ClosertoFire (6 page)

As if he sensed the direction of Bane’s thoughts, red light
flashed in Darek’s eyes. “No. We can’t.”

Bane met his friend’s hard gaze. “Of course not,” he
murmured.

Of course not.

“And steak, rare, for the gentleman,” the waitress said,
setting Bane’s plate down in front of him with a flirtatious flourish. He
nodded politely but didn’t return her smile. She turned to Darek, ignoring
Lily, and asked hopefully, “Will there be anything else?”

“A pitcher of water, please,” Bane said, his eyes on Lily as
she dug into her plate of pasta. She’d slept soundly for almost twenty hours,
which hadn’t surprised him. Bonding was a physically draining process for
dracambri—it was likely even harder on her human physiology. Add to that the
aftereffects of ether and the stress of so much new information on her psyche and
they’d had one exhausted woman. Darek had worried over her but neither of them
wanted to wake her. Bane’s greatest concern was keeping her hydrated. His gaze
flicked up to the waitress, whose mind was a noisy sea of erotic hope.

“Thank you,” he said firmly. Deflated, she left, and Bane
returned his attention to Lily.

They were seated at a booth in the rear of the restaurant, a
small steakhouse about a mile from the hotel where they had been staying in the
Outer Banks of North Carolina. He’d chosen the site because it was close to the
coast and not far from where Kai and Savara lived. They had checked out of the
room and walked, carrying only Bane’s black physician’s bag and a flowery tote
Savara had given him full of clothing and essentials for Lily.

When they got to the restaurant, Bane had insisted that Lily
sit between him and the wall, with Darek across from them in the seat facing
the door of the restaurant. His fear wasn’t that Lily would run away. He was
concerned about what might happen if Anthony or his other Council members got
wind of their relationship with Lily. He trusted Kai and Savara, but it was
possible he’d been seen coming and going this morning.

Oblivious to this problem, Lily ate happily next to him. She
was wearing one of several sets of clothing Savara had given him—a flirty black
miniskirt and a tight pink T-shirt. The word “babydoll” was printed across her
breasts in sequined silver letters.

The previous morning, both Kai and Savara had been helpful,
offering answers and advice. Savara, thrilled at the discovery of Lily, had
given him a number of things for her “sister”—clothes, shoes, hats and a
bewildering array of bottles and potions she’d insisted were absolute
necessities for female existence. He’d taken them graciously, exchanging amused
glances with Kai.

Savara had also proffered an overwhelming variety of barely
decent outfits before huffily conceding that yes, Lily probably needed to look
inconspicuous. Her eye for sizes was uncanny, considering she’d had only a
photo of Lily to work with, but her idea of “inconspicuous” was a far cry from
his own. Still, he thought, glancing at the generous amount of Lily’s cleavage
revealed by the shirt, he had to appreciate her style.

On the way to the restaurant, he and Darek had told Lily more
about the dracambri and the war. Bane could only imagine how strange their
story must seem to her. After all, she’d been raised as a human woman. The
story of the war had troubled her, particularly the idani’s role in the
conflict, giving birth to armies of
náladon
.

She’d asked to see them in dragon form. He grinned,
remembering her wide-eyed, excited expression. They couldn’t shift there, of
course, not when they might be spotted by the odd hiker. Only those of the
sovrán
s’
bloodline had the ability to cloak themselves from human detection. Lily’s
dragon show would have to wait until tonight. He knew of a quiet little cove
off the inlet near Cape Hatteras.

Between bites, Lily asked, “About the hybrids—the
náladon
.
If their mothers are idani and their fathers dracambri, does that mean that I…
That we could… Well, that I could get pregnant with a
náladon
?” She
shuddered.

“Your IUD will prevent a pregnancy, Lily,” Bane hedged. It
wasn’t a lie but it wasn’t an answer either. Honestly he didn’t know what would
happen if her IUD were removed. Without the shots, a full-blooded idana could
not have borne his or Darek’s offspring. But Lily was half human. If her IUD
were removed, a pregnancy was theoretically possible. Whether the child would
be
náladon
, he didn’t know. At some point, he would have to bring up
surgical sterilization—if not for her, then for himself and Darek. He didn’t
want to learn the answer to that question.

The previous evening, he’d run a rapid blood test to rule
out the presence of the drug cocktail
la vedova
used to prime her
broodmares. Lily’s blood was negative—no surprise there. At least he could
demonstrate to Anthony that she’d never been a part of the breeding program.

“What are they like? The
náladon
?” she asked.

Darek cleared his throat. “We’ve not seen many of them in
human form. As dragons, they’re black in the daytime, invisible in the
darkness. Like their sires, they hail to one of the four elements—water, fire,
earth or air—and they have power over that element. Some can also sift—teleport—like
the idani. We’ve encountered one with psychic abilities. That’s really the
problem—we’re not sure. We don’t know everything they can do yet.”

Lily drained her glass of water and Bane refilled it. “Okay,
question,” she said.

Darek sat forward. “Shoot.”

“I have some of my mother’s traits. Do I have others? Can I
sift?” Lily asked. She took a swallow of her water.

“I don’t know,” Bane answered. “Savara says she’ll help you
find out if you want.”

Darek shot him a baleful look. “Or not.”

He was probably right. Kai’s unlikely mate was as
unpredictable as she was gorgeous. And she
was
gorgeous—in her natural
form, she was six feet of sex on toast.

Picturing Lily taking advice from Kai’s mate made him a
little nervous. Kai had told him that morning, “Savara is civilized, but she’s
not entirely…tame.”

Bane glanced at her often as he ate his own food.

“I’m not going to run away,” she said finally, her mouth
curved in a slight smile. “You don’t have to watch me so closely.”

He laughed and shook his head. “It’s not that. I want to
make sure you drink enough fluids. Ether dehydrates people.” Her eyes narrowed
at his mention of the drug.

He grimaced. “Sorry about that.”

“That, and he wants an excuse to stare at your cleavage,”
Darek joked.

“So does every guy in here,” Bane growled, glancing sideways
at the bar. “A couple of minutes ago the bartender poured that guy a tequila
and Coke.” He gestured at a disgruntled-looking man seated at the bar.

Lily wrinkled her nose.

“Savara could teach her how to tone down her glamor,” Darek
suggested. “I sure as hell couldn’t teach her that.”

“Oh gosh, I never thought of that. If my mother could do it,
I could too, right?” Lily asked, straightening suddenly. Bane saw a series of
images flash through her mind—a sea of sad, desperate male faces. Lily put her
palm to her forehead. “All of those times I wished and wished they’d just leave
me alone. How could she?”

“How could who?” Darek asked.

“If I could have stopped it, why would my mother have kept
that from me?”

“Maybe she didn’t know how much it bothered you,” Bane said.

Lily stabbed at her pasta moodily. “How come it doesn’t
affect you guys?”

Bane grinned ruefully. “It does.”

Darek half grunted, half growled his agreement.

“We just have a little more…armor against it than humans
do,” Bane added.

“And,” Darek said in a low voice, his gaze heating, “we can
keep up with you.” Lily blushed and Bane saw her nipples pearl tightly under
the thin shirt. He remembered how she’d looked riding Darek, her breasts
swaying gently, her eyes meeting his, hungry. Her eyes had drifted closed when
he came. He’d tried to be generous, to give her time, but damn, he was jealous
of Darek.

“Bane?” His eyes snapped open at the sound of Lily’s voice.
“You bent your fork.”

He cleared his throat and set down the ruined utensil. “So I
did. I’ll be right back.” He stood, meeting Darek’s commiserative gaze

Lily watched Bane walk to the back of the restaurant,
appreciating the smooth, silent way he moved even as her mind whirred with
worry. She turned to Darek. “Is he mad?”

Darek shook his head but Lily was unconvinced. Her record
with men was beyond terrible. She’d caused more fights than she could count,
just by being in the vicinity of more than one man. Bane and Darek had talked a
good game about sharing her, but the way Bane had looked at Darek just now was
unsettling. The serenity she’d felt ensconced between them seemed naïve in the
harsh light of day.

“Maybe this isn’t the greatest idea,” she said, looking down
at her plate. “You guys have a great friendship. I know you said that you
believe you’re supposed to share me somehow, but it’s only been forty-eight
hours and Bane’s already mad at you. Maybe once we work out this Inquiry thing,
it would be best if we went our separate ways.” A weight, heavy and cold,
descended on her chest at the thought. She knew of painful breakups only from
books, but ruining a friendship like theirs would just be wrong of her.

When she chanced a look at Darek, he was smiling ruefully.
“Lily, I’m afraid we have no choice in the matter. And you misunderstood. Bane
needs you, but he doesn’t want to rush you. It’s the waiting that’s killing
him. He’s only jealous because I’ve taken you and he hasn’t. Go to him.”

She looked up at him, torn. “Look, you guys are…just beyond
wonderful. But you don’t know me. Every guy I’ve ever touched—” She snapped her
mouth shut, noticing the dark flare of jealousy in his eyes. “See, that’s just
it,” she hissed. “You look at me like
that
when I mention my one
disastrous teenage hook-up, but you can just sit out here and wait for us to be
done or something?”

A muscle in Darek’s jaw worked. He slid out of his seat and
came over to her side of the booth. “You don’t understand how this works. I’m
not jealous of Bane and he’s not of me. This
feels
right because it
is
.”
He put his arm around her.

His warmth, his scent were comforting, but the knot in her
chest remained. “I never thought I’d find a man I wanted to be with, who
could—I don’t know—
survive
being with me. That I found two is just
beyond imagining.”

He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, frowning.

Something in his posture seemed odd. Lily raised an eyebrow.
“What?”

Darek drew in a long breath. “There’s something we haven’t
mentioned yet. Dracambri—our species—we have soul mates,” he began. “They’re
called
wyrmates
. We don’t choose our mates like humans do. We
find
them. And when we do, we
know
it, head to toe, horns to tail and
everywhere in between. It changes us. We become a part of them and they of us.”
He nuzzled her neck, breathing in. “See, you already carry my scent. Once you
carry his, the bond will be permanent.”

Her shoulders tensed. “What does that mean?”

“Bane should be explaining this.” Darek shot an impatient
glance in the direction Bane had taken. “It means that once wyrmates are
bonded, each carries a part of the other’s soul. If one dies, the other rarely
survives.”

Lily blinked, clenching her hands together under the table.
“Okay. So do dracambri always mate in threes?”

“No,” Darek said. “Not often, but sometimes.”

The man at the bar pushed back his chair to leave. The loud
scraping noise made Lily jump. “So I’m your wyrmate?” she asked, testing the
word in her mouth. “Yours
and
Bane’s?”

Darek smiled. “Yes.”

Lily stared, unsure how to respond.

“Bane and I have a long history,” he said. “There aren’t
many female dracambri left. It makes sense that we’d share a wyrmate.” He
swirled the ice in his glass, watching her closely. As she had earlier, Lily
sensed another, more predatory creature in his dark, watchful gaze.

Lily tapped her knees with trembling fingertips. “You said
we will change. What will happen to us?”

Darek’s irises contracted, his pupils narrowing to inhuman,
vertical slits. She leaned closer, fascinated, hardly daring to breathe.

“To begin with, you’ll manifest our mark somewhere on your
body,” he said.

“Your mark?” Lily asked a little too loudly.

Darek placed a finger over her lips, shushing her. “Don’t be
afraid. This isn’t about what happens up here,” he said, tapping her forehead.
“It’s about what happens in here.” He touched the center of her chest. The tips
of his fingers were unnaturally warm, sending a shiver down her spine. “And
lower,” he added. Lily felt a rush of wet heat and blushed, glancing toward the
watchful bartender. Darek’s nostrils flared. “Oh I do like that scent.”

Lily shivered. “Stop it.”

Darek shrugged and took a sip of his drink. “I can’t, love.”

She sighed, exasperated. “The mark. What does it look like?”

“I’m told it looks a little like a tattoo, but it’s got a
mind of its own.” He looked up from his drink, capturing her gaze with those
mesmeric, preternatural eyes. “It’s supposed to be a wicked sensitive spot.”

Lily’s breath hitched, a frisson of desire sparking through
her. He sat next to her fully clothed, but the memory of his thick cock sliding
into her was so real, so present that she moaned softly. Her skin was hot, her
clothes stifling. The tables around her faded from her awareness. There was
only Darek’s hard, warm body and her slipping control.

Darek shook his head slowly. “That’s not me. It’s Bane
calling you. Go to him now.”

Lily nodded slowly, feeling as though she were in a dream.
He set a large bill on the table and stood so she could get up. Forcing her
shaky limbs to comply, she stood.