Firewalker (19 page)

Read Firewalker Online

Authors: Allyson James

Tags: #Paranormal, #General, #Romance, #Paranormal Romance Stories, #Shapeshifting, #Fiction

BOOK: Firewalker
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A sudden image of the Koshare slammed into my head. His red mouth opened in his black-and-white face, and the eyes of a god burned into my brain.
I screamed. Mick jerked his mouth from my breast and peered down at me in worry. “What is it, baby? Am I hurting you?”
“No.” I clutched at him, my heart pounding crazily in fear. “Do me, Mick. Now.
Please
.” Maybe if I lost myself in sex with him, the visions and the whispers would stop.
Mick’s answering smile ripped at my heart. He pulled off his shirt, then stood and stripped off his pants, boots, and underwear in record time. He was hard and ready, his cock dark and lifting. I sat up and took it in my mouth.
“Damn it,” Mick groaned.
He hadn’t seen anything yet. I slid my hand between his legs, gently playing with his balls, and stretched my mouth over him.
Mick wasn’t quiet. He held on to the shower rod and started telling me, between noises of pleasure, all the dirty things he wanted to do with me. “I’m going to fuck you until you can’t walk, Navajo girl. Then I’m going to tie you to the bed and do it some more.”
Fine by me. I was too tired to go anywhere, anyway.
“Then I’m going to bend your ass over this bathtub and give you every inch of me.”
I pretty much had every inch of him now. I played with him with my tongue and fingers for a few moments longer; then I slid my body up his, twined my arms around his neck, and kissed him.
Mick aroused was a beautiful sight. His eyes darkened to black again, his bad-boy smiles gone. I saw us in the mirror, a slim girl with black hair and a tall man with dark skin enveloping her.
He was much bigger than I was, so it was a little like climbing a tree, but I managed to work my way into his arms, my legs around his hips. Mick held me under the buttocks, his smile shining out again as he slid himself inside me.
I shouted as he went into me, hard and deep. He held me tightly and rocked with me, screwing me solidly right there in the bathroom. His back was to the mirror, and I watched over his shoulder as his ass moved, my eyes shining with the joy of it.
The only problem with the erotic picture was that the gleam under my half-closed lids wasn’t my usual brown, but a light ice green.
Mick actually did all those wonderful things he’d promised me. Our sex life had never been conventional, not from day one.
I woke up as the sun rose. Mick snored softly beside me, his body keeping mine warm. The air coming through the open window had a bite to it, the promise of winter.
I drowsed, trying to summon the energy to rise and perform my morning ritual outside the back door. Every morning I scattered corn and said a prayer to the east, greeting the rising sun. It was important to me. But some days, like today, after an all-night rampage with Mick, it was difficult to get going.
I’d almost convinced myself to move when a bright flame squirted through the door lock, followed by Colby swinging open the door.
Mick was on his feet in an instant, all six-foot-six of him, his hands full of fire. I was covered, at least, but I glared at Colby over the blankets.
“Don’t you knock?” I snapped.
“I figured you’d be too busy to open the door.” Colby closed it before early-rising hotel guests could look down the hall and see me with my naked boyfriend. Mick let his fire recede, but he didn’t move.
“What do you want?” I asked, since Mick didn’t look inclined to talk. Kill, yes; talk, no.
“I heard from the dragon council this morning. They finally set a date for the trial—ten days from now as humans count time. Plus they told me what kind of sentence they’ll give you.” Colby looked both disturbed and slightly gleeful, a strange combination. “I’m sorry, Micky. It will be Ordeal.”
Fourteen
“You are damn well going to tell me what it means,” I snarled at Colby when the three of us shut ourselves in the saloon, Mick and I dressed. “What kind of ordeal?”
“A deadly one,” Colby said. “They always are.”
Mick seemed the least disturbed by the news. He leaned against the bar, under the magic mirror, which I knew was listening with full attention.
“Elaborate,” I said.
Colby shrugged. “Can’t. The Ordeal won’t be determined until we reach the trial. Even if they decide beforehand, they won’t tell us.”
“Then what is the point of a defense?”
“Oh, now, sugar,” the mirror drawled. “I know that one. The defense is to convince the dragon council to give Micky an ordeal he might possibly survive. That’s why they don’t decide until he’s there.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“No, honeybunch. It’s what dragons do. Ferocious little beasties.”
“This is bullshit.” I very much wanted to get my hands around the necks of the dragon council. “So, they’ll either give you a test you’ll never survive or,
if
they like Colby’s defense, they’ll give you one you have a
slight
chance of surviving?”
“Yep,” Colby said. “You got it.”
“I don’t believe this.”
“It’s their job to make it damn hard on a dragon who breaks the law,” Mick said too calmly for my taste. “Dragons are powerful beings. We have to stay under control somehow.”
I clenched my fists. “And your defense is going to be that I’m not really a threat to dragons? Not that I don’t want to strangle the two in this room right now.”
“And Janet
is
a threat,” the mirror put in. “There’s nothing stronger out there than her. She’s a superbitch, though I love her to pieces.”
I glared at the mirror. “Don’t help.”
“Sorry, sugar. I call them as I see them.”
“The mirror’s not wrong,” Colby said. “You gotta control yourself, or Micky’s toast.”
Mick lifted his hands and let fire gather in them. “Get out.”
“I’m only trying to help, old friend.”
“The hell you are,” Mick said. “I wouldn’t put it past the council to send you here to figure out my plans, so they can prepare for contingencies.”
“Aw, now I’m hurt.” Colby’s fingers started to burn. “I don’t take orders from the frigging dragon council.”
“That doesn’t mean they didn’t send you. For punishment maybe. What did you do?”
I wanted to break into the argument, but Colby looked so guilty, I stopped. “Wait, you mean Mick’s right?”
“I didn’t lie when I said I’m working to make them give you a fair trial. Yes, they sent me to suss you out, but I told you, I don’t take orders from them. I’m not telling the dragon council shit.”
Somehow I believed him. Even if it hadn’t been Colby’s completely altruistic idea to come here, he didn’t seem the type to rush out and tell an authority figure everything he knew.
“So what did you do?” I repeated the question.
“Maybe I poached one of the dragon council’s bit on the side for myself.”
Mick shot him a look of disgust, but the mirror laughed. “Now,
this
I want to hear,” it crooned.
“I want to hear it too,” I said. Colby was an asshole. Here I’d hoped that there was something he could do to help Mick, and now the fingers of worry were tightening around me again.
“Is she a cute dragon?” the mirror asked. “A little red number, maybe?”
“She’s human,” Colby said. “She lives in Texas, and she doesn’t know we’re dragons. The head of the dragon council is her sugar daddy, even though he’s mated. I just showed her a little fun.”
“And got caught,” I finished.
“Something like that. So I’m putting my ass on the line for you, Micky. They sent me to spy on you, sure, but I didn’t lie when I said I don’t want them offing me without a trial. So I’m helping you, not them.”
“Why?” I asked Colby. “Why risk death betraying the dragons?”
Colby shrugged, his tattoos moving. “Screw them.”
Mick leaned back against the bar. “You don’t change, do you?”
“Hey, love me as I am.”
“You know,” I said, keeping my voice mild. “If I fried you now, it would save us all a lot of bother. Maybe the dragon council would spare Mick if I did.”
Colby didn’t look worried. “Don’t bet on it. Besides, you don’t know your way around a dragon council trial. I do. And if you use your goddess-from-Beneath magic on me, you can kiss your hopes of saving Micky good-bye. You can murder the entire dragon council, of course, but what would that make you?”
“Don’t think I hadn’t thought of it,” I said.
“You’d better keep your little Stormwalker under control, Micky. She’ll be the death of us all.”
Mick’s lips were tight with rage. “Let’s talk outside, Colby.”
“What for?”
“Now.”
“Gods, you are still a bastard. What don’t you want Janet to hear?”
“I’d like to know that too,” I said.
Mick was pissed. He strode by me and caught Colby’s shoulder, propelling him out. I knew he didn’t want to talk to Colby in front of the mirror, because I could either listen in using my shard or command the mirror to report what they said later.
Before Mick and Colby reached the door, it opened, and Maya Medina, in her white coverall, stopped and stared at the three of us. Colby let out an appreciative whistle.
“Hey, senorita, want to throw back some margaritas with me?”
Maya gave him a scornful look as only Maya could. “Who the hell are you?”
“Your dream come true, sweetheart.”
“I might puke.” Maya shoved past him, her toolbox just missing his groin. “It’s too early in the morning for assholes.”
Mick’s anger softened enough for a chuckle before he shoved Colby out the door. I closed it behind them and, just to be annoying, locked it.
“Really, who is that guy?” Maya asked me. “Mick is friends with someone like him?”
“Mick is enemies with someone like him.” I still hadn’t gotten one of them to tell me what had gone on between them, but I would. “I thought you’d fixed that short in here. Don’t tell me there are more.”
“Just checking on it. Actually, I came to talk to you.”
“At six in the morning?”
“I thought you’d be outside throwing grain around. I wanted to see you before anyone else was up.”
“My office,” I said with one eye on the mirror.
The mirror gave me a raspberry. “Beeyotch.”
Maya, not being magical, didn’t hear it. I gave it the finger behind Maya’s back as we left the saloon and walked through the empty lobby. Cassandra wasn’t due in until six-thirty with the pastries, when early-rising guests would start checking out or looking for breakfast or both.
Maya thumped her toolbox to my desk as I shut the office door, and she plopped, cross-legged, onto my couch. Even in her body-hiding coverall with her work cap on her pinned-up hair, Maya Medina was a beautiful woman.
“Emilio Salas asked me out,” she said.
Ah, girl talk. The incongruity between that and the discussion I’d just had in the saloon almost made me want to laugh. I didn’t, though. Maya looked too unhappy.
I sat down next to her and rested my feet on the coffee table. “Did he?”
“I know you’re not surprised, because he told me he asked you if he should.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I said yes.”
I smiled. “Good for you.”
“I don’t know. I’ve always liked Emilio, but...” Maya slammed her hat to the table and rubbed a hand through her ebony hair. “I’m lying to myself if I think there will ever be anything more between me and Nash. What we had was over a long time ago. We had a chance, and we blew it.”
Maya’s lower lashes were damp, but her mouth was set, as though she’d be damned if she cried over this.
“You really love him, don’t you?” I asked.
“Yes.” The word tore out of her. “I don’t know why; Nash and I are totally incompatible. We fought all the time we were going out, and we fight now. It’s what I get for falling for a white guy, I guess. At least Salas is Latino. The Joneses, they bleed white.”
“Nash’s whiteness never bothered you before,” I said. “Besides, he has a nice tan.”
“Except on his ass. He always wears shorts, even if no one can see him.” A tear trickled down her cheek.
Maya wasn’t the kind of woman who liked squishy girl hugs, and neither was I, so I didn’t reach for her. It was one reason we were starting to get along. “Did you come to ask me whether you should go out with Salas?”
“I don’t know what I came here for.” Maya unfolded her legs to stand up. “Stupid idea.”
“No, stay. We’re going to fix this.”
Maya shook her head but slumped back to the couch. “There’s nothing to fix. Nash isn’t interested in me. I thought we might pick up again, but he hasn’t bothered to call, to stop by. He barely speaks to me when he sees me.” She wiped her eyes. “Well, fuck him. I’ll go out with Emilio and enjoy myself.”

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