Breath of Flame and Shadow (2 page)

“You have no idea what an amazing creature you are,” Rafe said afterward, while he held her in his arms.

“Amazing enough that we’re fucking on the wreckage of your bed,” she said with a hint of humor in her voice. She glanced around at the shredded sheets and mattress that hung beneath the tilted wooden headboard. It was comfortable enough, with the mattress dipping in the center so that they had a nice, soft incline to lie back against. Downy feathers drifted across her skin from the demolished comforter.

She craned her head back to look at the headboard. The master-crafted carvings were gouged with claw marks. Hers or his she had no idea.

“It was only a few hundred years old. I think it’s time to commission some new work anyway. Perhaps in welded steel?”

The grin he gave her was more than she could bear. Their first night together had been enough of a revelation to leave her reeling. She had fallen for him and was so certain he felt the same way.

But that certainty had been an illusion.

The mournful looks she caught him giving her from time to time hadn’t worried her at first. It was only now that she was flying and had nothing better to do than replay their entire time together that they all came back to her with a vengeance. She’d just believed he had old baggage that she’d draw out of him in time. Heaven knew she had her own baggage she intended to share with him at the right time. There was no sense weighing down the early days of something so potentially wonderful with something as ugly as her own past. If only she’d known how volatile his secrets really were.

He hadn’t loved her, in the end. All he’d wanted was a vessel for his fucking sperm.

Cha
pter 2

R
owan had a greater appreciation for meteorologists after discovering the joy of flying. Wind was moody. Weather was, too. She found she had an affinity for the changeability of the weather after a week of flying through Central American summer thunderstorms. The streaming wetness of the rain represented the tears she wouldn’t let herself shed over her heartbreak. Eventually, she learned she could just increase her altitude and escape it all. Too bad she couldn’t do the same for the turmoil that roiled inside her.

The wind became her friend up high, the steady currents shifting in ways that she was able to sense instinctively based on the temperature. It was colder. Much colder, but she found she enjoyed the crisp brush of the currents along her scales, much like she’d enjoyed the wind from the interior of Rafe’s car not long after they had met.

The wind did nothing to drown out his touch or his words still vivid in her memory. She grew weary of the images that refused to leave her mind. In an effort to purge the thoughts, she pushed herself to her absolute limits before stopping to rest. She soon discovered she could fly for thousands of miles without stopping, but the hunger that would overcome her when she finally did rest made it more and more difficult to regain her human shape and conjure the clothing she needed to blend into whichever human community she chose to land nearby.

The magic Rafe had shared with her during their lovemaking had left a ghost of sensation deep inside her that she wished she could shake. It was like she’d let herself get drunk on some delicious cocktail and was now waking up to the unpleasant aftereffects and she couldn’t shed the ache that didn’t seem to want to subside. Replacing the magic was the only method she knew to combat that feeling. She could drown her sorrows at the same time as replenishing her energy.

She found it too easy to return to her old habits when she chose an attractive man in a bar in Costa Rica. She’d chosen him because of how different he’d seemed from Rafe. He was dressed casually, in loose linen pants and a similarly comfortable shirt, open at the neck to display a suntanned chest lightly dusted with gold curls. His hair was disheveled and he looked like he hadn’t shaved in a day.

She had the man wrapped around her finger in the span of ten minutes. Within twenty they were alone together in his rented hillside cabana, standing on a wide deck that seemed to overlook the entire world, including the dormant volcano that loomed against the horizon.

“Wine?” he asked. “Or something stronger? I have tequila, too.”

Rowan shook her head, keeping her eyes on the volcano in the distance and pondering the shimmering threads of magic that led to its peak. The trails felt familiar to her, and she believed they must be linked to other dragons somehow. It seemed to make sense to follow them once she had her fill with this man.

“Wine works,” she answered distractedly. The thought of tequila turned her stomach. The very scent of it brought back memories of the first night with Rafe.

“It’s a gorgeous view, isn’t it? One of the benefits of living in a place like this. Money goes a long way.”

The man rambled on about living as an ex-pat for a few moments while he poured drinks for them, but Rowan tuned out the sound, instead choosing to focus on the intriguing flow of energy that surrounded him, so different from the magic that made up the paths she’d been following.

She’d learned enough during her time with Rafe to know that magic was attracted to a person’s well of desire. It clung to them like iron filings to a magnet until their orgasm released the power that a dragon could absorb. Rafe had also taught her that dragons had their own similar wells, but the magic they absorbed was transformed, taking on special qualities that were unique to the dragon. “Like a fingerprint,” Rafe had said. A human’s magic was just as unique, of course, but less tied to their essences. It must be that essence of Rafe that she’d been unable to shake. She hoped to dilute it with this man’s energy.

Rowan glanced at the man. She smiled politely while sipping her wine and pretended to listen to him. His energy was average, and seemed a little bit uncertain at the moment. She shifted closer to him, let her arm brush against his. Her skin tingled in response to the tickle of the hairs on his arm. The rise in his arousal was subtle, yet almost painfully apparent to Rowan amid his hesitance to make the next move. She desperately needed what he had to give.

“Do the other women like the view as much as I do?” Rowan turned to look directly at him and sized him up with a sweep of her gaze over his body. He really was a fine looking man, broad-shouldered and square jawed. Just self-possessed enough that she enjoyed the way she’d shaken him with the question. She loved that she could do that to even the most controlled men.
Like Rafe.

He tensed and cleared his throat. “Do you mean the mountain, or…?” He left the question hanging, shot a look out at the view of Irazu, then back to her.

“I do enjoy mountains quite a bit, yes,” she said. She set her empty wine glass down and moved closer to him. His warmth seeped through the thin, soft linen of his shirt as she slid her palms down over thick pectorals letting herself explore the shapes of him through the fabric. He stood as though hypnotized by her touch, his lips slightly parted and eyes steadily watching her face. The slow, even rhythm of his breath increased when Rowan unbuttoned his shirt and slipped both hands inside to rake fingernails gently through the coarse blond hair. She held his gaze, watched his lids lower in response to her touch. He bared his teeth slightly and hissed when she pinched one nipple.

“Is it like that, then?” he asked, opening his eyes to look at her more intently.

“Like what?” she asked, digging her nails a little deeper into the curve of thick muscle over his hip. She’d intended to provoke some kind of reaction, to get him to come out of his shell, and it seemed to be working.

He grabbed her wrist suddenly, just as she began toying with the button of his trousers. His erection was plain as day inside the loose-fitting pants that hung low on his waist. He wasn’t wearing briefs and his cock hung low and thick along one thigh. Rowan suddenly ached in some deep place she’d only recently understood. In a way, it was an ache to be fucked, but more than that was the hungry need to absorb that rising swell of energy that had begun to swirl with greater intensity around him since she’d pinched his nipple.

“Believe it or not, I didn’t just bring you here to fuck you, but I’m happy to oblige if that’s why
you’re
here.”

“Why did you bring me here?” Rowan asked, struggling to restrain her frustration. She didn’t want to interact with people any more than absolutely necessary.

“Because you’re a beautiful, intelligent woman, and I imagine I would enjoy a lot more than just your body.”

His expression was so sincere and direct. Precisely the kind of directness she’d appreciated about Rafe when she’d first met him. The rush of memory only made her angry, however. She raised her free hand and deftly unfastened his pants, smirking at him defiantly. Before she could go further he cursed and gripped her other wrist, tugging her abruptly closer so that his mouth pressed against her ear.

“Is that all you want?” His breath blew hot across her skin, the tickle making her shiver.

Rowan shook her head, pulling back to sneer at him. “I want too much. I want things you can’t even fucking fathom. But there’s only one thing you can actually give me so don’t even fucking bother trying with the rest, alright?”

He looked briefly confused and maybe even a little hurt. She very nearly regretted being so mean. In a past life she would have likely enjoyed his company as much as he seemed to believe he would enjoy hers. But she didn’t have the patience for that kind of intimacy now.

His hands clutched her wrists bruisingly tight, his eyes blazing with anger that reflected her own inner turmoil perfectly. It didn’t even surprise her when he shoved her down to her knees and released her hands.

“You got it, babe. If this is what you want, have at it.” He tugged his cock free and stroked it once in front of her.

Rowan didn’t wait. She gripped the base of his cock, took him into her mouth, and sucked once, long and hard along his shaft. Salty, smooth skin and musk inundated her senses. He tasted and smelled like sex, and for a brief moment she was taken back to the trysts she’d had before Rafe. The enjoyable yet mostly empty couplings. Pleasure was all she’d been after then, lacking the true understanding of precisely why she needed those encounters.

His energy shifted violently, becoming a hurricane of magic brought on by the lust she’d incited with her mouth on him. That power would feel so, so good once it was hers. She could bring him off fast like this, too. Then maybe again after she was finished.

“Holy fucking Christ!” he said, threading his fingers into her hair. His legs nearly buckled when she began bobbing her head, taking him deep enough that she could feel his tip at the back of her throat. She was relentless, sucking and teasing with her tongue. It was tempting to shift, but she restrained herself. He was already far beyond the point that she needed to get creative with her mouth. He came with a buck of his hips and a harsh, incoherent yell. Hot semen pulsed onto her tongue, almost as sweet as the magic that flowed into her.

He collapsed to his knees when she finally released him and laughed a little shakily. “Well, I did always say embrace your strengths. But I have a feeling you’re an expert at a lot more than just the perfect blow job.”

Rowan smiled back, buzzed and happy from the fresh infusion of magic. It left her content enough to accept his hand when he offered to help her up. It even seemed to make perfect sense when he led her inside and kissed her a few moments later, his lips tender and soft as though in apology for the crude way he’d behaved. He made love to her with deliberate care, as though he hoped to prove to her that he was skilled enough to be worthy, looking at her every so often to gauge her reactions to the things he did.

She came close to believing she’d been wrong about running away again. Lying in his arms in the dark later, she thought that perhaps this lovely human man could help her purge the memories of Rafe. Perhaps he could love her the way she craved.

Except the very words her subconscious mind had chosen told her otherwise.
Human
. That’s what he was. That’s what she wasn’t. And the itch grew more intense again—the clawing need to not be earthbound, to feel the wind carrying her higher, to get even farther away from the hurt she’d left behind.

She left him sleeping soundly, his deep, slow breaths evidence of his exhaustion. She’d had her fill of him and it was time to move on.

Rowan left her clothes in a heap on the floor, not even certain whether the conjured garments would remain behind once she’d gone. Dawn was just breaking over the horizon when she leapt off the edge of his deck, taking flight over the twilit jungle and heading in the direction of the volcano, following a path of magic that grew clearer the longer she flew.

C
hapter 3

F
rom Irazu, the path led on. She didn’t bother with hopeful dreams of comfort in the arms of a human man again. Wherever necessary, she chose another man to seduce, but made a point not to let her intentions be misinterpreted. The magic trails sometimes led her to wild places where she didn’t speak the language and the people were primitive, but they were somehow even more attuned to her intentions when she arrived. They rejoiced in her presence and treated her like a goddess, sometimes celebrating in ritualistic fashion, catering to her specific needs without even having to be seduced by her breath.

She spent one glorious night in the jungles near Kilimanjaro, serviced extensively by a well-endowed villager who kept referring to her as “sunshine” in his own language.

The longer she flew, the more she understood what it meant to be what she was. Perhaps it was a long dormant instinct that awakened in her and grew stronger with each infusion of magic. She didn’t know precisely why, but Rafe’s friend’s words came back to her time and again.
Leave and live as a human if you wish, but you can have no further contact with other dragons.

She’d run from the choice, yet now she understood there was no going back to her old life—her human life. She considered returning to find that dragon—Kol—and confess that she wanted to be a part of their world, but only if she never had to see or speak to Rafe again.

But Rowan gradually began to doubt that any other dragons even existed. She’d been following what she was sure was their secret path through the upper reaches of the atmosphere for weeks, and had yet to encounter a single dragon. At least she believed it had been weeks. She neglected to check the date the last time she paused to replenish her energy.

Somewhere over Southern Asia she encountered a trail of magic that was far more potent than the other fading paths she’d followed so far. This one made a vast swath across the clouds, as though dozens upon dozens of others had traveled it, and recently. Unable to contain her curiosity she followed it. It wasn’t until she reached the end of the path that she felt a sense of uneasy excitement.

Unlike the other convergences of trails that led to desolate mountain peaks and dormant volcanoes, this one led to a very lively and populated mountain. Like her other stops, she approached it in the middle of the night after flying for days. The path of magic led through the air to a concentrated swirl above a well-lit clearing, paved with flagstones and surrounded by stone lanterns. Human figures wandered about in loose robes and for the second time in her life she saw another dragon in its full, native shape. The winged figure took flight from the center of the clearing and quickly dwindled into the distance, a pale blue speck soon blending into the dark indigo of the sky. A shimmering contrail of magic stretched behind it and gradually faded into the air. Rowan was sure that if she flew across the clearing she’d be able to sense that trail and follow it.

This might be a place like those wild villages she’d found where she had been received so eagerly. Still, she wasn’t comfortable approaching from the air even knowing a dragon in its true form wouldn’t cause alarm.

She found a shadowed rocky ledge, the far side of which was concealed by dense greenery, and descended in the darkness. Once shifted, she conjured herself a robe similar to the garb she’d seen on the humans and made her way down the slope.

“Gone on flyabout have you?” a deep voice said from somewhere just above and to one side. Rowan stopped cold in her tracks and turned toward the sound.

The voice cursed softly when she looked up, letting her hood fall away.

“You shouldn’t be here,” the man said.

Rowan could see two figures resting above on the smooth, flat surface of the large rock she’d landed behind. She hadn’t seen them in the dark when she landed.

“Why not?” she asked. She could make out one reclining nude man with inquisitive eyes. An older man stood above him, arms crossed as he stared down at her. Though “older” wasn’t precisely the word. He looked wiser, with sad eyes, and was slightly bulkier than his lithe, silent companion. Both men were stark naked with shaved heads.

It was their eyes that caused her heart to pound harder in her chest. The older man’s eyes blazed with orange light, not unlike how her own had appeared in the mirror when Rafe had urged her into a passionate frenzy. The other man’s eyes smoldered with a pale, yellow glow reminding her of the gas lamps in the historic district of San Diego.

“Because it isn’t safe for you. If you belonged here, you’d have landed in the field like the others.”

“You know what I am?” Rowan immediately felt like a fool for asking the question.

The man only smiled gently and dropped his arms. “Yes. And more than that, we can help you, but not if you take another step down this mountain.”

“Where am I, exactly?” Rowan said. She moved toward the direction he indicated and found worn footholds in the side of the rock that allowed her to climb up. The man who had spoken reached out a hand to her and hoisted her up effortlessly. She stumbled at the top and he wrapped strong arms around her, steadying her.

The second man spoke. “This is the Monastery. The Council lives here, along with a few free dragons, but mostly it’s either bonded humans or dragons like us. Unbound dragons shackled by the Council. We’d die if we lived anywhere else.”

“I remember hearing about you. A dragon named Kol told me—do you know who he is?”

The two men grinned at each other. “Yes. Kol is a good dragon. He’s on our side.”

“I don’t even know what most of all this means, to be honest,” Rowan said, giving them an apologetic look.

The older of the two men pursed his lips and nodded. “Sit and we can talk. First, tell me your name.”

She shared her name, and the pair introduced themselves as Darius and Zak.

“We’re what dragons call ‘Unbound.’ Our parents broke dragon law by breeding within the race,” Darius explained. “So we were taken from them as infants, our magic shackled. There’s no end to our indenture here. If you were to be found, you would end up like us.”

“Was that what Kol meant when he said that freedom was all you wanted? That I can help make a stand against the Council?”

“Yes. But it seems like you have other ideas.”

Rowan grimaced. Her gut roiled with guilt over the urge to run yet again even knowing she might be the key to these two men finding freedom. Rafe’s lack of conviction still stung, but if she kept running she may be condemning other dragons to slavery, and would likely have to keep running, herself.

“It isn’t about that,” she said quietly. “I fell for someone who it turned out didn’t return the feelings. I just need more time to decide what to do.”

Darius shifted closer to her, his eyes cutting through the darkness. He rested a hand on her cheek. His touch was gentle and lingered for a moment. “You’re depleted, aren’t you?”

“Yes. It seems like it takes more effort for me to get full each time I stop. I keep adding more and more to…to my plate but it never feels like enough.” She laughed softly at the analogy, but it truly did feel like she was going hungry and no amount of food could fill her empty belly.

“This is what it’s like for us daily,” Darius said. “We have access to just enough magic to sustain each other, to maintain these human forms we’re bound in. We’re allowed no more than that.”

“What would happen if you didn’t have that?”

Zack snorted derisively, earning him an admonishing look from Darius. He shrugged. “We’d die.”

“Oh God.”

“We will give you what we can, but you’ll have to find another source soon. There are coastal resorts only a few islands away—the kind that cater to particular human tastes.”

“What Darius means to say is that you can find some pretty eager humans down there if you know where to look. Just be careful because those resorts are a favorite spot for unmated dragons to visit, too.”

“If you two were free, is that where you would go?”

Zak and Darius shared a look. With a slow smile, Darius shook his head. “If we were truly free, there’s a female dragon we’d mate. She’s a lot like you, as a matter of fact. She visits here sometimes.”

“Why is it so wrong for two dragons to be together out there? You two are together here, aren’t you?”

Zak replied, “We’re males, and forbidden to mate or breed unless the Council sanctions it. They do use us as breeding stock if it suits them, but the law is the way it is to prevent inbreeding. Except we both know there’s a growing population of hidden purebreds like yourself who are clearly not inbred. Which just proves that we are capable of policing ourselves, keeping our bloodlines varied enough to prevent mutations. No, in here we just use each other for sex.”

Rowan decided she liked the easy honesty of the two men, and regretted her own conflict over helping them. She decided that once she replenished she would fly back to San Diego and find Kol and offer to help. She’d have to face her issues with Rafe at some point anyway.

“The female you love, she isn’t a purebred, I take it?”

“No, if she were she’d be in here with us.”

“Jesus. ‘In here’ makes it sound like a prison. This place is beautiful.”

“A gilded cage. At least we get conjugal visits.”

“Does she visit often?” Rowan suddenly had a slew of questions she’d never even considered that popped into her head all at once. When the men both burst out into uncontrollable laughter she stared at them. “What is it?”

“We can hear your thoughts clear as day. Who was the fool who released your binding?”

“He was a…a dragon named Rafe.” Darius’s brows drew together and Zak grunted, but Rowan plowed on. She needed this. She needed to let go of these awful feelings if she intended to go back and actually try to help them. “He was sweet, really. But he lied to me. That’s really all there is to it.”

“He’s a Shadow. Their MO is subterfuge. I doubt he kept the details from you to hurt you.”

“Then why? Why can he be so perfect one minute and then lie? I mean, we broke his
bed.
Two dragons screwing are too much for a piece of furniture that old. And he didn’t care. He just…” She couldn’t help but smile at the memory. “He just made love to me again.”

“You’re a dragon.” The pair of them said it in unison, like it was supposed to clear everything up.

“So what?” she yelled back. “I fell in love with the bastard. I
don’t fall in love
. And then he…said he only wanted me because I’m pure. Because he wants to
breed
with me.”

The worst part, that she couldn’t even bring herself to say out loud, was the stark denial that had erupted from Rafe’s mouth when Kol asked him, point blank, if he was in love with her. He’d said no. There she’d been in the dark, listening, after two days of falling in love for the first time in her life and on the verge of telling him as much. But when confronted with the question,
he had said no
.

She didn’t mean to cry, and it was entirely unlike her. The overwhelming flood of emotions was just too strong to hold back. She abstractly wished she’d spent more time crying when she was younger. She’d at least have been prepared for this. But her childhood hadn’t had room for crying. She collapsed even further into a blubbering mess at that thought, unable to contain it after all the running she’d done from precisely this reaction, and not just her reaction to Rafe, but her reaction to her entire fucked up life. Oh, God, it was all the same, wasn’t it? He
was
her life. He represented every little rejection she’d ever felt, every endeavor she’d tried and been shot down from. She’d risen stronger from all of them but had always wondered if there was one she wouldn’t recover from.

The strong arms that encircled her from behind did nothing to comfort her until the words hit her ears. “You’re more precious than you know, Rowan. Shush.”

Darius nuzzled the words into her ear at the same time as he swept a deft thumb across her cheek, smoothing the tears away. His lips pressed soft and comforting kisses against her temple, almost paternal, but a little too lingering to avoid hinting at his attraction.

The kiss brought her back abruptly to her current situation. She let out a stuttering breath and let her fingers twine through his where they still clutched her tight against him. His hand was warm and soft and he felt too good pressed against her, holding her with virtually all his limbs wrapped around her after moving close to comfort her. His long legs bracketed both of hers where she sat, and his large arms encompassed her. She felt protected, for perhaps the first time in her life.

“Are you all this big?” she asked in a nasally tone, then sniffed and wiped her eyes. “I mean, I’ve only seen two of you close up before. Kol was huge.” She raised an eyebrow at Zak who moved into her field of vision and squatted down with a concerned look. He was less bulky than Darius but still had the look of an Olympic swimmer, all tall and lanky and with muscles in places she didn’t think muscles should exist.

Darius laughed. “We’re as big as we want to be. This is just the size I’m comfortable with. Once we make a habit out of our human appearance it becomes very hard to change, however. All young dragons start off with a pleasing form. You clearly did, too. You just added to it.”

“Are you telling me I didn’t really need to go to the gym? Well, fuck.”

Darius’s laugh rumbled behind her and his grip on her loosened. His hands slipped down to rest at her hips, but she let herself lean back against his chest, taking comfort in his solid presence. Zak sat cross legged across from them, the moonlight above casting his skin in silver. He watched placidly, but after his few comments Rowan knew he could be opinionated and direct.

“What are you waiting for, Zak?” She asked the question innocently before realizing how it might sound. She’d only thought he seemed like he was waiting for something and she wanted to know what it was. She’d had no illusions that it might be something related to her.

“I’ve spent my entire life waiting,” he said. “For you, perhaps, if you agree to help us.” His gaze slipped over her, seeming to see right through the bulky robe she wore. “And to address your alternate meaning, I think you need to get rid of that ridiculous garment so we can get to the business of helping you in what limited manner we can.”