ClosertoFire (3 page)

“I’ll just be in the next room. Get some rest,” he said. He
dimmed the room lights and left, drawing the door not quite closed behind
himself.

No, don’t go
, Lily thought sadly.
I need you here.
She lay for a long time in the silence, trying to slow her breathing. She felt
strange. She swore she could feel every cell in her body, right down to the
blood cells moving through her veins. She could still smell him on her hands
and her lips tingled oddly. She brought her hands to her face on the pillow,
touching her mouth to see if it felt any different. She felt…marked. It was a
long time before she slept.

Darek rounded on Bane the second he stepped through the door
to the adjoining room.

“For fuck’s sake, Bane,” he growled, his eyes flashing red.
“You have her scent all over you.”

Bane raised an eyebrow, studying his friend. He was used to
Darek’s preference for shooting first and asking questions later. When Bane
spoke, he did so in careful, measured tones. “Perhaps so,” he said quietly. “I
take it you object?”

Darek snarled, his hands clenching into fists. “To you
fucking around with a target? You’re damn right I object!” He stormed across
the room, red light flickering over and through his skin in lightning-like
flashes, signaling that a shift was imminent.

Bane’s mouth twitched in spite of his friend’s ire.
“Shifting in here would be…ill-advised. If you want to tear me limb from limb,
let’s at least adjourn to the balcony.”

Usually, humor calmed Darek. Usually. So it surprised Bane
when his friend grabbed him by the front of the shirt, lengthening talons
piercing the fabric and cutting his chest.

“All right,” Darek grated, his eyes glowing bright red now.

A cold anger spread in Bane’s gut and he clenched Darek’s
wrists in his hands. “We can do this if you want, but it’s not going to change
the way you feel about her.”

Darek stopped mid-snarl, shock registering on his features.
“Is
that
what you think?” he asked in a low, dangerous voice.

Bane regarded him with narrowed eyes, gauging his chances of
being hurled through the glass door and off the balcony. “I think,” he began.
He paused, inhaling deeply. “I think that you’re so bloody tired of losing
people you care about that when you feel something—anything—you paint it over
with rage.” Darek’s grip loosened, the red lightning in his eyes fading. “And I
think you owe me a shirt.”

The last vestiges of red left Darek’s eyes as he let go of
Bane, his expression a mixture of anger and sorrow. “Fuck you, Sigmund.” He
took a step back, clenching and unclenching his fists. “At least I’m not the
one getting suckered by one of those bitches.” Bane raised an eyebrow but said
nothing in reply. “I need to look at the sky for a while,” Darek growled. He
shoved his now-human hands in his pockets and walked toward the glass door to
the balcony.

Those bitches
, Bane thought,
would be the idani
.

Bane had been working with Darek for more than a decade.
Like everyone, he had his issues, but he was a good partner. Loyal. Raised in
war-torn Britain in the fifteenth century, Darek was a skilled warrior. He
preferred being in the thick of battle to watching it from a strategist’s post.
Bane was a superb fighter, but he preferred not to fight until he’d analyzed a
problem from every possible angle. He supposed that made sense. After all, he’d
spent his fledgling years watching people die of plague in the once-thriving
city of London. Disease wasn’t something you could tear apart with your bare
hands.

The glass door rattled in its frame as Darek shoved it open,
stepping out onto the balcony. Bane let him go. If the night sky would bring
Darek some solace, let it be. Bane needed to think. And he
really
needed
a cold shower. He unbuttoned his ruined shirt and cast it aside, heading for
the bathroom.

The war—the dracambri’s struggle for survival, really—had
fallen upon them in the dark of night, twenty years before the turn of the
second millennium. Even their prince and
sovrán
, Anthony Ciruelo, had
been unprepared. Darek had been a commander in Anthony’s army then, and his
battalion was the first struck. The first reports to trickle in to the High
Council and to Bane were of a powerful new species of demon—red eyes, black
hides, translucent in the darkness. Halfway around the world, Darek’s men were
caught off guard. The demons nearly wiped out the entire aerie in Melanesia.

The loss stunned everyone. Anthony called their new enemy
the
náladon
, a word meaning “out of night” in the old tongue. The next
few years were spent doing little more than struggling to survive, hiding when
they could, fighting the
náladon
when they had to. Until Bane and other
scientists on the High Council were able to gather their resources and trace
their new enemy’s origins through DNA analysis, the military had nothing to go
on. What they found out would change the course of the war.

Years later, Darek was at the home aerie in Norway when an
exhausted Bane arrived to deliver the news to Anthony. The
náladon
were
a hybrid species—half dracambri, half idani and stronger than either. He was
skeptical—interspecies pairings had never before produced a viable pregnancy,
let alone offspring—but the research was solid. Someone had engineered a way to
make dracambri-idani hybrids that thrived. What was more, the sheer numbers of
náladon
suggested that a breeding program had been under way for some time.

Anthony’s response was bleak.
“We are at war with our
children.”
Who would do such a thing—and why?

That night, Darek and Bane discussed that very question on
the veranda over a bottle of one-hundred-year-old Scotch. It was there that their
partnership was formed.

Bane stood in front of the bathroom mirror and had a look at
the three deep parallel cuts over his right pectoral muscle. They weren’t too
bad. One shift would take care of them. If Darek had really meant to hurt him,
he could have shifted further, added in the anticoagulant glands at the base of
the dragon’s claws. Bane started the shower and stepped in.

Once Anthony gave their plan the go-ahead, Darek transferred
to intelligence work, with Bane as his handler and sometime partner. Whoever
was behind the
náladon
breeding program had been careful. The idani knew
the engineer by one name only, and it wasn’t exactly a revealing one. “
La
vedova
”—“the widow” in Anthony’s native Italian. According to the idani,
she’d come to them one at a time, offering them a near-irresistible deal. If
they signed her contract in blood and underwent a series of injections, they
could have access to an unending stream of inexhaustible men—dragon-shifters.
In exchange, any resulting offspring would be
la vedova
’s property.

Most of the idani didn’t believe the fertility shots would
work, which was all the more reason to take
la vedova
up on her offer.
If the shots didn’t work, there would be no offspring. The idani would get all
the men they wanted with no consequences. By the time they found out the
injections
did
work, it was too late—for everyone.

The water cooled Bane’s skin but did nothing for the heavy
ache between his legs. He kept picturing Lily’s startled eyes after he’d kissed
her, glazed with a hunger she obviously hadn’t expected. Eavesdropping on her
thoughts, he’d felt each new sensation as she experienced it. The scent of her
need had been intoxicating. It had taken every ounce of willpower he had to
walk away.

He wrapped his hand around the base of his cock, picturing
those soft, soft lips of hers in its place. He reached climax with just a few
good, hard strokes, leaning against the wall and groaning aloud as it overtook
him with unexpected force.

Afterward, he stood under the tepid spray for a long time,
trying to calm the grumbling beast still flexing and sliding beneath his skin.
It was futile, of course, trying to reason with it, but he couldn’t bring
himself to trust its instincts. Not yet. The whole thing was just too bizarre.

Wyrmate. Go to her
, it whispered in their shared
mental space.

Yeah
, Bane thought.
Just two little problems with
that. First, she’s an idana. What if she’s fertile?

This thought didn’t seem to faze the creature, so Bane
added,
There’s something else. Darek thinks the same thing. He doesn’t like
it, but he thinks it anyway. Can’t you hear him?

To his surprise, the beast was unconcerned. He’d expected a
jealous rage. Hell,
he
was a little jealous—less so than he would have
imagined, but he felt possessive all the same.

Instead, it purred a single word to him in its deep,
rumbling tone, pronouncing the word slowly, as if explaining a new idea to a
child.

Share.

Bane leaned his head against his forearm and watched
droplets of water run down the white-tiled wall.
You’re fucking kidding me
,
he thought. A creature of few words with no reason—ever—to argue a point, the
dragon did not respond.
Typical.

A mated warrior rarely survived the death of his mate. The
enemy knew this, which was why there were very few dracambri females left. Bane
and Darek had talked about it before—the “What would you do if you found your
wyrmate?” question—and they’d both agreed that mates would be a ruinous
liability. They’d be bound to their mates—biologically, spiritually, from crown
to toe, from horns to tail and everywhere in between. It had never occurred to
either of them that they would share a wyrmate. Possible? Yes. Likely? No. Fate
had one hell of a sense of irony.

So what now?
He turned off the water, grabbed a towel
and dried off. As he walked out of the bathroom, Bane saw Darek on the balcony,
leaning against the railing and gazing into the starry sky, gleaning what
solace he could from its glittering expanse. Even from this distance, he could
sense the restlessness of his friend’s soul. He felt for Darek. Before the war,
his friend had been popular among the idani. Although Darek had acted the part
of the ladies’ man, he’d considered many of his regular partners friends. When
the truth had come out, he’d felt massively betrayed.

Bane sat down on the edge of his bed. The shower hadn’t
taken her scent from him—a mixture of lemon and lavender that a man could drown
in. He’d never smelled it before but he’d know it anywhere. It was
her
scent.

Our wyrmate’s.

Steeling himself against temptation, he got up and closed
her door silently.
Not yet.
He tossed the towel in the bathroom and lay
down on the double bed on his side of the room, pulling the sheet over his bare
skin. He had to get some sleep.

“You’re going
where
?” Darek’s tone was incredulous as
he looked up from his coffee. It was still dark, about an hour before sunrise,
and they had yet to hear stirrings from the adjoining room where Lily slept.

Bane drew out the chair across from Darek and sat down,
joining him at the small table. He set down the cups of coffee he’d brought up
from downstairs and sat back, steepling his fingers under his chin. “I’m going
to talk to Savara. It’s not far by wing, and if I leave now, it’s unlikely I’ll
be seen,” Bane said. Disbelief warred with concern in his friend’s eyes.
“Darek,” he said gently, “she might know something about Lily that we don’t,
and I sure as hell can’t talk to Anthony about this. He’d put a hit out on both
of us.”

“You think?” Darek exploded. “Dammit, I just might beat him
to it. Are you out of your fucking mind?” His expression pleaded with Bane.
“You can’t be serious. We’re talking about the same Savara, right? The idana
who killed Kai? One of the very best breeders in
la vedova
’s program?
And you’re going to just walk in and have a powwow with her?”

Bane held up a hand. “I know what you’ve heard, but listen
to me. She didn’t kill Kai. She’d never hurt him. She defected. They ran away
together.”

Darek’s jaw dropped. “Come again?”

“She’s his wyrmate. They’re bonded.”

Darek’s jaw worked, an inarticulate sound emerging from his
mouth.

Bane continued, “They knew they’d be hunted down, so they
faked Kai’s death and went into hiding.” His voice dropped a notch. “I only
know about it because Savara needed my help with contraception. They swore me
to secrecy.”

“Did you do it?” Darek asked incredulously.

“Well, I told
you
, didn’t I?” Bane said, annoyed.

“No, dipshit. Did you reverse the shots?”

Bane shook his head, looking frustrated. “I tried. The
treatment she was given is a multistage process. I’m still working on a way to
reverse it. The best I could do for Savara was surgical sterilization.”

Darek barked a laugh. “You tied her tubes? Dude, she’s an
idana, not a soccer mom!”

“The idani reproductive anatomy is quite similar to ours,”
Bane said defensively. “Anyway, that’s not my point. Savara is older than
either of us. She was one of
la vedova
’s most prized recruits, and she’s
on our side now, whether Anthony knows it or not. She has a lot of history with
her kind. She might know something about Lily.”

Darek snorted derisively, stabbing his finger in the
direction of Lily’s room. “Lily? Look, I’ll tell you what’s asleep in that
room. It’s an idana. A
náladon
breeding machine,” he said. His eyes
flared scarlet. “And what’s more, it’s our target. The
sovrán
doesn’t
choose those lightly. He needs her for something. We need to take her to him.
As. Ordered.”

Bane shook his head slowly, holding his friend’s gaze.
“She’s an idana, I’ll give you that. But she’s not
just
anything to
either of us—and you know it,” he said.

“Oh yeah, right. I forgot. She’s
special
,” Darek
said, his voice dripping sarcasm. He swept his palm down his face. “Look, we
have been through more shit than I care to think about together. But you’re
scaring me. Yeah, she turns me on. They all do. It’s how they’re made. It
doesn’t make her any different from the others. She’ll seduce you with those
pretty, sad eyes and she’ll turn on us the second she gets the chance.”

Bane rubbed the bridge of his nose, suppressing a yawn. He
hadn’t slept well. “Darek, shut up and listen. Can you hear your own dragon?
Because I can hear it from here.
It
knows what she is, and if you’d pull
your head out of your ass, you’d know too.”

Bane tossed back half of his coffee, set it down and leaned
forward. “Tell me something. Last night, when I came in with her scent all over
me, what was your first thought?”

Darek snorted. “That you’d lost your ever-loving
mind
.”
Bane waited, poker-faced. After a moment, Darek shifted uncomfortably in his
chair. “Why the fuck do you want to know?”

Bane suppressed a smile. “Just humor me.”

Darek took a swallow of his coffee and set the cup down with
a
thunk
. The scalding liquid sloshed over his hand but he paid it no
attention. He took a deep breath and met Bane’s steady gaze.

“I thought her scent on you wasn’t right.”

“Why not?”

“It just
wasn’t
, okay?” Darek hedged.

Bane sat back, waiting. “You’re telling me her scent didn’t
do things to you—things you didn’t know were possible?” he asked after a
moment. “How’d you sleep last night?”

The remaining coffee in Darek’s cup bubbled and steamed.
“Not well.”

“Then if she’s
just
an idana, why didn’t you just
grab a condom, go next door and ask her if she’d help you get it out of your
system?” Bane asked.

“You know that would have been a dumbass idea,” Darek
replied. He tapped his fingers on the table.

“Why? It’s not like you’ve never done it before,” Bane
pushed.

Darek’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl. “That
was before the war, and those were my
friends
,” he hissed. “Emphasis on
were
.
And they were…” He stopped and closed his eyes. “They were safe. They didn’t do
this to me. I feel crazy, hungry, needy… Fuck.” He rubbed the stubble on his
jaw and raised his hand, as though asking Bane for patience. “This is insane.
You know that, right? It’s. Fucking. Nuts.”

Bane held his silence, waiting.

“I wouldn’t have gone to her without you anyway,” Darek
ventured. “It wouldn’t have been right. Not without you there.”

Bane sat back in his chair. At last, they were getting
somewhere. “Why not?”

Darek furrowed his brow. “I wanted to share her with you,”
he murmured. He raked a hand through his sleep-tossed hair. “Damn. Happy now?
Can we pick out curtains and a china pattern after lunch?” He lifted his cup
and downed the rest of his coffee.

Bane steepled his fingers under his chin “Do you want to
know what I think?”

Darek shrugged and tossed his cup in the trash. “Why the
hell not?”

“Evidence suggests that we may have found our wyrmate.”

Darek dropped his head back, hitting the wall behind him
with a bang. “Our. Wyrmate. Oh that’s perfect. Just fucking perfect,” he said
to the ceiling.

Bane said nothing. A moment passed before Darek lifted his
head, a resigned expression on his features.

“Just let me go to Savara,” Bane said, “see if I can find
out more about her. All right?”

Darek let his head fall into his hands. “By all means. We’re
already screwed nine ways from Sunday.”

Bane pointed toward the door to the adjoining room. “You’ll
need to untie Lily when she wakes, but watch she doesn’t make another run for
it.”

Darek groaned. “No problem.”

“If I’m right,” Bane said gently, “if she is our wyrmate,
the bonding process will begin. She will hunger. Soon and intensely.”

Darek nodded, not taking his hands from his face.

Bane sat forward, placing his hands flat on the table. “And
so will you.”

Darek’s shoulders slumped. “I’ll order room service.”

Bane sighed. “Yeah. Let me know how that goes.” He stood and
walked toward the small balcony. “I’ll return as soon as I can.”

* * * * *

Lily woke with a groan. Her head was pounding and her mouth
felt like she’d been chewing cotton. She opened her eyes cautiously. The light
pouring in through the window seared her eyes. When she tried to cover them
with her hands, she met with resistance.
Dammit.
It hadn’t all been a
dream.

She was still bound securely. She wiggled her fingers
experimentally. There was no tingling, so Bane hadn’t cut off her circulation.
He was pretty good at binding.

Lily tugged harder against the silver rope. No give. She
craned her neck to see where her hands were bound to the headboard. The IV in
her hand did run by her head. For a second she thought about pulling it out
with her teeth. Remembering Bane’s fury the previous night, she decided against
it.

So what now?
Frustrated, she arched her back and
pulled against the rope with everything she had, twisting her body this way and
that. The bed creaked but the rope held fast. Her IV tube caught under her
hair, twisting the catheter in her hand.
Ouch.

“Don’t hurt yourself, babe.”

Lily gasped, snapping her head up. The dark-haired man stood
in the doorway.
Darek
, she remembered vaguely. She hadn’t heard him come
in. She stared, wondering how he could look so infuriatingly casual and
perfectly delicious at the same time.

“Babe?” She was going for righteous indignation but the best
she could muster was a croak. At least the blistering pain she’d felt the night
before was gone.

“I’ll call you whatever I damn well please, little
demoness.” He grinned and closed the distance between them with a few smooth
strides, dropping to his haunches beside her.

Bastard.
She glared at him, struggling to sit up.
“Where’s Bane?”

“He’s on an errand.” Darek sat on the edge of the bed next
to her.

“You’re both a few crayons shy of sixty-four. You know that,
don’t you?” she asked.

He stretched his arm over to touch her face, tucking her
hair behind her ear. The pads of his fingers felt electric on her skin. Lily
shivered and rubbed her cheek against his palm. His scent—oh yes, right there
in the center of his hand—was divinely smoky. Different from Bane’s, but just
as euphoric.
Touch me more
, she wanted to say. But that would be nuts,
wouldn’t it?

“You know,” he said, stroking her cheek, “you’re kind of
cute all tied up and fussy.” Lily prepared to deliver a searing retort. But she
saw those dark, hypnotic eyes of his and the words vanished from her mind.

She stared, fascinated, the silence stretching thin and
taut. Bane, she thought, played his cards close to the vest. By comparison,
Darek was an open book. She saw longing and disquiet in his penetrating gaze.

He laid his hand on her arm. It was a simple gesture, gentle
even, but her body grew still, her breath shallow with anticipation. “I’m going
to untie you,” he said. “I’ll let you take a shower and give you something to
eat. But if you raise hell or try to run away, I
will
catch you, and you
will
be sorry.”

Lily nodded, not sure whether the clenching in her gut was
fear or excitement. Even when he was angry, Bane seemed in control, civilized.
But there was something savage in the way Darek was looking at her, as if he
might swallow her whole, given the chance.

“Now,” he said, “do you want me to start with your feet or
your arms?”

The words were out of Lily’s mouth before she could think.
“That depends—do you want me to start with your eyes or your balls?”

He burst out laughing—a rich, resonant, contagious sound.
Her lips curved in spite of the absurdity of it.

Still chuckling, he reached down and lifted a black bag onto
the bed. He searched through it for a moment, then drew out a roll of medical
tape. Lily’s stomach clenched. He tore off a short strip and reached for her.
She struggled against the ropes. He looked taken aback.

“I’m taking out your IV, not taping that cute little mouth
shut.” Lily breathed a sigh of relief. With practiced ease, he removed her IV,
pressed gauze over the puncture site and taped it down. Then he went to work on
the rope around her waist. With the needle out and her release imminent, Lily
realized just how badly she needed to use the bathroom.

“I… Um…” she began, then finished in a rush, “could you
hurry?”

He looked up from his task. “Got somewhere to be?”

“Yeah, kind of,” she said, nodding toward the bathroom.

“Oh.” He reached in his back pocket, drew out a pocketknife
and cut the thin, shiny bonds. Lily thought she’d never seen a more satisfying
sight than that whisper-light stuff floating away from her skin in pieces. She
sat up on the bed and pushed herself up, trying to stand, but her stiff muscles
wouldn’t obey. Cursing under her breath, she tried again.

“Let me,” Darek murmured, lifting her easily into his arms.
He carried her to the bathroom and set her on her feet, steadying her. “You can
manage from here, I hope?”

“Yeah,” Lily whispered. She didn’t want to think about how
good his body felt against hers. She hobbled into the bathroom.

He put his hand on the door as she was closing it. “You
hungry?”

She paused. Wow. She was starving. “Yes.”

“What do you like?”

“Steak. Rare.”

He chuckled. “A woman after my own heart.” Darek stepped
back from the door, shaking his head and grinning from ear to ear. He’d been
prepared—hoped, even—to despise her. He’d steeled himself against an onslaught
of seductive charms that had never come.

Instead, she was cute. Resilient. Funny. She had a sharp
tongue on her. And fuck, she’d felt so
perfect
in his arms.

He found the room service menu and sat down on the bed.
Burgers, fries, pizza… No steak. Not that it mattered—the kitchen was closed.
She was going to be disappointed. The dragon perked up and toyed briefly with
the idea of going hunting for her. He wondered whether she would understand the
visceral thrill of catching live prey on the wing or if it would horrify her.

Suddenly aware of the direction of his thoughts, he snapped
the menu shut. Damn, Bane’s crazy was catching. He snatched up the remote and
turned on the TV.

And then he heard water running in the bathroom.
Oh man.
Of
course
she was in the damn shower. Like an idiot, he’d suggested it.
He put down the remote and stared at the dark television set. She hadn’t tried
to seduce him—hadn’t so much as batted her eyelashes—but he wanted her all the
same. Craved every inch of her, from her dear little nose to her pink toenails.