Her Druid Desire (The Amber Druid Series) (12 page)

The
pulse of sexual yearning in her body was a number of things he had
sensed,
another one was the need she had to touch him. The
slight huffs of breath against his shirt, her fingers clenching against the
back of his neck and his hand, the rushing of blood to her core, were other
clues. He knew without having to use his powers, that she was slick with want.
He had practically felt the heat rising from her body. He could almost taste
the spiciness of her on his tongue at that moment.

           
To know that this young woman, the same young woman he had thought of as
nothing more than a family friend for the past thirteen years, now wanted him
as she might want a lover, sent a shiver down his spine and his fangs
threatening to expand, along with other parts of his anatomy. It had been
hellish to hold in all of those things on that dance floor. He still had no
idea how he’d done it. Thing was, she didn’t even comprehend that he had had
this realization. If she did, her embarrassment might be too much for her to
handle. Drake could sense the importance she placed on her emotions.

           
Night sounds interrupted his thoughts. Just what in the hell was he going to do
now? He knew that he could never have some random relationship with Nadia. And
never would he have more than that. Casual sex was his thing, his code, and the
women he did it with were more than understanding, which is of course why he
picked them. They knew the game and how to play it. Keeping his Amber Druid
status secret was the first thing he worried about with women. No one knew what
he was. He wanted to keep it that way.

           
Nadia would never be casual sex, never.

           
Her parents had raised her with morals and values that Drake knew she used in
everyday life. She had an invisible sign above her that screamed “marriage
material.” Drake knew better than to get caught up in that. Plus, they shared a
past, something tangible and real that he could never sweep under the rug. And
even if he wanted to ignore her, he couldn’t. Her life and his were intertwined
by their business acumen. They both were leading members of Texas society, and
they both were firmly cemented in that grasp.

           
The only thing to do was to act like nothing had ever happened, like he had
never felt that electricity shooting from her emotions, or the sweet zap of
energy that she had charged him with when she touched him. Those things would
be locked away, hopefully forgotten along with almost two hundred years of
other sacrifices that he had made because of his honor.

           
He would keep thoughts of her when she was a teenager with braids in her hair,
along with images of her and her family coming to Christmas parties at the
Haven together. He would remember her father and just how down to earth he had
been. He wouldn’t confuse what happened on the dance floor with what she was to
him. There was no reason to ruin his image of her with thoughts of her small
body pressing close to his, her small hands reaching out to touch him, and
those pink tinted, lush lips, opening on a soundless scream as he brought
pleasure to her body.

           
No. None of that would happen. Nadia would forever remain nothing but a casual
acquaintance to him. He would do his best to keep it that way. His honor
demanded it.

Drake
Thompson, one of Texas’s leading wealthy
bachelors
lights up the red carpet with Lorelei Winfield on his arm. The dashing southern
devil is wearing Armani, and the lovely Lorelei is draped by none other than a
vintage Valentino masterpiece. They were among many celebrities, and newsworthy
people attending the gala World Wildlife Federation fundraiser in New York,
Tuesday night.

           
The headline screamed out, silently grabbing Nadia’s attention from the shelves
at the Wal-Mart in Beaumont. She couldn’t stop her hands from picking up the
latest weekly copy of the social magazine,
Social News Weekly
. It was a
conglomeration of the many social happenings in all the major cities across the
U.S.

           
The picture under the heading was of good size, and Nadia knew if she ever had
the opportunity to shoot pictures of Drake and put them in her magazines, she
would make them of decent size so that the consumer could see every luscious
detail of the large, attractive man in full color. Sometimes when she looked at
pictures that had been taken of him they were hazy and unfocused, but this one
was alarmingly clear.

           
“Miss, the total is $78.05.”

           
The voice of the woman working the register was annoyed, but it snapped Nadia out
of her reverie of Drake and the luscious redhead that he was with in the
picture.

           
“Sorry,” she told the woman, and then paid for her purchases and left, leaving
the tempting picture behind on the shelves at the checkout. She sure as hell didn’t
need to bring it home with her and drool over it depressingly.

           
The past week had been harsh. She had fallen behind in the magazine ratings.
Three of the models from the firm she used had become infected with a virus,
and all Nadia heard at work from Renee was how amazing Cole was. Maybe she
should
have dated the man. Hell, the way Renee went on about him, he sounded
absolutely fantastic. Renee had informed her that Cole was taking her on a
weekend date to the Cayman Islands, and no matter how hard Nadia tried not to
be
jealous,
it was tough to be around someone who was
actually having a great life right now.

           
A while later she was unloading her groceries when her phone rang. After
maneuvering around all of her packages she finally managed to grip the
handheld.

           
“Hello?”

           
“Ms. Morales?”

           
“Yes, this is Nadia.”

           
“I’m Chase, from Safe Haven Animal Shelter. We have a border collie here that
has your name and other personal information on her call sheet. I understand
that you were to adopt her soon. Am I right?”

           
Nadia’s heart tripped to a stop in her chest. “Yes, I’m waiting for her to heal
properly before bringing her home.” Dread bled thickly through her limbs and
veins. “Is something wrong?”

           
When he took a deep breath, Nadia steeled herself for bad news. “An infection
set in probably two days ago. We are doing our best, but she is fading fast,
Nadia. I called you out of courtesy before any drastic measures are taken to give
her peace.”

           
Give her peace? No, oh no! This wasn’t supposed to happen!

           
Nadia gripped the phone harder, squeezed her eyes shut against an acute pain
for an animal she barely knew, but cared for. She spoke into the phone, “I can be
there in about thirty minutes.”

           
“I’m deeply sorry for such bad news,” he told her, then hung up the phone.

           
Seconds passed, the dead line started beeping, and Nadia shut it off without
conscious thought. Little black spots danced before her eyes as she stared at
her fenced in backyard that she could make out through her back window. Belle
would have come and lived with her in probably three more weeks. The large
fenced yard and quiet, low traffic country living would have suited her fine,
and after visiting her numerous times, Nadia knew that firmly.

           
A fine mist covered her eyes, but Nadia refused to cry. Her life was crappy;
this just certified it for her. Everything she touched fell apart.

           
Even though she knew she was acting irrational, she couldn’t stop one thought
from forming in her mind. If Drake would have known about this, he would have
done everything in his power to save that animal.

           
But you know he has the best people working for him.

           
Still, she centered that pain, and the motherly instinct that she hadn’t been
able to show the injured animal, onto his shoulders. He was the one that had
saved that dog for her. He was the one that told her Belle needed her as much
as she needed Belle. He was also the one that was gallivanting around New York
with Ms. Vintage Valentino right now as her world was slowly disintegrating.
Her world that had become the way it was because of him and the way she felt
about him-her world that she didn’t even know how to live in anymore.

           
He had known weeks ago that she needed a distraction, some form of distance
from her job and Donavan. He had offered Belle, and she had taken that offer.
But now his option was being torn from her before she had the chance to care
for it and love it like it deserved. And even though it wasn’t precisely
Drake’s fault, Nadia was projecting her pain and anger onto the one man that
she needed to keep her defenses around.

           
As she finished with her groceries, tried to control her tears, and finally
made her way out the door, Nadia silently fed the antagonism and hurt, pushing
it to the back of her mind where all of her thoughts and feelings for Drake
were cemented. She had prayed for a way to make him not so enthralling to her.
She would use anything to make that happen, anything.

***

           
“
Mmm
…you taste amazing.”

           
Lorelei’s wine-scented breath brushed across his jaw, and Drake clenched every
muscle in his body as her tongue crept out and licked another path from his ear
to his collarbone.

           
This had started when they walked in her door. Usually sexual dalliances were
no problem for him, neither was keeping the woman happy, sated, and
delightfully numb when he finally left her bed. But for some reason, the sugary
sweet smell of Lorelei’s perfume, her artfully coiffed red hair along with the
tight, extremely short black dress, was throwing any thoughts of having sex out
the door, just as it had Tuesday night after the gala.

           
Now, even with all of that, Drake could still admire a fine body when it was
pressed up in his face. With all of the plastic surgery around these days,
Drake had to admit that Lorelei’s breasts were her own, and they were
delightfully bouncy and perfectly round as they dangled in front of his face,
her pert nipples flushed a raspberry red with arousal. She had pushed the top
of her clingy dress down so that he could feast on her skin like she was doing
to him. He just hadn’t bit the bullet, so to speak.

           
Her fingers were making short work of his shirt buttons as he sat there and
basically let her undress him. Still, he felt not a damn thing when she pulled
open the offending material, and then slid down between his legs, her hot eyes
fixed on the prize, the prize that was at the moment only half-hard, and still
needed some attention before he could reach any state that would satisfy the
witch in front of him.

           
“So submissive, but I like being in control, makes me all the more ready to
work you until you scream my name.”

           
Drake rolled his eyes as she opened his trousers. He didn’t stop her from
pulling the two pieces of material open, and she saw how uninspired he was, but
for some reason he got a smile from that.

           
“I see I will need to do a little more for you before we move on to the main
course, but that’s okay. I’ll make it so hard for you baby that you won’t ever
want me to stop.”

           
He chuckled at that, but she ignored him. That was when the truth hit him. This
shouldn’t be happening. He was an Amber Druid. Members of that class had
certain more primal urges than most humans. There was no reason why he
shouldn’t be sporting a hard on so amazingly rigid that even Lorelei would seem
anxious about it. There was no reason why he was sitting submissively in front
of her right now and not doing anything with her stiff nipples which were
pushed up from her dress being pulled down, the redness of them winking at him
enticingly in the low light of the room.

           
Drake considered himself a connoisseur of women. He loved a sweet, slow
seduction, but rarely had the time for it. He loved all women, no matter their
sizes, shapes, colors or personalities. He adored the way he could make them
smile shyly at him when he turned on his Texas, good ole boy charm. Every inch
of their skin held numerous erogenous zones. When tasted, caressed, or licked,
he could turn even the frostiest of women into nothing more than a blubbering
mass of want. He prided himself on doing that to every woman he had the chance
to sleep with.

           
For some reason he was losing his patience with this woman, who was at the
moment, on her knees about to take his half flaccid cock into her wet mouth.
The damndest thing was, he should be as hard as a rock, and he wasn’t. Even
when her fingers brushed the sensitive area underneath the head, still not one
whisper of a zing moved through him.

           
Drake peered across the room, towards the wall and began to feel a spiking of
rage flow through his system. He knew why this was happening, and he didn’t
like it one fucking bit. The rage built and built, rising to a level that was
deadly, and not what he needed. When his emotions reached the limit, or when he
picked up anger from a human, his change started. Right now he could feel the
heat of his eyes shifting from brown to amber, and one move of his tongue
caught the edge of a fang slipping into a point. Damn.