Sword of the King (7 page)

"I don't know what kind of dragon they've found, but from what I've been told it could be whatever spawned all those steel myths," Rust replied, leaning forward and folding his arms on the desk. "I got a call from St. George yesterday, about some crazy powerful dragon he found. Hasn't even changed yet but his eyes have gone gold; he took out three dragons and seven men before they managed to tranq him."

"That's gotta be a fucking mistake," Blaze said.

Rust laughed. "That's what you're going to figure out. St. George has called in a favor. They want you to break the dragon in."

Blaze recognized the gleam in Rust's eyes. "You want me to steal it."

"Of course. You'll be given funds for travel and living expenses while you're there. Bring that dragon to me at all costs, Blaze. Trace has all the information you'll need."

"You got it, Boss," Blaze said, and stood up. "Hey, what happened to that ass who tried to fuck with me in the club?"

"He's been taken care of," Rust replied. "You won't see him again."

Blaze nodded. "Right.  I'll call you when I get there."

Rust smiled, leaning back in his chair and lighting a fresh cigarette. "Get me that dragon, Blaze, and you're out of the pits."

"Then you can count me out of the pits, boss," Blaze said before the door closed behind him. Trace handed him a manila envelope thick with papers. "Thanks."

"Be careful," Trace said. "St. George is considered a bastard even in our line of work."

Blaze shrugged the words aside. "I'll be fine. They haven't kicked my ass yet. Take it easy, Trace." He strode off down the hall, eager to be on his way. Erie was hot on his heels, growling happily as they climbed onto his motorcycle and headed back toward their apartment.

Back in their apartment, Blaze dropped his keys on the front table and made straight for the kitchen. He grabbed a beer out of the fridge, and then settled at the kitchen table with the packet Trace had given him.

Erie, back in dragon form, pawed at his leg and growled plaintively.

Blaze pretended to ignore him, ducking his head to hide his grin. Erie's growls grew louder, and his pawing held a hint of claw. Still Blaze ignored him, flipping through poorly scanned copies of medical files and recon reports—then yelped as Erie abruptly knocked his chair over and climbed on top of him.

Grunting at the hard landing, the breath briefly knocked out of him, Blaze scowled. "Brat."

Erie growled loudly, nipping playfully at his shoulder. "Okay, okay," Blaze said, conceding defeat. "Let me up, you damn lizard, and I'll get you some food. Like you can't get it yourself, you spoiled brat."

Nipping him again, Erie climbed off and prowled over to the fridge and waited impatiently, tail lashing back and forth. Snorting in amusement, Blaze climbed to his feet and walked over. He opened the fridge and grabbed a container of ground sirloin. Carrying it back to the table, he fed Erie chunks of meat piece by piece until it was finally gone.

When he was done, Erie growled and pawed again.

Smirking, Blaze stood up and went to the cabinet where he kept a glass jar full of mint candy of every shape and size. He set it on the counter and removed the lid, picking out a red and white peppermint and unwrapping the cellophane. "Who wants mint?"

Erie growled as he padded across the kitchen towards Blaze, his claws clicking on the linoleum floor. He reared up and placed his heavy front paws on Blaze's shoulders and growled again.

"You smell like meat, dragon," Blaze said, but dropped the mint into his mouth and rubbed his snout. "Get off me."

Instead, Erie smoothly shifted and wrapped himself around Blaze, forcing him to hold on or risk them both toppling to the floor again. "Dragon—" Erie cut him off with a hungry kiss, and Blazer permitted it because they had every reason to be excited.

They were getting out of the pits, and all they had to do was train a dragon. He didn't care what anyone said, steel dragons didn't exist. It was probably just a quad-black. Those were rare, but not impossible.

Blaze grunted as Erie drew back enough to stand, oofing as Erie then surged forward to pin him to the counter and devoured his mouth. Erie sucked at his lips, scored them with his too-sharp teeth, lapped at the blood and growled in satisfaction. Blaze moaned and just let Erie have him, wrapping his arms around Erie's waist and submitting completely, something he could only do with Erie.

Even if he shouldn't. Even if getting caught would get them both killed. He shuddered as Erie's teeth grazed his neck. "Don't leave marks, lizard!"

Grumbling his dissatisfaction at that order, Erie obeyed—but got revenge by yanking off Blaze's t-shirt. He threw it aside and bit hard at Blaze's hip, licking away the blood, making a soft rumbling sound that might have been mistaken for a purr in a cat.

Erie's hands went to the fastenings of Blaze's jeans, getting them undone and yanking them down enough to get at Blaze's cock. "Lizard—" Blaze's head jerked back as Erie swallowed his cock. He swore as he managed to bash the back of his head against the cabinet behind him, but he quickly forgot the pain as Erie's warm, wet mouth worked him.

Blaze sank one hand into Erie's hair and gripped it tight; he fucked Erie's mouth hard, knowing that the dragon wanted it, could take it. He kept his eyes locked with Erie's, drugged on that brilliant amber gaze, the affection that filled them. Whatever else he lost or gained, he had Erie. Nothing compared to his dragon; no one would ever take Erie away from him.

Erie rumbled, and the sensation around his cock was tipped Blaze over the edge, coming hard down Erie's throat. Erie took it all and licked him clean, slowly working his way back up Blaze's body; he greedily took Blaze's mouth in another hungry kiss.

"Fuck me, dragon," Blaze said after a moment, licking teasingly at Erie's lips, giving a husky laugh when that got him a nip and growl. He oofed again as Erie caught him up and carried him out of the kitchen, grateful Erie was remembering that much because Blaze still had bruises from the last time they'd fucked on the kitchen floor.

His breath left him entirely as he was deposited unceremoniously on the bed and the rest of his clothes were roughly pulled away. "Blaze ..." Erie breathed against his skin, teeth lightly scoring his chest.

Blaze grabbed his hair, dragged him up for a proper kiss, and then flipped them over so he could straddle Erie's hips. He ground against Erie's cock, gasped as Erie's claws dug into his hips. "Where's the stuff, lizard?"

Growling, Erie fumbled beneath their pillows for a moment before he shoved a tube at Blaze. After a few moments of fumbling himself, Blaze managed to slick his fingers and reached back to stretch himself.

When he was ready, Blaze used the remaining lube on his fingers to slick Erie's cock, and then slowly lowered himself down on it, groaning at the stretch and burn. Erie's claws bit into his hips and Blaze felt the hot trickle of blood where they dug in a little too hard. The pain made him gasp, made him harder, made him so hot and flushed that he was nearly dizzy. Bracing himself on Erie's chest, Blaze began to ride him, fucking himself hard on Erie's cock, never looking away from those brilliant gold eyes.

Erie lost all restraint in the fevered haze of their fucking; his claws left bloody welts, and he roared when he finally came. Blaze came a moment after, spurting all over them both. He pulled off Erie's cock and lay on top of him, too tired to muster the energy to roll off.

He smiled as Erie held him tightly, nuzzling and rumbling contentedly.  "Silly lizard."

"Good Erie."

"Yes," Blaze said, kissing his chest. "Very good Erie." They stayed that way until the room began to grow chilly and Blaze was in danger of falling asleep. He forced himself to sit up, groaning. "Come on, dragon. We need a shower, and then I really do have to read that paperwork Rust gave me."

Grumbling, Erie nevertheless obeyed and led the way to the master bedroom.

*~*~*

Carrying a fresh cup of coffee—cream no sugar—to the kitchen table, Blaze sat down with a yawn. The kitchen was cool, but after Erie and a nearly too-hot shower, he felt overheated in jeans and a black tank top. The coffee wasn't helping, but he'd fall asleep without it.

He pulled the thick sheaf of papers close and removed the binder clip holding them together, and sipped at his coffee as he began to read through them.

The first few pages were standard medical reports, containing every last scrap of family history, alongside practically every single bruise the dragon—Cam—had endured since childhood. Blaze always felt sorry for the bastards whose job was to hunt down all the information that went into the dragon reports.

He skimmed through it quickly, moving on to the tests Cam would have undergone after being taken in—kidnapped, really, but nobody liked to say that word.

Blaze frowned as he read the preliminary blood work—also called field tests—they did immediately after acquiring a new dragon. More extensive lab work was done later, but prelims were enough to be certain that they weren't wasting time or energy on the capture.

The report had to be wrong, unless he'd misread something. He flipped back to the beginning and reread the basic information. No, he'd read correctly:  the kid was nineteen, going to college, and worked in a bookstore. His parents were deceased. No other family listed. A loner, but not without some friends. A more or less typical guy.

But the prelim tests said his dragon potential levels were at eighty percent. That meant he was eighty percent dragon, even if it was all dormant. Such a high level of dragon potential made him a pure, and an exceptional pure at that. But it also meant he should have trouble functioning as a normal human. Pures were almost always found living solitary lives, usually up to their ears in violence, trouble, and criminal records. They didn't act normal.

Frowning, wondering if the preliminary test results were wrong, Blaze moved on to the full test results—and nearly spit his coffee everywhere when those tests stated that Cam was, in fact, ninety-one percent dragon.

Fucking hell. Cam should be serving a life sentence somewhere as a malcontent, violent, uncontrollable bane to society. It was a miracle he hadn't managed to trigger his dormant dragon genes himself. Blaze shoved his mug aside and read through it all again, pouring over every sentence.

All the hallmarks of a dragon were there: loner, very self-sufficient, disinclined to work with or under others, intimidating, plus the fixation on strawberries ... all of the signs were there, but based on the report, Blaze would have put the dragon potential at forty percent best.

"Incredible," he muttered. It had to be a quad-black. There were only three quad-blacks in the country last he'd heard, and twenty-four in the whole world. No wonder Rust was willing to trade taking him out of the pit fights with Blaze stealing the dragon for him.

He was pulled from the papers by a low, angry growl, and looked up towards the kitchen door where Erie stood sulking with a hurt look on his face. "New dragon? Better than Erie?"

Blaze smiled. "No one could be better than you, Erie. You're not incredible, you're perfect. Come here, silly lizard."

Growling happily, Erie prowled forward to sit on the floor, curling close against his chair and resting his head against Blaze's thigh. "Good master."

"Good Erie," Blaze replied, keeping one hand threaded through Erie's soft hair as he resumed reading. When he finally finished, he leaned back with a sigh and drained his cooled coffee. "I don't know what's going to happen when we meet the dragon, Erie, but I get the feeling that shit is going to get crazy. It's also going to get bloody. It always does when power like this is in play."

 Just thinking about it sent a chill across the back of his neck, a crawling sensation that had him rubbing his neck as though expecting to find a spider.  Thinking about things going wrong made him think of Ken, and the cold, dismissive way Rust had said they'd dealt with Ken.

Blaze tried to push thought of Ken from his mind. He'd told Rust about Ken because he knew Rust would take care of it, because it needed to be done. He wasn't sorry about doing whatever was necessary to protect Erie.

But knowing what Rust had probably done to Ken made him feel tired all the same. They made forbidden thoughts of running, of just saying fuck it and taking his chances, stir and try to rise. He shoved them back down and covered them up again, forcefully stilled the trembling in his hands. He could not afford those thoughts. "Come on, lizard. We need to pack and get going, it's going to take twelve hours to drive to St. George territory and we should already be on the road." He gently pushed Erie off his lap, then shoved his chair back and stood up.

By the time they were packed and ready, afternoon was turning into evening. Blaze shrugged into his jacket as they left the building, thanking the doorman who loaded their bags into the trunk of Blaze's Challenger.  He handed the doorman a tip, and took the car keys the doorman held out.

Sliding behind the wheel, Blaze buckled his seatbelt and waited until Erie was comfortably settled before pulling away from the curb and into traffic. Erie immediately set to fussing with the radio until it hammered out the hip hop he loved so much. Blaze left him to it, focusing on traffic and his own tumultuous thoughts.

The one thing the reports hadn't mentioned was who he'd be working with on the dragon. There was no fucking way St. George would leave Blaze unsupervised with such a strange dragon. Leonardo St. George was a mean son of a bitch, even by syndicate standards. The protective, trigger-happy goon squad that surrounded him was no better. It was a well-known fact that his pit fighters all played dirty. Blaze hoped he wouldn't have to work with any of them. They would be more interested in getting payback for all the times Erie had kicked their asses in the pits.

But it was unlikely he'd be working with a fighter; fighters weren't typically the ones to start the dragon training. The syndicates usually employed special trainers to help the newly turned transition from human to dragon. Fighters only started training the dragons once that transition was stabilized. That Blaze had trained Erie right from the start was one of the reasons they were so unusual.