Kinked

reasons.

He leaped at her, and she dove low so that he overshot, but he thrust out one hand and grabbed a magnificent handful of that tangled black hair and yanked her with him.

They tumbled together, growling, arms and limbs entwined. He caught her scent, and she smelled like healthy woman, clean cold air and arousal.

So the rumors about her and Grym must be true. He liked Grym and found the thought of their pairing so offensive that his growling deepened and grew edged.

She flipped him onto his back. Heaving hard, he flipped them over again and covered her straining body with his. As he pinned her long, taut torso, their hips came into alignment. There was rough friction at his groin, along with her wild scent.

It was so goddamn primal.

His cock stiffened again. Bloody hell.

Her eyes flashed furiously through her tangled hair. Fire bloomed down the length of his back as she raked him with her talons. Quicker than thought, breathing heavily, he punched her in the face. For one split second he thought she looked surprised and thoughtful. Then she twisted underneath him to knee him in the groin. More fire bloomed in an infernal garden.

He still had one fist clenched in her hair. Snarling, he yanked her head back and struck down, intending to fasten his teeth on her bared throat.

He never connected.

One moment they were locked together in a vicious, intimate embrace. The next moment he was several yards away, sprawled in a tangle against the wall in a complete disconnect with reality. He felt as if he had been kicked by a mountain.

Which in a way, he realized, he had been. His mind caught up with what had happened. Broken ribs protesting, he struggled to roll over onto his hands and knees, and he looked back in the direction of the elevators.

Dragos stood where they had been fighting, the harpy prone at his feet. Grym stood quietly in the open doorway of the elevator that Aryal had knocked him into, hands lax, all of his attention fixed on the Lord of the Wyr.

More details sank in. Dragos was dressed in jeans and a thin silk sweater, and he had one boot planted in the middle of Aryal’s back. He looked utterly furious, his roughhewn expression set in lines of brutality.

He also held his sleeping son cradled against his shoulder. Quentin had thought that baby was small before—just six pounds when he had been born, Pia had told him. Held against the tremendous musculature of his father’s chest, he looked as tiny as a small child’s doll.

Quentin’s mind flatlined.

He had thought he didn’t hold any illusions about Dragos. He knew that the only thing that could possibly take the dragon down was a dedicated army with inspired leadership and experienced magic users. But if he had ever held a secret daydream of someone besting Dragos in his human form in single, unarmed combat, that daydream had just been shattered forever.

Not only had Dragos just taken down two of the best, nastiest Wyr fighters in the world, he had done it by moving faster than Quentin could comprehend.

And he did it all without ever jostling the baby enough to wake him.

Dragos glared around the hall at the spectators who had been drawn by the violence.

“Go away,” he whispered. People vanished. He kicked Aryal over so that she lay on her back, staring up at him. Still speaking so gently that the baby never stirred, he told her, “I have given you more free rein than I have given almost anybody else, and you have just used the last of that up.”

The dragon’s incandescent gold gaze turned to Quentin. “And you haven’t earned any free rein. I am going upstairs to tuck my son into his crib. You will both go to my office right now and wait for me there. You will not speak to anyone else. You will not speak to or fight each other.” He glanced at Grym. “If either one of them disobeys me by so much as uttering a single word, shoot them.”

Grym drew his gun and said, “Yes, my lord.”

THREE

Quentin held his side as he limped down the hall, cataloguing the damage from the fight and that monstrously powerful kick. He guessed he had three broken ribs, maybe more. Whatever the damage was, it was the size of Dragos’s boot. His left knee was wrenched badly and he couldn’t bend it. The kneecap felt wrong, like it had been dislocated.

He had also done something exceedingly rare for him. When he had landed against the wall, he had been ass over teakettle, completely out of control of his fall. Usually his fast reflexes saved him from that kind of damage, but not this time.

When he added his bruised, throbbing groin and the claw marks on his back to the list, he was actually more hurt now than he had been throughout all of the Sentinel Games, but for a Wyr of his robust health the injuries were minor. He would want to get his ribs wrapped after Dragos yelled at and maybe fired them, but he’d heal just fine.

His gaze slid sideways. Grym walked between him and Aryal, his Glock pointed casually at the floor.

Aryal walked stiffly, her expression grim and mouth tight. One side of her face had already purpled from his punch. As Quentin watched, her gaze slid sideways toward him. The narrow-eyed glance she gave him was filled with pure evil. Then she looked down at Grym’s Glock, and her expression turned unhappy.

“You’re doing a really good job,” Grym told her, his voice mild and encouraging. “I know what you want to ask, so I’ll answer right now and save you the temptation. Dragos told me to shoot you if you said a word, so yes, I would do as he ordered. He didn’t say where to shoot you though.”

Aryal threw up her hands in a silent question.

Grym told her, “I’d probably tag you on your foot.”

Her mouth turned down at the corners. She shook her head and pointed to her forearm, while Quentin scratched the back of his head and stared at them. They were discussing in all seriousness which body part Grym was going to shoot?

“Okay, not your foot,” Grym amended. “I’d tag your arm. Satisfied? And the point is that you would deserve it. You both would. He really lost it with you. You’re lucky he didn’t shatter your spines and put you in traction for a month.”

Quentin took a deep breath. Both Aryal and Grym turned to him. Aryal looked hopeful while Grym just waited. He let the breath out again silently and Aryal’s face fell.

Grym said, “If that was meant as a question—yes, Dragos has put people in traction before.”

This was the most Quentin had ever heard Grym talk before. They made their way through the outer offices into Dragos’s massive corner office.

Quentin had only been in Dragos’s office once before. His lip curled as he looked around.

Compared to the ostentatious luxury throughout the rest of the Tower, the office was almost Spartan. Mostly the room was empty floor space. There was a huge desk and chair, with two more chairs positioned in front of it, a plain mahogany table pushed against one wall, and original multimedia artwork hung on the two interior walls. The two corner walls were floor to ceiling windows, framing one of the most expensive skyline views in the world. French doors led out onto a balcony patio.

Quentin moved to put his back to the one of the interior walls, crossing his arms and leaning against it for support. He watched as Grym shut the door and Aryal limped over to ease back against Dragos’s desk.

Grym registered Quentin’s position with a quirk of his black, straight eyebrows then walked over to Aryal. He still hadn’t holstered his gun.

The harpy was scowling at the floor, her head bent. Grym flattened one hand on the desk by her hip and leaned on it, angling his head to look into Aryal’s face.

Grym said to her in gentle voice, “You make people crazy. You do realize that, don’t you?”