“Just two years?” Layla’s eyes went wide.
“Rake André has been working with me on meditations, since my mother died.” Adrian spoke quietly. “It went away after my twenties, but surfaced again after my fiancé was killed by Hunter, then again after Hunter killed my mother. I’m in control of my nighttime shifts now, but I just wanted you to know… before we spent our first evening together.”
“Wow. Ok.” Layla didn’t have any words for a moment, trying to process. “So you could set fire to me in my sleep. That’s a thing.”
“It’s been a long while.” Adrian protested again, something careful in his eyes as he let Layla process.
“Still. Bedding with you might just make me a crispy critter.”
A small smile quirked his lips, but it didn’t touch his eyes. “We don’t have to sleep in the same bed, Layla. There are other guest rooms—”
“No.” Reaching up, Layla cradled his jaw with her hands. “I want this, Adrian. I want you, I want the whole meal deal. If that means I have to wear flame-retardant jammies to bed or whatever, I’m still in.”
“I don’t think it’ll come to that.” Adrian grinned now, and Layla felt something inside him ease. “In any case, you’ve stood in my flames before and not had them harm you. It’s a phenomenon that happens sometimes with life-mates. That the fire of one won’t burn the other, at least not casually. Not unless the flames are specifically aimed at that person.”
“So you’re saying there’s a chance I’m all good.” Layla cuddled closer, lifting up to kiss his lips. “Good. Because I want to be close to you. No matter what.”
“So do I.” Adrian curled her in his arms, and Layla felt their connection heat again. Passion sparked in Adrian’s eyes now that he’d admitted his secret and not been turned away. “I want you more than anything, Layla.”
“More than the hundred million Euros you spent to acquire me tonight?” She grinned.
“Jesus!” Adrian grimaced as he reached up to run a distraught hand through his short black hair. “Did the bidding really go that high?”
“Dusk pushed it way up at the end.” Layla smoothed her hands down Adrian’s lapels. “He got in a bidding war with Valdo after Quindici and Lulu dropped out.”
“Lulu Duvall was bidding on you?” Adrian frowned, and the look was not a good one. “Who else?”
Layla recalled to him all the people who had bid on her during her Courtesan’s Debut, including detailed descriptions of people she hadn’t known, most of whom had dropped out mid-way. But Adrian’s dark brows knit as he smoothed his hands over Layla’s shoulders. “Most of those bidders are of no consequence. But Lulu Duvall is the mouthpiece for the Owners’ Board. Neither Quindici nor I know if she’s Crimson Circle, and even though she’s Head of the Paris Hotel now, Quinn can’t get a straight answer out of her. We know she has a high position on the Board, yet a subservient one at the same time. Was Dusk trying to out-bid her?”
“Valdo thinks Dusk got jealous of you, actually.” Layla mused, recalling Valdo’s words. “Dusk drove the bidding up thirty million Euros after Lulu and Quindici dropped out.”
“Thirtymillion?” Adrian blinked, pulling back from their embrace as if she had slapped him. “Layla. Did something I don’t know about happen with Dusk recently?”
“Well, I mean we have been sleeping together.” Layla spoke, crossing her arms and feeling her Dragon rush up inside her veins with an irate heat as Adrian watched her like a hawk. “Pretty much every night for the past month, Adrian. I thought you were ok with me being with him?”
“Every night? Seriously? How many times a night?” Adrian spoke, blinking rapidly now. Layla watched him struggle with rage as he pulled away from her. As his hands slid from her waist, Adrian went from tender to tense in about two-point-five seconds. As he stood there suddenly fuming with his hands set on his hips, his beautiful eyes darkening to a vicious cobalt, Layla blinked. Here she was, his for the night, and he couldn’t help but ask who she’d been fucking while he was unavailable – typical guy bullshit, even though he’d said he was okay with her and Dusk.
“Yes, Adrian, Dusk and I have been together. A lot.” Layla tensed, her posture tightening as her hands gripped her arms now, a hot fury rushing through her as her drakaina gave a strangled roar of frustration inside her veins. “If I’m going to be a Courtesan and infiltrate the Crimson Circle for you, you need to pull yourself up out of your raging jealousy! Dusk and I are Bound just as much as you and I are. And he’s only doing it with me so often because he can help me discharge my power. My Dragon needs to fuck – it’s either that or fight – multiple times a day. I’m still training with Rikyava, but Dusk has graciously agreed to help me discharge the rest of my heat. Which happens to be in the bedroom.”
“You know that’s not true.” Adrian’s gaze was withering, as a scalding wind of scorched jasmine flickered the candles. “Dusk fucks you because he wants to. Twisting a dagger in my heart that he can have you while I’m away and I can’t.”
“Adrian, you’re acting like I’m not a willing participant.” Layla crossed her arms tighter, feeling her Dragon roar in her veins now. Her own searing wind picked up, filled with the scent of burning orange peels. Layla felt she and Adrian’s Dragons snarl at each other as the two winds heaved with barbed coils. “I want Dusk. He’s important to me. And it’s good, Adrian. It’s exactly what I need.”
“I bet.” Adrian’s gaze was scalding now, burning with molten gold. “Dusk knows all the right buttons to push in the bedroom to make a woman break to hischarms.”
“What is your problem?!” Layla shouted as she threw up her hands in an exasperation, her magic whipping out at him like a barbed tail. “You seemed fine with this last time! What about me being a Royal Dragon Bind don’t you understand?! My magic binds people. Men. Powerful men. It’s not just a bind of power and magic! It’s a bind of emotions, connection, feelings—”
“Love.” Adrian blinked at her, putting the pieces together just like Arron had earlier. “You love him.”
“Yes!” Layla yelled, setting her hands feistily to her hips in a posture that mimicked Adrian’s. “I love Dusk, and I loveyou, Adrian! I can’t help it that I feel your moods and his, that I can see into his mind and memories as well as yours. Every horror of your life, they’re mine now. Every love, every remembrance… I could feel it all if I dug deep enough. And I could do the same with Dusk and Reginald. But if I did, who would I become, feeling hundreds of years of lives I’ve never lived? What would happen to me if I dug into everything Reginald felt as he was drowning an entire village of Blood Dragons? What about when Dusk watched his clan and the Tunisians slaughter each other? What about you, standing over the body of your murdered fiancée? How dark would I go, if I carried all that – if I gave in to the Bind?”
Layla was shuddering now, shaking with fury and heartache. Tears rolled down her cheeks even as she wrapped her arms tight, trying to stop from breaking. She hadn’t even known how much she could see into her Bound men until the words tumbled out of her. But suddenly, all those memories of Reginald’s and Dusk’s and Adrian’s were careening through her – horrible images she’d touched but had pushed away, terrified.
And with the stress of everything else recently, it was suddenly all too much.
As fury and heartbreak filled her that Adrian was being such an ass tonight, Layla was suddenly flooded by her men’s nightmares. Seeing throats gurgle and eyes bulge as Reginald drowned the Blood Dragon village with seawater rising up their throats. Watching a battle of hundreds of Crystal Dragons slashing each other, biting out gullets, the sands of the Sahara flowing red with blood. Staring at her hands – Adrian’s hands – as he turned over a beautiful lump of white satin and long, dark hair and saw enormous talon-marks ripping his fiancée’s chest. His hands were covered in blood as he clutched the dead woman, screaming, sobbing.
Hysterical.
