Desired by the Dragon Page 11

  He tried and failed to imagine Cynthia playing Rack-O like a kid. She would have been baffled at the idea of playing anything as antiquated as that innocent family entertainment. And maybe that had been their problem from the start.

  Cynthia had taken the surface gloss of the Drakes as their essence. When the reality was that they were warriors who liked to come home and stretch out at their own firesides and dangle the kids on their knees. After all, what was the use of battle if you didn’t have family to defend?

  Moira had beaten him at his own game. She had repeatedly distracted him and slipped ahead of him to win. He had known she was smart. It was a relief to know that she was not quite as defenseless as she looked. A dragoness ought to be fierce and warlike too. Now where had that foolish desire come from? He knew full well that he could only transform a virgin. And that a fairy would never consider marriage to a dragon.

  But if that scorching good-night kiss at her bedroom door was any indication, Moira was going to share his bed this summer. Whatever else might happen, he was certain that she desired him. He would just have to work on convincing her that he had lost all interest in his former fiancée.

  But as he drifted to sleep to the rumble of thunder, he wondered if it was possible for one of the island’s sorcerers could work a little magic on Moira. To turn her not into a frog, but a dragon. And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

  The sun was shining on a still, calm ocean as blue as the cloudless sky. The temperature was rising even though the day had scarcely begun. He detected the sound of fairy feet pattering around in her room. They would have to go into town if they wanted more than coffee. Time to face the good folks of Mystic Bay. He got up and began to dress.

  Moira met him in the hall. She had changed her clothes again and was wearing high heels and a dress that made his mouth water. Her hair was piled into a knot at the top of her head and her makeup was perfect. Obviously, fairies traveled with an overnight kit better than anything he had found in the closet of his room.

  “Should I strip the bed?” she asked.

  “Leave it for the staff. I’ll call this morning and tell Sandy and Bud we used the house yesterday.”

  She groaned. “They’ll talk.”

  “Never have yet. But I expect that your absence from Rosewood Cottage was noted. Probably we were spotted on the water too. I thought we should go into the Bean and let folks have their say.”

  A delicate shudder rippled through her body.

  “Not if you don’t want to.” She didn’t want their names linked. He concealed his despair. His hurt.

  “It will be best if we brazen it out. But Mystic Bay is probably not ready for me to have an affair.”

  “Especially not with a hunter.” He waited for her response, but she merely floated down the stairs.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Moira~

  As soon as they pushed the door to the Bean open, every voice halted mid-word, every eye focused on her and Quinn. She held her head high and walked up to the counter. As usual, the tables were full. As usual, Lloyd was behind the counter contemplating the universe. Their arrival roused him. He and Quinn exchanged stares. After a couple of seconds, to her utter surprise, Lloyd grinned.

  Martha came out of the back and greeted them. “Good morning, Moira. Quinn. That was quite some storm last night.”

  “It was,” Moira said making sure her voice was clear enough to be heard everywhere in the silent shop. “I got stuck out at Quinn’s place overnight.”

  “Willow Cottage has only the one bedroom,” Martha remarked.

  “That’s correct,” Moira said. No need to say that they weren’t there. “But there is a couch in the living room.” That provoked a collective gasp from the audience. Presumably they were either disappointed or disbelieving.

  “Heard you lost power out there in the colony, Quinn.” Martha finally included him in the conversation. If this was a conversation and not an interrogation.

  “Hmm,” Quinn returned noncommittally. “Wires are still down all over the place.”

  On the way into town, they had seen crews out cutting up fallen branches and dealing with downed power lines. “I see you have power here,” Moira said.

  “Didn’t go out in town,” Martha said flatly. “And here at the Bean, we’ve got generators to keep things humming when it does. What’ll you have this morning?”

  “Two coffees and two slices of brioche,” Quinn said. “Please.”

  “We’re out of brioche,” Lloyd cut in sharply. “You want a biscuit? We’ve got three kinds today.”

  “That’ll do,” Moira said. She looked around. “Two blueberry, please. To go – seeing as there are no tables, we’ll use my back room.”

  As she had expected, her threat to remove them from the Bean provoked a small flurry. Two people got up, returned their mugs, and drifted out the door. Moira smiled. “I guess we’ll stay after all.” She sat down unhurriedly at the vacated table and nodded cheerfully to the people surrounding them.

  “Sit down,” Martha said grudgingly to Quinn. “I’ll bring your order to you.”

  As soon as he pulled out a chair, the questions began.

  “I hear you’re some kind of shirttail relation to those Drakes,” someone said. It wasn’t a statement.

  “Hmm.” Quinn said.

  “Where did you say you were from?”

  “I don’t guess you know our ways, being from Seattle and all?”

  “How long have you known Moira? She’s a local girl, you know?”

  It was not a very relaxing meal. But at least they got through it without a major confrontation. As soon as they had finished, Moira stood up. She and Quinn thanked Lloyd and Martha. Lloyd narrowed his eyes at Quinn, but mostly he still looked thoroughly tickled.

  “Do you want to tell me the joke?” she hissed as they walked to her store.

  “What joke?” he asked.

  “The one you and Lloyd Furlong were sharing.” She unlocked the door. Everything looked exactly as it had when she shut up shop the day before. Somehow that seemed a very long time ago. There ought to be a layer of dust on everything.

  Quinn shook his head and closed and locked the door behind them. Left the blind down. “Furlong probably sensed that I didn’t get lucky last night.”

  “Get lucky?” Her voice rose to a screech. “Get lucky?”

  “For Pete’s sake, Moira, the whole town thinks we spent the evening screwing our brains out. When the truth is we didn’t do anything carnal.”

  “You didn’t think that kiss was carnal?” She had had his tongue halfway down her throat. And returned the favor.

  “That kiss knocked my socks off. As you very well know. But we didn’t share a bed last night – no matter what Mystic Bay believes.”

  “Is that all you’re interested in?” she demanded. Anger seemed to have sprung fully formed in her. She felt incandescent with wrath.

  Quinn leaned back against the counter and gripped it with his huge hands. To her fury, he appeared relaxed and amused. “First time under fire?” he inquired.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” she yelped.

  “We’re fighting because of what happened at the Bean,” he explained calmly. “I agree it was stressful. And embarrassing. But those people and their opinions have nothing to do with us. Do they?”

  “I live here,” she reminded him. “And when you’ve gone back to Seattle, I’ll still have to see them every single day.” And endure their pity.

  “I’m not planning to go back to the city,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Quinn~

  His answer had not calmed the fairy princess down. Not in the least. It was sort of funny to see her hopping mad. But he figured it was also his duty to help her settle down after their cross-examination. “Would it bother you if I returned to the city?”

  She froze.

  “Because I intend to make painting my career – always supposing I can sell my stuf
f. If I’m not good enough, however,” he shrugged and didn’t finish.

  “You’re good enough.” Her voice was certain. “You were good when you got here, and you’re only getting better. Your stuff will sell too. It’s accessible.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That people will be drawn to your paintings without necessarily knowing why. They will pay for the privilege of hanging a Quinn on their living room walls. And they will buy another because they will enjoy looking at them every day.”

  “You saw that in your crystal ball?”

  “The Fae do not use crystal balls.” His fairy was tart. “It’s part of my talent, however, to see the value of art. Believe me, you are going to wow the judges at the Art Fair.”

  “In that case,” he said. “I will be staying on West Haven. In your bed – if you’ll let me.”

  “In my bed – you mean at my cottage?” Her eyes narrowed fiercely.

  “Probably not. You don’t have a studio. But in your bed, or mine, yes. This thing between us is not going to go anywhere any time soon.”

  “What thing?”

  He pushed off of the countertop and swooped down on her. Lifted her to his mouth and kissed her. Just the barest brushing of lips to lips. As soon as they made contact, the low-level arousal that he always felt flared hotly. His cock sprang to life. He held her away from his woody and let her enjoy a morning kiss.

  She tasted of coffee and biscuits and fairy. Kissing Moira was like kissing Aphrodite, if Aphrodite tasted of roses and woman and spring mornings. Her shop was no place for full-blown passion. He didn’t want to embarrass either one of them by starting something they couldn’t finish.

  When he raised his head, her lips were swollen and rosy from his kisses. Her lipstick was gone. Her eyes were back to being blue and her bosom was heaving. For that matter so was his. He felt as if he had been flying in that storm they had had last night.

  “Are we going to have a romance?” He set her down on her heels and held her elbows until she stopped wobbling. “Because it seems destined to me.”

  “What did you have in mind?” she asked suspiciously.

  “That’s up to you. I obviously want sex. But I can wait.”

  “For how long?”

  As far as he was concerned, forever. He smiled at her. “As long as the passion lasts.”

  “A summer fling?” Her voice was scornful.

  “If that’s all you want. I don’t see this as a short-term relationship. But we could start there and see.”

  Her eyes went cloudy again. They narrowed. “Everyone knows dragons are obsessed with virgins, is that why you’re interested in me?”

  His mouth dried. “Is that a roundabout way of telling me that you are a virgin?”

  She nodded.

  He couldn’t believe his luck. His bad luck. The world’s most fascinating and sexy woman was a virgin. No wonder she felt like his mate. But fairies didn’t marry hunters. Not on West Haven they didn’t. He wanted to howl at the moon – like the most stereotypical shifter. Moira appeared only politely curious. A dainty temptation to his senses and his instincts. Didn’t she understand her danger?

  His voice was a growl when he spoke. “We’re not obsessed with virgins. We’re forced to be concerned about the virginity of our mates.” He deliberately used the cruder word instead of the more civilized ‘brides’.

  “Why?” she squeaked. Apparently she was at last alarmed. Smart girl.

  “Because only dragonesses can bear us children. We dragons are an exclusively male race.”

  “What?”

  “For hundreds of years, there have been no daughters born in any European line of dragons.” He rolled his shoulders and folded his arms across his chest to keep from seizing his fairy maiden. “We have to make our dragonesses ourselves. And only virgins can be transformed.”

  She looked even more skeptical. “That’s nuts,” she said.

  “Yeah. It’s like we were cursed.”

  “Cursed?”

  “What would you call it?”

  “No daughters? Just sons?”

  “For as long as anyone can recall. And then this year, suddenly there are birth announcements for girls. As if the curse has suddenly been lifted.”*

  “So you don’t have to transform a virgin,” she said triumphantly.

  “I do. Unless I want to wait two or three decades to marry a dragoness.”

  “Too long?” she asked curiously.

  “Way too long.”

  His answer made her look sad. Which had the side effect of lowering his impulse to snatch her and carry her off to his bed where he would show her what happened to virgins who teased dragons. He didn’t want her sorrowful.

  “Was that the problem with you and your fiancée? You discovered she wasn’t a virgin?”

  Huh? “Cynthia never pretended to be a virgin. She didn’t – doesn’t – even know I’m a dragon. I had accepted that if we married I would have no children. She decided an artist was not what she wanted in a husband.”

  He turned his palms upward. “I was relieved to find out that her main attraction to me was my wealth, before I married her. Dragons don’t do divorce.”

  “Don’t you want children?” Her stormy eyes opened wide. Her cheeks turned pink.

  “I do. But not enough to marry a child.”

  “A child?”

  “Like that little mermaid at the Crab Hut.”

  “They say dragons steal virgins and keep them in harems,” she said thoughtfully. Her eyes were suddenly turquoise as they ran over his body. “Hoard them.”

  His stupid cock got even harder. Control yourself, Drake. “Maybe once upon a time. We are no longer permitted to steal maidens or to hoard them.” Besides, it sounded like endless trouble. What his ancestors could have been thinking eluded Quinn.

  “But you hoard other things? I’ve seen.”

  “Dragons are naturally acquisitive. And possessive. I admit that I am possessive. And for the record, I do want to tuck you away and keep you all to myself. It’s a primitive instinct. But I am not at the mercy of my instincts. I can decide not to act on my baser desires.”

  “So you’re not interested in virgins?” she asked tapping her lips with rose-tipped fingers.

  Was she out of her little Fae mind? “Where are you going with this?” he asked. His mouth watered. Even storm tossed, her eyes were pools of mystery, and her scent drew him like a moth to a flame. Or a dragon to a virgin. If he seized her, could she use her fairy magic to escape his arms?

  Only one way to find out.

  *Dragon’s Christmas Captive

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Moira~

  One moment Quinn was standing before her, arms crossed, at ease, like a great well-fed predator, calmly discussing dragons’ predilection for virgins, the next he had her wrapped in his arms and was kissing her. This kiss was as unlike the tender kiss of a few minutes ago, as it was possible for a kiss to be.

  She threw herself into that passionate, ferocious kiss. Not for one moment did she engage in self-deception. When you were doomed to spend a couple of millennia contemplating your mistakes, you learned never to indulge in games of pretend. She was no more Quinn’s captive, than he was hers. She could have whisked herself out of his embrace in the blink of an eye. If she had wanted to.

  What she wanted was the glide of his tongue against hers. The hardness of his muscled chest against the softness of her breasts and belly. What she wanted was to be ravished by this dragon. She savored the feel of his hungry mouth over hers, and the dampness that she felt between her legs. This was what she had been born for.

  For a long while it seemed as if she would get what she wanted. Quinn’s big hands wandered beneath her blouse and unsnapped her bra, so he could gather her breasts in his palms and thumb the nipples. Her moans sounded loud and breathless. His chest was rock hard beneath her palms. His breathing was rough and just as ragged as hers.

  And then he spoke. His
voice was harsh. Hoarse. “We have to stop. This is crazy.” He kissed her again, and her thoughts floated away on a sea of electricity.

  He wrenched his mouth from hers. His chest heaved. “We have to stop,” he growled.

  “Why?”

  “Do you want to become a dragoness? A mortal?” He leaned his damp forehead against hers.

  “A mortal?”

  “Probably. If transforming a woman into a dragoness extends her life, presumably transforming a fairy shortens hers.”

  Thunder and lightning. “Are you sure?”

  “No. Feel like gambling?” he rumbled. He held her a little tighter. His cock was a sequoia against her mound. Her pussy was pulsing and so wet she feared he could feel the dampness through his jeans.

  Gambling? Fairies did not deal in wishful thinking. Fairies did not throw their hats over the rainbow. Fairies thought things through and only acted after considered deliberation. Impulsiveness was foreign to their nature. Passion was foreign to their nature. Yet here she was in Quinn’s arms, brain clouded by passion, ready to take any risk if she could just get that dick of his inside her.

  “What have you done to me, Quinn Drake?” she cried.

  “Me? Nothing. I think I’m being seduced by a fairy.”

  “I can’t think properly. Stop it.” First anger. Now lust. This was craziness.

  He practically dropped her. When she recovered her breath, he was over by the card rack, arms locked across his chest. They rose and fell as if he had run a marathon instead of just kissing her.

  “I’d better go,” he said between his teeth.

  “We have to discuss this,” she said.

  “There is nothing to discuss, Ms. Fairchild. If I stay we won’t be spending our time talking. We’ll be in your back room making the beast with two backs, and when we’re done, there will be two beasts. Literally. I’ll have turned you into a scaly, twenty-foot, horned flying-reptile with talons and vast leathery wings. Are you ready for that, Madame Fairy?”