What could he possibly say to comfort her? In the past, he had faced women who had gone through what she had gone through and worse. That sense of helplessness and anger he had felt then was magnified tenfold. Knowing the no-nonsense woman Audiv had been since he arrived, seeing her trembling and vulnerable like this…
“He didn’t,” Antonio whispered awkwardly. “And he’s not going to come after you. I will protect you, Audiv. No matter what. Please believe me when I say that. I will do everything in my power to keep you safe. I will find him and—”
“No.” Audiv pulled back. Though her face was dry, her eyes were wet. “I don’t want you to find him, Antonio. I want you to stay here with me. I want you to stay in the palace and attend my classes with me and just… be with me. I know that’s ridiculous but—”
“It’s not. I’ll stay with you.” He could also look for Angstrom on the side, or at the very least be involved in the investigation. “I won’t leave your side as long as you want me here.”
Audiv let out a shaky breath and the tears she had been holding back leaked from her eyes. “He took something else from me.”
Antonio’s lungs locked.
“My magic. He’s a warlock, and he stole my…”
She broke into sobs, collapsing back over him. Antonio held her tightly, his mind reeling. Stole her magic? How was that possible…? But the tears wracking her body were unmistakable, and even if he couldn’t understand how it had happened, he knew it had. And all he could do was hold her.
***
Audiv asked him to come with her when she went to tell Indulf about Angstrom being a warlock. The king was grim-faced and distraught when she said that he’d taken her magic and assured her they would do everything they could to find him, and then gave her the assignment to research warlocks and try to find a way to reverse it.
At first, Antonio was shocked and thought that Indulf was putting too much on her. But as Audiv threw herself back into her classes with this new project on the side, he saw why Indulf had done it. Her confidence quickly returned as she was able to continue doing what she loved and had a goal to work toward. He’d taken to sleeping in her living room, the couch being replaced with a pullout, so he wasn’t quite so bloody uncomfortable.
A couple weeks had passed without any news when Indulf called them both to his office. He and his son, Warmund, were both there and looking as grim as anything. Antonio stood at attention, his past military and FBI training kicking in when he was with a superior. Warmund nodded once at him but allowed his father to do the explaining.
“Thank you both for coming,” Indulf said, inclining his head. “First off, Audiv, Katrina tells me that your classes are going much better now. How are you doing?”
“Fine.” She grinned at him as though nothing was wrong. “Classes, as you said, are going better. I’m connecting with my students better and it’s showing in their magic. I haven’t been able to find much about warlocks in my research, but I’ve got a bunch of the new volunteers digitalizing our records for easier searching. I’m fine. Everything is fine.”
Indulf considered her for a moment before nodding. “I would have thought that your parents would have come to see you by now.”
Her smile slipped. “I don’t see any point in worrying them at this point. I’m going to find a way to reverse what Angstrom did. Finding him is the first step in that, though. So, do you have anything to report in that aspect?”
Indulf frowned. Antonio shifted a little closer to Audiv. It was bolder than she should have been, and ruder, too… she shouldn’t speak to her king like that. But Antonio knew where she was coming from. Indulf did, too, and didn’t mention her breach of protocol.
“Yes, actually. That is one of the reasons why I called you here. We’ve received word that several people in the FBI’s protective custody have been… attacked. They’re alive,” he was quick to add, though his eyes darkened. “But it’s clear that those who were meant to protect them turned on them.”
Antonio’s hands clenched. Just as his team had turned on Hazel, the woman he’d been assigned to protect. If it wasn’t for her four dragon mates, she’d have been killed—and he would have been as well. Killed by the men he trusted to watch his back. Killed by the team he’d worked with for years.
“This was also uploaded to the internet.” Warmund tapped a few keys on a laptop, and a video started to play.
Smoke curled from Antonio’s lungs at the sight of Angstrom sitting in front of the camera. He had slicked his hair back and was wearing a suit. An arrogant smile curled his lips, and his eyes glowed with a self-assured righteousness that made the hair on the back of Antonio’s neck prickle.
“Hello to my friends who are likewise concerned with the uprising of dragons and witches across our Christian land.”
Antonio snarled under his breath. He already knew where this was going—Angstrom was going to hijack his religion and God to justify his hatred and violence.
“But fear not, my brothers. For you have a prophet risen by the hand of God to destroy the dragon and his kingdom. I will bring down these dragons and their devil-ways. If any of you have friends or family accursed by the devil’s magic, bring them to me. I will cleanse them and—”
“Turn it off!” Audiv’s face was utterly ashen.
Warmund clicked off the video. Silence fell in the office as Audiv clenched her hands. Antonio stepped forward, opening his mouth to ask if she was alright. She held a hand out to him, stopping him—and then turned on her heel and ran from the office.
Chapter Eight
Audiv
The only way to stop Michael’s words from replaying over and over in her mind was to run. So, she did. She ran and ran until she could barely breathe. Her chest ached, there was a stitch in her side and her legs felt like clumps of wood. Utterly exhausted, she found a soft spot beneath a willow and curled up at the roots. Her heart rate slowed, and her breathing became even, and without meaning to, she drifted off into a light doze, her mind blessedly blank.
When she opened her eyes again, she spied Antonio sitting on a bench a few yards away. A book was in his hand, but he was looking up at the sky.
Gratitude swept over her, along with a fair bit of embarrassment at her breakdown. She wasn’t entirely certain why Angstrom had affected her so strongly. Maybe it was that word, cleanse… Maybe it was the thought of family members dragging unwilling loved ones to that monster, thinking that it was for their own good when it would be so painful and traumatic…
Maybe it was some nagging doubt in the back of her mind, that maybe it would be best for some of them, to have their magic taken away from them.
Audiv grimaced as she stood. Her whole body was stiff as she hobbled over to Antonio and collapsed onto the bench beside him. He was silent for a moment before he turned to her, a pinch in his brow.
“Should I carry you back to the palace?”
The question was so unexpected that a startled laugh burst from her throat. Audiv tested her muscles and nodded sheepishly. She had overdone it big time. Even sitting was making her sore, it seemed.
Antonio scooped her into his arms and she briefly stiffened. She had thought that he was going to carry her piggy-back, rather than bridal style like he was holding her now. She looped an arm around his neck and tried to hold herself up by his shoulders, so all her weight wasn’t on his arms. The thought crossed her mind that, having a bounteous curvy figure, she was too heavy to carry, but she gently eased it away.
Even before he was a dragon, Antonio was a strong dude. She had seen pictures—he was ripped. His strength only increased after he became a dragon. Especially with how often she saw him at the gym. Though his muscle mass wasn’t the over-bulked look that lots of the thick-necked and small-headed men in magazines had, she knew he was more than strong enough to carry a person twice her weight.
And it was nice, to be carried like that.
Antonio took her back to her apartment and retrieved a lotion that she had
made recently, to help with the stiff muscles she always seemed to wake up with. From tensing in her sleep, she guessed. He squirted some onto his hand, then glanced up at her.
“May I?”
What he was asking was obvious enough. Audiv’s breath caught in her lungs as she imagined it going further than a simple massage. Her mouth went dry as an unexpected heat flared in her core. As she stared up at him, she realized that she wanted nothing more to have his hands on her body. Slowly, she nodded, then stood and pulled her tank off. She still wore her bra, and she left her underwear on as she took off her pants.
“Shall we go to the bedroom?” she asked.
Antonio’s eyes darkened as they roamed over her body. A strange expression came over his face as he jerked his head to one side, as though tearing his gaze away from her. “Audiv, I don’t know if that’s a good idea. You wanted to wait.”
“Marriage is an outdated notion,” she replied. “I’ve imagined it often enough, anyway. It’s not like I’m some naive virgin, I know how it works and how it’s supposed to feel.”
“Imagining isn’t the same as doing.”
The heat in her core started to fade, and a different sort of heat rose in her cheeks. Her ears went pink. “I know that.”
Antonio put the lotion back into the jar, then gathered her clothes from the floor and nodded at the bedroom. “I can rub your back and legs, but I don’t think it should go any further than that. Not when you’re in the emotional state that you’re in right now… I don’t want this to be done just because you need to take your mind off things.”
Her mouth dropped open, about to say that wasn’t it at all, but she couldn’t say it. Not when she didn’t know if it was the truth or not. More heat scorched her cheeks as she silently nodded, turning to the bedroom. She limped to her bed and stretched out. She hid her face from Antonio as he started to massage her aching muscles.
The lotion and his hands helped the tight knots unwind. His hands were strong and smooth, not calloused like she had expected. They weren’t womanly in the least, though, and that heat flared back in her core as those big, strong fingers worked on her muscles. She bit her lip to keep from moaning as he worked down her back, then on her thighs. A shiver ran through her, and she could feel herself getting wetter at his touch, even though he wasn’t anywhere near her lady bits.
Antonio paused and let out a growl of desire that had everything tightening inside her. “God! You smell so good.”
Audiv turned her head, staring up at him. His expression was tense, his jaw clenched as his fingers began to trace lightly up her inner thigh.
“It’s not sex if you just touch me, right?” Her voice came out husky. “And I could touch you, too.”
Antonio let out a strangled moan. She could see how much he wanted to take her up on her offer from the bulge in his jeans. Her mouth went dry again as she thought about what he would look like. She’d seen plenty of nude men from the guards flying back and shifting to human form in the courtyard, but she hadn’t seen any of them hard and erect. Her gaze moved up his white button-up shirt to focus on his eyes.
His nostrils flared. “I can touch you,” he grunted. “But if you started touching me, I’m not sure I could hold back.”
That sounded so wonderful that it was Audiv’s turn to moan. She quickly flipped to her back, sore muscles forgotten with the magic of her lotion and the heat of desire. She spread her legs, her breathing a little shallower than it ought to be. Antonio let his hands run up her legs a few times, his eyes on her face, before he smirked, such a wicked little smirk that made everything inside of her tighten up even further.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
She didn’t even have a voice to reply with, and so only nodded. Antonio gripped her thighs, moving them apart slightly, and bent over her. His breath was hot on her skin as he kissed up her thigh, then the top of her underwear as his hands slowly pulled them down. He tossed them to the floor as the chill air brushed against Audiv’s wet core. She chewed her lip as he kissed her thigh again. But he didn’t move his mouth to her center. Instead, he crawled onto the bed, caging her with his big body and pressed a searing kiss to her mouth.
Audiv tangled her fingers into his hair, desire growing so strong inside of her that she was almost growling with want. Antonio’s hands still roamed her, feeling every inch of her. He abruptly pulled back, panting. A furrow on his brow.
“Before we go further… how far have you gone, Audiv? What experience do you have?”
Her mind flashed back to her fiancé, and the things they did with each other. She struggled for a moment to find the modern terms. “Uh… Third base. Well… I mean, I’ve given oral sex before. And I’ve touched myself.”
“Has anybody touched you?”
Her cheeks went red as she shook her head. Her fiancé had told her that there was no point and that the only thing he could give her that she couldn’t give herself was all-out sex. But even though she would use her mouth on him every day, even if she wasn’t feeling well, he still labeled her a prude when she caught him cheating on her.
Antonio’s eyes darkened. “By choice?”
“Um… not really…”
He closed his eyes, sucking in a deep breath. After a moment, he let it out and shook his head. “We’ll have to fix that. I want you to lay on your side so I can grind into your ass while I make you come.”
Her whole body felt like it was on fire, buzzing almost as strongly as when she had used magic for the first time. She turned to her side as ordered, and when Antonio lifted her leg, she reached down to grasp her knee and help him keep it out of the way. He rubbed himself against her through his clothing as he reached around and began to gently stroke her.
Audiv’s head fell into her pillow. Her back arched, pressing her body more firmly against Antonio. She writhed under his touch as the heat inside of her built tighter and tighter. He leaned half over her, one arm around her waist to hold her in place as he kissed her mouth deeply. Audiv groaned into his mouth as his tongue swept over her lips.
Her fingers curled into his hair with one hand, the blankets with the other. His fingers slid around her, then inside of her. She let out a sharp cry, the pressure building to a point where she couldn’t stand it. Her legs trembled, her heart pounded and suddenly everything released all at once. Her body jerked, her muscles unwinding like a broken elastic band. She dropped her leg, squeezing his hand between her thighs. He continued to stroke her as her face and chest turned red and her body twitched this way and that.
When he pulled his hand away, the heat faded a little. Audiv panted, loving the feeling of his arms around her. She understood what he meant when he said if she touched him, he might not be able to control himself. That had been…
“Is it always that good?” she asked him, surprised to find her voice hoarse.
Antonio chuckled. “That was good? I’m glad… but it can be a lot better, Audiv.”
“No! Really?”
He grinned at her. “Yes. But that’ll have to wait for your wedding night.”
He winked at her so she knew he was teasing, but her mouth went dry once more. She had the sudden image of her and him, kneeling before the altar of marriage. And her heart swelled with warmth. It had to be the aftereffects of him touching her… they’d known each other for a while, but they hadn’t been dating… it was far too early to have those sorts of thoughts.
And so, she was going to think about something else. She took his hand and moved it back to brush her sex. “Do it again,” she whispered huskily. “And this time, put them inside of me.”
Antonio chuckled. “Yes, ma’am.”
Chapter Nine
Antonio
“If someone had told me a few months ago that they could take this dragon away from me and I could return to the life I had before, I would have accepted in a heartbeat,” Antonio whispered, holding Audiv’s body close to his own.
He’d shown her several different ways that a man
could give a woman pleasure without taking her virginity, and when the temptation started to become too strong, she had dressed again, and they had retreated to the library, where they could cuddle on the couch without the temptation to remove clothing.
“Because your world was turned upside down and you didn’t know who you were anymore?” Audiv sighed. “So many of my students told me that…. I didn’t understand. I thought they were just whining about getting something amazing handed to them. I didn’t think they deserved magic if they weren’t going to embrace it.”
Antonio smirked. He’d spoken enough with Audiv to know that was true. She did not have a strong empathetic streak. She didn’t deserve to learn how to empathize like this, though. She didn’t deserve to have what she loved most about herself taken away.
“I didn’t know who I was anymore. I was someone else, and I didn’t want to be. I knew that being a dragon would change everything, even if it didn’t change the core of me… Or maybe it did. I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I don’t know if you can go through something like that and come out completely unchanged.”
“You can’t. That doesn’t mean that who you are—your wants, wishes, aspirations—have to change.” Audiv’s gaze darkened, and she turned her face away. “Or maybe it does. Gods know that I am unable to fulfill my dreams. All I’m good for now is teaching and brewing potions. What any other magicless person can do. I’m not a mage. I’m…”
Antonio pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “And I’m not a human.”
Audiv let out a shaky breath, the tears clearly visible in her eyes. “No. I’m human and you’re a dragon. At least until Michael is found and I’m able to find a way to reverse his magic stealing. That’s one thing I’ve still got, my brain. All the magic in the world can’t make up for a head that doesn’t work.” She gave him a shaky smile, but it faded quickly enough. “Can I ask you something?”
The Dragon Fighter's Witch: A Paranormal Romance (Separated by Time Book 7) Page 5
