Dark Embers (27 page)

Phoebe burst out laughing, because the look was so Dylan, even in this magnificent creature’s body. Then she hurled herself at him, wrapping her arms around the dragon’s thick, powerful neck.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

O
f all the reactions he’d expected fromPhoebe, a hug was pretty far down on the list—so far down, in fact, that he’d never let himself so much as consider it. He’d braced himself for fear, disbelief, revulsion, hatred. Had even considered plain scientific curiosity, but never had he expected such generosity of spirit. Such warmth.

The dragon preened under her regard, as if it had been waiting for her to see it all along. And maybe it had been—God knew the beast had never torn up Dylan more than it had in the past few days as it had tried to get to Phoebe.

“You’re beautiful,” she breathed against Dylan’s neck. “Absolutely gorgeous. Not that that’s really a surprise, right?”

He tossed his head, nudged her with his long nose. God, she smelled even better when he was in this form, his keen senses even more so now. He sniffed again, fought the urge to rub against her from head to foot. He wanted to cover the dragon’s whole body in Phoebe’s luscious scent.

She ran her hands over his face, down his thick, scaly neck, over his back, and the dragon trembled in delight. It had never been touched like this—with wonder and awe and tenderness all rolled into one. It liked it, as did Dylan.

“You don’t feel like I would expect you to,” she murmured, as she stroked down his sides to his soft underbelly. “Not that I’m sure what I expected—maybe for you to feel like a lizard or a snake?”

Dylan snorted at the insult, butted her shoulder with his head.

“Don’t go getting all offended.” She laughed again. “You’re much softer, smoother. I don’t even feel your scales. And you’re still hot, maybe even hotter than normal. Why did I think that would change? Maybe because of the whole cold-blooded thing?”

He snorted again, his dragon’s version of a laugh. The heat was because of the fire. His temperature usually ran fifteen to twenty degrees higher than a regular human’s, and in dragon form—when the fire was purest—he ran even hotter.

He’d have to remember to explain that to Phoebe when he shifted back again. But for now, she was exploring and he was enjoying the feel of her small, cool hands as they stroked him.

She moved toward his haunches, stroked down his tail with the same firm pressure she used on his cock when he was human. The thought combined with the action made him tremble with need, despite the fact that he had just had her.

He contemplated switching back, thought about grabbing her and making her pay for the torment she was putting him through. But she was having such fun exploring, he didn’t want to ruin it simply because he couldn’t control himself. Besides, how was she to know that in this form all of his senses—including touch—were magnified? What she considered a simple exploration was really the most erotic of tortures.

“You smell so good.” She pressed her face into his spine, inhaled. When she exhaled, her breath sent flames running up his back. “Like wood smoke and the very best incense.”

He arched his back involuntarily, pressed himself more firmly against her cheek. He felt her smile, even though he couldn’t see it. And then she was brushing her lips over his spine.

Everything inside him froze at the caress, at her obvious acceptance of him in this powerful and frightening form. And when her hands worked around to his unprotected chest and underbelly, he held frozen for her, though every instinct he had urged that he buck and growl until she understood.

A dragon’s chest and underbelly were his most vulnerable spots, and as such, no dragon worth his salt stood by and let someone touch him there. Not when an enemy could so easily shove a blade straight through to the heart.

But he wanted this for Phoebe, wanted to give her a gift he’d never given anyone else. A gift he would never allow another woman. The fact that she didn’t understand, wouldn’t know what it was that he was giving her, mattered little.

And if he was to be completely honest, it just felt too damn good to be touched by her to give it up. Not when he trusted her not to hurt him.

She stroked and caressed, fondled and rubbed every part of him until the dragon was nearly drunk on sensation. He wanted her so badly that it was an agony standing there waiting, every cell in his body quivering for release.

By the time her curiosity was finally satisfied, and despite the fact that her touch hadn’t been overtly sexual, he was more aroused than he had ever been in his life. Maybe it was because he’d never been touched by a woman in this form; his dragon was for fighting, for letting off steam, but never for seduction. Or maybe it was the look on her face that was doing it—part awed, part fascinated, part aroused.

Whatever it was, lust formed a red haze in his mind. In the dragon’s. All he could think of was flipping her around and mounting her as his aching cock was dying to do. He’d even taken a step forward, had started to shift back, when she stopped him with a gentle hand on his forehead.

“Oh, not yet, Dylan. Please. You’re so beautiful. I want to see you move. Can you fly?” The eagerness on her face reminded him of a little girl on Christmas morning, and was so at odds with her normal demeanor that he shoved down his violent needs for just a little while longer.

The dragon howled in outrage, but he placated it with a promised
Soon
, and then he was nudging her with his snout, pushing her until she was once again by his side. He bent his knees, lowered his neck.

“I don’t understand. If you can’t fly, it’s okay. I just thought—”

He nudged her again, harder, until she was pressed hard against him. Then he gestured with his head for her to climb up.

The look on her face when she finally realized what he was asking was priceless. “You want—” Her voice broke, from nervousness or excitement—he wasn’t sure which. “You want me to ride you?”

The soft, breathy voice she spoke in had him conjuring up all kinds of images of her riding him, and none of them involved carrying her on his dragon’s back through the night sky. Promising himself he wouldn’t let her out of his bed for at least twenty-four hours once he got her there, he dropped a little lower in invitation.

“Oh, I don’t think that’s a good—”

He snorted loudly, and she giggled. Then wrapped her arms around his neck and swung onto his back. The dragon barely noticed her weight—it could carry ten times that without breaking a sweat—but the man definitely noticed what it felt like to be pressed so intimately between her legs.

In this form he was very flexible, and for a second he contemplated turning around and nuzzling his mouth into the juncture of her thighs. But she’d been brave enough tonight, without having a dragon make advances at her, as well, so he resisted the urge. Barely.

Then, after making sure she had a good grip on him—with both her hands and her knees—he took off into the starry night. Normally when he flew, he took off fast and hard, concerned with gaining as much height and speed as he could, as quickly as possible. But with Phoebe, he took it easy, caring more about not frightening her than he did about getting a rush.

“Oh, oh, oh!” she gasped, her arms tightening around his neck so much that for a second, he feared strangulation. Blurring both of their images, he swept over the laboratory roof, past rows of neat little houses and shopping malls and even the openings to the caverns he and his people claimed as their true homes. And then they were in the open air of the desert, the land spread out before them like an ancient sacrifice.

Stars shone brightly in the sky, and the full moon overhead cast much more light than he needed to see. His dragon eyes were keener than nearly any animal’s on earth and his night vision was superb. But he was glad for the soft filter of moonlight over the cacti and sand so that Phoebe could see his world as he did.

As she looked at the wonders of the night-tinted desert, she started to relax. He could feel it in the loosening of her arms around his neck, the relaxing of the knees that had pressed into his side from the second he’d first become airborne. Deciding she could handle a little more, he spread his wings, sped up, and went into a steep climb that had her giggling even as her embrace grew tighter.

She laughed and the dragon chuffed along with her. Together they sped through the night.

Phoebe alternated between abject terror, total amazement and incredible joy as she whipped through the night on Dylan’s back. When she’d confronted him earlier, had asked him what he was, she hadn’t expected this to be the answer.

He was a dragon. A
dragon
, for God’s sake, when she’d had no idea such creatures even existed outside of fairy tales. And here she was, flying with one.
Sleeping
with one.

Something moved inside her, clawing at her until her bones ached. Alarmed, she tried to quiet her too-fast heart, tried to focus on the weird feelings rocketing through her.

But Dylan chose that moment to go into a steep nosedive, and suddenly the only thing she could focus on was him and the crazy, mixed-up world around them. Part of her wanted to close her eyes as the ground loomed threateningly below them, but she couldn’t do it. The night was too stunning—and Dylan too amazing for her to miss any part of it because of cowardice.

Her stomach dropped to her toes, the same way it used to when she rode her bike fast down a big hill when she was a small child, and by the time she got her breath back, Dylan was already making the climb back up.

A dragon
, she thought again, absolutely giddy with this new knowledge. The scientist was beside herself, wanting to document everything about him. To examine sets of chromosomes to see where Dylan’s DNA differed from humans’. Although, technically speaking, he
was
human. His blood had contained human white and red blood cells, so clearly that she would bet her myriad degrees that he had all twenty-three human chromosomes that she did. But he had something else, too—obviously. And while part of her wanted to just give in and accept the magic of it, the dominant part of her brain wanted to know why, how, for how long.

Dylan did a quick loop-the-loop, and she was so startled by the new movement that she screamed, then attached herself to his neck like a limpet. “What are you doing?” she demanded, her heart in her throat.

The dragon snorted, then rolled again—once, twice, three times. On and on he went, spinning and turning and rolling until she was so dizzy, she could barely hold on. But at the same time, she didn’t want him to stop. She wanted him to keep tumbling forever, up here where none of her ugly suspicions about the disease could reach her. Up here where everything was pure and clean and beautiful.

When he finally came in for a landing—not back at the laboratory, but in a small depression in the middle of the desert—she was sad to see the ride end. She dismounted slowly, shocked by the sense of loss she felt upon separating herself from Dylan. When she’d been riding him, the exhilaration she’d felt had been nonsexual, but now that she was back on the ground, his deep onyx eyes looking into hers, she felt her thoughts take a distinctly sexual turn.

Over a dragon, for God’s sake. She was thinking sexually about a dragon.

But she must not have been the only one, because the second both of her feet were on the ground, Dylan was shifting back to his human form. Tall and muscular and gloriously naked, he watched her with dragon’s eyes. She recognized them now—a little bit darker, a little bit more dangerous than usual, they were the eyes he’d used on her when he’d first walked into her lab in Massachusetts. The eyes he often watched her with as they made love. Strange that they’d made her nervous at first, when now all they did was turn her on.

Aroused, electrified, desperate to feel Dylan against her, inside her, she reached one trembling hand toward him. It was all the invitation he needed.

Grabbing her hand, he pulled her against his chest. She had one brief moment to register the feel of his hot, hard body against hers and then he was on her, his mouth devouring hers until she wasn’t sure where she left off and he began.

He tasted wild, like the Atlantic Ocean during a hurricane. Sweet, like the rain she used to play in as a child. Reaching out, she tangled her hands in his hair and gave herself to the storm.

His tongue—rapacious, ravenous, greedy—swept across her lips, and she opened herself to him. Took what he gave her with his lips and teeth and tongue, then demanded more.

He groaned when she pulled his lower lip between her teeth and bit softly, then slid his hands down to cup her ass. She gasped as he kneaded her, pressing back against his wicked, wonderful hands even as she struggled to get closer to his hot, naked body.

They stood like that, locked in each other’s arms on the edge of what felt like forever, mouths fused together. Their tongues met, teased, tasted, tangled, until, desperate for more, she tightened her grip on his hair.

Dylan growled low in his throat, the sound rumbling up from the chest she was pressed so intimately against. And suddenly even that wasn’t enough. Suddenly she wanted everything, needed it with a hunger that was beyond her control.