The Enforcer (Fire's Edge)

by Abigail Owen

Cami handed her a license with a picture that looked like her but a completely different name—Lisa Hernandez. When had Skylar got that for her? Or had Rune? Either way, this was feeling less and less like a jail break, and more like a deliberate plan on the part of both Rune and Skylar.

  “Uh…my—” Cami stopped, glanced at him as if trying to figure out what to call him exactly, and started again. “The airport lost one of our pieces of luggage.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Lucy said. She pointed at a wall of travel-sized things. “Any toiletries you’re missing, we can probably replace.”

  Cami smiled up at Drake expectantly. Smart woman. He quickly snapped up a toothbrush and paste and deodorant, along with a small first aid kit and a sewing kit and put his goods on the top of the check-in desk. “Add it to our room.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Key cards in hand, they headed up the elevator to a room right by the stairs. Drake checked the room out thoroughly, then left to inspect the floors above and below them, letting his senses search out any possible supernaturals close by. Not a whiff.

  “All good?” Cami asked faintly when he returned. She was sitting on the foot of the bed, slumped over as though she could hardly keep herself upright.

  “For now,” he said.

  She rolled her eyes. “That makes me feel a ton better.”

  “Let’s get you fixed up.” He scooped her off the bed, and it said a lot that, rather than protest, Cami rested her head on his shoulder instead.

  She must’ve lost more blood than he thought. Or… Drake thought hard about a bite from a ghoul. Usually, once the first bite happened, that was the end of whoever was on the receiving end. Did a bite do more than the physical damage?

  Drake sat Cami on the toilet and whipped off her shirt.

  “Ow,” she said in a low voice. Her only feeble protest. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the basin.

  Drake got to work cleaning and disinfecting each individual tooth mark. A few of the more shallow wounds he was able to close with butterfly bands from the first aid kit. The rest, however, needed stitching. They went deeper, still seeping blood, trickling down her skin in thin rivulets, the scent of metal and salt filling his nostrils. Blood had never affected him before, but his asshole puckered at the smell. This was Cami’s blood.

  He threaded a needle from the sewing kit, but at the first stick to her skin, Cami came to screeching wakefulness, jackknifing to sitting.

  Shit. This was not going to work.

  “I have to,” he said.

  She gave her head a hard shake, her hair tumbling about her face, eyes wide. “Take me to a hospital.”

  He shot her an impatient look. “And explain this how? Shark bite?”

  “I—” She shook her head again, breath coming in sharp pants. “I can’t. I can’t…”

  The woman he was supposed to be protecting was losing it, and her panic was dragging him with her, like undertow.

  Drake took her face in his hands, centering her gaze on his, forehead to forehead, trying to will his calm into her through that small touch. “Okay. We’ll try something else.”

  Her breathing slowed. “What?” she whispered.

  He flattened his lips. “My blood.”

  Cami’s mouth parted in a silent oh, then she licked her lips. Lips so fucking close to his. “Will that…you know?”

  “It won’t turn you, and, as a mate, you should be able to handle it without dying. It worked on Delaney once.” Granted, she was Finn’s mate, but they hadn’t known that at the time. “But if we don’t have compatible blood types, it could…”

  “Hurt me?”

  “Burn you up from the inside out.”

  She swallowed. “Maybe I can handle the stitches.”

  That would be better. But the way she’d flinched and, given the number of wounds, that could be worse. Not to mention he had no idea what a bite from a ghoul would do. The healing properties in his blood should take care of any residual effects as well. That alone made it worth a small risk. “We’ll try one little drop, just to see.”

  One drop wouldn’t kill her, right? He’d suck and bite it out of her skin himself if he had to.

  “One drop. Okay. That can’t be too bad,” Cami echoed his own thoughts. “Like a skin test when you dye your hair.”

  “You’ve dyed your hair?” He asked the question as much to distract himself as her. Using another needle, Drake pricked one finger, then carefully held it over one of her wounds and let a single tiny drop splash onto the open flesh.

  “Uh-huh. Purple once.”

  “Weirdo.” Except he sort of thought purple could be sexy on her.

  He pulled his hand back and stared at the spot, waiting for it to smoke or turn black around the edges. Instead, it did the opposite, the blood absorbed into her flesh before the angry red gash turned more pink. After a long moment, to be sure, he glanced at Cami. “Okay?”

  She nodded.

  Reasonably confident his blood wouldn’t eat her alive, Drake pricked his already healed finger again, letting more blood drip into the same still-open wound. This time, before his eyes, it shrank and closed, the skin puckering to a fresh-looking scar, the skin shiny and mauve.

  “Wow,” Cami murmured. “That’s potent stuff.”

  Chapter Ten

  Drake repeated the action over each wound. To Cami, each new douse left behind a cozy warmth, like how she felt as a child when her mother kissed her good night. Cosseted. Cared for.

  The exhaustion that had taken hold of her after the attack, making it difficult to get words to form in her mind let alone emerge intelligibly from her mouth, receded in the face of a clearer, rejuvenated mind.

  Miracle blood.

  They could make a mint on this stuff if humans could take it.

  Except halfway through, the warmth started to coalesce and spread, down her arms, then into her chest. Her nipples tightened, tingling almost painfully.

  “Um.”

  Drake paused. “Problem?”

  Another ripple of sensation and a smidgeon of panic set in. “Did this Delaney person have any…side effects?”

  Drake jerked his hands back from what he was doing. “What do you mean side effects? Does it hurt?”

  Hurt? Another wave of sensation had a hysterical giggle punching from her. “Not exactly.”

  Drake frowned. “What then?”

  “I think I’m going to…” She had to pause, screwing her eyes shut tight to breathe through concentrated tingling in spots that shouldn’t be tingling right now. “Orgasm,” she finally managed through pinched lips.

  Dead silence greeted those words.

  Cami peeped open one eye to find Drake staring at her with an intensity that stole her breath more effectively than the waves of sensation washing through her body with growing intensity.

  “You’d better finish up,” she prompted. “Before I…finish up.”

  If she could get him out of the room, at least she’d be afforded a little privacy.

  “Fuck,” he muttered. And, moving a hell of a lot faster, started dripping blood into the remaining open wounds. He missed a couple times in his haste, his blood trickling across her clavicle to trail between her breasts.

  Cami let out a moan. Of its own volition, her hand went between her thighs to rub.

  “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” Drake muttered.

  She opened her eyes, shocked to find that she’d managed to squish that hand down her pants, her hips pumping to the rhythm of the pressure she was applying.

  And Drake was watching, fevered slashes of crimson marking his cheekbones and flames in his eyes casting glimmering light over the bathroom, turning the clinical space more…intimate.

  “Keep going,” she panted.

  He startled, which any other day would’ve made her laugh, then dripped his
blood into the final wound.

  Then, with a jaw so tight and hard he could cut diamonds with it, he spun and practically ran from the room, closing the door behind him.

  The sensations didn’t lessen for Cami with his absence, though. They were still building and gathering and pulsing through her in electric shocks. With fumbling hands, she stripped her pants and underwear away, then spread her legs wide, getting off with her own fingers.

  And the man she pictured with each shuddering sweep was the man in the other room. Only in her mind his hands were on her, that fevered gaze wasn’t tempered but allowed full rein, his heat threatening to consume them both.

  That image seared in her mind as the tsunami of her orgasm crashed into her and through her, his name gasping from her lips as the sensation crested. Panting with her release, she rode the wave as it ebbed and flowed through her body, sweat covering her skin in a fine sheen. It seemed to take ages to slow, leaving her limp yet still strangely keyed up, and surrounded by silence.

  Oh lord. Her eyes flew open. Did he hear that? Not just her orgasm, but his name on her lips?

  Nothing she could do about it now, except ignore it. Drake definitely would. Feeling both wrung out and vitally alive at the same time, Cami forced herself up to unsteady feet and looked at herself in the mirror.

  Then winced.

  She looked like a woman who’d had sex. Her skin glowed. The fire inside the center of her chest pulsed the rhythm of tiny orgasmic aftershocks, gradually slowing and easing through her body. Meanwhile, the wounds on her shoulder appeared more like several-weeks-old scars.

  “Amazing,” she whispered, tracing one slick pucker with her fingertip.

  Needing to clean herself of blood and the scent of her desires, Cami took a quick shower. Wrapped up in the thin excuse for a towel, which barely covered her ass, she made her way back into the room to find Drake had kicked off his shoes and lay on the one side of the king-sized bed, as close to the edge as he could be without falling off, giving her plenty of space. The side closest to the door, she noted. He’d thrown an arm across his eyes, probably fully intending to do his damnedest to ignore the woman in the room with him.

  No way was he asleep after all that.

  “You know…you haven’t been showing any symptoms lately.” The thought had occurred somewhere in the middle of his getting her here and fixing her.

  Even under his arm, she could see his face pull into a frown. “I guess not.”

  “Is that good?”

  “I doubt it’ll last. Let’s just hope it doesn’t come back anytime soon.”

  Not an answer, but a good point. Also, the end of that conversation. But she had other things to figure out. “What was that thing?”

  Now that the immediate problems had been dealt with, she wanted answers.

  Drake didn’t remove his arm. “A ghoul.”

  “A ghoul,” she repeated. “And, for those of us without a PhD in bizzaro-world, what the hell is a ghoul?”

  He gave a twitch that she assumed was a shrug. “Sort of like vampires, I guess. They are humanoid, and feed on flesh—dead or alive.”

  Oh. “Hence the daggers for teeth.” Got it. “Why did you go all weird?”

  Under his arm, his mouth flattened. “Sort of like a siren, a ghoul can project an image of something to entice you close enough to rip into you.”

  Cami shivered at the image. After all, she’d come damn close to being ghoul-food.

  Something to entice. She mulled over Drake’s words for a second. “Who is Sera?”

  Her stomach turned sour then twisted inside her as she waited for his answer. Because if the ghoul projected something Drake found enticing, then did he want this Sera woman?

  “She’s Aidan’s mate.”

  He wanted another man’s mate? Jealousy slithered through her like a writhing mass of black snakes, even as cold logic pierced the darkness. That didn’t sound like Drake at all. “Why is she important to you?”

  “The ghoul made it seem like she was in trouble.”

  Immediately, the knots loosened. She knew enough about Drake to realize the ghoul had appealed to his default mode. “You wanted to protect her,” she said.

  Drake heaved a sigh that communicated his return to regularly scheduled irritation and dropped his arm away from his face. The second his gaze landed on her, he scowled. “Can you put some damn clothes on?”

  Cami rolled her eyes but moved into the bathroom, quickly dressing. When she returned, Drake was back to the arm over his eyes.

  “Do we need to be worried about another one coming for us?”

  “Another ghoul? No. At heart, they are cowards. They stick to outside locations with as few live humans as possible—deserts, alleys, cemeteries—preferring to set a trap for one or two unsuspecting people at a time.”

  “And the rat shifter?”

  “He won’t have the balls to show his twitchy little face anywhere near me again.”

  Cami nodded, not that he could see her, then forced herself to ask a harder question. “Were they after me?”

  Was her secret already out less than an hour away from the safety of Rune’s hideaway?

  “No. They were after me.”

  “You?” She didn’t keep the shock from her voice.

  He still didn’t bother to lower his arm which was starting to piss her off. She needed to see his face, his eyes. Couldn’t he tell she was still scared to death? A death she’d nearly met tonight. A stark shiver scampered up her spine like that creepy rat. “Why would they go after a dragon shifter?”

  “A rogue dragon. One confined between buildings in a city with not enough time or space to shift. Open season, as far as bizzaro-world is concerned.”

  He risked his life simply being here with her. “I see.”

  At least that explained tonight. Though Cami doubted she could close her eyes without seeing that ghoul’s solid white eyes—blank like they were missing irises and pupils—or feeling the blades of its teeth sinking deep and the sharp pain that radiated to every nerve in her body.

  Needing something else to distract her, she snatched the packet Rune had given her, from which she’d pulled their new identification, and sat down. The bed dipped under her slight weight. She wiggled, getting comfortable, then proceeded to go through the documents provided. She refused to admit that Drake’s presence—the smoky scent of him, the warmth of his skin so near her—had her on edge. That orgasm lingered in her memory, and her body. Like it hadn’t been quite enough to satiate a deeper need.

  Don’t think about it.

  “Huh,” she murmured.

  Drake ignored her.

  “I said huh,” she spoke louder.

  He didn’t lift his arm. “So?”

  She stuck her tongue out at him, not that he could see. “Any normal person would be curious.”

  Drake sighed and lowered his arm. “Fine. What?”

  “There’s an ID in here for you, too.”

  She held out a small plastic card toward him. Like it was a snake that might bite him, Drake went up on one elbow to get a better look but didn’t reach for it. A picture of him looked back, with the name Yi Cheng. His eyebrows went up before lowering, almost meeting over his eyes.

  “What the fuck?” he muttered and snatched it from her fingers. “No way could that fucker have known—”

  She watched with interest as he mentally worked through some thought process.

  “Rune,” he muttered. “That manipulative son of a bitch.”

  Cami’s eyebrows shot up. “Wait. You think he planned for you to be here, too?”

  “Yeah. He pointed out the shift change time at night, which I, of course, decided to take advantage of for my practice flight. He knew I’d find you there at the same time. I’m guessing Skylar told you when to meet?”

  Sh
e nodded.

  “Remind me to thank that asshole properly next time we see him.” He tossed the license at Cami and resumed his prone position.

  “How on earth could he have guessed you’d choose to help me?”

  “He didn’t. But he knows me pretty damn well.”

  Cami thought about that. “In other words, Rune didn’t have to be a genius to know that you weren’t happy in the mountain and also wouldn’t stand by while I risked my still human backside.”

  The glance Drake threw her—both irritated and speculative—told her she’d pegged that about right.

  The bed shifted again as Cami stood. “Technically, I’m running back home.”

  Drake sat and scooted back to lean against the faux headboard. “That’s not home anymore. You know that, right?”

  She paused in unzipping her bag. “I understand it,” she said after a quiet beat. “But that doesn’t mean I have to accept it.”

  She pulled a toothbrush and paste out of a side pocket and went into the bathroom.

  “You’re going to have to accept it,” Drake called out from the bedroom.

  She paused a second. Was he right? Abandoning them would hurt her family as much as her. Cami gave a shake of her head then resumed her brushing.

  Turning off various lights as she went, Cami returned to the room and pulled the covers back on her side of the bed, climbing in beside him. Not looking at him, because she had the strangest urge to snuggle into his side and knew that wouldn’t end the way she was picturing, she reached over and turned off the bedside lamp with a soft snick. The only light came in through sheer curtains. Neither of them had bothered to close the light-blocking set.

  “Should I close the drapes?” she asked, her voice seeming loud in the quiet room.

  “No. I want to be able to see anything that comes at us, even if it comes through the window.”

  “Oh.” There went any hope of sleep. Between the man at her back and the things he stirred inside her, and now the real concerns of something attacking—another ghoul maybe or that rat bringing his rodent brethren—would not let her rest.

  Think of something else, she tried to tell herself.