Love Burns (6 page)

The mattress was deliciously comfortable and the down cover felt velvety soft, but Olivia tossed and turned. Finally, at midnight, she sat up and looked at Calder. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said.

“I noticed.” He’d been lying on his side with his back to her, reading a book. He tossed it onto his nightstand and sat up.

She folded her arms across her chest. “So, just out of idle curiosity, why wouldn’t you lay a finger on me?”

“The obvious reason.”

She scowled at him. Why didn’t he just come out and say it, then? “Because I’m too fat for you.”

He let out an exasperated breath.

“No, because you said you weren’t interested. You are not too fat for me. I already told you, I find you very attractive.”

“Oh,” she said in a small voice. Then, after a pause, “What, specifically, do you find attractive about me?”

He reached out and smudged her cheekbone with the ball of his thumb. “Your eyes,” he said. His gaze dropped to her mouth and he murmured, “Your lips.”

She realized her breathing had become shallow and rapid, and her heart was thudding in her chest so hard she felt sure he must be able to hear it.

“Your spirit,” he continued. “You don’t take any crap from anyone. Not me, not your father, not anyone. And…” He reached out and hooked a finger into the neckline of the oversized T-shirt she was wearing as a nightshirt. “You look much better in this than I do.”

She doubted that. Calder made even a plain cotton T-shirt look mouth-wateringly sexy, the fabric stretched taut over his pecs. And right now he was wearing nothing but a pair of boxers. She could feel the heat radiating from his muscular chest and felt a sudden, desperate urge to lick him.

She told herself sternly to keep it together and stammered, “Oh, come on – I’m not exactly at my sexiest in the middle of the night.”

Calder shifted closer. “That’s where you’re wrong,” he whispered, and she was suddenly, shockingly aware of how close he was and how little clothing there was between them. A trickle of moisture dampened her panties.

“Your hair is all mussed,” he continued. “And you’re blushing. You look like you’ve just had really good sex…or you’re just about to.”

At that she felt her pussy clench, and to her utter embarrassment a little whimper of desire escaped her.

Calder grinned. “I can see all your curves,” he said, and he brazenly ran a fingertip down over the slope of her breast, catching her nipple, which furled into a tight peak against the fabric of the T-shirt. She gasped.

He ran his hand down over the dip of her waist and the curve of her hip and let his fingers flirt with the hem of the T-shirt, which barely covered the tops of her thighs. “And this doesn’t leave much to the imagination.”

“You’ve…you’ve been imagining me?” She wriggled under his hands, feeling feverish and restless. His fingers were stroking featherlight patterns on the insides of her thighs.

“Oh yeah,” he growled, and he lowered his head to kiss her.

The touch of his lips on hers was hot, hungry and demanding. Sensation shuddered through her and she opened to him, running her hands up his broad chest and over his shoulders, holding on to him as he explored her mouth.

He drew the hem of the T-shirt up over her hips and she hesitated for a moment, self-conscious about the soft curve of her belly, but he pressed closer to her, flicking his tongue insistently against hers, and she melted into his arms.

He pulled back briefly to pull the T-shirt over her head and toss it aside, then eased her back onto the pillows, drinking in the sight of her with worshipful eyes. “Beautiful…” he breathed.

He explored her body with his hands and his mouth, touching and tasting. He took her nipple in his mouth and circled it with his tongue, teasing it into a tight bud. Electrical thrills of sensation ran from his lips to the slick, needy flesh between her thighs, and she moaned. When he pulled back and blew cool air over the rosy peak, she shuddered and arched, digging her fingertips into the satiny-smooth skin of his strong back.

He kissed his way down over the curve of her belly, stroking her ample hips and thighs with his hands. When he drew her panties down, she clamped her thighs together in sudden embarrassment, but he pressed them insistently apart and her hands fluttered to the back of his head as he flicked his tongue at the apex of her slit.

“Oh God, I’ve wanted this,” he groaned against her core.

He parted her pussy lips with his clever fingers and stroked her clit with his tongue, drawing out each stroke and making her squirm and sigh with pleasure. He pressed a finger inside her, thrusting in and out, skin sticky with the juices of her arousal.

Olivia shuddered and moaned, thighs trembling, as he worked her to the brink of orgasm, until every touch and stroke was an exquisite, almost unbearable pleasure…and then he stopped.

She lay shaking on the bed, heart thundering, too aroused to speak, aching for his touch.

He quickly stripped off his boxers and returned to her, and she eagerly embraced him, wrapping her arms and legs around him and urging him to enter her; to complete her.

Calder sheathed himself inside her with a single smooth, steady stroke that was almost enough to tip her over the edge, and his deep groan of satisfaction made her core clench greedily around his thick erection.

Then he began to move, and she was utterly lost. She cried out as he thrust inside her, her orgasm rolling over and through her. Every time she thought his body couldn’t possibly wring another drop of pleasure from hers, he thrust again and she was shaken by trembling bliss.

Calder groaned as he pumped faster, his skin sheened with sweat. His face was set in harsh lines of pleasure-pain, and she knew he must be close to coming.

She locked her ankles at the small of his back and grasped his taut buttocks, urging him inside her harder and faster.

His groan turned to a hoarse, helpless shout of pleasure and he came, riding her every clench and throb as they spiraled back down to Earth together.

Calder told Olivia that he’d be following her to and from work from now on, and if he wasn’t available, he’d send a couple of his centurions. “Until we figure out who is after you, and why, you shouldn’t be alone,” he said. “And I don’t entirely trust your father to protect you. I agree that he doesn’t have any motive to try to kill you, but there’s something I don’t trust about him.”

“Something?” Olivia said. “There is literally not one thing that I trust about that man.”

“Agreed. Also, I’m going to leave Barnum standing guard in your office, and if you go anywhere during the day, he should accompany you.”

Olivia snorted at that. “Is that for my protection, or is it a cheap excuse to get him out of your hair?”

“Can’t it be both?” Calder favored her with a winning smile. “I’m sending him with his own lunch and everything. If…I mean
when
he hits on anyone, please have them slap him. Hard.”

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, she barely noticed Barnum sitting there reading magazines and playing games on his phone and hitting on everybody female who walked by, because the entire morning was a blur of meetings and phone calls. She was happy to hear that the rash of fire-versus-ice vandalism seemed to have died down for the time being, and everybody was still happy with Lionel being at the park. She was mildly exasperated to get an email from Tabitha wanting to meet up to go over what would be served at the rehearsal dinner. And she was annoyed to get a voicemail from her aunt, saying, “You’re not actually really dating Calder Kingsley, are you? I assume it’s just a ploy to keep your father off your back? Please call me right away.”

She ignored the voicemail from her aunt. She sent an email back to Tabitha, saying, “Since this is an imaginary wedding, I’d suggest you serve jackalope stew and unicorn steak.”

She promptly received an email back, saying, “Ha ha. How droll. Unicorns are on the endangered species list, so no. Calder says you like steak. I’m thinking filet mignon.”

Shortly before lunch, her father called her up and yelled at her, which was pretty much his only method of communicating with her, now that she thought of it. “What do you mean by going behind my back with the investigation?” he demanded. “Do you not trust me to find your attacker? We may have our differences, but I am your father, after all. I find this offensive.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Olivia said, baffled.

“Oh, don’t pretend that you and your new boyfriend didn’t go behind my back to talk to Henrik. You’re trying to make me look incompetent, that’s what you’re doing.”

She hung up and called Calder to ask what the heck her father was talking about.

“Word travels fast.” Calder sounded contemptuous. “So, yes, this morning I had my mother over and I described that weird dragon scale I found, and she drew it for me. She’s a very talented artist, actually. She emailed me the sketch and I showed it to Henrik Vromme. Oh, and she was asking me what you like to eat. I think she wants to invite you for dinner.”

“No, she’s actually planning our imaginary rehearsal dinner for the fake wedding that’s never happening.”

“Ouch. Right in the heart.” She could practically hear him pouting through the phone.

“Hmmph. For a fire dragon, you’re pretty sensitive. What did Henrik say?”

“Well, he was pretty angry at your father for not having reported it to the Dragon Elders. So that’s a win.” Calder sounded way too pleased with himself about that. “And he said that if the sketch is accurate, then the scale appears to come from a Russian dragon.”

“Russian?”

“Yes, there’s a group of Russian dragons who were members of the old secret police and who are now mobbed up. Apparently some of them are assassins.”

“This just gets weirder and weirder. Who would hire a Russian assassin? That’s got to be expensive,” Olivia said, astonished.

“Henrik is concerned that it might be political,” Calder said. “The assassination of an ice dragon mayor could destabilize relations between the two species. He’s having the Council of Elders run a check of all fire and ice dragons from Russia who are registered as being in the U.S. So that’s some progress. If we could only catch at least one of the bastards, we could find out who was behind all this.”

“Yay. Progress,” Olivia said faintly. “Keep me posted on that.” The idea that somebody hated her enough to want her to die chilled her to the core – and she was an ice dragon. She didn’t chill easily.

“How’s Barnum behaving?”

“Well, he hit on Ermengarde, and the female janitor, and one of the town council members, and a UPS delivery girl, who dumped her iced coffee on his head.”

“So as per usual, then.”

Barnum looked up. “Is that Calder? Tell him I say hey, and thanks for the sweet assignment,” he said cheerfully. His hair was still damp and he smelled like a Frappuccino.

“Tell him I’m going to whup his tail,” Calder said with annoyance.

“No he won’t. My daddy’s the mayor.” Barnum grinned and went back to playing some card game that beeped a lot.

As Olivia set down the phone, her intercom buzzed. “Alfreda Mortensen to see you,” Ermengarde said.

Ah, a grateful constituent.

Or not.

Alfreda marched in with a scowl creasing her forehead, and Barnum glanced up at her, then back down at his phone. He didn’t even bother trying to hit on her. Was it the glare on her face? Or was she that much of a social pariah? She was actually fairly pretty, with honey-colored hair and big, dark eyes that had faint dark smudges of exhaustion under them.

“You had no right to do what you did,” Alfreda snapped at Olivia.

“Oh? And what’s that? Stop by your house and tell your kids they could come back to the park?” Olivia said, taken aback.

“No! Paying my electric bill. Like we’re some kind of charity case. Everyone here thinks we’re a bunch of beggars.” Tears of anger glittered in Alfreda’s eyes. “I work for a living. I take care of my kids. I was just a little late on my bill, that’s all.” The woman opened up her purse and dumped a bunch of crumpled bills on Olivia’s table. “That’s for the electric bill, and you stay out of our business.”

She turned and marched out of the office, head held high.

Wow. Russian assassins, and a crazy woman planning her wedding when she wasn’t even engaged, and now a pissed-off constituent throwing a hissy fit.

“Well, my day just keeps getting better,” Olivia muttered, gathering up the bills with a sigh. She’d put them in the town’s general fund.

It was after lunch when she got a text from her aunt. “I need to talk to you. Your father has some very bad plans that I can only discuss in person. Meet me at the old ghost town as soon as you can. Please come alone – we need to be discreet about this.”

The old ghost town was an abandoned mining town about ten miles outside North Lyndvale. Once the mine had been tapped out, the town had died. Now it was a collection of collapsing shacks lining one cracked, weed-choked road.

Olivia tried to call her aunt back to tell her that she didn’t think it would be safe for her to go out into the middle of nowhere until her assailant was captured, but the call went straight to voicemail, so she called Calder.

“I can go with you, if you want,” Barnum piped up.

“I heard him. Tell him thanks anyway. Barnum means well, but I’m not trusting him with your life,” Calder said. “I’ll hide in your car, and as long as everything looks okay, I’ll stay hidden.”

True to his word, when she went to pick him up, he lay down on the back seat with a blanket pulled over him, and they drove out to the remains of the old town.

“I don’t see my aunt’s car anywhere,” she called out to Calder. She opened the door and climbed out. “There are no other cars here at all.”

The town would have made a great set for a horror movie, she thought. And at the moment, it was thoroughly creeping her out.

“Aunt Nora? Helllloooo?” she yelled.

Calder climbed out too. “Screw this,” he said to her. “If she complains that I’m here, I’ve got a thing or two to say to her about you driving around by yourself when there’s an assassin after you.”

Olivia picked up her phone and tried to call her aunt again, but there was no cell phone reception.

She looked at him in dismay. “Calder, something’s wrong here. When I tried to call her back about the text, the call went straight to voicemail. That’s kind of weird. She always answers her phone. If she sent me a text asking me to meet her, why wouldn’t she leave her phone on just in case? What if something happened to her?”

“Heads up,” Calder said in an urgent voice, pointing.

Three fire dragons had risen from a hillside where they’d apparently been lying in wait.

Fear shot through her. Three – too many for her and Calder to fight. Whoever was after her wasn’t fooling around.

“The old general store, quickly,” Calder said, grabbing her arm. “There’s a trapdoor that leads to a secret tunnel.”

They ran to the old store, floorboards creaking alarmingly under their feet. The door fell off as they ran in, and they hurried past cobwebbed shelves and stacked empty boxes into a back room. Calder peeled a moldy rug away, revealing an iron ring on the floor.

“Ladies first,” he said, yanking the door open.

She hurried down rickety stairs into a pitch-black room.

Calder followed her, and as he slammed the trapdoor shut, the general store exploded into flames behind him.

Above them, they felt the earth shake. Calder blew out a small, steady stream of fire to light their way in the tunnel, and Olivia followed him, choking on dust and dirt. They made it a few hundred feet into the tunnel, and then it collapsed behind them. They broke into a run.

Fortunately, Calder seemed to know exactly where he was going, and led her through various twists and turns and forks in the tunnel until they emerged in a cave.

“I have no idea where we are right now,” she said, blinking in the darkness. Calder found an old wooden torch and blew fire on it, then set it in the sand, and the torch cast a dim glow over their surroundings.

“It’s an old cave system,” Calder said. “My brother and I used to play here when we were little.”

He put his arm around her. “We’ll get to the bottom of this,” he said. “Whoever did this overplayed their hand. Three fire dragons launching a direct daylight attack on you? Every dragon investigator in the country will be converging on this area.”

He glanced around. “In the meantime, we should wait here for a while to make sure they leave the area. Hopefully they think we’re dead, but they might stick around for a while.”

They sat down on the cool, sandy floor of the cave, and he put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close to him. She sank into his warmth, enjoying the feel of his muscular arms wrapped around her.

“I’m really worried about my Aunt Nora,” she said. “What if the fire dragons have her too? What if they’re after our whole family?”

“Nothing we can do about it right now,” Calder pointed out. “Not like our cell phones will work down here. We’ll hang out here for an hour or two, and then we’ll head back to town.”

She sighed, looking around the empty cavern at the dripping stalactites and stalagmites glittering with mineral deposits. “It’s beautiful in here,” she said.

He reached up and stroked her hair. “When I find whoever is behind this, I’m going to roast them alive. Slowly,” he said.

“Aww, you say the sweetest things.”

He winked at her. “Anything for my girl.”

She felt her heart stutter in her chest.
His girl.
She twisted in his arms to look him right in the face. “Am I your girl?” she asked.

He raised an eyebrow. “Are you saying you’re someone else’s girl?” His voice had suddenly gone low and dangerous.

“Hah,” she scoffed. “Of course not.”

He stroked her arm gently, sending shivers through her body. “Oh, good. I would hate to have to kill anyone else today. I’ve already got a full plate with those assassins.”

“We just met,” she pointed out. “And our species are traditionally at each other’s throats. And…”

Calder moved in to kiss her.

It was sweet and possessive, and it made her toes curl. He anchored his fingers in her hair and turned her head to one side, claiming deeper access to her mouth. His tongue stroked hers in a slow, thorough seduction, and whatever she’d meant to say fled from her head. She couldn’t think of anything but the warm press of his lips against hers and the feel of his biceps bunching under her hands as she clung to him.

When he pulled away, she was left panting and breathless. “What was that for?” she asked.

“Every time you say something ridiculous, I’m going to shut you up by kissing you.”

“But Calder—”

“There you go again,” he said, and he kissed her, and this time he didn’t stop.