Dragon Fate (15 page)

He bent her back dangerously over his arm, far enough to bring them both down, but his strength was unwavering. Unlike his tongue, which writhed across hers in a wet, hot dance that sent an answering flood of desire through her core. He shoved his other hand down her pants, stroking across the damp silk of her panties. She moaned.

So much for making him wonder.

Their clothes might as well have turned to ash so quickly did leggings and jeans and shirt and boutique sweater disappear. Torch drove her backward toward the bed, tumbling her roughly onto the mattress. She spread her legs for him and bucked her hips up in wordless demand.

He fell, fell hard, right into her, his rampant cock spearing deep. But she was ready, more than ready, and the slam of his thighs against her ass reverberated through her like a bell tolling.

She gasped and ground against him, seeking…whatever it was they were wondering about.

It didn’t matter, nothing mattered except the fire he was stoking in her pussy. Every stroke of his engorged cock urged the flames higher, and when he bent to bite her reddened nipples, the slick swirl of his tongue was like kerosene.

She clamped around him, heels and inner muscles holding him close as he pounded her. Even braced against the bed, she couldn’t keep still. She could only dig her fingers into his broad shoulders and cling tight. The cords of muscles under her hands trembled, as if all that flying was nothing compared to fucking her.

Curling her spine, she brought him deep, all the way to the hidden core of herself. Her clit throbbed, and he reached down between them to touch that exposed bead of flesh.

She screamed as she came and felt the hot gush of him flood her passage as he roared out his own release.

They clung together as their pulses echoed furiously, only slowing as their sweaty skin finally cooled.

“Well, that answers that,” he said, with more than a hint of smug satisfaction.

It didn’t, but she didn’t have the heart to tell him so.

Chapter 14

They left the next morning for Salt Lake City.

Torch had James bring around one of the convertible Corvettes while Anjali hung back, her eyes disguised by exceedingly large sunglasses.

“Leave the top up?” The valet peered at the sky. “Looks like another storm coming.”

Torch glanced away from Anjali. “Yeah, it does, doesn’t it?” He shook his head. “Let’s put it down. There’s always another storm so might as well enjoy what we can while we can.”

He hoped she heard him, but she’d been distracted since they got up. Worried about confronting her uncle, maybe. Torch scowled at the thought. But he’d be right there with her, and no one would take advantage of her again.

Though the scudding clouds were dark and heavy on the bottom, the tops were blinding white under the sun. Maybe they should’ve flown; it would’ve been faster. But he didn’t want to squander his strength. And he wanted this time with her.

Before the end.

Once Esme was freed and Piper had the formula for the petralys substitute, there would be nothing holding Anjali here.

He raised his voice over the rush of wind. “What are you thinking about?”

She turned her head to look at him squarely though even his sharp dragon stare couldn’t penetrate the dark lenses. With her dreadlocks bound back with a silvery scarf that matched the glinting threads in the thigh-length brocade coat he’d suggested she wear to protect her from the spring chill, she looked like a glamorous, mysterious Hollywood starlet escaping from her adoring legion of fans.

He scowled at this thought too. He didn’t want her to escape.

Her lips pursed as if she was holding something back, then flattened. “You’re doing it wrong. Men don’t ask what women are thinking.”

“I—”

“But you’re not a man, are you?” She brushed the side of her face dismissively although no hair had sneaked loose.

“I was going to say I want to know. So of course I’d ask.” He took her hand and raised it to kiss the inside of her wrist. Her pulse jumped against his lips: his ichor in her responding to his touch.

She curled her fingers into his. “I… I guess I should just admit I’m angry.”

He kissed her knuckles this time. “At me?”

“At…everything. Always.” Her nails pressed into his skin. “From the time I left New Orleans.”

“That’s a long time.” He lowered their hands to his lap, careful to keep his gaze on the road and not disturb her thoughts. “But seems to me you had cause: a young girl losing everything she’d known. Of course you’d be angry.”

She let out a short huff. “Of course a fire-breathing monster wouldn’t mind anger.”

He shrugged lightly, although the monster comment stung. “We don’t mindlessly fear any power. Not even powerful emotions. If you’re angry, I can take it.”

“My life just…dried up moving from New Orleans to the desert. My mom and my friends were gone. My uncle didn’t know what to do with me. I got into some trouble, and from there I found new friends who were worse trouble. Which only made my uncle harsher with me, and I was always so mad.” She stared out her side window as if seeing her past streaming by, but she kept her hand in his. “I always thought I’d go back someday, find what I’d lost. But then the hurricane just washed away my old street, even my mother’s grave. Finding Esme and Piper might have saved me. I starting making art again. But just when I thought I had my shit together, my uncle called me back to work at the shop.”

“And you couldn’t say no.”

“Not when he was all I had left. And school was harder than I thought, and expensive. I still thought I could pull it off; it was just going to take me longer while I worked and took classes. But then I met Lars…”

He squeezed her hand gently. “His money and connections must have seemed like an opportunity.”

“I was an idiot,” she said flatly. “Which only makes me more mad. At myself this time. Meeting him was the last, worst twist of my downward spiral. My uncle confessed those awful things, Esme got dragged in, and now I’m just a pawn when my mother was a queen in our community.” She stared straight ahead, and behind the lenses of her sunglasses, her hazel eyes were narrowed as if she was facing a glaring truth. “This is way worse than wanting to straighten my hair. She would be angrier than me to see how I’ve failed.”

Torch tugged at her hand until she twisted to frown at him. “She wouldn’t want you to keep beating yourself up about it.”

After a moment, her lips twisted in a wry smile. “Well, you don’t know bayou mamas. But she’d want me to find my own power, even if it was anger.”

He nodded. “I think I would’ve liked her.”

Anjali snorted. “I think she wouldn’t have approved of you, at all.”

He shot her a wicked grin. “Which would’ve just made you like me more.”

She tugged her hand free from his with a scornful ha, but the tense hunch to her shoulders was gone, and she angled in her seat toward him. “You’ll let me do the talking, right?”

He inclined his head. “He’s your uncle.”

“That wasn’t really a yes.”

“Yes,” he clarified. “Unless there are extenuating circumstances.”

“Like?”

“Anything that might endanger you. That I will set on fire.”

She lifted her eyebrows high enough to be seen over the sunglasses. “We’re going after a warlock and
now
you decide I
might
be in danger?”

“I’ll set that on fire too.” He glanced at her once sharply before focusing on the road again. “You brought a dragon—me—to its knees, so I don’t underestimate what you can do, but I won’t stand by idly.” He pursed his lips. “Just think of me as your muscle.”

She grumbled something under her breath that the wind whipped away.

“Should I stop and put the top up?” So he could hear her swearing at him.

She shook her head. “I like it down.”

Of course she did, because all her passions, not just her anger, were strong. When she flared, it was as bright as dragonfire, and equally precious. Ashcraft was a fool for making her a pawn when he could have made her his queen.

The dragon wanted to howl into the wind, and Torch tightened his grip on the wheel.

The Vette’s engine covered the fast, flat road in less time than the maps suggested, and the sun was high between the clouds when the scrubland gave way to strip malls.

Anjali pointed to the off ramp that led to her uncle’s shop although Torch had memorized the map. “In some ways, I’m more mad that Ashcraft didn’t—I don’t know—throw Uncle Gwain in a dungeon or something. At least then I’d understand why he cooperated. But knowing he just borrowed money and listened to the promises about more magic…” She stiffened, a stricken look distorting her mouth. “But I guess I basically did the same thing.”

Torch touched her knee. “And once you found out what Ashcraft was and what he was doing to your friend, you decided to stop him. Let’s hope your uncle listens to the same truth.”

Papi Herne’s House of Hazy Daze was a freestanding cinderblock storefront tucked between two larger complexes. The smaller structure should’ve been lost next to the busy convenience store and the strip club/pizza joint, but the concrete had been painted a high-gloss black with bilious green accents, making it stand out like a poison dart frog. The neon lights glared brighter than the daylight, proclaiming “glass pipes” and “Tarot on Tuesdays”.

As Torch eased the Vette into a parking slot with its nose pointed toward a quick getaway, two young men were leaving the head shop. A cloud of incense—plus a little something extra—rolled out the door after them and lingered in the air.

Anjali had pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head, and her gaze was stark.

Torch took a breath. “If you don’t—”

She held up one finger to silence him, then pushed open her door. He hastened to fall in behind her purposeful steps.

The incense fog inside the shop was thick but not choking, as Torch had feared. Under the musky scent, he caught whiffs of marijuana, psilocybin mushrooms, and the bitter chemical tang of less natural substances. Although some of that stink may have been from the garishly tie-dye t-shirts. Light from the windows was partly blocked by layers of poster art, most for musical acts that either got rich or OD’d decades ago.

The shop was unoccupied except for a tall, lean man at the register. Torch had expected a loose Rasta sort, but Gwain Herne was dapper from his close-cut charcoal hair frosted at the temples to his collar-less gray linen button-down. He moved with the graceful economy of a gifted cardsharp, a look Torch knew well from casino security.

This man would always have an ace up his sleeve.

Torch moved a half step off Anjali’s shoulder. He could bust out of his own plain black t-shirt and cargo pants and free his dragon as fast as any card flip.

She had hesitated near a circular rack of crinkled skirts, one hand nervously flipping the hangers with a muffled clack. The familiar sound must have lulled Herne because he didn’t look up from his task until she murmured, “Uncle Gwain?”

That jolted him around. His brown eyes widened with rings of white as they focused not on her, but on Torch.

“God dammit, Anji. You were supposed to take the demon to Mr. Ashcraft, not bring it here.” He fumbled under the counter.

Torch was across the room and in the man’s face before his hand cleared the edge of the counter. Clamping his fingers over Herne’s wrist, Torch pinned tendon to bone. And since the would-be witch doctor already knew what he was, he let his talons out too.

It wasn’t a gun, but a cell phone in the man’s hand.

Herne glared accusingly at Anjali. “And you’re letting it walk around free?”

She crossed her arms over her chest, and for an instant, Torch caught a glimpse of the lost little girl she’d been before she lifted her chin. “I left the leash in the Corvette.”

Herne scoffed. “I shoulda figured you’d pick up your mama’s tricks.” His mouth twisted. “She turned all the tricks for her golden demon lover.”

Anjali stiffened. “You said the dragon killed her.”

“It did.” He winced when Torch tightened his grasp and slid the cell phone out of reach. “Killed her and itself.”

Torch rumbled a threat low in his throat. Not technically talking, which he hoped Anjali appreciated.

Herne stepped back after Torch released him but seemed to realize he was not going anywhere and added, “After I laid the jealousy spell on it.”

Anjali shook her head, her dreadlocks waving limply. “Why?”

Dropping his head, Herne slanted a glance sidelong at Torch then his baffled niece. “I didn’t mean for… I just wanted the demon to leave us. Leave her. It was…shifting her little magic, changing her.” He straightened. “She was no priestess before it came along, just a trinket seller in the Quarter. But she got full of it, full of herself.”

“The dragon wasn’t jealous,” Anjali said slowly. “You were.”

“There was enough for us both,” Herne said. “I was her brother, and I would’ve taught her all I know if she’d shared.” His deep-set eyes narrowed, like barnacles withdrawing at low tide. “But seems we have a second chance.”

Anjali just stared at him. “Now that I have a dragon, like my mother, you’d teach me the magic that was my birthright.”

He snorted. “No birthright. Only what you take.”

“And you’d take this away from Ashcraft, after you set me out at his bidding. How’s he going to take this change of plans?”

Herne’s white teeth flashed in a smile. “Without this demon’s power, he won’t be able to do much at all.”

Considering how much damage Ashcraft had done already, Torch thought Herne was deluding himself—again—to think the warlock was powerless without the alchemical properties of dragon flesh.

Anjali, too, was shaking her head. “Ashcraft is already too powerful,” she insisted. “He’s been controlling my friend like a puppet from a distance, and it’s killing her.”

With a dismissive wave—a move Torch watched without blinking lest he miss some sleight of hand—Herne said, “Ashcraft cooked up that ring and used the matrix to send hypnotic suggestions through a cell signal—clever enough,” he admitted grudgingly, “but I gave him the hallucinogenic spores that he crystallized.”