You Slay Me

  "Did you? How very generous of you. And your com­panions are?"

  I waved my hand toward Rene. "This is Rene, my taxi driver. He doesn't know anything about what's going on."

  "Doesn't he?" Drake turned his attention on Rene, eyeing him carefully for a moment before lifting his hand. A flash of blue like a concentrated ball of lightning shot from him to Rene, leaving me with big black spots bobbing before my eyes.

  "What have you done to him?" I yelled as soon as the spots disappeared enough for me to see. I ran over to where Rene was slumped unconscious against one of the cases. "My god, you've killed him!"

  "How bloodthirsty you are. I had no idea your lovely exterior hid such a cruel nature."

  I sent him a glare that should have burned the hair right off his head. "I'm not the one who just killed an innocent man! You are going to pay for this, Drake. So help me, you are going to pay!"

  Drake sighed and shook his head in mock sorrow. "Such a suspicious mind you have. I did not kill him. I merely sent him to sleep for a while. The fewer witnesses to what is about to happen, the better."

  Relief filled me even as I recognized just how omi­nous his words were. I made sure that Rene was just out, and when I was satisfied that Drake told the truth about zapping him, moved so I had my back to the case holding the dragons. Drake glanced toward Jim.

  "That's Jim."

  "Her demon," Jim said, strolling over to Drake. "But if you're as powerful as you look, I can be yours instead."

  'Traitor," I whispered, taking a step backwards. Al­though the main part of my brain, the functioning part, knew I was caught and how, the little daredevil section of my brain said that if I could just grab the aquamanile, I could run for it. True, the odds weren't in my favor, but there was still a chance I might be able to get by Drake if I could get Jim to distract him by attacking.

  OK, it was a very small chance. But I didn't have much choice, now, did I?

  I took another step back, my fingers brushing against the brass handle on the front of the case. Drake was giv­ing Jim a look that had the demon backing away as it mumbled, "It was just a suggestion. Sheesh."

  "Would it surprise you to know that I've been expect­ing you?" Drake asked, leaning back against the door, his arms crossed over his chest. "The police were here ear­lier, asking many questions about you and my alleged visit to Mme. Deauville's apartment. I, as an upstanding businessman, naturally expressed horror and surprise at accusations such as you have evidently leveled against me. The police seemed very satisfied of my innocence when they left, but somehow, I knew you would pay me a visit.

  The memory of my highly detailed, erotic-beyond-my-wildest-dreams fantasy about him the night before was potent enough to make me shiver at odd moments during the day, but seeing him in the flesh took my breath away. I used a few moments to admire the hunter-green silk shirt he wore (the color matched his eyes perfectly) and the marvelous way it caressed the muscles of his arms and chest, as well as the tight fit of his black leather pants. He really was gorgeous, enough that my tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth for a moment. I engaged in a little decleaving while swallowing hard a couple of times, my fingers busy as they opened the case behind me, quickly closing over the cool metal shape of a dragon.

  "Were you? How prescient of you. Would it surprise you to know that I've got my aquamanile?" I crowed tri­umphantly as I whipped the gold object around in front of me. I pointed at Drake and used my best demon-ordering voice .to say, "Effrijim, I command thee by thy lord Amaymon to attack him!"

  Jim sat down. "You have got to be kidding."

  Drake smiled, amusement clearly visible in his eyes. I wanted to scream. Why did nothing ever go right in my life?

  I marched over to Jim and shook the aquamanile at him. "You are supposed to be my demon, mine to order, mine to give commands. I gave you an order. I'm in a desperate situation here. Drake is likely to kill me if you don't help me escape. If I die, no one is going to buy you hamburgers anymore. Now are we on the same wave­length?"

  Jim made a pouty face. "He's not going to kill you— you're his mate. Dragons mate for life; they can't kill their mate or their own life ends."

  I looked at Drake. He was still smiling. "Is that true?"

  He looked me over carefully, his eyes lingering on my breasts. My mind went off on a little excursion remem­bering what it felt like to have his mouth on my flesh. I smoothed down the taupe linen tunic while I reminded myself that what had passed between us had been a dream, not real... even if the nightgown had been.

  "You claim you aren't my mate."

  "No, I meant that if I were—and I'm not saying I am—but if I were, is it true you can't kill me without corking off, too?"

  The amusement in his eyes turned to outright laughter. "The demon does not lie."

  "Whew," I said, breathing a huge sigh of relief. "That's nice to know. Hoo! I was worried there for a minute that you were going to get a bit testy over me hav­ing my aquamanile back, but I don't have anything to worry about if you can't hurt me—"

  "I didn't say I couldn't hurt you—I said I couldn't kill my mate. As far as I'm aware, you have not agreed that you are my mate; therefore, were I to take exception to the fact that you have broken into my house with the in­tention to rob me, I could do so without any repercus­sions."

  I clutched the aquamanile to my chest as I squared my shoulders and sent him as offended a glare as I could rally. "I do not like you."

  "At this moment I'm not exceedingly fond of you, ei­ther." Drake straightened up, striding toward me, his hand outstretched for the aquamanile. "You will return my treasure now."

  I clutched it tighter, moving backwards as he contin­ued forward. "No. It's mine. I've stolen it back from you. If you want it, you're going to have to agree to help me, because there's no other way you're going to get it from me."

  He backed me up until I was against the wall, the cool­ness of the stone seeping through the thin linen of my tunic. "You little fool, I allowed you to enter my home. Do you really think I have learned nothing about security in all my hundreds of years of existence?"

  "You heard me," I accused, breathlessly aware of every inch of his body as he leaned against me, the dragon caught between us.

  His fingers trailed a line from my ear down my neck. It was an oddly gentle touch. "It's called closed-circuit TV, sweetheart, and it can be found in every room of this building. As can the silent alarms on all the doors and windows, the pressure-sensitive floor alarms, and the thermal detectors that alert me to anyone who enters the house. If you had gone into the room beyond my bed­room, you would have seen the monitors that show me what's happening in every room."

  "You have thermal detectors?" I asked, my mind going all girly as he tucked an errant curl behind my ear.

  "I have many of them."

  "Oh." My heart sank as I accepted the truth. We hadn't been fooling Drake at all. See? Not the brightest bulb. "I didn't see any of those."

  Drake smiled his slow, sexy smile at me. "I knew sooner or later you would try to take the aquamanile back, so I decided to make it easier for you."

  "Why?"

  His hands slid up my waist, slipping under my crossed arms to head for the no-man's-land made up of my breasts. "Perhaps I wanted to lure you into my home. You liked my bedroom."

  "It's very... you," I gasped as his thumbs rubbed across my breasts. The familiar fire was back in his eyes, a fire that warmed me to my toenails, a fire that set my whole body alight, but I was a woman determined. I kept a firm hold on the aquamanile as Drake pulled me tighter against him. "I thought you said you weren't fond of me?"

  "I don't have to like you to want you," he murmured as he pressed his mouth against the pulse point in my throat. My knees threatened to give way under the erotic touch of his tongue against my flesh. I wanted to be of­fended by his statement, but in truth, I was not terribly happy with him at that moment, and yet he was stirring things deep in my soul that no one had stirred befo
re. I was far from perfect, but I would not add hypocrite to my list of failings.

  "Does he have his hand on your boob?" Jim asked, watching us avidly. "Is he copping a grope? 'Cause that's what it looks like from here."

  "Go away!" I frowned over Drake's shoulder at Jim. It shot me a sour look but lay down and rested its head on its paws. "Drake, why did you really let me in?"

  "Questions," he said, nuzzling my collarbone. My spine went all boneless as the cool silk of his hair brushed against my jaw. What is it about men's hair that makes it so sexy? "You always have questions."

  "That's because you won't give me the answers, al­though you were almost a chatty Cathy last night before we..."

  I stiffened the second the words left my lips, and not just because Drake's right hand slid around to my derriere. I hadn't meant to mention the dream, not since I was still confused over what was real and what wasn't. Although that nightgown was awfully real this morn­ing----

  "I will always answer questions if you present me with an inducement to do so," he said, kissing a hot, wet path down toward my chest.

  "An inducement?" 1 asked, my blood starting to sim­mer. He hadn't acknowledged the dream had been real, causing that tiny little part of my mind that worried it had been reality to sigh with relief. "What sort of induce­ment? Like money?"

  "Mmm," he said, taking little nibbling bites that had me arching against him. His fingers slid down the line of buttons on the front of the tunic, his tongue snaking into the valley between my breasts. My knees gave out com­pletely. "That's not what you offered last night."

  "Last night? Oh, my god, it was real? When we— uh—that was real?" Embarrassment filled me at the thought of the things I had done with him, but that faded quickly as his mouth moved over me. My mind warred between the desire to give myself over to the burn he was generating within me and the almost desperate need to es­cape the desire he represented.

  His tongue touched the spot on my collarbone where he had burned me in the dream. "Do you really doubt it was real?"

  My mind decided it didn't want to cope with the fact that I had jumped the bones of the first handsome dragon I met a day after meeting him, focusing instead on what Drake was doing to me now. "You mean that's all it would take to get you to answer my questions—sex? Hot, steamy dragon sex? Hoo, you're not going to—Are you going to—?"

  "I told you that after the first time we would make love as humans do," Drake answered, his tongue a brand on my quivering flesh.

  "Wow!" Jim said. "Wish I had a camera. The black­mail potential of this is enough to keep me in burgers for the next millennia."

  "Jim!" I squawked as Drake's hand slipped inside my bra.

  "Yo! Right here. Wow. I can't believe he's doing that in front of me. This is better than cable TV."

  "Can't you make him go to sleep, too?" I asked Drake.

  "He is your demon to command," Drake murmured against the swell of my breast.

  My mind kept telling me I was stupid lo just stand there and let him seduce me. My body overruled my mind with a majority vote. "Oh, yeah. I forgot that. Jim, I command you to close your eyes. And turn around. And don't listen to us."

  "Party pooper." Jim grumbled.

  My breast heaved a couple of times in Drake's hand as his long fingers stroked the swollen flesh, his mouth kiss­ing a line over to the nipple that was screaming for his touch. I waited until Jim obeyed me before I looked at Drake.

  His eyes glittered with arousal and want and leashed power, and I knew that if I did not stop him, things would go much further than I anticipated. The dream might have been shared between us, but what we were about to do was indisputably real, with very real repercussions... repercussions I wasn't sure I wanted to face. "This mate business ... How do we know if I really am your... male?"

  "Only a true mate can survive a dragon's fire," he said as his teeth closed gently over my nipple. I clutched his hair and arched upward, my body and soul on fire, but it was a wonderful sensation, one that left me craving more.

  "That's it?" I gasped, part of my brain surprised I could still form words. The other part was busy directing the fingers of my left hand as they unbuttoned Drake's shirt.

  "That is what a dragon's mate must do.... A wyvern's mate must also prove herself to the sept."

  "Uh ... prove herself how?" I slid my hand inside his shirt, my fingers tingling with the heat of his skin. His muscles rippled as I mapped out the wonderful terrain of his chest and abdomen.

  "A challenge is set. The mate must triumph over it or be rejected." He kissed a burning path over to my other breast, tugging my bra down so he could tease that breast with long strokes of his tongue. His voice was harsh, rough like crushed velvet. "You taste of my fire. You taste of desire. You taste the way a mate should taste. Come to me, Aisling. Give yourself to me again. Mate with me as mortals do."

  His words were blunt, but they sent a shiver of pure arousal down my spine. After the things we'd done in my dream, I had no right to become suddenly prudish, but Drake was completely different from any man I had known. It wasn't just his power; it was the way he made me feel totally and completely feminine. He might be a dragon in human form, but he was the most masculine person I'd ever met.

  His tongue burned me as it flicked over my hardened nipple, and I almost said yes, I almost threw caution to the wind and agreed to be whatever he wanted me to be just to taste again the promised fire in his eyes, but this was more than just a fantasy—there was something missing that I just couldn't ignore. There was arousal in his eyes, there was desire and the knowledge that we would bring each other ecstasy, but there was no affec­tion.

  "You don't like me," I whispered into his hair, a tear sliding down my cheek. Surprise flashed across his face. "And to be honest, although I really enjoyed the dream, and want to do lots and lots of things to you, many of which involve my tongue, I'm not... I don't... I'm not in love with you."

  His emerald gaze didn't waver, but his eyes opened wider, the disbelief in them almost enough to make me laugh. "You do not sleep with men unless you are in love with them?"

  "You don't have to say the word like it's something dirty."

  "What we did last night did not involve love."

  I tightened my lips. "What we did last night was not real, not in the sense that matters. As for love—so I don't sleep around, so I happen to believe that people should care about each other before they have sex. Lust and physical attraction are all well and fine as a fantasy, but there is more to be had than just wild, fiery, incredibly fabulous sex, you know."

  His eyes grew dark. It was amazing how his irises grew brighter or darker with his emotions, but I didn't have the time to ask him how he did it before he spoke. "You are the only woman in all of time who was born to be my mate, the one woman to whom my life is irrevo­cably linked, the woman whose death will bring my own, and you believe I don't care about you?"

  I raised my chin. "There's a big difference between self-preservation and true affection. Since right now part of me is so angry that I want to bean you with this aquamanile, I think it's probably better if I leave. With my friends. Unhurt." I added that last bit just as a reminder.

  His gaze burned into mine for a few seconds, the flames of his anger licking along my skin. I opened the magic door in my mind and embraced the fire. He stepped back from me, and my entire body wailed a dirge at the loss. I tucked myself back into my bra and, still clutching the aquamanile, buttoned up my tunic.

  Drake raised an eyebrow until he looked like he was the poster boy for irony. "And just how do you expect to keep me from taking the aquamanile from you?"

  "I am a Guardian," I said with a great big bucketful of confidence that I didn't come even remotely close to feel­ing. "I have power of my own. You mess with me, you'll be sorry."

  His lips quirked. "I believe someday that statement will be true, but today?" He glanced at Jim, who was lying by the door, its back to us. "Today I believe I will dare your wrath."
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  I'd like to point out that I had no choice. I really didn't. I'm not a violent person normally, but I knew without a doubt that if I didn't disable Drake, he'd simply take the aquamanile from me. If I had the aquamanile, he'd be pissed at me, but he'd agree to anything I asked in order to get it back. So I knocked him out.

  Actually, I think I just stunned him. He wasn't expect­ing that I would take his move toward me as a classical situation of attack from the front, but one of the things Uncle Damian had insisted that I do was take a course on self-defense. So I kneed Drake in the noogies, stabbed at his eyes with the fingers of my left hand, and brought my right hand—and the heavy aquamanile—down on his head. He hit the floor with an astonished look on his face.

  "Jim, up, help me with Rene," I yelled, not waiting to see how badly Drake was hurt.

  "Oh, now you want to recognize me again— Fires of Abaddon, what did you do to him?"

  "I want you to carry Rene upstairs and out to his taxi."

  "Pardon me, you evidently have me confused with a pack mule. I'm a demon, not a form of transportation."

  "You're a huge dog who can probably bench-press me and Rene put together, but don't worry, I'll be helping you. Lord, he's heavy."

  With Jim's dubious assistance, I managed to drag Rene so he was partially draped over Jim's back.

  "Ow! My back!"

  "Shush," I said, running over to Drake, sliding two fingers along his jaw to find his pulse. It seemed a bit sluggish, but nothing too serious. There was no blood, which gave me hope he was just stunned. I turned him so he was on his back, pulling a cushion off a chair in the corner and tucking it under his head before turning back to Rene. The aquamanile I stuffed in my purse, slinging the strap over my head so it crossed my chest. I picked up Rene's legs. "Come on, let's go."

  Jim groaned, but it staggered forward. I halted us once we got out of the lair, spending a few precious seconds to snap the padlock onto the door. I had a feeling it wouldn't stop Drake, but the lock might slow him down long enough to let us escape.

  In the end, I didn't have to worry about leaving the house. Drake, secure in his ability to control me by him­self, had evidently sent his minions elsewhere, because we didn't see a single person as we dragged Rene's body up the stairs, and we made a lot of noise.