“I am hungry. I will eat breakfast now, and then you must contact Aisling to ask her why Jim is in Sweden without its memory and bound to you.”
I put my hands on my hips, blocking the exit. “First, you answer questions. Then if you ask nicely, I may make some food. But only if you—Hey!”
He put both hands around my waist and heaved upward. I rose a couple of inches, but when I kicked my legs out in protest, he dropped me like a hot potato. I thought at first that I must have connected with him, but since he didn’t double over clutching whatever I had kicked, I decided I was mistaken.
Plus there was the expression of befuddlement on his face. “What did you just do?” he demanded to know, standing so close to me I could feel his breath on my face. Normally, I’m very strict about personal space and don’t like people puffing on me, but Kostya somehow managed to breach the perimeter of my safety zone without setting off any of my mental alarms.
In fact, I had just the opposite reaction. I wanted very much to smoosh myself up against him. I told my body to knock it off and focused on what was important. “Did I kick you? I didn’t think I made contact, but if I did, you deserve it for trying to pick me up and move me so you could walk through the door before I’m done talking to you.”
“You did something,” he said, frowning down at me. Hesitantly, as if he was afraid of what would happen, he put both hands on my arms. “One moment you were fine, and the next it was as if you weighed a ton.”
I pinched his side. “That is so rude! I know I’m not one of those anorexic skinny models, and I might need to lose a few pounds—okay, maybe twenty pounds—but that doesn’t mean that you can make cracks like that. Men are supposed to admire real-sized women! Get with the program.”
“Your body shape and size pleases me,” he said, but his frown was still in place as his gaze zipped up and down my front. “I would not want you to starve yourself thinner. It would not suit you. That was not, however, what I meant when I said that you did something.” His eyes narrowed. “Did you cast a spell? You do not appear to have that ability, but it could be that the blow to my head has somewhat confused me, and I am unable to see you as you really are.”
“What sort of a crack is that? I am exactly what I am—there is no seeing-me-as-I-really-am business. And, no, I did not cast a spell. I’m not a witch!”
“You did something, though,” he insisted. “It was as if you did not wish to be picked up, and you blocked me doing so. Look, I will try again.”
His hands slid down to my waist, and I braced myself, my hands on his arms. I did not want him to move me away from the door—I had questions, and he had answers, and I’d be damned if I let him get away without satisfying at least part of my curiosity.
He grunted in his attempt to lift me.
“You’re just doing that on purpose,” I accused. “Despite that very nice comment about how I shouldn’t go after the twenty pounds of flab that comes from being stuck in a nuthouse with little to do but read, you’re doing passive-aggressive shit, and I don’t like it.”
He released my waist, his expression turning thoughtful. I tried hard to resist the urge to brush back a lock of hair that had fallen forward on his forehead, but it was too much for me. I reached up and pushed it back. He jerked backward as if I had struck him.
I thought at first it was because I had touched him, but he grabbed my hand and twisted it, saying, “The ring!”
“Huh? Oh, that.”
“Where did you get it?” He all but shook my hand at me, which struck me as an amusing thing to do.
“It was given to me by a guy I dated. Well, not really given to me. I mean, he handed it to me to look at, but then he was killed, and later came back from the dead, but by then I was taken away to the home for the deranged, so I never got to give it back to him. It was the same guy who pointed you out to me. Except there was a second dragon, too.”
“That was Anton. The red dragons killed him shortly thereafter. Who is this man who gave you the ring? You said his name was Terrill?”
I twisted the ring around my finger. To be honest, I’d forgotten that I’d even put it on the day before, but the idea that it could keep Kostya from picking me up—twenty extra pounds aside—was ludicrous. “Terrin.”
“I do not know him. Who was he? Why did he give you the ring? Why did he not demand it returned?”
“He was just a guy I met at the GothFaire. At least I thought he was just a guy. Now I realize that there was more to him, too, than I thought. But why all the questions? It’s just a ring. Yeah, Terrin said it was magic, but it doesn’t do anything.”
Kostya’s range of expressions ran from dark and brooding to slightly amused. “It is not just a ring. It is the very reason that I am in this area and also why I was almost killed and likely why Jim is here.”
“You’re kidding, right?” A memory struck me, one of Terrin telling me that the dragons sought the ring for some reason, but I couldn’t quite remember what it was.
Kostya’s lips thinned. “Do I strike you as if I am joking?”
“Well…”
He adopted an outraged expression. I had to give it to him, he did outraged well, although it seemed to strike my funny bone more than make me feel apologetic for offending him.
“I do not laugh. I do not smile. I see no enjoyment in kidding, intentional or otherwise. I am Konstantin Nikolai Fekete, wyvern of the black dragons! I have been tortured for many decades and left to die a slow and lingering death. I survived the wholesale destruction of my sept and had a deranged naiad force me to declare her a mate before the entire weyr only to later run off with a minor deity, the embarrassment of which would have killed a lesser dragon!”
I did laugh at that. “Oh, so that’s why you’re so gun-shy of women? Got dumped by someone who embarrassed you, huh? Weyr… I’ve heard that word before, although I don’t remember what it means, or naiad, for that matter. It sounds like something out of Greek mythology. Isn’t a wyvern a two-legged dragon?”
“Yes. It is also the name of the leader of a dragon sept. Answer my question about the ring.”
“Tell you what, Mr. Bossy Pants, we’ll play you answer one, then I’ll answer one, okay? You go first. How did you end up on the beach outside my house?”
“Why do you have the ring?”
“Why would someone leave you to die a slow and lingering death? Wait, was it the chick who dumped you?”
He ignored my question. “How long have you had it? Did you use its powers to revive me?”
“What did you mean that you were almost killed because of the ring? It’s been locked away with my possessions for two years, and I only just put it on last night, before I went to the GothFaire. Man alive, that was just last night, wasn’t it? It seems like weeks ago.” I shook my head and held up my hand when Kostya opened his mouth, obviously about to ask yet another question. “This is getting us nowhere. Let’s do this step-by-step. Why were you almost dead on my beach?”
“You are stubborn enough to be a dragon,” Kostya surprised me by saying. The warm, admiring look in his eyes was just as surprising. “That pleases me. I dislike women who pester me—the naiad was forever challenging everything I said—and unlike her, you present your opinion without whining. Nor are you cowed by your circumstances. This is good.”
“I’m so happy you approve,” I said with a little laugh, half annoyed and half flattered by his no-nonsense appraisal of my personality. I had to admit, though, it was refreshing to find a man who didn’t form an opinion on me based on the color of my skin. Kostya was… different. He was brusque and arrogant, but underneath that, I sensed a need in him that resonated with something deep in me.
It was as if he had a hard exterior shell that protected his sensitive inner self. I envied him that shell.
He gave a sharp nod. “If I were to ever take a woman again, which I will not because after Cyrene, I made a sacred oath that no other woman would ever tempt me, but if I were to be tempted, I
would allow you to act out all of your lustful desires upon me.”
I addressed the most important thing in his outrageous statement. “I do not have lustful desires about you!”
“You kissed me. You enjoyed it. And you like touching my chest and are pleased with my ass.”
“You kissed me, and chest-touching and ass-looking are totally allowable, especially when the parts in question are naked,” I said with much dignity.
He leaned forward so that his chest rubbed against my breasts. A little moan escaped me as my body seemed suddenly to come alight. He tipped his head down, the strand of hair falling down over his forehead again, this time brushing against my face. It sent shivers down my spine, shivers that soon faded into fire when he murmured, “You are too enticing for your own good, mortal. There is something about you that speaks to me…”
That was when his lips touched mine, and his tongue swept along them, causing me to gasp with the heat of his body that was suddenly pressing me against the wall. He caught the gasp in his mouth, his hands setting my hips on fire when he grasped them, an inferno of desire sweeping through me and catching me wholly off guard.
I swear that the kiss was so hot—Kostya was so hot—that perspiration prickled on my forehead as his tongue slowly and thoroughly explored my mouth. I’ve never been one to particularly enjoy such things, but apparently I just hadn’t yet properly experienced exactly what a tongue could do. Kostya’s tongue seemed different, more sensual and… for lack of a descriptive word, hot. Red-hot. Think the spiciest of cinnamon candies that burns almost to the point of pain, but not quite over the line.
It wasn’t until he snapped his head back, asking, “What is that?” that I heard the sound.
A shrill BEEP BEEP BEEP was echoing through the house.
“That’s… holy hellballs, it’s the smoke detector. Something is on fire. It’s my room! Ack! And me! I’m on fire!”
I stared in utter horror at my feet, which were fully engulfed in flames. Kostya wasn’t at all touched by the fire, and although there were little patches of it around the bedroom, I stood frozen with fear until Kostya, with an odd look at me, flicked his fingers. The fire circling my feet died down.
He leaned forward and sniffed the air next to my head.
“What the hell?” I asked, jerking away, trying to get my mind to stop shrieking while at the same time well aware of the fact that I didn’t feel anything in my feet. Clearly, they had been burned to nothing. “What are you doing smelling my hair at a time like this?”
“I’m not smelling your hair, although you have a nice scent overall. Not chemical, like many mortals who use perfume. I like that. I was smelling you to see if you had any dragon blood that I did not ascertain earlier. You appear wholly mortal, however.”
“Sweet salted saltines!” I screamed, ignoring his babble for what was important. I grabbed his shirt and tried to shake him to drive home the horror of the moment. “My feet are gone! I don’t feel anything in them—they’re burned to a crisp. Aieee!” I stopped shaking him and instead tried to climb him like he was a ladder, but of course, you can’t climb a ladder if your feet have been burned away.
He clicked his tongue and pried me off his chest. I tried to punch him, which just resulted in me stumbling backward until I collapsed on the bed. “Now you are being hysterical. Cease such emotional outbursts. This smoke detector noise irritates me. Where is it originating?”
I was so incensed by the fact that he didn’t even take the trouble to notice that I no longer had feet—I was afraid to look down and see how bad they were, since the sight of blackened, burned stumps would no doubt snap what was left of the sane part of my mind—that I focused on him rather than the fact that I wasn’t actually in any sort of pain. I jumped to my feet-stumps and stomped over to him, poking him in the chest while saying, “How dare you!”
He had the gall to look surprised. “How dare I do what?”
“Make that annoyed noise! No, don’t give me that look like I’m crazy—you proved to me that I’m not and I never was, and despite your attempts, I refuse to let you drive me insane. That tsking thing you just did. That is the sort of noise you make when you discover you’re in a bathroom stall with no toilet paper, or that you’ve run out of stamps, or that someone drank the last of the milk and didn’t tell you. That is not the appropriate response when someone has had their feet burned off!”
He looked pointedly down at my feet. “Do you have some sort of anti-derangement medication? If so, you might wish to take it.”
I walloped him on the arm. “How dare you!”
“You already said that,” he pointed out.
“And I’ll say it a third time if I like! How dare you cast slurs about my mental stability when you know full well that you being a dragon and Jim being a talking demon dog means… Hey.” During the middle of my (wholly righteous) rant, I had glanced down to take in what remained of my feet, but there weren’t any remains to notice. They were perfectly normal. Two feet, all ten toes present and accounted for, adorned with pink toenail polish and stuffed into my favorite pair of sandals. There was nary a singed mark to be seen, let alone a stump, burned or otherwise. “Why are my feet okay? They were on fire.”
“That was my dragon fire. Somehow you managed to harness it.” He gave me another one of those speculative looks before tsking again. “No, it is worthless to question how you accessed my fire. You are not a mate, and even if you were, I do not want you.”
“Oh!” I gasped.
He made a sharp gesture of dismissal. “Will you make that machine cease the noise? It is giving me a headache.”
“For a man who doesn’t want me, you sure end up kissing me a lot,” I snapped, casting yet another glance at my feet before looking around the room. There was no fire to be seen, and only the faintest black smudge on the floor where the little pools of flames had been. “But I’m going to let your overbearing arrogance—”
“I am not arrogant.”
“—and self-centered egotism—”
“I am a wyvern! The welfare of my sept falls on my shoulders.”
“—go, because this fire thing just freaks the bejebus out of me. Wait a minute—dragon fire? That’s a thing? A real thing?”
“Dragons control their fire, yes,” he said, looking impatient.
“I object to that,” I said, pointing at his face. “You can’t give me that impatient, ‘How did you not know that dragons have fire, let alone control it’ look when that’s so out of the bounds of normalcy that it never even struck me as possible. Well, to be true, the same can be said about dragons, but still! You didn’t tell me that the whole fire-breathing dragon thing was real.”
“You are an odd woman,” he said thoughtfully.
“Odd good, or odd bad?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“I have not yet come to a decision. Dragon fire is different from mortal fires. It does not generate as much smoke, and dragons and their mates are not harmed by it. To us, it merely feels… warm.”
“That’s it exactly,” I said, thinking about how my feet felt when they were on fire. “Warm and tingly. Where did the rest of the fire go?”
He was still giving me a speculative look, but that ended when he shook his head and said softly to himself, “No. It is fine for Drake, but I swore never again would I bind myself to a woman. What? As soon as I realized your room was alight, I put out the flames, of course.”
“There’s no ‘of course’ about it. You didn’t move,” I said, wanting to crawl back into bed and pretend the last twenty-four hours hadn’t occurred.
Except, my mind pointed out, that would mean Kostya never kissed me. Twice. And despite his protests that he didn’t want me, and my own common sense that told me to hook up with a man who had a dragon side was nothing short of folly, I very much enjoyed those kisses.
Once again, I sensed a need in him that called to me to give him succor. His was a soul in unrest, and as someone who’d lived through her own hel
lish nightmare, I felt a kinship that threatened to blossom into something warm and fuzzy.
And if that wasn’t the most ridiculous thought I’d ever had, I don’t know what was.
“I did not need to move. Why are you stalling?”
“It’s called trying to wrap my poor, beleaguered brain around something like dragons and fire, not stalling. Oh, all right. I admit that sound is annoying.” I opened the bedroom door and went into the hallway, where the nearest smoke detector was screeching away.
The hallway was filled with smoke.
“I thought you said—” That was all I got out before Kostya, swearing profanely, grabbed me by the waist and tossed me over his shoulder. He raced down the hall, the breath knocked out of me sufficiently to leave me speechless for about five seconds. When he ran across the living room, I stopped trying to squirm out of his grasp.
The house was on fire, seriously on fire, and I knew without him saying a word that this was no dragon fire that he’d lost control of—smoke, thick and choking, boiled around the room while the kitchen walls were fully engulfed. So was the door to the beach. Kostya spun around and bolted back down the hallway to my bedroom, not stopping even when I squawked to be let down. He simply shifted his weight, smashed one foot through my bedroom window, kicked out the glass shards, and flung me through the gaping hole.
I fully expected to hit the dry, scraggly grass outside my bedroom, but instead I hit something hard that fell backward under my weight. I screamed, thrashing my arms and legs in an attempt to gain purchase on whatever it was, my hair and burning eyes blinding me for a few seconds. Voices shouted nearby, and hard, grasping hands suddenly clawed at me, jerking me to the side.
I kicked out and had the satisfaction of hearing the grunt of pain in response. Just as Kostya leaped out of the window after me, I managed to roll to the side and get to my knees.
The man—and it was a man I’d been flung onto—grappled with Kostya in the very best action-movie manner. Kostya snarled and suddenly shifted into the shape a large, angry black dragon. I gawked when the other man did likewise—only his black was tinged with a dusky red color, with little yellow flecks that dotted his torso.