Taming the Dragon (2 page)

THREE

He hated being woken up.

Kaden had been perfectly comfortable for years now, curled
around his treasure and mostly asleep in the ramshackle shell of a house he’d
long ago made a cave of. No one came near, no one bothered him...even though
humans could sense his presence, they didn’t necessarily believe in what he
was.

He didn’t give a damn whether they believed in dragons or not,
as long as they steered clear.

And so it had been quiet, perfectly peaceful on the edge of a
world that had forgotten him. Until today.

He’d considered ignoring the knocking. He’d considered eating
the interloper. Then she’d mentioned the necklace, that one little bit of
treasure that had vanished out of a different cave he’d called home centuries
ago. He’d never accepted its disappearance, lifted by that damned witch who
thought she knew more than anyone.

Had it really returned to him after all this time? And if it
had...why?

He opened the door.

It only took Kaden an instant to look over the wide-eyed woman
so unwisely standing on his porch. Dark auburn hair tumbled around her
shoulders, framing an oval face dominated by a pair of big blue eyes. She was a
classic beauty, from her aquiline nose to the stubborn set of her jaw. She
looked as if she should have been wearing silks and jewels instead of the tight
jeans and battered leather jacket she had on.

Though the tight jeans gave him an excellent view of her long
legs, along with the gentle curve of her hips.

Too beautiful. Too
noticeable.
He’d
have to bring her inside.

Damn.

Without another thought, Kaden had dragged her inside and
slammed the door before she could so much as squeak. Then he had his hand over
her mouth, pressing her against the wall. In the darkness of his lair, the only
sound was her ragged breathing. There was a faint glow beneath the neck of her
shirt, pulsing gently like a heartbeat. Kaden grinned, baring his teeth.

Whoever this messenger was, she had indeed brought his treasure
home.

His eyes flicked up to meet hers again. She was terrified.
Acceptable, under normal circumstances, but he wanted information and her fear
would not be useful. He frowned, considering how best to calm her down. Even
now, he had little interest in the nuances of human interaction. In his world,
direct had usually worked.

“You will be calm,” he growled.

Her eyes rounded, but the heart pounding against his chest
where they touched didn’t slow. Perhaps if he let her speak...

“I’m going to take away my hand,” he said. He paused, then
added, “If you scream, I’ll set you on fire.”

When she stopped breathing altogether to stare at him, Kaden
decided his warning had been effective. Slowly, he uncovered her mouth, still
feeling the sensation of her soft lips on the skin of his palm. He inhaled
deeply, leaning in when he caught her scent. She smelled of pomegranate and
rich, ripe berry. Delicious enough to sink his teeth into...or simply lick into
submission.

A disconcerting thought. He hadn’t given much thought to
anything but treasure and sleep in a good long time. Centuries, at least.

The harsh rasp of the woman’s voice, such a contrast to her
beauty, startled him back into the moment.

“Listen, asshole, I’m just here to make a delivery. If you
don’t let me go, Morgan will have the cops on you before you know what’s
happening. She knows I’m here, so
back off.
”

Kaden pulled back just enough to study her face, which was
ablaze not with terror, as he’d thought, but with fury. Fascinating, that such a
pretty thing would sound like a warrior. Or a dragoness.

Kaden’s jaw tightened. Finding one of those was something he
definitely didn’t need to think about.

“You truly came at the behest of Morgan Le Fay,” he said. Not a
question. Just simple amazement. He remembered, with a great deal of irritation,
the visits she had paid his cave many years ago. Shouting at him, trying to
order him about. When she had finally stopped coming, his necklace had been
gone.

He had learned to ignore her a little too well. He would not
make that mistake again.

The woman drew in a shaky breath and nodded, her eyes never
leaving his. “I did.”

“Ridiculous. Why would the witch hire you to stand for her?”
Kaden asked. “You’ve no power. I would know. You’re defenseless.”

“Witch?” Her eyes, now incredulous, stayed locked with his, and
Kaden felt something long dormant begin to stir within himself: desire. It
caught him entirely off guard. In an instant, he could feel the contours of the
soft female body pressed against his own, all long legs and perfect curves, warm
against him in a way that the treasures he slept among never were.

Suspicion, his natural state, awakened fully.

“There must be more. Some condition, some trick. Perhaps she
seeks to lure me away from my treasure and take it for her own by dangling a
pretty treat,” Kaden growled. “Or she is waiting without, preparing to enslave
me somehow. What aren’t you telling me, woman?”

“My name is Tess,” she bit out. “Not
woman.
And I’ve just told you everything she told me! Deliver
necklace to the weird rich guy by the river. I don’t know if you’re rich, but
you’re definitely weird. So take the necklace and let me get out of here so I
can get paid!”

The heat in her voice, the fight in her, pleased him. All of
him. Some parts more than others.

He bit back a groan, trying to concentrate despite his rapidly
hardening cock. He’d had enough trouble since becoming trapped in this
world—finding good hiding places, avoiding the dragon hunters who sought both
his hoard and his head. His life was blissfully simple as long as he kept his
focus on treasure and sleep. A seduction was out of the question.

Except...when was the last time he’d found a woman more
compelling than a piece of treasure?

“Give me the necklace, woman,” Kaden said, troubled by the
answer.

She pressed her lips together, and those big blue eyes
narrowed. “Let me go and you can have it.”

It was only then that her realized how effectively he’d trapped
her. Newly awakened, he’d been rougher than he might have been otherwise. And
still, she’d neither fought nor screamed. He found himself impressed anew at her
fearlessness with him. Kaden regarded her with fresh curiosity.

“Why are you not afraid of me?”

“I...” She trailed off, frowning. “I’m not sure. I’m
just...
not
.”

He could see she was as puzzled by the truth as he was. Kaden
considered her, trying to clear the cobwebs from his mind. He’d slept a long
time this time, many years. It took a few hours to be fully alert after such a
sleep. But as his focus sharpened, he noted that nothing was as it should be—the
way her body already curved into his rather than tensing, his own strong
reaction to her presence, her scent. What had the witch sent him?

Rattled, he found himself stepping away before he could think
better of it, though he put little enough distance between them. Just enough for
him to be able to think.

“If you try to run—”

“I won’t.” The glance Tess gave him was full of reproach as she
reached behind her neck to unfasten the necklace.

Kaden kept still, his expression carefully neutral, though his
hands itched to help her, to show her his touch could be gentle. Why should he
care what this human pawn of the witch thought or felt? It was a question he
knew he would ponder later.

Tess fiddled with the clasp for a moment, then frowned and
tugged harder. “I can’t get it off.”

The charm, a tiny silver dragon, slipped from the neck of her
shirt. It glowed brightly, and Kaden’s eyes tracked it as it swung. Of all the
things the witch might have stolen, she’d known to take the piece that had far
more value than just the metal that had formed it. This was his
dragyn-ka
, a symbol of himself that he would one day
give to his chosen dragoness, a magic-infused representation of their bond. In
his world, he could have taken a mate without it, but no she-dragon worth her
treasure would have been pleased—most would have stormed off, refusing to
consider him. It was their way. He had no longer been in his world, though, and
he had already lost nearly everything that mattered. He had thought himself
beyond feeling in those days, cut off from everything but the hunters who
refused to let him be even here, in a world where he was alone. Still, the loss
of the necklace had been a blow. The
dragyn-ka
was a
part of him.

And here it was, wound around the neck of a beautiful
woman.

She could not remove it. He knew what it meant. But...she was
human
.

After a full minute of watching Tess fumble, Kaden blew out a
frustrated breath. She went completely still.

“Did...did that smoke just now come from
you?
”

The incredulity in her voice nearly surprised a laugh out of
him, and laughter was a rare thing for a dragon. Instead, Kaden caught himself
and allowed a slow, lazy smile. The flicker of hunger he saw in Tess’s eyes sent
heat curling through him.

“Of course it came from me,” he said softly. “Didn’t the witch
tell you what you were getting yourself into?”

She shook her head slowly. “I don’t believe in witches.” Her
husky voice was barely a whisper.

Kaden slipped his fingertips beneath the chain around Tess’s
neck, hearing her soft intake of breath as his skin brushed hers. She was
deliciously warm, nearly as warm as the dragon charm he lifted to toy with. It
had given her heat.
His
heat.

He leaned in close, so that his nose was nearly touching hers.
Her breath feathered his face, his lips, and he could feel the remnants of his
anger fading. He wanted this Tess. It wasn’t in his nature to deny himself what
he wanted. And his
dragyn-ka
, by means fair or foul,
had attached itself to her.

Kaden watched her lips part, her eyes go hazy. Whatever web the
witch had woven for him, there was no denying that his body called to Tess as
strongly as hers called to him.

“Pretty human,” Kaden murmured. He let the necklace drop and
braced his hands against the wall on either side of her head. He lowered his own
head to within a breath of hers, teasing them both with the promise of the blaze
that could catch between them. Kaden brushed his nose against hers, soft,
decadent contact. He felt Tess shiver, and a wave of desire rippled through him.
He spoke softly, deliberately.

“Morgan Le Fay sent you here with a treasure she stole from me
long ago. If she’d come herself, I would have fought her for the insult. If
she’d run, I would have tracked her. But instead, clever witch, she sent you. I
don’t understand why...but until I find out, I will enjoy the gift.”

“Gift,” Tess murmured, her eyes dropping to his mouth.

Madness,
Kaden thought. A human and
a dragon...such a combination was dangerous. But the connection was undeniable.
There was nothing to be done for it now.

“Dragons collect beautiful things,” Kaden told her, lips barely
brushing her cheek.

Tess shifted where she leaned against the wall, opening herself
up to him further. Every breath she took was a ragged, shallow little sip of
air.

“Dragons?” she whispered.

“Mmm,” Kaden growled, giving in and lowering his mouth to hers.
“Dragons. This dragon.
Me.
”

FOUR

Tess had a split second to register the fact that Kaden
St. George had just described himself as a dragon.

Then his mouth fastened on hers, and her thoughts scattered
like butterflies in a hurricane.

She’d never been kissed like this. She shouldn’t be
letting
anyone kiss her like this. Especially not a
guy who could blow smoke from his mouth and threatened to light her on fire. And
she was on fire...just not in a way she ever would have expected.

There was a brief moment where she thought to protest. She’d
opened her mouth to do...something. Ask him if he was insane? She couldn’t quite
remember. Because his tongue had swept in, and then he was doing things to her
mouth she’d only considered in her most erotic dreams.

Kaden’s lips were sinfully soft, a stark contrast to the
demanding way he used them on her. There was nothing gentle about his kiss,
nothing that bespoke anything but complete possession. She melted back against
the wall, her legs going liquid when he stepped closer to her. Tess lifted her
hands, not for any reason other than to put them on Kaden, and immediately found
them pinned to the wall on either side of her head.

She was trapped.

And to her shock, she was brutally aroused.

His scent enveloped her, a dark and sensual musk that was both
unfamiliar and completely intoxicating. Tess’s clothes suddenly felt too tight,
too warm. She couldn’t seem to focus on anything but the feel of this dark
stranger’s body against hers, the ragged sound of his breathing that said he
wanted her at least as much as she wanted him.

Kaden nudged her legs apart with his knee and then slid one
well-muscled thigh between them. The pressure was immediate, intense, and Tess
found herself arching into him with a broken moan. She ought to be afraid, and
she wasn’t. She ought to be fighting him, not giving in to this wild need that
had come on like a storm and obliterated every ounce of her common sense.

There was a low, animal-like growl from somewhere. Tess’s eyes,
nearly shut, snapped open.

“Wait,” she said breathlessly. He didn’t. His only response was
to drag his mouth across her jawline, then fasten it on the sensitive skin
between her shoulder and neck, sucking and biting.

It took several long moments before Tess remembered what she
wanted to say.

“I...wait, I heard something...”

“No,” he said against her neck, a rumbling command. One hand
released a wrist to drop to her breast, taking it roughly in hand. She gasped at
the shock of pleasure the instant before his mouth covered hers again, kissing
her with a barely contained ferocity that she’d never sensed in any other man
she’d been with. It was raw, primal.

Dangerous.

Tess wound her fingers in Kaden’s hair, feeling it slide
against her skin like dark silk. The movement of his thigh between her legs was
steady, relentless. Tess felt the pressure building deep in her core, hinting at
the sort of climax she’d decided was a myth. Her head fell back against the
wall, her eyes seeing everything and nothing in the darkness of the house as he
raised his head again, shifting position so that it was no longer his thigh
between her legs.

Tess heard her own strangled moan, Kaden’s hiss of pleasure. He
dropped her other wrist and grabbed her hips, rocking into her so she could feel
the hard length of his cock. Tess looked at him hazily as he pulled his mouth
from hers, his gold eyes glowing like lamplights in the dark.

Glowing.

Glowing eyes.

Kaden’s hair hung in his face. Tess was startled to see how
much tension was there, in the set of his jaw, the way he bared his teeth. As
though he was holding back, and it was costing him.

The combination of that and his eyes, which only seemed to grow
brighter the longer she looked at him, were finally enough to awaken some small
part of Tess’s common sense. Slowly, her mind cleared. All things considered,
she wished it hadn’t. Her cheeks flooded with heat.

“We will seal the bond,” Kaden said, his roughened voice making
her shiver with inadvertent pleasure. “Now.”

His cock still throbbed against her, and it took every ounce of
Tess’s willpower not to just wrap her legs around him and let him do whatever he
wanted. She’d learned to avoid bad boys a long time ago. Kaden St. George went
way beyond her average leather-clad mistake, though.

“I can’t.” She bit the words out, trying to get her heart to
resume some kind of normal rhythm. Kaden didn’t seem to understand what she
meant.

“There is a bed here somewhere, if you prefer,” he said. “I
don’t care.”

“No, I mean...
we
can’t,” Tess said
more forcefully, trying to wiggle out of his grasp. All that did was to create
more of the sort of friction that had her breath catching. She saw the flash of
those incredible eyes, saw two jets of white smoke curl lazily out of his
nostrils as he exhaled.

“This is a bad idea. I don’t know you, you don’t know me...you
breathe...smoke...” Tess trailed off, her heart still pounding unevenly in her
ears as she watched the thin trails of white rise toward the ceiling and vanish.
That wasn’t normal. None of this was remotely normal. She could almost believe
that Morgan had drugged her back at the shop, that she was just hallucinating
all of this.

Almost. But not quite.

Kaden St. George couldn’t be a dragon. Could he? She looked
away from him, finally seeing the glint and glitter of what surrounded her.
There was no furniture. Nothing but the kind of riches she’d only read about in
pirate stories and fantasy. She saw gold and silver coins, statuary and vases
and an embarrassment of jewelry and loose gems. They covered the floors, rolling
in gentle hills and mounds from room to room.

She banged the back of her head several times against the wall.
Nothing changed.

“Oh, God,” she moaned softly, still trying to wrap her mind
around it. “I need to get out of here before the dancing mice show up.” Somebody
was messing with her. She didn’t know who, or why, but there was no way this was
what it looked like.

The fact that Kaden was now looking at her as though she’d
grown an extra head did nothing for her state of mind.

“Is this something the witch threatened you with? I assure you,
enchanted mice will pose no match for me,” Kaden said. “You should never be
surprised when you deal with witches, wom—Tess,” he said, catching himself.
“Their simple tasks are never simple.” Tess was on the verge of slightly
hysterical laughter when Kaden grinned. It was so full of wicked promise that
her voice caught in her throat before she could make a sound.

“And now you are mine.”

Her body and her mind had two infuriatingly different responses
to the sound of that.

“I’m not yours!” Tess protested. “And there are no such things
as witches!”

Kaden snorted. “Humans are very stupid about such things. You
make it easy for them.”

Whoever he was, whatever he thought he was, Tess decided,
Kaden’s arrogance was off the charts. The words fell from her lips before she
could consider how ridiculous they sounded.

“If dragons are so smart, then how did a witch get a hold of
your necklace in the first place?”

His eyes narrowed. “I—”

But he never finished the argument. Instead, Kaden whipped his
head to the side, teeth bared. Incisors, long and dagger sharp, glittered in the
near dark. Tess could barely believe what she was seeing...but she couldn’t
ignore it, either. He had
fangs.

He snarled several words in a guttural language in a voice that
had gone several octaves too deep for any human, then returned his blazing eyes
to hers. “Did you lead them here?”

Tess managed to formulate an answer despite her horrified
fascination with his teeth. She shook her head rapidly, barely understanding the
question.

“No, I...it was just me, I—”

Kaden turned his head to the side and blew out a long breath in
a great, smoky hiss. Tess felt the air around her heat immediately.

“The witch plays a game with us both. I will know why before I
set her aflame. If you value your life, stay right here until I return.”

Any other time, her sense of self-preservation would have
sealed her mouth shut. But for some reason, Tess was perfectly comfortable
challenging this big, dangerous, smoke-breathing weirdo. Every instinct she had
insisted he was safe.

“What, is that a threat?” she snapped in a half whisper. It was
only then that Tess realized everything around them seemed to have gone
unnaturally still. No birds outside, no distant sound of cars...not even the
constant rush of the water. The silence was suffocating, and the hair on the
back of her neck prickled with warning.

“I will never hurt you,” Kaden said. He said it without humor,
without anger. His words hung in the still air like a vow. Then, with a breath
of wind and a flicker of shadow, he vanished, leaving her cold and shaken only
steps from the front door. Tess stayed frozen for what felt like an eternity,
though some part of her knew that only seconds had passed. She needed to go. The
last thing she wanted to do was go.

She had lost her damn mind.

The distinct possibility of that was what finally did it. Tess
steeled herself, then did the only thing that made any real sense.

She ran.