With a ferocious snarl, I rounded on my friends. Frosty air poured from my normally dormant dragon’s mouth as I nearly launched myself at them. How dare these women try to take my mate from me! Did they think they could have him for themselves? That I wouldn’t fight to protect what was mine?
This wasmymate. If they thought they could ride his cock and be taken by him instead of me, I would end them. I would slash their throats and rip out their stomachs. I would wear their skins as battle trophies!
My dragon bellowed its agreement, caught up in a frenzy of blood and lust.
Thankfully, my friends backed away, submitting to the crazed light that must have been my eyes, glowing with whatever color my dragon was, if she had ever been able to come out.
Turning back to the stranger, I whined and moved against the bars, sinking to my knees as one hand rubbed my breasts. My eyes rolled around in my skull each time I brushed fingers over my nipples. I nearly ripped my shirt from my body, my dragon beyond eager to bear every inch of my skin tohim, despite all the onlookers. And a crowd was starting to grow. My actions were not normal. I was acting out of my mind.
Mate.
That was impossible. I knew that, even if mydragon didn’t. Clippys didn’thavemates. They just didn’t.
The snarl that tore from my throat was vicious enough to send some of the gathering onlookers back a few steps, despite the cage bars between us.
Across the market, the poor, unwitting soul stupid enough to meet my eyes was struggling with their own actions. They were closer now. At some point, they had slid a few steps nearer to the cage.
Hope soared.
Were they going to break me out? Swoop down, destroy the cage and fly me out of there? Take me back to their home to push me down and climb on top, spreading their wings as they spread my legs? My underwear was plastered to my wet folds now, and my hand slid from my breasts beneath the waistband, headed on a steady, undeviating path lower, toward that radiant heat.
No. I wasn’t going to do this in front of all these people. Was I?
Most of the people watching and staring were men, but more than a few women had their eyes focused on me. I was the show. The exhibition. If I had been on display earlier as I’d complained to my friends, now I was the main attraction. My body writhed with hormones, arousal, and the need to be taken.
Not by any of the perverts listening to my moans, now rising in my throat as I touched and teased the sorest, most sensitive part of me. Jolts of electricity were pouring forth, turning my entire body into a twitchy, sex-crazedthing. I was no longer Anna Carradine. I was just an object with a need—a need to come hard and fast.
I was growing closer. Emerald-Eyes was still staring at me. I could vaguely, in some tiny part of my mind that remained sane, hear my friends talking about what to do and whether they could do anything without me attacking them again.
Why was he still over there? I slipped a finger inside. Did he not like what he saw? Was he not interested in how I smelled, how I tasted? Did my mate not feel the need to keep my body to himself? Or was he the kind to enjoy showing me off, bragging about me to everyone else.
You don’t have a mate. You’re a clippy.
I slammed my body against the cage, mewling and whimpering, whining as I struggled to get free and run across the market to my mate. To the dragon who smelled of woodsmoke and citrus spice. I would rip the hood free and sit on his face, screaming his name until I came. Because I knew my mate would never let me suffer a need like this without fixing it. Without making it stop. I reached out my free hand toward him.
A snarl ripped across the market. Was it mine?Was it his?
Emerald-Eyes turned and left. He didn’t flee. He stalked out of the market, like a predator on his way to kill something.
Just before he disappeared down a hallway, the cloak fell free for a moment, revealing a head full of brilliant platinum hair tumbling down his back in luscious waves.
Three
Casimir
I shruggedthe cloak back into place over my head with all the casualness I could muster. With a raging alpha dragon struggling to break free and storm back to the cage, it wasn’t easy. Scales rippled under my skin, threatening to push free and out me to any casual passerby.
Doing so would destroy the cover I had worked on for so long and ensure I couldn’t track down the elite whose trail I had been following. So Ihadto contain the beast. Taming it wasn’t an option.
The darkness of my monster was far too cold for that. I could only hold it back long enough to get the smell of vanilla and cinnamon spice from my nostrils. Maybe that would bring it back from the edge of insanity.
Mate.
The call struck my brain like an iron spike. A giant slammed his hammer down, forcing the spike deeper—nearer a part of me I had closed off long ago and vowed never to open.
Frosty air billowed from my nostrils as we struggled for dominance, neither side winning. We were locked in a stalemate over a clippy. Awoman in a cage, who had no dragon. Who never mated. Weknewthat, knew they could never be mated to anyone. They were too weak for a mate bond to form, which meant my dragon was wrong.
It had to be.
