Mere Temptation (8 page)

Sidon cleared his throat and gave Isa a grumpy little look. Her face flushed as she realized she’d been caught staring.

“Ismaelda, this is Laird,” he said, gesturing to the fair one, who inclined his head slightly. “This is Kai,” he said, gesturing to the Asian dragon, the chiseled one who seemed to wear a permanent scowl. The men’s heads stayed stationary during the introduction, as if they saw right though her.

“Sidon,” the one called Kai said, “The Council Chair has allotted us two days for us to address your concern. I suggest you brief us on the situation immediately.”

Sidon shot Isa an apologetic look. “I have all my data and the coordinates of the sightings and the attack back at my home office. Would you be willing to discuss the situation there?”

Kai, who Isa was rapidly learning to hate, hedged. “I would rather not leave the district, but I see no harm in meeting you at your home.”

His gaze slipped to her then. “I don’t see why the mere needs to be present.”

Isa stepped back like she’d been slapped.

Sidon started to respond, but she cut him off.

“Excuse me, but I was the first one attacked by these guys. I think I should be privy to whatever you discuss.”

It was the dragons’ turn to look affronted.

“Isa.” Sidon stepped into her line of sight, hissing at her like she was an errant child. “Kai is one of the Council’s generals. He’ll say what information they need, and recommend a course of action to the Council.”

“Why does he get to decide?”

“Well, the Council is in charge here.”

“So they get to call all the shots?”

At that, Kai seemed to swallow his tongue. Laird stood and stepped forward, his bulk ending any thoughts of continuing the argument. “Yes.” His deep voice resonated. “Yes they do.”

Isa felt her face heat from pink to red to purple. Sidon addressed the other dragons. “I’ll fax you my prepared reports and all my notes. See you at six?” The two men nodded. “Thank you.” Giving them a little bow, he shuffled Isa toward the door. Her huff continued all the way out to his car.

Pulling out of the large parking lot, he placed a hand on her knee. She slapped it away. “Sweetie, I told you. You can’t take anything they say seriously. They’re assholes.”

“But they acted like I wasn’t even there! I mean, I’m the one who got attacked. I’m the one who was followed down the entire country!”

His eyebrow rose at her admission, but when Isa shrugged, Sidon chose not to let it go. “I know, sweetheart.” He rubbed her shoulder as he drove with one hand, but Isa leaned to the side to escape his touch.

“They think I’m scum! Like I’m some kind of lower life form. Where do they get off—”

Sidon cut her off. “We need them, Isa. It sucks, but we need them. The Council is organized. They have access to ships, teams of soldiers. They have guardians in mere habitats all over the planet and can pass on all kinds of information.”

“And I suppose it never occurred to them to share any knowledge or resources with the lowly mere?”

He looked away from her, his mouth a hard, thin line. “No. That kind of thing does not occur to them. Dragons see themselves as mythical supernatural beings, not as part-humans like the mere. They think they rule by divine right.”

Disgust bubbled in her belly. It must have shown on her face because Sidon backpedalled.

“Look, I don’t think that. I don’t think I’m a god, or that I’m better than humans or mere. Heck, I’m half mere. But I’m only one dragon, and I don’t make the rules. Can you try to understand that?”

Isa watched out the window as the rolling lawns of the district led to the hardscrabble dirt roads of the Key, and wondered when Sidon had joined the other side.

Chapter 5

Spawned

Gracie’s neck arched back, and her soft hazel eyes fluttered just like a dream. She leaned back on her elbows, her naked ass balanced on the edge of his desk. Karon held her ankles high and plunged into her in lighting strikes. Soon she was coming so hard around his thrusting dick he felt lost inside her. The feeling gripped him low and twisted, but he wasn’t ready to finish this yet.

Karon lifted and flipped her, shoving her breasts into the cool varnished wood of the desk, then kicking her feet apart. Palming her raised hips, he entered her slowly and angled his strokes to the spot that made her cry, smiling when she moaned low in her throat.

“Reach down and touch yourself, Gracie.”

She did as requested. A tidal wave of lust wracked him as he watched her writhe and gasp, tilting her hind end higher for his fucking. He paused to stroke his finger around the O of her stretched opening. The torture on wire-taut nerves made Gracie buck back, and he slapped her ass once before drubbing into her in earnest. When her cunt began to spasm and rock around him again, he held her wide open, big feet planted between her smaller ones, and pressed her into the desk while his cock throbbed and spurted inside her. She was screaming now, shouting his name, invoking god and the devil, and the sound of it filled the room like fiery perfume.

Still shuddering, he laid his hard body over Gracie’s soft one, breathing the honey-spice scent of the skin at her neck. Her satiny walls still shook against his rawness, like a small caress. He didn’t want to pull out and have to face his day, his life. So he fought the haze of exhaustion that threatened and petted her arm a few times, willing her not to run off like a spooked filly.

Finally pushing up, he lifted Gracie, and he found himself a little grumpy when she shied away from the embrace he tried to give her.

“So Gracie, you never told me,” he said, hoping for a little conversation before she left him. “Where do succubi come from? Are they born like little vampire or elf babies, or cast from heaven like centaurs?”

“Are you thinking about a career change, Captain?”

“Fuck yeah! Let’s see, human trafficking or seducing virgins? It’s not exactly a tough choice.”

“You would make a poor incubus. You lack the requisite charm and finesse.” She raised her eyebrows. “And since when do you consider ‘lab-rats’ to be human?”

Karon pulled up his jeans up and started to buckle.

“Some are more human than others,” he grumbled. “But seriously, were you born, or made? Or did you come from the underworld or something?”

“I was born human, but a demon made me a succubus. Now I’m practically immortal.”

“Practically?”

“Well, I need to absorb life force to live. If I don’t have sex I age and die, and pretty quickly too, faster than a human. And of course decapitation or being torn into small pieces would kill me.”

Karon pondered this for a moment. “How much do you need? Like at what point would you be ‘starving’?”

Gracie picked at the hem of her dress as she answered. “Well, left to my own devices I’d probably make love once or twice a day. I’ve never willingly gone more than forty-eight hours.”

Karon pondered her explanation for a moment. He sniffed for a little more to the story, even though he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know.

“What do you mean, willingly?”

Gracie looked up at him sharply, like he’d pricked an open wound. “Well, among all the other lovely things that happened at Dendric Headquarters, the scientists wanted to see what happened if I didn’t have sex, how long it took me to start aging.”

“Oh.” Not knowing what to say, Karon settled for peering down and looking abashed. He saw her watching him. A glimmer of something hard passed her normally soft gaze as she continued.

“After a week I was incapacitated. Lying in bed all day, crying.”

“By the end of the second week, I became incensed, started to beg and plead every time a man came to take my blood or give me food.”

The glimmer settled into a steely-coldness, and Karon knew he’d entered deeper waters than he’d meant to. Gracie seemed to barely register he was there.

“Then one doctor decided it would be enlightening to sit in front of my cage and pleasure himself. He watched while I threw myself against the bars, cracking my own bones against the metal. The other doctors watched too, took notes on my behavior.”

Then she smiled and her grin chilled Karon to core.

“Well, that same man decided to enjoy himself the next day, only this time all on his own. I relaxed and focused this time, and when he began I took my clothes off and kneeled at the bars, looking enticing. His chair shuffled farther and farther forward. And when he got so close that the legs of the chair hit the bars I held open my mouth.” She laughed then, a sound like chalk against rock. “You can imagine what he did, and I bit down and held on like my life depended on it. He didn’t release much lust after that, but the panic and pain and fear—it was the best feeding I’ve ever gotten. I drained him so fully that his skin sank in and grayed right before my eyes.”

She paused again for a long time, seemingly collecting herself. “They let me go pretty soon after that.”

* * * *

As Sidon’s truck pulled into his driveway, Isa looked forward to taking a short nap before the Council’s dragons descended. The previous night, though wonderful, had not included much actual sleep. Unfortunately, a figure stood on the doorstep, the tiny person Isa dreaded meeting even more than the guests for tonight.

“Hi, Mom.”

Despite Ashala Freya’s fierce stance, Isa was glad to see her. The mere looked no older than thirty in human years. Her hair was a silvery gold. She stood only five foot two, but her fury made her seem much taller. Green and gold bands of mere markings snaked up her legs and onto her back, visible under her thin sundress.

“Don’t you ‘Hi, Mom’ me! What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in Landworld!”

Isa shrank back. “I just came to visit.” She was lying to everyone else. It only made sense to share the same story with the whole Key.

“Yes.” Ashala cast a surveying look over Sidon. “I can see that.”

To his credit, the dragon regarded Ashala with cool indifference, though the mere’s eyes shot daggers.

“Isa, I think I’ll head inside and let you and your mother get reacquainted.” He nodded once in Ashala’s direction and turned towards the door.

“Why don’t you head back to the district with the rest of the lizards?”

The door shut behind him, and Isa swiveled. “That’s just rude, Mom! He didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Oh, please, he’s managed to lure you back here after twenty years just to turn you into one of his tramps. What did he do, use the Council’s network to track you down? As if he didn’t have enough playthings already!”

Isa winced at the mention of his other females, but resigned herself not to rise to the bait. She stepped from foot to foot, thanking whatever god would listen that the tracker he’d placed on her was hidden beneath her sleeve. She’d have to remember its location on the odd chance her mother offered her a hug.

“No, I just happened to run into him when I came through town. We’re…” The phrase
j
ust friends
flitted through her mind. But there was a difference between telling a lie and saying something so outlandish that no one in her right mind would believe it. “We’re just hanging out together for a few days, for old times’ sake.”

“Isa.” Her mother’s tone softened now. “You just need to take a human lover. I know you feel like being mere is part of who you are, but it’s ridiculous to stay fry this long. Of course you’re frustrated. That’s just your body telling you it’s time to become human.”