The kiss canceled out every worry I had, every terror of the night. This was me and Mick, and this was raw. His lips bruised mine as he drew me up into him and explored my mouth with deep, hot strokes. I clung to his shoulders, and my lightning flowed straight into him.
Mick cupped my breast, his palm rough through my shirt, and I wound my leg around his thigh. I wanted him; gods, I wanted him. The lightning was driving me crazy, the storm outside was escalating, and I craved Mick.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and melted against him, finding him hard for me. Sex with Mick could be fast, brutal, and exciting, and then he could turn around and be so incredibly tender it made me cry.
Tonight, I wanted him with everything I had. If the others hadn’t been in the kitchen with us, Mick would have had laid me across the stainless steel table and taken me then and there.
Bang.
“Um,” Fremont said. “I appreciate that you guys are in love, but . . . a time and a place?”
“He’s toning down her storm magic,” Cassandra said, sounding weary. “He’s afraid she’ll kill us with it. Dragons can imbibe storm magic. It won’t hurt him, I don’t think.”
“Yeah, but . . .”
I was aware of Coyote watching us closely, a far-too-interested look in his yellow eyes. As if in answer, Mick lifted me into his arms and strode with me out of the kitchen. I clung to him, my mouth still seeking his, blue crackles of electricity crawling over both of us.
Maya came charging down the stairs as Mick carried me toward the back hall. “I’m not staying up there to get struck by lightning,” she said. “Anyway, it’s raining now, so the fire’s out.” She stopped. “Janet, what the hell?”
“Go to the kitchen,” I said breathlessly. “Talk to you later.”
Maya rolled her eyes as Mick whisked me into the hall that led to my bedroom. Before we hit the threshold, I shouted back, “Keep Coyote away from us.”
Mick kicked closed the bedroom door, cutting off Maya’s deprecations directed at me in Spanish.
MICK DUMPED ME onto the bed and started pulling off his clothes. Even while my bedcovers started to smolder from the lightning in my hands, I didn’t mind sitting back and watching my boyfriend strip.
His body was delicious. I remembered the night I’d first seen it, in a hotel room in Las Vegas. I remember sitting on the bed, nervous as hell, while he pulled off his shirt to reveal a chest and six-pack abs a bodybuilder would kill for. As he’d turned around to toss the shirt somewhere, his jeans had dipped to reveal the jagged fire tattoo riding across his lower back. Plus the fact that he wasn’t wearing any underwear. By the time he’d turned back around, I’d had my shirt off, too. Mick had smiled at me, his eyes so damned blue. He’d put his knee on the bed, touched my face with his big hand, and said, “Gods, Janet, do you know how beautiful you are?”
His eyes were black tonight, but my heart still pounded as hard as it had then.
Mick threw his shirt on the dresser. “What are you smiling at?”
“Memories,” I said.
Lightning struck right outside, and Mick stripped me, not slowly, not gently, but with the skill of long practice. He jerked out of his own jeans and laid me down on the mattress, his mouth all over me. My lightning fired into him as he covered my skin with openmouthed kisses, his breath hot when he kissed the stud in my navel.
He looked up, my lightning sizzling around him and sparking in his eyes. “More,” he whispered. “Give it to me good.”
The power in me wanted to dive into him, like the best sex, but I worried I’d hurt him. Mick never touched me when the storm was at its peak; it would be too much.
Mick pulled me up until we were kneeling together, naked, sweat slicking our bodies. “Don’t hold back,” he growled. “I want it. All of it. As much as you can give me.”
“Mick, I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t. I want it, Janet. I want you.”
When I still hesitated, Mick grabbed me, opened my lips with his, and sucked the power out of me.
I screamed against his mouth. Mick imbibed my lightning as though it were the best wine, his body hard, his whispered groans driving me crazy.
Gods, I love him.
The fire tattoo on his back was hot under my touch, his body sizzling with my lightning. We risked blasting a hole in the floor and tumbling into the basement, and it was the most erotic thing I’d ever experienced. Mick laid me back down on the bed, his eyes devouring me, and he entered me in one swift thrust.
He pinned me down, my Mick who liked to play the master with me, made even more exciting because I knew he’d never, ever hurt me. He’d taught me that first night to trust him with everything I had, and the reward was pleasure I’d never dreamed existed.
Tonight bore the wild edge of danger because of the hex. Mick had been reluctant to try sex-enhanced spells, but now we tossed away caution like a used tissue and gave in to the ecstasy. This was different from spell casting—this was Mick simply driving into me, and me giving him every bit of power I had.
I met his thrusts with my body, my nails raking down his back, my cries ringing to the ceiling. Outside the storm wound up, and inside we did the same.
Mick’s eyes shone with fire. “Love you,” he grated. “Love you so much.”
The snakes and whorls of electricity slowly dimmed, Mick’s dragon magic absorbing them all. But Mick was a long way from being finished. He pinned my wrists over my head and kept going, this lovemaking session growing ever more crazy.
I think we would have gone on until we died, if the magic mirror hadn’t chosen that moment to let out a high-pitched keen. The sound spiraled up until it knifed through my head, and even Mick cursed and jammed a hand over his ear.
“What the fuck?” he snarled.
I rolled out from under Mick, and Mick landed next to me, panting, while I leaned from the bed and scrabbled for the piece of mirror in my pocket. “Hey!” I yelled at it.
The keening wound all the way down and flattened out into a word. Summertiiime.
“Hey, you moronic piece of glass. Call Drake. Get him over here.”
The mirror kept on belting out the song from Porgy and Bess. I shook it and yelled at it, but my mirror ignored me.
“I don’t think it can hear you,” Mick said breathlessly.
“Damn it!” I flung the mirror into the wall. The voice dimmed somewhat but didn’t stop. I didn’t know which was worse, having the mirror dark or stuck singing show tunes.
“If he starts singing to the dragons, Drake will be out here fast enough,” Mick said. He ran a firm hand down my body. “Right now I need more.” He kissed my back. “So much more.”
It would be stupid to stay in here and have sex while Cassandra’s enemy waited for us to be at our weakest. But I willingly rolled over and drew him into my arms.
Mick had started kissing me again with hungry strokes when someone beat on the bedroom door.
“Janet,” Maya called through the wood, her agitation strong. “If you’re done screwing in there, Nash is out front. He’s with Pamela, and they’re trying to get in.”
SEVEN
I YANKED ON MY CLOTHES AND WAS ABOUT to hurry out after Maya, but Mick put his arm across the door, blocking my way. He was a big man and made a formidable barrier.
“Wait,” he said. “Let me check it out first.”
Impatiently I buttoned my jeans. “It’s Nash, Maya said. Exactly who we need.”
“Maybe it’s Nash. I want you to stay in here and lock the door behind me.”
This was getting annoying. “Staying in my room won’t save me from the hex,” I said.
“Even so, wait for me to clear it before you come out.”
I wasn’t about to obey. I knew I couldn’t fight Mick, but I was small enough and swift enough to duck under him before he could grab me. I heard him growling in anger as he came after me, but this was my hotel, and I was more than ready for Mick’s alpha-dragon instincts to recede.