DragonMaster (6 page)

When the skin was hot to the touch, he
turned her, loving the way she immediately curled to snuggle, her weight
consolidated so she’d feel the effects of the punishment he’d administered with
each heartbeat, each movement.

For a shimmering instant, her trusting
gesture made him feel as if his world had been made perfect. A heartbeat of
time that dissipated in a rush when he bent his head, intending to nuzzle her,
to tell her how much she pleased him—but instead caught her quick glance toward
the play area, her hasty search for the blond human named Miles.

Dragon fire poured into Jubal’s bloodstream
like lava. It burned away contentment and left him fighting not to exhale fire.
He clenched his fists against the overwhelming urge to flex his wrists so the
spurs would pierce the material of his shirt sleeves in a precursor to being
raked across his mate’s body.

By the Great Shared Ancestor, he’d had
enough of this! Treasure be damned and tolerance too! Ensconced in his lair,
she’d learn to trust him soon enough. She’d—

He forced himself to calm.

His mate was on his lap. Soft. Content.

A hand signal brought a male server over
for his order. Minutes later that staff member returned with a small plate of
mixed fruit.

Jubal rubbed his cheek against her hair.
“What do you do with your days?”

The question brought no tightening of her
body, no evasiveness in her manner when she answered, “I’m a bartender.”

Perhaps he would arrange for her to work at
Drake’s Lair if she’d prefer it to gambling, so he could keep her close on
those nights he played cards there. “And for pleasure?”

“I surf. What about you?”

Her desire to know him better, outside of
the sexual, was like having tendrils of smoke from a hearth fire curl through
his chest.

“I own a fleet of commercial boats. Outside
of managing them, I have a variety of interests. Poker is one of them. I play
at Drake’s Lair? You’ve heard of it?”

“Who hasn’t?” But she made no mention of
her sister’s invitation.

Should he admit to having met Lyra there?
Dragon pride kept him from it.

“Diving and exploring old wrecks is another
of my interests.”

She shivered. “I’ve sworn off diving.”

He cupped her face, used the touch in a
silent demand for her to meet his gaze. “You would have no reason to fear if
you were in the water with me. I protect what belongs to me.”

He leaned down, mouth covering hers, tongue
pressing between parted lips, good intentions escalating to carnal with the
first taste of himself on her. Gentle persuasion sank beneath waves of demand,
that she trust him completely and give herself into his care.

She intoxicated him even as she drove him
mad with the subtle shifting and grind of her buttocks against his cock, each
of her movements a challenge to his control. She grew bolder, as he’d come to
expect, hand going to the front of his shirt, stroking a pebbled nipple and
sending a flash of heat to a cock about to throw off the cage of magic and tear
through the front of his trousers to get to her.

“No,” he said, punishing them both with the
lift of his mouth from hers. Wanting nothing more than to stand with her in his
arms and take her to his car.

Her resistance—until the reason for her
arrival at Chains had been dealt with—was a given. An aggravation he intended
to put behind him. Now.

“I take care of what belongs to me,” he
said, selecting a pear slice and holding it to Summer’s lips. “I guard what is
mine.”

She took his offering, his heart swelling
with the act of tending to her. The need it fulfilled in him driving back the
intense urge to mount her despite the phantom touch of her tongue on his cock
when she cleaned his fingers after eating the slice of fruit.

“I am not a harsh or unfair master, nor am
I an unreasonable one, though my word is law and my decisions final.” Not that
he’d ever be able to ignore his mate’s input.

Her scent deepened, providing the answer to
his question before he asked it.

“Is that the type of master you desire,
Summer?”

“Yes.”

His expression hardened at her small test
of his strength.

“Yes, Master,” she whispered.

He fed her a second piece. A third. A
fourth, demonstrating with each additional offering that he could provide for
her, take care of her, building layers of trust before finally selecting a
slice of peach.

She bit, traces of juice remaining after
she’d eaten the fruit, and he had no willpower to resist her lure.

Leaning down, he licked the juice from her
lips, captured more of the peach’s taste with the delve of his tongue, a foray
into hot depths that renewed his cock’s demand to penetrate, to be sheathed in
her body.

His hand covered her mound, palm pressing
against her clit, rubbing in tiny circles against the naked head, his fingers
slipping into her channel, forging deeper with the lift of her hips. “Do you
trust me to see to your needs?” he asked.

“Yes, Master.”

The way she cuddled against him, looked at
him with trusting eyes, made him confident she would give him the answers he
sought.

The desire for closeness that would only be
satisfied by the sheathing of his body in hers tempered his demands so he was
willing to make sharing her secret easier for her.

He brushed his lips against hers, said,
“The blond possesses something, a treasure you came here to collect. What is
it?”

She jerked, attempted to leave his arms.

He prevented her escape with a show of
strength, abandoning her pussy to lock her in tight arms.

“Tell me.” Demand instead of gentle coax.

“Please don’t ask that of me. Please.”

Her body was taut, her eyes begging him to
accept this limit and not push. A weaker male would have relented. Or had she
been an innocent, instead of a woman drawn to a place like this one, he might
have chosen a different course of action. But every instinct screamed that this
was too important to let go, given the magical nature of the artifact and his
own intention to leave Chains with it, whether in his possession or Nisien’s.”

“I’ve told you I take care of what belongs
to me. You are mine. Last chance, Summer, what did you come here for?”

Struggle was written on her face. Finally
she surrendered a tiny piece of information. “He stole something from a
friend.”

“What?”

“I can’t tell you.”

Pride kept him from promising to allow her
to decide the fate of the treasure after it was retrieved as a way of gaining
her trust. “Very well then.”

It took strength to refuse her the warm
comfort of his arms. He released her rather than continue holding her against
his chest in a cocoon of security. Forced her from his lap and onto her own
feet.

He selected a flogger from the collection
of items in the bag then stood, noting the relief on his mate’s face that said
she would gladly accept punishment if she could keep her secret. She’d soon
discover he couldn’t be so easily manipulated.

Chapter Five

Summer shook as Jubal guided her to the St.
Andrew’s cross. Her thoughts were a riot of confusion, her desires a
contradiction of imperatives.

Jubal knew there was treasure. He had to be
a dragon and yet he hadn’t made a move on Miles, hadn’t sent Nisien to retrieve
the star ball.

He’d concentrated his efforts on her
instead. Been the master she’d dreamed of having and confirmed with his words,
accompanied by the sense that he was talking about life away from the club
scene, that he was right for her.

Becoming a man’s property and giving
herself over to his keeping was a path to true intimacy, to arriving at a level
of trust that transcended any she could find in a vanilla relationship. It
confined her world, blocked out the worries that came with caring about so many
other people, and allowed her to be fully attuned to her own needs as well as
her master’s.

She wanted that with Jubal, yearned for it.
Craved not only the sense of belonging that would come with the joining of his
body to hers, but with wearing his collar and being subject to his demands at
home.

She stopped in front of the cross. Jubal’s
firm hand tangled in her hair kept her from turning to face him.

His arm went around her waist, the flogger
touched to her belly with its tails streaming downward to settle against her
cunt. “I’d prefer to be inside my mate’s body, showing her a lover’s care
instead of a master’s discipline. Name the object, Summer.”

Mate
. The
word rippled through her in a shiver of pleasure, became a temptation of hope
colliding against loyalty and fear.

Be careful, Summer. Please be careful.
Kei’s words as he touched his forehead to hers, telling her that a
kitsune’s star ball was a prize and dragons would stop at nothing when it came
to acquiring treasure.

Did Jubal not know what Miles had? Or was
he merely testing her?

My word is law. My decisions final.

“I can’t tell you,” she whispered, aching
when that answer brought loss of contact except for what was required to lift
and bind her wrists to the cross before he crouched behind her to secure her
ankles, delivering a spank to her ass when she tried to distract him with the
rub of it against his cheek.

She shivered in anticipation of feeling the
lash of the flogger. Managed a glance in Miles’ direction.

Panic swelled at seeing him check his
watch, then say something to his sub that sent the other man toward the
changing rooms. He meant to leave.

The rustle of clothing behind her drew her
attention. Her panic intensified at the sight of Jubal’s tie being brought toward
her eyes to become a blindfold.

“No,” she gasped, fighting the restraints
in a hopeless attempt to avoid the silky darkness awaiting her.

Her heart thundered in her ears with the
touch of the material to her skin. Her chest constricted, making it nearly
impossible to breathe as the tie tightened, locking her in blindness.

The safe word erupted from her subconscious
like a beacon illuminating a terrible path.
Enos
.

“Use it and we are finished.” And she’d
heard in his tone a complete ending instead of merely an end to the scene.

“Please don’t do this, Master,” she said,
renewing her jerks against the restraints.

“You’ve left me no choice, beloved.”

Want and need coiled in her belly at
hearing the endearment. She trembled with it, cried out as the flogger struck
her, creating trails of fire that had a voice.

Decide.

Decide.

Decide.

A silent command followed by the press of
his chest to her back, the shirt between them symbolic of the secret keeping
them apart.

She knew Miles’ routine. He’d dress in his
street clothes then come in for one last look. She had five minutes, tops,
before he’d be gone, and any chance of recovering Kei’s star ball tonight gone
with him.

Enos.
But
that wasn’t what left her lips.

“Master, I don’t want to lose you.”

A touch of his mouth to neck and shoulder
were the entirety of his answer before he removed heat and comfort to deliver
more punishment, a demand for her to give him what a master was entitled to,
what she would have gladly surrendered to him any other night. Her trust.

Fire streaked across her back, and though
the flogger didn’t circle to land on breasts or pussy, it might as well have.
She burned, ached as though she’d felt the hot, sharp sting of the lash on
those parts of her body.

He stopped. Once again touched his shirt-covered
chest to her back, trapping the heat and inherent demand of his discipline
against her naked skin, offering the promise of true intimacy if she would
relinquish what she continued to hold away from him.

She shook. Torn between what her heart and
body and soul cried, that this was the master for her, and what her mind
ordered, the use of the safe word.

If there were other supernaturals involved,
orchestrating the theft by manipulating Miles, then Jubal might be Kei’s only
hope. But if she was wrong in giving Jubal her trust…

I can’t imagine a dragon hanging out at
a BDSM club
, Kei had said.
But for treasure…

Could she trust Jubal not only with her
body and heart, but with Kei’s fate?

A whimper escaped at imagining Jubal using
a ball-gag and leaving instructions for one of the staff members to free her
later, after he’d gotten the star ball and taken it away.

His warmth left her. The lashes struck her
back.

Decide.

Decide.

Decide.

Trust rising, building, the agony of choice
finally answered.

“My friend is kitsune,” she whispered.

It was enough to bring Jubal back to her.
His lips touched her neck, brushed against the mark he’d placed there.

“You need say no more, beloved. I can guess
what was stolen from him.”

With a slide of silk, his shirt parted.

Her breath caught on a shiver of ecstasy at
the press of his bare chest to her back.

“If you know of the kitsune, do you know
what I am? What Nisien is?”

“Yes.”

He stroked the sides of her breasts. Let
the flogger fall away so he could capture her nipples and send streaks of fire
downward with his tugs and twists and squeezes.

“You please me, more so than I once
imagined it possible for a mate to do. I came here for you, so impatient to
claim what was mine that I couldn’t wait for the introduction your sister promised
me.”

“Lyra knows?”

His rumbled laugh rippled through her. “By
now she’s already been made a dragon’s mate, as you would have been had I
intercepted you earlier.”

The words chased some of the warmth from
her. “I need—”

“To trust your master to take care of your
needs, and your mate to do what is right.”

He reinforced it with a painful nip that
had her channel spasming, then nuzzled her neck as his hand left a breast to
stroke downward to her mound.

“Our mating will be a private affair,” he
said, pressing the balls of her jewelry against her engorged clit, making her
buck before thrusting two fingers into her slit.

She clamped on him, her need for his cock
only heightened by the substitute he offered, her hips jerking spasmodically in
an effort to drive them deeper.

“Mine,” he said before taking away his heat
and touch.

He removed the blindfold and freed her from
the restraints. Turned her to face him, using a hand tangled in her hair to
force her gaze to his.

“Go dress, beloved. And do not ease yourself
by touching what belongs to me or we will be delayed by further discipline when
we are finally alone. Your release is mine to grant or withhold.”

He fished the locker key from his pocket
and handed it to her. “Wait for me in the dressing room. My cousin and I will
attend to this matter. We will secure the kitsune’s
hoshi no tama
.”

A protest blossomed in her chest but
withered with the narrowing of his eyes and tightening of lips.

“Yes, Master,” she said, though obeying him
was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. If she was wrong to trust him…

I’m not.

Though it didn’t slow the rush of her
heart.

Jubal spared only a glance to find and
signal Nisien to him before his attention snapped back to Summer.
Possessiveness deepened with each step she took, every instinct arguing against
allowing her out of his sight.

As she neared the doorway, he wasn’t
convinced he could tolerate it, even for the few minutes it would take to
secure the
hoshi no tama
. A mate was the greatest of treasures and he
had no intention of losing his even before he’d thoroughly claimed her.

He’d moved as she had, keeping the distance
constant and unaware of it until Nisien reached him, stopped him by saying,
“We’re leaving?”

His jaws locked to contain the gout of
flame that welled up and would otherwise have spilled out as Summer disappeared
through the doorway.
Trust your master to take care of your needs, and your
mate to do what is right.

He wrenched his gaze away from her exit
point and directed it at Nisien. “We leave after we retrieve the
hoshi no
tama
belonging to the friend of my mate.”

Nisien’s eyes widened in surprise. “You are
fortunate indeed, Cousin.”

“Not just me. All of our kind.”

Nisien’s sharp nod indicated he understood
the danger. His grim expression said no price was too high to pay when it came
to eliminating the threat created by the kitsune’s loss, though in truth, the
task would be easily accomplished on this particular night. Against dragon
pheromones, Nisien’s in particular given the human’s leanings, the blond didn’t
stand a chance.

They cornered him along with the submissive
he’d been playing with, both now in street clothes.

“You have something that doesn’t belong
you,” Jubal growled, fighting the urge to incinerate the human, not because of
what he suspected the theft meant, but because this male had claimed Summer’s
attention. “You will surrender it now.”

“Cousin, have you never heard of the gentle
art of persuasion?” Nisien asked, a hand cupping the back of Miles’ neck,
drawing him forward for a kiss as his other hand tangled in the submissive’s
long brown hair, forcing him to his knees.

Heat radiated off Nisien, and Jubal was not
unaffected though his interest was elsewhere. His cock strained, protesting its
confinement with savage spikes of need and the shattering of magic.

Praise the Great Shared Ancestor his mate
already knew he was dragon. There would be no shrinking his cock or hiding the
twin rings that circled beneath its head. Just as there would be no sheathing
his mating spurs now that they’d descended. It would require all of his control
not to pierce her skin with them at first contact.

The submissive nuzzled the front of
Nisien’s trousers and Jubal’s buttock’s clenched as he imagined his own mate on
her knees before him, naked and doing the same each time he arrived home.

Get it done!
he silently shouted at his cousin, understanding this was a better
course of action than simply beating the human to a pulp, even if it wasn’t
nearly as satisfying.

Nisien deepened the kiss, hand wandering
downward, seeking, finding the treasure he sought and deftly removing it.
Passing the
hoshi no tama
to Jubal before finally pulling back, leaving
the blond swaying on his feet, dazed and lost, his hand on his cock, stroking
it through the material of his pants.

“What do you know of the orb?” Nisien
asked.

“It’s worth a small fortune.”

“Who told you that?”

“I did.” It was the submissive nuzzling the
front of Nisien’s trousers who answered.

“Where did the information come from?”

“Jaron Tamarack.”

Fury scorched through Jubal.
Fey pawn
.
Only Queen Otthilde’s protection of the human antiquities dealer had kept him
safe all these years.

“He told you to steal it?” Nisien asked the
submissive.

“He told me he had a client who sought it
and would offer a fortune should the item become available. It was easy enough
to meet Master Miles and he was willing to help acquire it for a share of what
Jaron offered.”

Jubal seethed at imagining his mate feeling
pain on behalf of her friend. A tendril of smoke escaped between clenched teeth
as he fought to remain silent rather than undo the sexual lassitude Nisien had
managed to create.

“Where are you supposed to meet him?”
Nisien asked, tugging at the sub’s hair and making him moan.

“Here. But he’s a no show.”

Because there were dragons present.

Because a dragon’s mate had led them to
Chains.

Jubal’s anger gave way to satisfaction. The
Fates were finally smiling on his race.

“Let’s go,” he said, not bothering to
suggest Nisien might wish to remain and play with these two. His cousin would
never lower his standards to such an extreme.

“I will join you momentarily at the car.”

Jubal nodded, anxious to get to his mate.

She knelt when he entered the sitting room,
reviving his fantasies in a rush that sent his hand to the front of his pants
to take possession of his cock before it plunged through the zipper. Her palms
settled on his thighs rather than behind her back, and the face she lifted to
him was full of hope and trust.

Joy slammed into him. Intense. Fierce. A
powerful blast of emotion that nearly took him to his knees.

He tangled his hand in her hair, moaned
when she immediately leaned forward to nuzzle his cock, to tend to his needs
rather than asking the question he knew burned inside her. “Beloved, we’ll
never get home and mated if you continue to tempt me so.”