Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
FLYING
As if reading her mind, Torran indicated a desk Kate couldn’t remember seeing before, on top of which sat a fresh-lined pad of paper and a pen. “Guaranteed privacy and a chance to make notes,” he explained, “and if you want to use a laptop…”
How could she have missed the laptop sitting on top of the desk?
“There’s excellent connectivity here. You can mail your copy right away.”
“After you’ve checked it?” Kate challenged with the lift of a brow.
Metaphorically rolling up her shirtsleeves, she crossed to the desk, picked up what she needed, and returned to the bed. She sat cross-legged on top of it. Pen poised, she began: “You never married.”
Torran seemed amused by her question. “Dive straight in, why don’t you?”
“For a man as good-looking as you to remain single at thirty-two seems…”
“As unusual as you being a virgin at twenty-two.”
Frowning, Kate mashed her lips together. These were her questions, not his. “Would you count yourself at least partially responsible for the increase in storm activity around the castle?”
“Boring.”
“Well, it has to be asked.”
“Like a lightning conductor?” Torran suggested, quite obviously trying not to laugh.
“Maybe.” Kate gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Next question. Are you a dragon shifter?”
“You’ve ridden me,” he reminded her, drawing her glance to his sensual mouth. “What do you think?”
That she was an innocent abroad, quite literally, and one who couldn’t believe she’d ended up asking questions like that.
Torran let the silence hang until Kate broke it. “I guess that makes relationships tricky for you.”
“How so?”
He was so confident, so mocking, so arrogant, so male, she couldn’t let him get away with it. Raising her brow, she threw him a level stare. “I don’t imagine many women go for a man with a tail between his legs.”
For a moment, thunder threatened, but then Torran laughed, and that lifted everything, including Kate’s mood.
“Tail between my legs?” Torran choked out as he tried to catch his breath. “Is that how you see me?”
“Honestly?” Kate’s lips pressed down. “No.”
“Don’t you find dragon shifters sexy?”
“Are you asking the questions now?”
“I beg your pardon,” Torran responded without a hint of remorse. “Please do forgive me.”
“Tongue. Cheek. Remove,” she said, refusing to let him off the hook. “You’re responsible for the storms around the castle, and I want to know more.”
This really was a game to him, Kate realized as Torran’s eyes flared with amusement. “You’ll have to ride me again to find out,” he said.
Silence was the best weapon in this game, Kate concluded as her body responded with enthusiasm to Torran’s burning stare. “Does shifting hurt?” she asked at last.
But Torran was onto her, and of course, her stupid body thrilled when he held her gaze. If only she could take sex in her stride like anyone else, then maybe her stupid body wouldn’t be throbbing with frustration.
Licking the tip of her pencil, she continued doggedly, “When you turn into a dragon, does it hurt?”
“It’s a beautiful pain,” Torran informed her with a twitch of his lips, drying Kate’s mouth completely.
“Isn’t that a bit…” She pulled a face. “Pervy?”
“Pervy?” He laughed, a flash of strong white teeth transforming him in the very best of ways. “I prefer to think the pain of shifting is a worthwhile price to pay for the benefits granted to a dragon.”
“Such as?” Kate leaned forward, genuinely keen to learn more.
“Such as boundless stamina, an increase in the acuity of my senses, and, of course, phenomenal strength.”
Okay—calm down, body. He’s talking in the broadest sense without the slightest intention of relieving your frustration. “But don’t you possess many of those same qualities in your human form?”
“Yes,” Torran admitted, a faint smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “But in my dragon, those attributes are enhanced—for example, I’m far more sexually aware.”
Staring straight at her, he made it vital for Kate to remain professional. Clearing her throat, she continued with her questions, “Are there any disadvantages to being a dragon?”
“None that I can think of.”
Torran’s shrug drew her attention to his powerful shoulders. “Until it comes to battling the White Hordes,” she prompted, trying her best not to look at those shoulders and imagine him looming over her.
Once again, Torran’s expression changed from amused and seductive to suspicious. “Care to elaborate?” he pressed coldly.
“I was just thinking about what happened at the Gathering when people saw me dressed as Dracula. Vampires are real?” she said, trying to make light of it.
“Vampires are real,” Torran confirmed.
Kate rubbed her forehead to give herself a moment to think. Pieces of the jigsaw were starting to fall into place. Vampires were real. As she grew older, Kate had always suspected this might be the case. It would explain everything about her father. She’d pushed the thought to the very back of her mind, because it was too horrible to think about.
But she must think about it now. “I’m guessing there’s trouble between dragons and vampires?”
“You appear to know a lot about it.”
“I don’t know anything about it—it’s still largely in the realm of fantasy for me.”
“Largely?”
“Yes. Beyond the costume I wore and the trouble it caused, I don’t have a clue what’s going on.”
“If you were connected to the undead,” Torran mused, studying her face, “it would account for your particular skills. Mind-reading and mind-blocking, for instance,” he added before Kate had a chance to defend herself.
“That’s crazy,” she said, trying to forget a suspicion that had been growing about her father. “I’m here to investigate unusual weather patterns.”
“How are your investigations going?”
Truthfully? If Torran remained elusive when it came to answering her questions, she’d hit a brick wall. “My investigations would be going a lot better if you were more open with me.”
“What do you want from me, Kate?”
“Another flight, as you suggested, but this time while I’m awake and prepared.”
“That’s all you want?”
“That’s it,” she lied, reminding herself for the umpteenth time that induction into the world of sexual pleasure was not, and had never been, on offer from Torran.
“Then, let’s fly.”
“Okay, then.” Even as she spoke, Kate was marveling at the ease of it all. Was flying a dragon becoming as usual as catching a bus? Well, this bus stop had no walls. When had they disappeared? One side of the room had vanished completely.
“Ready?” Torran asked, flexing his muscles in the most diverting manner.
It was too late to back out now.
Bizarrely, what Kate remembered now was not a flight on Torran’s back, but on another dragon’s back when she was just a little girl. Growing up, she’d thought it was a particularly colorful dream: a dragon bringing Kate home to her mother after she’d been kidnapped. How ridiculous was that? Ridiculous, maybe, but she could still remember her father’s part in what she’d thought was a dream and how he had taken Kate away to punish her mother to a dank and dismal place that smelled of damp earth and decay. How had the dragon known where to find her? Why had he rescued her? She had so many questions. Why was the past always shrouded in mystery? If only she’d paid more attention at the time.
She’d been a child. She was an adult now and would definitely pay attention.
Kate watched in awestruck wonder as Torran transformed into his dragon. She would never get used to the amazing transformation. How could anyone get used to witnessing such an impossible feat made possible in front of her eyes?
Torran’s eyes changed first. From shrewd, hard, and very occasionally humorous, they became hot daggers of intent. And then his body grew, reshaping into a seemingly impregnable fortress of muscle. She should be frightened, Kate puzzled, but instead, she couldn’t wait to get on the back of his hard-muscled neck. This might be her last chance to ride a dragon.
The problem was, she could hardly write about it without Bill’s magazine becoming a subject of ridicule, and that she would never allow. Plus, who would believe her? She wouldn’t be the first reporter to invent a story to improve flagging circulation figures, but Bill would be ruined, and Torran’s safety compromised, along with that of all the other dragons. Kate’s aim was always to protect and defend, so she’d have to find another way to spice up her story.
“Do you trust me?”
Torran’s voice in her head shocked Kate into action. “Yes,” she replied in thought. “I do.”
The great dragon’s eyes blinked, and then it put the most incredible question into her mind: “You trust me, so will you kiss me?”
Kiss a dragon? Hang on?—
“Are you frightened by the idea? Revolted, perhaps?”
“Neither,” she defended.
“Do you dare to kiss a dragon?”
“I dare.” Raising her face to the great dragon’s maw, she closed her eyes and touched her lips to his. Reality vanished in that instant, as if dragon had become man, and man became lover. The kiss was everything Kate had dreamed about. Torran’s lips, the dragon’s lips, were warm and wickedly persuasive?—
“Mount me,” sounded imperatively in her head.
“I beg your pardon?” There was something so sexually suggestive about this command that, for a moment, she was incapable of action.
“Now,” the voice rapped.
“Okay—give me a chance…” What marvelous research for a story she’d never write, Kate reflected as the great dragon lowered its head so she could clamber onto its neck.
“Hold on…”
She gave a laugh of sheer exhilaration as it took off, and almost lost her nerve when it dipped over the yawning abyss at the end of the room. She may have screamed, but the wind whipped the sound away.
The ground retreated at an incredible pace as Kate’s dragon soared into the sky. It took a while to feel confident, but then she felt like a bird, a jet plane…a dragon.
Torran was heading for the two peaks where Kate had noticed lightning strikes occurred more than anywhere else. “Enjoy. Don’t think too hard,” his voice said as they flew on. “If you believe in dragons, anything’s possible, so relax and take in the view.”
Relax? Being securely strapped down in an aircraft was one thing, while riding a dragon was a little bit different.
They flew high enough to see between the two peaks. There was a chasm, a black hole between them, like a seemingly endless tunnel in the sky. Was this the portal? Had Torran brought her to the gateway between two worlds?”
“Moving between dimensions takes a lot out of you. You’ll need to rest when you get back. Spending time in bed is always so reviving, I find…”
Reviving, huh?
She was right to be skeptical, Kate thought, as very male laughter sounded in her head. Was Torran teasing her—taking advantage of her one weakness, which was him? What were his intentions once they got back to base?
She wasn’t given a chance to think about this before they were swallowed up inside the portal, and everything went dark.