Rogue Dragons Series: Box Set Books 1-5

by Hartley, Emilia

  In between bouts of bliss, Daphne wondered if she slowed her advances and paced them out, if Ford would eventually feel the same about her. She admired this man who had lost someone so dear and important. He hadn’t buried himself deep in the earth like some dragons. He hadn’t retreated to the far reaches of the world and given himself over to his beast in order to dull the pain.

  Ford had found ways to move on. She didn’t understand why he was alone, though. It wasn’t that she expected him to bring another woman into his life. No, that wasn’t it. Ford could have easily found a place among Gavin’s new clan. They wanted to increase their numbers, so surely, they’d extended an offer to him.

  Why, then, had Ford chosen to remain apart from the clan?

  Of all the things Daphne could easily ask, this wasn’t one of them. She didn’t want to dig at Ford until he kicked her out and avoided her. His company was the only thing keeping her sane at this time. When she wanted to roar at the skies, seeing Ford brought her back down to the earth.

  She couldn’t be his mate, anyway. He’d already found and lost his, and no shifter ever had the pleasure of falling for two mates in one lifetime. Whatever secrets Ford held close to his chest would remain his own because they would eventually go their own ways.

  Daphne inevitably had to go back to Zander’s clan. Once Evangeline had stabilized and Bree could fly, then Daphne would leave.

  “I take it from what you said earlier that your brother’s mate survived her change,” Ford said, breaking the silence that had settled between them.

  Daphne nodded and swallowed her mouthful of food, embarrassed that he’d caught her with cheese in her mouth. “She’s a nervous wreck, though. She accused me of being a spy for Gavin’s father.”

  “Are you a spy? You seem loyal to their previous clan. These shifters betrayed their clan leader and struck out on their own.” Ford’s tone wasn’t accusing, but matter of fact.

  “That’s not exactly what happened. Gavin and his mate had a spat, so he left. I was told that Casey and the others were being sent out to retrieve Gavin. Then, they never came back. My brother makes it sound like Zander kicked them out. I’m not sure what’s really going on anymore.” She thought of Zander’s ominous warning.

  Though Zander had rubbed her the wrong way most of her life, she knew that he had to be strong willed and forceful to keep their massive clan safe. She’d never questioned Zander before now. His motives didn’t make sense.

  “Shifters from your clan have been harassing these guys for weeks now.” Ford threw back the last of his wine and lifted the empty bottle only to set it back down. “There was a fight a while back, one that I wasn’t part of. After your brother and his friends got rid of the shifters Zander sent, the one human mate had burn scars on her shoulder. I don’t know how she came by them, but I doubt it was any of the local boys.”

  Daphne had noticed Isabella’s shoulder. Curiosity almost made Daphne ask, but it seemed wrong to inquire about the woman’s injury. It would have been worse had Isabella explained the situation and Daphne denied Zander’s involvement. Daphne would have defended Zander when she first arrived in town, but now she wasn’t so sure.

  “I’m not sure of anything anymore,” Daphne whispered as she stared at the table. “I’m not sure of my own abilities, not sure of the man I pledged my allegiance to, and I’m not sure…”

  About what she was feeling with Ford. She couldn’t say that, though. He’d made it clear they would never move past acquaintances during this short time together.

  Daphne’s phone rang again.

  She scowled at her purse. “I should get that. It could be Casey…”

  Ford shrugged. He got up and grabbed another bottle from the top of his fridge. This time, it contained brown liquor. She could handle this phone call if she could get a glass of that after, so she rummaged for her cell. The number on the screen surprised her.

  “Zander?” she whispered. “What’s he doing calling me at this hour?”

  Ford’s attention dropped to the device in her hand. As she watched him, his jaw tensed, and his eyes darkened. Her heart flipped, the fluttery sensation returning. That was the face of a man driven to protect. Ford wanted to protect her.

  Her beast would have purred, but the constant buzz of the phone in her hand soured her mood. She didn’t want to answer it. Zander couldn’t call on her at all hours of the night. Yet, she feared what would happen if she didn’t pick up. He might declare her a traitor and exile her, too.

  Would that be so bad, though? Did she really have all that much to fear? She could walk away from the position she’d put herself in. The work she’d forced herself to do would no longer exist, and she would finally be able to take that vacation she needed.

  That meant walking into a war, though. She would be on the side facing Zander’s wrath. There was no telling how long this battle would rage. She might never escape the constant barrage of demands.

  “Answer it,” Ford said. He twisted the cap off the liquor bottle and pushed it toward her. “And tell him to fuck off.”

  Daphne tried to smile. She couldn’t quite manage the expression, though. It felt stiff and crooked on her face. She raised the phone to her ear with a trembling hand.

  “You’re not at my son’s cabin,” Zander said after her quick hello.

  Her gaze jerked up to meet Ford’s. A low growl filled the room. She backed up from Ford because he looked like he might snatch the phone away from her at any moment.

  “I can go anywhere I want,” she said. “Besides, how do you know I’m not there. Are you following the GPS on my phone?”

  “Don’t think about shacking up with one of the bottom-rate shifters my son dredged out of the ditch. Remember your place, Daphne. Remember where your home is. We need you here.” Zander’s voice never changed, never dipped into the low rumble of a threat or the high pitch of rage. She understood the danger in his words, all the same.

  He needed her so she could keep expanding his numbers. That was all this was about. He didn’t value her as a person, as someone he needed to protect. She was the reason his clan harbored so many shifters.

  “You’re watching me,” she said out loud once she realized it.

  “I’m doing what’s necessary to keep my clan in one piece.”

  Her blood chilled. She twisted to peer out the nearest window, but she couldn’t see through the darkness outside. The idea that someone she knew had been watching her this whole time made her skin crawl. It could have been a shifter she’d trained, someone she’d helped into Zander’s clan. After all she’d done, she’d been betrayed.

  Faster than she could react, Ford snatched the phone from her hand. She thought he would have something to say to Zander, but Ford disconnected the call and tossed her phone aside.

  “You’re staying here tonight,” he snarled.

  She looked up at him with confusion and shock. After the gears in her mind started spinning again, she said, “You could drive me back to the cabin. You don’t have to make room for me here.”

  Ford shook his head. His eyes burned with the light of his beast, giving away his emotional state. Had it not been for his eyes, she would have seen his anger in the way he stormed out of the room.

  She followed him and wished she weren’t such a burden. Ford had retreated to his bedroom. She watched him throw pillows around, rip blankets from the floor, and shove his anger into every jerky motion. She expected him to hand her a pillow and a couple of blankets to make her own bed on the couch.

  Once his own bed had been cleaned up, he marched past her with pillow and blanket in hand.

  “You don’t have to do that,” she said. “I can make my own bed.”

  He pointed back to the queen mattress. “That’s your bed tonight.”

  Her jaw dropped. Annoyance fluttered through her and sharpened her tongue. “I didn’t come here to steal your bed out from under you. I came here to get under you, and I’ll be damned if this night ends with both of
us unhappy.”

  He chucked what he’d been holding onto the couch and whirled on her. She could have moved out of the way, but no alarms of warning went off until Ford had her pinned against the wall. His hands circled her wrists as he looked down at her with his burning eyes.

  Desire made her push her chest out to see if her nipples would graze him. She was right. Pleasure rippled down her front, all the way to her core.

  “I am doing my best to keep my damn hands off you,” Ford growled. His breath touched her neck, her clavicle. “That monster you call a clan leader has made it very hard for me to control myself.”

  Ford pressed his knee between her legs, where her sex throbbed and begged.

  “I want to fuck you so hard that you’ll never want to go back to him. I want to make you scream my name so I can believe for a little while that you could belong to me…” His gaze softened, and a sigh escaped him. “But I know you’ll never be mine.”

  Ford released her. He yanked the lamp plug from the wall and plunged the room into darkness. Daphne listened to the springs of his couch groan. Ford had, effectively, gone to bed. Meanwhile, Daphne leaned against the wall and struggled to catch her breath.

  She slowly sidled into the bedroom and closed the door behind her. Burying her face into one of Ford’s pillows, she was greeted by a cloud of his scent. She swallowed her scream and tried to ignore the pulse still thrumming through her body.

  No man had ever set her on fire like that.

  The burn took half the night to fade. Daphne pressed a pillow between her knees so it might feel like someone was lying with her, but her body still ached for real contact.

  56

  Ford had never wanted to hurt another man so badly since his wife’s passing. The rage he’d felt that day seemed miniscule compared to how he’d felt while listening to Zander’s thinly veiled threats. If that man came for Daphne, Ford wouldn’t hesitate to give his life for her.

  Worse yet, Ford was willing to do the one thing he said he’d never do again. Blood had stained his hands once. He’d wrecked his clan when he removed its head. He didn’t know how large Zander’s clan was, but Ford doubted he would lose sleep over Zander’s death. No clan deserved to live under a man like that.

  King killer, they’d called him. Not that his previous clan leader had been much of a king. He’d been a sniveling man in the end. Seeing that Ford’s wife was dying, his clan leader had taken it upon himself to change her. Her disease had not been the end of her. She might have had another decade had his clan leader not acted against her will.

  Ford hadn’t been able to stop himself when he’d learned of what happened. Now, he wondered what he would be like if Daphne were hurt. Strong and independent, Daphne wouldn’t die because of an accident. Someone would have to mean it if they killed her.

  His beast snarled. It lashed out at him. The taste of blood lingered on its tongue and it craved more, but there was no one to hurt. The man Ford wanted to kill wasn’t here. He prowled the outside of his home, searching for whoever had eyes on Daphne, but he had no intention of killing the spy.

  The spy was just doing their job. Ford knew what it was like to live under a man who had outrageous demands and even worse punishments. So long as the spy watched and did not touch, Ford would keep his hands to himself.

  His beast begged to be set free, but Ford couldn’t risk leaving his home unattended. He couldn’t shift in town. Gavin wouldn’t appreciate a dragon exposing them.

  Gavin had kept to himself for the most part. He didn’t seem to care that another shifter was lurking on his territory. That also meant that Ford knew little about the man. Gavin could have been another harsh dictator, for all Ford knew. The happiness of his clan made Ford think otherwise, though.

  He shook himself. Was he truly considering entering another clan for this overworked woman who would never be his to please? Ford had his one chance. He’d lost his mate and killed his clan leader. No clan would ever welcome him again. Once Gavin found out what Ford had done, then he would hunt Ford down to make sure it never happened again.

  And Ford didn’t blame him. Both a good leader and a corrupt one would do the same. A corrupt leader would do it to save their own hide. If Gavin was the man Ford suspected him to be, then Gavin would kill Ford to protect his people and their secret.

  Before Ford knew it, the sun had painted the sky in shades of rosy dawn. He hadn’t slept a wink, and yet his beast seemed relentless. It had accessed a secret stash of energy that made Ford’s muscles hum. He could do nothing, though. He had no target, nowhere to direct the frustration winding him tight.

  When the first sound of movement inside reached him, he debated staying outside. Daphne’s allure dragged him through the front door. He wanted to know what she looked like right out of bed. The sight of her did not disappoint.

  Her shoulder length hair had formed a mussed halo around her head. She blinked sleepily at him on her way to the bathroom. When she recognized him and a small smile graced her lips, the walls around his heart crumbled a little more. Upon leaving the bathroom, she stared at the couch, her head tilted.

  “You didn’t sleep,” she said.

  He’d definitely tried, so he wasn’t sure how she knew he’d spent the rest of the night outside just by looking at the couch.

  “Is it because I took your bed?”

  He snorted. No, it’s because I want to murder your clan leader in cold blood.

  Ford didn’t say that, though. He went to the coffee maker and filled a fresh filter with grounds from his favorite café. The motion was familiar and gave him something to do with his body other than touch her. Fuck, he wanted to touch her. He wanted to run his hands down her legs before going back up and searching beneath the hem of the t-shirt she wore.

  He did a double take. “When did you steal my shirt?”

  She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth. He wanted it back so he could get a taste of it, too. The knowledge that she wanted him didn’t help him keep his hands to himself. If anything, it made him want to howl to the moon like a feral beast. Here she was, wearing his clothing and nothing more, looking like she’d gotten the best sleep of her life.

  His beast craved her. More than he’d ever craved any other woman, actually.

  The thought surprised him. He knew that time would help him heal and that he wouldn’t have to dredge through painful memories every time he looked back, but he never expected this. Daphne reignited things in him he’d thought long dead and gone.

  He’d loved his wife; that wasn’t in question right now. Yet, he couldn’t help but wonder if this was something more than what he’d felt before. Could this be the true connection a man felt to his mate? Or was it that no one had looked at him like that in a very long time?

  Little by little, Daphne seemed to wake up. Her body stiffened with every passing moment, as if she’d donned the weight she carried on her shoulders like a shirt she had to pull on in the morning. While Ford would have liked to invite her to stay, that would have been selfish. Her brother’s mate needed her. Hell, Bree needed her, too.

  Ford liked the spunky new dragon shifter ever since their run-in behind the restaurant. He wished Daphne didn’t have to be the one to keep the two women propped up right now, but he liked to think that Daphne was sharing that indomitable strength of hers with them.

  “Do you want a cup of coffee for the road?” he asked.

  “How did you know I was planning to leave?” She narrowed her eyes at him.

  “You have your dress in one hand and the weight of the world on your shoulders.” He pulled a travel mug from the cupboard. It was one of those new double-insulated metal mugs with oversized metal handles. He couldn’t remember where he’d gotten it from, but the yellow mug seemed made for her.

  “I wish I could stay,” she said. “I really do, but there are things that need to be done. Evangeline needs to practice shifting again. Bree crashed out of the sky yesterday. The work never ends.”

  “An
d Zander’s spy? What do you plan to do about that?” He poured the dark liquid into her mug.

  “There’s not a lot I can do. I have to deal with the watch detail until I book my ticket home, I guess.”

  Unexpectedly, the idea that she would go back to Zander’s territory hurt him. He’d thought she would see Zander for who he really was and choose to stay here. Not that her presence here made a difference in his life.

  He. Couldn’t. Have. Daphne Albright.

  * * *

  Something had happened in the night. Ford refused to look at her anymore. He kept his eyes trained on the floor or over her shoulder. When he passed the bright, yellow mug to her, he didn’t look up. She wanted to shake him but didn’t dare spill the coffee he’d poured for her.

  He walked her to the door after she got dressed and tugged on her boots. She hesitated on the front porch.

  “Be careful,” Ford whispered.

  She looked up and finally met his gaze. Once again, she could see the light of his beast burning in his eyes, as if it had never left. Ford leaned over her in a way that suggested he wanted to protect her with his own body.

  An ache made her throat tight. Someday, she would have to walk away from this man. The thought pained her more than she’d ever anticipated. A single night with him had gifted her the best sleep of her life. The events of the night before had been the furthest thing from her mind when she saw him after waking.

  Before he could vanish from her sight, she wound her arm around the back of his neck and rose on her tiptoes. He growled when her lips met his. She expected the kiss to be short lived, but he embraced her, pulling her into his body until she fit against him like a missing puzzle piece.

  Ford’s tongue flicked her lips. She parted for him and let him delve deep inside her so she might feel him brush against her soul. She wondered if maybe the taste of him would tell her if they were meant to be, but that was too much to ask of a single kiss.