The traitor, p.9
The Traitor, page 9
The laughing implication rankled. “None of your business.”
“I mean, rumor has it you tried to mate them all yourself and failed each time.”
He was well aware of the fucking rumors.
Trying to turn a mate who wasn’t your fated resulted in two horrible consequences—her death, which was unthinkable, but also the loss of a part of the male’s soul. The instinct to find a mate could override a sense of morality for some dragons.
“The mates are fine,” he muttered, his voice starting to turn to more of a growl.
His own teammates may not have hunted him down the way they should have…but he’d bet they’d wondered. They’d definitely blamed him and his group of dissenters and rogues for the almost twofold increase in dragon-caused fires. They hadn’t started them, but they’d been involved, not that he expected anyone to give him the benefit of the doubt about it. He tried not to blame the team too much, when he was feeling generous.
Her feet hit the deck with a thump as she sat forward. “So you did take mates?”
Well…he’d fallen right into that one, like a rookie on his first day. “Yes.”
“And you didn’t try any funny business with them?” He whipped his head around, intending to snap at her about his innocence only to discover no judgement in her green-eyed gaze. Curiosity, yes. Assumptions, no. Blame, also no.
Why? She didn’t know him. Not really. And why was he indulging this? “No.”
“I didn’t figure you for that type, anyway.”
Rune stilled, arrested by those words. No one had granted him that kind of faith in a long, long time. Not even the mates he’d protected. Not entirely.
She couldn’t be that naive for real.
Hadyn leaned back in her chair again, feet back up. “I don’t make judgements until I see or hear for myself. So far, you’ve saved my life at greater risk to your own and promised to help me. Someone who does that…” She shook her head. “That’s not the kind of person who kidnaps women and risks their lives due to base instinct.”
“You’re one of the few who see it that way,” he muttered.
She huffed a bitter-sounding laugh. “I’m not exactly normal myself, am I?”
At his glance, she dropped her gaze, plucking at a stray thread on the hoodie he’d provided. Her thick jacket, while probably warmer, would’ve looked odd where they were headed. Oversized and rolled up in a ton of different places, it made her appear like a drowning waif. Oliver with a cup out asking for more.
“So why did you take them?” she pressed.
Rune checked his watch, checked the sky, then turned the wheel to put them in a gradual turn, heading north. When he straightened the boat out, he still had no intention of answering her.
“I discovered that the Mating Council wasn’t properly matching mates with their fated counterparts.” The words were out before he consciously decided to speak.
He kept to himself how finding that out had given rise to other questions. He’d heard tales of how millennia before dragons had had a more innate sense of who their mate was. Maybe implementing the council changed them. Made them question whether they’d truly found their mate or not.
“How did you learn that?” Hadyn asked.
She didn’t ask if he was sure, or say he must have been mistaken, or demand proof. All things his team had thrown at him when he’d tried to convince them. That had been before he’d gone rogue.
A rope of tension that he’d been carrying for years eased from his shoulders, a different kind of tension entirely slipping in to replace it. “I was the one to escort all dragon mates found in our team’s territory to the Alliance, who then transported them to the Mating Council in France. For years, I checked up on the women we’d found, learning who they’d mated or if they hadn’t yet.”
Not that there had been all that many, and he’d possibly been the only one who had mourned the few who had been lost to the wrong dragon’s fire.
“It wasn’t until technological advances increased the speed and frequency of communication that I started to see a pattern that didn’t look good,” he continued. “Fewer answers came my way.”
“Because they died?”
He tightened his grip on the wheel. “I wasn’t sure. At first, I put it down to new men assigned to the Council, but eventually I was told point blank that mates were none of my business and to stick to enforcing.”
“That doesn’t sound promising,” she murmured.
“Exactly. Thanks to our long lives, dragons tend to see slower change in our leadership and laws. Believe me, I’ve been enforcing them for centuries. Humans move faster. Kingdoms and realms rise and fall. My observation of them over the centuries was that when leaders started withholding information was usually the most crucial time to start questioning those leaders. More often than not, a society that goes down that hole eventually implodes.”
Hadyn nodded, following his train of thought.
“So I sent one of the mates I escorted with a small cell phone, a fairly new technology at the time. Something she could hide on her person easily, but still use to contact me.”
Hadyn slowly lowered her feet to the ground again, no longer casually interested. “What happened?”
“She made it to France, but when she met the men who the Council assured her their Seer had determined were the most likely matches, though they were the right color, none had the symbol that would show on the back of her neck. I’d taken a picture of it and made her memorize it.”
He glanced her way, finding her watching him intently, expression grim. “I can see you realize what that means.”
“My parents told me how it works,” she said.
“How we assumed it worked,” he corrected without thinking about it.
She frowned at that. “You mean she mated successfully?”
That was the worst part. “I don’t know. I told her not to choose any of them unless she felt it was right. To wait for a man with her symbol. After that communications cut off. When I called to check, I was told she’d mated successfully, though not to who or even which clan.”
“You think they lied?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Call it gut instinct. Proof would be almost impossible to find either way, but especially if they lied.”
“You didn’t leave it at that,” she insisted.
That kind of faith in him could become addictive. His dragon stirred inside him, so did need, turning his veins thick.
Because she was right, and he hadn’t left it alone. As subtly as he could, Rune had put feelers out using contacts in the other clans that he’d developed during his time as one of his king’s guards. He didn’t tell them his suspicions or why he was asking. “I started gathering information on mates who had been found in the clans and other regions in the colonies and what happened to them.”
Hadyn sat quietly, waiting.
“From what I could piece together, mates used to successfully be turned at a higher rate—say only one in twenty didn’t survive. That had dropped to what I estimated as closer to a fifty-fifty shot of making it or not.”
“Holy hells.” Hadyn shook her head as though trying to get that information to lodge in her brain properly. “You’re sure?”
“No way to be sure, but I shared this with my teammates. My alpha did a check through the proper channels and was given proof of survival for most of the mates I’d confirmed had died.”
Hadyn’s slow frown, brows pulling low, mirrored his own reaction at the time.
He continued before she could ask. “I accepted it at first but kept looking into it in secret as much as was possible.”
“Until you had proof, right?”
He shook his head. “I never found definitive proof.”
Her mouth dropped open slightly. “You went rogue on a hunch?”
The sudden urge to shuffle his feet only made him sit more still.
She wasn’t done. “Then you took all those mates to keep them safe.”
Not a question, but a statement. The tone in her voice—a quiet respect—had him scowling, mostly as he tried to control his own body’s response which was an instant, driving urge to claim all that trust with kisses that would lead to a hell of a lot more. “I’m no saint.”
Hadyn snorted. “Who said you were, hot shot?”
“I’m no hot shot either,” he insisted darkly.
She barked a laugh at that. “Have you looked in the mirror?”
She found him attractive?
That piece of information hit him with all the subtlety of a wrecking ball to the face. What would she do if he stopped this boat and took the opportunity to lose himself in her body, see what noises she made when she came, bleed off the tension of the last few days?
“Don’t worry,” she teased, laughter lining the words. “I won’t jump you or anything. You’re not my type.”
An odd sort of calm settled over Rune, and a sense of knowing quieted his mind. When that happened—almost like a tic—he knew the words coming at him were lies. Which meant he was her type, but she didn’t want to admit it. Maybe even to herself. Dark satisfaction surged into that quiet of knowing.
Because he wanted this woman.
In a primitive, need to go up in flames together, kind of way. Not forever, just fucking.
“But you do find me attractive,” he said in a slow, deliberate cadence.
“I guess most women find tall, dark, and ripped hideous,” she said almost conversationally. “I’m an odd duck that way.”
Her bright sarcasm only made him want this more. “So if I offered fucking—a no strings, make you come until you see stars situation—what would you say?”
He backed the throttle off, letting the boat coast to a stop on its own. No worries about them hitting anything out here. Then he turned to face her, letting her see the flames in his eyes at the mere thought of her saying yes.
She stared back, lips parted slightly, cheeks flushed, and damned if her reaction didn’t send more need pulsing through him. She squeaked a sound that might have been an attempt at a word, and he grinned.
“You did not just say that.” She’d probably meant it to come out firm, but mostly she’d sounded irritated with herself for being interested.
“I want you,” he stated categorically. No hesitation. No embellishment. No equivocation. She didn’t mind hammers? Well…that suited him fine.
Her body told him she was interested, color surging into her cheeks and the sweet scent of lust drifting to him in the air. He wouldn’t force anything. This had to be her choice.
“You don’t even know me,” she said.
Such a female point of view. “I know enough to enjoy myself with you. Like I said… fucking only.”
After all, that was all that was available to them.
Hadyn swallowed. “We’re running from dragons,” she pointed out with a glance upward.
“We’re safer here than just about anywhere else.”
Her eyes shot wide. “Here. You want to throw down and…” She waved an ineffectual hand in the air.
“Fuck,” he supplied.
She swallowed, pupils dilating. She liked that word. “You want to do this right here?”
“Fuck?” he asked, and smiled with utter, primitive satisfaction at the way she shivered. She definitely liked that word. “Yes.”
He didn’t remove his gaze from her, hiding nothing of the desire building inside him, no longer holding it back. Gods let her say yes, because a hard, uncompromising need had come on him fast. Merciless. Only one thing would assuage what his body was screaming for. Only Hadyn.
He ignored the possessiveness that wanted to curl around her name in his mind. This wasn’t about possessing or connecting. Just…chemistry.
“You said you don’t do this to the mates you encounter,” she said slowly.
Not an accusation, but almost like a little girl saying he wouldn’t hurt her because she trusted him. Her mind was fighting this even as her body was screaming at her, hopefully in the same fever pitch as his.
“Only the ones who don’t have a mate out there waiting for them.” Which had only ever been her.
He tried to couch the words gently. Though, to be honest, the last thing he wanted her thinking about right now was her dead mate. However, he also didn’t want her thinking he went around casually screwing all these women. He hadn’t touched a single one who belonged to another man.
But Hadyn…
“I promise,” he said. “No fire. No claiming. Just…pleasure.”
…
Hadyn exhaled in a harsh burst.
No fire, he’d said. She knew what that meant. Her adoptive parents had warned her constantly. No sex with dragons because they’d only want her for one thing—to try to claim her. Any fire during sex, and she’d burn up in it.
Except what Rune was offering wasn’t that. What’s more…she trusted him to keep his word.
That probably made her an idiot. A lust-driven fuzzy-brained idiot whose body had perked up the second she’d laid eyes on him. Hard not to with a face like that. She’d always had a thing for the chiseled broody types.
So what’s the problem?
Part of her was screaming at her to take him up on his offer, hop right into his lap and get things started. She’d had a few human lovers through the years. Nothing all that spectacular. Her vibrator did a better job more often than not. But a chance to see what it could be like with a dragon? With what she was supposed to have become. Especially one who already pushed her “hell yes” buttons…
“I can’t believe I’m considering this,” she whispered to herself.
Wrong thing to say. Or maybe the exact right thing, because Rune surged out of his chair, crowding her. He leaned over, placing his hands on the console behind her, caging her in, but not touching.
This close, she could see the sparks of silver in his eyes, and the dangerous scent of smoke and man wound around her, drawing her in.
Eye to eye, he smiled slowly. “I will only touch you if you want me to.”
Criminy. An honorable man was her kind of catnip. Always had been.
“I want you to touch me,” she whispered.
He didn’t move, searching her gaze for a long, heart-stopping beat. “Be sure, love. Right here. Right now. Mutual pleasure. That’s it.”
Her lady parts swelled with each word out of those surprisingly beautiful lips, her clit giving a little jolting throb.
Hadyn held his gaze, not blinking or looking away, even as an all-body blush of heat rushed over her, up her neck, and flooded her face. “I want you to fuck me,” she said in no uncertain terms.
She’d hardly got those heady, dirty words out and his mouth was on hers.
He didn’t touch her in any other way. Just that mouth against hers, powerful, demanding…and soft.
“I’m human, not glass,” she husked against his lips.
Rune’s smile snagged her breath. “I like to take my time,” he said.
Oh, my.
Hadyn gave herself up to his kisses. Drugging kisses that spun a web of hazy desire around her, possessing her mind and building a need inside her, softly at first. After the kind of months she’d had, to simply give herself over to him, to give him full control and let herself fall into him, was a sinfully tempting luxury.
He coaxed and sipped with his lips, taking his time, holding back until a small whimper escaped her, a need for more, her body almost humming with anticipation. Then, and only then, did his tongue come into play, slipping into her mouth, dipping and licking, tangling against her own.
Gods above, the man could kiss.
She’d been thoroughly ravished by his mouth alone. His hands still braced on the console behind her. Every touch perfect, and yet not enough, leaving her both breathless with anticipation and oddly empty.
“More,” she begged against him, pressing toward him, trying to reach more of him. “Touch me.”
“Hell…” He pulled back, dropping his head to hang between his raised arms, chest heaving.
Was he stopping? Her throat tightened.
Before that thought could fester, he lifted his head, pinning her with eyes of pure fire. “If I touch you, I’m not sure I can stop.”
He was holding back to give her time to be sure?
Hadyn curled a fist in his shirt and used it to pull him closer. “Who asked you to stop?” she demanded.
With that she took control with kisses of her own. She plundered and possessed, loving the low growls coming from his throat.
He didn’t give her long in control. With a grunt that almost sounded like pain, Rune swept her up in his arms and somehow got them to the back of the boat. Only he didn’t lay her down on the wide, cushioned seating that most likely doubled as storage.
Instead, he stood her up and took a step back. When she reached for him, he gently tugged her hands away. “I need to see you.”
His voice was all dragon now, and damned if she didn’t see scales ripple across his forearms for a brief second, his animal side gloriously close to the surface.
I did that to him.
Sent him careening out of control like that. This man who, five minutes in his company and she knew that control was almost all he had.
So she stilled and waited, her hands at her side.
Rune reached out, unzipped her hoodie and, with a flick of his fingers, popped open the button of her shirt, then another, and another, his gaze intent on each new centimeter of skin he exposed, satisfaction drawing the skin tight across his sharp cheekbones and need hardening his jaw.
Standing there, being slowly exposed, felt incredibly powerful. Like she was Selene, the goddess of the moon, with sway over the mighty oceans.
