Burned by Darkness - Alexandra Ivy Page 0,16

Tayla.”

Her stomach clenched, a throbbing emptiness pulsing low in her body.

She wanted to wrap her legs around his waist and feel that large cock slowly sinking deep inside her. She wanted his lips pressed to her throat, singeing her with his dragon-kisses.

The vivid images slammed into her with shocking force.

Yeesh. It’d clearly been way too long since she’d had a lover. Now she was panting with her brutal need.

“Don’t,” she muttered, her hands lifting to land against his chest.

He pressed his face into the curve of her neck, sucking in a deep breath.

“I can smell your desire.” His fingers tightened in her hair. “It’s a fragrance that has haunted me for twenty-five years.”

Panic jolted through her. What was wrong with her? She was supposed to be enduring his touch with contemptuous resignation, wasn’t she?

After all, he could demand the use of her body, but her pride needed the pretense that it was completely against her will.

Instead she was melting like a spineless sex slave.

“Because you’re using some weird dragon-magic on me,” she accused in desperation.

He lifted his head, regarding her with a confused frown. “Dragon-magic?”

“Don’t pretend you can’t make females desire you.”

He blinked, then with a soft chuckle he lowered his head and resumed his destructive path of kisses down the length of her throat.

“I can,” he admitted without a smidgeon of modesty. “But it has nothing to do with magic.”

His tongue touched the pulse pounding at the base of her neck and Tayla squeezed shut her eyes. Oh…damn. She didn’t want to listen to her pride. She wanted to melt beneath the golden pleasure flowing through her like warm honey.

“Baine,” she breathed.

He planted bold kisses over the upper curve of her breasts. “Say it again,” he commanded.

“Baine,” she muttered, not because he ordered her to say his name. Heck, no. It just happened to be the only word she was capable of forming as his lips traced the deep vee of her neckline.

Her nails dug into his chest, her hips instinctively pressing forward. With nothing but two thin layers of fabric between them, she could feel the perfect outline of his cock as he rubbed it against her lower stomach.

One tug on those loose dojo pants and she could have her fingers wrapped around his erection and—

The fantasy had barely started to form when it was rudely interrupted when Baine muttered a low curse and reluctantly lifted his head to study her with a brooding gaze.

“We can’t finish this here,” he growled. “We have to go.”

She blinked. Go? Her body was trembling with need and he wanted to leave?

“Go where?” she rasped.

“This lair is no longer safe.”

Oh. She gave a slow shake of her head, trying to concentrate on his warning. What on earth could make a dragon’s lair unsafe?

A horde of demons? An outbreak of Ebola? An invasion of space aliens?

None of them seemed likely.

“What does that mean?”

His fingers brushed her cheek before he was stepping back. “That’s a question only you can answer.”

“Me?”

Before she could demand an explanation for his cryptic accusation, Baine was grasping her wrist. Whispering a word of power, he opened a portal and tugged her through.

###

Baine stepped out of the portal, his lips still carrying the taste of tart lemon and warm, willing woman.

It was…

He struggled to think of the appropriate word.

Aggravating, he at last decided.

He understood lust. And the need to safeguard his treasures. He was a dragon. It was as natural as breathing. But this overwhelming need to touch and hold and protect this female was becoming an obsession that consumed his every thought.

If he was smart, he would cut his losses and walk away.

There were a million women to fill his harems. All of them capable of slaking his lust without disrupting his well-organized life.

But even as a voice in the back of his mind whispered to release Tayla and return to his lair, he was grasping her elbow even tighter as they stepped out of the portal.

This woman belonged to him. It didn’t matter what he had to do, or who he had to kill—he was going to keep her.

Almost as if sensing the intensity of his emotions, Tayla shivered, her eyes widening as she caught sight of the large house shrouded in darkness.

“You brought me home?” she breathed, her lips curving.

He shrugged, his chest tightening at the sight of that smile. “You said you wanted your belongings.”

Without warning, she tugged free of his grip and hurried toward the wide porch.

“I—”

She made a strangled sound as he caught her