Magic Kingdom (Dragon Born Alexandria Book 3) (22 page)

“Monster Cleanup,” Violet answered after one ring.

“Violet,” Alex said. “I’m across the street from the summit hall. I have four Convictionite psychos tied up and ready to be picked up.”

“What happened?”

“They spewed their tired old supernaturals-are-evil lines, then tried to fry me with something called a Soul Crusher.”

“Are you all right?” asked Violet.

“Fine.”

Logan gave her a hard look.

“Mostly,” Alex added, shrugging at him.

The shrugging was a mistake. It made pain split across her ribs. The vein between Logan’s eyes looked ready to pop.

“Do you still have the Soul Crusher?” Violet asked her.

Alex stared down at the pile of metal shards strewn across the parking lot. “Kind of. It’s in pieces. If someone wants it all, it will take a long time to collect them.”

“Stan will want it,” Violet said. “I’ll tell him. And I’ll have a Disposal team there in two minutes.”

“Thanks.” Alex hung up.

Zinnia was watching them.

“You’ve eaten now,” Alex told her. “Don’t you have some dust to analyze? Or are you going to lose that one to me too?”

A crinkle formed on her picture-perfect forehead, spoiling the picture. What a shame.

“I’ll call you later,” Zinnia told Logan. She stole a look at Alex, then blew him a kiss.

“Goodbye, Zinnia,” Alex said. “You’ve puckered your surgically-primped lips. Now scram.”

Zinnia made a little noise that sounded like a kitten falling into a hole. As she left, the Disposal truck pushed through the flimsy tape barrier blocking entry into the empty parking lot. It parked in front of the Convictionites. And just in time too. The four thugs were starting to wake up.

* * *

After the Disposal guys loaded the four Convictionites into their van, Alex and Logan drove home. They were now in their suite, cleaning up in the bathroom. For what seemed like the hundredth time in two days, Alex was stripped down to just her lingerie. Her shirt was ripped and bloody. And her pants were full of holes from scraping against the pavement. So her ruined clothes were in the garbage can, which was getting pretty overstuffed with her defective wardrobe.

Alex and Logan sat side-by-side on the big fainting couch in the bathroom. Alex wouldn’t be fainting, even though the magic healing spray he was squirting onto her side stung like the fangs of hell. Being dipped in boiling acid would have hurt less. But still there would be absolutely no fainting. She was too tough for that. She did, however, want to pull out her sword and swing it down on that stupid sofa, chopping it in half.

“Are you all right?” Logan asked her, squirting her again.

Alex gritted her teeth, bottling a scream. She gripped the sofa tightly. She imagined herself jumping up to grab her sword, then using it to hack all the furniture into toothpicks.

“Fine,” she said.

Truth be told, she wasn’t fine. She was as upset about Zinnia’s attempts to seduce Logan as she was about her injuries. No, make that a hundred times more upset. Zinnia was trying to break them apart. And Logan wasn’t even telling her off. Maybe he thought it was funny. Yeah, about as funny as a drop of acid in the eye.

But how could she complain about Zinnia’s flirtations when he was being so gentle and loving to her right now? She shouldn’t be thinking about that witch. That’s what Zinnia wanted: to ruin even the time Alex and Logan had alone.

Logan lifted up her right hand. “The broken bones in your hand have healed. So have your ribs.”

His hand brushed across her naked side. Goosebumps popped up across her body in response to his touch.

“Yes.” She drew in a deep breath, drinking in his aura. “Thanks to our bond.”

“The changes in your body are accelerating,” he told her. “You are gaining more and more of my abilities.”

“And you?” She smirked. “Shooting out any dragon fire?”

“No,” he said. “Nor any other magic. It appears the magical changes are entirely one way.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. My body is already saturated enough with magic as it is.” His fingers caressed her cheek. “And just because my magic hasn’t changed, that doesn’t mean that
I
haven’t changed.”

“Oh?”

“I’ve been having more trouble controlling my emotions,” he told her.

Alex looked at his granite face. She laughed. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“It has made staying focused difficult.”

“Sorry.” She set her hand over his. “I got extra powers and you got my volatile emotions. It doesn’t sound like a fair trade.”

“Yet I wouldn’t change a thing. If I could go back in time, I’d bond with you all over again.”

Alex thought about the flood of heated emotions they’d had after the bonding. Oh, yes. She’d do it all over again. Even if the Blood Magic ritual had made her as possessive as a vampire. She’d grabbed Logan’s butt in front of Zinnia. God, she’d acted like the psychopathic jealous girlfriend.

Zinnia was asking for it,
Nova said.

Logan dipped a washcloth in the bowl of water, then wiped it across her stomach. The blood washed away. The skin beneath was smooth, as though it had never been injured. He slid the washcloth up her stomach, trailing the edge of her bra.

Alex tried to stay focused. “I looked at the residue,” she told him. It was a good topic. There was nothing the least bit sexy about a bunch of necromancer residue.

“I’ve been with you the whole time. When did you have time to do that?” Logan asked.

“While you were getting everything ready to play doctor.”

Play doctor,
Nova snickered in her head.

Grrr.

“You were supposed to be resting,” Logan said.

“Yeah, well, you know me.”

“That you can’t sit still for more than ten seconds? Yeah, I know you.” He sighed. “What did you find?”

“The residue is definitely dark fairy magic,” she said. “It kind of feels like our necromancer, but it’s hard to say. Every scene we’ve been to has had the magic burned away. And what little magic remained was scrambled and weak. There were too many types of magic. Too many artifacts. I wonder what the necromancer’s end game is. Why does he want to build an army of the dead?”

“Why does anyone try to destroy the world?” Logan posed.

“Because they are nuts,” stated Alex. “Destroying the world makes things suck for everyone, including the madman who brought about the end of the world.”

“It’s about power, Alex. These people would rather be a king in hell than a nobody in paradise.”

“See, that’s where these crazies and I disagree. I don’t want to be a king—or queen—in either hell or paradise. I do, however, want a world with things like running electricity and indoor plumbing and no monsters freely roaming the lands, killing people. If this necromancer is so content with the idea of hell, I will gladly send him there.”

Logan chuckled. “I know you will. Actually,
we
will. We just need to find him.”

“I’m working on it, but the residue is super weak. I’m not sure I can track it. So I froze the residue to preserve its magic until Sera comes back. She’s better at tracking magic than I am. I’ll have her take a look.”

“Cheating in your competition?” His mouth twitched.

“I’ve never played by the rules,” she declared. “Besides, your former lover won’t be playing fair. You can bet on that.”

“Oh, noticed that, did you?”

“She is not a subtle woman.” She was, however, a lot of other things, most of them four-letter words.

“No, she’s not,” Logan said. “And neither are you, love.”

“Are you comparing us?”

“No, I wouldn’t want to upset her by making an unfair comparison.” His face was completely deadpan.

She punched him in the shoulder. “I knew you were listening.”

“It’s hard not to. Plus, I have to admit I was curious.”

“Morbidly curious,” she said.

“Are you planning on killing her?”

“That depends entirely on her,” Alex told him.

“Don’t trouble yourself with Zinnia. She likes to make a big show. She’s chronically addicted to being the center of attention.”

“And yet you were with her.”

“We worked together. We had a few meaningless nights together. It was just fun. Nothing deep.”

“Well, Zinnia thinks you’re soulmates.”

Logan laughed. “Zinnia is too fickle to feel deeply enough to have a soulmate. She’s just messing with you. It amuses her. This isn’t the first time she’s done this sort of thing.”

“Stolen you from another woman?”

“From some women I hardly knew, yes.”

“And you let her?”

He shrugged. “Whether I ended the night with her or some other woman wasn’t relevant. I had fun, I went out with some women, but never more than once or twice. Back then, I got bored quickly.”

Alex tried not to dwell on the fact that ‘back then’ was only half a year ago. No, she had no right to judge. She got bored easily too. She’d never been in a real relationship before either.

Alex stood. Her legs wanted to be moving. “It looks like you’re done. Thank you for your help. Now I just need to find some clothes, assuming I have any left in my closet.”

She started walking toward the big wooden wardrobe, thinking about her dire need to go shopping. Fighting monsters in her underwear was just not practical. She’d barely made it out of the bathroom when Logan was suddenly in front of her.

She looked at him. “I wonder how long before I get super speed.”

“Never, I hope. I’d hate to become superfluous.”

“You’d never be superfluous.” She smirked at him. “No matter how much magic or speed or strength I get, I can’t give myself a back massage.”

Logan wrapped his arms around her and began massaging his fingers into her back.

“Yes,” she said, closing her eyes. “Like that.” She melted against his fingers. “Logan?” she asked after few moments of thoughtless bliss.

“Yes?”

“I have this weird feeling, the feeling that we are just pawns in some bigger game.”

His hands froze on her back. When she moaned out a protest, he continued the massage.

“Any time you work with the Magic Council, you become a pawn in their game. You know that,” he told her.

“Yes, I know. But we have little choice. Not if we want to fight the Convictionites and win.”

“We don’t have to fight at all. We can go away, just the two of us. I can hide us so that no one ever finds us. We can live in peace,” he whispered into her ear.

“Maybe for a time.” She turned around to face him. “But they would eventually find us. This conflict is splitting the world. There is no escape when the ground is crumbling everywhere beneath you. We must fight the Convictionites’ plague of hate before it consumes the earth.”

Logan’s arms tightened around her. “I love you.”

“Because I’m going to save the world?” she teased.

“Because you want to,” he said. “Because you don’t give up when the going gets tough. You just fight harder.”

“Well, someone has to save the world. Funny that it’s the for-profit duo of Slayer and the Paranormal Vigilante.”

“Yes, I heard that they’re nothing but trouble.” He kissed her.

“Indeed,” she agreed, kissing him back. “They spread chaos wherever they go.”

Logan’s hand darted to her head, freeing her ponytail. Her dark hair tumbled down over her shoulders.

She gave him a coy smile. “I’m suddenly feeling very vulnerable standing here, in only my lingerie before that terrible assassin Slayer.” She zipped down his shirt, peeling the hot leather off his skin.

“As you should.” His hands slid down her back, releasing her bra. “Caught without a place to hide your weapons.” He clicked his tongue. “Very sloppy, Vigilante.”

His mouth lowered to her breast, her nipple hardening in agonizing anticipation as he flicked it once with the tip of his tongue. He licked it again, and ripples of coiled desire sliced across her body, tightening between her legs. His hand followed, rubbing across the rippled lace of her panties. A soft moan brushed past her lips.

“I didn’t quite catch that, Vigilante,” his wicked voice whispered into her ear as his fingers plunged beneath the lip of her panties, drowning her in a deluge of slick, wet heat.

A deep, primal cry of pure lust ripped out of her. She couldn’t hold it back—and she didn’t want to.

“Yes, that,” he said, his voice hardly more than a growl. “I love that.” He gave the lacy garment a rough tug, sliding it down her legs.

Logan’s hands locked around her hips, tugging her up. He pushed her down on the bed, the mattress bouncing as her back hit it. His hard body stretched across the length of her. His mouth closed softly over hers. He kissed her with a hard, rough passion, probing the inside of her mouth with hunger.

Suddenly, he pulled back, breathing heavily. His face was strained, his eyes burning like a man just before his breaking point. Through their bond, she could feel the threads of his control stretching, fraying under the deluge of desire.

“Having trouble holding back your emotions?” she teased.

His voice was a thick rasp. “Yes.”

His fingers teased her skin in gentle, soft caresses. His magic, however, was thrashing against hers in a storm of hard, uncontrolled thrusts. It was building faster and rougher. He was losing it. And she wanted him to. She wanted him with none of his brakes on.

“Then don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t even try to hold back.”

She reached out with her magic and plucked his aura like a taut harp string. He roared. His hands closed around her wrists, pinning her to the bed as he thrust inside of her. Her body shook and shivered, dizzying threads of heat spreading through her. She screamed out.

“I love you,” he said, his fingers dipped lower even as he thrust into her again.

A deep hunger grew with every stroke of his fingers, a spasming, spiraling, insatiable heat building inside of her. A tear ran down her cheek, whether from her burning heart or the burning from a bit further south, she did not know. All she knew was…

“I love you too,” she said. “And don’t you dare stop.”

“Darling,” he whispered hotly into her ear. His eyes screamed wicked intentions. “I am just getting started.”