I don’t know if he means me joining him in playing pool, or this intense game of carnal sex and magic that always possesses us the moment we meet. Though I think Mikkel’s offering for me to play pool, it’s something else that possesses us, as I slowly move into the room.
I come to the table, but stay on the opposite side of him. He moves towards me now, but not, as we circle the pool table like sharks. With our eyes locked, neither of us blinks from our intense standoff as we slowly circle.
In a dragon-dance as old as the Void is black.
“I didn’t expect to find you here,” I say as we circle the table, both equidistant, neither of us closing the distance or catching up.
“I needed a break from Lærke’s constant scheming for our clubs.” Mikkel watches me, hot, dark, and intense. “She’s got me on it morning, noon, and night while we’re here, not in-residence at our clubs anywhere. I can’t help it—when she saysjump, I do, generally. She’s really the brains of our operation. Always thinking twenty steps ahead. I’m the show.”
“And you’re both the muscle.” I watch him, aware of just how many people Mikkel’s killed for crossing him in his business dealings over the centuries. “You’re the brains too, though… far more than you might admit.”
“Yes,” Mikkel says, as a dark shimmer takes him. I think it’s just his eyes, glowing with a seething chartreuse darkness from just how deep his ruthless ambition goes, until I see it’s also his dragon-magic, lifting to shimmer all around him in the gaming room like a snake’s scales.
Deadly and brilliant.
His response leaves us without words now, as we circle and evaluate each other. Unfortunately, I can feel my inner drake and drakaina rising to Mikkel’s hot promise of death, sex, and violence, which shimmers in his magic and in his eyes. He’s calm right now, but his indomitable energy floods me through our week-old bond.
Insane, with its need to rip and shred all enemies apart.
But it wants to rip and shred me, too, in the most impossibly hot way, as he circles me. Mikkel’s not closing the distance on me yet, but I can feel it in the air this morning from all the hot monkey sex Ström and I had last night.
Because Mikkel felt it too, through our bond—and I know he wants some, as we watch each other and circle.
Something we haven’t done since our initial bonding.
“How are your drakes?” he asks now, as if reading my mind through our bond. Mikkel has a plethora of mind-magics; I’m pretty sure he can read my mind anytime, as he watches me, intent.
“You’re my drake, too,” I remind him, though I know his choice of phrasing was intentional.
“You know I’m not.” His voice is quiet as he watches me, circling. “I may be bonded to you. I may feel metaphysically connected to your needs and desires just like they do, but I’m not one of them. Not by a long shot.”
“You could be, if you let yourself. I’ve felt it in you. Goodness.” I’m picking up on what he’s saying, but I think about that hopeful brightness I’ve felt in him a few times now, especially in the amphitheater yesterday, though Mikkel would never admit it.
“My goodness is a show, Rikyava. You know it and I know it. We both know what I am,” he says without missing a beat as he watches me.
But what he’s said is off. Whether it’s a flicker of his long, dark lashes, or a buzz of discontent upon my chest from Aesa’s Truthstone, or just my inner dragon-instinct, I know that what he’s said isn’t right.
I already know that somewhere in there, some part of Mikkel is still good. It’s some part of him that’s been strangled for so very long, however.
Still struggling to get out.
“You’re afraid that being noble or compassionate would make you weak. I get it. Every true warrior faces that insecurity inside themselves at some point,” I say now as I watch him. This time, I do see Mikkel’s eyelashes flicker. His smile twists, becoming wry and hard rather than sexy. Because I’ve just called himinsecure, and that’s a big deal for a dragon.
It’s ruffled his scales, and I can practically see his metaphysical tail lash as he grips the pool cue in his hand tighter into a fist. He doesn’t crack the wood from his strength; Mikkel has too much control over his dragon-power for that. But it makes his casual movement become threatening now, as he steadily walks around the table.
I don’t know what he might do with that pool cue—but then I get a flash of memory from him. It’s of Mikkel killing an entire room full of dragons with a pool cue, in an ornate Victorian gaming hall not too dissimilar from this one.
Not only that, but he did it while they were all shifted and he was not. In human form, he somehow killed ten dragons in that vicious brawl. The memory flashes out like he didn’t mean for me to see it, andmy eyes go wide. His are unapologetic, however, as he stares me down. I see retribution in their dark depths.
And wrath.
“They had Lærke. They were holding her prisoner, manacled by magic, so she couldn’t escape. They deserved it.” He watches me, endless wrath boiling from his cold, dark eyes, rather than heat.
“How old were you, then?” I breathe, as I get the feeling Mikkel wasn’t all that advanced in age when that event happened, or the twins’ empire much solidified.
“Seventeen.” We’ve not stopped circling, but the heat and power in the gaming hall have thickened a lot.
“That memory wasn’t all that long ago. Mid-1800s, maybe,” I say now, cocking my head as I finally have some sense of Mikkel’s age. “You and Lærke really aren’t much older than Ström, Bjorn, and me, are you? But you’re both beyond powerful.”
