Page 8 of Destiny of the Dragons

Smoke grumbled, and they went into the back to meet their contact. Irritation rose, and he was ready to haggle harder for making it easy for Mia to leave.

Smoke woke up in a cold sweat. The sheets clung to his clammy skin, and Jace stirred in the bed next to him.

Smoke let out a slow breath, breathing the clear air in through his nose. His heart pounded erratically, fear coating his mouth.

For a moment, his mind played tricks on him.

The last few years were only a dream. A necessary escape from the torture of his daily life. Jace was a figment of his imagination, and now he was imagining a third to his Treasure, as if he had ever had that much luck in his life.

No. He pushed the thought away. He was laying on a soft bed, the sheets silky against his skin. No concrete, no burlap sack. He and Jace had eaten Indian food for dinner, and the gnawing hunger was gone, a phantom of his memory.

Jace rolled over and threw an arm around his chest. Smoke froze his first reflex one of violence. Jace snuggled against him.

Jace often told him that Smoke saved him from the streets. First rivals for the jobs a single dragon could perform, now they were stronger together.

Jace didn’t understand the truth, that Jace had saved him. He was barely functioning before Jace came along and forced him to eat regularly. Forced him to by a real bed and not a mattress on the floor.

Jace forced him to plan for a future longer than the next day, the next moment.

Jace forced him to have hope, and now there was the girl.

Mia. Her name rolled off his tongue and made him hard. His libido, always unpredictable, roared at the sight of her in the market.

His dragon wanted her.

The thought was a cold splash of fear.

Jace knew his history. He didn’t have to worry about scaring Jace off. Jace had followed him, pursued him relentlessly. Judging by the haunted expression on Mia’s face, she’d faced her own demons.

Smoke didn’t want to turn into one, but he didn’t know how to be the dragon she needed.

His imprisonment had taken years of his life, and then years left recovering. He hoped his past wouldn’t steal more of his life away.

Smoke took Jace’s hand. He had to get stronger, had to become the dragon Jace and Mia needed.

Mia cleaned the countertop for the millionth time. She should be tracking down her lost spellbook. She should have been worrying about what sort of spell Cross wanted.

Instead, she spent the night tossing and turning, dreams of her pressed between two dragon lovers.

Heat flushed over her chest. She had to think about something, anything else.

But once the image was in her mind, she couldn’t stop. Jace was all sharp swagger and arrogance, his short brown hair artfully tousled. He’d had on a white dress shirt, and wore it open at the neck. It should have made him look like a fuckboi, but instead he looked like aGQmodel on his off day.

Smoke was just as hot. Dark brown eyes, with cheekbones sharp as knives, and jet black hair that hung to the middle of his back. One look from him and her skin tingled.

Her body spent the entire last day and a half in a state of arousal.

She wasn’t ugly, but she wasn’t attractive enough to draw two hot dragon shifters across a crowded marketplace to her. That crap only happened in movies or books. But there they were, and they followed her to the café like there was nothing more they wanted in the world.

She told Charlotte, last night, on the phone. Charlotte had told her she was right to be suspicious, they were clearly working some sort of angle.

A tiny part of Mia wished they wanted her for her. How bad would it have been if she just went to bed with the both of them? One night of intense sex would be worth the risk.

She tried to picture both dragons touching her at once, but her brain short-circuited.

The doorbell jingled, and she jumped. It was another patron.

Mia wasn’t waiting for them. She wasn’t. Jace did say they would stop by, and it was already two in the afternoon.

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