Forbidden Embers Read online

  She knew that was exactly what she should do—head back to the compound and let Simone look at her arm. But she wasn’t ready to go back there yet, didn’t want word of how Julian had savaged her to get around the clan. That she’d let him do it would be just one more strike against her.

  Confused, annoyed and in pain, she headed across the clearing for her favorite tree. This spot atop the highest of the Black Hills was her spot, and she’d been coming here for years to think or just to escape the darkness of her father’s house. In the past few years, she’d come so often that she’d hidden a secret stash of clothes inside one of the trees.

  It made things easier for her, especially now, when the last thing she wanted to do was land naked in the middle of the Wyvernmoon compound. She didn’t think anyone would harm her, but without a father and a brother, the protection of her station extended only so far, especially with the higher-ranked families in the clan. She hated it, hated that she no longer felt safe in the only home she had ever known, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to change it. At least not until she had amassed enough power as queen that they would be afraid to take her on, or until she finally decided on a husband.

  The fact that she was now considering getting married only made her regret harder to bear. And yet it might be worth it, she thought for the first time. Might be worth it still to accede to her father’s wishes, though everything inside of her rebelled at the thought. Ambition was too rampant among the dragons, and letting them continue to compete for the title basically meant declaring open season, and she couldn’t do that. Wouldn’t do that. Most everyone knew of her father’s plans to marry her off to Julian, though. If she chose him, if she married him, the infighting would stop. Julian was one of the strongest dragons in the clan, no doubt about it. If she elevated him to royalty, the clan might finally have a chance to heal, even as it doomed her to life with a sadistic asshole.

  But isn’t that the price of royalty? she mused. The price for all the riches and respect and perks that came with being a member of the ruling family? The absolute determination to do what was right for your people, despite the personal cost. And in this case, the personal cost would be almost unbearable. She had no doubt that marriage to Julian would leave her broken, no matter how hard she fought to stay whole.

  Absently, she reached into the knotty hole in the huge spruce tree where she always kept a change of clothes in a waterproof backpack. Her hand met nothing but air. Frowning, she reached for a branch and hoisted herself up so she could peer inside the opening, in case she had somehow shoved the bag farther back than usual the last time.

  But no, there was nothing there. She glanced around at the landscape, made sure she had the right tree. She did. So where the hell was her backpack?

  She shoved her hand deeper into the tree. Had one of the animals run off with it? The idea seemed more than strange. What would a squirrel or even a bobcat want with her old backpack? But she had a hard time coming up with another alternative. She was high enough in the Black Hills that few tourists ever came here, and she’d made sure to hide the backpack far enough off the ground that the few who did wander this way would never find it.

  The other Wyvernmoons didn’t come up here, either. They much preferred the caves and caverns down below to the heavy woods up here. All the trees hemmed them in, made it difficult for them to stretch their wings or fly, as most of them couldn’t take off or land without room to speed up or slow down.

  Frustrated, she continued feeling around in the hole, certain that she must simply be missing her bag. Her next hidey-hole was nearly two hundred miles away, and while that was only an hour and a half by flight, she was tired and cold and more than a little grumpy. Not to mention the fact that her arm hurt.

  Damn it! Where were her clothes? Could nothing, absolutely nothing, go right today?

  “Are you looking for these?”

  At the words, spoken in a deep and darkly amused voice, Cecily whirled around. Only quick thinking and her dragon reflexes kept her from tumbling out of the tree and landing on her very naked ass at the speaker’s feet.

  Why the hell hadn’t she thought to scan? It was the first rule of safety, and she’d completely ignored it.

  In the middle of berating herself, it took her a second to realize that he’d made no move toward her. Raising her eyes to look at him for the first time, she found him halfway across the clearing, watching and waiting for her to get her bearings.

  Too bad that might take a while, as her first glimpse of him had her brain freezing and her mouth nearly hanging open. Dressed only in worn, faded jeans and a pair of tan work boots, the man standing in front of her just might have been the most beautiful creature she had ever laid eyes on. Not to mention the largest. And seeing as she’d spent her entire life around dragon shifters, that was saying something.

  A quick sniff of the air—about five minutes too late—told her he was dragon, too, though unlike any dragon she had seen before. She’d always considered the men in her clan pretty tall at a little over six feet, but this man made even the Wyvernmoon factionnaires look like malnourished children. A quick measurement of his eye level with the branch she was currently sitting on told her he was at least six-and-a-half feet tall, though another look down at the ground told her he might be even taller.

  And he wasn’t just tall—he was broad, as well. His shoulders were so wide that they actually spanned the distance between the two trees he was currently standing in the middle of. It was a distance that would have fit her three times over, and she’d never considered herself small.

  The fact that he was so big should probably have intimidated her—would probably intimidate her once she got past her utter amazement at his size. Not to mention his good looks. No two ways about it, the man was gorgeous, with very short, dark blond hair and long-lashed, whiskey-colored eyes. He had a strong jaw with just a little bit of stubble on it, bronze skin and a series of complicated-looking black tribal tattoos covering most of the left side of his body.

  For a second, she had a vision of running her lips over those tattoos. Of letting her tongue linger on the warm, tanned skin between the thick black lines. The vision was so real—as was the answering response in her body—that it had her snapping out “Who are you?” before she had thought better of it.

  “The dragon who currently has possession of what I’m guessing are your clothes,” he said with a grin that changed his face from a work of art into a study in mischievousness. But when he shifted, turned, she saw that the entire right side of his face was marred with a long, angry-looking scar.

  She knew she should look away; he was probably self-conscious of the injury. But she couldn’t do it. Yes, it was ugly, but somehow that only emphasized the incredible beauty of the rest of his face.

  He didn’t flinch from her examination of him, just stared at her with those odd-colored eyes. As he did, her breath caught in her throat and she felt a strange tingling along her nerve endings, one that made it almost impossible for her to sit still.

  Out of self-preservation, she forced herself to look away from him. Immediately his words sank in. They were easier to understand when she wasn’t blinded by his insanely good looks, and for the first time, she noticed the dark green backpack dangling from his fingers.

  Outrage filled her. “Hey! Give that to me!”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because it’s mine!” she said. “You said so yourself.”

  “Are you sure? Because from where I’m standing, things look a little different. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, after all.”

  “You can’t be serious,” she said with a quick roll of her eyes. “What would you do with them, anyway? It’s not like my clothes will fit you.”

  “Maybe not. But it turns out I’m particularly fond of the blue lace bra and panty set in the front pocket. If you want it back, I’m afraid it’s going to cost you.”

  His smile grew even wider, and the weird tingling spread through her e
ntire body. She knew it was stupid to be so overwhelmed by his sheer physical beauty, especially considering the fact that he was doing his best to torment her, but she couldn’t help herself. There was something about this strange, unfamiliar dragon that got deep inside her—even when she was beyond annoyed that he’d pawed through her stuff.

  Still, if she was honest, it wasn’t like she could really blame him for it. If she’d found a strange backpack in a tree in the middle of nowhere, she would have opened the thing up, too. She wouldn’t hold it for hostage, as he seemed hell-bent on doing, but she definitely would have checked it out.

  Still, it wouldn’t pay to let him know how much leeway she was willing to give him on the subject. Feigning boredom, she finally told him, “Never mind. It’s not like I need it, anyway.”

  He shrugged. “Well, if that’s how you really feel . . .” He slung the backpack over his shoulder and started walking in the opposite direction.

  Cecily stared at his retreating back in shock. He isn’t really going to take my clothes, she assured herself. Any minute now, he’ll stop and hand them to me. She waited and waited. Any minute now. Surely—

  “Hey! You can’t just disappear with my things!” she shouted after him. His steps didn’t so much as falter, though she’d pitched her voice as loud as she could, amazed at how much ground he’d managed to cover in a few seconds with those crazy-long legs of his.

  “Come on! I need my clothes. Please.”

  He paused then and feigned surprise, but those damn amber eyes of his all but shouted Gotcha! when he turned back to look at her. The bastard. “I thought you said you didn’t need them.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you always this perverse?”

  “You call this perverse?” he said with a laugh. “Darlin’, I haven’t even gotten warmed up.”

  “Well, before you get too hot and spontaneously combust, could you please toss me the stupid backpack? It’s not fireproof.”

  He tilted his head as he considered. “I could toss it to you. But I don’t think I’m going to.”

  At his cocky grin, she lost the battle to hold on to her patience. “You’re a real jerk. You know that?”

  “I am, but I’ll tell you what. Since the clothes mean so much to you, I’ll make you a deal. You come over here and get the backpack, and I’ll let you have it.” The look in his eyes said he didn’t believe for one second that she was going to leave her perch on the branch, where she was safely covered by a strategic arrangement of leaves.

  Never one to resist a challenge, Cecily was scrambling down the tree before she could think better of it, and headed straight for him with her hand outstretched. Maybe it was stupid to let him goad her into it, but she’d had about enough of his attitude. It was time he figured out that she gave back as good as she got.

  It took only a minute for her to cross the distance between them. As she got closer, she realized with a grim sort of delight that he was no longer smiling. He was too busy staring at her naked body. And while she wasn’t normally self-conscious of her nude form around anyone but her father’s Conseil—it was hard to be a shifter and be uncomfortable with nudity—his single-minded regard for her form made her nervous in a way that Julian’s disgusting leers never had.

  A shiver worked its way up her spine, and as she felt herself start to tremble, she thought briefly about shifting. After all, it was beyond stupid to stand out here, completely vulnerable, in front of this man. She didn’t even know who he was, only that he was another dragon. And not one from her clan. She knew every single male member of her clan, at least by sight, and she knew very well that this behemoth was not one of them. What was more, he didn’t smell like one of her kind—on a physical or psychic level.

  Add in the fact that he hadn’t come to the Wyvernmoon compound and introduced himself—as was expected of dragons visiting the area—and she was suddenly more than a little suspicious. Of course, it was kind of late for that, and she wished the thought had occurred to her before she’d dropped out of the tree to parade nude in front of him.

  C’est la vie. What was done was done. At this point, she had no choice but to brazen it out.

  Showing fear—or anything else—isn’t an option, she told herself, even as an unfamiliar heat started in the pit of her stomach and sizzled its way through her blood. Dragons were wild animals, after all . . .

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Logan watched in appreciation as the woman in the tree headed straight for him. She was completely naked, and while he knew that the gentlemanly thing to do was to hand her the backpack, he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. Not when it meant that she would cover up that delectable body he’d been getting glimpses of ever since he’d realized she was in the tree.

  He looked his fill as she got closer, impressed and awed by just how beautiful his little tree dragon was. Curved in all the right places, she was a little rounder than most of the women he knew. Her breasts were full and high and rosy tipped, her thighs soft, her belly just a little curved. But her waist was slender enough for him to span with both hands, and her legs were long and shapely.

  As she walked toward him with smooth, gliding strides, his gaze was drawn unerringly to the shadowy area at the apex of her thighs. He did his best not to look—doing so would step over the invisible line of conduct most shifters adhered to with members of the opposite sex—but it was a lot more difficult than it should have been. He found himself wanting to spread her legs, to see if she was as soft and pink there as she was everywhere else. His cock hardened at the thought and at the certainty that she would be.

  He was used to the Dragonstar women, who were gorgeous, no doubt about it. But they were all tall and toned, with muscles nearly as hard as his. This dragon, this woman, looked like something he could sink right into. Like she would make the most comfortable of resting spots.

  The thought of stretching out above her and burying his face in the sweet curve of her neck while her long blond hair wrapped itself around them aroused him even more. He wasn’t sure why, as that had never been one of his fantasies before. But looking at her, he couldn’t get the picture out of his mind. Maybe because he was so deep-down tired. He hadn’t realized just how exhausted he was until he’d landed up here the night before and had a few hours free from any and all forms of mental intrusion.

  It had been an incredible gift, one he hadn’t even known he needed.

  God, he was getting tired of his psychic gifts. Even with his ability to block, four centuries was too long to live with other people’s thoughts crowding into his head.

  Knowing her thoughts wouldn’t be a burden, though, he figured, as he dropped the shields he’d slammed into place the second he realized another person had invaded the mountaintop he had begun to think of as his. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he wanted to know what someone else was thinking.

  When he wasn’t immediately flooded by her feelings and imaginings and desires, he deliberately arrowed his consciousness toward her mind, trying to get inside her head to see what was up. It didn’t work. Her shields were rock-solid, impenetrable. At least by his first, relaxed foray. Her mental strength intrigued him, turned him on even more, and suddenly he found himself really wanting to know what was going on inside that brain of hers. He was just about to start digging a little, to launch a more aggressive foray into her brain, when a stray thought slipped through her defenses.

  She felt uncomfortable, on display, not nearly as relaxed with her nudity as her initial behavior had led him to believe. It was a strange reaction for a shifter, but, then, she wasn’t just any shifter, and this wasn’t just any situation. She was a woman completely alone with a strange man, and a small woman at that. If he had to guess, he would say she stood about five-five or five-six. A perfectly normal height for a human woman, but tiny for a shifter—at least by Dragonstar standards. At home, most of the women stood close to six feet tall. Still not as tall as the men, but within half a foot or less of most
of the male clan members.

  If the same held true of the Wyvernmoons—and he had no doubt that it would, based on the war parties they had sent into New Mexico—she must feel dwarfed by the men around her all the time. And his height, which was unusual even for a dragon shifter, could definitely be making her uncomfortable. Plus, if she was as soft as she looked, she was pretty much defenseless against him. She probably knew that, as well.

  The beast inside him let out a low, mean growl, began scratching at his insides in an effort to get out. Not to harm her, but to protect her. The vulnerability of this delicate little shifter obviously upset his dragon as much as it did him.

  He yanked the old, worn backpack he’d found in the tree off his shoulder and held it out to her with what he hoped was an innocuous smile. The last thing he ever wanted a part of was making a woman feel vulnerable—at least not in that way. And though he knew the shifter in front of him had claws and fire and probably some other powers when she was in dragon form, he didn’t know what she could do as a human. Or even if she could do anything at all.

  She looked surprised when he held the bag out to her, her big violet eyes going wide as a little bit of the fight—and fright—drained out of them. The surprise didn’t last long. Tossing her hair over her shoulder, she reached for the bag. The second her fingers closed over it, she whirled away, speeding toward the nearest clump of trees.

  She moved quickly, gracefully, nearly soundlessly, and he found himself straining to hear where she stopped. Was that it, then? Was she done with him, having gotten what she wanted? He wouldn’t blame her if she was, but the thought was strangely disappointing.

  Not so strange, he told himself forcefully. It was all part of the job. After all, when she’d gotten close to him, he’d scented Wyvernmoon on her. His guess when he’d first seen her had been right on—she was a member of the enemy clan. Maybe, if he played his cards right, finding an in wouldn’t be quite as difficult as he’d originally anticipated.