Dragon's Flame (16 page)

Get out! Get out! Get out!
Saffron silently screamed as she was buffeted by intense heat.
Get out!

The borrowed turnout gear burned. It smoked and blackened on top of what felt like a thin protective bubble between it and her.

The breathing apparatus failed.

She held her breath, afraid of frying her lungs.

Get out! Get out! Get out!

How much of the fire was linked to the unhatched phoenix and how much of it was natural, she couldn’t tell. But she needed to get out, didn’t want a fellow firefighter rushing in, trying to save her and dying because of her.

Flailing, feeling as if she was swimming through flame, she moved in the direction she hoped was the front door. To keep panic at bay, she counted her steps.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

At nineteen, panic threatened to gain the upper hand.

It was a small house. By now she should be clear of it, or at least be able to discern an exterior wall.

She couldn’t.

Fire raged and swirled around her like a desert sandstorm, like tornadoes made of flame.

She needed to breathe.

Desperately needed to breathe.

I should be clear of the house.

I should be clear of the house.

The thought swirled like the fire around her. She should be clear of the house. Somehow she’d gotten turned around, the way she had in the water when she’d rescued the kid.

If Taine hadn’t grabbed her, pointed her toward the surface…

Maybe she should—

Don’t!

She couldn’t second guess herself now. She needed to keep going straight.

Stay on course. Change it now and they’d find what was left of her somewhere in the house, maybe steps away from an opening.

Twenty.

Twenty-one.

A few feet to her right fire slammed into fire, vertical into horizontal, forming a window that lasted less than a heartbeat but it was enough.

She lunged forward. Cleared the burning house, stumbled and went to her knees.

Within seconds a firefighter was there. Then another, foaming what remained of the protective gear to cool it down.

Taine reached her. Stripped the outerwear off with barely suppressed violence, ignoring the shouts of the firemen.

She shivered. Reaction setting in and for a long moment, she battled nausea.

“Saffron,” he said, voice choked, his hands trembling as they swept over her, and it was that trembling that brought her back to herself.

Her eyes locked to his. “I’m good. I’m okay.”

His hands kept moving, gliding possessively over her skin. Her nipples became hard points.

An awareness that they weren’t alone had her batting his hands away, torn between laughing relief and embarrassment. “I’m good! Quit! I’m good already.”

“Our work here is done,” Maksim said. “Headquarters everyone.”

She was grateful IRE credentials got them out of there before she was asked questions she couldn’t answer, at least not without sounding crazy to fellow firefighters and paramedics. And she was glad to see that other than scorched adobe, broken windows and burned trees, Elon’s neighbors hadn’t suffered any losses.

In the sedan, Taine pulled her to him and kissed her hard, with enough heat to set her pussy on fire. Damn she wanted him, needed him, tried to tell herself it was natural, could be totally attributed to surviving what would have been impossible to survive without the charm.

“Never again,” he growled, though they both knew she’d take the risk to keep San Diego from burning.

And so would he.

Her heart flipped with thoughts of him coming under attack. Constricted with memories of what it’d felt like each time her father deployed, the ever present worry that had come knowing her brother was patrolling the city, at risk every time he pulled a driver over or responded to a callout.

Feeling those feelings was exactly what she’d tried to avoid. And still, she didn’t push Taine away.

Her mouth clung to his. Her tongue plunged through his lips, her sex swelling, anxious and wet and ready for the thrust of his cock.

He tugged her shirt upward, cupped her side. His hand against her bare skin made her breasts tighten and ache.

She covered his hand with hers, urging it toward the place she needed it to be. A blaring horn jarred her and she moaned in protest.

“To be continued,” Taine said against her mouth.

“Agreed.”

He hit lights, siren and gas pedal, peeling away from the other black sedans and the Hummer.

Saffron laughed, and blushed. Every one of the IRE agents they were speeding away from had to know the reason for the hurry.

Where’s the fire?
her mother used to ask on those occasions when her father was driving and passed the ten-miles-over-the-speed-limit mark. And inevitably, the two of them would exchange a glance that had their children closing their eyes and trying to scrub the notion of their parents having sex from their minds.

Saffron checked the speedometer. Taine was pushing twenty over the limit.

The siren and lights cleared the way, making it safer. But the speed kept her heart pumping fast and her anticipation building.

It was like riding in the engine, racing toward danger and action. She laughed and Taine said, “Share?”

Their eyes met and she grinned. “Just thinking,
Where’s the fire?
”

His gaze heated and his nostrils flared. He pressed her hand to the front of his jeans and she clamped her thighs together, savoring the burn in her sex.

“A huff and a puff and I could burn the clothes off your delectable body,” he said.

She grinned, her gaze flicking to the message on his T-shirt. “The danger of messing with dragons?”

“One of them.”

He sped up. She thought the sedan must have a lot more under the hood than what came standard.

They went airborne when he left the street and headed down the sloping, curving driveway to IRE HQ. She let out a little yelp, lifted her free hand as if she was in a roller coaster car.

They whizzed past parked sports cars and her modest red Corolla. Swung around to the back of the house and came to a fast stop.

Seemingly in a heartbeat she was out of the sedan and penned against the passenger-side door. Taine’s mouth covered hers, hot and hungry. His tongue thrust against hers, promising his cock as their pelvises ground together.

A jerk of his hands sideways and the buttons on her shirt were pinging against concrete. A sweep of those same hands and the shirt had disappeared altogether.

It wasn’t the huff and puff of threatened fire but the end result was the same. He undid her bra, tugged and it was gone.

Sunshine and air hit her skin. Her rational mind broke the surface of drowning need long enough to remember where they were and the convoy of vehicles that would soon be arriving.

“Inside,” she said on a gasp.

“Definitely,” Taine said, undoing the front of her jeans and shoving his hand into her panties. “I absolutely need to get inside you.”

Her laugh was part sob as he grazed her erect clit. She whacked him on the back. “Inside, inside.”

He thrust his fingers into her and she moaned, but managed to clarify. “The house. Inside the house.”

His lips prevented her from saying more. The pleasure delivered by his thrusting fingers submerged her in pure want. Her channel clamped, clutched at them, and she was helpless to do anything but moan and rock and fuck his fingers deeper into her body.

He tore his mouth off hers. “You’re right. We’ll be interrupted sooner if we remain out here.”

Taine swung her into his arms. “My clothes!”

“I’ll come back for them.”

He carried her into the house as if she weighed nothing. Stopped in front of a door off the hallway and set her on her feet.

Taine kicked off his shoes. Peeled off his T-shirt and dropped his jeans.

Reaching behind her he opened the door into a bathroom with a long black marble counter and a shower stall bigger than the one in his apartment. She reached down, wrapped her hand around his hard, satiny cock and led him beneath the water.

This time she was the aggressor, pressing him against slick black tile, her mouth covering his, her tongue stroking, matching the up and down movement of her hand on his shaft.

She wanted him, needed him. The desire was raw and primal and powerful, like nothing she’d ever experienced with any other man, or after engaging with any other fire.

She fisted Taine’s hair, left his mouth to kiss downward. He panted, spun them so it was her back against the shower wall.

He used his strength to lift her. “Inside,” he growled and she wrapped her legs around his waist, guided him to her opening.

He pushed into her, the muscles in his arms flexing as he held her lower body to his. His eyes burned with a fierce possessiveness that had her heart doing flips before it climbed into her throat as if it wanted to speak.

Taine claimed her mouth in a hard, demanding kiss. He thrust his tongue roughly against hers, matched it with the fast, relentless plunge of his cock, in and out, and in and out. Each thrust a claiming. Each thrust demanding her complete surrender.

She met those thrusts. Tangled her hands in his hair, tugged, but that wasn’t nearly enough of a shout of victory at having survived.

Her hands swept downward. She scraped her nails over his back as if marking him, claiming him.

His moan was part growl, a deep rumble that vibrated through her breasts so she ran her nails over his back again and again.

He slammed into her forcefully, each strike driving pleasure through her clit and into her pussy, each stroke gliding over her g-spot the way he had the night before, as if his cock and his cock alone could find that place inside her.

She reveled in it. Went up in flames because of it, even as heated water struck her skin. Welcomed the raw, hot splash of his semen inside her.

Alive. She was alive. They both were alive.

Long moments passed before their breathing returned to normal though she didn’t unlock her legs from around his waist.

Taine touched his forehead to hers. “I’ve never known fear like what I experienced when that house became fully engulfed while you were inside it. If the others hadn’t held me to the ground I would have raced in after you.”

“I’m glad they did. And that you didn’t.”

She tried for lightheartedness and failed. Her heart thundered, trying to drown out the warning bells going off in her head.

Danger! Danger!

Only the panicked feeling that accompanied the warning said it was already too late to avoid the inevitable pain that came with falling in love. It
hurt
to imagine him losing his life because of her. It hurt to know that he was courageous enough to care about someone whose everyday life exposed them to danger—and that she wasn’t courageous enough to expose her heart.

Yet.

But she was getting there.

She touched her mouth to his, her channel rippling and clamping on his cock. The kiss lasted forever and not nearly long enough.

He held her gaze and her heart melted at the uncertainty she saw in his eyes. Taine said, “Yesterday, when we were at The Deep, I…”

“You?”

He sighed. “It was the perfect time but I…”

Her heart spasmed painfully. “Say it. Whatever it is, just tell me. I’m a
rip the bandage off
kind of girl.”

“I’m a dragon. The waitress at The Deep
is
a siren and the bartender a merman.”

It took a heartbeat to process. And on the second heartbeat she wondered if he’d been playing around with magic so long that he thought he was a dragon.

It took several additional heartbeats to find the courage to say, “Okay, show me your dragon form. I assume you have one.”

“I do, but I can’t show it to you.”

She searched his eyes, looking for signs of crazy and finding only honesty.

How could she not believe after everything else she’d seen since being assigned to IRE and Supernatural Ops?

“Let me guess, shifting to your dragon form would blow out the bathroom walls and bring the second floor crashing down on us.”

He laughed. Gave her a hard, fast kiss and then breathed fire.

 It struck her face and neck and the slopes of her breasts in a hot, erotic caress.

A small, girly girl shriek escaped before she could prevent it. Holy shit! And Jesus forgive her for the blasphemy. But holy shit!

“So you weren’t joking about huffing and puffing and burning the clothes off my body.”

“Your delectable body.”

His gaze dropped to her mouth, her breasts, heated and his cock began hardening inside her.

Her channel clenched on him. The temptation was there, to abandon conversation and give in to desire, but she needed answers and real world concerns would soon intrude.

She was surprised they hadn’t already been interrupted. Time was running out. They needed to find Elon Moates and the egg.

It didn’t change her need to get her head around
this
. Her thoughts flashed to the night before, when they’d gotten back to her apartment, to the orgasm to beat all orgasms, the one that’d felt like it blew off the top of her head and rocketed her into a version of the snow globe on his cubicle desk.

Had she known what he was subconsciously? Seen him on an unconscious level because of her sorcerer’s blood?

She licked her lips. “So you do have a dragon form?”

“Yes.”

“Let me guess. You’re dark blue and silver.”

His gaze snapped back to her face. There was definitely a purr in his voice when he said, “Exactly right.”

She lightly slapped his muscled biceps though her chest tightened. “IRE, what does it stand for?”

“Interspecies and Realm Enforcement.”

Part of her didn’t want to know. Ignorance was bliss—until it wasn’t.

“Were you born here?”

“No.”

“You came through a portal?”

“Yes.”

“How long ago?”

“Twenty-five years.”