Dragons do it dirtier, p.12
Dragons Do It Dirtier, page 12
Finally, I hadn’t gotten my explanation. The one that included angry rat hordes, guilds, dragon friends who “fried” rats, and a reason that anyone would be after me. Or after Bain, for that matter. He was a respected distiller in the Austin area, for goodness’ sake.
And dammit, I was leaking.
It had been so long since I’d had condomless sex with an actual human being that I’d forgotten about that little fact.
Not that I’d change a thing about what had happened between Bain and me earlier, but I had to deal with this situation and there was a large, muscular arm trapping me against an equally large, muscular man.
I tried to pry his arm loose. He growled, a deep, rumbling noise that started in his chest and moved through his body. His arm clamped more tightly around me.
Wild guess, Bain was still out, and he didn’t like having his beauty sleep disturbed. I couldn’t tell for sure, because I was the little spoon to his big spoon and I was also tucked so tightly against him that I couldn’t turn to see his face.
“Bain?”
He shoved his nose in my hair and inhaled deeply, then he let out a sleepy sound of contentment.
Was he seriously completely passed out right now? Because we were supposedly in the middle of a crisis and his poor friend was out there flying around like a… Ugh. Like a dragon who was giving his friend time to get laid, I guess.
Obviously, Bain was asleep.
But leakage, so he’d have to deal.
“Bain!”
He jerked, pulling me even closer.
“Let go, big guy, or I won’t be able to breathe.”
His arm immediately loosened, and I wiggled free.
“Where are you going?”
Why was he so adorable when he was sleepy? I just looked like I’d had a near miss with a bus and maybe been visited by the bad-hair fairy.
“Bathroom.” And I don’t know what possessed me to explain, but I said, “I have some leakage going on down there.”
I blushed as soon as I realized what I’d said, but Bain got that fierce intent look of his, then yanked the covers down.
“What the heck?”
His hand was between my thighs, and he had an intensely satisfied look on his face as he smeared his come along my inner thigh.
“Are you actually turned on by your come leaking out of my coochie?” I asked him.
He looked at me like I was the one who’d lost my mind.
“Seriously?” I asked again.
His eyes glinted. “Fuck, yes.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Except, him being turned on by it kind of made me turned on by it…
“We cannot have sex.” I clenched my thighs together, trapping his hand briefly until he withdrew it.
If I’d thought he looked adorable when he was all sleepy-eyed and groggy, his sad puppy eyes were even worse. Completely adorable.
I frowned at him. “You owe me an explanation. After I get back from the bathroom.”
He rolled out of bed and was on his feet with more grace than any person should demonstrate within minutes of waking.
He offered his hand, which I took, because I wasn’t a tenth that graceful.
I opened my mouth to thank him, but the words died. Something was wrong.
He was rocking his signature fierce-and-intense look, but there was an undercurrent I almost didn’t recognize. It took a second, but I realized as I turned in the direction of the bathroom that it was panic.
I returned a few minutes later to find him dressed and in the kitchen, so I pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and joined him.
“Tea?” he asked, offering me a steaming mug of chamomile tea.
“Tell me.”
Whatever he wasn’t saying, it was bad.
Obviously.
He set down the cup of tea on the kitchen counter—how had he had time to heat water?—and said, “All right.”
But he didn’t say anything.
So I waited.
He owed me an explanation, and I was certain he’d deliver.
I eyed the chamomile tea. “Do you have any whiskey?”
He nodded but didn’t move. “I’m a dragon.”
Lord above, save me from my bad judgment. First, it was pencil dick with his cheating ways, and now a delicious, walking, talking sex god who thinks he’s a mythical creature.
“I don’t think prayer is helpful,” he paused. “Unless it makes you feel better.”
I wasn’t even going to worry about the fact that I’d just said all that out loud. About my ex and his pencil dick and his cheating. About Bain being a sex god. Not worrying about that, because I had other concerns.
I blinked, but Bain was still Bain. Of the gym-commercial-worthy muscles and the beautiful green eyes and…human.
“But you’re…” I looked at his muscled chest. His human chest. “And we…” My gaze drifted lower.
We’d been as intimate as two people could be physically. I’d have noticed if he wasn’t human. Wouldn’t I?
But then, I had, hadn’t I?
“The glowing eyes.”
He nodded. “Most humans can’t see that, so I’ve never bothered to mask it. It only happens when I’m…”
“Agitated?” I supplied. It seemed a more manly word than emotional. Although I didn’t think Bain’s ego so fragile that being called emotional would upset him, it still seemed a more fitting description.
He nodded again. His intent gaze followed me as I walked into his kitchen, brushing past him.
I opened a few cabinets until I found the glasses, but a few more tries didn’t reveal the whiskey I was hunting.
Speaking of whiskey… “What about the smoke and cinnamon? Is that a dragon thing?”
His eyes narrowed.
“You smell like smoke and cinnamon and—” And sin and sex and desire and all my fantasies wrapped up in a glorious package of delicious man.
He frowned. “I don’t smell like smoke or cinnamon.”
“You do.” And he knew it. I’d mentioned it before.
I knew what I knew. My man smelled like the kind of smoke that scented the air on a brisk fall day in the north. And cinnamon wasn’t exactly a difficult scent to place. The rest of his scent, the way he smelled like sex and the best kind of sin, that was a little harder to label.
Rather than bicker, he conceded, “All right, I do—but only to you.”
Sort of conceded. How could he smell a certain way only to me? I shook my head, because that just didn’t make sense.
“What you’re smelling isn’t me. Not exactly.”
Maybe I knew where he was going with this. “Okay, fine. It’s not you; it’s your whiskey. But that still doesn’t explain why you smell like the whiskey you distill.”
“I don’t. No one else smells or tastes cinnamon when they drink McBain’s. And if they catch a hint of smoke, it’s not the same as what you’re experiencing. That unique combination of scents is one of the ways you recognize my magic.”
I blinked. But his expression didn’t change. He wasn’t kidding. He was apparently a dragon with aromatic magic.
Magic that was all over him, making him smell like the best sort of dessert. And that magic was in his whiskey. Hell, I’d had Bain’s cock in my mouth, and even his precum tasted of smoke and cinnamon. An absurd desire to laugh hit me. Bain had a magic dick.
Once I’d tamped down the hysteria that had bubbled temporarily, I muttered, “Right.”
By which, I meant: no way in hell, and should we get you committed to a facility now or after dinner?
But what the hell? It’s not like I didn’t believe in dragons. Not after I’d seen and heard Dex.
“Why do you think my eyes glow?”
Without hesitating, I replied, “Demon possession.”
His eyes widened for just a split second. I’d surprised him. “I’m not a demon. You have my word. They aren’t the nicest of creatures.”
I closed my eyes and slowly let out a breath. When I opened my eyes, I demanded to know where the damn whiskey was.
This time he didn’t hesitate. He fetched a bottle from his pantry and poured me a glass. Not much. We both knew what a lightweight I was, and getting drunk wasn’t the point.
You didn’t tell a good Southern Christian woman that demons walked among us and expect her not to lose her shit. I might not be a Bible-thumper, or even a regular churchgoer, but…demons?
I inhaled the scent of the whiskey, and—dammit—it smelled like Bain. Or his magic, I guess. No wonder the stuff was so good. He’d voodoo magicked it.
I hadn’t truly believed that Bain was demon possessed. It was a kind of coping mechanism. Pick the most absurd explanation possible, because it could never be true. Then when you find out the real reason, it seemed less terrible in comparison.
My coping mechanism might have failed me, because it turned out that Bain’s eyes glowed because he was a dragon.
Oh, and by the way, demons? Definitely real, and definitely hanging out on earth, mingling with the rest of us nondemon folk.
I sipped a small quantity of whiskey and held it in my mouth. I let both the flavor of the alcohol (influenced by Bain’s voodoo magic) and the burn of it flood my taste buds before swallowing.
Cradling the glass in my hand like it was my own boozy security blanket, I looked at my dragon-man lover. He looked so human.
When my eyes met his, all I could think was, Well, hell. As if all of that dragon and demon crap wasn’t enough, there was more bad news. I could see it all over his face.
He looked just like my dad had before he’d told me and Thom that Gran couldn’t live at home any more.
What was bad enough that he looked like a man about to break it to his kids that their grandmother had to move into a hospice facility?
“Go on, then. What else have you got?” I asked.
There was a knock on the door, and I knew from the look of relief on Bain’s face that I was right. More bad news was coming.
“Come in,” Bain called.
The man I’d met at Derek’s bar the night I’d had too much to drink, the one with the nice laugh and the beard, walked through the door.
“I’ve got news from the rats.”
I took another drink of whiskey. Because that voice belonged to Dex the dragon. And also Dex the man I’d met at the bar.
As the warmth of the liquor slid down my throat, I realized that the dragon-man was talking about rats. Probably rat-men.
Sal. Sal Green was no mole. The man was a rat. An actual rat, of the four legs, fur, and a tail variety.
How had I forgotten about Sal? Standing in a room with two men who looked like men but were actually dragons, it was pretty clear that this horde of rats that kept coming up was an actual horde of rats.
I leaned against the counter as Dex explained how Archer—also a freaking dragon—had left Dex to handle patrol duty and gone into town to do a little digging, since it was clear that Bain and I would be otherwise occupied for some time. I didn’t blush—much.
It hadn’t taken long for him to connect with the relevant horde. (It seemed there were several hordes in Austin. As if that wasn’t a disturbing thought. More whiskey was required.)
This particular horde wasn’t shy about their contempt for the local dragon scourge.
“Scourge?” I interrupted. How could I not. The guy I’d been sleeping with was considered to be a scourge by the locals.
“It’s an old-fashioned term,” Bain replied. “One that has never been accurate.”
“We don’t organize as a group,” Dex explained. “Consider us independent contractors, unlike the rats, who follow a leader.”
Considering what I’d seen of Dex as his dragon self, I could understand that. He’d looked like a top-of-the-food-chain, I’m-taking-care-of-my-own-business sort of flying lizard.
I nodded my understanding, lifted my glass in a toast, and Dex continued to explain how Sal’s horde had it out for the local dragons because one of them had stolen their leader’s woman and hidden her away.
“Wait, what?” Because I was pretty sure the woman Bain had “stolen away” was me. “Sal is claiming that I’m his? Like he owns me?”
I should have broken that man’s twig and squished his berries when I’d had the chance.
Also, I was at the center of this mess. More so than I’d realized.
A knock preceded the entry of a man I’d never met. Tall, dark hair, and not as brick-house large as Bain or Dex, but still a big guy. Maybe dragons just ran on the large size?
I had to swallow a giggle at that thought, for so many reasons.
The newcomer nodded in my direction but didn’t make eye contact.
Bain’s eyes narrowed with concern. “Archer.”
“Your woman’s safe. No patrol necessary for the moment.”
I wasn’t anyone’s woman. These guys needed a twenty-first-century reality check. Oh, lord. Exactly how old were they? More importantly, how old was Bain?
“I was getting to that part,” Dex added. “The rats are demanding a reckoning.”
Bain choked out a humorless bark of a laugh. “You’re kidding. We’d annihilate them.”
There was maybe a half second delay between his words and my understanding that Bain was talking about murder. “You can’t kill them!”
“You do realize, sweetness, that they’d kill us.”
“If they could,” Dex muttered.
“Which won’t happen,” Archer said in a dry tone, “because it won’t come to that. They’re demanding a reckoning, and the premise of their demand is faulty. We only have to prove that, and this is all over.”
“No.” Bain’s grim denial seemed to take both men by surprise.
“But—”
Bain turned a glowy-eyed glare on Archer.
I set down the empty whiskey glass I’d been clutching in my hand and turned my back to Bain. I gave Dex and Archer my full attention, and after close examination, decided that Archer was my best bet.
I smiled at him, ignoring the growl coming from Bain’s general direction. “So, Archer, you talked to these rat people.”
He looked amused and not at all concerned about the threatening noises coming from his friend. “Rat shifters.”
Huh, well that explained a lot. Sometimes rats, sometimes people. Like Bain, Dex, and Archer were sometimes people and sometimes dragons, making them dragon shifters.
“So you spoke to these rat shifters, and you told them that they were out of their minds, right?” When he raised his eyebrows, I elaborated. “You told them that I wasn’t Sal Green’s property.”
At this point, he made the mistake of glancing in Bain’s direction.
I got out my angry finger and pointed. “You’re talking to me, mister, not him. You told them they were wrong?”
He considered his words before replying. “Yes.”
That was all he had? Yes?
“Would you care to elaborate?”
“No.” Blunt, but at least he didn’t look to Bain for support this time.
“This reckoning?” He nodded when I looked to him for confirmation, so I continued, “This reckoning is about getting all the facts out in the open.”
He considered my statement and eventually said, “Basically.”
I pointed my angry finger at him and glared. “Explain.”
“There tends to be more fighting and less talking.” He tipped his head, examining me in much the way I had him earlier. “Fighting is complicated, because—” Bain’s growl erupted once more, but Archer simply spoke over him. “Because we can easily defeat them, but that would cause problems for us. Bain, shut it, man. You know it would. I like Austin. I don’t want to have to relocate because the city’s monster hunters have a hate-on for me.”
“This is why those bastards feel like they can hassle us,” Dex said. “Because they think our hands are tied.”
“Yes,” Archer agreed. “But they legitimately believe that their leader’s…” He paused and inclined his head in my direction. “They believe that you’re his girlfriend, Taylor.”
I snorted, because really? “That’s easy. I just go with you to this reckoning thing and explain that I’m not now, nor was I ever, dating Sal.”
All three men looked extremely uncomfortable with this obvious solution.
“I’ll go and explain,” Bain said.
But I wasn’t remotely convinced that he’d “explain.” Bain was pissed. Seriously angry. And if dragons breathed fire, I’d be worried he’d truly roast them all, unlike whatever it was that Dex did to the rats he’d encountered earlier.
“What you mean is that you’ll go and knock some heads together.”
“In his defense,” Dex said, “he’d only do that after attempting to explain.” His comment was delivered in a somewhat upbeat, possibly even cheery, tone.
“Exactly,” Bain said.
I ignored him. Bain still wasn’t telling me everything. Also, he seemed to be the least reasonable of the three men in the room.
I asked Dex, “Why aren’t you as worried as Archer about getting hounded out of the city by these…what did you call them? Monster hunters?”
Dex grinned. “The Van Helsings. I haven’t had a good fight in over a century. Might be fun to tangle with one of those crazy ladies.”
I distinctly remembered him threatening Bain. Something about not wanting to tangle with the Van Helsings.
“Wait—a century?” I hollered.
Dex shot Bain an apologetic look, then looked at me and shrugged.
I couldn’t even try to wrap my head around that right now. Too many other more pressing concerns, like this reckoning nonsense. “Can’t we just call up this rat horde group and explain?”
“That’s not how it’s done.” Bain said this as if “the way it’s done” was written in stone, never to be changed, even in the face of common sense.
“They’re face to face,” Archer said.
“Always,” Dex added.
Not much wiggle room there.
“Okay, then I’m going with you.” It was the logical solution.
If all this fuss was over a misunderstanding created by Sal’s lies, and all of those lies centered around me, then all I had to do was show up and call “bullshit.”
Bain looked appalled. “No.”
