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  “What was that?” she asked in surprise, jerking her head slightly to one side. “I saw a light somewhere behind you. Do that again!”

  The breath he’d just exhaled had not come from this form, which didn’t breathe so much as sense, because it was his breath. When he’d let out that long sigh, the breath had come from his static form in the back of the room, on the far end of the pool. He emitted another breath and watched the dark light of it illuminate his long, shiny snout and brows, and the horned crown of his head where it rested in slumber along the pair of huge foreclaws. Rather than let the breath recede into his lungs again, he let it continue, pushing the magic residue back over his sleeping body until it settled on the entire surface of his skin leaving him glowing as though in phantom moonlight.

  “Is that you?” Hallie asked, awe-struck. She walked faster toward him. Too fast in the darkness.

  “Wait, stop!” he called out, nearly too late to keep her stepping headlong into the pool.

  “What? I can’t believe you think you’re worse at attracting humans. Can you see how beautiful you are? And that stunt you pulled earlier. Very forward way to seduce a woman, sneaking into her dreams like that. But you know what? It worked on me.”

  “I didn’t… what do you mean it worked?”

  “Listen, dummy, I disagree with your approach but that doesn’t mean I didn’t absolutely love what you were doing. I’m doing this because I choose to. Because I want to. Consider me an adventurous spirit. And because whatever magic is in the air—water—whatever—in this temple is making me the horniest I’ve ever been in my life. And trust me, that’s saying something.”

  “Sweet Mother, I don’t know if I’m ready for women in this century,” Kol muttered.

  “So, you’ll adapt.” He could hear the smile in her voice and relief washed over him. “Now tell me why you made me stop.”

  “You’re about to get very wet if you don’t.”

  She let out a throaty little laugh. “I thought that was the plan. Get me hot and bothered, then have your way with me? It’s a little late for that.”

  Kol smiled to himself. She had a point, and she also had a wicked sense of humor. The idea that he could have a woman so self-assured that might still willingly submit to him thrilled him. And he thought he might just play along a little bit to see how she responded.

  “Well,” he said, lowering his voice, “You should take off your clothes before you take another step.”

  Chapter Seven

  Hallie’s heartbeat raced in spite of her cocksure attitude. Strange as it was, getting naked in the dark wasn’t exactly her style. She liked having everything out in the open, knowing what to expect, and being able to trust her lovers implicitly.

  But it wasn’t her lover that had betrayed her, was it? David had been perfect until she’d run from him. A perfect life. A perfect lover. Rich and beautiful. But a man who insisted she follow his rules. She’d been on board for love. Until shit happened.

  How, she still wasn’t sure. She’d gotten pregnant in spite of taking precautions. Intolerant of mistakes, David had blamed it all on her. So she’d left.

  Somewhere down the road he apparently had second thoughts. When he learned she planned to keep the baby, he came after her. She’d never seen how brutal he could be until he was.

  She’d seen the signs before. But the level of illumination in a room didn’t matter at all when you had blinders on.

  Now here she was, standing in the dark, listening to a perfect stranger—someone not even human—ask her to trust him enough to take off her clothes. And like a fool, she was going to.

  She squatted down and reached out a tentative hand before her, searching. The surface of the water was barely six inches in front of her, and warm. He hadn’t lied about that, but he had lied.

  “Why did you lie to me?” she asked, pulling her tank top off over her head. “If you want me to trust you so badly, tell me that.”

  He remained quiet, she guessed he was trying to figure out what lie he had told. Oh, God, she hoped there weren’t more than the one. When he spoke, his voice seemed a little more distant than before, like he’d retreated to the far end of the room.

  “I think I wanted to believe it, to believe I could make you mine simply by commanding it. I’m not as good as the others at making humans believe what I tell them.”

  “I believed everything else you told me. Was any of that a lie?”

  “No.”

  She stood and shimmied out of her shorts and panties in the dark, then pulled the clip out of her hair, letting the silky waves fall to her shoulders.

  “Are you going in with me?”

  “I can’t. Not yet, anyway. Just follow my voice.”

  “Did you consider just, you know… asking? Unless you mean you don’t really want me in the first place, in which case, why bother?”

  Hallie fumbled back down in the dark to grip the edge of the pool. She sat on the smooth stone and slipped her feet into the warm water. The residual ache from her journey immediately began to dissipate from her sore calves. She slipped the rest of the way into the warm depths, her feet coming to rest on the floor of the pool with the water just covering her breasts. She stood there, staring into the blackness and hoping to catch just a glimpse of him or anything that would let her know where to go. All she had so far was the hard stone at her back and the warm water surrounding her.

  Her heart raced at the unknown, but so far nothing about this entire encounter had felt the least bit sinister. In spite of the utter lack of visibility, she had the strongest impression of a man trapped and lonely, and very reluctant to ask for what he really needed.

  But she decided she wanted him, not this shadowy manifestation he’d been communicating with, and she understood from Kris’s explanation that there was only one way to get to him. She took a deep breath, positioned herself in the direction she believed he rested, then threw caution to the wind.

  She stretched out her arms and dove beneath the water, eyes closed and aiming forward as surely as if the pool had been lit and she could see the markers on the opposite wall. She only had the sense of the distance from the soft glow on the sleeping dragon at the far end. Her Shadow had to be there somewhere, too.

  The smooth stone of the pool’s wall met her fingertips and she grabbed on and stood, grateful that the pool seemed to have a uniform depth. She definitely didn’t feel like treading water.

  His massive, sleeping shape rested peacefully a few feet from the edge of the pool. She hoisted herself out. Her nipples immediately prickled slightly in the cooler air and gooseflesh rose on her skin.

  She sat for a moment at the edge of the pool catching her breath. In spite of the stillness around her, she could feel the pulse of life from the large, static form behind her. That was him. She cut her eyes to the side and caught a glimpse of a massive thigh and claw. To the other side she saw a resting snout, the graceful introduction to a head the size of one of the black leather seats in David’s Maserati. But prettier and still glowing faintly with the ethereal light he’d cast on its surface. God, he had horns. Big, coiling things that shot out from his brows.

  “This is you?”

  “It is.”

  “I just have to be in contact right?” she asked in a whisper, sure he was close enough to hear.

  “Yes.” The rough voice was right against her ear. “Just touch me, I’ll do the rest.” She could sense the warmth of his body nearby, but he still had yet to touch her again.

  “I can make myself come, if you don’t want to do it.”

  The sensation of soft fingertips grazed over her hip and down her ass. “I want you. When you wake me up, I’ll want you even more.”

  “I want you, too,” she whispered. “I just haven’t decided yet whether I can trust you. Call it an overabundance of caution.”

  “What is it you need me to say?”

  Too many different things sprang into her mind at once, but none of them had any bearing on w
hat really worried her. She dug her fingernails into the smooth scales of the large, jade shape in front of her. A hesitant touch grazed her shoulder and she leaned into it. The warm shape of him gave slightly, like sinking into a hammock, then grew even more solid. Heavy arms wrapped around her and held her.

  “Oh, God, if you even knew. I need you to tell me you’ll never betray me. I’m afraid of falling in love and you never returning it. If you believe we belong together, I need assurance that you mean it. And if…” What she had on the tip of her tongue was the hardest thing to admit, but it was the reason she had run to begin with, and kept running. “If we do belong together, I want a family. But under no circumstances otherwise will I ever let myself get pregnant again.”

  “Again? You have a child already?”

  “No,” she whispered. “I wasn’t ready when it happened before. He was a good man, but the idea of my pregnancy changed him. I betrayed his trust, but he betrayed mine. He chased me, threatened me.”

  Her Shadow’s voice sounded gritty with anger and he held her tighter. “You didn’t fight him?”

  “I trusted him. It was his child, too. But soon I was just the vessel for the baby and his feelings for me didn’t matter.”

  Hallie turned in the invisible arms and looked imploringly into the shadows before her, wishing she knew where his face was.

  “Up here,” he said. Warm fingertips touched her chin, tilting her head up higher.

  “I wish I could see you,” she said.

  “How’s this?” The air shifted slightly in front of her, and the faintest outline of a face shimmered, then disappeared, but it lingered long enough for her to see the concerned press of a pair of lovely lips and furrowed brows in a strong, open, and honest face.

  “Better,” she said with a small smile.

  “What did you do after that?” he asked.

  “The only think I could think of. I ran. I thought I’d left him behind. Then he found me. So I ran again. But he kept coming. Accused me of robbing him of love and family. He offered money. Insisted I come back and be a family, but I couldn’t have a child with him. Not after what he’d turned into.”

  “And the child?”

  “I miscarried. After that, I wanted to get as far away from it as possible. But I found Erika, and the others. And now you.”

  His arms shifted, one large hand caressing the small of her back. Warm lips pressed against her forehead.

  “I will never betray you, I will love you forever, and if we didn’t belong together, another woman would be standing here in my arms right now. Also, it’s against my nature to lie to someone I love.”

  Something in his voice carried a hint of despair.

  “You’re not talking about me when you say that, are you?”

  “I’m talking about you, and one other who I lost. It was a long time ago. She’s gone now.”

  Hallie didn’t miss the hint of equivocation in his voice. She pinched his naked, ethereal backside hard enough for her fingers to meet through his foggy flesh. He jerked against her.

  “Ow!”

  “You are a lousy liar, or at least terrible at hiding things you’d rather not say. Spill it or I’m diving back in that pool and leaving. I don’t care if I end up rotting away in some dark corner. You want me, you tell me everything.”

  “Sweet Mother. Alright! I was in love with a human woman before I came here. I broke the rules and lost her.”

  “So dragons have rules, huh? Which one did you break?”

  “The one that said we must mark a human if they find out our true nature. It guarantees their loyalty, among other things.” The sulky tone made her wonder a few things.

  “How old are you?”

  “Five hundred and twenty five.”

  “And you’ve been stuck here for all but twenty five of those years. No wonder you’re such a broody mess. Five hundred years and you still haven’t gotten over her.”

  “It isn’t about her. You don’t understand, it means I have to mark you. They took her away because I failed to do what was expected… required. But I hate that rule.”

  “So you have to mark me, so what? I saw the others get marked in Corey’s video. That didn’t look so bad. Looked pretty damn hot, if you ask me.”

  “This man you were running from, did he ever give you anything… permanent?”

  “Just the determination to avoid assholes who want to treat me like a vessel for their offspring.”

  “That’s what it would signify if I do it. You would be branded like livestock. Except it would be more than that. It would tie you to me like a contract.”

  “Oh,” she said, realizing suddenly two things. First, that his cock had just gotten epically stiffer against her stomach at the talk of marking her, and second, that his words were exactly counter to the signals his invisible body was throwing off.

  “You want it, deep down. So where’s the conflict?”

  His forehead rested on her shoulder and he groaned. “I don’t believe in treating humans like … breeding stock. But yes, it’s instinctual. I have to fight the urge.”

  Was she crazy that the idea turned her on incredibly?

  “Come here,” she said. She backed up, pulling him with her until the wall of the stone dragon behind her hit the flesh of her ass. She reached up and tangled her fingers into the short hair at the back of his neck, pulling him into a kiss. He sank against her, as hard and solid as flesh now, his tongue delving deeper at her invitation. He tasted faintly of juniper and something a little salty. Would he have the same flavor in his true form? Oh, God, did she want to find out how he tasted—every inch of him.

  “Sweet Mother, women are confusing now,” he said when she came up for breath.

  “How in the world do you have short hair after five hundred years?” She raked her fingernails along his scalp when he bent to her breast, sucking deftly on one nipple, flicking it delicately with his tongue and pulling at it with his lips.

  “Dragon magic,” he whispered, brushing lips against her other nipple and pushing one hand down between her thighs. “You’re even wetter than you were before. How are you so wet?”

  “Dragon magic,” she said with a gasp when he thrust a pair of fingers deep inside. “What else can you do with it besides make me beg you to fuck me? Oh, God, whatever you’re doing, do it harder.”

  He laughed against her nipple. “Give it to me, love, so I can have you for real. Give me your Nirvana.”

  He relentlessly fucked her with both fingers. He found her sweet spot and now rubbed at it while he thumbed her clit. She reached for his cock, the beautiful thick length that she’d wished for when he woke her up earlier. She wanted him to fuck her now, but knew this little taste was just an appetizer. Soon she’d have the genuine article, not a facsimile.

  The mountain of dragon flesh behind her began to quiver when her orgasm began. The pleasure rocketed through her so hard she wasn’t sure if it was the earth moving under her feet or if she’d merely lost balance from the effect of him. Soon it became clear he was no longer holding her up from the front, his fingers were no longer sunk deep in her pussy, but something altogether bigger had gripped her from behind, then lifted her, cradling her gently in a pair of massive talons.

  A massive, shiny black head peered down at her, tilted to one side. As her spasms subsided, she abstractly thought that if David ever found her again, he might be in danger of being eaten.

  “That’s it, Hallie,” her dragon’s deep voice reverberated off the walls in the room. “I’m going to fuck you so hard we wake the entire temple without the Queen’s help. But first, please tell me you want my mark. Tell me you’ll have me.”

  The desperation in his tone contradicted the majestic ebony beast that held her. In that moment she understood it wouldn’t be she who was bound to him, but the other way around. He would be in thrall to her. She was as sure of it as she was that she would never have to run from him.

  “Do it now, but first tell me who you are.
I need to know the name of the dragon I’m essentially marrying.”

  Chapter Eight

  “She said yes!” Kol vibrated with the excitement of her answer, unable to resist sending the thought out to all the others who could hear. Now he would be able to have her without betraying his brethren, forcing them into another long sleep.

  “I heard her, Shadow,” Kris sent the thought from somewhere in the darkness at the other end of the room. “Don’t leave me hanging, finish the final step. It’s MY turn next.”

  “Let me savor this moment. I know you’re eager, but trust me, I think we’ll both want time to recover so we can enjoy being a part of the Nexus. As will the others. And you can’t begin without all of us.”

  “Kol,” he said, regaining his senses and gazing down at the beautiful woman in his arms. “My name is Kol. This may sting a bit.”

  Hallie arched her back, thrusting her breasts up to him. Kol nuzzled them with his long snout and she laughed. “That tickles.”

  “Sorry, I’m not used to staying in this form for very long. The world has always been a little too small for me.”

  With a long, forked black tongue, he traced the pattern of the mark between her breasts: a medallion-shaped crest with a coiled dragon within—black to represent his color. She hissed in response to the sting and he quickly exhaled a steamy breath to soothe her skin. The magic of their bond wasn’t instant, but within the span of a heartbeat his craving for possession dissipated, replaced only with the need to pleasure her.

  Unable to resist the allure of her twin, pink-tipped mounds he darted his tongue out to taste her.

  She sighed and arched further, grabbing onto him and pressing her mouth against the side of his, her breast closer to his tongue.

  “Go lower,” she whispered.

  He complied, flicking his tongue along the smooth skin of her stomach. Her hips twitched and she spread her legs for him when he reached the fringed mound of her sex. Slowly and delicately he parted her slick lips with the forked tip of his tongue. She tasted of earth and rain and sky. He delved deeper, tasting, teasing, enjoying how her juices flowed over his tongue the deeper he went.