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  Gabriel opens his slacks enough to take out the proud length of his cock. My eyes snap to it: hard and angry, pre-cum glistening on the tip.

  He fists his erection and strokes one giant hand up and down. His eyes lock on mine. He bares his teeth. His strokes quicken. I watch, far more fascinated than I want to be. His breath quickens, and a muscle jumps at his jaw. He stops his breath, and then cum splashes over my bare midriff.

  Gabriel growls a word in that guttural language of his. I can guess what it means. Mine.

  At this point, I’m too overcome to debate it. The robot arms slacken, but I’m too wrung out to move.

  He stretches out beside me, and he pulls me into his arms. I typically hate cuddling; it’s so awkward, and my partner and I never fit.

  But Gabriel and I fit together perfectly. I’m tall and gangly for a woman, but his big body curls around mine. My ass is cradled by his hips. I’m naked, and he’s still clothed. Tomorrow, I’ll mess up his hair. I'm too tired now.

  His head presses into my hair. His lips find my bare neck. “You're my perfect treasure.”

  “I'm not yours,” I mutter.

  “But you are, little one. I have claimed you. And soon you will admit it.”

  I yawn. “I won’t,” I say sleepily, but I can’t deny I’m about to fall asleep in my kidnapper’s arms, and it feels amazing.

  Gabriel

  I am a man who enjoys games. Cat and mouse. Hide and seek. Run and chase.

  The hunter in me loves to amuse himself this way, and I usually care not whether my opponent enjoys the game or not. But with Tabitha, I’m conflicted.

  Is she playing with me?

  She allowed me to pleasure her, and I know she enjoyed it. Yet I also believe her protests are genuine. That she’s not playing a game to string me along, to make me prove myself.

  Yet she doesn’t fight, nor does she seem afraid.

  She asked about my pleasure. She wanted me to take mine with her.

  That’s the piece I turn over and over in my head as my beautiful little human slumbers beside me.

  What does it mean? Is she simply a generous, giving female? Or does she feel something for me? How far does the mating instinct go in a human? On some level, she must recognize she belongs to me, but perhaps that level is embedded in the vessel, in her body. Her mind rebels against this attachment.

  But no, she asked about my pleasure.

  This is the loop I continue around until Tabitha falls into a deep sleep, and I quietly get out of bed and put on a robe. I scoop her into my arms with the blankets still around her soft, fragile form, and carry her back to her chamber.

  I want to keep her with me in my tower–fate knows how much–but I don’t trust myself with her. My usual control slips when she’s close.

  Frightening her now would be the worst move I could make. I don’t trust my dragon not to accidentally harm her. Better to play it safe until we’ve both had time to get used to each other.

  4

  Rafe

  * * *

  The bright sun bounces off the hard-crusted snow as I tromp up the pedestrian-only alleys between the shops of Taos. My destination is a cheerfully lit shop with a freshly painted door. I kick the frozen mud from my boots and reach for the gold latch. The bell over the door jingles and the warm scent of chocolate and coffee and caramel and all sorts of delicious things set my mouth watering.

  Adele’s chocolate shop is her second favorite place on earth. The first is my bed, and I spend long blissful hours each night making sure it remains that way.

  I step back to allow two female customers bundled up in hats and scarves to exit. They’re carrying white bakery bags filled to the brim with gold boxes of truffles, and they have big smiles on their faces.

  When I step inside The Chocolatier, the heat hits my face along with the most delicious scent in the world. No amount of chocolate can compare the scent of my mate. It's a little peppery today, a pinch of cayenne mixed into the sweetness. She's worried about something.

  When she sees me, her big green eyes round. She starts around the counter. I meet her halfway, plucking her off the floor and setting her on the countertop. I plant my hands on the counter, on either side of her hips and lean in to claim her lips.

  My beard scratches against her soft skin.

  “Rafe,” she sighs against my lips. “You can't. The customers.”

  “There’s no one in the shop.” I finger the hem of her wool skirt. “Are you wearing a garter belt today?”

  She slaps my hand. “You’re not going to find out. Not here.”

  I grip her hips to keep her from scooting off the counter and escaping. “We’ll see about that.

  The bell above the door jingles. “Go away.” I bark without taking my eyes off Adele. “We're closed.”

  There's a laugh. “I'll leave these packages outside then.”

  “Rafe,” Adele wriggles in my hold. “I can't believe you. That could’ve been a customer!”

  “I knew it was the mailman. I recognized his scent.” I nuzzle the hinge of her jaw where she dabbed a little lavender oil there this morning in lieu of perfume. I dig my fingers into her wealth of curls and hold her still, so I can taste the sensitive spot.

  At the touch of my tongue, she gasps. “I need to make rent.”

  I move so my big body blocks any view of us through the front windows. I kiss along her shoulder. She's wearing a sexy little one of her blouses and a sexy tight skirt. It takes too long to slide her out of the skirt. Easier just to rip it. Even if I face her wrath later.

  “I'm sure your landlord will work something out with you.”

  “That's not what I want.” She smacks my arm. I lick over the line of her collarbone.

  She grabs my head and forces it back, and I let her. “This is inappropriate workplace behavior,'' she intones, trying to sound stern even as her lips twitch.

  I lean back. “Baby, that’s the point.”

  She rolls her eyes.

  “I thought we could have lunch today,” I say. “I might be busy with work for the rest of the week.”

  She hops down and flips the front door sign to “closed for lunch” herself.

  I grin at her eagerness. We often eat lunch together. And by “eat lunch together,” I mean I feed her and then lay her down on the desk in the tiny room she calls an office and eat her pussy until her curls are mussed, and she’s half-drunk on endorphins.

  “Are you going on a mission?” she asks.

  “No, it's a local gig. Security for some company. Why?”

  She nibbles her bottom lip. “I'm worried about Tabitha. She hasn't answered her phone. It’s not unusual, but I thought she’d call on Christmas, and we still haven’t heard from her.”

  “She was traveling alone, right?” I could kick myself. We should have put a tracker on her car.

  “She’s a free spirit. She does sometimes go off the grid for periods, but I just have a funny feeling about it this time.”

  Adele's fear hits my senses with an icy blast. “Okay, beautiful. I'll get the guys looking for her stat.” I pull out my phone and tap a message to Channing right away. As I text, I tell Adele, “We’ll see if we can ping her phone and location first. Once we find her, we’ll drop a visit to make sure she’s okay.”

  Message sent, I tuck my phone back into my pocket. “We'll find her,” I promise, soothing a hand down her back until her fear dissipates in a cloud of lavender.

  “Thank you.” She leans in and waggles her brows. “Now show me what exactly you want for lunch. Whatever you're craving, I’m sure I can oblige.”

  Tabitha

  * * *

  I'm in a dark echoing space filled with a warm and smoky scent.

  My foot skids on something like gravel. Smooth and clinking. I reach out to steady myself and touch a wall of heated stone.

  There's a glow up ahead. I inch along the wall, sliding my hand over the heated wall tiles. I’m a cloud of a smoky scent, spiced like incense
. I’m wearing the blouse and skirt that no longer exists outside this dream–the outfit Gabriel cut off.

  My footing slips on the piles of stones. The gravel underfoot is round and clinking like…coins. With one hand still against the wall, I reach down and touch the coins. I sift a few between my fingers, sniffing their metallic scent. My next handful contains a few smooth baubles, smooth like polished stones. Precious gems?

  The wall...moves. The glow floods the space, illuminating the gold and jewels glittering at my feet.

  I'm face to face with a scaled head. Dark eyes as big as my head glitter like cut diamonds. Smoke curls from the creature’s nostrils. The gray plumes eddy around me.

  I would fall, but the scaled body of the dragon is coiled behind me, propping me up.

  But I'm not scared. This is, after all, a dream.

  “What is this place?” I don’t speak aloud because in a dream there is no speaking out loud. Communication is silent, my words leaving my head as soon as I think them.

  Mine. Treasure. The dragon speaks mind to mind. I understand perfectly.

  I stoop and collect another gold coin. This one is huge and heavy, ancient.

  Yours, the dragon tells me. Mate.

  Of course. It all makes sense. I’m comfortable and satisfied, resting with the dragon in its dark lair.

  The smoky, spicy scent is intenser now. It's like the concentrated scent that emanates from Gabriel's skin. It's not cologne like I first thought it was. But if we could bottle it, we’d make a fortune. Pure, liquid desire.

  The dragon lifts its head, turns it, and blows fire. Flames light the room, and when the dragon lowers its head again, a huge hanging lamp overhead remains lit. Shadows dance across the dragon and the cavernous space. Mountains of coins are piled around us, some several stories high. Each mound is studded with multicolored jewels. Emeralds and rubies blink red and green, like Christmas lights on a gold coin tree.

  The dragon’s scales are red and gold, the color of flickering flames. A scaled foot planted beside me has a gold glimmering cuff banding it.

  Oh no. I point to the dragon’s claw. He has you cuffed, too. I lift my wrist to show the dragon my cuffs, but in my dream my wrists are bare. I’m free.

  The dragon’s rumble shakes the mountains of treasure. A few coins tumble down, threatening an avalanche.

  Easy. I waver as the cave shudders with a dragon-made earthquake. Smoke curls around my ankles. The beast blows out of breath that blasts my skirt back.

  I'm sorry, buddy. I reach out and touch the scaled head. Reptiles are cold-blooded and dragons are too, but the scales are warm to my touch. The dragon has hidden fires stoked in its belly.

  It's okay, dragon friend. We're in this together now.

  The dragon blinks. And then…

  I'm sitting on a windowsill in the tower, my legs dangling over the castle wall. I’m not afraid of falling.

  I’m no longer wearing the peasant skirt–the one that Gabrielle sliced up before he tortured me with orgasms. I'm in a soft pair of joggers that billow a little bit like harem pants.

  I lower myself onto a waiting ledge. I don’t need to look; I know it'll be there for me. I’m on a stone parapet, a ledge between an inner and outer wall of the castle. The parapet continues along a rampart in a long, gentle decline all the way to the ground. In ancient times, the parapet was a place where soldiers could drop things on the heads of the enemy in a siege. For me, it’s an escape route.

  The wind whips my hair, tugging at the billowing folds of the harem pants. I walk along the castle wall, my hand skimming the merlons, sticking like jagged teeth from the outer wall. Just beyond the battlement is blue sky. In places, the lip of the outer wall has worn away, and there’s nothing between me and a sheer drop down several stories to a cliff face. But I feel pretty confident in the wideness of the ledge. Beyond the castle walls, the rampart is a steep, sloping path to the ground. I walk like a gymnast on a balance beam. There are some patches that are icy but my feet and steps are sure.

  The path leads straight down into the mouth of a cave. Smoke drifts from the dark maw of the cave in silver plumes. Like Aladdin’s cave of wonders.

  The dragon is waiting there. Its red and gold scales shimmer in the light. At times the scales reflect only the blue sky or stone, a camouflage that makes parts of him go invisible.

  Thank you, I tell the dragon. I turn and hike back up the way I came until I reach the open window and climb through into the castle. To my right is a suit of armor. Underneath the open window is a bench. I drop onto it.

  When I open my eyes, I’m back in my bedroom–the room I was in the first time I woke up in a castle. I’m in the bed alone. Gabriel didn't spend the night with me, but my body is sore from the pleasure he gave me.

  I stretch my arms over the covers. Gold cuffs glint on my wrists. Gabriel kept me cuffed just like the dragon in my dream. My dream...

  I gasp. It’s so obvious. How did I not understand it last night?

  Gabriel is not a wolf shifter, which I had assumed last night when he told me about Rafe and Deke and Lance.

  Gabriel is the dragon!

  There are dragons all over this place–how did I not put it together? I think about his strange eyes–the way the pupils change to vertical slits. I’d thought it was a trick of the light, but now I understand what I saw.

  My mind races back to our first meeting all those years ago. The water had been steaming hot, yet there were no known hot springs in the area. And then the wind storm… Could it have been kicked up by his wings?

  My dream is still with me, complete as a recent memory. It wasn’t just a dream. It was a vision. I haven’t had one in a long time.

  I used to have visions regularly when I was a kid. I’d blurt out what I was seeing without thinking. Until the day I asked my mom’s best friend why her husband liked to hug so many women without his clothes on.

  She started crying. “I knew he was cheating on me!”

  My mom was upset. After her friend left, I had to listen for hours to how uncomfortable I make people, how rude it is to look into their lives and minds without their permission. I was grounded all weekend and missed my friend’s birthday party.

  That's when I learned to keep my mouth shut about my visions. I couldn’t stop them from coming, but I ignored them. Eventually, I stopped having them so often.

  Seeing people’s auras, being sensitive to their energy is exhausting. That's why I don't hold down jobs for long. No matter how excited I am by a work environment when I start, the energy of everyone rubbing against each other tends to suffocate me. The petty squabbles, the turf wars, the annoyances, the resentments build up until they overwhelm me.

  That's why I need to get away from even my closest friends on a regular basis. I need to be alone in wide-open spaces, so I can let my energy expand. I usually keep it tucked in tight.

  This space is different. There’s a relaxing emptiness to the castle. My energy fills the long, echoing halls. The knot in my chest releases, like I’m able to exhale after years of holding my breath.

  Then it hits me. I’m the maiden from the stories. The one the dragon snatches and carries back to his lair. The one the knights try to save with their pitiful swords that are no match for the mighty fire-breathing dragon.

  Gabriel brought me here, and he has no intention of letting me leave.

  He thinks I’m his mate.

  While he doesn’t strike me as insane, I’m also certain he’s operating from a different set of rules than the ones I live by. You know, like giving a woman her own free will. Not flying her across the sea to a castle in Transylvania as a method of courtship.

  Then again, there are other methods of his style of courtship I didn’t mind so much last night…

  I roll out from under the covers and notice there's an outfit laid on the bed. A crop top and a pair of loose pants. Being a modern woman who prefers to dress herself, I leave the outfit and pick out one of my own from the wonderful closet
s. I have to admit, he did a good job shopping for me. Everything is my size and to my taste. He certainly put in the effort. I choose a slouchy plum sweater with a neckline that hangs open over one shoulder and a pair of expensive, butter-soft leggings.

  I head to the bathroom and clean myself up, finding everything I could possibly need there–brush, skincare, makeup, toothpaste, and floss. I run a brush through my hair.

  I'm ready with a hairpin to pick the lock but the massive bedroom door swings open to my touch. I step out into the hallway. I need to get the lay of the castle. More importantly, I need to get my hands on a phone, so I can call Rafe to come and rescue me.

  I start one way down the hall then change my mind and turn back, only to gasp.

  The tall, thin and painfully proper form of Buttons stands at the end of the hallway.

  “Are you looking for something, ma’am?”

  “No,” I sound breathless, so I square my shoulders and huff. “No,” I return with a lot more aplomb. My stomach growls so loud we both startle.

  Perfect timing. “Actually, breakfast would be good.” I can blame my wanderlust on my hunger.

  “Yes, of course,” he says. “I was coming to fetch you.”

  “Okay.” Interesting.

  “Where is Gabriel?”

  “Master Dieter had some business that required his attention, but he said to tell you he will join you for lunch.”

  Oh for heaven’s sake. Are we pretending I’m not a prisoner here?

  I test it. “Before breakfast, can you provide me with a phone? I need to get in touch with my mother. She will be worried about me.”

  Buttons has the grace to look chagrined. “I’m afraid you will have to speak to Master Dieter about that matter.”

  Right. That’s what I thought.

  “After breakfast, I thought I would also show you the library since the Master told me that you enjoyed it.”

  Okay, I’ll play the game. “That sounds nice.”

  When I glance over, the aura around his spare frame glows a welcoming pink and purple. Sunset colors. Buttons can’t be evil. People I’ve met who aren’t kind people have muddy auras with blacks and browns and grays. Sometimes there’s red around their heads signaling anger. Buttons’ aura shows a person with a big heart.