Dark Embers (38 page)

Which was just fine with her. Never in her life would she meet a more trustworthy man.

“You can’t believe it? Try being me!”

“How? Why?”

“Well, I don’t think you can actually be me. I just mean—”

“Phoebe!”

“I don’t know. I never really knew my father—he left when I was five or six. I’ve had dreams, though, for years. Dreams about my father being half monster, half man. Dreams about my stepfather changing before my eyes, clawing at my back.

“I thought I’d imagined it, had turned them both into more than they were because I resented them. Well, I resented my father; I hated Ray. But maybe it wasn’t my imagination. Maybe they really were—” She stopped, her mind still not able to wrap itself around the word.

Dylan filled it in for her. “Dragons. Maybe they really were dragons.”

“Right. Dragons.” She brushed a soft kiss over his lips. “Did I thank you for rescuing me?”

“I think that should be the other way around. You were unbelievable when you went after Silus.”

She rubbed her nails on her shirt, blew on them. “Well, I try.”

“You succeed.” He pulled her into his arms, then carried her to the bed in the middle of the room. “You know I love you, right?”

Tears—the first ones she’d shed since her father had left—filled her eyes, poured down her cheeks. Only now they were tears of happiness for Dylan.

“I love you, too. I don’t know how it happened, but I love you so very much.”

“I snuck up on your blind side.”

“I think you did.”

They spent a few moments simply holding each other, letting the experiences and emotions of the last few days roll over them.
It’s a strange feeling
, Dylan mused as he pulled Phoebe even closer,
this loving and being loved
. As if his heart was ready to take flight at any second. As if sheer will alone was holding him to the ground.

He might have a traitor in his midst—the more time he spent thinking about it, the more certain he became that that was indeed the case—and a centuries-old blood feud might suddenly have become an out-and-out war, but for the moment he refused to worry about either of the situations. Refused to do anything but hold on to Phoebe and revel in the fact that after five hundred years, he had finally found his mate.

Even his fear of the disease—his utter terror at the insane conviction he’d heard in Silus’s voice as he’d spoken his last words—couldn’t mar his happiness. Now that they knew what to look for, Phoebe and Quinn would figure out how the disease was spreading. They would figure out how to stop it. And if they couldn’t do it fast enough, he wasn’t above launching a full-out military-style blitz on the Wyvernmoon compound and doing a little kidnapping of his own. The scientists who’d created the damn virus could damn well uncreate it.

But he wouldn’t dwell on that now, wouldn’t think about his people or his sister and Lana, wouldn’t think of his too-thin, too-angry best friend and all that Gabe had lost—at least not now. For once, for this one, perfect moment in time, his responsibilities could take second place to his heart.

Laughing with sheer joy, he slipped out of her arms. Sank to his knees in front of her and pulled one of her feet onto his lap. He started to massage it, running his thumb firmly up her arch.

“I want you to marry me.”

Her shocked eyes met his, dimmed with pleasure from the foot massage. Still alert, still questioning—she was every inch the scientist—but softer somehow, as well. “Marry you?” Her voice was little more than a squeak. “But you’re a dragon.”

He smirked, refusing to acknowledge the painful pounding of his heart. The fear that she might not stay with him. The sheer terror that she might say no. “So are you, sweetheart.”

“Yes, but—”

“But what?” He concentrated on rubbing in soothing circles, told himself not to squeeze too tightly.

“My work. My lab. My . . . job.” She threw her hands up in frustration, as if the words she wanted just wouldn’t come. It was a first for her, and one he would have savored had he not been so fucking nervous.

“You can research lupus here just as easily as you can in Boston, right?” He climbed back up on the bed, so that they were face-to-face. “Well, maybe not as easily, but it can be done. I’ve got a state-of-the-art lab all set up here, and the University of New Mexico isn’t that far away. And if that isn’t enough, UT is an hour flight to our right, and U of A is not even that far.”

He took a shuddering breath, then let the riot inside him pour out in a jumble of words. “I know it’s not Harvard and I know how hard you worked to get where you are, but, Phoebe, I don’t want to live without you. I
can’t
live without you. You’re my whole fucking world.”

She gasped, her eyes filling with tears, and panic skated down his spine. Still, he didn’t stop the words that would lay his soul bare in front of her. “I walked into that Harvard lab, and one look at you had me shaking in my boots. I didn’t know then that you were my mate, didn’t know then how much I would grow to love you. I just knew that I wanted you—for my clan, but even more for myself. From the second I saw you, I knew I couldn’t let you send me away.”

Phoebe’s heart trembled in her chest at Dylan’s words, at the truth she read in his black-magic eyes. She thought of Harvard, of how hard she’d worked to get there. And she thought of how easily they’d dumped her research, like what she was doing was less than nothing. Suddenly the decision to leave, to grab on to this chance with Dylan and hold it close to her heart, wasn’t nearly as difficult as she’d imagined.

She loved him, wanted him, needed him—dragon and all. And even more important, he loved and wanted and needed her. For a woman who had spent much of her adult life alone and isolated, the idea of being needed was a powerful one.

She placed a shaky hand over his, smiling so hard her cheeks ached. “Yes, Dylan, I’ll marry you. Yes, I’ll live here with you and grow old with you, and, God willing, make babies with you. Yes, yes, yes!”

For a moment, he looked thunderstruck; then she was in his arms, his mouth moving over hers with a tenderness that brought new tears to her eyes. Yes, Dylan would take care of her. He would love and protect her and any children they might have together. It was more than she’d expected, more than she’d thought she’d ever have. She wasn’t stupid enough to turn her back on it.

Wrapping her arms around him, she held him as tightly as she could for as long as she could. But eventually he pulled away, skimmed his mouth tenderly over her cheek.

“Dylan?” She reached to pull him back.

Dylan looked down at Phoebe, at the question in her eyes that very nearly made him ashamed. He had spent so much time giving her the rough stuff that she looked shocked when he gave her something softer, sweeter.

He slipped down her body, finished rubbing the foot he had started on before his proposal, then slowly worked his way to the other. He would take his time with her, he swore. Show her how much she meant to him.

“Trust me, Phoebe.” He brushed his lips over her forehead, her eyes. Slid them down the sharp angles of her cheeks to the smooth line of her jaw. Nibbled at that strong, delicious jaw for a while, delighting in the small, broken breaths that eased from her.

When he’d exhausted the possibilities on her glorious, giving face, he slipped lower. Using his lips and tongue softly—so softly—he traced the elegant curve of her neck. Skimmed s1owly over the hollows of her collarbone. Nuzzled his way between her unbound breasts. Nudged her robe off her shoulders. Then delivered one long, slow lick from her navel to her breastbone.

Phoebe gasped, arched, while her hands moved restlessly over his shoulders and back. “Sssh,” he whispered. “Just enjoy.”

She was wearing panties as soft and pink as she was. Cut high in the hips, they rode low over her flat belly, and he grinned as he slipped his tongue under the waistband. She jerked, shivered, then clutched at his hair to hold him in place.

But he would have none of it. Though the beast raged inside him, urging him to take her hard and fast, he ignored it. He refused to give in to the darker side of their passion, was determined, for now, to stay in the light. There would be time enough later for the sizzle and the heat. Now, in this moment, he wanted her to know more than his possession. He wanted her to understand his love.

Moving out from beneath her grasping hands, he stood and stripped off his clothes in a few quick movements. Then he was sinking onto the bed with her, pulling her into the circle of his arms. Relishing the feel of the only woman he’d ever loved pressed against him.

Phoebe wrapped her arms around Dylan, holding him as tightly against her as she could manage. It felt so right to be here with him, to cradle his head against her breast as her body yearned for his. She prayed with everything inside of her that it wouldn’t be the last time she felt her lover against her.

“Dylan, I’m sor—”

He cut her words off with a kiss so tender, so exquisite that it brought a new tightness to the lump at the back of her throat. “Not now,” he whispered, and his wild black eyes were calmer than she’d ever seen them.

Leaning her head to the side, eyes still locked with his, she offered him her mouth again. He took it, and the sudden pressure of his lips on hers was like walking through the desert at night—deep, dark, yet with the underlying sweetness of home.

A moan rumbled in his chest, and she grinned, thrilled at how easily she could make this strong, powerful man want her. Equally excited about how quickly he could do the same to her.

His hands weren’t steady as they shimmied her panties down her legs, but they were capable. Everywhere they touched ignited a small fire within her, every skim of his fingers was a little zing adding to the power already pulsing within her.

“You’re beautiful,” he murmured as he caressed her ankle with tender lips.

She wanted to be. For him, she wanted to be everything. Sliding her hands down his spine, she toyed with the rigid muscles under her hands. So strong, so capable, so ready to give his life so that his sister could live. What had she ever done to deserve him?

She started to tell him how she felt, but he silenced the words with another kiss. And then he was rolling across the bed, spinning with her, lifting her above him as his mouth swept over the curve of her breast.

He gently settled her astride him, her knees on either side of his hips. And then, with one fluid motion, made them one.

She rode him slowly, sweetly, cherishing him with her body the way he so obviously cherished her. Immersed in him, wrapped up in the feelings that arced between them with each slow glide of her body, she kept the rhythm languid, steady.

Even as the tension began to build in her, the ache between her thighs becoming more and more unbearable, she kept it dreamy, drowsy.

Even as his hips arched beneath hers, and the hands that had caressed her so gently turned rough in an instant, she kept it leisurely, lazy.

Need was a living thing within her, but she pushed it back again and again, unwilling to let their moment end so soon. But it continued to build until sweat poured from him, from her, mingled as she leaned over him and brushed a kiss across the muscles directly over his heart.

“Now, Phoebe!” Dylan’s hands clamped on her hips like a vise. “It has to be now.”

Because she was suddenly as desperate as he was, she let him take control. One powerful thrust, two, and they plunged over the edge of the world. Together.

When it was over, when they had both found their way back to their bodies—and each other—she lay in bed with him, smoothing her lips over every part of him. When she got to his bicep, she leaned up on an elbow. “Do you want to tell me what’s with your tattoo?”

He frowned at her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, it keeps changing. I swear, every time I look at it, it’s wider, filled with more symbols.”

He sat up abruptly, stared at the tattoo like he’d never seen it before. The tribal band had tripled in size, had added interesting shapes and symbols, including a bunch of long curlicues much more feminine than the rest of the tattoo.

Dylan reached over and traced them with his index finger. Then he threw back his head and laughed until tears poured down his face.

“What?” she demanded, wondering if he’d gone insane.

“You’re my mate.”

“Of course I am. I thought we’d just decided that.”

“We did.” He still didn’t take his eyes off the tattoo. “But this means you’re my destined mate. You were picked just for me.”

“Really?” She raised an eyebrow. “Just for you?”

“Yes.”

“Forever?”

“Yes—or at least for another five hundred years or so.”

She brushed her lips against his. “That just might be long enough.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tessa Adams
lives in Texas and teaches writing at her local community college. She is married and the mother of three young sons.