Dragon's Chase (Paranormal Protection Agency) (Paranormal Protection Agency Book 7) (10 page)

“So fucking hot,” he murmured, watching her even as he shoved her dress up past her hips, but it didn’t seem to be enough for him. With a growl, he ran a claw up the middle of it, slicing the fabric and her bra beneath cleanly before tearing it from her form so she lay naked apart from her panties before him. The panties likewise didn’t last long, sides snapped within a blink of an eye and the fabric tossed aside.

“Perfect.” He hunched over her, his voice more beast than man, and took her nipple in his mouth. She whimpered again, hands driving through his hair as he suckled her. Goddess, she’d never thought her breasts or nipples could be that sensitive. The mere brush of his tongue over her was enough to have her on the edge of orgasm again.

He moved from one breast to the other, but the second didn’t get the same attention as the other. Instead his movements became shorter, more hurried, as though he were driven by his own baser needs.

Magic flared and his clothes disappeared, his hair-roughened thighs brushing the inside of her knees and his cock hard and heavy against her thigh. She closed her eyes, reaching above her head for something to hold onto. He kissed her nipple, moving up over her.

She opened her eyes to find him looking down at her. Triumph and possession shone bright in his eyes.

“Mine,” he growled, reaching between them to slide a finger between her pussy lips. “Admit it. You’re mine.”

She nodded, unable to do anything else when he dipped his knees to fit the broad head of his cock against her. No protection, but they didn’t need any. Dragons didn’t get STDs from other species and she could only get pregnant in her heat phase.

He frowned, stopped but there was anger in his voice when he demanded. “No, dammit. I want the words, Chase. Admit it, out loud. You’re mine.
My
Mate. Now and forever.”

He pushed, just a little. Enough that the thick head of his cock parted the delicate flesh of her pussy and plunged half an inch inside. She gasped, fingers clutching in the cushions over her head as hard pleasure rocked her body.

“You like that?” he demanded, pulling back and pushing in. Exactly the same amount. Frustration rolled through her. She needed more. She needed everything. She needed him to slide in all the way and fill her to the hilt.

He did it again, pulling back and sliding in just a little way, even less than he had before. Teasing her. “Admit it then, Chase. And I’ll fuck you. I’ll fuck you so well that you’ll never be able to get me out of your head. I’ll fuck you so well that you’ll never look at another man again.”

“I’m yours, Duke. Please….” She begged, tears of frustration thickening her throat. She needed this, needed to complete the bond now. Sooner.

He smiled and she was lost, the final wall around her heart shattering into a million pieces. Without warning, he pushed hard, spearing her all the way to the hilt with one movement.

She gasped, all her breath pushed from her lungs at the sudden fullness in her cunt. She was filled more than she ever had been, his cock pressing and stretching her pussy so much it burnt. But burnt good. She froze, waiting for the feeling to subside. Within seconds it did, and she needed to move.

“God, Chase,” he groaned, dipping his head to catch his breath. “You…fuck…you’re perfect.”

“Uh-huh,” she panted. “Not so bad yourself.”

She rocked her hips and the wave of pleasure rolled her eyes into the back of her head. She did it again, pulling a low curse from his lips. He took over, sliding an arm under one of her arms to cup the nape of her neck in a large hand. Holding her still as he pulled back and powered into her again. And again. Fucking her with long, hard strokes that rocked the couch under them. The furniture squealed at the abuse, but he didn’t stop, his features tight as he chased pleasure for them both. Her breath caught, her unfettered breasts jiggling with each hard slam. She met him thrust for thrust, stroke for stroke, giving herself up to pleasure until, with one last stroke, he buried himself deep inside her with a roar and came. The pulse and jerk of his cock within her, the sudden backlash of pleasure through their mental link, thrust her over the edge. With a cry, she followed him into bliss.

Chase woke as the first rays of the sun started to lighten the sky. Years of waking before dawn had conditioned her to be an early riser, despite the fact she’d been awake half of the night. Her mate had proven that he had more than enough stamina to keep up with her, even wear her out. He’d barely let her sleep, waking her if she fell asleep to take her again. Each time had been different, from the franticness of their first time, through hard and fast and right into so sensual and gentle it had pulled at her heart-strings.

She didn’t move, just lay on her side watching the man taking up most of the bed next to her. A fond smile curved her lips at the sight. Asleep he was no less handsome than awake, but he looked peaceful. Serene. He lay on his front, head turned toward her. His long hair flowed over his broad shoulders for the most part, with a few strands falling forward over one eye.

She reached out and brushed them away, studying his face. Committing how he looked right now to memory. Locking this moment away safely, so that in the future she could pull it out and look at it. Remember that she’d been gifted with a mate, and how happy she was right now. One perfect moment.

You’re not going to let me rest, are you, you insatiable woman?
His voice in her head was thick with sleep, but he opened one eye anyway. The ring of gold at the center hadn’t disappeared since last night, but to see it now meant this was a man in tune with both sides of his nature.

“Me?” She asked in mock-outrage. “How about you, Mr.Didn’t-let-me-get-a-wink-of-sleep?”

He smiled, a lazy curve of his lips but didn’t argue. As she watched, the softness of sleep cleared from his eyes.

“So…. Are you going to finally fill me in on what’s going on?”

He turned over onto his back and reached for her. She went happily, nestling against his side. A contented rumble, almost like a purr, escaped her throat when he started to stroke a hand down her back in slow movements. Right here and now, nothing seemed to matter, nothing apart from the two of them and their newly formed mate-bond.

“Chase?”

She sighed, idly drawing patterns over his chest with her fingertips. “Shadow-dragons are an ancient and powerful race. Once, long before humans started to record history, during the last endless winter, our empire spanned much of the globe.”

His hand stopped on her back. “Endless winter? You mean the last ice age?”

“Yeah, that’s what the humans call it anyway.” She shrugged. “Dragons are far more practical. It was cold, like winter, and it didn’t end. Endless winter.”

He chuckled, the sound a vibration where she rested against him. “Makes sense. So what then? Big empire and…?”

“The rest of the world happened. The magic users.” She closed her eyes and reached out mentally, her memories sharp and vivid in the forefront of her mind. “Even back then, Shadows were the most ancient of the dragons. Only the elemental types were older and they were all but extinct before our race rose to prominence.”

He pulled her closer, saying nothing but she could feel his concentration through their link.

“But magic was disappearing from the world. Fewer and fewer full dragons were born to the families. I was one of the last.” She kept her voice soft as she told a tale that none living had heard. “Children were born, but they couldn’t shift, had no magic. Our essence, what we were, was disappearing with the rest of the magic in the world.”

A shudder rolled through her body as she flipped through the memories of all the battles she’d fought. “As powerful as we are, we weren’t without our weaknesses. Even diminished, we were still powerful.”

Pausing on one memory, she showed him a dragon in battle. A Shadow in the prime of her powers fighting an army of warlocks and trolls. The dragon dominated the sky, black shadow and fire. Lethal and terrible, it decimated the troops on the ground with gouts of flame. Surgical strikes backed up by lightning strikes thrown from its claws. Magical attacks cast from the sky as a storm rolled in behind the dragon in the air.

The army on the ground broke, the soldiers fleeing to escape and the dragon wheeled in the air, flying straight for them. So complete was the memory that Duke flinched, pressing himself back into the bed but the dragon pulled up at the last minute. Between one heartbeat and the next the terrible creature folded in on itself and became a woman. A beautiful woman with raven-black hair and blue-gray eyes.

“Nevaris Stormcaller,” Chase supplied. “The most accomplished amongst us.”

Beside her, Duke murmured, curiosity flavoring his mental presence. “She looks familiar.”

Chase smiled, and froze the image for a moment. “She should do. She was my mother.”

Beautiful, but she can’t hold a candle to you, sweetness
.

His endearment and the soft brush of his lips over her temple made her smile. “You’re biased, I’m afraid. She was the best of us and still it wasn’t enough. They found ways to trap us. To control us and the magic that is our very essence.”

She carried on, showing him image after image on fast forward. Dragons captured and forced into slavery. The havoc they wrought under the control of their masters. The ever more hopeless situation Chase and her kind had found themselves in.

“We were scattered, in hiding…as a race we were done. Then our queen was blessed with a child.” She remembered the day as though it were yesterday. The elation of a royal birth, and the despair of the world the royal princess had been born into.

“The queen made a terrible choice, but the only one she could. She sent her child to sleep beneath the earth. There she would remain, with twelve guardians, until the world was ready for our kind again.”

“You were one of the twelve, weren’t you?” He shifted and she opened her eyes to find him leaning over her. With a smile she lifted her hand and stroked her thumb across his cheek.

“I was. And you, mate of mine, were the first sign that the world was ready for Shadows once more.”

He frowned, confusion clouding his features. “How do you work that out? We don’t know who our parents were. One thing’s for sure, they certainly weren’t dragons. We searched far and wide and
no one
knew anything about what we were.”

The frustration was clear in his voice, as was anger. She soothed him with a finger against his lips.

“They might not have been dragons. Probably descendants of one of the bloodlines though, the magic dormant and hiding for thousands of years until it was ready.”

“Ready for Baron and me? I can’t see that somehow.” He chuckled. “Our mom always said they broke the mold when they made us.”

“Perhaps they did,” she mused, watching him. “You have a raw ability with magic the like of which I’ve never seen before. You shouldn’t be able to handle it the way you do, not without a century of study. At least.”

He grinned. “Hey, I’m Dragon mark two. D-two, like terminator two but a dragon.”

She sighed, picking up the reference to a cult film instantly. “D-two all right. For douche and dick.”

“Hey! That could hurt my feelings!” he threw back in indignation, but the easy smile and his wandering hand on her backside told her he wasn’t seriously upset. His smile dropped serious again.

“So…where does that asshole Sellers fit into all this? Ris, our Seer with the agency, said something about a control spell on this collar?”

Chase’s mood clouded, anger filling every cell of her body as he touched the collar around her neck. Instinctively she locked all her thoughts about the collar and how sex with her mate had broken the spell down deep where he couldn’t reach it.

“I was woken before it was time, in a strange room with this around my neck.” Somehow she managed to force the words out past gritted teeth. “Sellers had found where we slept, broken in and stolen the princess and me. The others…I don’t know where they are. Dead presumably. None of us would stray from our mission to protect the baby.”

Duke’s jaw clenched, his lips compressed into a tight line. “That fucking asshole. Put a collar on you while you slept? But why? What benefit does kidnapping you have?” He seemed to think about that, then shrugged. “Aside from having a dragon at his beck and call, of course.”

“Royal blood.” Pushing him back, she sat up in bed and ran a hand through her hair. It shook but she ignored it. “He needed royal blood to power the Dragos spell, and the heart-blood of a dragon-mate to seal it in place. That’s why he was after the human girl, Honor. She’s your brother’s mate. And humans…way easier to kill than a dragon.”

She looked back over her shoulder. “That’s what the thing with Rat—Sellers’ pet pixie—was. He fed us both a love spell so Rat would become a dragon-mate.
My
mate.”

***

Duke couldn’t help the warning growl that trickled from his lips. The damn pixie was
not
her mate. He was.

She blinked at the sound, surprise on her features, an instantly he wanted to claw it back. She’d been through so much—all the memories she’d shown him tinted with suffering and sacrifice for the greater good—she didn’t deserve him being an asshole on top of it.

And he wanted to be. A total asshole that was. He wanted to tear up the sky to get back to the city and find both the pixie and that bastard Sellers. Then he’d show them both what a mistake messing with a dragon’s mate could be.

And messing with his was the last one they’d every make.

Her soft chuckle took the wind out of the sale of his anger. As first he wasn’t sure what the light sound was—he’d never heard it from her before—but when he looked down, her eyes were alight with amusement and something warmer.

“So ferocious, mate of mine,” she whispered, gentle fingers stroking a path along his jaw, scarping the heavy stubble there with a soft rasp.

Shivering at the touch, he turned his head to kiss her fingers. He loved her touching him. The rustle of scales hidden under his skin gave him away. Then her words registered, the part of his mind trained by the PPA latching onto the fine details.

“Sorry to talk shop, sweetness.” He slid his arm under her neck to pillow her head. Just to make her more comfortable. Nothing at all to do with the fact he liked touching her. A lot. “But does that mean we have a pixie kicking around who Sellers can use to complete this Dragos thing?”

The expression in her eyes shifted for a moment but before he could analyze it, it was gone leaving him wondering if he’d seen it at all. Perhaps a trick of the light.

“No, he gave us the love potion but even if we had…been intimate, I don’t think it would have worked anyway.” Reaching up, she planted a soft kiss on his lips. “Because I already had a mate.”

“Too damn right you do,” he growled, his body going from half hard to full mast in a heartbeat. Until he’d met her, caught her scent, he’d never known it was possible to want one woman so much. No, want was the wrong word. He didn’t just want her, he craved her. Not only did she feel right against him, as perfect as though she’d been crafted by some deity just for him, but everything about her completed him. Gave him the sense of belonging he’d looked for his entire life.

With a struggle, he pulled his mind back to the task in hand. “So, Sellers needs a dragon-mate to complete the spell. We know of two—you and Honor.” He grinned, confidence surging through him. Things were so much easier when all the pieces to the puzzle were available. “Honor’s human and you’re locked by that spell thing he has on you.”

He pursed his lips for a moment, studying the collar around her throat. Perhaps it was a trick of the early-morning light, but the thing looked somehow duller than before. “So all we need to do is keep both of you out of his clutches until he’s dealt with.”

She shook her head, concern in her lovely eyes. “No…don’t forget,
you’re
a dragon mate as well. He could use you.”

“Believe me, sweetness, I’d like to see him try.” Amusement filled him and he dropped a kiss on her delicate, little nose before rolling from the bed. “Now, let me see if I can rustle up some coffee, then you can tell me all about this Dragos spell.”

He paused just long enough to pull on some pants before striding out into the main area and heading for the kitchen. Happiness and contentment surged through his veins with each beat of his heart. Overnight he’d gone from some paranormal kid no one, not even his own parents, had wanted, to having a people and a history, not to mention a mate, to call his own.

Nothing could stop him now. Especially not a pain in the ass warlock like Sellers.

A footstep behind him made him smile as he rooted around in the cupboard for coffee. “You didn’t need to get up, sweetness. I’d have brought the coffee through. Breakfast in bed, eh? What more could a woman want?”

She didn’t reply, which brought a frown to his face. He turned to look over his shoulder and that’s when the spell hit him, full force. His body locked up, and the thread between him and his dragon frozen so he couldn’t pull power from the creature to break free. Even the mental connection between them was blocked solid.

Chase moved into his line of sight. She was fully dressed, her clothes similar to the ones her mother had worn in the memory she’d showed him, and her face was twisted in guilt and determination.