The Dragon's Flame, page 14
“Wait what?”
“He came with us last night so that Seamus would see him as someone I value enough to bring as council to a war meeting.” Dahlia leveled her gaze with mine. “Though I never could have predicted my uncle would have wanted to get one of my people that brazenly, it actually opened the door more perfectly than I could have hoped. Thomas made his first check in this morning once he finally got in, and he said it couldn’t have gone any smoother.”
“Why didn’t you tell us earlier?” I asked.
“It was a need-to-know mission.” Ben was starting to do that more—speak for Dahlia. “It would’ve been more dangerous for Thomas if more people knew what he was about to do.”
“Has Thomas even done anything like this before? Why was he chosen to go in?”
“He hasn’t done this before, but he has helped Khan do something like this a couple of years ago.” Dahlia’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “And he wasn’t chosen, he volunteered. He couldn’t stand by while he watched the people he told to go out into the city come back dead. He had to do something, which I respect, so I let him go. I made him promise that he would proceed with the utmost caution.”
Lilly placed a calming hand on my arm. “Addy, it really isn’t a big deal that no one told you. I only found out last night after you fell asleep.”
“She told you?”
Lilly shrugged. And I pushed my chair back.
“Excuse me. I think I’ll go back to the kitchen, since that’s the only kind of contribution I can make.”
I stomped out of the war council without looking back.
“I just couldn’t believe it, Khan.” I paced back and forth as I ranted and poor Khan watched. “I thought I was starting to make real contributions to the war, but apparently, I’m only good for food and emotional support.”
“I can’t believe they really meant anything by it by excluding ya, Addy. I really doubt it. When I went undercover a few years ago, only Dahlia’s father and Thomas, who was my handler, knew about the mission until I came back for the debrief. It really is safer for the undercover person if no one else is in on the secret.”
I huffed and dropped to the floor beside him, wrapping my arms around my knees and resting my chin on my arms. Khan slid closer and pulled me to his side.
“What’s all this really about, huh?” His soft voice eased some of the irritation brewing under my skin.
“It’s just that…” I paused because I didn’t really know how to put all the feelings into words. “I want to help. I want to bring you home and help keep Lilly and my family and Dahlia safe. But I’m not strategic like Lilly is, I’m not as good a medic as my mother and sisters, I’m not a leader like Dahlia and Ben. I’m just there, and sometimes I bring food. How is that helping anyone? It was just obvious when they didn’t include me on Thomas’ mission that I wasn’t essential to the planning and everyone is humoring me, letting me hang around. I’m trying my best to be useful, but I’m the most useless person there.”
Khan’s squeezed my waist and pulled me until I leaned my head on his shoulder.
“I know it doesn’t feel like you’re helpin’, but ya got to remember, Dahlia never had anyone to support her, never had a friend, ‘cept me. She’s only ever had generals and soldiers, people to order around. She probably doesn’t know what to do with ya, honestly, other than to have ya at the meetings with everyone else, even if it’s just to be there to listen and sometimes bring food.”
I took a deep breath. Khan’s words meant a lot, especially since he was the person who knew Dahlia the best. Now that I was finally calming down, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d overreacted at the meeting that day.
“I should probably apologize to Dahlia when I see her in the morning,” I mumbled.
“I doubt she’s expectin’ ya to, but it definitely won’t hurt her,” Khan said, pressing a kiss to the side of my head.
“Sorry if I seem so crazy. I really don’t know what’s wrong with me. I feel like my emotions have been all over the place since…”
I didn’t mean to bring it up again, it just came out, and even though I didn’t finish the sentence, Khan knew exactly what I’d been about to say.
“Since I left?” he asked, his voice pained. “I’m sorry again, Addy. I wish there was another way and that I was with ya right now.”
“I know, I shouldn’t have brought it up. You’ve apologized so much now, and I’ve forgiven you, completely. Remember, though, I’ve never been in love with someone the way I’ve been in love with you. I don’t know how to handle anything emotionally right now. Forgive me for bringing it up again?”
I got onto my knees and kissed him on the cheek, coaxing a smile out of him.
“There’s nothing to forgive,” he said, his voice getting low and husky now as he looked me up and down. “Though maybe ya could show me how in love with me ya are. I’m not sure I quite remember.”
I shoved his shoulder gently before crawling in between his legs and grabbing his face with both hands to bring him close for a kiss. His hands wandered all over my body, from my waist to my hips to my ass, then back up to one of my breasts.
Groaning when he squeezed gently, he smiled. “Ya have the most beautiful tits I’ve ever seen, Addy.”
“Seen a lot of them to compare, have you?” I kissed his forehead as he pressed his lips along my collarbone.
“I have, but I instantly forgot about the rest of them when I first saw ya naked.”
I couldn’t resist that.
“Show me,” I whispered.
His grin widened, and he wrapped his arm around my waist. “As you wish,” he said before flipping us over so that he hovered over me.
23
KHAN
It didn’t compare to anything we did in the waking world, but I still couldn’t get enough of sleeping with Addy in the dream land. I couldn’t get enough of kissing her and making her breathless and feeling her pussy around my dick.
I kissed her roughly, nibbling on her bottom lip. She moaned into the kiss, sending blood rushing straight to my cock.
“I’ll be doin’ this to ya and more in real life soon, Addy,” I whispered before kissing her neck. “I promise ya.”
I kissed down her neck, down her collarbone, to the slope of her perfect breast.
“I will say, I’m gonna miss ripping your clothes every time.” She chuckled at that, then gasped when I tore through the flimsy shirt that had been falling off her shoulders.
She gasped again when I wrapped my lips around one of her nipples, pinching the other one with my free hand. I loved how she reacted to my touch, even in this bizarre dream world of ours.
When she was panting, tangling her fingers in my hair, I switched to the other nipple. I played with her tits until she was wriggling under me, then pulled my mouth off with a loud pop. She whimpered from the sudden distance.
“Tell me what ya want, Adelyn,” I whispered, kissing her quickly before leaning back, staring at her heaving chest.
“I want you, Khan,” she whined.
“And ya have me, darling, but what exactly do ya want me to do to ya? Right now?”
Her eyes widened, and then I saw her start thinking about her options, all the things I’d done to worship her body and maybe the things she’d fantasized about me doing. I couldn’t wait to hear what she wanted.
“I want you to eat me out,” she said, a blush rising to her cheeks, as if she was ashamed to ask for what she truly desired.
“As you wish.” I pressed a chaste kiss to her cheek before lowering myself down her body, worshipping her bare skin as I did.
When I got to her panties, I paused. I would draw this out for her so she could have all the pleasure she could handle, and maybe a little more.
I lowered myself to my stomach and wrapped my arms around her legs to pull her body close to my mouth. I pressed my lips to the inside of her leg, right above her knee, and left a trail of kisses up to the sensitive skin right before I reached her pussy.
Her breath hitched when I got close, but she let out a moan when I moved away to the inside of her other leg, starting right above the knee and trailing up torturously slow. She tried to wiggle closer to me, but my arms around her legs kept her firmly in place.
When I finally reached her panties again, I bit down on the top of them and tore them away with my teeth. She gasped again.
“You’re not going to be able to do that when we do this in real life again,” she said breathlessly. “I’ll run out of panties faster than I could ever replace them.”
“Maybe that’s been my plan all along.” I chuckled before turning my attention back to her pleasure.
I kissed the skin above her clit.
“Khan, please,” she begged. “I’m going to combust if you don’t move faster.”
“Now that’s definitely part of my plan.” I kissed her pussy again before dragging my tongue up her slit, drawing a cry from Addy’s lips.
I slowly circled her clit with my tongue, which made her whimper loudly. While I paid special attention to her sensitive nub, I dragged a finger along her entrance before slowly inserting it into her pussy.
She groaned and arched her back, panting as I withdrew my finger and inserted another. I kept up a quick pace, making her breaths shallow and drawing her orgasm closer and closer until…
She screamed as her pussy clenched around my fingers.
“Oh my God, Khan,” she whispered, her voice soft as her body relaxed and came down from her orgasm. “I need you so badly. Come kiss me.”
I pulled my fingers out and lifted my fingers to lick them clean. Addy smiled and reached out to pull me down for a kiss. I growled against her lips.
“I can’t wait to do to this in person.”
She glanced down at my erect cock with hooded eyes. “Me neither. I have so many plans for you.”
After a minute, Addy’s head snapped up, looking off into the distance, her eyebrows furrowing. The dream world around us flickered and faded as it did when one of us started waking up.
I lifted myself onto my elbows. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I think someone just came into the house,” she said, her voice growing small as it always did when she was in the process of waking up. “It didn’t sound like Thalia or Lilly or—” Her face froze in a silent ‘o’ of fear.
“Khan—” was the last thing before her dream self disappeared in a purple cloud.
“The fuck.” I struggled in my own bed, trying to force myself awake, fear threatening to drown me in the nightmarish images of what could have woken Addy up so suddenly.
“Garrick, I need to go back to Kell,” I said, marching into his and Hana’s curtained sleeping area.
He opened one eye and glared at me, the intensity almost making me wish I had waited to make my request until the morning. Studying me up and down, he rolled over.
“Absolutely not.” The finality in his voice should have deterred me. “I’m not going to let you risk your safety and sanity over a case—though a severe one—of blue balls.”
“I didn’t—what? No, that’s not what this is about at all.”
He turned back to raise a knowing eyebrow at me.
“There are fewer things in the world with a higher sex drive than a young dragon. You can wait until the elders have found a solution to your Flame problem.”
“Garrick, you don’t understand,” I growled. “I’ve been having dreams where I see Addy, almost as if we were next to each other, like you and I. Normally, they come to a natural end when one of us has to wake up to an alarm, but not tonight. She was startled awake by someone bursting into her house. I know Dahlia and her security. She would not have let Addy be burst in on like that. Something is wrong. Something in my gut tells me so.”
Garrick’s face grew serious, his jaw locking. He swung his feet out of the bed, and I rose my eyes to avoid looking at his naked form.
“Let me get dressed, and I’ll go with you to the elders. Surely they have something that could help you, no matter how temporary. You should dress in something more respectable, especially when making a request such as this.”
No matter how much I wanted to argue with the ridiculousness of the elders and their rules, I knew that he knew what he was talking about. If it would help me get to Addy faster, then hell, I would dress in a ballerina’s leotard.
So, I did as he asked and changed in record time. I waited in the dining room for Garrick to get dressed too, my leg bouncing up and down as I did.
I’m sure it only took him a minute, but it felt like an eternity had already passed since I had woken up from the dream abruptly.
“Let’s go,” he said, quietly so he wouldn’t wake up his daughters.
He marched out of his dwelling, and I followed.
The community was dark and quiet. The only evidence of life was the smoke climbing out of the occasional chimney.
Garrick took a different path from the one he had led me down last time, a shortcut, I guessed, but we walked in silence. I was sure that he could feel the anxious and panicked energy coming off of me in waves.
When the chamber of elders finally came into view, a thought came to my mind.
“Wait, will any of them be awake to speak to us tonight?”
“Their sleeping quarters are attached to the meeting chamber. It won’t take long to gather them to make your request.” I always appreciated Garrick’s concise manner of speaking. There wasn’t any of the bullshitting I was used to from Dahlia’s father and his generals.
We entered the elders’ building, and Garrick pulled on a rope that was set in the wall that I hadn’t noticed the first time I was in there. A soft gong echoed throughout the chambers.
Barely five minutes had passed before one of the elders, the youngest one, appeared to greet us before the meeting chamber. She had her robes wrapped tightly around her body, and she was rubbing sleep from her eyes when she spotted us.
“Garrick, Khan, what is the matter that can’t be settled in the morning?”
Garrick opened his mouth to explain, but I jumped in before he could say something polite to the elder.
“I need to leave the community.” I took a step closer, which made the elder take a step back. “My love is in danger, and I need to go save her.”
The elder scoffed and rolled her eyes but didn’t stop watching me as if I were a feral animal that could—and probably would—pounce at any moment.
“How could you possibly know—?”
“I saw it in one of the dreams that I share with her.”
The elder tilted her head. “But your lover isn’t a dragon. That’s not possible.”
“Even so, it has happened. And I need to leave. Did any of you or Alys find anything in the ancient text or whatever to help me resist the pull of my Flame until I can go through the ritual to put it back in?”
She got a funny look on her face. “We have the ritual translated and ready,” she said finally.
“Great, then I can go. I’ll save Addy, then—”
The elder cut me off with her hand. “You don’t understand. We have everything we need for the ritual, minus one vital piece.” She paused, looking at me pointedly.
“His Flame,” Garrick said once he pieced it together. “You need his Flame before you can perform the ritual.”
“That’s right,” the elder said.
“That’s fine, I’m pretty sure the Flame and Addy are in the same place anyway. I’ll just grab one when I grab the other.”
The elder got the funny look on her face again.
“What? What are ya not tellin’ me?” I stepped closer once more.
“We can’t let you leave.” The elder lifted her eyes to mine. “Without the Flame in your own possession, you pose a danger to our way of living. Whoever has your Flame could very well ask you about where you’ve been, and you’d have to tell the truth. You wouldn’t be able to not tell them about our community. That creates a safety issue for us. Therefore, you cannot leave. We could maybe send—”
“You don’t seem to understand.” My low, growling voice made the other dragon’s eyes widen. She obviously wasn’t used to anyone questioning her authority or that of the other elders. “There’s this woman that needs me, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let her down again. So I’ll be leavin’, with or without your permission. There’s not much in this world that could stop me.”
Before she could say another word about my not being permitted to leave, I turned and marched back to Garrick’s dwelling, the other dragon close behind me.
I burst into Hana’s and Garrick’s dwelling without a word. I had lost Garrick somewhere between the elders’ building and his dwelling, but I didn’t care. The only thing I could think of was Addy and the way she cried out before our shared dream ended.
Hana asked a question when she saw me, but I didn’t listen. I marched into the room that had been mine for the past month and started packing what little belongings I had into a bag that was draped on a hook off the wall.
I didn’t have many clothes, but I packed them all. Including the beautiful clothes that Hana had made for me for Freedom Day. I didn’t want to forget any of their kindnesses.
Once I was fully packed, I left the room, pausing at the threshold to say goodbye to my little temporary home.
In the kitchen, Hana, Garrick, their daughters, and Alys stood around the dining room table with a map spread out on the stone. I noticed a pile of packs, similar to the one slung on my shoulder, against the wall next to the dwelling door.
“What the hell?” I asked. The five of them looked up at me. “What do ya think you’re doin’?”
“We’re charting the best course to get us to Kell safely.” Garrick’s voice suggested no room for arguing, but I wasn’t going to let them put themselves at risk.
“No, absolutely not,” I said. “None of ya are coming to Kell with me, especially not the little girls. It’s dangerous in the city right now. The trip is likely to be dangerous too.”
