A Way to a Dragon’s Heart (9 page)

The proposal part of her speech took him by surprise, but otherwise Xander had heard the same refrain before and learned just as little from it. He hadn’t pushed at the time, but if ever there were an opportunity, this was it. “What things went wrong? You said he never cheated or lied to you, that he wasn’t controlling or abusive in any way. What went so badly when he proposed, of all things, that you haven’t even spoken in almost three years? What could he have possibly done?” His gaze dropped. “What are you afraid I’ll do? What happened?”

She reached down, grasped the hem of his t-shirt and pulled it over his head. Her hand touched the dragon tattoo on his chest. “This. This happened, Xander. He wanted this, and I’m not it. He proposed, I showed him my Dragon Form, he insulted me, and I reacted badly. He apologized and made it worse, and I reacted badly. When he wouldn’t stop talking, I showed him out of the apartment and may have neglected to open the door first.
He
reacted badly.”

On a list with a thousand choices, Xander would have never come up with that particular scenario. He couldn’t make sense of it. His mind simply refused to wrap around it. “I don’t understand, Kryssa. I watched you in the lake.” He touched his chest. “This isn’t a water dragon, but you didn’t look far off. If anything, the fact that you were moving in the water so fluidly at that size was more impressive than any bit of ink I’m wearing.”

“That’s my water form; not my Dragon Form.”

Xander took her face in his hands and gently turned her to face him. “I don’t care what Landon thought. He’s obviously an idiot that managed to hide it incredibly well until the crucial moment where it counted. He did you a favor by revealing it before you said yes. They say stupid breeds true, right? You got off lucky.” He touched his chest. “This is just a representation like the triple moon on my right thigh or the anointing dagger on my left one. It’s not something I’ve literally expected from anyone. You don’t have anything to live up to with this.”

Her eyes took on their Dragon Form. “Your heart just sped up,” she pointed out. “This little change means something. The image inked on your skin means something as well. If I don’t have to live up to it, then tell me what it means to you. What does it represent?”

“Actually—” He gave a short laugh. “—it represents the spirit of someone who would show the boyfriend that broke her trust right out of the apartment without necessarily opening the door first. It’s a symbol of strength, perseverance, and determination. It’s everything I want to live up to and everything you’ve shown from the day we met. Hell, you’ve surpassed it. I’m not sure my little ink dragon would have the balls to throw a client from a window with a billion dollar deal on the table. That’s a whole new level of self-assured.”

Kryssa laughed. “We still got that account for the record.”

“Of course you did; it’s you.” Xander hugged her close. “I’m sorry, Krys. I’m sorry that someone who mattered made you feel like you weren’t good enough. I’m sorry I needed to hear you explain it even though you don’t like to talk about it. I understand why it’s been hard, why the two of you never wanted to see each other again, and why you wouldn’t want to risk another break-up with that kind of finality still fresh in your mind. Whatever happens or doesn’t happen, I’m glad you’re here, for me, for Caleb, all of it. I’m glad you came and that you’re staying.”

Her arms were tight around him. “Thank you, Xander. Most people don’t understand why I avoid him.”

Xander’s jaw clenched. “Avoid him?” He pulled back to look at her. “He still tries to see you?”

“He did a great deal at first. We do run in the same circles, and his company has an account with us. Avoiding him proved no small feat. Fortunately most attempts dropped off after the first year when he relocated to Sydney, Australia. Now I only hear from him on birthdays, holidays or anniversaries.”

“Is he trying to get you to forgive him?” Xander asked. No other acceptable options existed for him.

Kryssa shrugged. “There were those emails and texts at first, yeah. Then there were more about getting back together.”

“Get back together! What?”

“Oh no.” She laughed and touched his face. “Calm down. I don’t think he could help it completely. Some of it is just Therian inclination. We’re drawn back to the familiarity of old relationships like humans and others, only rather than just memory, it’s scents and sounds and textures as well. All of it pulls us back.”

Xander nodded. “What was the rest? I mean you put him through a door. How much more did he need to take a hint?”

“Some folks get off on that. Landon turned out to be one of them. My internal Dragon-ness made up for my external disappointment.” She gazed off into nothing. “I didn’t want him to want me
despite
my form, but I understand how he thought I might. Some people would rather stay with what they know than face the possibility of getting hurt again by someone new.”

He leaned over to catch her eye. “You chose not to do either. Why’d you connect it to your sabbatical? I know it gave you time to be ready, but there has to be more to it.”

She laid her head on his shoulder. “It was the chance to travel. I decided that if I focused on work and got through to the sabbatical it would be enough time to get back to myself, to reconnect with that part of me that didn’t care what people thought. Then I’d be free to travel, to meet people from other backgrounds, to find someone without such a narrow definition of what it meant to be me. I’d find someone, or several someones to have a torrid affair with and see where it went, letting it go wherever it had to because its purpose wouldn’t be forever but to be the bridge to forever.”

“Can someone be both? The bridge and forever?”

Kryssa sat up and looked at him. “It depends on the person or the people involved.” She kissed him softly and smiled. “I’ve always seen you as someone’s forever, never someone’s bridge.”

“I can be a bridge if you want me to be,” he offered.

“No.” Kryssa shook her head. “You’re my best friend; that’s already a forever.” She brushed her lips along his. “But you can be right now.”

She kissed him and now felt pretty damn good.

Chapter Eleven

Xander kissed along the curve of Kryssa’s neck, his tongue tracing the swirling edge where skin became scales. She arched her back, and he took the invitation, delving lower to lick along the sensitive flesh until cloth impeded his progress. His fingers tugged at the ties of the shoulder straps. Kryssa stopped him.

“Sorry, too fast?” he asked.

She gave a soft, heated laugh. “No.” She reached down and pulled the tank top over her head. “It just takes forever to get the ties just right.”

He kissed her smile and supped at her mouth. They came apart panting. Kryssa leaned back and plucked a tumbler of water from the table. She tipped the smallest amount across her chest and shivered. Goose bumps pebbled along ginger and molasses skin just before hints of blue began to peak out. Another minute spill and triplicate rows of tiny scales erupted along her clavicle in full.

He leaned forward and licked away droplets along the beaded skin, smiling as she shuddered beneath his tongue. “So they’re all as sensitive as the ones on your back and neck.” He smiled against her skin. “Good.” He took the glass she offered and set the water out to his side, dipping his fingers into it and painting a trail his lips quickly followed.

Secondary scales bloomed to the surface in an arousal pattern. The undersides of her breasts, along her ribcage, below her navel, along the curve of her hips, all were bathed in delicate, tiny, iridescent jewels, three to five rows deep. Xander tried to taste them all, his mouth everywhere at once. He abandoned his oral cataloguing of the scales only long enough to take each taut nipple into his mouth. He suckled at the rigid cocoa-colored peaks until he knew them by heart and then sought out the sensitive scales once more.

He turned them and sat her on the edge of the couch to taste the row at the top of her hips. Once he’d exhausted the exploration cloth allowed, he tugged at the shorts to go further. A lift of her hips and he pulled them clear. His gaze followed the fabric and came back up to a sight that left him open-mouthed. He stared at the delicate velvety fleece across her vulva. “Feathered down.” His fingers stroked through the jet black fluff that took on dark blue streaks where it had grown damp.

The swollen lips of her sex were slick and heated, the first touch making her jump as he brushed the engorged node of flesh beating a seductive rhythm at the apex. There wouldn’t be a need to search the pleasure-center out; it had surged to meet him.

He wanted to press his tongue against it and find out if it beat to the same rhythm as the pulse jumping in his own throat. Instead he forced himself to go slower, first taking in her scent as he brushed his lips over the dusting of scales along the inside of her thighs. When her hips rose to meet his advance, Xander placed a kiss on the protruding head of her clit, and his tongue plunged through her folds.

She was salt and sweet and spice with a warmth that was sunlight on new skin. He nudged her legs farther apart, finally draping them over his shoulders to give him the access he desired. The more he had the more he wanted, his hands spreading her open as he tried to memorize her by mouth, tonguing and tasting his way over every centimeter.

Solitary dedication pulled a series of sounds from her that seared into his senses. A Pleasure Bond fell in place between them as her defenses lowered, and he felt the heavy build of orgasm moving through her limbs to overtake the tiny waves of release that already coursed through her. He marveled at the phantom sensations threatening to break his concentration and pushed further, wanting to feel all they could be.

Kryssa began to pull back toward clarity, and Xander chased the release, too close to let it slip away. Her body tensed, and he pushed her over the edge.

“Xander!”

A tint of concern and question colored his name from her lips, but it dissolved before he could make sense of it and then the sensations washed over him and any attempt at thought washed away. He shuddered with her, so caught up in the newness through the Bond he failed to realize it shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

Chapter Twelve

Pleasure splashed over her, viscid and sweet. The world burst into crystalline color spirals as each set of optic nerves spun her vision through the spectrum of light. His tongue never stopped, and he brought another wave behind the first as his fingers sank deep inside and worked the rigid nerve cluster with unerring accuracy.

There had been a thought forming, a surprise that had brought concern, but she couldn’t place it again. When Xander came up on the couch beside her and captured her mouth, she stopped trying.

Her arms slipped around his neck, and she poured herself into the kiss with greedy enthusiasm. She could almost taste his emotion mingled with that of food and Dragoness and pure Xander. He pulled her down over him, his hands playing over her spine and the high curve of her backside.

She broke the kiss to travel down his body, hitting every erogenous zone standing out in base relief to her Dragon-Sight. When she had him naked and in her mouth, the thought returned in the wake of a pleasure rush only possible with a Bond. She’d never experienced one the first time with a new lover, often not the first few times. It was new and unexpected enough that she had a moment of clarity to decide if she wanted to stop and question it or instead answer the fine tremble of Xander’s body and the almost desperate way he whispered her name. It didn’t even rate as a contest.

Kryssa released him from her throat and laved the delicate spheres incased in tight ridged flesh. Her hand stroked his length as she sucked the fragile skin into her mouth, pulling a new catalogue of sounds from him.

She moved to take him in her throat again, but he sat up. “I can’t touch you way down there,” he said and kissed her.

They moved over and around one another, each eager to touch and taste everywhere until they ended back on the floor with her straddled over him as they’d began. She ground against him until another set of small waves washed over her and brought her laughing.

“You’re driving me crazy.” He moaned. “But I love that sound.”

“I want to hear you.” She kissed him and lifted up, tilting her pelvis to guide him inside. She was wet and ready but not open, and they entered into a dance of push and retreat, coaxing her body to take him all in.

Strong, sure hands took her hips once he was hilted within her. “I’m even hardier than I look,” he promised. “Don’t hold back.”

Kryssa took him at his word, and the world sprang to life in Dragon Scope for both of them across the Bond. The sound of their bodies and their pleasure given voice joined the pounding rain, the lilting music and the crackling from the fireplace to form a blissful symphony. She rode his body, caught in each sensation and sonance, drinking it in until she couldn’t remember a time when they hadn’t been joined together. That such a thing could end caught her by surprise. The release took her off guard, the cry raw and real, yet still eloquent in its summary of their efforts.

She melted against him, floating in the afterspace, linked to Xander as he basked in his own peaceful perfection. Time ceased to be measured in anything but heartbeats and breaths as they came back to themselves by degrees. Kryssa slipped away first and sat stroking Xander’s cheek when his eyes opened.

“Why’d you leave?” he asked, caressing her hips with a smile.

“I wanted to see your face,” she confessed. When Xander laughed, she gave him a confused smile. “What did I say?”

Xander shook his head. “No, it was perfect. You said something perfect.” He kissed her and laid his head back on the couch. “If that’s your version of just right now, I’ll need a lot of practice to be up to forever.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself.” She brushed a strand of hair from his temple. “I think you’ll do just fine. But we can practice all you want.”

“It’s good, right?” He paused and seemed unsure. “That you see me as someone’s forever?”

It was a dangerous question, but with their bodies still joined and echoes of his pleasure still moving through her, she answered. “Yes, it’s good.”

“You said someone could be a bridge and still be forever depending on the person. If not me, then who do you see as both? Who would be your bridge?”

Kryssa stared out the open patio door. “Caleb,” she answered.