Dragon Call (10 page)

When Cora glanced up at Greg, he looked from
the circle to her and raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps we may talk?”

“Perhaps I should get dressed.” She fingered
the folds of her robe, acutely aware of her nakedness beneath
it.

A soft exasperated noise came from the phone.
Cora let it pass without comment. Miranda could spout nonsense
about mating calls and ritual sex all she wanted, but Cora didn’t
buy it for an instant. She was determined to find a solution to
this mess that involved neither long-term animal—lizard—care nor
abandonment of her birth control. She and Greg would begin by
talking. And she would be fully clothed for the conversation.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” she stated
firmly, partially for her objecting, eavesdropping mother’s
benefit. “After I’m dressed.”

Greg nodded, but as Cora moved toward the
guest room, he started to follow. She stopped, raised an eyebrow.
Greg answered with a sheepish smile and a shrug.

“I’ve spent every hour since the last time I
saw you wishing I hadn’t let you out of my sight,” he explained.
“I’d rather keep you in it now.”

From the corner of her eye, Cora saw Diane
poke her head from the kitchen. Her big sister was making her
presence known in the event Cora needed backup, but instead of
alarming her, Greg’s words and the lopsided smile that accompanied
them eased some of her tension.

“Keep your back turned. Or your eyes
closed.”

Greg followed her into the bedroom. Alone
with him, she wasn’t sure what to say. She couldn’t offer him a
seat because the only candidate was an air mattress with rumpled
linens, and drinks were out of the question.

“It’s messy, sorry.” She opted for the
apologetic approach.

“Not at all. Do what you need to do.” Greg
went to the window and stood with his back to her, still wearing
his jacket. “And please, relax,” he said without looking her way.
“I hope the dragon hasn’t been problematic.”

Cora froze, crouched beside her half-unpacked
suitcase. She hadn’t expected him to be so direct. “I wouldn’t use
that word,” she replied after a moment of careful silence.

Greg shrugged. “Disruptive, then, or even
inconvenient. I can tell from your anxiety, not to mention the
state of your household, that the summons was unplanned.”

She answered with a noncommittal noise and
stole a moment to concentrate on dressing herself. Keeping an eye
on Greg’s back—a lean, delicious triangle capping a fantastic ass,
she noted—she pulled a pair of panties up over her hips and
followed up with faded jeans, completing her armor with a cotton
camisole and an oversized sweater. The dragon-leashes made the
whole process a little trickier than it should have been.

“You’ve a remarkable talent,” Greg said.
“I’ve never met anybody who could issue a call of such strength.
The dragon didn’t even resist it, and believe me, it could have
resisted.”

“You didn’t have any say in the matter?”

Greg shook his head. He still hadn’t turned
around, for which Cora was grateful. She would not argue with one
fewer set of eyes watching her.

“It doesn’t work that way. I’m not the
master; I’m a partner.” Greg turned around while Cora was lowering
herself to sit on the air mattress. He didn’t seem to notice the
graceless way her butt sank down to nearly touch the hardwood floor
beneath it.

He came over and crouched in front of her,
close enough that their knees almost touched. He smelled like soap
and coffee. “We respect each other, the dragon and I. And it seems
to respect you as well, or at the very least, your ability to
summon.”

She fingered her scarves, studying his hands
where they rested on his thighs. She hadn’t exactly sensed respect
from either of the dragons. Resentment, affection, and violence,
however—those reactions were blatantly apparent when they surfaced.
She suddenly, vividly remembered the first moments after she came
to. Whichever dragon had responded to her call first had not been
happy to be called. The remembrance of her near-rape made her
stiffen.

“Which one is yours?” she asked abruptly. She
didn’t need to ask; Greg and his dragon shared the same unexpected
rage. She needed to know whether he would be honest, though.

It took so long for Greg to answer that she
looked up at his face. His eyebrows were drawn together in
confusion, but he quickly composed his features. “Which one is my
what?”

“Your dragon. I have two.” She held up each
hand, lending each scarf a little twitch with a flick of her
wrists. “Which one is yours?”

“You summoned two dragons,” Greg murmured.
“Remarkable.” He reached to touch the white scarf. Cora pulled her
hand back before he could make contact.

“The colors correspond?” he asked, frowning
at her retreat. “Mine is the white.”

She made a mental note to pass the info along
to her mother. Perhaps research into the colors wouldn’t be a
pointless endeavor. Nor would research into the men—no, the
Dragonlords’ backgrounds.

“Cora, listen,” Greg said abruptly. “It can’t
be good for you to be in such close proximity with not one, but two
dragons. Let me at least take mine off your hands, and free you up
to cope with the other one. I’ll help you.”

The mattress creaked when Cora shifted to
hide both hands behind her back.
They’re mine, not yours
,
were the first words to come to her lips, but she managed to hold
them at bay. They were irrational words. She didn’t even
want
the damned things. Still, she refused with a lie. “The
bindings can’t be released until the sun comes up tomorrow.”

“Ah, right.”

Cora thought his mouth tightened, but she
couldn’t be sure.

“You should know why they’re here, then. I
wouldn’t leave you alone with them if I had any other choice.
Without the choice, though, I want you to be informed.”

“I appreciate that,” she said. She could
already feel tension easing. “What do I need to know?”

Chapter Ten

Greg settled down to sit on the floor,
crossing his ankles. He sloughed off his jacket. Cora allowed
herself to appreciate his physique, but didn’t permit herself to
crawl onto his lap, tempting as the idea was. She did grant herself
the fantasy while he gathered his thoughts. No harm in wondering
whether he would be slow and soft or fast and hard.

“You issued a mating call,” Greg began. Cora
felt her cheeks heat up. Hearing it from his mouth was worlds
different from hearing her mother say it. She just knew this
conversation wasn’t going to distract her from the urge to slip
down and straddle his muscular thighs.

“While the dragons are intelligent creatures,
they’re also intensely emotional. They’re instinct-driven. What you
did was the equivalent of any other animal releasing a scent.”

She crossed her legs and drew a pillow onto
her lap to mask the fragrance of her body. Greg’s voice was low.
Cora glanced at his face and decided that no, he wasn’t trying to
seduce her. He had the vanilla expression of a teacher relating
information. Good. If he could be a teacher, she could be a
student.

“Since you drew both dragons at the same
time, you’ve become an issue of territory to them. They’ll attempt
to win your favor, but they will also attempt to best one another
and claim dominance.”

So she had found herself in possession of the
means to live every woman’s fantasy, with two males trying to
one-up one another in the pleasure arena in order to gain her
approval. The only problem with this scenario was the species of
her males. Cora pursed her lips and eyed Greg sidelong. A devilish
little part of her said, “Wouldn’t mating with me be anatomically
difficult for them?”

He paused, his expression startled. She noted
with some satisfaction that his manhood had stirred subtly at the
question, its outline growing against the cloth of his trousers.
Cross-legged as he was sitting, he couldn’t shift to hide his
half-hardness. Cora had partial success with suppressing her
smile.

“It’s very important that you retain a
rational, logical upper hand when dealing with them,” Greg said, a
bit more stiffly to Cora’s ears. “As creatures of emotion and
instinct, they will attempt to dominate you when you demonstrate
actions founded in emotion and instinct.”

A girl didn’t spend half her life on the
fringes of the goth set of NYC without picking up at least a little
knowledge of alternative sexualities. When Greg dropped that
innocent little word into the mix, Cora’s pulse quickened. While
she had never considered herself particularly submissive or
dominant, she wasn’t immune to the titillation of a power exchange.
Her aroused hormones, teased to life by the affectionate dragons,
stirred up an image of herself tied to Diane’s big bed, Greg and
the dragons surrounding her.

The moment she pulled the dragons to mind and
actively pictured them, they rolled to life at her fingertips. She
stopped listening to Greg. She couldn’t help it. Before, the
dragons had been active while she was distracted by panic and too
many people, all with something to say. Now that it was just her,
Greg, and the dragons, they pressed against her with the full
weight of
real
. She struggled to keep her eyes open. By
turns, they whispered wordless promises of intense pleasure.

Cora rubbed her wrists, tangling the white
and red scarves together. Heat shot through her body; she gasped.
White surged up, overwhelming her vision—something deeper than mere
vision. She felt consumed, as she had during those first few
minutes of awareness when she and the dragon were in the circle
together. Greg faded into the background, his voice as well as his
body. Instead of naked on a cold, hardwood floor, Cora found
herself spread out on satin-draped stone.

She could see the dragon above her. When
shadows shifted in one direction, the creature resembled the
fairytale monster, all fiery scales and iridescent wings, intense
eyes, clawed hands and feet doing the job of shackles and holding
her pinned at wrists and ankles. A heavy, hot weight pressed
against her mound, nestled against her core. She had no defense
against it, limbs splayed and anchored as they were.

With the rational part of her brain screaming
about abominations and the irrational part humming with excitement
at the
rightness
of this, Cora lifted her head to look down
the length of her body. When she moved, her vision stuttered,
blanked, returned in the same loop, but the dragon had changed. A
man hovered above her in the dragon’s shadow—part of the dragon,
part of its shadow. She couldn’t make out his features, just knew
that she knew him. He pressed her down with a kiss and whispered
something; she strained to hear what he said.

Instead, she heard Greg’s voice, the second
half of a sentence: “…nothing you can do to reverse it. You must
choose one or the other or they’ll kill each other trying to win
you.”

Cora’s fantasy/nightmare stopped cold. Her
palms were sweaty. Greg was looking at her as if she had two heads.
She was not only disturbed at the direction her libido had taken
but also at the sinister conclusion to Greg’s explanation of her
choices. She needed to move, to outrun the throb between her legs,
but when she started to stand, he grabbed her wrist.

“Don’t touch me,” she snapped, yanking her
hand back. She was too sensitive after the fantasy…whatever it
was—too real to be imagined—after her rendezvous with the dragon,
its surprise attack.

Greg let go, but a scrap of white silk
fluttered down onto his open palm. One knot remained in the silk.
Cora felt her stomach drop.

“You untied it,” she whispered, unsure
herself whether it was a question or an accusation.

He folded his fingers around the scarf,
balled it up in his big hand. “I didn’t. It must’ve come loose.” He
reached to touch her knee with his other hand, said gently, “You
have to be careful. I don’t know what happened just now, but I know
something
did.”

She ignored him and put her head between her
knees, looping her arms around her ankles. The position was
undignified, but she didn’t want to look at Greg, and she couldn’t
breathe, so it killed two birds with one stone. He touched her
hair, and she flinched. Her scalp tingled.

“Talk to me. I want to help you deal with
this.”

“If you want to help, take yours back.”

He wrapped a lock of her hair around his
finger, caressing her ear and making her shiver. Goosebumps tingled
on her skin. Greg frightened her; his anger, the bizarre
possessiveness he’d displayed when they last met, and his
connection with the violent dragon, all made her regret allowing
him to be alone with her behind a closed door.

“I could,” he said, “but that won’t make it
go away.”

Cora broke away from his touch and struggled
to her feet. Her knees were weak, and her head swam with the sudden
move, but she shook it off and wobbled across the room. “I’m not
going to participate in this.”

“Then let them kill one another.” Greg’s
voice was neutral. “I wouldn’t like to lose this part of myself,
and I doubt the other—what did you call us? Dragonlords?—the other
Dragonlord would be happy with the demise of his dragon. It is,
however, your choice.”

She cast a withering look over her shoulder.
“I don’t appreciate the amateur attempt at guilt-tripping me, and
you’d have to mean a lot more to me than you do for that to
work.”

Greg ran a hand through his hair. “Do you
think I don’t understand how precarious your position is? You made
a mistake and stumbled into something you wouldn’t have voluntarily
gotten into had you known the facts. Now you have to deal with it,
but the solution requires a sacrifice you’re either not willing to
make, or not ready to make.”