“I traced your family history. All the way back to the Norse pagans. There’s a reason you’re so fascinated by Norse Mythology and history. You were born to it.”
“Oh my God,” she whispered. “You are being serious.”
Exasperation twisted Derek’s lips and he scowled at her. “Your line is the most powerful Norse line there is, Jilly. Your ancestors were the first humans to ever bond with dragons.”
She blinked again, a hot lump filling her throat.
The longer she sat still, the clearer her head became. As the fog of whatever had shrouded her dissipated, her earlier ravenous sexual hunger began to make itself known again. The desire to press her fingers between her thighs, to rub her clit, tormented her, even as Derek spoke of what was surely a ridiculous fantasy on his behalf. He’d always been one for Dungeon and Dragons and high fantasy books.
“So ,what?” she said, resisting the urge to skim her fingertips over her nipples. “My great-great-great-great-grandfather had some kind of lizard fetish? That’s kind of gross, Derek.”
Fire Mate.
The deep voice growled through her head, followed a heartbeat later by an animalistic screech. She sucked in a breath as an image of a massive dragon filled her head along with a choir of chanting.
Ari.
His name caressed her mind. She shivered, her body reacting.
Hurry. I need…
“No,” Derek said, the contempt in his voice dragging her away from the licentious heat building within her. “Your ancestral mother was sacrificed to the dragons. Given to them as a virgin to become a sexual slave. She was the first to be bonded to their species, the first of many.”
Jilly frowned. The chanting in her head grew louder. She wished it would stop. She couldn’t concentrate with its rising noise. “I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head at Derek. “Did you just say ‘sexual slave’?”
He nodded, leaning his elbows on his knees once again, his stare intense. “And Arriman Drake—who’s an abomination, by the way, both man and dragon, who shifts between forms—is trying to do the same to you now. Enslave you. Bind you to him. Make you his. But I can stop him. I think I’ve figured out a way to terminate the sexual frenzy the dragon shifters call the mating fire. I think I can sever the connection between you and—”
Jilly jolted to her feet, shaking her head once more. “This is ridiculous. You’re being ridiculous. I can’t believe any of this. The whole notion is absurd. Druids? Dragons? I don’t know what either you or Ari have been smoking, but I want both of you to leave me out of your fucked-up Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying. It’s not funny or clever or…or…nice.”
Derek looked up at her. His jaw bunched again. “From the moment you first saw Drake from your window, you were sexually drawn to him, correct?”
She didn’t answer. The chanting, the screeching in her head faded to silence, replaced by the hammering of her heart.
“And when he arrived at your apartment?” Derek went on, stare holding hers. “You were instantly ready to have sex with him, correct? It was an imperative you couldn’t deny?”
Jilly’s stomach roiled. A hot flush crept over her. Her eyes burned. “I don’t… I want to go…”
“They call it the mating fire. It is an ancient magic, older than even the druids and pagans. Older than the oldest of gods. Fated mates. Fire Mates.”
Her breath caught in her throat.
Fire Mate.
“Did you have sex with Arriman Drake?”
“I’m not going to tell—”
Derek straightened to his feet. “Did you. Have sex. With Drake?”
She stumbled back a step, her heart slamming in her throat. “I…didn’t.”
A smile stretched his lips and a slow breath escaped him. “Good. All is not lost then. As long as Blade can keep him away from you long enough, I can destroy the magic binding you to him and we can be together.”
“We?” Jilly frowned. Fear licked through her, hot and cold at once. “There’s no we, Derek. We’re friends. Just friends. You know that, right?”
Something dark flickered in Derek’s eyes. His nostrils flared. “Oh, Jilly.” His Adam’s apple jerked up and down his throat as he shook his head. “I wanted you to fall in love with me. I waited, hoping you would. But now…now I can’t wait any longer.”
He raised his hand, palm up before his face, and blew.
Most large cities on the planet with a dragon-shifter population contained safe houses. The apex alpha of most cities maintained the safe houses, along with the area’s Cleaners.
As the Cleaner for Sydney and its surrounding districts, Ari knew the location of every safe house, although he’d always thought the term house ridiculous, given the buildings were large warehouse-size constructions with no external windows, reinforced, flame-retardant steel walls and bio-scan security systems.
Ari never thought he’d need the protection of those reinforced walls himself.
However, the moment he grasped the nightmarish fact he’d lost complete control of his dragon, that he could not stop the shift from occurring, he headed for the closest one.
At his most controlled, he knew he’d be able to delay the inevitable by a matter of minutes. Ten if he was lucky. Those ten minutes could save him, or end a secret kept from humans for thousands of years.
Daylight in the middle of Sydney, with ten minutes to reach the closest safe house, would require more than just control. It would require pushing his Harley, the laws of physics, his body and his mind to the limits and beyond.
Damn it, if Kellan Donovan found out, he’d never let Ari live it down.
He rode through the busy streets like a demon, the speed limit a distant joke.
His muscles and bones tore and reknitted beneath his flesh, the internal war between his two forms a molten inferno of excoriating agony.
Every breath he drew into his lungs turned to fire. Every air particle lashing against his skin incinerated.
He rode, ducking and weaving through traffic, no longer a man, but not a dragon, either. Shit, he needed to
