his mouth inhaled my nipple between his teeth. I yelped in surprise, but everything he did only ignited my passions to a fevered pitch.
He fumbled with my jeans while I kicked off my shoes. He stripped them down to my knees without releasing my breast. I peeled them the rest of the way off with my feet in time to meet his rock solid body coming at me at the same time.
His naked perfection startled me out of my mania, but only for a second. Before I could react, he picked me up off the floor. He sat me down on his hip bones. On instinct, I clung to him with both arms and both legs. All the time, my mouth kept seeking his in rapturous need.
His arms supported me and stopped me from falling. I never thought I could do it like this, but every nuance and detail convinced me this was right. If I was intended for him and he was intended for me, why not? I was going up to the Ridge with him. My destiny rested on him. What else did I think I was going to do?
His wicked tongue slipped between my teeth and excited the forgotten recesses in my heart and soul. He probed my very being with that tongue and those masterful lips until I forgot all about the danger. How could being with him ever be dangerous?
His manhood nudged my swollen petals. This was it. It was happening, and I didn’t even try to stop it. I wanted it. I wanted him. I wanted the dragon. I wanted Kylen, whatever he was.
My heart sobbed in aching desire. Oh, please. Oh, please. Oh, please.
He didn’t, though. He froze. He stayed there, still and reserved, until I opened my eyes to look at him. When I did, I saw him staring back at me out of eons past. His eyes bored into me with that questioning, searching intensity that first attracted me to him.
He hung there, poised and suspended. He waited—for what? I couldn’t wait any longer. I needed him. I needed everything that was about to happen.
He held my weight with no difficulty. He could stand there holding me forever. Gnawing ravenous hunger for him drove me out of my mind. I couldn’t delay a second longer.
I arched my back and contracted my midsection. With one calculated movement, I punctured his shaft into my moist recesses. His frilled crest broke the seal, and his throbbing meat plunged home.
I groaned into his mouth in untold satisfaction. He gasped out loud from the sudden tightness clamping him on all sides, but the fated union already took hold of both of us. His veined length burrowed through my insides, and neither of us could ever be the same again.
The next instant, he tensed his frame from head to heel. A sinuous ripple glided down him to end in a rhythmic pumping action of his pelvis into me. His ridged shaft stroked all the sensitive territory in my channel until I couldn’t stand it.
My agonized moans change to cries. I clawed his back for every ounce of purchase, but I was never in any danger of falling. Once he got moving, he manipulated my body to meet his thrusts.
My eyes snapped open, and we stared farther than ever into our mutual soul, into that mystical realm where we became one being. I lost awareness of what might have been the awkwardness of my position. I was with him. I was doing with him what I was always needed to do.
Every fiery penetration excited me beyond reason. His anatomy astonished and exhilarated my insides until I couldn’t bear the passion taking hold of me. I wanted every inch of him delighting all the unseen pleasure spots along my channel.
In a moment, a wave of intoxicating rapture took hold of me. A rush of hot juice gushed from my opening to bath his blistering member. I didn’t become aware of the shrieks issuing from my throat until I heard them echoing across the room. Even then, I couldn’t stop them. I knew only the endless spikes of pleasure urging me to go faster, faster.
Sweat sprang out on his skin. I tasted it on his lips, and something hot jetted through my insides. Kylen’s mouth broke the seal of our kiss, and a shattered cry exploded out of his throat. Searing fire torched through me, but it only rocketed me higher into a world beyond the stars, a world of magic and dragons and dreams fizzing out in supernovae to brighten the darkness.
9
Kylen
I swung into the Jeep. Pop crammed a loaded clip into the magazine of a 9mm handgun and released the slide back into place. He turned the gun around and handed it to me. “Keep it in the car. Don’t take it into the bar.”
I gave him a clipped nod. “I know what to do.”
He slapped me on the shoulder. “Good luck, son. We’ll be waiting for you to come back.”
I slotted the gun under the driver’s seat and dropped the Jeep into reverse. I didn’t look at my brothers or cousins or uncles standing there. I whipped the vehicle around and burned rubber down the Ridge toward town. The sooner I got this over with, the sooner we could all get this war on. The sooner hostilities came to a head, the sooner this racking tension would go away.
I didn’t tell Hannah about Pop’s plan. That would only scare her. She didn’t want to let me leave her room to come home, but I couldn’t let Pop down. Hell, I didn’t want to leave myself. I wanted to stay there in her sweet arms forever.
Soon. That was what I kept telling myself. Soon enough, I would take her home to the Ridge where she belonged. Just one more day, just a few more hours, and the Lynches would follow our trail of breadcrumbs to the Ridge. They would dig their own graves there. Then nothing would stop me from taking her home.
I drifted into a daydream about our night together. I relived the continuous Earth-shattering bliss of holding her and feeling her shudders of climactic release over and over again. Her cries and sobs of ecstasy filled my ears until I could think of nothing else.
I didn’t tell Pop about her, either. I informed him, when he asked, that yes, she was with us. She was a Kelly, heart and soul. If anyone laid a finger on her, I would tear him apart and leave the scraps for the buzzards.
I purred into town and parked the Jeep down the street. I got out and brushed the dust off my jeans. I dressed in the same clothes I usually wore to the Watering Hole. I had to play the part, even if I only intended to be there for a few minutes.
The truth was I had no idea what to expect. I might have to sit there for the whole night the way I did before. I might have to pick a fight with Everett to get him to take the bait. Then again, the Lynches might not even be in the bar at all. This whole thing could turn into a colossal dud.
I puffed out my cheeks taking another deep breath, but standing on the street corner wasn’t getting the job done. I marched down the street. I waited for three highway guys to enter the bar first, and then I swung through the door.
One glance around, and I knew something was wrong. Larry, the owner, stood behind the bar. I didn’t see any Lynches anywhere. A sinking feeling ate away at my guts.
I barged up to the bar. “Where’s Hannah?”
Larry shrugged. “I don’t know. She didn’t come down for her shift. One of the guys from the grocery store called to tell me the bar was closed. She isn’t upstairs, either. It looks like she flew the coop.”
Those words blasted my head apart. She couldn’t have, not after last night. No way. I didn’t dream that night. I didn’t imagine her kisses, her mouth on me, her hair dangling in my face while she straddled my hips.
No wa
y. She didn’t leave. She couldn’t. I wouldn’t let her. I stormed out of the building and around to the stairs. I ran up them three at a time, but I already knew what I would find.
I shaded my eyes to peer through the window. All her stuff remained in the room. Her teddy bear perched on the pillow. Her wallet rested on the side table under the window. Then I saw her keys right next to it.
I seized the door and yanked with all my might. It was locked. She never flew the coop with her keys still locked inside. My heart plummeted into my shoes. Where was she? She didn’t leave, and she damn well would never miss a shift. Something was wrong.
I marched back downstairs and stopped. I looked back and forth, up and down the street. My blood pounded in my head putting the pieces together. She wasn’t here and neither were the Lynches. Where were they?
I swiveled and barged back to the Jeep. I jammed the key into the ignition and peeled out of town. My tires spat gravel speeding up the Ridge. I screeched to a stop in the driveway. All the boys still stood around in the same places. They talked in low tones.
Pop raised his eyebrows. “What are you doing? You were supposed to lead the Lynches back here.”
“Hannah’s gone,” I snapped. “She didn’t turn up for her shift at the Watering Hole, and her keys are still locked in her room. Something’s wrong. I’m going out to the Lynches’ compound to find her.”
I pulled the gun out from under the seat and headed for the house. No one on God’s green Earth was going to stop me from getting Hannah back. No one had to draw me a map of what happened. The Lynches took her. I never doubted that for a second.
Pop dodged in front of me. He planted his hand on my chest. “Hold it, son. Don’t go off half-cocked.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. I never thought I’d live to see the day I would ever threaten my old man. I never would have believed it myself, but this was different. Spending the night with Hannah did something to me. It made her a part of me. I couldn’t stand by and let anyone hurt her or scare her or steal her from me. No way, no how.
