His heart slammed in panic, and he circled back toward the causeway.
He landed on the salty rocks, one wing cradled under her, the other arching overhead to shield her.
This was his fault, his ichor in her veins making her vulnerable to the warlock’s evil.
Seeing her broke him, and he shifted without realizing. The rain stung his bare shoulders, and the rough rocks tore at his souls.
“Anjali.” He crouched over her. “Don’t let it turn you to stone now. Not when you’ve always been my fire.”
He forced himself to think. When she’d hit him with the black smoke, he’d been paralyzed from the inside out. As furious as the dragon had been at its cage, he’d been able to endure the cessation of breath, the agonizing slowness of his heart because he knew his shifter strength would outlast the smoke.
But in the human body, which should never be affected by the stone blight…
As he had during her nightmare, he set his lips to hers and breathed, once, twice, a third time.
She coughed and he tasted the salt on her breath.
So much worse than her nightmare, because now he understood why he needed to keep her alive. Not to save her friends or the Nox Incendi.
To save him.
He breathed into her again. “You are my heart,” he murmured. “You are the only treasure I want.”
Rain was pouring down now, washing the salt off the rocks to leave only dull gray behind. Against that background, her hazel eyes were scintillating jewels when they blinked at him.
“Torch?” Her voice cracked, breaking free.
He pulled her to his chest. “Here for you. Always.”
“Ashcraft almost got you.”
“He did get you.”
“But you got me back.”
“Yes.” He clenched her tight until finally her arm curled up around him. “And if you think I’ll let you go again…”
The rumble of a boat engine behind them made him tense. He angled to keep her protectively beneath him while he watched the water.
“You guys need a lift?” The dark-haired man at the helm of the small speedboat gave a wolfish smile.
The younger man beside him echoed the smile. “That one has his own lift. Quite the show.”
Torch grunted. “Nothing you haven’t seen.”
“Nothing the rest of Salt Lake needs to see.” The younger man tossed a slicker to Torch. “Speaking of things that weren’t seen… Ashcraft disappeared. Lost him in the squall. I would’ve said it was impossible, but…” He shrugged.
Torch wrapped the slicker around Anjali and lifted her in his arms, her legs looped over his elbow. She curled against his naked chest, clinging tight as he stepped carefully down the rocks.
The younger wolf-shifter took her up into the boat though her arm tightened one last moment around Torch’s neck.
He paused with his hands braced on the boat. Dread scratched at him like salt crystals against his delicate bits. “Did you happen to see—?”
The older wolf held up the case. “Saw you drop this. Realized you had more important cargo on your mind.” He glanced at Anjali.
She was listing sideways, her face drawn.
Torch boosted himself into the boat and pulled her close. “Let’s go.”
He only wished he knew for sure what they were going back to.
Chapter 18
Torch paused in the doorway to the aerie’s bath and listened to the splash of water.
This was her third shower he knew of since they’d returned to the Keep late last night. He’d left her in Piper’s suite, insisting that Rave’s mate keep an eye on her though she’d shown no lasting effects of the black smoke and had slept with her head cushioned on his thigh for most of the sedate drive back to Vegas.
He’d put the top up on the Vette but still his ears rang hollowly as if the wind was whistling past his head. He’d come so close to losing her…
When he’d finished his duties to the clan—thanking their allies among the wolf-shifters, handing off the black smoke antidote to Rave, checking on the security of the casino and hotel—he went back to the suite.
“She wouldn’t stay,” Piper told him.
His blood turned to sludge, cold and crystallized as the water in the Great Salt Lake.
He didn’t know what devastated expression was on his face, but Piper jumped forward to touch his arm. “She wouldn’t stay
here
,” she clarified. “Here-here. She said she was going to your aerie.”
His breath exploded past his clenched teeth and he turned his head lest he accidentally incinerate his cousin’s mate.
She curled her fingers around his forearms, holding him in place though his whole body leaned down the corridor toward his empty treasure room.
“Is she your solarys?”
He swiveled his head back to stare at Piper. “I don’t need a solarys. The stone blight isn’t…”
She just looked at him as he petered out.
The petralys wasn’t poisoning his ichor like so many of the dragonkin. But he’d been existing as though it was, turning to stone not in his blood and bones, but in his heart.
And Anjali had burned it all away, exposing his empty core.
He might not need a solarys, but he wanted her.
“She’s so tough, tougher than me,” he admitted. “What if she won’t…”
Piper gave him a moment to finish, and when he didn’t—couldn’t—she smiled and tilted one shoulder in a shrug. “Then she won’t. But I’m sure you noticed that as tough as she is, she still has dreams.”
He ducked his head. “Dreams? That’s basically all I have to offer her.” His gut curdled with the same withering shame as when Bale had told him his line had betrayed the reyex and left him behind. “Didn’t Rave shower you in gold and jewels?”
Piper squeezed his arm once more and released him, lifting her hand to flash the sunstone ring on her right hand. “Anj already knows how to braid silver and gold and set gemstones, remember? That’s not what she really wants.”
As Torch stalked through the secret halls of the Keep toward his aerie, he wondered what this one prickly human female might want of him if not the smooth, cool glory of precious metals and the eternal glitter of the most prized stones. What else could tempt her?
A breakfast tray—barely touched—sat beside the rumpled bed and he grabbed an orange from the bowl of fruit before going to lean in the bathroom doorway. There was no door, though a bend around the wall—wide enough to let a dragon sidle past—lent privacy. The shower too had no door, just another bend, although the clear, triangular blocks making up the wall didn’t do much for privacy.
Instead, the crystal, like the panes making up the dome of the aerie, turned her into a misty, surreal watercolor. The famous Impressionist masters only
wished
they could’ve seen this. Torch tilted his head.
He’d call it
Bathing Redhead: A Flame in the Water
. A picture worth millions. To him.
When she emerged, dripping on the slate tile, her hazel eyes half lidded, he handed her the orange and spun her gently away from him. He took a smaller towel and carefully bound up her dreadlocks. With a larger, fluffier towel, he patted her dry. He was careful of her ribs, which she’d told him earlier were still sore, and maybe he lingered a little over the curves of her ass too, convincing himself she was okay.
If she walked away after all that had happened, he wouldn’t blame her.
But the bright citrus scent of the orange wafting in the humid air gave him hope.
He worked his way around to her front until he was kneeling at her feet.
Cupping the half-peeled orange in one hand, she put her other hand on his head. “He was going to catch you in that trap, and then he was going to…” She shuddered.
“But he didn’t.”
“Because I shot him.” Her voice wavered as much as her knees did, still shocky.
“You missed,” he soothed her, cupping his hands behind her dimpled knees. “Mostly.”
Her fingers tightened almost painfully in his hair. “He’ll come after us again. He won’t stop. It’s a sickness with him.”
“Well, the ash-hole is going to be a bit busy for awhile.”
She tilted his head back with her grip. “What did you do?”
He winced and gave her an innocent grin. “Me?”
“You.”
“I was helping Rave research the night-blooming cereus your uncle told us about. It’s a common name so it might’ve taken us awhile to hunt down the exact type, but… Turns out, Ashcraft Antiquities has recently begun importing from a small island nation in the West Indies no one bothers remembering the name of.”
She let him go to keep peeling the orange, one eyebrow lifted. “I take it that means you remember its name.”
“Ah, her name actually. The wife of the island’s governor accompanies him on his so-called business trips to the Keep. She disapproves of his casual relationship with the sanctity of his country’s treasury, so she indulges in casual relationships of her own when she’s here. I once provided a sympathetic, uh…ear.” He eyed Anjali with utmost caution, his pulse skipping uneasily. “That was in the past, obviously.”
Her lips quirked. “Obviously.” She couldn’t have been too upset with him because she gave him half the naked orange, and he let out a silent, relieved breath. “So you aren’t just the Keep’s muscle, you’re its sexy spy too.”
Resting his butt back on his heels, he straightened his spine. “Sexy?”
“Back to the spying,” she prodded. “And the flowers.”
He huffed. “The island with the Ashcraft name attached caught my eye, and imagine my surprise when I discovered the island’s export to Ashcraft is…pitahayas.”
“Wow. That
is
surprising.” She ate a section of her half of the orange. “Okay, what is a pitahaya?”
“Wait for it,” he said. He ate his orange and grinned at her when she grumbled under her breath. “Also known as dragonfruit.”
Her hand with the orange sagged. “For real.”
“For real. And dragonfruit comes from…the Hylocereus genus.”
“Cereus,” she mused. “The night-blooming cactus.”
He nodded. “Ashcraft has been importing cereus blossoms to formulate his dragon traps. There’s a new shipment bound for the Port of New Orleans with Ashcraft’s name on it. What he doesn’t know is he’s about to also import a stash of illegal drugs, supplied by our corrupt governor who would prefer not to answer questions about whence comes his gambling income. The governor is going to blow the whistle, and the shipment will be met by port police and the media. Once they start looking at Ashcraft Antiquities’ bills of lading, I imagine they are going to find other inconsistencies. For a man whose power lies in secrets, these will be bad days.”
Anjali blinked at him and shook her head. “That’s…devious.”
“Next I’ll be looking for a connection in Nawlins—hmm, maybe a native daughter—to find a good home for those prickly cactus blossoms.” He finished off the orange and rose to his feet. “Cuz, you know, smart
and
sexy.”
She took a step forward to fist her hands in the front of the button-down shirt he’d donned in an attempt to look respectable after spending the previous day shooting up head shops and shifting into a dragon before an unsuspecting public.
She tilted her head to look up at him. “What happens now?”
The towel on her head started to slither off, and he caught it, squeezing the last of the water out of her dreadlocks. So considerate, so tame, when all the while his heart was slamming against her knuckles. “Funnily enough, that governor has been thinking of stepping down, and he’s endorsing his honorable lady wife to take his place—”
“Fabulous, but I was wondering…”
His hands drifted down to her bare shoulders. “Dreaming, maybe?”
She licked her lips. “It definitely seems like a fever dream. Dragons, magic…soul mates.”
His heart was beating like a double kick drum, loud and furious, him and the dragon. “A fever isn’t all bad. It burns away everything that isn’t meant to be there.”
“And am I? Meant to be here?”
The dragon didn’t roar—it whispered, singing through his veins. “Here at the Keep? In my aerie?” He caught his breath. “In my arms?”
“All of the above.” She stepped even closer, the heat of her naked body searing through his oh-so proper clothes. The perfume of oranges ringed him. The scent of luck and love, she’d said.
He swept her up against his chest and carried her to the mussed bed.
***
Anjali undid the small buttons of his shirt as fast as she could, before he could change his mind.
Of course, she’d changed her mind. Just a few days ago, she’d been determined to kill a dragon, and now… She wanted one for herself, this one, with his wicked grin and his beastly heart.
“I’ve been so afraid,” she said.
His grip tightened. “Not of me. You were never afraid of me. Even when I wanted you to be.”
“But I was.” She curled her fingers inside his shirt, feeling his heartbeat thud against her knuckles. “Or maybe not
of
you, but of what you could do to me, what you could mean to me. I was afraid to let anyone close.”
“But I swooped right in. Good thing I have wings.”
Revealing his hard pectorals to the bright sunlight streaming through the dome crystal, she ducked her head to kiss his chest, flicking her tongue across the shining tattoos.
She gasped when he tossed her toward the bed. For a heartbeat, she was airborne, then he was descending on her, his shirt ripped away and his jeans flayed around his hips.
Before she landed on the feathery mattress, they were entangled in each other’s arms, hot gusts of breath fanning the desire rising between them.
She thrust her head back on the pillows, arching her spine to make space to calm their frenzy, but he only took it as an invitation to bite at the side of her neck. Her pulse roared in her ears, and she felt the throb of her blood beneath his teeth.
Clutching at his taut shoulders, she moaned and threw any semblance of calm to the winds of their wanting.
He kissed his way down the column of her throat and circled her breast. Her aching flesh pebbled and reddened, bright as a ruby that he rolled across his tongue. She threaded her fingers through the sun-streaked strands of his hair, holding him fast as she lifted her hips in wordless demand.