Portia raised an eyebrow at Ky but spoke to Jada. “You need to worry about you.”
Jada nodded. “I will. I promise.”
A tremble worked its way into her voice. It sucker-punched Ky right in the gut.
“How can I get in touch with you? Should we have a secret signal and a secret meeting place?” Jada asked Portia.
Ky recovered by focusing on that potential escape plan. She couldn’t get him to give into her succubus ways. Oh no. If he had anything to do with it, there would be no secret meetings.
Jada held some hefty keys to what was going on with the demon dragons and Cage’s stolen soul shard. He was responsible for figuring out what those were.
Thinking with his dick wasn’t helping. Ky wasn’t ready to admit that she had some power over his own shard too.
Nope. Not even a little. His need for this woman controlled his head. Besides that scorching kiss, he’d resisted her allure. He could continue to do so.
Portia smiled and shook her head. “If you’re going to live in the real world, you need to start acting like a modern human. Get yourself a cell phone.”
Jada wrinkled up her nose. “Blech. Kitchen tech I can get down with. It makes life better. Cell phones are little zombie making machines. Do I have to?”
“Yes, you do.” Ky butted in and mentally made a note to get her a phone. He wondered how old she was. She looked around his age, or what humans assumed was his age. Late twenties. But she acted like Match or Nana Kiki, who both refused to get with the times.
He had no idea how a succubus aged. She could be twenty-something or twenty-thousand.
Thinking of her as a grandma helped cool his libido. But not much.
Portia pulled away from Jada, but then hugged her tight. “He took the words right out of my mouth. And get an iPhone so we can FaceTime.”
“I know you’re speaking English, but I don’t understand the words coming out of your mouth.”
Portia laughed and moved toward the door. She pointed at Ky. “I’ve got to go. I’m leaving her in your hands, dragon boy. Keep her safe or I’ll drink you dry.”
He recognized the threat came from a place of worried love. He wouldn’t take offense. Especially since he had no intention of letting Jada out of his sight.
He gave Portia a salute and wrapped an arm around Jada’s shoulder. She shoved him off.
The games begin.
The second Portia was out of view, he lifted Jada’s chin with his knuckles. “Now, where were we….”
In the last minute, he’d come up with the perfect plan. He’d seduce the information out of her.
Sweet as.
Adorably, she blushed. He didn’t think a sexual being like a succubus even knew how to blush. “Ah, yes, we were right about here.”
Ky lowered his mouth to hers, taking her mouth, inhaling her breath. The zing of energy he’d felt before hit him twofold this time. He wanted, needed so much more from her than a kiss.
He lifted her by the legs, wrapping them around his waist. She squealed and grabbed his shoulders.
The counter sat a foot behind them and he stepped toward it to lean her against it, fully intending to lay her out and strip her bottoms off.
Her head tipped back, searching for where he was going, baring her neck to him. His muscles tensed at the sight of her creamy skin, unmarred. His for the taking.
As soon as she answered his questions.
He scraped his teeth across the base of her neck, pushing her shirt aside with his chin.
“Oh hell. What are you doing to me? We should not be making out in the middle of the café in broad daylight. But do that again. Please.”
He chuckled because that was exactly what was going through his mind too. They should be doing this someplace a little more private, but he was not waiting.
“Tell me where you hid the soul shard and we can take this anywhere you’d like.” He nibbled and licked his way from one collarbone to the other, hoping to keep her mind on what he was doing to her body.
“I don’t know what a soul shard is.”
He pushed a basket of doggie donuts next to the cash register to the side, making room to lay Jada down. “The golden crystal you and your partner took from Cage Gylden.”
She leaned back on her elbows which thrust her fantastic rack right into his face. He was going to spend days with his face or his cock between those tits.
“Who is Cage Whosie-whatsie?”
Ky couldn’t get to her shirt to lift it up, until he got rid of the apron she had on. No way was he taking the time to cut through the knots. He sliced the fabric tie on either side and pulled it over her head.
“I hope you know how to sew, because I don’t, and someone has to fix that, so I don’t get fired.” She tugged at the hem of his shirt and shoved it up, running her hands along his chest and stomach. “Holy washboard abs. I think I could actually do my laundry on your stomach, it’s so rock hard.”
She was doing a great job at avoiding his questions and distracting the hell out of him with her touch. “That’s not the only thing that’s hard, wahine ataahua. Give me the shard, and I’ll show you.”
“You could be calling me an ugly duckling and it would still sound sexy with that accent. Is it Australian?”
“No doll, I’m no wallaby. Think a little lower.” Damn, she’d distracted him again. He would get back to the soul shard and where she had it.
“I’ve been thinking lower, like all the way down in the gutter since you walked in the door. Why is that?”
“You’re the succubus. You tell me. While you’re at it, tell me where the soul shard is.” Yeah, smooth seduction. Real smooth.
“Is it like a crystal on a necklace? Kind of like yours?” She indicated toward his own soul shard dangling over her where she’d lifted his shirt.
“Yes. Do you have it?”
She reached inside of her shirt, and he wished with all his might she was taking off her bra, but he supposed he should hope she was fishing for the shard.
She pulled out a charm tied with a loop on the end of a cord. The shape matched the bone carving his own soul shard was surrounded by a Manaia spirit creature that resembled a dragon.
The paua shell at its eye glowed a deep blue, filling the café with light.
This was not Cage’s shard.
Ky reached out to touch the necklace but thought better of it. Manaia carried power and until he knew what it was and who’d given it to her, he’d be cautious.
“Where did you get this?” He wrapped his fingers around Jada’s hand where she clutched it in her grasp.
His shard was a gift from the White Witch. All dragon warriors received the gift when they came of age. A piece of their own souls mixed with that of the First Dragon, granting them long life, the ability to shift between human and dragon forms, and the responsibility to defend the world from evil.
How did a succubus end up with one?
“A woman in a white dress gave it to me. Right before she knocked me out with some sort of spell. I think she was a witch.”
Not possible. A witch had given her a bone carving identical to his own, that glowed with a light matching the one coming from his own soul shard.
She had to be playing a trick on him, or lying.
But she didn’t smell like she was.
Enough. He shifted his hand and touched the shard. It disintegrated beneath his fingers. The bone and shell shimmered and transformed into red, blue, green, gold, and sparkling white dragon scales.
“Whoa. How did you do that? I haven’t been able to take it off since the witch put it on me.”
“He doesn’t need it anymore. He has found you.” A small woman with the presence of an Amazon walked in through the back of the shop.
Jada scrambled out of his arms and off the counter putting her clothes to rights, hiding behind him. She’d turned red as coral upon hearing the woman’s voice.
“Ninsy, oh hell. We kind of got carried away.”
The woman
smiled at Jada as if it not matter that he and Jada had been caught with their pants down, but that she approved.
“Hello, my lord Kaiārahi Tarakona Puru.” The woman’s Māori accent was perfect. But she was no Antipodean. She was also no dragon.
She shouldn’t know his full name. Only a rare few did, and they were all dragons, save his own mother and Nana Kiki.
Ky inhaled her scent and found only calm confidence. Her power ebbed and flowed in and around both him and Jada. A pure virginal caress that meant no harm.
“Hello.” He tipped his head to the side, studying her. “You can call me Ky.”
She laughed and then covered her mouth to stifle it. “You want to be called after food? That doesn’t seem like an appropriate nickname, my lord.”
Yeah, how many jokes had he heard like that growing up. Kai which was the word for food in Māori, and Ky, the name he preferred to be called. Same -same but different.
“Why do you keep calling me that?” Only during a blue dragon Wyr meeting did anyone call him Kaiārahi, much less my lord.
She bowed her head in deference. “I am but a loyal servant. Your mother sent me.”
This was no ordinary witch. Did she walk between two worlds? Maybe she was Hine-Nui-Te-Po Māori goddess of the underworld, protector of the dead. “My mother has been gone for more than a hundred years.”
“Not that mother.” She didn’t say ‘silly boy’, but he heard it in her tone.
Jada poked her head out from behind him. She’d smoothed her hair and had all her clothes back in place. Too bad.
“Ninsy, do you know this man?”
She nodded. “Dragon. I know this dragon.”
Ky narrowed his eyes and studied Ninsy. “But I don’t know you.”
“What you need to know is that we have only a few hours before Kur-Jara’s Galla demons are upon us.”
“Demon dragons?” Ky looked more closely at the witch. She had burn marks all up and down her arms. Those weren’t from any oven. Whoever she was, she’d been defending Jada, protecting her.
“Now that you have found your mate, they will be more desperate to take her and attack in full force.”
Umm, excuse me. Found his what now?
Battle of the Danish
Ninsy was being super weird. She was kind of an odd duck anyway, but who wasn’t? Now she was all mysterious because what’s his name… holy crap, she had made out with the dude twice and hadn’t even asked his name.
Ky. He’d told Ninsy to call him Ky.
“Did you just say he’d found his mate? You don’t mean me, do you?”
Ninsy came over and put her hand on Jada’s cheek. A soft energy, like Ninsy’s tea, warmed her from the inside.
“You are his mate. Feel it in your soul, dear one. It is a great gift from Inanna and her dragon. You are blessed.”
Her blessed? That was a riot. She’d been damned from birth.
“Thanks, but—”
Ky growled behind them and in an instant a huge blue dragon filled the café with its body. The tables and chairs squashed beneath his body, and Jada had to duck to miss his tail.
Okay, so she’d think about being someone’s mate later.
“They are here.”
Jada slapped her hands over her ears. Not like that would help. “Ack. You can’t hear my thoughts now, can you? Get out of my head.”
Was this what had happened to all the dragons’ mates? They were driven insane by having a dude in their head all the time?
Ninsy conjured up a shield and a sword out of thin air. “It is not even dark yet. How are they out in the daylight?”
“I’m not in your head. I’m merely speaking into your mind. It is the only way I can communicate with you in this form.”
Demon dragons appeared out of the tiniest of shadows. In the corner of the café, next to a plant, under a chair. A black creature slithered up any space that wasn’t in direct sunlight. There were three or four times as many as had attacked her on the street a week ago.
Oh hellfire. They were all going to die before she figured out if she wanted to be Ky’s mate or not.
Definitely not.
Well, maybe.
He was a good kisser.
Which wasn’t really important at this particular moment. So why couldn’t she stop thinking about it?
The beasts snarled and snapped their jaws. One rolled its head like a crazy demon and spoke in a possessed-by-the-devil voice. “Give us girl. We go.”
Ky responded to that by swinging his tail and chopping off the demon dragon’s head. Poof. Just like that, it was a stain on the floor.
The other bastards hissed and snarled and basically lost their shit.
“Jada, behind me.” Ky snatched her with his tail and shoved her across the counter and into the kitchen.
Demon dragons leapt into the air, their wings flapping, fire spurting from their mouths. There were so many that in an instant they covered Ky’s entire body.
He slashed and turned them into blocks of ice, but there were too many. Ninsy’s sword cut them down, but as soon as she felled one, another and another took its place.
They both bled from deep gashes the demon dragons gave them and burns covered Ninsy’s arms.
All to protect her. She was barely worth saving.
Jada had to do something.
Ky roared and rolled across the floor, squashing a dozen beasts on his back.
She yanked open the display case and chucked raised glazed donuts at the demon dragons’ heads. The baked goods in projectile form wouldn’t hurt in the least, but maybe it would distract them long enough for Ky or Ninsy to kill them. Besides, raised glazed were not her favorite anyway. Pulling out the tray of snickerdoodle cake donuts with cream cheese glaze was harder.
She took a bite of one and then flung the rest, Frisbee style, at the three demon dragons climbing on Ky’s shoulders, tearing at his scales, ripping them off, exposing new chinks in his armor.
Each wound to Ky, Jada felt, not on her body, but on her soul. He was weakening under the onslaught. One of the beasts opened its mouth wide to bite into Ky’s flesh. Jada took not so careful aim and tossed a whole tray full of cinnamon rolls at it.
By sheer luck, one went straight down its gullet. It quirked its head to the side, licked its lips with a disgusting slithery tongue and jumped three feet across the room toward her. Its claws clacked on the tiles with each step.
Shit.
Ky was buried under another pile of demon dragons and Ninsy was fighting her own hoard off with a fire extinguisher, her sword lost in the melee.
Jada backed away. The coffee urns were only a few more feet. They’d make a better weapon than baked goods. Slowly, slowly. A sudden move might provoke the thing into attacking.
Ky tossed one of the demon dragons across the café, knocking it into the coffee urns and splatting them against the wall.
There went that plan.
The demon dragon stood up, shook itself, and zeroed in on her.
The only thing left to defend herself was that pile of strawberry-rhubarb cream cheese Danishes. She backed away and tossed two Danishes at the demon dragon.
It snatched both out of the air with its teeth and swallowed them without chewing, and stepped closer, narrowing its eyes at her. Then it stood up straight, its eyes went wide, and it exploded, covering her in dragon demon guts.
Gross. Awesome. But gross.
She wiped the black slime off her face and grabbed for the remaining Danishes. It was probably total coincidence, but when battling evil incarnate, she’d take any chance she had.
Another demon dragon bounded over the counter, narrowly missing being taken out by Ky’s tail. It stalked her the same as the last one.
If they were going to kill her, why didn’t they just get on with it? This one tried to grab at her arms and then her hair. “You come now. AllFather want.”
They weren’t trying to kill her. They wanted to kidnap her. Big mistake. Huge.
r /> Jada threw an arm over her face and in her best damsel in distress voice she said, “Oh no, don’t take me.”
The demon dragon took her bait and lunged for her. She gave him a face full of strawberry rhubarb.
The bastard screeched, clawed at the pink goop on its face. Too late, its face melted right off and before she could say yippee, it disappeared in a pile of goo and ash on the floor.
Well, hell yeah.
Jada bolted for the walk-in cooler where she knew Ninsy had more of the filling stored. She yanked the door open and found eight-quart containers of fresh home-made strawberry-rhubarb filling.
That seemed like an inordinate amount. They never sold any of those Danishes. Ever.
She grabbed a handful of disposable pastry bags and slopped the filling in with her hands. Three bags took her about sixty seconds and in a battle for life and love, that was too long.
A snip of the end of the bag and her weapons were ready. She hefted one of the full containers under her arm and piled the bags on top, then she ran and slid behind the counter.
This time she aimed more carefully. She had limited ammunition and a lot of demon dragons to destroy. One big squeeze of the first bag landed half the filling down the front of her, but a stream of the red stuff hit the nearest demon dragon. It shrieked, and its arm melted off and fell to the floor.
“Ninsy, catch.” Jada tied the end of her second bag and tossed it through the air to her badass boss. Ninsy didn’t catch it, because she was in the middle of running a demon dragon through with her sword. The tip of her blade sliced the bag and coated the steel with the fruity filling.
The next demon Ninsy touched with her blade went up in a puff of smoke.
“The filling kills them,” Jada shouted.
Ninsy nodded, slid her blade through the red smear on the floor, and redoubled her attack.
Now to help Ky. Jada refilled her own bag and climbed up on the counter. Fire and smoke filled the air around her. Water and ice covered the floor.
She put the tied ends of each bag in the crook of her arm, pointed the spout at the demon dragons, and squeezed. Red goo flew through the air, coating everything in a thin stream of tart jam.
The cry of the demon dragons filled the air like a thousand dying seagulls. Her plan worked to even out the numbers. Finally, she could see Ky’s face again.