by Abigail Owen
“Why is everyone so determined for me to abandon my family?” Cami asked in a voice smaller than she liked, only she wasn’t quite sure she wanted to hear the answer. Drake, though, wouldn’t pull his punches. She’d hear his opinion straight with no chaser.
Was it possible for someone to bore holes in one’s back with only their stare? She didn’t need to turn over to know Drake was doing exactly that.
“That’s not it,” he finally said.
Something in Drake’s voice—almost an understanding as opposed to the more typical don’t-give-a-shit tone—had Cami turning over in the bed to face him.
Her eyes had adjusted to the dim lighting a bit and she found him still sitting up, his eyes giving off a faint red glow as he watched her.
I should find that creepy.
Like freaky movies about demons and poltergeists and exorcisms creepy. Instead, she found herself staring back, fascinated, an odd answering warmth blooming inside her. Under her shirt, the constant glow of fire inside pulsed with light, more visible through the flimsy T-shirt than the thicker black shirt she’d borrowed from Skylar. The one in tattered, bloody ruins on the bathroom floor now.
She had another one for tomorrow, to hide things from her family. But maybe a shopping trip might not be a bad idea.
Drake’s gaze shifted from her face to her chest then back, his expression giving nothing away.
Just as she had when she’d looked out from her hiding spot in the hangar to find a massive red dragon staring back at her, when she looked at Drake all she could see was power and awe-inspiring beauty in a startling sort of way.
In that form, every hard muscle stood in stark relief, even under the coat of his scales. The crest at the back of his head rose sharply with spikes that she knew to be razor sharp at the ends. More deadly spikes lined his back. And those red eyes had glittered with a fire that was only a spark of the raging inferno that lurked inside him. A weapon held under his complete control. He’d practically vibrated with command, filling the cavern with his presence.
What would it take to really light those eyes up with flames? She’d seen it happen a handful of times with Rune’s men. Even Rune himself. But Drake seemed to be on a permanent low burn setting.
Watching the dragon tonight, her body had responded instantly, coming to buzzing life in all the wrong ways.
An inconvenient sensation that took up uncomfortable residence inside her now. Never mind the orgasmic session in the bathroom. If she was honest, she’d been brought back to that aching need when she’d lain on top of him in the alleyway. He’d felt hard and strong beneath her and her mind had been full of the news that he’d saved her family from a horrible death.
Should she tell him that she knew about what he’d done for them?
No. He’d hate her gratitude. “What is it then?” she asked instead, forcing her thoughts back to his comment about needing to give up her family.
Drake scooted down in the bed, and she expected him to turn his back and return to ignoring her. She swallowed when he turned to face her instead, close enough to see details. Details she’d practically memorized when he’d been unconscious and healing. Except his eyes. Now she could see, behind the swirling red, how darker specks graced the depths of his irises, which were rimmed in an almost maroon hue.
“You’re obviously loyal to your family,” he said.
She could reach out and touch him if she wanted. And she definitely wanted. She just didn’t want to deal with the rejection sure to come from him, swift and brutal, so she pulled the sheet up around her and resisted the urge.
“It’s more than that,” Cami murmured. “I love them.”
Drake stayed quiet at that.
“You don’t think that’s a good reason?” she asked.
“No.”
Cami gave a huff of anger. “Do dragon shifters even know what love is?” she lashed out, maybe as much from frustration with him as fear of losing the most important thing in her life. “As far as I can tell, dragons walk away from anyone they might care about with way too much ease—”
Drake reached over and covered her mouth with his hand, skin hot and a shade rough against hers. Shock dropped through her like ice followed by heat that crawled over her skin, making it feel too tight for her body. A pulse point started up at the juncture of her thighs, and she stared at him, waiting. Anticipation thrumming.
“You talk too much,” he said. But quietly. Almost like he was amused, though he didn’t smile. “And you tend to jump to conclusions. I wasn’t saying that your love for them wasn’t a good reason.”
He dropped his hand on the bed between them.
“What were you saying, then?” she asked, happy her voice functioned at all, coming out mostly normal, maybe a bit of husk to it. Hopefully he didn’t notice that bit.
“The kind of love you describe…” He paused, his eyes going vague as he seemed to have to search for words. “The kind where you would do anything for them, right?”
Cami nodded. “Anything.”
“Sacrificial love?”
She nodded again, more slowly. He was going down a mental path she wasn’t following yet.
“I’ve only seen that kind of love in two ways. The few mated pairs I’ve witnessed firsthand—my parents; Finn, my Alpha on the team, and his mate Delaney. My brothers and their mates.” He grimaced. “Sort of.”
Yelena had tried to explain it. Cami could see it whenever Yelena and Goret were near each other. Even after ages together, he still watched her like she was the most precious thing in the world. Witnessing them and their connection was part of the reason she’d stayed, she believed.
“What’s the other way?”
“I’m the youngest of seven brothers with only one sister younger. You would think I would have found that kind of love with my family.” He shook his head, his hair brushing against the pillowcase. Was it as silky as it looked? She was starting to mangle the sheet in an effort at willpower.
“We were too far apart in age for me to form those kinds of relationships,” Drake said. “Four brothers were already mated by the time I was born. I was a…mistake.” He bit out the word. “My sister, born not too many years after me, they saw as an even bigger mistake.”
Cami squashed the small sound of rejection that clenched her throat, but he caught it anyway, giving a small shrug as if it didn’t matter. But the way his lips pinched, she knew it mattered.
“Do you know about female-born dragon shifters?” he asked.
“They’re born sterile.” Cami wanted a family as big as her own. She couldn’t imagine being denied the chance at that from the moment she was born.
“Yes. My brothers saw her more as an embarrassment. Someone they’d be forced to take care of. When I left Nepal and came here to be an enforcer, Lyndi came with me. She’s my family. My real family. Lyndi and the men on my team. Men who’ve fought beside me and saved my ass more times than I can count. Men I would do anything for.”
Cami waited for Drake to realize he’d said more than two sentences and clam up, but she couldn’t resist asking the question that popped into her head. “Even Rune?”
The glow of his eyes flared. This close she could see definition in the flames, colors a spectrum of reds from so dark it appeared black to as bright as a laser beam.
As fast as the flames flared, they settled again. “Even Rune,” he said. “I’m still pissed at him. For a lot of reasons. Instead of trusting us, he abandoned us. Then made us fight against him until we figured shit out for ourselves.”
Right. The Huracán team were Rune’s allies now. But that implied that they hadn’t been. That had to have been hard. Cami understood that kind of anger, one tinged with love that made you want to scream at them, shake some sense into them. “I get it.”
“Yeah?” he asked.
“Yeah. With my sisters, actually. They’r
e a lot younger than me. They’re off at college now, interested in boys and getting the hell away from ranch life. Part of me gets that. They’re young and have other interests. But the other part thinks they’re acting like selfish brats.” She clapped a hand over her mouth. She’d never voiced that particular annoyance. “I sound awful.”
His lips twitched. “No. You sound human.”
“Like that’s an excuse. Humanity sucks as far as dragons are concerned.”
“True. But we’re not exactly better.”
Cami twisted a piece of hair around her finger. Drake’s gaze dropped to follow the action, so she released the strand. “It’s almost like the love makes it worse when you’re mad at them.” Like tinder to a fire, the anger turning brighter, sharper. “Because you love them.”
He grunted what might’ve been an agreement, or even the closest thing to a laugh she’d heard from the man yet. “Yeah,” he said.
Cami sighed. “Why are you telling me this?”
Again, asking the question would probably shut him up, but no way did he not have a point with all this. Drake didn’t talk just to talk.
“Love like that…” He stopped again, grimacing like talking about feelings was torture. It probably was for him. “You should be willing to sacrifice everything.”
Cami frowned. “I am.”
He shook his head, and anger kicked through her. “Don’t shake your head at me. I’d die for my family.”
She almost had, that day when the fire had come, and he’d saved them. Drake had saved them. She was still having trouble wrapping her head around that reality.
Drake shifted closer, getting in her face, though not touching. “Would you live for them?”
Everything inside her stilled at his nearness, at the intensity radiating from him. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“Would you leave them, make a life away from them, to save their lives? Even if it caused them pain? Even if losing them or imagining being the source of their pain is the worst thing you could ever experience yourself? Because what you are now, that’s a choice you have to make. You might have to make it tomorrow. I’m not sure we should risk anything like that ghoul following us and hurting them.”
Her harsh intake of breath was the only sound in the room. Even the steady hum of the air conditioner under the window shut off, leaving them in thick, aching silence.
Lord above, she hadn’t considered that, relegating the ghoul to something contained in the city at night. But to unleash that kind of monster on her family would be worse than watching them age and die as she continued on.
Could she do that? Hurt them now by pretending to disappear just to keep them safe? Sacrifice her connection to the most important people in her life?
Dawning realization had her letting go of that thought as she took in Drake’s expression, the hardness in his eyes, the way the light had died out in them completely, leaving them dull. “Is that what you’re doing? For your team?”
After a long, tense silence, he shoved away from her, rolling back to his side. “Get some sleep.”
I’m right.
Rather than close her eyes and do what he said, Cami had other ideas. “You know what could help me sleep?”
Beside her Drake breathed loudly through his nose.
She grinned but kept going. “A good orgasm.”
His back stiffened, the muscles bulging under his shirt in fascinating ripples. “You just had one.”
“Mmmm… Except it left me all keyed up. I need to…relax. You know?”
A beat of silence, then, “Go ahead.”
He was trying to call her bluff, huh? Well, they’d see who could out-stubborn who. After the kisses he’d laid on her in Argentina, she knew he wanted her, and she was done trying to hold back and figure things out at whatever pace she thought she was supposed to take.
Slipping her hands lower, under the back of her panties, she flicked a finger over the bundle of nerves still buzzing from her earlier orgasm.
Cami didn’t hold back a small hum of pleasure.
“Ah hell,” Drake muttered.
Before she knew what was happening, he rolled over to settle between her legs, his body hot and hard and ready.
“I was hoping you would—” He swallowed her words in a kiss that was all heat and unleashed need.
When he had her mindless and breathless, he lifted his head, pinning her with a look that shot tingles straight to her clit. “I couldn’t tell.”
Was that a joke?
Only he was kissing her again, so who cared. She grasped his arms, the heat of his skin over flexed muscles and couldn’t help exploring the contours of his arms, his back, his chest. She rubbed her palms over right, flat nipples and he shuddered against her, dragging his mouth away. “I need to be inside you.”
“No argument here.”
“You won’t get pregnant, and dragons don’t carry diseases. Got it?”
“Got it.”
With fingers turned frantic they got out of the rest of their clothes and returned to each other’s arms. Drake poised at her entrance, stopped, and pinned her with eyes turned to molten red flames. “Tell me you want this.”
Above her, his body shook with the effort to hold back, and maybe with the effort at all. So easy to forget he wasn’t a well man lately. With a grin, Cami shoved him back, rolling on top of him so that she straddled him. By some miracle she managed to keep him right at her entrance, and, with a shuddering moan, sank down his shaft.
Once he was seated deep inside her, heat going everywhere all at once, she looked him dead in the eye. “I want this.”
He grunted, almost as though in pain. But at the same time, those big, strong hands went to her hips to hold her there hard. Using a strength that still boggled her mind, he lifted her up then slid her down his cock in one long, penetrating stroke.
“Good,” he said.
Then he did that again.
Despite her position of power, Cami gave herself over to the sensation buffeting her body as he controlled the pace. She stared back at the stark, harsh face of her lover, knowing he could see every nuance of what he was making her feel. Knowing, and reveling in it.
With each measured stroke, waves of electricity pulsed through her, gathering at her core, making her feel like she was coming out of her skin. Those hands at her hips both brutally possessive and tenderly worshipful.
The glow of Drake’s eyes filled the room, mixing with the aura coming from her, giving it a darker edge, more intense. More beautiful. Brighter with each stroke.
“What if I cause a fire?” she panted.
“I’ll take care of it.”
The mere mention of flames seemed to alter him, and that possessive grip turned harder, just at the edge of pain as he increased the pace, impaling her on his cock. Harder. Faster.
Building the pressure, and the lights pulsed with the beat of her heart and the pounding of her blood. Building. Building. Until the pressure spiraled out of control and erupted.
Cami tossed her head back and screamed as an orgasm as powerful as the man inside her rode her body. Burned away everything she was and replaced it with a woman foreign to her. Wilder. Freer. More powerful.
Was this just a taste of what it would be like to become a dragon?
Cami collapsed over Drake, her head on his chest, and smiled.
He trailed a finger over the sweat-slicked skin of her back in soothing whorls as they both caught their breath.
“We shouldn’t have done that,” he said finally.
Cami lifted up to look at him seriously. “Maybe not.” She shrugged. “But I’d like to do it again.”
“What about finding your mate?”
Drake didn’t know about the mark on her neck, which only showed under fire. Rune hadn’t told him, and neither had she.
> But the time wasn’t right to tell him. Not yet.
The sex was incredible. She bore his mark. And she liked him. Despite the glowers and the lack of words, she genuinely liked this complicated man.
But that didn’t make her sure.
This was still too fast, too new. She’d spent only a few months with dragon shifters. What she’d seen and how she felt with them… Hell, how she’d felt just now with only a taste of what she could become. She knew, in her gut, in a way that could never be explained or reasoned, that she was meant to be one of them.
That didn’t mean she needed to rush. No matter the danger of being found out by the Alliance or the clans. The danger to her family was another thing entirely.
“I’ll find him when the time is right,” she finally said. “Until then, I have no intention of living like a nun.”
Chapter Eleven
Drake cast his gaze around the large covered parking lot, noting any other people in the area, taking in the scents, all while hustling Cami to the rental car with a hand on her elbow.
Rune was a damn genius.
In the paperwork provided, they discovered that he’d procured them a rental through yet another dummy corporation, tied to their fake IDs, but through a special “Gold Members” package. That meant their name was displayed on a digital board and all they had to do was walk to the numbered parking spot. No need to pay or have their IDs checked.
How the hell Rune had got that set up, he had no idea. But he’d ask next time he saw the guy. The team could use that method.
As they moved, he checked his sidelines and kept his senses tuned to the skies, glancing up every so often.
“Will you stop that?” Cami demanded beside him as they walked to their waiting car.
“What?” He didn’t bother to look at her, still checking that they weren’t being followed.
“You’re making me nervous.” She pulled her arm out of his grip and kept going without him.
“I’m keeping us safe.” Why did he even need to point it out? Especially after last night.
She just shook her head. “Esta cabrón,” she muttered.
