From This Day Forward (6 page)

“
We’ll just see about that . . .”

He felt a jab of magick at the base of his skull; a searing pain that shot through his cerebral cortex and numbed half his brain. He panted and went rigid at the intensity of it, trying to suck air into lungs that didn’t want to work.

She took advantage of his moment of vulnerability and latched onto his mouth. Powerful magick gripped his head like a vice grip, holding him still. Surprised and experiencing agonizing neurotransmitter aftershocks, he couldn’t move even if he wanted. She continued to kiss him. Her soft mouth moving on his. She barely seemed to notice he didn’t respond.

The magick eased. Apparently she couldn’t focus on the kiss and wield magick at the same time. Interesting.

He yanked away from her again. But she was faster, pressing him against the wall so the back of his head thunked into the jagged stone behind him. Pain echoed against the outside of his head now, too.

She aimed another blaze of energy at him.

It fired along his skin, biting as it went.

Excruciating pain spidered through his veins.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out she planned a full-blown seduction, one painful magickal punch at a time. And no way in hell was he going to allow the assault to go on for long.

Sexual sparring wasn’t in Noah’s interrogation repertoire. He didn’t play these games. Operator or no, he never ever crossed that line. Too much hung in the balance for him.
He had a moral code. One that only included the mission.

Noah was taller than the brunette, so he pressed his shoulders against the wall and angled his head back, away from her, to keep his mouth just out of reach.

She ran her palms down his chest instead. Over his abs, heading in a dangerous, dangerous direction. He forced ice—and non-reaction—into his veins. He would not be forced to respond to this woman, by God. He could feel the dragon rising, waiting patiently, but wanting so damned bad to be released, to take over and take total control of the situation.

“
What do you want?” he ground out through clenched teeth.

“
Come on, Captain. It’s not hard to figure out.”

“
Yeah, but no one goes to these lengths for a booty call.”

Just before she got to his dick, he twisted and slammed his body into hers, taking her by surprise, the full body slam made her stagger back a few steps, but she kept her balance enough to remain on her feet and came right back at him, eyes blazing, mouth pulled tight in a fierce snarl.

“Ah, you like it rough. I can accommodate, Captain.” She jabbed at him again with a thrust of blistering power that sent him almost rocking on his ass. He stumbled.

The chains alone kept him upright. Shit.

He took the blast of fiery energy to the chest this time. His heart thumped hard, a sledge hammer pounding to get through the walls of his chest. A pain rocketed down his left arm. The bands of tension around his ribs cinched tighter.

Somehow, she manipulated his own biorhythms to work against him. The pulse at the base of his throat slammed like a cornered animal trying to find its way out of a cage. And the muscles in his neck seized into tight knots.

“Still playing hard to get?” She grabbed his hips and brought them flush against her body. Cool leather against naked flesh. “I’ll make a deal with you. Stop resisting me. Give me what I want and I’ll give you what you want. One, good, responsive kiss, and I’ll give you an answer to that question.”

He studied her face. Took in the sober, assessing look in her eyes. The dilated pupils. She was aroused and seemed like she wanted only one thing at the moment. The smell of desire, thick and balmy, hung in the air, snaking around him and enticing him to come, to partake, just for a moment. Taste.

True evil. Echoes of Eve in the garden with the snake.

He needed to know the reason he was here. How high the stakes were and why Sammy had been involved.

Why one of his men would go as far as betraying him and the U.S. government for this woman . . . for a reason that sat just beyond his comprehension. Elusive.

Seemed like a reasonable exchange. A kiss.

Easy. Simple. Non-threatening.

It couldn’t be that clear-cut. She wanted something more than a kiss or sex. But he didn’t know what. Once he knew, he could shift, change
to dragon, and get the hell out of here and back to camp with an explanation, or a version of it, that the United States military would accept. Then, he’d understand the stakes. What hung in the balance. And he’d have done his job. Nothing more. Nothing less.

“
Deal.” Noah needed her to compromise her position a little more though, give him the upper hand. The advantage. If he had a hope in hell of getting out of here and back where he belonged, he needed her vulnerable. “But, first, you need to unchain my hands. I can’t respond to anything with my hands in chains.” He lifted his hands and the manacles clanked—metal against metal and metal against stone.

She considered him a long moment, her amped up desire for him clearly waging a war with her need to keep him bound and harmless.

She slipped a key from her pocket, inserted it into the lock of the shackles, and his chains hissed open, and clanged to the earthen and stone floor. Point one, team Noah.

The dragon lifted his head. Alert. Waiting for the right moment to pounce.

Noah chaffed his wrists. After only a short time, the heavy metal had already scored his skin. His legs remained shackled. But the dragon could handle metal leg restraints if Noah could incapacitate the woman.

“
Kiss me.” She stood a few inches in front of him, daring him to do what she commanded. This was trouble. Plain and simple. Nothing was ever this straightforward when you scratched the surface. Hell, and he needed to do more than scratch the surface to find out what lurked below with this woman. He was sure of it and it didn’t make him happy.

He readied the dragon. It opened its mouth in a silent roar. Moments away from attack.

The woman’s eyes remained on his face. She had no clue the dragon readied himself. Noah met her verbal challenge with action of his own. He palmed her neck. Drew her closer. His nostrils flared, he breathed in her musky scent.

It wasn’t sunshine and light like April’s.

A pain, having nothing to do with the woman standing in front of him and everything to do with the woman he loved back home in Mystic Springs, lanced his chest. God, he missed his wife. And he was going to change that. When he escaped, he’d get home to see her. To hold her. And to kiss her.

He’d make this right. Somehow. As soon as he could.

He didn’t want to give in to this woman or kiss her, but he had to stop her and to do so he had to get closer. Distract her and get inside her head.

This was a job. Nothing more.

A military maneuver he’d execute with precision.

The woman’s chest brushed his. He lowered his head. His lips touched hers. He went through the right motions, his mouth moved on hers, his tongue invaded her mouth. But in his head he kept it clinical. Deliberate. Professional.

His core body temperature dropped. Dragon magick filtered through him, seeped into her, and slithered through her mind.

She stilled. Didn’t breathe. She was thinking. He could tell she felt something wasn’t right, but she couldn’t figure out exactly what was wrong.

He turned up the heat on the kiss. Eliciting passion—fear, anger, pride, even lust—never hurt when trying to addle a target’s senses—mundane or magickal; it served to distract them from their purpose, kept them off balance. Depending on the magickal, any strong visceral emotion worked the same way.

But not for him.

Noah worked the opposite. He could be ice-cold during highly emotional situations. He’d learned long ago to clamp down on those strong feelings . . . to control them, funneling the power straight into his magick.

It had served him well.

The intensity of the kiss scorched his skin. Yet, he remained focused. Analytical. Searching for the right piece of info on the metaphysical plane, the Intel that would connect all the dots.

This woman’s mind was a twisty, dark place.

There. He’d almost missed it. An innocuous black box, lid closed, shoved into the darkest recesses of her mind. He reached for it, the dragon mage energy swirling, creating a funnel of icy wind strong enough to lift the secret compartment and remove it before she noticed him fiddling around in there.

All
Noah had to do was to take possession of the box. Then he’d know what she was hiding. He sent a short burst of power to yank the box free. He’d discover what was inside later. Tucking the battered oak chest within the churning magick of an icy waterspout he directed within the woman’s psyche, he turned to continue his exploration.

A flash of color caught his attention. He stilled. A hoard stone. Powerful and glittering a bright orange carnelian. He took a closer look. The stone had been cleaved in half. Not good. That’d explain the erratic energy he sense
d from her.

But why? Why did she have a hoard stone? And only half a stone at that? Her magick held markers of sorcery, straight up. Not dragon magick. She couldn’t possess a hoard stone, unveiled, unless she was dragon born . . . or a dragon mate.

Snow flurried around him, reminding him what he was supposed to be doing. He’d been at it so long, ice had begun to form inside her mind. Brain freeze. Damn.

She’d have one hell of a headache when he was done.

He retreated, draining her magick as he withdrew.

She jerked out of his grasp.
“Damn you!”

A furl of fire melted the ice. The wintery mix that had formed into a funnel to transport the box warmed. The churning ice, wind, and water slowed, the box shifted, dropped.

Noah pulsed the magick, holding tight. But she fought him. Fire for ice. Heat against cold.

A magickal tug-of-
war raged for the box. Whatever secrets she held inside she fought fiercely to keep. He’d almost completed the transfer from metaphysical to physical when she let go, her power raced through him, performing a magickal frisk—not unlike he’d just done to her—then she dove for his hoard stone—the large bowenite stone that sat at the center of his own hoard. April wore a matching stone on her finger as an outward sign to all magickals she was protected by the Dragon Wyng and the Hoard of Easton.

He clamped down on his own magick. The stone would fight The Fox off. It protected itself and him from its enemies. And everyone outside of the dragon himself and his soul mate was the enemy when it came to a personal dragon hoard stone and his hoard.

He’d never faced a bigger threat to his hoard.

But when he surged his
power internally to protect his hoard stone, the funnel holding the box of secrets aloft dissipated. The black box plummeted, falling with a loud, soul-jarring crash.

The contents spilled onto the floor.

A dozen hoard stones tumbled onto the floor.

The hoard thief.

“I’ll be damned. It’s you. You’re the hoard thief. But how?” He didn’t finish because she grabbed for his stone.

He lashed out. A blast of ice and wind so strong it forced her magick back, out of reach. His energy bisected his own hoard stone, and the opaque green mineral magnified its strength.

The Fox fell back. She didn’t stand a chance.

In that moment, Noah unleashed his dragon.

In the same instant, the woman drew her power to herself. Swirling, fiery energy cloaked her.

Before Noah totally transformed
—while his mind remained most analytical, most rational, and cognizant, and most human—he watched her initiate her own change. Scales appeared on her pale skin. Bright orange, fiery red, and hot pink.

A dragon. A God-damned fire-breathing female dragon.

Fuck.

Noah steeled his dragon for a ferocious fight.

He couldn’t kill her anyway. Not without knowing who she really was, where she’d come from, or her family line. Finding out that kind of information and what would deal the death-blow would take time. Time he didn’t have. So for now,  he needed to retreat and regroup. He had to get away. Free himself to discover more about this woman, this dragon-sorceress, who’d been stealing hoards from some of the most powerful dragons in the world over the last year.

He roared. The ice dragon discharged a st
ream of ice and hoarfrost that covered the other dragon. Coating her in an icy sheet that blinded her. By the time she’d shaken off the impediment, he’d breathed a thick fog of gas into the cave. The noxious vapor had already begun to paralyze her. Her fire sputtered and died in a final smoky puff. The female dragon slumped to the floor.

With effort
, her voice huskier and slurred, she said, “This is not over, Captain. I’m coming after you and your sweet April. Your stone. Your hoard. Your life. All will be mine before the new moon.”

“
Don’t count on it. I’ll be ready. And I always protect what’s mine.” He shifted back to human form and snapped the shackles onto the wrists and ankles of the semi-conscious dragon.