Breathing Fire (Heretic Daughters) (20 page)

Finally, I met his stare.
 
It hurt my chest just to look at him.
 
The pain was sharp and enduring.
   
He was the only thing in my life I’d ever wanted badly enough that it made me shake like an addict.

I had never been like him.
 
His absolute faith in our love, in our ability to be together, in spite of the odds, had floored me.
 
And I had stolen it from him.
 
And from myself.
 
In the cruelest way that I could think of.

I’d never just been with him, thinking it would last forever.
 
I’d always known the clock was ticking on our affair.
 
My sense of borrowed time had always been acute.
 
But it still made me ache to know I’d never have him like that again.
 
A brief taste of his body only made it harder to bear the permanent loss of his love.
 
Still, I couldn’t seem to stop myself from coming back for more.

“Maybe,” I said vaguely.
 
“We can always just blame our libidos.”

“I’ve grown rather accustomed to blaming you,” he said with a rare combination of bitterness and humor.
 

A corner of my mouth lifted slightly.
 
I shrugged.
 
“Join the club.”

He moved toward me, and that was all it took to sweep me back in.
 

He backed me deliberately into the wall, pressing hard against me until I gasped from the sheer, solid contact.
 
“Ask me for it,” Dom growled at me, and it was clearly an order.
 
He was trying to get a reaction, I thought.
 
I wasn’t in the mood to balk at his methods, though.
 

I ripped his shirt open.
 
My hand slid down his chest and directly to his heavy erection.
 
I gripped him with just the right amount of pressure that I knew he would love.
 
“Please, Arch, may I have this?” I asked without a hint of mirth.
 

He answered by gripping my hair and pulling down until I went to my knees.
 
I freed him from his pants and he buried both hands in my hair, pulling me towards his length.
 
I obliged eagerly, taking him into my mouth with wet lips pulled taut over my teeth.
 
I sucked him hard, drawing a groan out of him that I knew he was reluctant to give.
 
I began the familiar rhythm that I knew he wanted, and that I myself relished.
 
I used my hands at his base in a wet, twisting motion, and took him deep into my throat.
 
He held my head and pushed into me. I felt the very air around us changing when he was close to release.
 
He climaxed deep in my throat with a muffled groan, and I swallowed.
 
I pulled back to look up at him, licking my lips.
 
He put a hand on the wall, leaning heavily against it for a moment, but he’d always been quick to recover.
 

He lifted me back up to stand not even a minute later.
 
And this time it was him that knelt, pulling down my tiny lycra boy shorts and my lacy thong in one efficient movement.
 
He buried his face against my core, throwing one of my legs over his shoulder, and his clever tongue had me screaming in seconds.
 
“Please,” I said, even after I came.
 
I loved what he could do to me with his mouth, but it never felt complete until I had him buried deep inside of me.
 

He rose fluidly, burying himself to the hilt in the smoothest motion.
 
He kissed me while he thrust, and I ate at his mouth, missing that intimate contact amidst all of the rest.
 
He pulled back to watch my eyes near the end.
 
Their changing depths had always mesmerized him, I knew.
 
I wondered, not for the first time, if I had inadvertently cast some sort of spell on him.
 
There was so much I didn’t know about my own power.
 
But if it was a spell, why would I myself be just as caught up?
 
I lost myself just as completely in his extraordinary gaze.

“Come,” he commanded harshly, and it did the trick.
 
We climaxed together, our eyes staying locked.

“What do you look like as a dragon?
 
I’ve never seen one before.
 
Is it similar to the legends?” he asked unexpectedly.
 
We were both getting dressed.
 
I finished first.
 
My few scraps of lycra were much quicker to get in and out of than his tailored gray Armani suit.
 
I kept my back to him as he finished getting dressed.
 
Why did it sometimes seem so much more intimate getting into clothes than it did getting out of them?
 

“All of the dragon-kin are different.
 
Different sizes, different shapes and proportions, different colors.
 
But yes, we’re much like the legends.
 
I have to imagine that most of those renderings came from real encounters with dragon-kin.
 
My family does love to be worshipped.”

“What color is your dragon?”

“It’s unusual actually.
 
My dragon never chose a color.
 
She’s just like my hair, she changes on some whim, against my will.”

“Does that happen to dragons often?”

“Never that I’ve heard of.
 
But I left the clan before I knew much.
 
I’m flying blind on most of that type of information.
 
Why do you ask?”

“So other dragons’ hair doesn’t do that?”

“I don’t think so.
 
I’m horrible at changing my appearance on purpose though, which would be far more useful.
 
I think the shifting colors might just be a sign of my lack of control over my magic.”

“What is your element?”

I looked at him now.
 
He was just finishing his tie.
 
It was a solid, vibrant blue that set off his left eye to perfection.
 
“Fire.
 
A lot of our kind are a mix of elements, which can be useful, but I’m almost completely fire.
 
It’s the least subtle magic.”

“So no ice at all?”

“No.
 
Are you surprised?”

“Only a little.
 
I guess I always saw the fire.
 
Though I have seen you practice subtle magics.”

I shrugged.
 
“I was taught that we are the Firstborn.
 
The gods gave us many magics to work with.
 
I can use some of the subtler stuff, but it’s always been my weakness.
 
Even simple glamour gives me a headache.
 
I have no patience for it.
 
Fire is great for an all-out battle, but outside of that, the other stuff is far more useful.”
 
I studied him for a long time.
 
It was so strange, talking to him about this, about what I was, after all of the years of secrecy.
 
It made me want to tell him more, now that I was free to.
 
“I don’t know if they believe it now, but draak used to believe that every kind of Other race after us was a sort of bastard version, stealing just pieces of our lesser magics.
 
They believed that we were the perfect prototype that couldn’t be improved on, only copied poorly.”

“Did you believe that?”

I smiled ruefully.
 
“I left them when I was barely more than a child.
 
But no, I believed little that they tried to teach me.
 
You won’t be surprised to know that I was always obstinate.
 
I despised my father and his ways.
 
He and his brothers believed themselves to be gods.
 
You and your druids struggle to be fair and just.
 
The dragon-kin are the opposite.
 
They are so deluded about their own godhood, they believe that any horrible thought in their heads is divine.
 
Power has driven them mad.”

“I do recall that Lynn doesn’t mind playing goddess.”

I smiled at that.
 
“It’s different.
 
She doesn’t mind being worshipped, I’m sure.
 
It is more her dark sense of humor though, than any belief in her divinity, that makes her collect lost souls to follow her.
 
Sometimes you have to laugh in the face of the things that scare you about yourself, or the fear alone will drive you mad.”

“Both of you always did have a dark sense of humor.”

“In our family, you either go insane from the horror, or learn to laugh at it.”

He handed me two business cards that were blank but for two phone numbers.
 
“Keep one, put your contact information on the other.
 
Don’t worry, I won’t be calling you.
 
My people will simply keep you updated on the draak’s activities if it seems pertinent.”

I nodded, jotting it all down.
 
“Thank you.”
 

“I hear you’ve been invited to the necro assault.”

“Yes.
 
I’m rusty, but I should still be useful against a race that can burn.”

“I’m having them put you in my unit.
 
You’re less likely to get any trouble from my people that way.”
 
He left the room.
 
I watched him leave.
 
Neither of us said goodbye.

I followed him out no more than a minute later.
 
The druids were gone, leaving Christian still bound and gagged.
 
I couldn’t really blame them.
 
There was murder in his eyes as I approached him.
 
I ripped the tape off his mouth, and he started cursing fluently.
 
“You should have let him fight me when he mentioned it, Jillian.
 
You don’t know how much I’d like to take a shot at him.”

I raised my brows at him.
 
I should have known that would be the only thing he focused on.
 
“Are you ok?”
 
I asked him.

“Yeah. You?”

I nodded.
 
“Just the usual Druid politics bullshit,” I lied, adding to the already huge pile.
 
“Let’s head back to the retreat.”

“Those wankers,” he said darkly..
 

“Your British is showing.”

“Bloody wankers,” he elaborated, making me smile.
 
He smiled back, always quick to shake things off.
 
It was by far his best quality.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Too Much Dough For A Super-Nerd

Christian took the condition of his slightly charred porsche better than I would have expected, considering how much he always waxed poetic about it.
 
He was more teasing than mad about it as we drove to his retreat.

Christian’s mountain retreat was an impressive compound set up with Christian’s keen eye for both security and style.
 
It consisted of several small buildings, and one much larger building.
 
The entire compound was tucked into the mountains, almost completely hidden from the small dirt road that took us the last few miles from the interstate.
 
The exterior of the buildings were stones that matched the desert mountains like camouflage.
 

I had no idea what was in the smaller buildings.
 
I knew that the larger building was all of the housing, with enough rooms to comfortably house us and even most of Lynn’s followers comfortably.
 
If I had to guess, I’d say the smaller buildings were probably bunkers stockpiling weapons.
 
I knew I wouldn’t have to wonder long to find out.
 
Christian would give me the grand tour.

“Does it make your skin crawl to have all of the goth humans in your safe house?”

He shrugged, seeming unaffected.
 
He probably loved the thought of showing off his pride and joy to more people.
 
“I’d rather not be bored up here.
 
And anyways, they’re all humans.
 
What’s the worst they could do?
 
Lynn even made them all leave their phones behind.”

It still made me antsy.
 
An overcrowded safe house… so much was wrong with that.

Christian sped into the oversized garage that opened before us with surprising swiftness.
 
The concrete ground below the porsche began to lower immediately.
 
It was a surprisingly smooth ride, and went down a shockingly far distance.
 
I gave Christian wide eyes.
 
“How far underground does this thing go?”
 

He grinned.
 
It was such a smug, toothy grin.
 
It made me want to either smile or punch him, depending on why he was wearing it.
 
“You’ll see.”

Something occurred to me.
 
I smirked at him.
 
“Did you make yourself a bat cave?”

He wiggled his brows at me, shameless.
 
“A slayer cave, to be exact.”

I shook my head, grinning.
 
“You have way too much dough for a super-nerd.
 
The combination is a danger to society at large.”

He threw his head back and laughed.
 
It was infectious, especially after such a tense, volatile morning.
 
“Wait ’til I give you the grand tour.”