Dragon's Promise

That was something he’d take up with Danielle later.

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t living here then.”

“Ah.”

He was taken aback by the shortness of her answer. “I am not engaged.”

She rolled her eyes and shrugged. “That doesn’t matter.”

“What did you—”

She turned to face him, throwing up her hands to stop him from talking. She screamed in frustration and then nearly shouted, “Our son has been kidnapped!”

The beast reared back and growled with enough force to send him stumbling backward. The growl turned menacing as it vibrated inside his chest. Between that unexplained bout of temper and the sudden roaring in his ears, he wasn’t certain he’d heard her correctly. After taking a deep breath and shaking his head, he asked, “Our what?”

“Son. Our son.”

“That isn’t possible.”

“Yes,” she shot back. “It is possible.” She covered her face with a shaking hand for a second before adding, “I don’t have the time, nor the inclination, for this.”

He repeated, “It’s not possible.” He would have known. The beast should have known. This woman had been marked as its mate, why hadn’t the beast known, or at least sensed this had happened?

“Damn it!” she yelled. “Do you think I sleep with so many men that I don’t know who the father of my child is?”

“No.” His mind swirled with an effort to make sense of this. First, however, he needed to defuse her anger before she managed to give the beast a reason to be uncontrollably enraged. “That isn’t what I meant. Calm down. Give me a minute to—”

“Would you like a calculator?” She jerked her purse from her shoulder, rummaged inside and slapped her smartphone against his chest. “Here. We were together a little over a year ago. He’s three months old. You do the math.”

Sean cursed and pushed the phone aside. “I assumed you were on the pill.”

Not only was it lame, it was the flimsiest excuse he’d ever used. Especially since he knew what her response would be.

“Oh, of course you did. And I suppose you also assumed that human birth control pills would somehow be effective?”

He closed his eyes at the expected reply. He’d never had to worry about any type of danger inherent with spur-of-the-moment sex, since his beast had the uncanny ability to sense when something wasn’t quite right and would steer him away from the encounter. As for birth control—his brothers had assured him that it was a nonissue since he could only impregnate his...mate.

Sean wanted to kick himself. Once they’d walked into her bedroom he’d been so wrapped up in lust, need, desire and her that he’d never given a second thought to the fact his dragon had marked this female at the bar. How had he let himself get so out of touch with reality? It wasn’t as if he could blame the alcohol—he’d only had two beers. Regardless, intoxication wasn’t an acceptable excuse for anything. Especially not for this.

Caitlin dropped the phone back inside her purse, and then she grasped the lapels of his suit jacket. “I don’t care if you believe me or not. I know he’s your son, and he’s in danger.”

Sean looked down at her as he willed the snarling dragon to calm down enough for him to think. “I never said I didn’t believe you.”

“He’s just a baby.” Tears welled in her eyes. Her chin quivered. “Please, help me.”

He could hear the beast’s roar in his ears, saw it thrash back and forth in his mind. The dragon was feeling trapped and angry, but the woman in front of him was afraid and worried. His beast would soon get over its hissy fit. However, Caitlin couldn’t be expected to do the same. He stroked her cheek and brushed away a falling tear. “Yes. Of course I will.”

She fell against his chest with a cry. “Thank you.”

Ignoring a sudden bout of heartburn caused by the dragon’s displeasure with this entire situation, Sean restarted the elevator and then, against his better judgment, he wrapped his arms around her. “It’ll be fine. We’ll get him back safely. Have the kidnappers asked for a ransom?”

She nodded against his chest.

“That’s good. Money isn’t an obstacle.”

“The ransom isn’t money.”

The kidnapper didn’t want money? Then what was the demand? “So you’ve talked to the kidnapper?”

The elevator doors whooshed open, and Caitlin stepped out of his embrace. She shrugged one shoulder and then said, “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

Sean frowned at her elusive answer. “My suite is right around the corner. We can talk there.”

He escorted her down the hallway in silence. Once inside his apartment suite, Sean crossed the living room to open the sliding door to the balcony. A blast of cool, late-autumn air flowed into the suite. He breathed in deeply, hoping the crispness of the air would help to quell the uneasiness in his chest.

Stepping away from the door, he motioned Caitlin toward the sofa. “Would you like something to drink?”

She shook her head as she settled into a corner of the couch.

Instead of taking a seat himself, he perched on the arm of the chair across the room from her. “Why don’t you start at the beginning.”

“The day before yesterday, something broke into my room while I was napping.”

“Something?”

“Yeah—something.” She shrugged. “At first I thought it might be you, until the icy evilness of it washed over me, taking away my breath.”

As far as he knew, that type of evilness could belong to only one being. A sickening feeling in the pit of Sean’s stomach formed, growing with each passing word of her explanation.

“It was as if it knew I’d realized the thing’s vile intent, because it conjured a spell that threw me against a wall and pinned me there until it exited with our son in tow.”

“Can you describe it?”

“At first it was wispy with no real identifiable form.”

That explained why she’d thought it might be him. His dragon form was little more than smoke unless he—or the Dragon Lord—willed it into something more solid.

“And when it started to take shape, it was like a beast from a nightmare.” Her lip quivered, but she quickly turned her head away as she continued, “A monster has our son.”

Sean’s beast growled with rage. Not with a vague undirected anger like it had upon first seeing Caitlin, but with murderous intent toward the wizard who had taken its offspring.

“You’d said it spoke to you and demanded ransom?”

She nodded, but didn’t answer.

Sean rose and crossed the room to kneel before her. He stroked her cheek, coaxing her to look at him. “What, Caitlin? Tell me, what does it want?”

“The book, the box, the emerald and sapphire pendants.” She stared at him. “And for you to complete your task.”

Sean jerked back as if he’d been burned. While the items demanded as ransom told him that his suspicion had been correct—Nathan the Learned had his son—it gave him no clue as to what task he was supposed to complete.

Caitlin edged around him and stood up. With her hands pressing into her stomach, she moved across the room—away from him. Staring out the open balcony doors, she asked, “How are you involved with this...this thing?”

“I’m not.” Even though as far as he knew he wasn’t working with any malevolent being—at least not of his own free will—his answer felt...off...not quite right somehow. It felt as if his subconscious was vaguely aware of something that hadn’t yet fully registered in his brain yet.

“Then why did it place so much importance on this task of yours?” She leaned against the doorjamb. “It laughed when it repeated itself more than once.”

“It has a name—Nathan—”

“No!” She spun around with a cry before he could complete his sentence. “Not Nathan the Learned?”

Tightening his grasp on the arm of the sofa, he frowned. What did a succubus know about a Druid wizard? He straightened and turned to face her. “How do you know about Nathan?”

“My father is a vampire.”

He rubbed his neck. “I already gathered that much.”

“He’s been around long enough to have run into the Learned a time or two. Besides, my father has a seat on the High Council of our kind, so there isn’t much he doesn’t know, or hasn’t heard.” She shrugged again. “And what he doesn’t know, my mother can usually find out.”

He almost didn’t want to ask. “And your mother is a...what?”

“Dead.”

Sean resisted the urge to vanish. A few years ago he would have walked out of the apartment at such a senseless answer. But he’d seen and learned so many things the last two years that he was fairly certain this wouldn’t be anything new. “Dead as in a zombie?”

Her eyes widened. “Gross. No. Dead as in physically deceased.”

“Ah.” Feeling foolish, he offered condolences. “I am sorry for your loss.”

“No need. She’s still here.”

Maybe he hadn’t learned everything just yet. “What?”

Caitlin rolled her eyes. “She refuses to move on without my father, so her spirit is still here.”

“That raises more questions than I want to get into right now. But I don’t suppose your mother can find out where...” He paused, realizing that he didn’t know the child’s name.

“Sean.”

“What?”

“Sean. His given name is Sean Alexander Drake II.”

Just. Simply. Wonderful. Since there was no way for her to know that what she’d done in naming the boy went against centuries of Drake tradition.

“Is there a reason you made it so easy for him to be found by any dragon slayer out there?”

She shrugged. “Since I’m the slayer, it actually didn’t cross my mind. Besides, his name had nothing to do with you or what you are.”

“Right.” He didn’t buy that for a minute. “Then why make it so obvious he’s my son?”

“Because it was the easiest way to piss off my parents.”

“And I’m sure you succeeded.”

“Completely.”

Why she’d want to enrage her family in such a manner was a question left for another time. “I don’t suppose your mother can find out where Junior is being held?”

She cringed visibly at his use of Junior. “Sean—his name is Sean.”

“Can she find out where Sean is being held?”

“She already has. He’s in a castle ruins on the east coast of Ireland.”

Sean found it interesting that the wizard had holed up about as close to Mirabilus Isle as he could without being easily detected. His family had taken the larger jet, but Braeden’s personal one was still in the hangar at the airport. He pulled out his cell phone and directed Harold to have the jet fueled and ready to go as quickly as possible then tapped it off without explaining why. He and Caitlin needed to get to Mirabilus, and she had no means of otherworldly transportation.

Turning his attention back to Caitlin, he asked, “Does your mother know if he’s harmed the baby?”

“Our son is fine—for now.”

That was a relief. Although there was no telling how long that might last. A flash of heat coursing down the back of his head, then down his spine, distracted him.

“He’ll be safe for a week.”

Sean frowned at the way she’d answered his question before he’d asked, and then he realized her intrusion had caused the flash of heat. “Stay out of my head, Caitlin.”

“I’m sorry. Since we’re physically so close, it’s just easier.”

“Easier isn’t always right.” Before, at the bar, she hadn’t complained about him delving into her mind, but he wondered how she would react to the same type of trespass now and reached out to brush her thoughts.

His touch seemed to crack the mental dam she’d been using to rein in her needs. At first a trickle of weak, nervous energy flowed free. Then, as if the dam burst, the hunger she’d been holding back rushed out, nearly overwhelming him. Her raw, aching need was stronger now than it had been the night they’d first met. She was literally starving to death.

He studied her closely. While her copper-streaked auburn hair still fell in waves down her back, the shimmering luster had dulled, as had that twinkling spark in her amber gaze. Her attempt to hide the circles beneath her eyes might have worked from a distance, but now, standing before her, he could see the darker areas where the makeup had worn away. Her face seemed thinner, and her cheeks gaunt.

He lowered his focus, briefly noticing the line of padding in the shoulders of her jacket, before seeing the stark definition of her collarbone.

Sean cursed silently. This hadn’t happened in the hours since their child had been taken. Without thinking, he backed her against a wall, pinning her forcibly with his body. “What have you done, Caitlin?”

“What are you talking about?” She pushed at his shoulders. “Nothing. I’ve done nothing. Let me go.”

He ignored her feeble attempt to free herself. Instead, he opened himself to the emotions battling for escape—an avalanche of need, hunger, anger and fear cascaded against him—a tide of emotions he could easily calm, if she’d let him.

Her hunger and craving tore at him, creating a sudden urge to care for her. He didn’t question the urge; she was the mother of his child and his dragon’s mate. She was his responsibility, and he would do whatever he must to ensure her well-being.

Seemingly over his early bout of anger, his beast chuffed in agreement and then sniffed the air around her. Sean wanted to groan at the lack of life force surrounding her. How many weeks, or months, had she gone without feeding? How many more would pass before she perished?

“You’ve done nothing?” He slipped a hand beneath her jacket and felt her ribs. “Nothing?” The dragon raged with an unfamiliar worry. Fighting to control his own concern at what she’d done to herself and the beast’s anxiety, Sean said, “You will be of no use if you are dead. You need to feed.”

She sighed raggedly and leaned against him. With her lips against the hollow of his neck, Caitlin agreed. “I know.”

Letting one claw form, Sean hooked the dragon talon into the neck of her silky blouse, warning, “If this is a favorite top, consider it gone.”

“Don’t,” she whispered, but offered no resistance.

“You are spent.” He trailed a line of kisses along her cheek. “Let me help.”

At her soft sigh, he shredded the fabric and then slowly traced the smooth curve of his talon across her stomach, drawing a moan from her lips.

She shrugged out of her jacket and torn blouse, letting the clothing fall to the floor, and placed her hands against his chest. “What are you going to do to help?”

Her touch was like ice, cold and lifeless against his skin. He again sensed her fear and hunger. He knew the fear would only be calmed once her child was back safely in her arms. But her hunger twisted in his gut with an unspoken desperation that only increased his desire to feed her.

“First you are going to gain some strength.” He retracted the claw and covered her hands with one of his own. “Then we’re going to Mirabilus to get our son back and kill that bastard wizard once and for all.”

When she only nodded, he dipped his head to ask in a whisper, “What use will you be to the child if you’ve starved yourself?”

She tried to free her hands, but he held them securely against his chest. “I’m fine.”

Sean laughed softly at her lie. “You are far from fine.” He pulled her into his embrace asking, “When did you last feed?”

“I don’t remember.”

He cursed at the shakiness of her answer, released her from the circle of his embrace, swung her up into his arms and headed down the hall toward his bedroom.

She stared at him in shock. “What are you doing?”

“I would think that was obvious.” He kicked open the door, crossed the room and dropped her onto the bed.

When she scrambled, almost backstroking toward the far edge of the bed, he easily grasped her legs and pulled her back to him. Kneeling on the bed, he leaned over her and held her head between his cupped hands. “Why didn’t you come to me?”

Caitlin swallowed a cry of frustration at the concern she heard in his voice. She could claim that she had tried everything to contact him, but they’d both know that was a lie. Even though she’d been unable to reach him via the phone, she could have searched for him, driven here to Dragon’s Lair. While tracking him down might have angered him, he would have come to understand the need.

Or she could say she hadn’t wanted to tell him about the baby, but she would know the strength of that lie. She had wanted to tell him, wanted him by her side during the pregnancy and delivery, but her parents and the High Council had insisted vehemently that she hold on to that secret, going so far as to imprison her—a near death sentence for her—when they discovered that she had reached out to him by calling Dragon’s Lair.

Still, at this moment, she’d be safer back in her cell. This was the last place she wanted to be—and the only place she longed to be. Beneath his unwavering stare, she finally answered, “Because I don’t want to need you.”

His easy smile was her undoing. That smug, knowing, self-satisfied, all-male half smile was enough to make the walls she’d painstakingly erected around her emotions crash to her feet as nothing more than tiny shards of broken glass.

His gentle touch stroking her cheek, brushing the hair from her face, tracing her lips, coaxed a strangled cry from her.

Blinking back unwanted tears of shame and disgust at the ease of her surrender, she slipped her arms around him and whispered, “Damn you to hell, Drake.”

“At least I won’t be lonely with you by my side.”

Between his feathery kisses, she exclaimed, “I hate you.”

Again with that smile, he answered, “I know.”

“I’d rather we didn’t—”

He covered her mouth with his, effectively cutting off her words.

When his tongue swept across hers and he exhaled, his breath filled her. It warmed her and fed life into her starving soul. He had every reason to be angry with her, but still he freely shared his life force. How could she not set aside her misgivings?

It didn’t matter that she was a St. George, a slayer of dragons, or that he was a Drake and supposedly her mortal enemy. Nor did it matter what her family or the High Council thought best. She needed this—she needed him.

She had craved his touch for so many months now that she no longer cared what her parents or the council had said. They were wrong—all of them were wrong. They’d insisted that her obvious path was to kill the dragon and had expressed disappointment that she hadn’t done so when she’d had the chance. But she knew with a certainty she couldn’t explain, that her only path in life was to not kill the dragon. Without the beast, and the man, she feared she might be the one who died.

Without releasing her, his cell phone hit the nightstand right before she heard their clothes rustle to the floor and felt the cool breeze rush across her flesh. She greatly appreciated some of his more than handy skills.

He rolled onto his back, pulling her atop him, and broke their kiss. “Now, if you’re done complaining and protesting, let me help you. Take what you need, Caitlin.”

She sat up to straddle him, her hands flat on his chest. His expression was serious, no hint of teasing quirked his lips. His heart beat strong and steady beneath her palms, no uneven thumps to give evidence of a lie.

She wanted to accept his offer, but knew full well that she was so starved for his touch that things might get out of control this time. If she drained him, killed him, she’d never see her son again, and she’d spend the rest of her life running from his family. Worry for his well-being prompted her to admit, “I don’t know if I can stop myself.”

“Darlin’,” he drawled in his best tough-man voice, “I think we both know full well that you can’t hurt me.”

When she still hesitated, Sean reached up to thread his fingers through her hair. He cupped the back of her head, and she shivered at the tingles running across her scalp.

His bright green gaze held hers, and she swore she could see the dragon within coaxing her closer as the man pulled her down. Memories of their last time together filled her mind, heated her blood and gave her the oddest sense of belonging. Coming here had been the right thing to do.

When their lips barely touched, he challenged, “I dare you to try draining me.”

How could she possibly resist such an offer?

Chapter 3

Sean knew Caitlin would be unable to resist his challenge. He relaxed beneath her as she hungrily kissed him, inhaling as much of his energy as she could.

Knowing that a kiss, a drawing in of his breath, would never be enough for her to gain full strength, he slid his hands down the smoothness of her back, chasing the rising goose bumps with his fingertips, and grasped her hips to lift her.

He wanted her healthy and whole—needed her to be at her very best for what was to come. It would take both of them to defeat Nathan and rescue the child. And she would need all the strength she could summon for what would come afterward.

He shifted beneath her and eased her slowly down the length of his erection. Her moan echoed his as she curled her fingers into his shoulders, her nails pressing hard into his flesh.

Sean closed his eyes, savoring what was more than just a physical union of their bodies. This intimate act was more than just a way to replenish Caitlin’s energy, or to satisfy the hunger between them.

It was a way to feed their beasts—to soothe the anger emanating from their souls. The growing heat of their bodies, the touch of their lips, transformed the hurt into a power that could very possibly keep them both alive.

Through a thick fog of desire he heard the security alarm scream from his office down the hall. His cell phone vibrated off the nightstand.

Before he could respond to either, Caitlin rolled off him with a harshly gasped curse. Her wide-eyed gaze flew to the bedroom doorway. “Mother! What are you doing here?”

Sean quickly spelled their clothing back on, swallowed hard and then rose from the bed. He stared at the uninvited, semisolid, still-forming woman walking into his bedroom. “Mrs. St. George?”

His beast twitched, backing away in the same manner it did when confronted by an angry Aunt Danielle. Sean rolled his eyes at the adolescent behavior of his dragon.

Mrs. St. George ignored him. Instead, once fully visible, she pinned Caitlin with a hard glare. “I thought we discussed you having anything to do with this...this vile animal.”

Animal? The dead wife of a vampire thought him an animal? Sean was amazed at the woman’s audacity.

“Like it or not, Mother, he is my son’s sire.”

Narrowing his eyes, Sean frowned at the term sire. He was the child’s father, not his overlord. But that was a detail he’d take up with Caitlin later. For now he chose to silently watch the byplay between the two women. He hoped it would give him a chance to catch his breath and regain some composure.

“This is how you defy the council? They gave you orders to keep your mouth shut and to stay away from this beast. Instead, you lied to us about where you were going and like some cheap whore, come running to the enemy’s bed?”

“He is not my enemy.”

Mrs. St. George flung her arm out and pointed a shaking finger at Sean. “That is a filthy beast. Your father would run him through with a sword and roast him on a spit like the pig he is, if he knew what you were doing.”

The dragon within shook off its initial apprehension at Mrs. St. George’s appearance. He focused his growing rage, intent on self-preservation, on the older woman. Never before had the desire to kill been so strong and overpowering—not even when he’d felt driven to murder his brothers. Who did this...ghost...think she was to threaten him in such a manner? Roast him on a spit? Sean clenched his fists tighter at his sides as he fought the unrelenting urge to shift into dragon form, rear up and do a little roasting of his own.