Finally, his thumb came to rest over her pulse. A strong
beat leaped against the pad of his finger. A sob he was glad no one else was
around to hear exploded from his throat. Amanda lived. She’d wake up. It was
just going to take some time.
He wiped his eyes as a thought dawned on him. What if she
didn’t forgive him for doing so many things wrong? Dean shook his head. Somehow
he’d have to make sure that eventually she did. He would grovel if need be.
“Amanda.” She still didn’t answer him, so he hauled her into
her arms until he could carry her steadily.
Dean wanted out of that dragon cave immediately. He crossed
the floor to get them both outside. When Amanda woke up it would be to sunshine
and fresh air, not caves and the dragon’s remains.
Of course, there was the problem of getting her home. Not
that it would be much of an issue—he could carry her for years if she needed
him to. Dean would never let her down again. He’d die first.
The sound of motorbikes caught his attention. He jerked his
head to the left. Robert had been pissing him off with all his craziness but
now he’d never been so happy as he was to see the logos on the approaching New
Straussvehicles.
Jane pulled up first. She jumped off the bike and strode
over to him. Her sharp eyes took in the scene. “Dead dragon, I assume.”
He motioned toward the cave with his chin. “In there.”
“Right.” Jane took off in that direction while Robert
approached him.
His second in command regarded him for a second before he
spoke. “Amanda?”
“That’s right.”
“Dead?” Robert stared at Amanda’s unmoving figure.
“No. Just still out.” He could do more than some of Robert’s
standard one-word sentences.
“Good. Come on, then.” Robert motioned for the bikes. “I’ll
be glad when this is behind us.”
“I don’t have a bike. I rode a dragon here, remember?”
“How could I forget?” A muscle clenched in Robert’s jaw. Dean
was really going to have to relieve him of his second-in-command duties. The
man might have a nervous breakdown. “Ride behind me. You can hold her.”
“I can’t hold on to you and her at the same time.”
“Hell, Dean. You rode on a dragon without holding on, balancing
a sword at the same time. You can’t manage this?”
“No.” Dean shook his head. “In that case it was my sword or
my neck I was risking. I won’t have Amanda endure any more pain. I won’t risk
dropping her.”
“Then what do you suggest?” Robert asked.
“You’re not going to like this.”
His friend rubbed his forehead. “I don’t like any of this.”
“I’m going to drive. She’s going to be attached to me.
You’re on the back.”
If Robert could have shot daggers from his eyeballs, Dean
would have been dead.
* * * * *
He stared down at her still-sleeping figure. She took sips
of water if they roused her but then immediately fell back to sleep. Amanda had
never once in three days regained consciousness enough to indicate that she
knew she’d been separated from the dragon.
“Why won’t she wake?” Lily looked down at her sister. “Is
she going to die?”
Dean smoothed the hair off Amanda’s brow. “She’s recovering.
Sometimes these things can take time.”
To have come so far just to lose her
…
That would be unbearable.
“This much time?” Steven hadn’t moved from the chair across
the room in hours. He wouldn’t go near Amanda anymore.
“You know, the problem is that we have no idea. All of this
is really new. Before just a few months ago, we didn’t know dragons could join with
people, let alone how to free the person they’d taken. So we’re figuring it out
and in the meantime your sister is safe with us again.”
“And you love her.” Steven didn’t ask it as a question.
Dean opened and closed his mouth.
Well, hell
. He
hadn’t really thought about how he’d explain that part of his relationship with
Amanda to them.
A dragon alarm sounded. He squeezed Amanda’s hand. His
people would handle it. A few seconds later the second one went off. That was
his cue.
“Sorry, guys. I have to go and see what’s up.” He kissed
Lily on the head, nodding to Steven. “Stay here. I mean it. Don’t move. Amanda
needs you to guard her.”
He turned on his heel. Each day that passed made him wonder
if Princess hadn’t been lying.
A vegetable that would never recover
…
Amanda drifted back to consciousness to the sound of a
blaring alarm. Her eyes darted open. What was going on? Why had Princess let
her back up? Not that she was going to complain.
She reached out to grip her head.
Something has happened
.
Amanda let her mind swirl. Where was Princess? Other than the times with Dean,
she’d always been present in her mind, a constant throbbing. Except now?
Nothing.
Forcing her stiff muscles to move, she sat up. Where had she
ended up? Was Princess gone? Her hands shook at the thought.
The room seemed pleasant. Sunlight streamed through two
windows and if the alarm hadn’t been blaring louder than anything she’d heard
she would have felt pretty good about being on a soft couch in a warm location.
She swung her legs down to stand up and almost toppled over.
“Amanda?”
She turned at the sound. A boy with blond hair stood in a
doorway. She blinked rapidly, staring at him silently. The first thing she
noticed was how beautiful he was. Gorgeous, platinum-colored hair with bright
blue eyes.
Steven
. She’d rocked him to sleep when he’d been a baby, held
his hand when he’d been scared of the dragons.
And now he was so grown up. Or at least bigger.
The second thing she realized involved the fact that he held
a very large gun in his hand.
“Steven.” She breathed out his name. “Look at you.”
He grinned.“You woke up.”
“Have I been sleeping?” She didn’t remember. The last thing
she could remember was the brown room. The endless sameness.
She shook her head. Somehow she’d gotten out.
“Dean went and got you. Brought you home. But you haven’t
woken up in three days. We were worried about you.” He moved to her and threw
his arms around her.
Amanda closed her eyes and squeezed the little boy. The last
time she’d seen him he’d been starving in a barn. Now he felt solid and cared
for.
Dean
. He’d taken care of her family. Her eyes swam with tears. Steven
still smelled the same. She took a deep whiff of him in case the moment
suddenly vanished.
The gun he held whacked her in the back. She laughed and
pulled back. “What is going on? Why are you holding that thing?”
“We’re under attack. I have to take care of Lily.”
Amanda wiped her eyes. “Where is she?”
“Hiding under the bed.” He pointed ahead. “In Dean’s room.”
“Okay.” Trying to make sense of all of this made her head
hurt. Maybe she needed to do deep breaths or eat something. Still, with the
dragon alarm going off it didn’t seem the time to do either. “Let’s go to Lily.
And where is Dean?”
“Fighting the dragons. He wouldn’t let me go with him this
time.”
“This time?” She’d have to get more of these details. They
walked together into Dean’s room. Her sense of smell must have been heightened,
because just as she had realized that Steven’s little-boy smell remained the
same, she would have known she’d entered Dean’s room from aroma alone. The
sheer masculine, woodsy, somehow fresh scent of Dean wafted through her nose as
soon as she entered the room. Her whole body reacted, goose bumps breaking out
on her skin and the hair on the back of her neck standing up. She shivered. Steven
didn’t seem to notice. Somehow she’d have to do a better job of controlling
that reaction.
“Lily?” She bent down to look under the bed, Dean’s black
sheets brushing the side of her face as she did.
“Amanda?” Lily squealed, but she didn’t come out. “I love
you. I’ve missed you. I told Dean to go get you—I told him he was capable. I
knew he’d bring you home. Even when you were dead I knew.”
The little girl didn’t move, although her grin told Amanda
how happy she was.
“Okay. Well, we’ll talk about all of that. I need to hear
about your life here. But for now, I need you to tell me how much danger we’re
in.”
It had been so long since she’d been in New Strauss. She had
no idea whatsoever what the alarm meant.
“Two alarms mean that there’s more than one dragon out
there. But don’t worry. Hear that cannon fire?”
Amanda concentrated. Beneath the blaring dragon alarm there
was the low boom of cannons being fired. “Yes.”
“It means they are bringing them down. We were using a
different gun for a while, when Dean made the dragons tell him where you were. They
couldn’t die before he could get them to tell him where to find you. This way,
they’re just going to go splat.” Steven smiled again.
“How did Dean…um…interrogate a dragon?” She looked between
Steven and Lily.
“By taking them into his mind.” Lily nodded and touched the
floor next to her. “Come under the bed with me.”
“He did what?” She squeaked the last word. Had he lost his
senses? How could he have risked himself like that? In a million years, she
never would have wanted him to place himself in harm’s way. Not for any reason.
She swallowed. There would be time, hopefully, to ask him those questions later.
“Lily, honey, I’m not going to fit under there. Why don’t you come up here with
Steven and me? We’ll all sit on the bed. How does that sound?”
Lily bit her lower lip, then nodded. She scooted out from
under the bed and Amanda wrapped her in her embrace. Lily smelled the same too,
like soap and vanilla.
Without speaking, they all climbed into Dean’s bed. She
covered the kids with his dark sheets, placing herself in the middle of them. “Steven,
why don’t you give me the gun?”
“Do you know how to fire it?” His eyes were serious when he
asked that question.
“Yes. I used to do it. You might not remember because it was
so long ago and you were so little, but I took care of us.”
“I never forgot.” He passed her the gun and snuggled up
against her.
The dragon alarms blared on and on. Amanda lost track of
time, feeling content despite the noise. She’d wanted to hold the kids again,
had thought she never would. Her stomach grumbled. After a while she looked
down, wanting to ask the kids how long these things usually went on. Instead
she just stared. They’d both fallen asleep against her, their breathing deep
and even as if they slept in silence instead of a dangerous, alarm-blaring
situation.
She pulled them tighter against her.
The alarm ceased sounding and she heard the distant voices
of men and women cheering. It must have been a heck of a takedown. Her mother
would have said that Dean had ice in his veins, that these things didn’t bother
him at all, that somehow that made him less than human. Amanda knew better now.
Her parents had been good people who had made some bad choices. One such poor
decision had been to misjudge Dean Andrews so completely.
He felt things very acutely, he just didn’t broadcast his
every mood over a loudspeaker.
As if conjured by her thoughts, he appeared in the doorway.
She stared up at him as he took in the scene. His eyes were the only part of
his face to illustrate his thoughts. At first glance they widened and then,
while he gained control of his shock, they masked over into the remote,
watchful Dean she’d seen so frequently behind Princess’ eyes while she’d been
in captivity.
She moved silently and swiftly, not wanting to wake the
kids. They didn’t stir, their eyes still glued shut in blissful sleep.
On quiet feet, she reached Dean. They stared at one another
without words.
Why doesn’t he say something
?
It didn’t matter. She reached up, pulling his head down to
hers, and met his lips with her own. His hands went to her waist and he lifted
her until she could wrap her arms around his neck.
Carrying her like that, he left the sleeping children and
strode across the house.
“Where are we going?” she whispered.
“Guest room,” he answered her. “Don’t worry about noise.
They’ll sleep through until morning now. Noise doesn’t wake them.”
“As evidenced by the fact that they fell asleep during the
alarms.”
“Amanda.” He closed the bedroom door behind them. “Hell, I
thought I wouldn’t have you with me again. I failed you. I’m sorry.”
She cut him off, pressing her mouth to his again. There
would be time for talking. Right that second, she wanted him inside her,
showing her that this was all real, that she’d really come back and could count
on being here with him.
“Touch me,” she whispered against his neck. “Everywhere.”
He pulled at her shirt, taking it off her body. She didn’t
wear a bra, which might have bothered her if she’d thought about it, but now
she just felt glad not to have more things between Dean and her.
He leaned over her breasts. “I’ve gotten no time with these
two.” He squeezed her breasts in his hands. Pleasure surged through her veins. All
thoughts of food fled her mind. She only needed Dean to feed her soul.
And if he continued to play with her breasts, that would be
fantastic too. He bent over and sucked on her nipple. She drew in her breath,
her hands going to the back of his neck until she found his hair.
Amanda closed her eyes. Wow, the man could do amazing things
with his tongue and his teeth. He bit down on her aching peak and it hardened. She
hissed. How could pleasure be mixed with so much sweet pain?
Dean lifted his head and went down to the other breast, capturing
her bare tip in his mouth. Her skin burned where he’d left it alone. Why
couldn’t he touch her everywhere all at once?
“Easy, gorgeous. We have all night.”
She grinned. “Or at least until the next dragon alarm.”
“Hell. You’re right. We might have to hurry this up.” He
stroked her breast, causing her to shiver again. “I want to spend time with
them.”
She sat up on her knees. “And believe me, I want you to. But
I want you in me more than anything else. I’ve thought about little else, when
I could think at all, for the last however long it’s been.”
“Months, baby.” He kissed her, this time gently, as if he
wanted to take some of the pain from the time she’d been trapped away from her.
In that second, she believed he could. Dean performed miracles.
“All right, months. So get that hot cock in me.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And where did a gentle soul such as
yourself learn such language? Dragons talk dirty?”
“Don’t forget where I came from. I knew lots of dirty words
before the dragons gentrified me.”
Dean smiled, a broad display of white teeth. “I’d love to
hear each and every one of them.”
Amanda pulled his shirt from his body. Dean’s muscles were
as she remembered them except, if possible, more defined than before. She
leaned over and licked his skin. He tasted salty and male.
He groaned as if she’d touched another part of his body
besides his chest.
Cock
. She’d shocked him. That rocked.
Dean pushed her backward on the bed, moving on top of her. “I
need to get your pants off before I come from just looking at you.”
She yanked them down. “Whose clothes are these?”
“A bunch of different women donated them. I really don’t
want to talk about that right now.”
“All right.” A slow smile crossed her lips. “Then I guess I
shouldn’t ask who got me into them?”
“Me.”
She sighed dramatically. “Then I guess it hasn’t been long
since you last saw me nude. Can’t be too exciting for you.”
He grabbed her hand and placed it on his dick. “Does this
feel like not excited to you? I’ll never be able to get enough of you.”
Dean took off the remainder of his clothes. He stood before
her totally nude, like a god from one of the statues she’d seen in some of her
travels with Princess. “Did they carve you from stone?”
He bit down on her shoulder but didn’t answer her question. “You
were made for sex. Your body is all curves and softness.” He ran his hand down
from her neck to her stomach. “For months I’ve thought about you, dreaming of
you, touching myself imagining it was you.”
She stroked his cock. “Touching yourself like this?”
“Harder, baby.”
Amanda wrapped her hand around him tighter. “Like that?”
“Yes.” He sighed. “Just. Like. That.”
His erect length was hard and deeply veined. She sat up,
wanting her tongue to be where her hand milked him. Before he could stop her or
tell her anything that might mean she didn’t get to do just what she wanted,
she leaned over and licked him.
Dean sucked in his breath. “Shit.”
“Language, Dean.” She licked again. “Wherever did you hear
such things?”
“Damn it.” He pulled himself back to where she couldn’t
reach him and instead tweaked her clit.
A surge of pleasure overtook her and her body started to
shake. Dean kissed her belly. “Shh. I’ve got you, baby.”
He moved closer, positioning his cock near her core. “You’re
so wet.” Dean slid himself inside her. “Like heaven. Better than I remembered.”
He laughed to himself. “How is that possible?”
“Dean,” she whispered. “The dragon is out of me. I could get
pregnant.”
“Hell, I’d love that.” He nodded. “But we should talk about
that when we’re not this hot for one another.”
Dean backed away and her muscles clenched in complaint when
he did. “I’ll be back.”
Amanda got a quick view of Dean’s naked ass as he hurried
out the door. A few seconds later he reappeared holding two packets in his
hand.
“Where was I?” He put himself over her again. “Can you put
it on me?”
She could. She reached out. She hadn’t realized how badly
her hands were shaking until she had to open the foil. The sheath came out and
although it took her several tries, she got it rolled down his slick, hot cock
until it covered him.
“Put it back in. Please. Until I explode from wanting you.”
“As my woman wants.”
Dean pushed inside her. Her muscles clenched, glad to have
him back inside her where he belonged. In and out of her he moved, slowly at first,
then quickly picking up into a frenzy that she could barely keep up with.