Remember when dragons were hot?
Excerpt from DRAGON DANCE, the second Dragon Queen book:
“Salim!” she shouted up the stairs. “It’s me, Cora. I brought your dragon back!”
Irritation propelled her up to the landing, which opened out into an acrylic and oil jungle. She had trouble focusing on any one painting; the landscapes overwhelmed her. They featured trees, rivers, skies, holes; panoramic fields and sheer cliff faces. She thought the “sky” in one painting resembled the rough walls of a stone-constructed dwelling.
She hadn’t even considered that Salim might be an art aficionado. It made sense, though. He was the Collector. The title might be unfair—he didn’t gather witches’ familiars for the simple joy of lining them up in some curio cabinet—but it was accurate. She shouldn’t be surprised that the title extended itself to art as well as spirits.
A portrait at the far end of the gallery deviated from the wild theme. Cora moved for a closer look and came face to face with herself. Except it wasn’t her image from a normal perspective; instead, Salim had painted an oil replica of the red dragon’s memory of her, flush-cheeked and in the throes of passion.
Fighting an urge to cover the canvas, she turned and scanned the paintings nearest her a second time. Strange angles, odd colors, bizarre points of focus—all created by Salim’s hand, but not dreamt up by him. Was this how he shed the dragon memories? Through art?
“What do you want?”
Cora jumped. She tracked Salim’s voice to a dark stairwell that she’d overlooked.
“Your dragon showed up in my bedroom.” She had to stand at just the right angle, not blocking even a sliver of light. Shadows fought to overtake him, crept close to his bare feet, which were perched on the edge of the bottom step. She hadn’t heard him come down from the third floor.
“What do you want me to do about it?”
“They’re yours. Keep them with you.”
“Are you asking me for help?”
“I’m asking you to keep them under control.”
“You didn’t help me when I asked for it,” he said. His toes curled around a lip of wood. “In fact, you turned around and walked away.”
She envied him his shadows and suddenly longed for something deep and dark in which to hide her abrupt, unexpected shame at the reminder.
“You didn’t need me,” she said, for herself more than for him. “Not that much. You knew what to do by yourself.”
He leaned forward into the light. Flat, mad eyes met her own. “Is that what you believe? That I knew what to do?” He stalked close and drove her backward toward the stairs. “Get out,” he commanded. “Figure out what to do on your own.”
The first time she saw Salim in Greg’s apothecary, he’d looked like the most delicious, most dangerous criminal ever dreamt up. Her muscles had gone a little mushy. He wasn’t gorgeous anymore, and her muscles felt like gelatin for entirely different reasons. Haggard lines scored either side of his nose and furrowed his brow. The last time she saw him, his jaw was smooth, clean shaven. Now, unkempt whiskers curled raggedly down his throat. Beneath the coarse, matted beard, the tendons in his neck flexed and released. He hadn’t brushed his hair in weeks, if the wild knots tufting above his ears were any indication.
Salim mirrored his art, both radiating “wild” vibes. A year ago, he had been a wholly different man than the one driving her away toward the stairs. Could she have caused this change in him?
“Salim, stop. I thought you knew.” She stopped retreating. The delicate skin at her hairline, at the corners of her eyes, tingled with the unexpected rush of adrenaline flooding her bloodstream. She would run if he made a motion to attack, but she decided to stand her ground until he did.
“Tell me,” he said, voice quiet and dangerous, “precisely what you thought I knew.”
“I thought—”
“What?”
“That you knew what to do about Greg, and about his dragon breaking free. You’re a dragonlord, aren’t you? You know better than anybody how to cope with the dragon spirits.”
“Do you have any idea what they would do to be near you?” Salim whispered the words, so close that the feverish heat he gave off warmed her own chilled skin.
“Kill each other,” she murmured. The first time the dragons showed up, her mother had said they would tear one another apart in a battle for dominance, for the prize of possessing her.
Salim reached for her hair. She flinched. Instead of backing down, he snatched a handful of her hair in his fist and used it to anchor her in place. She couldn’t move, couldn’t back away. He came so close his beard scraped her chin, and his lips brushed her cheek. “He remembers you,” Salim said, still whispering, as if trying to keep a secret from the dragons around them. “He remembers the texture of your hair, and the heat of your skin. He remembers exactly how much pressure it takes to redden your lips with a kiss.
“The strength of your pulse while we were inside you, the way your fingers curled as we held your wrists to the bed. He remembers the way your body stretched to fit us both, how fast your nipples responded and hardened, how you cried out and how you lost your voice. He remembers every breath of it. And he remembers it every fucking moment of his existence. Every moment of mine.
“He can’t protect himself anymore. He can’t stop remembering you long enough to preserve himself. His protection is left to me. And I can’t stop remembering you either.”
She swallowed and closed her eyes. Her hands flattened across his stomach. The muscles beneath her fingers jumped, flexed, and didn’t relax. He stood so taut that he trembled where she touched him. The kind thing would have been to take her hand away and wrestle free of his grip, establish some distance between them, but she didn’t feel very kind. Raw lust overrode kindness. It also overrode her hygienic sensibilities. She suddenly didn’t care that his breath smelled stale, that his hair smelled like scalp oils, or that his shirt was damp with sweat. His animal wildness had become hers at some point during the past few moments. She wanted to touch him lower, to feel his body’s response weighing in her palm, pressing hard against her wrist. She wanted to drive him down to the floor, to take him inside and give him a different memory, one that he didn’t have to share with anything or anybody else.
To read more, look for MATING CALL, DRAGON DANCE and DRAGON BOUND at Freya's Bower, Fictionwise and All Romance E-Books.
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