Forbidden Embers (12 page)

C
ecily came awake slowly, shocked to find herself lying outside by the pool, her nightgown around her waist. Memories of the night before—of her fantasies about Logan—bombarded her, and she sat up, hastily yanking her gown back into place.

What came over me?
she wondered, pressing cold hands to her suddenly hot cheeks. She’d masturbated before—she was more than forty, a shifter and untouched, which pretty much made masturbation a requirement, especially when her dragon’s hormones got the best of her—but never had she experienced anything like what had happened last night. Never had her fantasies felt so real. Never had her imagined lover felt so hot and hard and ready.

A picture of Logan rose in her mind, his eyes glowing with sex and need and pure, unadulterated wickedness. An arrow of heat shot through her and she nearly came again, just sitting there imagining all the things he had done to her body last night.

In my dreams,
she reminded herself as she climbed shakily to her feet.
In my fantasies
. None of what had happened last night had been real, no matter how it had felt at the time. She needed to remember that. As it was, she wasn’t sure how she was ever going to face him again.

When she’d left him yesterday, she had told him she would return. After the way he’d kissed her—and after what her mind had conjured up the night before—she was more than eager to do just that. But at the same time, she was embarrassed by her imagination, shocked by the creativity and reality of her own fantasies. What would Logan think of her if he knew what thoughts she’d been having about him? Would he like her fantasies or be disgusted by them? Last night had been raunchy and raw and more graphic than any fantasy she’d had before. In the light of day, it shocked even her. How could he fail to feel any differently?

And yet I want to find out,
she realized as she walked into the house and straight for a hot shower. She wanted to know if the reality of Logan would live up to her fantasies, or if she was just setting herself up for disappointment. He was the first man she’d ever fantasized about. Usually, her dream lovers were shadowed, faceless men who pleasured her but whom she could never quite connect with.

Last night, she couldn’t have been more connected with her fantasy than if they had been handcuffed together. The thought brought on a whole new kind of heat, and Cecily nearly died. What was wrong with her? Why was she suddenly thinking and behaving like a sex-crazed fiend? And why wasn’t she more upset by the fact that she had masturbated in the middle of her backyard, where any dragon flying by could have seen her?

Who was this woman she was becoming, and what had happened to the old Cecily, the little mouse who hid in her father’s mansion and never dared to make waves?

A glance in the mirror told her she even looked different after last night. Her eyes were wide and glowing, her mouth swollen, her skin flushed a rosy, satisfied pink. Her nipples were standing at attention, stiff and tight beneath the thin cotton of her nightgown, and her muscles felt weak and achy, like they did after she’d overtaxed them with a particularly long flight.

Even her hair was different. Instead of flowing down her back in its usual straight style, it was completely out of control. Wavy, curly, snarled in some places, it looked like someone had spent hours plunging his hands through it. Immediately, her mind jumped back to Logan and their kiss by the lake. He had grabbed on to her hair, had wrapped it around his fist, and she had loved every second of it. And now, standing here, she loved knowing that in doing that, he had marked her in a tangible way—even if a shower would take care of it.

Her sex clenched at the thought of being marked by Logan in a more permanent way, and she heard him whisper again—as her fantasy lover had the night before—that he would spank her if she didn’t listen to him. Her knees turned to jelly at the memory, and she would have fallen if she hadn’t grabbed on to the counter to catch herself.

God. She was insane. Absolutely crazy. This whole thing with the
factionnaires
was driving her completely around the bend. What other explanation was there for what she’d been thinking and fantasizing about?

Can the real Cecily Fournier please stand up?
she demanded, shaking her head as if doing so would get her sluggish brain back on the right channel. She had a meeting today—probably the most important meeting of her life—and she couldn’t afford to be muddled, sex-drunk, horny. She needed to be sharp, to focus, or the
Conseil
would walk all over her. That was something that Cecily—new or old—would never allow.

Stripping off her nightgown, she dropped it in the hamper against the wall and stepped into the steaming hot shower. She washed quickly, refusing to be distracted by her tender breasts or the ache between her legs. Last night had been strange, fantastical, fantastic, but it was daylight now and she had much bigger things to worry about than her nonexistent sex life. It was time to get her head in the game.

 

Six hours later, she wasn’t nearly so sure she wouldn’t have been better off lying around the house and fantasizing about Logan. If she thought the meeting had gone badly yesterday, when they’d been unprepared for her, then she was sorely mistaken. Because now that they’d had twenty-four hours to think and strategize and unite, the
factionnaires
were coming after her—and they were loaded for bear. Or dragon, as the case may be.

“With all due respect, Cecily, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Julian’s voice rang, loud and clear and condescending, through the meeting room. Just the sight of him earlier that morning had set her teeth on edge, and nothing he’d done since had endeared him to her.

Not that he cared. The more time she spent around the narcissistic asshole, the more she realized he cared about nothing but his perceived position in the clan. How he failed to realize that alienating her was not going to get him what he wanted, she didn’t know. But, obviously, he was nowhere near as shrewd as her father had given him credit for. That, or he really didn’t think she had any power.

Of course, on that point, he was dead-on, but that didn’t mean it was going to stay like that. It wasn’t. She really didn’t care what three thousand years of tradition and fourteen
factionnaires
said; it was more than time for her to have an active role in the
Conseil
. After all, not one person sitting in this room cared more about the future of this clan than she did.

Not trusting herself to answer Julian’s latest put-down—it was the sixth or seventh of the day—she counted to ten, then back down to one, then to ten again before she felt it was safe to open her mouth. And even then she wanted nothing more than to kick him out of the room, off the
Conseil
and out of the clan.

She couldn’t do that, though. Not now and probably not ever. Especially not with the way Remy, Acel and Etienne were backing just about everything he said, looking for any chance to kick her out of the room once and for all. Which meant, for a while, anyway, that she would be better off working with him instead of against him. It grated—God, did it ever—but she had no doubt she would have to do worse for her clan than make nice with Julian before this nightmare was over.

“I understand that I have a lot to learn,” she finally told him in the calmest voice she could manage. “That’s why I’m here, asking to be filled in on the clan’s inner workings. I’ve been watching things since my father’s death, and I’m not nearly as inept as you all seem to think I am.”

When no one butted in to tell her they thought differently, Cecily buried her hurt and anger behind a layer of unbreakable ice and told herself that it was okay. If she was at rock bottom in terms of their trust, then up really was the only way she could go.

Shrugging off the fact that none of the men she’d considered her friends—not even Gage or Thierren—had come to her defense, she said, “Let me tell you a little of what I’ve figured out since my father died.”

She held up one finger and began ticking off her observations. “One, we’re on the brink of a full-scale war with both the Dragonstar and Shadowdrake clans. In the past five months, we’ve lost nearly a hundred dragons in battles with them—including my father and my brother. Jacob was killed in what I’m assuming was a raid on the Dragonstar compound.”

“They don’t actually have a compound,” interjected Wyatt. She stared at him, unsure if he was trying to make her look even more ignorant than she was or if he was genuinely trying to help. Either way, she didn’t stop him, as she wanted to know, to learn as much as she could. “It’s more of a city in the middle of the New Mexican desert. They’re a lot less war oriented than we are—or, at least, they’re set up that way. Their behavior lately, however, couldn’t be more at odds with peace.”

She let his last comment go, as she had her own theories about it and wasn’t quite ready to discuss them yet, and focused instead on what he’d said about the way the Dragonstars lived. The news that they had a civilian setup instead of a military one surprised her, especially considering how much violence had passed between the Wyvernmoons and Dragonstars in the past couple of years.

“Where are they located exactly?” she asked.

“A little outside of Las Cruces, New Mexico. They have a town out there, along with a huge network of underground caverns that they live in.”

She nodded, jotting yet another note in the journal she’d brought with her to the meeting. They’d been talking for only an hour and already she’d filled close to twenty pages with things she should have known but hadn’t. Things she needed to know if she had any hope of keeping the Wyvernmoons from extinction.

“And where is the Shadowdrake clan from? I know they’re in California, but—”

“San Diego,” Gage said, in the slow, deep drawl that always reminded her of her childhood. “They’re about an hour and a half outside of the downtown, and they live on a compound similar to ours.”

“Thanks.” She shot him a quick smile. He didn’t return it like he normally would have, but he did nod, and there was a gleam in his eyes that none of the other dragons had. It made her feel a little better, though she couldn’t have said why.

She added the information he’d given her to the notebook and then turned to Wyatt. “And thank you,” she added, before continuing with her earlier train of thought. “So, Jacob
was
killed on some kind of raid of this town in New Mexico?”

“Yes.” This time it was Dash who spoke up. “He took twenty or so dragons with him and attacked the woman who is now the Dragonstar queen.”

“Why?”

“Excuse me?” She didn’t think he could have looked more surprised if she had asked him to strip naked and crow like a rooster. Which told her a lot more about the Wyvernmoon state of mind than she wanted to believe.

“Why did he do it?” she repeated. “It’s not like we don’t have enough problems here at home with years of bad crops, poor food distribution to the civilian clan members and a war brewing with the Shadowdrakes. Why would he deliberately go down and antagonize the Dragonstars? Have they been attacking us and I’m just not aware of it?” she demanded.

“Noooo—”

“Yes.” Acel interrupted Dash with a fierce frown. “Cecily, we’ve been engaged in skirmishes with both of those clans for decades now. You know that. Trying to understand one battle in the overall war is almost impossible.”

“So now it’s a full-scale war?” she demanded. “You actually consider us at war with these clans?”

“No, of course not,” Remy said at the exact moment Julian responded, “Of course.”

She raised an eyebrow and looked in astonishment at the other
factionnaires
in the room. “Well, which is it? Are we at war or aren’t we?”

They all began talking at once, and after a minute, she gave up trying to follow a conversation that resembled a three-ring circus much more than it did a rational discussion. Instead, she reviewed the notes she had already taken for the day and waited for everyone to wind down so they could pick up where they’d left off.

Withdrawing from the conversation also gave her a chance to process the absolute shock she’d felt that half of the
Conseil
really believed that they were at war. How could that be? What had her father said to make them believe that he felt like war was a viable option at a time when they could barely feed their people?

And if he
had
said something, how could the rest of the
factionnaires
not pick up on it? How could they believe that the clan
wasn’t
at war? She would’ve wondered if all this confusion—all these different definitions of war—had come about after her father’s death, except for the fact that he had died in battle. As had Jacob. Which she had to believe meant he’d truly thought they were fighting for something important, so important that he was willing to risk his life and the lives of his son and his
factionnaires
to obtain it.

But what was it? What had he been trying to gain—or defend?
she wondered as she concentrated on listing her thoughts in her notebook, no matter how random some of them were. This was how she thought things through, how she saw evidence of emerging patterns, by recording—by hand—all the information and ideas she ran across.

She was totally aware of the condescending way most of the
Conseil
had looked at her when they’d seen her pen and paper, as if she’d barely entered the twentieth century, let alone the twenty-first. She knew from the looks they’d shot one another that they thought her lack of computer savvy meant she was stupid.

It didn’t, any more than her use of a notebook meant she didn’t know her way—intimately—around the various computers and equipment that lined one long wall of the meeting room. She did. But this was her party, and she would do things her way. If that meant they underestimated her, well, then, they had nobody but themselves to blame.