Bride Of The Dragon (11 page)

She’d been wrong. He was gazing at her with frank, lascivious hunger in his dark eyes.

Her lips parted as he leaned towards her and took her mouth in a passionate, demanding kiss.

She kissed him back, their tongues twining and dueling in an exchange that was playful and intense by turns. He grasped her head between his big hands and plundered her mouth, pushing his tongue urgently against hers and pressing his hot, naked body closer against her. When he pulled away to gaze at her, his brown irises were flecked with fire-dragon red and gold, and he was breathing hard.

He tugged at the tie of her wraparound dress, and groaned softly when he pulled it away and saw that she’d opted to go braless. She’d always been self-conscious of her small, high breasts, but as he pulled her into his arms and bent his head to suckle her nipple, she felt a thrill of power. There could be no doubt that her slender body excited him. His cock was hard, straining towards her with a bead of creamy fluid glistening at the tip, and as he kissed and tongued her breast, he fondled the other with his palm, his breathing harsh and excited.

She rose to her knees, and his hands strayed down her body to span her narrow waist. He nibbled on her lower lip, pulling away to watch her with heavy-lidded eyes as he dipped his fingers beneath the waistband of her panties and worked his hand between her thighs.

She was slippery with arousal, and he slid his fingers through the silky fluid, parting her folds and teasing her entrance until she clenched on nothing and groaned with need, desperate to have him inside her.

With a hungry growl, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her towards him, laying back on the carpet of shed pine needles and tumbling her on top of him. She gave a squeak of surprise that turned into a breathy moan of arousal as she sprawled against him, their bodies pressed intimately together. Her small breasts were crushed against his chest, and she could feel the insistent pressure of his thick erection. She wriggled against his hard body as she shimmied out of her panties, eliciting a groan of longing from him, and kicked the scrap of fabric away so they were both lying gloriously nude, exposed to the chilly mountain air. Heat from the fire licked one side of their bodies with invisible tongues, and she shuddered with want.

Parting her thighs, she straddled his pelvis, kissing him as she rolled her hips, allowing his rigid length to slide teasingly through her wetness, the friction kindling sparks in them both. She darted her tongue against his and teased him with her teeth and tongue even as she slid against him, back and forth, in a promise of what was to come.

His patience unraveled and he grasped her hips firmly in both hands, lifting her slightly to position the sensitive, slippery head of his cock at her aching entrance. Then, as he guided her down, he slowly thrust upwards, pushing into her with exquisite control until he was buried balls-deep in her wet heat. She moaned helplessly and clutched at his biceps, enjoying the almost unbearable fullness, before she started to move.

She rose and fell, working his cock in and out of her sopping channel, and each time she thought he was as far inside her as he could possibly be, filling her as completely as she could bear, he flexed his hips and pushed her that little bit further. She gasped, her breathing becoming ragged and a rosy flush washing down her throat and over her chest as he ran his hand up her thigh and found her clit with his thumb. He strummed gently at the sensitive bundle of nerves and Kelly moaned and writhed, her muscles locking as licking flames of excitement shimmered inside her, rising and curling until her arousal was a wildfire burning out of control.

As heat washed through her limbs and the tingling in her core intensified, Gabriel rolled her onto her back and drove into her. She came, clenching around him as he pounded into her, stoking the trailing embers of each orgasm into the igniting sparks of the next and making her all but scream with the intensity of the sensation.

As she clutched at the tensing and relaxing muscles of his back, wrapping her legs around his hips to let him drive deeper still inside her needy body, he uttered a low, broken moan that fractured into a series of hoarse, helpless shouts as he jerked inside her, shuddering with the pleasure-pain of his climax.

Gabriel landed in front of the castle with a thud, and Kelly slid off his neck and watched him shift back into human form. The air around him rippled as his wings melted into his back and his scales smoothed out. In less than a minute, he stood there in human form, tall and impossibly handsome. The breeze whipped through his hair as he strode towards her.

“Isn’t it nice to be home?” he said.

“I get what you’re doing,” she said with amusement. “You’re trying to send subliminal messaging so that I’ll think I actually live here.”

“Nothing subliminal about it,” Gabriel said, grinning. “Stay here with me and give birth to my dragonlings. I’ll make it worth your while by plying you with great food, great sex, and lots of jewelry. An offer you can’t refuse.” Then his grin faded into a scowl as a cab pulled up in front of the castle. Teresa was sitting in the back seat. She climbed out and walked up the steps, with an expression of martyred dignity.

“Your mother’s secretary called me and said that my belongings are here, so I came to get my clothes. I won’t be able to get my furniture until I have a place to stay,” she said to Kelly. “I’m sure you’re delighted by this whole development. What with me being homeless and unemployed.”

“Yes, Teresa, because everything I’ve ever done has shown how I’m trying to make you miserable. Like when I warned you that coming to work for mother was a terrible idea and she would be impossible to please and never appreciate anything that you did, and I told you that Chad and his family were assholes. And so on and etcetera.”

For once, Teresa didn’t have a sharp retort. She just stared at Kelly with her mouth open for a moment. Finally she said, “I thought you were just jealous of me and Chad. And I thought you didn’t want me to work for our mother because you wanted all the glory for yourself.”

Kelly snorted. “Chad has made me nauseous from the minute I first met him. And there’s never any glory at work. I earned mother millions of dollars in recovery fees, and she’s well on the way to being able to buy back her share of the firm, and she still spends all her time eagerly waiting for me to screw up so she can berate me again.”

“Well. Anyway. You can tell Winthrop I’m sorry,” Teresa muttered to Kelly. “I shouldn’t have yelled at him.”

“He took the day off, which he apparently never does. And when he comes back,
you
can damn well find him and tell him you’re sorry,” Kelly snapped at her. “He really liked you, and you hurt his feelings.”

“He liked me?” Teresa said, startled.

“No accounting for taste, is there?” Kelly turned and walked up the steps that led into the castle, with Gabriel by her side.

She went up to her room, sat down at her desk, and typed up her resignation letter, which she emailed to Allied. Then she headed back out to find Gabriel.

As she walked into the drawing room, she saw Evangeline sitting on the couch there, crying, and a crowd of guards rushing through the room. They were heading in the direction of the elevator that led to the south tower.

Kelly walked over to Evangeline and sat down next to her. “What’s going on?” she asked.

Evangeline glared at her. “You could help. You could fix this, and you’re not! My uncle’s afraid to ask you because you’ll arrest him!” And she got up and stormed out of the room.

Now what the heck did she mean by that?

Kelly sat there on the couch and waited until Gabriel came into the room about half an hour later. His face was drawn and tense, and when he settled down onto the sofa next to her, he had the thousand-yard stare of someone who’d just come back from a war zone. And the ends of his hair were singed. Only a dragon’s fire could have done that.

“We need to talk,” she said. “What the hell is in the south tower? Evangeline said that there’s something I could help with, and you’re afraid that if you ask me, you’ll get arrested.”

He heaved a sigh. “That’s not exactly it. But yes, we do need your help with something, and it would require you to set aside your professional ethics to a certain extent. Maybe a lot.”

“I’m listening. With considerable trepidation, but I’m listening.”

“What do you know about jewels that can heal the mentally ill?” he asked. “Specifically, mental illness caused by cloudy opal?”

She looked at him. “The Farriday Opal? It was stolen ten years ago and never recovered. Your father was a suspect in that theft.”

He met her gaze unflinchingly. “Yes. That was when we were still in the jewel theft business. He gave the opal to my sister Alexandra for her birthday. And she went mad within days. We got rid of the opal, of course – destroyed it – but it didn’t help.”

Understanding dawned. “And that’s also around the same time that you opened up the jewelry store and went legit. Mostly legit.”

An expression of pain creased his face. “Yes. My parents were racked with guilt. And once we saw what harm a power gem could do, we would never have risked that again.”

Kelly nodded. The odds of them ever encountering another such gem were slight – but not impossible. Frequently, famous gems, the type that especially attracted the attention of thieves, were power gems. They became famous because people could sense the power in them and were driven to find them, display them, possess them.

“You said that you quit,” Kelly said, “but you guys have been suspects in the thefts of a number of jewels over the past ten years.”

Gabriel nodded grimly. “We stopped stealing for profit. Every time we heard of a jewel with power, we would steal it to see if it could cure Alexandra. We’ve actually stolen several jewels, replaced them with paste imitations, and then put them back when they didn’t work. We did more research, and realized that we would need a gem empath working for us to help us find a solution – and also, possibly, to manipulate the powers of a healing gem, since some gems won’t operate on their own.”

“So that’s why you hired Marvin.”

“Yes. We’d been trying to hire a high-level gem empath for a long time – under the table, of course – but we couldn’t find anyone who would work for us.”

“Well, there’s a reason that Marvin was willing to work for you, obviously. He’s not a high-level gem empath. It would be hard to find one who would risk losing his license and going to prison for you.”

He nodded somberly. “I have to ask, Kelly. Is there any possibility that the Dragonsblood would cure her? If, say, you used your powers on it?”

She sighed. “No, unfortunately. If it would work, I’d do it. I’d heal her in exchange for you giving me back the jewel, and I’d return it without saying how I got it. But I sensed the Dragonsblood the other day in the castle. I didn’t sense any healing powers from it. I’m not exactly sure what it does– I’d have to handle it personally and get to know it – but it doesn’t heal.”

“What do you mean, you sensed it?” He stared at her suspiciously. “There’s no way you touched it.”

Time to come clean. “I can sense power gems from a distance, if I focus really hard. I can’t do it for too long or it makes me sick, though. That’s why I’ve been having these headaches.”

He scowled. “So. That would explain why you were so eager to tour the castle.”

At that, she felt a flash of anger. “Hey. You know who I am and what I do. I told you from the minute I met you that I was after the ruby. Excuse me if I didn’t disclose my methods. And don’t get on your high horse with me, Mr. Jewel Thief.”

He still looked disgruntled, but he nodded and said, “Fair enough. And you didn’t turn us in.”

“Well, I couldn’t be one hundred percent sure that it was actually the Dragonsblood, and I didn’t even know if I could get a warrant. And I didn’t know where you had it hidden.” She glanced at him. “And if I’m being honest with myself, I don’t really want to see you or your family in prison.”

As a grin quirked his gorgeous mouth, she smacked him.

“Stop looking so damn smug! Anyway. The only jewel that I know of that might have the specific healing powers you need is the Sunrise Citrine. It’s in the Mildenhorff Museum in New York City. My firm insures that gem, in fact.”

“We’ve heard of that gem and its reputed healing powers.” Gabriel’s brows drew together. “My father was in the building next to the museum when he got busted – right before he managed to break in. Calder had found out what my father was planning, and reported him.”

“Even though Calder knew what it was for?”

Gabriel’s expression hardened and his eyes flashed red with anger. “He sees things as very black and white. And now security around that particular gem is so tight that even we can’t steal it. And that’s saying a lot.”

She groaned. “Don’t brag about your thieving skills to an insurance investigator! I’ll do some research, see if I can find out about any jewels that could specifically reverse mental illness in a dragon.”

After hours of research, of phone calls to personal contacts, of poring through her files, she hadn’t found anything.

There was someone who might possibly know, somebody with many more years in the field than her. Her mother. And Kelly did have a bargaining chip.

She called up her agency.

“I knew you’d change your mind,” her mother sneered.

“I haven’t changed my mind. I still quit.”

“Then why are you calling? Have you found the ruby?” her mother demanded.

“I have a pretty good lead, but I don’t know exactly where it is, and trust me, searching this castle won’t turn it up,” she said. “However, I know how we can get it back. We need to find a gem that could heal madness in dragons.”

She explained in a general way what had happened to Gabriel’s sister, without telling her that the jewel that had caused her madness had been stolen. “I think there’s a good possibility that if we could get access to a healing gem, then I might be able to locate the Dragonsblood.”

“In other words, Gabriel’s family does have it.” Her mother’s tone was smugly triumphant.

“Not necessarily,” Kelly said. “And it doesn’t matter who has it, frankly. If we return it to the Rossi family, you don’t have to pay for its loss.”

“Since when are you trying to protect criminals?” her mother snapped at her.

Since we were hired by criminals whom I don’t feel particularly motivated to help,
she thought with annoyance.

“Just see what you can find out about healing jewels,” she said, keeping her tone calm. She was sure that her mother would do her absolute best. She found money highly motivating.