Page 43 of Tempt the Dragon
“Because I was going to let them down. I killed Drakon when I was supposed to be a protector to our kind. Sure, I told myself I killed them because they’dbeen traveling the realms terrifying humans and preternaturals alike, they were the ones creating a bad reputation as vicious killers for our kind. But I was the one who killed them in cold blood, and I didn’t feel any remorse. My job as a Noble was to bring them to the emperor and let him deliver punishment. But the emperor had been the one instructing those Drakon to wreak as much havoc as theycould across all the realms. Of course, later we learned that the emperor had been possessed. Still, I had no right to take matters into my own hands. It wasn’t my place.”
He still didn’t get how good and perfect that made him sound. “Protecting others from bad Drakon doesn’t sound like it would disappoint anyone. In fact, that sounds damn heroic.”
“Not when it involved killing innocentchildren.” The sheer horror and pain that draped his face at this moment, held her still. “I didn’t know they were in the same building as the dragons I was hunting, but it didn’t matter. If I hadn’t gone on a rampage, then it would’ve never happened.
“It was so easy to feel just like you said, heroic, as I wandered the realms scorching any Drakon I saw doing something to harm others thatwas against our code. There was no investigation, no questions, just judgment, swift and fatal, toward them all.”
She jerked back at the heated way in which he’d said that last word.
“You see that, you feel it?” He tapped a finger over the spot in her chest where her heart had begun to beat frantically. “Your immediate reaction was shock and disgust. Anger will come next and then recrimination.This is exactly what I knew my parents would feel. It’s what I knew the emperor and the Nobility would have to consider when deciding how to judge me. Instead of publicly disgracing my family, I left and I knew I’d never return to what had already been preordained for me. And then I found you in Miami and I felt whole again. I felt that even with everything I’d done that someone like youwould still love and want me.”
Until she pushed him away.
Sitting up now, she dragged her hands through her hair she was sure looked a matted mess, and took a long slow breath before speaking again. “You left the Far Realm before being judged or reprimanded for the crimes you knew you committed and yet you never hesitated to preach everything about the Drakon world and its laws to me asif they were the gospel.” When he didn’t immediately respond she looked over her shoulder at him.
“I’m not perfect.” He shrugged. “I’m flawed from my basic reasoning to the actions I took—then and now. I know you’re thinking I was a coward for running away instead of facing the consequences and you’re right. I am. I’m also a bastard for walking out on my family without any type of explanation.And after all this time I haven’t owned up to the wrong I’ve done. Not in all the years since I left the Far Realm and not when I returned last year to help Theo get his mate back. I didn’t visit my family, nor did I turn myself in to the head of the Nobility for judgment or correction, or whatever they feel is necessary to do to me. When it was time to leave with Theo and Shola, that’s whatI did.”
“Does he know? Your fearless leader, the one whose orders you follow without a second thought? Does he know what you did?”
“He’s never asked. When I ended up here in Burgess after leaving Miami, I just applied for the job that was closest to what I’d been doing with the Collectors. Legion Security was that place.”
“You knew Theo was a Drakon when you applied to his company?”
“I did.”
She turned all the way around then, crossing each foot over her thighs as she now faced him. “You aligned yourself with a Drakon whose goal was to protect humans and other beings from preternatural forces. Just like when you were with the Collectors, you were hunting and detaining known preternatural criminals others couldn’t catch.”
He nodded. “It’s what I’m good at.”
“It’s what you think you need to do to redeem yourself for killing those children.” Damn, even with that dark moment, in her eyes he was still fuckin’ perfect.
Bringing himself to a sitting position, he reached for her hands, and she let him take them. His fingers were longer, and she felt the brute strength in them as they moved over hers. When he lifted her hands to his mouth, kissing theback of each, she tried like hell not to melt.
“It’s what I do because it’s what I am. Just as you’re here, now, doing what you do, because this is who you are.” Easing their hands down slowly, until they were still entwined but now resting in her lap, he leaned in to drop the softest kiss on her forehead. “Your parents may not have taught you how to be a Drakon, but you know, Mel. It’s inyou and now it’s trying to come out. No amount of running or fighting it off is going to work. You’ve got to see that now. This is who you are. And you are who I want.”
His next kiss was to the tip of her nose, then another brushed warmly over her lips. She pulled her hands away from his then and eagerly laced them behind his head, holding him still while she kissed him. An easy peck at firstand then a more urgent touch of lips and tongues because it was what she yearned for at the moment. The physical was easier. That swirling and reaching that ignited as if his proximity just flipped a switch was easily quenched when they touched, because something within him was reaching out in the same way. She’d felt it for certain a few hours ago when they’d been in the game room. The connectionhad been like a blinding light—almost like that light that had shined in their faces when they were on stakeout—locking the two beasts together in a blissful spin of passion.
That’s what she wanted right now. It was what she needed to feel, because her brain was destined to play tricks on her. It wanted to keep the conflict going, to rebut everything Aiken tried to say about her, to resistmaking peace with the hurt that had stained her since she was a child.
He knew, Aiken, or his beast did, or perhaps both, she didn’t care which. All she cared about right now was the way he wrapped her in his arms while sucking on her tongue. Keeping their mouths linked, he eased her back on the bed, and she pulled him down on top of her, holding him so tightly she wondered if she were suffocatinghim.
“You’re safe here, baby,” he whispered when he pulled his lips away from hers and proceeded to kiss along the line of her jaw.
Safety wasn’t what she was looking for, not now. Her hands moved over his shoulders and down the strong muscles of his back. He eased away from her, breaking the contact so that she gasped with the unwanted separation. She watched him push the sheets awayfrom their bodies and come back so that he was on his knees between her spread legs.
“This tat goes all the way around.” The featherlight touch of his fingertip gliding along the line of stars that marched across her lower belly and over to her waist was enticing and the sensation sent quick spikes of desire to her pussy.
“It does. The wind, sun, the moon, the stars, a constant for mebecause they’re always there. The only things I never have to worry about leaving.” He’d dropped his head to stare down at his finger moving over the tat. She felt exposed, open, bared to him in a way she never had before.
“There’s something else that’s constant.” His voice was a deep rumble that moved over her skin in the same way his fingertip was.
“What?” A whisper in the room filledwith so much sexual tension at this moment she wondered if it would overflow into the hallways and the rest of this fortress.
“Pleasure.” He’d eased his body down so that his hands were now on her hips, his face level with her mound, his breath brushing over her in a way that had her juices flowing.
When his tongue had touched her here in the game room, she’d thought she was going to hopup off that table. Now, laying on this bed, the second he touched his lips to her plump folds she saw stars bursting bright and fierce behind her closed lids. More than the ones of her tat, more than any she’d ever seen in the sky. He opened his mouth and slid his tongue along the slick soft skin and she gripped the sheets, shouting his name with the explosion of heat in her body.
Need expandedinside her, filling every crevice with longing. “Aiken.” It was all she could and all she needed to say.
