city of dragons 02 - fire storm (12 page)

“Yeah, that makes sense,” I said. “But this slayer person. Maybe she’s involved somehow.”

“We’ll need to check her out.”

“Can you do that? Can you find her?”

“I’ve got people who might know who she is,” he said. “Confidential informants, that kind of thing.”

“Oh,” I said.

“When I find her, you want to come with me to talk to her?”

“Of course,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. He got up. “I should go.”

I studied my knuckles. “Yeah, maybe that would be best.”

He shook his head. “It’s funny, because some part of me wants to do the fight-for-the-girl thing. Like I’ve got any right to ask you to be part of my life. I’m all kinds of fucked up.”

“Yeah,” I said in a tiny voice. “Me too.”

“You’re not,” he said.

“I am.” And suddenly, I didn’t like that he was leaving. At all. I stood up, facing him. “It occurs to me that no one’s ever really fought for me before.”

“That fighting-for-someone stuff?” he said. “It only happens in old books, like
Jane Eyre
.”

“And bad romantic comedy movies,” I said.

“Really?” he said. “I don’t really watch that.”

I tried a smile.

He smiled back at me, and he reached out and cupped my cheek with one hand. “That’s just like you, Penny. You always bring in the light somehow.”

“Look, Lachlan, I’m not saying that I’m not afraid, because I am. But if you simply leave, then…”

He shut his eyes. “In real life, there shouldn’t be any need for fighting. It should be easy. We should just be together and comfortable and happy.” He opened his eyes. “When I met my ex-wife, it wasn’t like this. It wasn’t all angst and confusion and pain. It was only nice. Of course, that all went to hell, so…” He let out a breath.

“Don’t go,” I said, the words seeming to rip out of me.

“I thought you hated me,” he said. “I thought you were angry with me for drinking your blood.”

“Not for drinking it, just for not stopping,” I said.

“And that will never change. I’ll never be able to stop.”

“You always
have
stopped though.” I bit my lip.

He let out a wild laugh. “Oh, by all means, let’s throw caution to the wind, then.”

I didn’t respond.

He started over to the steps. “I’m going to go.”

Maybe that was for the best. It wasn’t romantic, but it was sensible. I nodded, feeling disappointed, but accepting it.

He turned away from me and started down them. “I’ll call you whenever I’ve got something set up with that slayer,” he called over his shoulder.

I gripped the edge of the balcony and watched him as he descended the steps and then disappeared into the darkness. God damn him for leaving.

Even if it was the right thing to do.

Truth was, if he was going to keep waffling back and forth like this, maybe I didn’t want it to progress too much. I didn’t know if I could handle his mood swings if we were any more deeply involved than we were now.

Movement out of the corner of my eye.

It was Lachlan, running around the hotel. He bounded up the steps, two of them at a time.

I furrowed my brow. Had he forgotten something?

He gave me a lopsided grin as he stepped up onto the porch. “This is a fucking bad idea.”

“What is?”

He came for me, one hand sliding behind my hair to cup the back of my head. He kissed me and pushed us both back into the wall, pressing his body into mine. He was warm and solid and eager, and I held onto him for dear life.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I pushed open the door and lurched into the apartment, Lachlan right behind me.

I collided with the wall, facing it, my palms flat against the cool smoothness there.

He shut the door. He pressed into me, hands tangling in my hair, mouth on the nape of my neck.

I gasped.

He ran one hand over my hip, my waist, under my shirt to touch my bare skin.

I sighed.

His teeth grazed the skin of my neck.

My lips parted in anticipation.

“No,” he muttered, turning me to face him.

Then we were kissing again, kisses that took my breath away, and both his hands were inside my shirt, pushing it up, baring my belly button, then my bra.

And then I put my arms up, let him pull it over my head.

He sucked his breath through his nose.

I grabbed fistfuls of his shirt and tugged him after me, yanking him down the hallway, into my bedroom.

He kissed me in the doorway. He cupped my breasts through my bra.

Jolts of sweetness ran through me, electrifying my nerve endings, exciting me. I moaned against his mouth.

He pulled back, fixing me with a penetrating expression.

I gazed back, breathless, coming alive.

He reached back and yanked his shirt over his head in one swift movement. “You are so beautiful,” he murmured, brushing my cheekbone with his thumb.

I gazed at his bare chest. He was compact and lithe, and he rippled in the scant light. He had a little bit of hair that started just above his belly button and traveled down into his pants. I put my forefinger on it, traced it. “You’re…” I felt suddenly shy. “Beautiful. Too.”

He laughed a little.

I blushed.

He kissed me.

I felt the bare skin of his hard stomach against my softer one. It made me feel lightheaded.

He kissed the tip of my nose. My chin. My shoulder. He pushed the strap of my bra out of the way. “Penny Caspian,” he whispered. “Do you have any idea how badly I want you?”

I bit down on my bottom lip. “So… take me, then,” I whispered.

And he did.

* * *

My ceiling fan was making a noisy circuit over us.

We lay sweaty and sated in tangled sheets, side by side, both of us staring at the fan.

It was sometime after midnight, but I still felt awake and alive, as if some part of me that had lain dormant for a long time had been breathed to life again. I hadn’t been sure that I could do it, that I still
functioned
. I’d been worried that I couldn’t get wet for a man that wasn’t Alastair, that I wouldn’t be able to have an orgasm with someone who wasn’t my destined mate.

For so long, it had been dead between my legs, and I had missed it… but I had also been somewhat glad to see it go, because all my sexual desires had been twisted up in pain and shame and associations with a man who beat me. I didn’t know if I’d be able to separate it.

But my body worked fine.

And Lachlan surprised me. Out of bed, he was often very staid and reserved and serious, and I didn’t expect him to be a playful lover, enthusiastic and warm-blooded and athletic and just… refreshing.

It was easy, like getting it on in the back seat of a car in high school—not that I had ever done that, since I’d been rich and we’d had a pool house. But the way I imagined that kind of lovemaking would be.

Fresh. Youthful. Good.

I sighed. I closed my eyes. “Well. This is really the opposite of taking it slow,” I said in a soft voice.

“I said it was a bad idea.” He was grinning. I could hear it in his voice.

“Do you regret it?”

“Not even a little bit,” he drawled. His Texan accent was thicker, and his voice was loose and full of sex, and I liked it.

I opened my eyes. I giggled. I peeked at him.

Felt shy.

Looked up at the ceiling fan again. Was it crazy that I was comparing him to Alastair? I mean, did it mean anything? Would the specter of Alastair hang over me forever, or was it simply that I hadn’t been with anyone but Alastair in so long that comparisons were inevitable?

I had to admit that it wasn’t like having dragon-mated-bonded sex, which was always ridiculously intense and imperative and impossible to say no to. This was lighter and more free. Springtime as opposed to summer heat. I could handle that. I liked that.

But then I wondered if Lachlan was doing it too. Comparing me to his past lovers, measuring where I stacked up? Was he thinking about his ex-wife now?

Or maybe he’d had sex with lots of women since his divorce, and I was just the latest in a sea of conquests.

I turned to look at him again, and was surprised to find that he wasn’t watching the fan at all, but was lying on his side, staring at me and grinning.

“What are you thinking about right now?” he asked.

“How many women you’ve been sleeping with recently,” I said.

His eyebrows shot up. “What?”

I cringed. “Oh, should I have lied? That was probably a time when I should have lied.”

He chuckled, a deep, rich sound. “I haven’t slept with anyone in a very long time. Not since I was married.”

“Oh,” I said. “Me either. Nothing since Alastair.”

“You’re already jealous of my past? We really
aren’t
moving slow.”

“I’m not jealous.”

“You sound jealous.” He could not stop grinning, could he?

I grinned too. “I’m not.”

He pulled me close, tucking me into the crook of his shoulder and arm.

I fit there. I laid my hand on his chest. “It’s just that maybe I forgot what this was like, doing this. How the first time, it’s like peeling back all the layers, like an onion, and how underneath, we’re different.”

He kissed my forehead. “You think I’m different?”

“You don’t think I am?”

He considered. “Nah. I’ve seen you naked like a zillion times already.”

I pushed myself up to glare at him. “I knew you were checking me out when I was hit by that tranquilizer dart.”

“Whatever, I saw it all way before that,” he said. “That time with the Brotherhood, you just chucked off everything in front of me and dove into the water.”

“I was far away from you.”

“Not that far,” he said. “I could see everything. Not that I minded or anyth—”

“You should have been a gentleman and turned around or closed your eyes or something.”

He laughed. “I’m not that much of a gentleman.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You’re awful.”

He kissed my nose. “You’re incredibly nice to look at naked.”

I settled back down and laid my head on his shoulder again. “I don’t know if I forgive you for that.”

“Forgive
me
? What?
You’re
the one who keeps stripping in front of me. I don’t see how this is my fault.”

“Anyway, being naked isn’t what I meant,” I said.

“No? You aren’t pleasantly surprised at how incredibly buff I am underneath my suit jacket?”

I couldn’t help but giggle again. “Now, you’re just fishing for compliments.” I snuggled close. “But if you must know, I would not mind if you never put a shirt on ever again.”

“I won’t if you won’t.” His hands moved under the sheets.

I squealed.

But then he stopped, and his expression grew serious, and I saw the Lachlan that I always saw, the one with the haunted eyes. “What did you mean, then? How am I different?”

“You’re just…” I reached up to touch his face. “You seem… lighthearted. I guess I expected you’d be really brooding and intense or something.”

He smiled again. “How does one have brooding sex, anyway?”

“I don’t know. Never mind.”

“No, I think I understand.” He looked up at the ceiling fan. “You make me feel that way sometimes. Like I have a second chance. Like all of the badness from my life before isn’t shackled to me, keeping me under water.”

Oh. Wow. I didn’t know how to respond to that.
I
made him feel that way?

His arm tightened around me. His voice was a low rumble. “And how are you different?”

“I’m vulnerable, I guess. It’s scary.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“I…” I let out a little laugh. “I do. Of course I do.”

He put his lips against my temple. “I’m going to make it easier for you to trust me. I really am, Penny. I promise.”

I pressed my bare skin against his, the length of me against the length of him. I wanted close now. As close as I could get. I never wanted to let go.

But at some point, in the early morning, dawn streaking the sky, I awoke to find him sitting on the bed, pulling on his clothes.

I sat straight up. “You’re leaving?”

“Sorry.” He leaned over and kissed me. “I got a call. Someone I owe a favor to at the station. Wants my help interrogating a suspect, and they’re running out of time to keep him in custody. They need me to come in now.”

“Oh,” I said. I lay back.

He smiled at me, but his smile wasn’t like last night—it wasn’t carefree and playful anymore. He was weary now again. My Lachlan with the world on his shoulders. “I’ll call you,” he said.

I nodded.

He kissed me again. “Go back to sleep.”

And then he was gone.

And my bed was cold without him.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“Watch the road,” Felicity complained. This was her new shtick, to be a really annoying backseat driver since she didn’t want to be carted around everywhere.

“I am watching the road,” I said, turning to glare at her.

“No, you’re not, you’re looking at me,” she said. “And you seem distracted. What’s up?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“It’s not nothing. You’ve barely said three words to me besides snapping at me whenever I point out that your driving is about to kill us.”

“My driving is fine,” I said.

“You always had a driver growing up,” said Felicity. “I don’t think you’re as good at it as you think you are.”

“Oh my God, shut up,” I said. I screeched to a stop at a red light. It was another of those days in which I was getting stopped at every traffic light. The thing about Sea City was that it was a thin little strip of land, separated from the rest of Maryland by swampy marshland and the bay. So, there weren’t really alternate routes up the coast besides Atlantic Avenue. So, the road was bloated with stop-and-go traffic all the time, and it made me insane. It was getting worse every day.