Kinked (Elder Races, #6)(9)

Just as down the hall, the doors to one of the elevators opened, and Aryal and Grym walked out.

The sight of her was the same shock to the system as it always was, a raw live jolt of electricity that juddered over his nerve endings. Fueled by a surge of adrenaline, his mind leaped to a higher, faster level. This must be what it felt like for humans to jack on amphetamines.

He lunged down the hall toward her, noting every detail about her as he gained speed. As usual, she wore fighting leathers and her thick, black shoulder-length hair was tangled. Even though he knew that meant she had recently been airborne, she looked as rumpled as if she had just gotten out of bed. Her normally pale skin was flush all over with a clear, high color.

She looked as if she was glowing from an internal flame. Even though her face was uncharacteristically drawn with tiredness, she was still more alive than anyone he had ever met, ten times more vibrant than any other woman he had ever seen.

She was … glorious.

A stiletto of bitterness lanced him. Gods, if he could ever meet a woman like that whom he didn’t loathe as completely as he loathed her, he might lose this whip of restlessness that drove him. He could live the rest of his life and do nothing, be nothing but completely content. It was hideously unfair that he would look at this harpy and realize that about himself.

She saw him coming. Even though his intent was unmistakable, her face lit up, because she was just bent that way. As she turned toward him, she swept one of her arms backward, hard, and knocked Grym in the chest so that he staggered back into the elevator. Then she strode forward to engage.

She didn’t even pause to say anything or ask Quentin why. They both knew there were so many reasons.

He leaped at her, and she dove low so that he overshot, but he thrust out one hand and grabbed a magnificent handful of that tangled black hair and yanked her with him.

They tumbled together, growling, arms and limbs entwined. He caught her scent, and she smelled like healthy woman, clean cold air and arousal.

So the rumors about her and Grym must be true. He liked Grym and found the thought of their pairing so offensive that his growling deepened and grew edged.

She flipped him onto his back. Heaving hard, he flipped them over again and covered her straining body with his. As he pinned her long, taut torso, their hips came into alignment. There was rough friction at his groin, along with her wild scent.

It was so goddamn primal.

His cock stiffened again. Bloody hell.

Her eyes flashed furiously through her tangled hair. Fire bloomed down the length of his back as she raked him with her talons. Quicker than thought, breathing heavily, he punched her in the face. For one split second he thought she looked surprised and thoughtful. Then she twisted underneath him to knee him in the groin. More fire bloomed in an infernal garden.

He still had one fist clenched in her hair. Snarling, he yanked her head back and struck down, intending to fasten his teeth on her bared throat.

He never connected.

One moment they were locked together in a vicious, intimate embrace. The next moment he was several yards away, sprawled in a tangle against the wall in a complete disconnect with reality. He felt as if he had been kicked by a mountain.

Which in a way, he realized, he had been. His mind caught up with what had happened. Broken ribs protesting, he struggled to roll over onto his hands and knees, and he looked back in the direction of the elevators.

Dragos stood where they had been fighting, the harpy prone at his feet. Grym stood quietly in the open doorway of the elevator that Aryal had knocked him into, hands lax, all of his attention fixed on the Lord of the Wyr.

More details sank in. Dragos was dressed in jeans and a thin silk sweater, and he had one boot planted in the middle of Aryal’s back. He looked utterly furious, his roughhewn expression set in lines of brutality.

He also held his sleeping son cradled against his shoulder. Quentin had thought that baby was small before—just six pounds when he had been born, Pia had told him. Held against the tremendous musculature of his father’s chest, he looked as tiny as a small child’s doll.

Quentin’s mind flatlined.

He had thought he didn’t hold any illusions about Dragos. He knew that the only thing that could possibly take the dragon down was a dedicated army with inspired leadership and experienced magic users. But if he had ever held a secret daydream of someone besting Dragos in his human form in single, unarmed combat, that daydream had just been shattered forever.

Not only had Dragos just taken down two of the best, nastiest Wyr fighters in the world, he had done it by moving faster than Quentin could comprehend.

And he did it all without ever jostling the baby enough to wake him.

Dragos glared around the hall at the spectators who had been drawn by the violence.

“Go away,” he whispered. People vanished. He kicked Aryal over so that she lay on her back, staring up at him. Still speaking so gently that the baby never stirred, he told her, “I have given you more free rein than I have given almost anybody else, and you have just used the last of that up.”

The dragon’s incandescent gold gaze turned to Quentin. “And you haven’t earned any free rein. I am going upstairs to tuck my son into his crib. You will both go to my office right now and wait for me there. You will not speak to anyone else. You will not speak to or fight each other.” He glanced at Grym. “If either one of them disobeys me by so much as uttering a single word, shoot them.”