Hidden Dragons (15 page)

“We won’t!”

Rick cupped her cheek, and she frowned at him. “Why are you so sure it’s pointless?”

“Because . . . I don’t know why. I just am.”

She’d clenched her jaw, so he stroked it with his thumb. He wished he didn’t have to press her, but he was pretty sure he did. The signs of distress she was displaying didn’t strike him as normal.

“Cass, your father fiddled with your perceptions. At the least, he misled you about his background. At the most, well, he’s a pureblood. He’s got a lot of mojo. I think it’s possible he glamoured you.”

“I’m his
daughter
. He wouldn’t do that.” A moment later Cass cried out, both palms flying to her forehead. “Crap,” she said, breathless from the flash of pain. To Rick’s dismay, she began to cry.

“Shh,” he soothed, undoing her seatbelt and pulling her to him.

“Why would he do that?” she sobbed. “Doesn’t he love me?”

It was a child’s lonely cry, one he sympathized with even if he didn’t know how it felt. Heart breaking for her, he rubbed her back. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. We don’t know the whole story.”

“Shoot,” she said, cutting short the storm.

Though he didn’t want to let her push back from him, he released her. “There’s Kleenex in the glove compartment.”

She dug it out and blew. “You’re being really nice to me.”

This was said so forlornly he rolled his eyes. “Don’t be stupid. You know I like you. More than like you, probably.”

She turned to face him. Naturally, her pink nose looked good on her. She grimaced at herself. “I’m being pathetic.”

“Well,” he said. “Learning stuff like this about your father would shock most people. And you’ve been through a lot lately.”

He rubbed her shoulder through her jacket and then her neck. That was a miscalculation on his part. Her skin was bare there, and her half faerie energy shot from it into his palm. Everything he’d wanted to do to her in the kitchen rushed back into his mind. He remembered how she’d nipped his neck like a she-wolf, how she’d clung to his shoulders and rubbed her crotch over his erection.

His cock jammed out in his jeans so swiftly it stole his breath.

“Oh God,” she said, clearly suffering the same violent arousal. Her nipples pebbled behind her nice silk shirt.

“We shouldn’t do this here. This is a public street.”

“Right,” she agreed. “I just—” Her gaze fell to his throbbing groin. “I just need to undo your zipper and touch you for one second.”

He couldn’t refuse her when she bit her soft red lip that way. He’d heard about faeries getting touch-hunger. “One second . . .”

“Or half a minute. You cut that kiss short. I didn’t get to do what I wanted.”

“What did you want?” His voice was raspy; pornographic, it seemed to him.

Cass’s pupils dilated. Her hand dropped to his knee and progressed upward along his thigh, causing nerves to jump wildly in its wake. “This.”

His heart pounded when she undid his jean’s button. She took his zipper’s tab between her thumb and two fingers. She pulled it down the hump of his erection, carefully but not slow, watching his eyes as his swollen flesh pushed his white boxer briefs through the opening. The stretchy cotton didn’t dull the effect of the soft stroke she gave him.

Despite that undeniable thrill, he wasn’t truly panting until she took hold of his briefs’ waistband. She lifted it over him, allowing his trapped hard-on to spring out. Steadying the pulsing shaft in her hand, she bent to him.

Rick swallowed back a moan. This was definitely a high school fantasy. Her mouth surrounded his penis’s head in warmth, her cheeks soft and clinging, one hand sliding smoothly into his jeans to cradle his still covered testicles. When she squeezed them, fireworks shot through his system.

He cursed, his fingers forking helplessly into the waves of her raven hair. He liked the length it was now, the way it whispered over him. The strands were silk, the clasp of her mouth doing crazy things to his arousal. She sank down his erection, her sleek tongue wetting and rubbing him.

No force on earth could have kept him from tightening his buttocks and thrusting an inch farther.

“Jesus,” he gasped as her lips tightened and she pulled back up him.

His glans vibrated when her mouth popped off it.

“I’ll finish you this way,” she said throatily, her hand caressing the well-licked spots where her mouth had been. “Unless you’d rather take me instead.”

A tiny uncontrollable explosion went off inside his brain, like phosphorus flaring. “Yes,” he rasped. “I want to take you.”

Possibly they both went crazy. Heedless of where they were, they started tearing their clothes open. Her jacket flew into the back. Her shirt. His shirt. Her trousers and panties. They muttered swear words as they bumped against the confines of the car. The old Buick was a boat, but they were tall people.

He thanked God the front had a bench-style seat.

“Hurry,” she said, spreading her naked legs for him.

He felt like he dove between them; he was that desperate to get into position. Not there yet, he wedged one foot on the door behind him, the other leg bent up beneath her. He chafed her hips—reassuringly, he hoped.

“Is this okay?” he asked. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” she urged, her hands on his waist. “
Please
.”

The
please
just about killed him.

She placed the ball of one foot on the Buick’s window and the other on the dash. If anyone walked out of their hoity-toity house, there’d be no doubt what they were up to.

In that moment, Rick simply couldn’t care.

“God, I want you,” he said.

She reached between them, her beautiful silky hand wrapping his raging cock.

His body quivered as she pulled him to her. He was as crazed for this as the first time, like every time he took her would be a miracle. The heat of her pussy was insane, the wetness, the way it twitched when his tip touched her.

Part of him longed to stay there and savor, but the wolf in him had to push.

“Oh,” she said as he slid in.

His cock wanted him to pump like a madman. He gave her a hip swivel.

“
Ohh
,” she said lower than before.

“Yeah?” He did the swivel again, loving the results pretty much himself.

“Yes.” This was a breathless gasp. “I like that.” To prove it, she wriggled under him, one hand fumbling out to grip the dash.

The other pressed hot and flat on his sweating back.

He didn’t have room to get fancy. The car allowed him one position, one method of stroking, one steady slope to climb toward increasingly powerful sensations. He’d never been bare inside a lover before her. His cock felt so good—his whole body, actually. He knew he wasn’t going to stop, and that she didn’t want him to.

He paid attention to
everything
.

The softness of her pussy around his thrusting cock.

Its strength when it contracted to pull his length deeper.

The little mewls she made when he did something pleasurable.

“Oh yeah,” he praised, ducking to kiss her neck. “That’s what I want to hear from you.”

As sweet as she was to nuzzle, he couldn’t stay bent there. She was too pretty a picture to ignore. He pushed up again to see her. He felt like he’d never watched a woman during sex before. Her breasts jiggled in their fancy bra cups with every stroke, their upper curves flushed with excitement. Tendons in her inner thighs tightened when he pulled his cock backward. When he pushed in to reclaim her, her entire being seemed to welcome it.

Her eyes . . .

Her eyes were his window to heaven, closing with bliss and then opening to search his. They seemed to ask the same questions he wanted to ask her.
What does this mean? Why are we so good together?
His chest ached from more than arousal, from more than his need for air.

Oh yeah, he didn’t just like her. He wanted her to be his forever.

He couldn’t worry about that then, not while his body demanded he drive it to completion. Seeming to feel the same urgency, Cass dropped her foot from the window onto his ass. He’d shoved down his jeans to take her—not the suavest tactic but efficient. Each time he hit the deepest spot in her, her toes curled into his bare rump.

She was pulling her pussy up him, making his thrusts harder. The hair on his scalp prickled. She was stronger than he expected, maybe as resilient as she’d claimed.

Even if he wasn’t willing to test her limits, the idea that he didn’t have to be
too
careful triggered more excitement inside of him. His hips started churning faster, and that started her groaning. The sound was like pepper itching on his bulbus gland. He couldn’t control himself. He sped up more, needing to rub the slight swelling at the base of his shaft. His balls ached with fullness. God, he was going to go. Wanting to bring her with him, he gripped the dash with his left hand and worked the right between them.

The shift placed the electrum cuff between their abdomens. Even as Rick searched out her clit with his thumb, the low grade tingling in the metal flared. Cass’s back arched off the seat, her nails digging excitingly into him. Her swollen button throbbed beneath the pressure he exerted, the satiny skin slippery and hot.

He simply had to rub it harder.

She cried out and clenched, and Rick’s orgasm catapulted over the tipping point. He poured himself into her with a groan, thrusting and thrusting, until his balls squeezed out the last shot of ecstasy. His mating gland had almost activated. Even now, it twitched like it was considering it.

“God,” Cass sighed, hands stroking up and down his back.

Too relaxed to worry, Rick lifted his head and smiled at her. She smiled back, the curve of her mouth mixing naughtiness and languor.

“You’re really good at that,” she observed.

“I’m glad you think so.”

“I know so, Detective Lupone. Sex that good deserves an award.”

He laughed. “I should make love to you more often. I like seeing you sassy.” He kissed the tip of her nose and then her soft full lips. “Don’t think I won’t take a rain check on the other.”

“The other? Oh.” He adored her blush as she recalled how she’d started off this encounter. “Well, that will be my pleasure.”

He stroked her dampened hair from her face. Their bodies remained connected. Probably, he ought to move and pull on his clothes, but he was damned if he wanted to. “Speaking of pleasure, I didn’t bonk my hip or my funny bone even once in the thick of it. You must have done a spell.”

“Oh no,” she denied earnestly. “I was too distracted to do magic. That was just faerie luck.” She yawned. “Gosh, I could drop off right here.”

“If you do, be sure to talk in your sleep like before.”

“I don’t talk in my sleep.”

“You do,” he insisted teasingly. “‘Where’s my shovel,’ is what you said last time.”

“‘Where’s my shovel?’” Her eyes were wide.

Because he was looking right at her, he saw the instant her gaze blanked out.

CASS Maycee had the best daddy in the world. Not only did he bring her presents when he went away on trips, he taught her to do spells so she’d know he was all right.

Tonight, she was curled in a blanket in the big story chair beside her window. Her daddy’s pocket watch lay open on the sill. If she sent it a pulse of energy from her faerie half, the face lit up. A green glow said he was safe and sound. Blue was the sign he missed her, and white meant he was almost home.

Cass had been pulsing the watch every fifteen minutes, refusing to fall asleep. Despite her constant checking, it wouldn’t change from green to white.

Wondering if she’d done the charm wrong, she pushed up on her knees. She could see out the window then. Her bedroom took up one end of the attic, which was nicer than it sounded. She liked the slope of the rafters and the pretty princess bed her mother had let her pick. Best of all, the rest of the huge floor was empty—the perfect place for her and her daddy to practice tricks. Cass’s mother didn’t want her learning spells. She didn’t approve of magic. Cass thought that was silly. You couldn’t get away from magic in the Pocket, but her dad said they ought to be considerate.

He only taught her tricks when her mother wasn’t around.

Cass didn’t see his car coming up the drive, so she guessed she hadn’t been mis-spelling his special watch. When she checked the hands, the time was eleven thirty and a bit. She frowned at that. She’d turned seven years old today. He’d promised he’d be back for her birthday. He didn’t have much longer to keep his word.

Annoyed, she flopped back in the chair. He’d already missed her party with the kids from school. The half elf cousins she liked had come, the ones she’d told him about. They’d picked their own present, instead of just handing one over from their moms. Bridie had wrapped theirs with extra stars stuck onto the paper. That was nice, Cass thought. Bridie and Jin might turn into real friends. Cass wanted to share that with her dad but couldn’t until he was home.

She wondered why her mom didn’t mind when he went away. She was down in her room sleeping, not at all angry or worried.

“How’s my girl?” the best voice in the world asked softly from her doorway.

“You’re back!” Cass cried happily. She ran to him for her bear hug, loving how he picked her up and squeezed her until she squeaked. “I checked your watch, Daddy, but you snuck up on me!”

“I’m the grownup,” he said with a teasing smile. “I have to have my secrets.”

He let her chatter about school and the party and all the things she’d been storing up since he went away.

“That’s good,” he said when she told him about Jin and Bridie. “Friends are nice things to have.”

“So you really think they’ll be my friends?”

He framed her face in his hands. His blue eyes were serious. “I think you’re the most amazing little girl in the Pocket. You’d make a lovely friend to them.”

“I want to,” she said. “They’re more fun than anyone.”

He patted her head and straightened. “Do you think a special gift from your old dad would be fun?”