Dragon Fate (2 page)

For a moment, the clenched line of his square jaw softened as if she’d actually startled him. He looked down. “After everything we just did,
that’s
what scares you?” He slid his hands down his lean hips. At the sensual gesture, his cock pulsed.

Not that she was looking.

His lashes lowered, hiding the silver echo of lightning in his dark eyes. “Would that make you talk?”

She thought hard about her answer. “No. It’s not as bad as the alternative.”

In a move so fast she couldn’t process it, he was crouched in front of her, one raised knee blocking her view of his cock, the fingers of one hand steepled next to his bare foot. “Let’s get one thing straight,” he snarled, his eyes wide and glittering with the violet aurora borealis finish of expensive crystals. “It would be
good
. More than good. It would blow your mind.”

She slammed her head back against the pillar, but the thin coil of smoke from his sensual lips didn’t smell like brimstone. More like the rare temple incense her uncle sold from the back room of Papi Herne’s House of Hazy Daze.

Still, she held her breath. Because she knew what that incense could do, and she couldn’t afford to be hazy around Torch Dorado.

Bad enough he could take her so high…

He crouched back on his heel, watching her. Subtle metallic markings glinted on his skin: not the remnants of scales, she realized, but some sort of numinous tattoos twining down both arms and across his chest. And lower, curling over his hip bones in long, lustful fingers.

“You’re alone here,” he said, his voice like a burnout velvet mixing threat and solace. “Lars Ashcraft can’t get to you anymore. So tell me what he’s planning. Tell me why he sent you.”

“I
already
told you.” Although she tightened her throat, she couldn’t keep the plaintive note out of her voice. “I. Don’t. Know.”

“Your friend Piper Ramirez already confessed everything you told her,” he warned. “That Ashcraft wanted you to use your friend Esme Montenegro to lure a dragon so you could steal our ichor.”

Anjali raised her chin. “And that’s
all
I know. I explained everything when Piper found us at the motel.” Pipsqueak had been furious and hurt at being left behind, but Anjali had only wanted to keep her out of harm’s way. And harm equaled dragons like the one staring holes in her right now. And like the one that had appeared out of nowhere to force their escaping jet to the ground and then burning it into the dirt. “You can keep asking me like you have been for the last three days, but the answer is going to be the same. I don’t know why Ashcraft wants dragon ichor. Just that he’s willing to do anything to get it.”

Including threatening to destroy everything she had left.

Which wasn’t much.

Torch tilted his head, as if he smelled her weakness. “Including binding Esme to him, thinking he can siphon a dragon’s power through her. It’s killing your friend.” He tilted his head the other way, always watching. “Or should I say ex-friends. They’re almost as done with you as I am.”

She sucked in a harsh breath, and water burned in her lungs as his words tore deeper than his talons had. Esme and Piper had been her only friends during her haphazard and ultimately pointless attempt at a fine arts degree. They’d stayed friends even when she had to go back to work for her uncle, even when she couldn’t quite hold up her end of their apartment rent or the wine and ice cream binges.

To lose them hurt worse than anything she’d ever felt in her life.

Worse except for whatever Ashcraft would do when he found out she’d failed.

Chapter 2

The flare of pain in Anjali’s hazel eyes made Torch curse. He wasn’t interested in actually hurting her.

He just wanted to scare the ever-living shit out of her.

Frustration churned in his muscles that were more electrified than exhausted from the flight through the storm. “Do you want me to toss you off the roof again?”

Her haunted eyes widened at the threat, but her chin notched higher. “Do you always play with your food?”

“Sweetheart, you
wish
I’d just eat you.”

Fuck. He hadn’t meant that quite the way it sounded…

Glowering, he snagged his kilt off the railing of the gazebo and slung it low around his hips. He was wet and peeved, and the clinging wool around his junk just made him itchy and peeved.

But he didn’t like the way she was looking at him.

He grabbed her arm with the same precision he used his talons and hauled her to her feet. Hmm, maybe he’d been a little careless with his talons—her skirt was pretty much in shreds, her dimpled knees appearing and disappearing in an accidental peepshow as her legs wobbled. He waited an extra moment until they locked before he frog-marched her down the spiral staircase.

Sconces in the wall flickered to life one after the other as they made their way down. The dance of light shimmered on the textured coils of her dreadlocks and her rain-dewed, dusky skin, and the frolicking shadows looked almost festive, as if he was a lord guiding his lady to the midnight ball…

He scratched at the kilt.

Hazel eyes slanted his way, askance, and with a scowl, he dropped his hand.

What was he going to do with her? As head of security for the Keep—and enforcer for the Nox Incendi dragonkin—he was in charge of keeping the clan’s secrets, keeping them safe, though he was one of the youngest in the small, endangered clan. The fact that he was unaffected by the petralys curse killing the Nox Incendi might’ve had something to do with him getting the job—he tried not to let that reality undermine his confidence. He did what he had to do, just like every shifter in a world that would freak out if it discovered their existence.

As for Anjali Herne… She knew too much, was confessing too little, and didn’t scream nearly enough. He wasn’t sure if she was insanely brave or just insane.

This was the first time he’d ever felt uncertain about a human female when they were usually so soft and willing around him.

And he didn’t like it, at all.

He’d tried isolating her. He’d tried terrifying her.

He’d have to find some other way to break her stony silence.

At this time of night, activity in the casino was in full swing, so the private dragonkin quarters in the Keep were empty. All available hands were on deck, keeping the treasure flowing to their coffers. Treasure did more than feed their greedy dragon hearts, it was their best protection in this world.

Or had been, until Lars Ashcraft sent his spy.

The crash of Ashcraft’s private jet—burned on the outskirts of town when Rave in his winged shape had rescued his true mate Piper from abduction—hadn’t made the nightly news. It hadn’t even featured in any crappy, shaky, vertical YouTube videos. Torch knew he should be grateful that the dragonfire scorch marks and dragon tooth-sized holes Rave had left in the fuselage hadn’t gone public, but he feared that spoke volumes about Ashcraft’s power.

Ashcraft wasn’t just the scion of an influential industrialist family, he was a warlock, a master of alchemical magic. He had some spell on Esme Montenegro that was slowly draining her life. Whatever hold he had on Anjali wasn’t magical, but equally ugly.

In the dark, empty hallway beside one of the sconces, Torch paused.

Since his fingers were still wrapped around her arm, Anjali had to stop too as he studied her.

He’d been so infuriated by her, he hadn’t really bothered to
see
her. He rarely bothered to look at human females beyond the amount of time it took to decide whether he was going to bed one for the night. Some of the Nox Incendi believed monastic isolation from humanity was the only way to keep from flaming out and killing as many as possible before becoming intimately familiar with a missile up the ass and thus blowing their cover forever. But his own duty to the clan meant he had to be out and about with humans.

When he needed to scratch his under-kilt itch, he usually chose from the older women abandoned by their gambling husbands—when they were bored with shopping and brunching at the Keep’s many upscale options, they looked for something else to do. And there he was. He picked them like ripe plums: opulent, juicy, and soft.

Anjali was more like a pineapple—his lips puckered thoughtfully—with her tough, prickly exterior.

Bite on her after a shot or two of rum and she’d go down sweetly, leave him breathing fire.

Somehow he thought she’d object to being the luscious piece of fruit kebab-ed on his dick in this scenario.

It was her dusky-dark skin that had him thinking of sultry nights in hot lands, the hazel of her eyes like murmuring green waves over sandy beaches. The kind of lovely isle where pirates buried treasures. A paradise surrounded by rough shoals and terrible storms that sunk ships so the pirates died before reclaiming their treasure. Poor fucking pirates.

What was Anjali hiding? Maybe she was telling the truth and even she didn’t know.

“Are you hungry?” he asked abruptly.

Her lashes bristled at him when she narrowed her eyes. “Are you fattening me up? In case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t need it.”

He
hadn’t
noticed, but now that she mentioned it… She had all the curves of a pirate ship figurehead. The wet fabric of her off-white shirt was molded to her breasts, close enough that his fingers twitched to trace the scallops of lace that outlined her bra. The remnants of her velvety skirt belled out over her hips like a strong wind filled a ship’s sails.

Dragons dearly loved a storm.

“Have you been starved the last three days?” he asked instead.

Her jaw worked, as if she was chomping sand. “No,” she admitted. “But you wouldn’t let me leave, either.”

“You tried to kill my cousin and me.”

Her gaze skittered away. “Dragons aren’t meant to exist in this world.”

He rolled forward onto the balls of his feet, crowding her. “I exist.”

“They’re evil.”

“I’m not evil.”

Her eyes snapped up again. “You dropped me on Las Vegas!”

He eased back onto his heels. “Oops.”

“That’s not an oops,” she said. “That’s evil.”

“I caught you.” He didn’t like the note of defensiveness in his voice. “And evil is sacrificing your friends for your own power. That’s what Ashcraft promised you, right?” He peered at her. “Power of your own?”

She looked away again, the rich hue of her skin graying. “He didn’t promise me a thing.”

All Torch’s senses were on alert, the dragon curling in his bones. “Ashcraft has no hold over you here. Why won’t you talk to me?”

She jerked her arm out of his loose grasp on her arm. “You don’t have a hold over me either.”

But he noticed she didn’t run away.

Not that he’d let her get far. Probably she knew that. She might be only human, but she had to feel the beast’s restlessness in him.

“Anjali,” he said softly.

She shivered a little at her name. Or maybe just because she was cold.

“Anjali, if I was willing to take a lovely female like you out into the storm and drop her to her death to protect my people, imagine what I’m willing to do to Ashcraft.” He put one finger under her chin, tilting her head up to meet his gaze. “Don’t fear me less than you fear him.”

Her shivering was a bone-deep shudder now. “A rock and a hard place. You think that’s a choice?”

“No,” he said. “You’re choosing between dragonfire and hell.”

He took her arm again, and this time all her resistance was gone.

At least the fall had done some good.

So why did he feel worse for having broken her?

Chapter 3

Wrapped in cold misery, Anjali wasn’t paying attention to where Torch was taking her. She’d assumed back to the featureless room somewhere in the depths of the Keep where they’d stashed her for the last three days. There’d been a bed and a bathroom and regular meals, so she couldn’t say she’d been abused—though he
had
dropped her!

And yeah, he’d caught her.

But when he pushed open the double doors to a posh suite, she realized the torturing was really about to start.

She tried to drag her heels, but it was hard when she was barefoot and just so tired and cold.

Not to mention guilty.

The living area of the suite was bigger than their college apartment, lit with a huge, golden-glowing, amber chandelier, and the view of the Las Vegas Strip was different, but Piper looked almost the same, perched on the couch with her feet tucked under her and the loose waves of her black hair in a high ponytail that perfectly fit her cheerful optimism.

Esme, however, did not look so good. She was sitting in front of Piper, shoulders bowed. The waist-length fall of her white-blond hair looked more like dry bone than its normal lustrous pearl as Piper worked a comb through bed-head snarls. Esme was in a nightgown, and though she’d always been slender, the jutting points of her collarbones and the points of her shoulders were like knives stabbing Anjali in the heart.

She stumbled at the change a mere three days had wrought in her former roommate, and she was suddenly glad of Torch’s punishing grip on her arm.

When they’d left for Esme’s bachelorette party at the start of the long weekend, Ez had seemed distracted and forgetful. But not dying. Now the ghost of her skeleton seemed to be rising through her skin before she was even gone.

Anjali gasped and started to make a warding gesture against haints she remembered from her mother. Then stopped. She deserved whatever haunting came her way.

Piper glanced up with a welcoming smile, but when she saw Anjali, her dark eyes snapped with fury. “
Mierda
. Why’d you bring her here?” She squared off, blocking Anjali’s view of Esme, the comb in her hand held like a switchblade.

Piper had always been more about homework than homegirls—the Spanish curse sounded awkward in her mouth—but she looked like she fully intended to use each tooth in the comb to take a bite out of Anjali.

Torch kept her from shrinking back in shame. “Anjali and I had a chat out in the storm, and she got a little wet. She needs a change of clothes and all the luggage you ladies brought is here.”