Sparks Fly: A Novel of the Light Dragons (3 page)

I giggled as I squirmed my way out of my shirt. “You already did that when you returned at three o’clock this morning. Twice. In a way that left me utterly breathless for hours.”

“And yet you seem to have your breath again,” he murmured as he whisked off the last of his clothing, kneeling on the bed to stroke a hand up my belly to my breasts.

I reached for him, shivering with pleasure as I slid my hands along the muscles of his arms and shoulders. “I expect you can do something about that.”

“Perhaps,” he murmured, his cheeks nuzzling my breasts at the same time as his hands busied themselves with removing my bra.

One hand slid down to the waistband of my jeans, about to unzip them, but a sudden shadow looming overhead had me gasping.

The black-haired Baltic of the past stormed into the room, quickly removed his clothing, and flung himself down onto the bed, right on top of where I lay.

“Whoa now,” I said, scooting to the very edge, looking down at the naked man who had once been my Baltic. “That startled me. Er…is he going to be here for a while?”

“How the hell do I know?” Baltic rolled off me, a decidedly disgruntled expression darkening his face.

“Well, he’s you. Don’t you remember how long you were here?”

The look he gave me spoke volumes, and none of them expounded on the brilliance of my thinking. “No, mate, I don’t happen to remember what I did every single day of my more than one thousand years of existence.”

“You weren’t resurrected until almost forty years ago,
so you missed three hundred years,” I pointed out, watching with interest as the past Baltic tossed and turned before lying on his back, his hands behind his head. I couldn’t help but glance downward.

“Ysolde,” Baltic said warningly.

“I was just looking, not comparing. Besides, I already told you that your resurrected form was a bit more robust, so you have nothing to glare at me about, not to mention the fact that this is the very same body I used to ogle in the past.”

“Come,” he said, holding out his hand.

“Well, I had planned…never mind. I suppose having him right there wouldn’t be appropriate.”

“Nor desirable. We will continue this in our own bedroom later.”

Reluctantly, I climbed off the bed and accepted the clothing Baltic handed me. As we put on our clothing, I glanced back at his former self with a bit of sadness. “Although if you were to lie down in exactly the same spot that he was…”

The lecture he gave me as he dragged me out of the keep and down the bailey was potent, but not worthy of repeating, and of course, absolutely unwarranted. “And in the future, you will cease involving me in your visions. Do you understand?”

“Pfft,” I told him, pinching him on the behind as he strolled around the corner of the hut next to the practice yard. “You’re so limited in your ability to enjoy different things.”

“I have more important things to do with my time,” he called back as he disappeared.

“Nothing is more important than the job your father gave me. Hey, speaking of that, you never told me who that woman was. Baltic? Who was she?”

“Who’s who?” a voice asked behind me. I spun around, staggering slightly when the world spun with me for a
few moments, finally resolving itself into a familiar, if uninspiring, bedroom atop the old pub. “Are you all right? You look funny, like you smell cabbage cooking.”

“I’m fine, lovey.” I smiled at the brown-haired boy watching me with eyes that always seemed far too old for their nine years. “And there’s nothing wrong with cabbage, despite your stepfather’s insistence that it was put on this earth only to try his patience. That stir-fried cabbage with peanut sauce that Pavel made last night was to die for, which you’d know if you had tried it.”

Brom wrinkled up his nose. Always a placid child, if a tad bit eccentric, in the month that had passed since our house had been destroyed, he seemed to have adopted Baltic as a hero figure. I’d caught him more than once watching Baltic closely, as if fascinated with the way a wyvern acted, but I think it went deeper than mere curiosity about the dragons with whom we now found ourselves living. He’d started parroting Baltic’s likes and dislikes, even going so far as to spurn food I knew he didn’t really mind.

“Are you going into London today?”

“Nice change of subject, and yes, I am.” I shook off the last few dregs of anger over the idea that the First Dragon had tried to force Baltic into taking a mate, and finished putting away the shirts I’d bought in a local shop. “Where is Nico taking you today?”

“He wants to go see a history museum.” Brom looked thoughtful. “It has ships and stuff, but no bodies, although Nico says there might be some surgeon’s tools. When are we going to get our own house so I can set up my lab again? You said you’d start looking right away, and it’s been forever.”

“Four weeks is hardly forever.” I smiled and gave him one of the three daily hugs he allowed. “But I’ll ask Baltic again about a house. Would you mind if we lived outside of England? He’s likely to want to be near Dauva in
order to oversee the rebuilding, and I hate to make him travel between here and Riga all the time.”

“Are there mummies in…” His face screwed up in thought.

“Latvia?” I finished. “I have no idea, although it is close enough to visit St. Petersburg, which I know has some fine museums. Whether or not they have mummies is beyond me. You can ask Nico, though. Perhaps he’ll know.”

“OK. Will he come with us? Because he’s a green dragon, and not in Baltic’s sept, I mean.”

“I’m sure Drake will give him permission, since he’s agreed to let Nico tutor you for a year. Oh, you haven’t had your allowance yet, have you? Let me get my purse.”

Brom’s expression turned painful for a few seconds before his shoulders sagged, and he said with obvious reluctance, “Baltic gave it to me this morning when he got home from Nepal.”

“Uh-huh. And were you going to tell me that, or just let me give you more?”

His lips twitched. “Well…no. But if you wanted to give me more, that would be OK.”

I laughed and gave his shoulder a little pat. “I’m sorry to have burst a burgeoning scheme to get money from both of us, but you really don’t need more than
one
weekly allowance.”

“How am I going to buy supplies when we get a house?” he asked as I herded him before me back into the narrow hallway. The floor and walls, wooden and uneven, made me feel as if I were walking at an angle. I didn’t complain, though; I found the small pub run by some human friends of Pavel, Baltic’s second-in-command, charming and quaint in its Elizabethan Englishness. Baltic insisted we would be safe there should Thala, his former lieutenant, decide to try to kill us again. I had no doubt that he would keep us safe no matter where we
were located, but like Brom, I was growing tired of such a transient lifestyle, and I yearned for my own home where we could settle down once and for all.

“When we have room for you to set up another mummification lab, I’ll buy you some supplies. Although, really, Brom, couldn’t you find some other hobby than mummifying animals?”

“You said it was illegal to mummify a human,” he pointed out as I tapped on the door to his tutor’s room. “Besides, I don’t know where to find a dead person.”

Nico, an auburn-haired, studious green dragon who had charge of Brom’s education
for the last few months, greeted me and grabbed up a small backpack. “Did Brom tell you that we’re going to the naval museum today?”

“Yes, despite the fact that it won’t have bodies.” I shared a smile with Nico before reminding Brom to behave himself. “I won’t be back until just before dinner, but Pavel said he was going to cook up something special, so be home by six.”

“Absolutely,” Nico agreed, and with a glance at his watch, hustled Brom down the stairs. I heard the rumble of male voices drift upward after them, and waited, wondering how best to broach the subject of my vision.

Baltic appeared at the head of the stairs, his hand quickly whipping away from his pocket as he spotted me.

“You didn’t!” I said, frowning as he approached, Pavel on his heels. “Baltic, really, it’s too bad of you!”

Guilt chased across his face, followed immediately by a look of pure seduction as he swept me up in his arms and bathed me in dragon fire. “
Chérie
, what is it you’re frowning over? Could it be that you have missed me in the last five minutes as much as I’ve missed you?”

“Whenever you call me
chérie
, I know you’re feeling guilty about something,” I said, melting against him even as I giggled a little. “Of course I missed you, and not just for the last five minutes. It’s been a hellish twelve days while you were trying to find Thala, not only because I was worried sick about you, but because you weren’t here to drive me wild with desire, but that’s not the point. Brom did
not
need more money. And don’t deny you gave him some, because I saw you putting your wallet away.”

“We’ve spoken of this subject already,” he murmured against my lips, pulling me brazenly against his hips. “If you are good today, I will allow you to have your wanton way with me later.”

“If I’m
good
…” I released my outrage at such a statement, and almost purred as I let him kiss me, amused that he thought he could distract me in such a way before I realized that he had a very good record of doing just that.

I gave myself up to the sensation of his fire sinking into me, of the hardness of his body against mine, of his scent, that masculine, spicy scent that seemed to kindle my own dragon fire. And when his mouth moved against mine, I knew I didn’t stand a chance. I kissed him with all the passion I possessed, making him growl into my mouth as I tugged on his hair, wordlessly demanding more of his dragon fire.

Pavel passed by us, murmuring something about waiting for Baltic in the sitting room, but even that didn’t stop me from welcoming Baltic’s fire with a little moan of my own. His tongue burned as it swept inside my mouth, his chest and legs hard when he pushed me up against the wall. I clung to his shoulders, rubbing myself against him, pulling hard first on my fire, and when that didn’t come, on his, to bathe us both in heat.

“Ysolde, if you do not stop attempting to seduce me in the hallway, I will take you right here,” Baltic said in a low voice filled with passion. “And while I would be happy to fulfill this latest of your secret fantasies, we risk shocking anyone who comes upstairs.”

I slid one hand down to pinch his adorable behind. “For the last time, you incredibly sexy dragon, I do not have sexual fantasies that are anything but perfectly ordinary, and certainly do not involve voyeurism. And before you say it, no one would have seen us in the keep, not even your past self. I will admit, though, that parts of me are still humming after the way you greeted me this morning when you arrived home. That was quite the homecoming.”

“I merely gave you the attention you were due.” Baltic raised an eyebrow seconds before he dived for my chest, his mouth and hands hot on my breasts. I squirmed against him, shifting his hands so I could have better access to his chest and wondering if we had time to indulge our need for each other, but at that moment, my phone vibrated in my pocket and bellowed out a recording of one word: “Ysolde!”

Baltic raised his head from where he was licking the valley between my breasts, frowning something fierce. “Mate! I thought I told you to change your alarm sound.”

I giggled against his mouth and nipped his bottom lip. “But it’s so perfect! Nothing catches my attention more than your saying my name. And speaking of attention, I want to talk to you about that vision.”

He ignored the emphasis I put on the words, wrapping his arms around my waist and lifting me off the ground as he squeezed tightly. “You try my patience, woman. I have no time for reminders of what happened in the past. I have lost twelve days chasing Thala, and there is much work that I must accomplish in a short amount of time.”

I took a deep breath. “I wish I could ignore them, but I can’t. You’re not the only one who lost twelve days, my darling. When the First Dragon demanded I salvage your honor—”

“I’ve told you before that my honor is fine as it is.”

“When your father, the godlike ancestor of every dragon whoever was and whoever will be, tells me to salvage your honor, then I’m not about to ignore anything that might help me do just that. Especially since you aren’t making it the least bit easy for me.”

“If you choose to waste your time—”

“Waste my time?
Waste my time!
” I gasped, shoving at his shoulder. “I cannot believe that you would call my visions a waste of time!”

“You are being emotional, Ysolde,” he started to say, but I slapped both hands on his chest with a glare that by rights should have stripped his hair off his head.

“I am not being emotional!” I yelled. The echo of my voice along the wood-paneled hallway was quite audible. Baltic’s glossy dark chocolate eyebrows rose. “Fine! I’m emotional! I can’t help it. I’m hormonal right now.”

“Are you having your female time? You were not earlier. Did it arrive since then? I hope it will be over soon. I do not like having to wait for it to cease,” he said, passion firing in his eyes.

“People can hear us downstairs, you know, and you haven’t
quite
embarrassed me to death. Would you, perhaps, like to inquire as to the state of my bowels?” I took a deep breath when he looked about to do just that. “What were we talking about that didn’t involve my bodily functions?”

“Your being emotional. It is a good thing that I am a wyvern, and thus am able to control my emotions where you cannot.”

“Oh, I like that—”

“It is just like that time at Dragonwood when you tried to geld me with your eating dagger. You were most emotional then, as well. You remember that, do you not?”

I frowned for a few seconds as I tried to dig through what remained of my memory. “No…at Dragonwood? I tried to geld you? Are you sure?”

“Do you distrust my memory?” he asked. There was something about the innocent look on his face that made me suspicious, but there was nothing I could say to challenge his statement.