Kylen's Secret

by Jadyn Chase

  I seethed in tormented rage, but I couldn’t break his hold. A head shot back and lunged at me gaping a mouthful of fangs. I barely recognized Everett before he plowed into my head. He stunned me, and before I could collect my wits, he sank his teeth into my thigh.

  I screamed in pain, but the next minute, an almighty smash blotted every thought out of my mind. My body collapsed under Everett’s weight, but the fall didn’t slacken his power in the slightest. It took me a minute to realize he must have used me to break his own fall. I cushioned him from the impact, and he didn’t even have the decency to thank me.

  Before I could recover, he clamped his reptilian coils around me tighter than ever. His neck wound around mine, and he cinched it into a noose. His whip of a tail thrashed bound my legs so I couldn’t fight back. I fought to breathe, but no air could squeak past his hold.

  Black spots blinked before my eyes. I started to succumb to the darkness. Hannah, I prayed. Where are you? Help me.

  No one could help me now. No one could defeat that monster. A rush of adrenaline fired through my brain. My vision cleared just long enough for me to see the whole crowd of Lynches standing around watching him kill me.

  She wouldn’t help me. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t blow the charges, either. She loved me too much. At least I would die with that certainty to give me comfort. She loved me for as long as it lasted. She gave me a brief glimpse of happiness before Everett put an end to me.

  The next thing I knew, the sight faded. My strength drained from my limbs. I couldn’t fight any longer. I sank under Everett’s weight. At least my Clan made it out alive. Liam would take Hannah back to the Ridge. She would live in safety with my people for the rest of her life. Maybe she would find another guy to love, or maybe not.

  None of that concerned me anymore. Something in the back of my mind told me everything would be all right. I was going somewhere quiet, somewhere safe, somewhere comfortable. I longed for it. I didn’t want all this danger and mayhem. I only wanted peace.

  I let go of my dragon self, and it subsided beneath my skin. I drooped onto the ground with that horrible thick loop still knotted around my neck. I blinked and looked up through human eyes at Everett’s scaly face looming over me. He blocked out the sky.

  The burning red glow in his eyes faded and glassed over into a black pupil regarding me. A puny human man reflected in the shiny surface. How small and insignificant I looked compared to that enormous beast. I didn’t mind dying at his hands.

  Just then, a shrill voice echoed out of the forest. “Stop!”

  Everett’s head swung up. His coils scratched over my skin. They loosened, and a rush of sweet air flooded my lungs. My head cleared, but I still couldn’t rise. Everett sidestepped away from me, and another guttural snarl vibrated out of his chest.

  His coils pulled me over onto my stomach, and I found myself staring at Hannah. She stood at the edge of the compound with the detonator clenched in her upraised hand.

  “Stop!” she cried. “Leave him alone or I’ll blow this whole place sky high.”

  Everett glared at her for a moment. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. She wouldn’t dare. If she released her hold on that device, she would kill all of us along with the Lynches. Would she really go to such lengths to save Clan Kelly?

  Everett whipped his head up and screeched to the ends of the Earth. He thrashed his neck down and bellowed at her at the top of his lungs. The poisonous wind blasted her hair back from her face. She squinted against the foul wind, but she didn’t back down.

  In a flash, Everett shifted into a man, but his friends and relatives and companions stayed where they were. Two dozen huge dragons stared down at the small woman confronting them with nothing but a detonator.

  I floundered to get my feeble brain working. This was the woman I loved, the woman I hoped against all odds to take back home, but I never dreamed for an instant she could pull this off. We would both die here. Neither of us would ever love anybody else again.

  At that moment, I couldn’t bear the excruciating pain of loving her. We would die together. She didn’t want to go back to the Ridge without me. She didn’t want to love anyone else, and neither did I. If we had to die out here together, at least we would be together.

  Everett threw back his head and laughed out loud. “Well, what have we here? If it isn’t little old Hannah Larsen from the Watering Hole. What’s the matter, baby? You couldn’t stop thinking about me, could you?”

  He laughed again. Then he turned and delivered a shattering kick to my still-sore ribs. I felt them crack in the same place, and a sickening pain stabbed through my guts.

  Hannah swallowed hard, but she steeled herself against the affront and barged into the compound. She stopped ten feet in front of Everett and held her detonator on high. “We rigged this compound to blow. If I let go of this, we’re all dead. Understand? If you lay a finger on me, I’ll detonate the charges. You fool, Everett. You told me yourself you stashed that C-4 at Jacks River. I dug it up and planted it here to trap you. Do you hear that, all of you? Your glorious leader led you into a trap. Now you can deal with me, or we can all go to Hell together. What do you say, Everett?”

  He bared his teeth at her. “You stupid little witch!”

  “Not as stupid as you, it seems.” She sniffed down her nose at him. I cheered her spirit, but I still held out no hope that we would see the morning.

  She nodded down at me. “Now here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to put my detonator on the ground, and Kylen is going to get up and walk toward me. We’re going to walk away into the woods, and we’ll all go about our business like none of this ever happened.”

  “Like hell we will,” Everett rumbled.

  She took another step forward. She held the detonator out for all to see. None of the dragons moved a muscle. She crouched down and set the detonator on the ground a few feet out of Everett’s reach. Then she backed slowly away.

  “Come on, Kylen,” she called. “Get up. You’re coming with me.”

  I locked my jaws against the pain and forced myself onto my hands and knees. Hannah inched back toward the trees. My heart leaped. Could this actually work? Would Everett really let me get out of here alive when he nearly killed me?

  All at once, he danced on his left foot and swung another brutal kick at me. He nailed me in the kidneys and I went down hard. Everett threw back his head and laughed until he hugged his sides in pain.

  A few other guttural laughs drew my attention behind me. One by one, the other Lynches shifted and gathered around my shattered form to share the joke. They elbowed each other and pointed at me huddled on the ground.

  A stricken look crossed Hannah’s face. She glanced from the detonator to me. She was too far away to reach it now. She’d played her last card and lost. She couldn’t get to me, either. Everett had won.

  The next instant, her features hardened into a stony mask of sheer will. She clamped her lips and locked her flinty eyes on Everett. Ever so slowly, with glacial slowness, she looked down at me. A depth of unspoken understanding passed between us.

  I gathered all my resolve inside myself. I couldn’t let her down—not now. She held up her end of the bargain. She completed her side of the equation. Now it was up to me.

  Everett stepped forward. He picked up the detonator and held it aloft, still laughing his head off. He raised it in triumph for all his kin to see. A beatific smile spread across Hannah’s face, but I couldn’t see anymore with the blood pounding behind my eyes.

  My head hurt. My ribs hurt. Everything hurt. My mouth ripped open, and I yelled out all my tortured rebellion—against the Lynches, against my Clan, against everything. Only Hannah understood. Those bottomless black eyes offered me my only refuge from everything. I could die in there. That’s all I wanted.

  That broken scream poured out of me faster and stronger than I ever thought possible. It blasted me apart, and the dragon rocketed across the yard. I slammed into Hannah with all my strengt
h, and the air caught my wings.

  I kept my eyes closed to focus all my concentration on flying her out of there. Her ivory arms slipped around my neck. I shot for the trees and felt her pull her pistol from her waistband. It went off right next to my ear. The bullet buzzed past my back spikes and disappeared somewhere behind me. Her delicate weight hung from my neck, and I was flying, flying high and free, far away from there.

  Out of nowhere, an Earth-shattering concussion knocked me out of the air. I catapulted head over heels and smashed into the hillside. I lost consciousness for an instant.

  The next thing I knew, Hannah’s cool hand caressed my forehead. “Open your eyes, Kylen.”

  I blinked, but I couldn’t raise my head. I turned to one side and found her sitting next to me, but she didn’t look at me. I followed her gaze down the hill to a smoldering crater indenting the wilderness. Hundreds of trees lay in an oval ring around the hollow aiming outward in a perfect fan. Nothing remained of the compound, the fence, the buildings, or anything or anyone else.

  Epilogue

  Hannah

  Sunshine streamed through the window and splashed across the bed. I screwed my face into the pillow, but I couldn’t go back to sleep with it shining in my eyes. Kylen stirred under the bedspread behind me. He turned over and slipped his bare arm around my waist.

  I smiled to myself and nuzzled backward into his warmth. He buried his face into my hair and did his best to get back to sleep, but I already recognized the change in his breathing.

  He grumbled low, and his bicep tightened around me to tug me in tighter. A sizzle of fire scorched through my insides, and his midsection contracted down to the hardness between his hips.

  I stiffened. Could we do this now? Would circumstance interrupt us the way it had a habit of doing at the worst possible time? My skin glowed warmer, and a trickle of molten desire burned between my legs. I wanted him. I wanted him just enough to chance it.

  His rough hand came to rest against my belly and inched farther down. I rotated my hips into his pelvis to encourage him. His hardness burrowed into my ass, and his teeth sank into my neck. I whimpered in agony at the delicious mixture of pleasure and pain.

  He pressed my stomach to guide me into his spike. He trailed his fingertips another millimeter south to the mound between my thighs. I ached for his touch down there, but no amount of writhing and backing into him would make him move any faster.

  My mind kept screaming, Come on, come on, but he was his own man. If I learned one thing about Kylen Kelly, it was that. He chose his own time and place. No one chose it for him, not even me.

  His other arm slithered under me and clamped around my chest. Between his two hands, he undulated me against his muscular frame. His midsection stroked my back and he crushed me in his arms.

  I squirmed to get his hand between my legs. He flicked his fingers across my sensitive tissues. He must know how wet he made me. I parted my legs and tried to trap him between my thighs, but he managed to dance out of the way. He knew exactly how to tease me to the peak of ecstasy.

  All at once, his hand closed over my quivering box. At the same instant, his hard tool slipped between my legs from behind. He stopped within a fraction of an inch of entering.

  He closed his iron grip over me for a long, terrible moment. Then, as if by magic, he glided inside on a film of immaculate juice. Was that his finger or his member? I couldn’t tell with the clouds of rapture bursting in my brain.

  Oh, God, he felt so good in there! I gyrated in wilder circles and he copied me from behind. Now I knew it really was him, his glorious stiff lance that touched all the most intoxicating nodes inside me.

  I worked him in deeper, but he knew better than I did how to drive me wild. He caressed the engorged nub at the top of my slit while his shaft filled me to overflowing. I couldn’t get enough. I could never get enough.

  He groaned in my ear. His teeth crawled up my neck to the secret place behind my ear. His primal noises entered my brain and drove me over the edge.

  I sobbed and screamed in rapture. My being turned to liquid gold and poured out of me in torrents. My glistening honey coated his shaft and saturated his hair. All the time, his hands steered me where he knew I needed to go. I became putty in the grip of a master.

  The epic climax ruptured inside me. I sensed it rising out of control. I turned my head into the pillow and screamed out all my carnal cravings so no one could hear me. The louder and longer I screamed, the higher the wave crested until it tumbled me into confusion. I lost all awareness of what was happening save the rippling ecstasy overpowering me.

  Kylen roared in my ear. He rolled up on top of me and plowed into me from behind, but nothing could stop that soul-destroying tempest tearing me apart.

  He collapsed on top of me still growling and groaning in my ear. His sweat soaked my hair and his tongue slipped into my ear, but I didn’t notice. I still rocked in that dream of delirious desire and fulfillment.

  After what seemed like hours, he fell off me and flopped full length on the bed. He gasped for breath and snuggled in behind me to wrap me in his arms again. If only these summer days could last forever, I would spend every minute of them in bed.

  That would never happen, though. I started to drift off to sleep when the bedroom door knocked open and a hurtling ball of motion crashed onto the bed. It hit me and Kylen at the same moment and dispelled the blissful repose of a moment before.

  Kylen bolted upright. “Hey! What’s the big idea? You’re going to hurt somebody doing that.”

  I turned over on my back to find a little boy perched between us. He shook his shaggy white-blonde hair out of his eyes and grinned to reveal the space where his two front teeth should have been.

  When Kylen moved aside, the boy slotted into the hollow between our legs. He showed every sign of being blissfully unaware that he was sitting on us.

  “Can I have a bowl of ice cream, Mom?” he asked.

  I sat up and raked my hair out of my eyes. I should have known this was going to happen. Oh, wait. What was I thinking? I did know it would happen. It always happened just when Kylen and I got a moment to ourselves.

  “No, you can’t have a bowl of ice cream,” I told him. “What do you think? It’s seven o’clock in the morning.”

  “It’s Saturday.” He launched off the bed and landed flat on top of me. “Come on, Mom. Just this once.”

  I gave him a hard shove to topple him off. “Get off, Luke. You’re hurting me. I said no. Since when do you get ice cream this early in the morning? You know better than that.”

  “Grandma lets me have it.”

  I pushed him off the bed and swung my legs over the side to rob him of the chance to do it again. “What you do at your Grandma and Grandpop’s house is none of my business. As long as you’re in my house, you follow my rules and your Pop’s rules. Now get out of here and let me get dressed.” I picked up a hair tie from my night table and started gathering my hair into a bunch.

  “But, Mom….” he began.

  Kylen rushed him from behind and snatched him off the floor. “You heard what your Mom said. Your grandma will be here later, and I’m sure she’ll bring you a treat. Now out you get.”

  He heaved the wriggling, shrieking boy onto his shoulder and bundled him out of the room. I had to smile watching them go. Kylen threw Luke out of the room and came back to me.

  He put his arms around me, and I indulged in a few miraculous seconds kissing him before the next storm hit. He moved a stray wisp of hair out of my eyes. “Do you want to hit the showers first?”

  I sighed. “I might as well. I don’t want your Ma to see me like this.”

  He snorted. “She’s seen you a lot worse.”

  I didn’t want to think about it. I hustled to the shower and washed my hair and face. I even managed to get all the way dressed before the next intrusion. I stood in front of my dressing table combing my hair when a deafening knock nearly broke down the bedroom door.

 
“Mom!” came the disembodied screech from the other side. “Fraser is stealing all the strawberries.”

  I yanked the door off its hinges to find Luke parked in the hall. I barged past him to find my three-year-old sitting on the kitchen counter. Mashed strawberry covered the lower half of his face, and tattered green stems scattered around him on the tiles and the floor.

  I plucked him off the counter. “Fraser! What are you doing? You know those were for your grandma.”

  I set him on the ground and he bolted out of the house into the crisp morning sunshine. The front door stood open to let the warm air in. A postcard view across Smokey Mountain extended as far as the eye could see beyond our front porch and all the windows.

  I picked up the now empty strawberry carton. I looked into it, but no amount of looking would bring the strawberries back. Fraser did a good job polishing off every last one.

  I set the carton back down with a defeated sigh. So much for impressing my mother-in-law with strawberry shortcake. Then I remembered I didn’t get a chance to clean Fraser’s face before he ran off. Caroline Kelly would find my children a mess, the house a disaster zone, and nothing to eat.

  Not that she cared. She never cared. That woman had seen it all raising four sons. Nothing surprised her anymore.

  I turned to the fridge and took out the egg carton when Caroline breezed in. With her long, brown tresses and her hourglass figure, she always looked amazing. I swear she woke up completely put together when she got out of bed in the morning.

  She set a wicker basket on the table and leaned forward to kiss me on the cheek. “Good morning, sweetie. How are you? Did you get that accounting application filled out?”

  I snapped to attention in a military salute. “Filled out and turned in, Colonel Sir.”

  She laughed out loud. “I’m sure you’ll get the job. You’re more than qualified.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t take it, though,” I remarked. “After I turned it in, I started having second thoughts. What if I can’t do the job, what with taking care of the boys and everything?”