Phoenix (Bears of Kodiak Book 3) (6 page)

She still hadn’t said anything, but once he felt the rigidity leave her shoulders, he knew it was safe to finally speak his piece.

The dragoness had sheathed her claws. For now.

Running his palm down the side of her face, his own arm hairs electrified by the strength of her powers, he opened up to her for the first time in his life.

“That day on the cliff, when you looked at me. I knew I’d screwed you over bad.”

She said nothing, and he was grateful for her silence because he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get any of this out if she started asking questions just yet.

“You were a dragon. Fierce. Powerful. Strong. Legend among the Breed. I was a lowly grizzly. I was nothing. I am nothing.”

Taking just a small step back, she palmed his chest, right over the spot of his beating heart. No longer did she curl those deadly nails into him, but her fingertips gently grazed him, and she tipped her face up, to meet his gaze directly.

“You’ve never been nothing to me, Phe.”

Those gently whispered words were like a salve to his fractured heart.

Clamping his hands down over the top of hers, he gazed deeply into her eyes. Losing himself all over again, just like he had that morning.

“I knew, even back then, when your magick took me. I knew it was right. I felt the instant tethering, the instant connection.” His thumb toyed with the tip of a dark curl.

Those gorgeous lips of hers turned down into a quivering frown. “Then why did you run? Why did you leave me behind to watch you flirt with one woman after another. And why did you fucking tease me that night? For so long I thought it was just a game for you. I was just a game.”

Those words pierced him like a dagger. But he knew she needed to speak it, and he needed to hear it. No running away this time. He was going to own up to what he’d done, even if it killed him.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he forced the damning words past his lips. “Because you were so young, Madison.” He looked at her, not exactly pleading that she accept what he’d done, but that she’d at least try to understand why he’d done it. “Because I was a grizzly. And I hardly even remember that night, I was skunked off my ass, all I know is I wanted you bad. So damn bad and I lost myself to that need for just a second, but it was never a fucking game for me, Madi. I was scared, lost, and felt like a dick about what I’d done to you. You don’t deserve—”

“I don’t give a shit about—”

Shaking his head, he placed a finger to her lips, stilling her words. Her soft breath feathered along him, making him feel hot all over. Everything he’d felt and had buried deep, it was coming up now, and was coming to a crescendo, a boiling point of need and desire. But he wouldn’t touch her like that, wouldn’t taste her, or hold her unless she forgave him first.

“You might not now, Madi. But what about when I’m a hundred and fifty and just a withered old man? Or when you have to bury me in the ground and you’re still young, powerful, and practically immortal? What then? Will you still thank me for forcing you to live on without your mate? I should never have been at that fucking cliff. You and I both know it.”

She swallowed hard and it was damned difficult to decipher what the sudden stillness in her meant. Would she disembowel him? Hug him? With a dragon, it was anyone’s guess.

He almost chuckled at what was so not a funny situation. Madison was both his biggest regret and his driving need. With a word she could slay him, and she wouldn’t even need to use a claw to do it. He was giving her the chance to see the truth and to decide on her own.

Not that she wasn’t bound to him now, because she was, and there was no undoing that. At least not by conventional means, anyway. But a witch could give her the illusion of being unbound. A witch could at least spare her the misery of an eternity without him.

Her hands moved, wrapping around each of his biceps and she squeezed. But not hard, more so as though to hang on tight.

Pressing on, he laid it all out there. “I flirted with other women Madi, hoping that it would be enough to get you to leave me.”

“Why! Am I that repulsive to you?” The ‘you’ ended on a note that sounded suspiciously like a checked sob.

Unable to keep from holding her a second longer, he yanked her slight body into his chest, palming the base of her spine in his large hand and hanging on tight. If she wanted out of his touch, she could do it. He might look physically stronger than her, but with Breed appearances were always deceptive. Between the two of them Madison was by far the bigger threat.

But she merely wrapped her arms around his waist and held on just as tight.

“The truth is, Madi, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing about anything. But deep down I knew when I started that damned mating ritual that it would be you. I didn’t need magick to figure that shit out. I figured it out as I watched you grow. At first I was just protective of you. Not wanting other guys around you, careful to keep any asshole away from you.”

She frowned, glancing up at him. “I never saw—”

He snorted. “Ever wonder why any dipshit who ever flirted with you would suddenly be sporting a shiner and a busted lip the next day?”

Her lips parted. “What? That was you, I always thought Uri—”

Growling, he remembered each and every fucking time he’d had to punch the lights out of some punk jock who thought it would be fun to claim they’d had a dragon in their bed. And it’d confused the hell out of Phoenix, because he’d been so much damned older than Madison.

In human years anyway. Breed years were different.

Dragons were born with the knowledge of the ancients already beating inside of them. They reached sexual maturity at the ripe old age of ten; by eleven she’d looked like a woman. But he’d kept his distance because she’d deserved better than him. He’d always known that.

Framing her face with his hands, he hated himself for the way he’d handled everything.

“So you don’t think I’m ugly?” she asked softly.

And he might have laughed, if he hadn’t sensed just how much his answer mattered to her. Groaning, he did the thing he knew he shouldn’t do, but had to or he’d die.

He leaned down and kissed her.

~*~

Madison

T
hat old hunger that always lived and beat deep inside her heart for this man came roaring to life. And Madison was greedy for more. She didn’t just want a taste, she wanted him. All of him.

With a growl born of suppressed need, she hooked her foot around his ankle and shoved him down to the nest floor.

Phoenix didn’t fight her. Instead, he just kept his arms banded tight around her as they fell. That kiss unleashed the beast inside of him, because he was frenzied in his attack.

His hands were hot, hard, and rough as they shoved the robe off her slim shoulders, exposing her naked body to the elements. Her skin rolled with goosebumps even as her internal core heated to magma levels.

She in turn was just as wild as he was. Raking and clawing her nails down his chest, neck, and back. Anywhere she could. Wanting to imprint herself upon him permanently. Wanting to let the world know that Phoenix Hawthorne was her male. Now and forever.

But the grizzly in him actually seemed to like the pain. He’d hiss, only to then deepen the kiss. Twining her tongue with his and devouring her.

Madison had never been kissed like this before.

As a dragon shifter there could only ever be one for her. Casual sex amongst her kind didn’t happen. Because once the bond happened, nothing else would do. She’d craved Phoenix’s touch like a drug. And now that she’d gotten her first real taste, her first hit...she was hooked.

Planting her hand on his chest, she straddled his hips and sat up. Unable to keep from rubbing herself on the long, thick length of velvet wrapped steel poking at her ass.

He groaned, eyes rolling and eyelids fluttering as her wet heat continued to grind down on him.

“You’re going to make me come before I ever even get to slip inside of you, Madison,” he said with a thick growl to his words.

And though she didn’t want that she had to stop and admire him. Biting onto the corner of her lip, she gave her head a slight shake and whispered the words that’d been imprinted on her heart from the moment he’d become hers.

“I used to lie in bed at night, wondering what you might look like.”

His eyes narrowed and he went absolutely still.

Terrified out of her mind to be so blunt, she also couldn’t seem to stop the tide of words. That dam had been broken and now there was nothing holding her back.

Squeezing her thighs, because the constant rubbing was creating a delicious friction, she couldn’t stop from panting as she said, “What you’d look like when a woman touched your bare flesh.”

So saying, she trailed her fingers languidly, lazily down the center of his thick chest, and along the corded, ropey muscles of his flat stomach. He sucked in a sharp breath, and Madison wanted to crow.

She might never have had sex herself, but she’d seen it happen enough times to understand the mechanics of it. Dragon society wasn’t shy. Unlike humans, mating wasn’t a thing to be done in secret, or painted as something to be ashamed of. Mating happened whenever, and wherever, the mood struck.

Which was often violent, heavy, and intense.

Madison had always craved that level of intimacy herself, but without Phoenix beneath, beside, or on top of her the interest would soon wither and fade away.

“Madison,” he all but croaked, and her lips tipped at the knowledge of the power she wielded over him.

The friction was delicious, and she let out a groan of her own when he shifted his hips just slightly up and to the left. The shift was subtle, but made a world of difference, because now his penis was sliding along the length of her vagina.

She shuddered, her spine stiffening with a wildfire of lust starting to rage out of control inside of her, but still she pressed on.

Instinctually she clutched at his chest when his hard fingers dug into her hips, guiding her slide over him. He stiffened, digging his heels into the nest as he pushed his pelvis up, and her with it.

A strangled oath spilled off her tongue at the new sensations flooding her. The darkness that was starting to overwhelm her senses, the scents now mingling between the two of them, heat and pine and desire so thick it clung to the cave walls.

“Phoenix,” she couldn’t help but sigh out his name as she rubbed harder and harder, her stomach tightening with something powerful and pervasive, feeling as though the very life might slip out of her soon.

But she was going to follow that need, even to her death if she had to. There was no stopping this now.

“Madi,” he grunted, “always you. Only you.”

She sucked in a sharp breath at those words and then he had his hand behind her neck and was shoving her down toward him. Claiming her lips with his own once more.

Lost to his touch, his taste, she was wild and wanton on top of him. Demanding wordlessly that he sate the beast he’d awoken deep within her. And then he shifted those hips one more time and that hot, hard length shoved deep inside of her.

Spine bowing, she sank her nails like claws through his chest, bleeding him instantly. But Phoenix either didn’t seem to mind or hadn’t felt it because he was shaking his head and telling her she’d be all right. But Madison didn’t feel all right. It hurt like hell. She tore her mouth away from his as the pain of being torn clenched like a fist deep inside of her.

But he was there, rolling to a sitting position, cradling her like she was a treasure and whispering in her ear that it would only hurt for a little while and then never hurt again.

She trembled. But waited. Because she’d known this would happen. All females had a hymen. It just so happened that for a dragon theirs was twice the thickness of a regular woman’s. Having thick hide came in handy in most cases, except now. She sniffled.

The heat of just moments ago now gone as she trembled from pain.

“Shh, my beauty.” He brushed his thumbs down her cheeks, making her realize that she’d shed a tear or two.

“I promise that will never happen again. I promise,” his voice was thick with worry and though she still ached, it was no longer quite as unbearable as it’d been.

In fact, a new revelation was coming over her now. She’d been breached. Marked forever. There was no going back from this. Not like she’d ever wanted to. But the enormity of what they’d just done had begun to make itself manifest.

Her family would smell his scent on her. Phoenix was safe. Now they could never hurt him. Never harm him. Because he was her mate in every sense of the word.

The relief was so overwhelming that she wrapped her arms around his neck and the tears she rarely cried sprang forth.

“Madi?” He asked in obvious confusion, his fingers tightening on her arms and she had to smile through her tears and shake her head.

She was mortified beyond belief at her reaction to what should have been a moment of hot and heavy sex, but the relief was almost more than she could bear. After years of wondering and worrying, Phoenix would never again face the threat of harm by her family.

“It’s okay,” she mumbled, kissing his whiskered cheek and nuzzling the corner of his jaw, “I’m okay. I’m just...I’m sorry.”

Frowning, he pulled back a little, so that she could see the dip of his brows. They were still joined at the hips, but now she could start to feel him starting to soften inside of her.

She’d ruined a perfectly good fuck by getting all stupid and sentimental. She’d need to fix that quick, because there was no way in hell she was letting him not finish.

Not now.

“Are you—”

But whatever he’d been about to ask her she silenced with a kiss. And this time when she wiggled her hips, it didn’t hurt. Oh no. Not at all.

Like tossing a pebble into a languid pond, the ripple of desire started out small, but soon grew and grew and grew into ever broadening, ever larger need. Until finally her entire body felt like it’d been lit up with her dragon spark. She was electrified. The fine hairs on her arms stood on end as she bore down harder and harder on his now—thank the gods!—raging erection.