Breath of Fire Read online

  Chloe trailed her hand through his hair, and her touch rattled his insides. “So when you lose your magic you lose your life?” Her eyes narrowed and her brow furrowed as she tried to take it all in.

  “Yes. Eons ago I fled to this island in search of sanctuary. Shortly after there was a shipwreck, and the survivors swam ashore. Some were dying, and I couldn’t sit back and watch that happen.”

  “Not even after the way humans had treated your kind?” Chloe shimmied back until she was propped against the pillow. She patted the space beside her.

  He crawled in next to her and shook his head. “No. Not even after that. We’re gentle beings, Chloe. We protect life.”

  She leaned into him and flung one leg over his. He could feel the heat of her pussy through her thin dress and suspected she wasn’t wearing any panties. Her plump breasts pressed into his chest and he nearly lost his train of thought.

  “When I ran into you last night, I wouldn’t have thought you were gentle. You seemed pretty damn ferocious to me. Then I realized you were just a big softy. A big, soft, beautiful, gentle being.”

  He swallowed. “Beautiful?”

  “Yeah, beauty and power.” She tapped his chest. “That’s you, Jared.”

  As his cock throbbed, he smiled and lightly ran his fingers over her arms, thrilled that she wasn’t repulsed by his dragon. “At first I didn’t realize it was you and I’d planned to put a good fright into the person who dared to enter my lair and hunt me. So much so that they’d run away screaming like a raving lunatic, and people would be hard-pressed to believe anything they said.” He ran his thumb over her cheek and she leaned into his touch.

  “Like the man who cut a piece of your wing away.”

  “Yeah, like him.”

  “Why is it taking so long to heal? Your arm healed quickly.”

  “The cut on my arm was small. The hole in my wing is much bigger.” And with his magic dying it was becoming harder and harder to rejuvenate.

  Her fingers marched over his skin and her sweet scent curled around him. “Chloe…” he breathed out heavily.

  Despite the sexual energy building in the room, she pressed on. “So because of hunters, you’re forced to stay in hiding?”

  “You see, humans are quick to hunt and kill anything perceived as different. But not you, Chloe. You wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “How do you control the change?”

  “It takes careful concentration and control to keep our human form.” He smiled at her. “Sweetheart, when we made love last night you just about did me in.”

  As though understanding how much their lovemaking had affected him, she smiled back. “When you lose the concentration you morph?”

  “Yes, when our bodies grow weak, it brings on the change. We must return to our dragon form and remain that way until we reenergize.”

  “So tell me what happened after you saved the shipwreck victims?”

  “I gave them immortality, and in return they protect me. Together, on this island, we’ve found a balance.”

  “And now you consider these people your family.”

  “Yes, but I’m still dragon, and even though I call them my family, there is still a distinction between us.”

  “Are there any more of you alive?”

  He nodded. “I’m beginning to think so.”

  “Yeah? Where?”

  He touched her cheek. “Right here. Beside me. You see, Chloe, my magic was growing old and dying, and then I met you.” He paused to give her a moment to digest his words. “After we made love, your sweet cream acted like a catalyst, reviving me and restoring my magic to its full strength.”

  Eyes alive with intrigue, amazement and total acceptance at what he was telling her, she glanced at his chest and his healed wounds. “The mongoose, you healed it. And your wound—?”

  “You’re my life mate, Chloe.”

  She swallowed. “How?”

  “I believe you’re a descendant of a dragon. It’s the only logical explanation I can come up with. We’re connected, Chloe. I know you feel it every bit as much as I feel it.”

  “Is that why it felt like you were with me the other night? Making love to me?”

  “Yeah, you were feeling my thoughts. It’s the bond we have between us, it’s growing more powerful every day.”

  “If I leave, what will happen to your magic?”

  “Only time will tell.” He suspected that without his life mate by his side, his magic would eventually diminish and die, but he refused to tell her that, making her feel obligated to stay. He’d just have to find other ways to sustain it.

  “Well, we’ll never have to worry about that.”

  He opened his mouth to question her, but she cut him off.

  “It must have been lonely here for you all these years. Everyone deserves a family, children.”

  “At times,” he admitted honestly. “Especially at night.”

  She blinked up at him. “You don’t have to be lonely anymore, Jared.”

  “Why? What do you mean?”

  “You have me now.”

  He looked down solemnly, a lump forming in his throat, not daring to believe or hope for such a thing. “I only have immortality to offer you, and you deserves so much more. You need to go back home, Chloe.”

  Her voice came out a little raspy when she said, “I have nothing to go back to. Even if I did, I still wouldn’t want to go.”

  Her warm palms touched his face. “There is nothing here—” he began before Chloe piped in.

  “You’re here, Jared, and that’s all I want or need. And the only thing I want from you is your love.”

  “You’re human, Chloe, and I doubt I can give you children. You deserve a family and children. Everyone does. You just said so yourself.”

  She ran her fingers through his hair and lowered herself onto the mattress, dragging him with her. “Who says you can’t give me children?”

  “What if it’s impossible?” He gripped her shoulders and pinned her to the bed as he climbed over her.

  “What if it’s not? Heck, you just said I have dragon blood in me.” She winked at him. “And don’t you think it would be fun trying?” With that, she spread her legs wide for him, welcoming him home.

  Jesus, he could hardly believe how easily she accepted what he was, what she was. “What if the child turns out like me?”

  He saw love shining in her eyes. “Then I’ll be the luckiest woman in the world, and together on this island we’ll have a life, and a family and we’ll all protect each other.” She pulled her dress up to expose her naked pubis.

  With his heart pounding, he tore his pants off and positioned his cock at her opening. God, could this really be happening? “Are you sure, sweetheart? Are you sure this is what you want?”

  “I’ve never been surer of anything, Jared.”

  Heart soaring with bliss he asked, “So you only want my love, then?” He pushed his cock in an inch and watched her toss her head to the side in pleasure.

  She writhed against the mattress and began panting. “Well, maybe that’s not entirely true.”

  He laughed out loud and in one quick thrust drove into her heat. “Sweetheart, you have no idea how glad I am to hear that.”

  Afterword

  Thank you so much for reading, Breath of Fire. I hope you enjoyed the story as much as I loved writing it. Be sure to read on for an excerpt from Instinctive, books one in the Eternal Pleasure series.

  * * *

  Interested in leaving a review? Please do! Reviews help readers connect with books that work for them. I appreciate all reviews, whether positive or negative.

  Happy Reading,

  Cathryn

  Instinctive

  IN THREE DAYS she’d be gone. Erased. Buried.

  Dead . . .

  Today, however, today was an entirely different story. Not only was Jaclyn Vasenty still alive and breathing—she was hell-bent on living the last few hours of her life to the fullest.


  She glanced at the well-endowed man powering upward between her thighs, taking note of his smoldering blue eyes, dark, shoulder-length hair, the clench of his firm jaw, and the small beads of perspiration trickling down his bronzed skin. Every pleasure-seeking nerve in her body came alive as her gaze traveled downward to the tuft of curly black hair smashing against her naked, passion-drenched pubis as he drove his cock all the way up inside her.

  Scrumptious . . .

  Oh yeah, she was going to enjoy today, she mused.

  She swung her long chestnut curls over her shoulders to expose her aching breasts. Brian’s hungry eyes latched onto her pale pebbled nipples. When his tongue darted out to wet his sensuous mouth, a small moan slipped from the curve of her well-kissed lips and caught the attention of those around her. A few couples stepped closer, some eager to get a better look, while others coveted to get in on the salacious action. Jaclyn’s libido fed off the sexual energy swirling around her, the intoxicating euphoria drawing her deeper and deeper into a cocoon of lust and desire.

  Just knowing the voyeurs in the club were watching her fuck the dark-haired Adonis strapped to the plush sex chair, while she rode him like a feral animal in heat, brought on wild and wicked sensations.

  She looked past Brian and glanced around Risqué, the erotic club where anything and everything goes. She took a moment to observe the explicit sex acts taking place on the nearby dance floor.

  All in various stages of undress, hot naked bodies writhed in sync to the sensuous beat booming from the nearby speakers. Wet pussies and hard cocks were out in abundance tonight, all striving for one common goal—to get off using any means possible. In their single-minded pursuit of pleasure, some were fucking while others were licking, sucking, nibbling, or burying their faces in the juncture between their lovers’ legs.

  Her entire body vibrated in bliss.

  As she took pleasure in the show, a rush of liquid heat rocketed through her and brought on one hell of a violent shudder. Jaclyn’s pussy dripped in response to the stimuli, and her clit tightened with primal need, screaming for a little of that tongue action from Brian while she watched the hedonistic acts from afar.

  God, she would miss this when she was dead.

  With her pussy hot, wet, and ripe for the taking, she bent forward and loosened the silk rope from one of Brian’s shackled hands. Settling for fingers over fellatio, she inched upward, her actions conveying without words exactly what she wanted from him. And she expected nothing less. Brian, the masterful lover that he was, shot her a grin and deftly parted her twin lips. With little finesse, he unceremoniously scraped the rough pad of his thumb over her inflamed clit, his perfect ministrations keeping her hovering on the precipice.

  “Oh, yes . . . ,” she murmured, grinding her fleshy nub against him until pleasure bled into pain. “So good . . .”

  “That’s it, baby. Let me take you to heaven,” he whispered and bucked against her, so his rock-hard erection toyed with her oversensitized G-spot.

  Lust prowled through her and urged her on. Jaclyn cupped her engorged breasts, lifted herself clear off his cock and then swiftly impaled herself onto him. Jesus . . . As Brian’s impressive length speared her, his girth stretched open the tight walls of her cunt until a creamy release was merely a stroke away.

  She hungered to prolong the pleasure, to continue their fuck session clear on through to next week. But it couldn’t continue and she damn well knew it. Because come Monday morning at eight a.m.—merely thirty-five hours and fifteen minutes away—she’d be dead.

  Well, not dead in the biblical, or even the Wikipedia, sense of the word, but certainly in the spiritual sense. She knew her essence for life, the uninhibited sexual force deep inside that drove her pleasure-seeking hormones, would slowly be snuffed out until she became the proper girl her family demanded, and her upper-class, high-society community expected.

  As a privileged socialite residing in Chicago’s Gold Coast, she was supposed to play by her society’s stringent rules, despite the fact that deep down she never felt she belonged. At times she attributed her loneliness to adoption; other times she was certain the hollow feeling stemmed from something else entirely—something she couldn’t quite put her finger on, something that was just out of her grasp.

  Nevertheless, in three days she’d have to bury her wicked ways and start playing the part of the good girl. Not an easy task considering she’d been sexually ravenous since hitting adolescence. Her stomach dipped in dismay at the thought, already mourning the death of her wild, sexual spirit.

  It wasn’t her fault she’d been born with a sex drive that would rival any man’s, and she certainly hadn’t meant for her enjoyment of kinky sex, ménages, voyeurism, exhibitionism, or BDSM to bring scandal to her family’s name. Nor did she think her untamed, passionate nature would cause investors in her father’s multimillion-dollar cosmetic business to turn skittish. And with the threat of a corporate takeover, any more rumblings about her after-hour activities would cause nothing but trouble for a company already treading on shaky ground.

  But her daily desire for wild sex didn’t mean she’d stand by while her father’s empire collapsed around her. She was a high achiever, intelligent, resourceful, with a hard-earned marketing degree to back up her credentials—in addition to being her father’s sole heir. It was a shame no one on the board could see past the paparazzi pictures. Sure she went to extreme measures to keep her private indiscretions, well . . . private, and she maintained a professional demeanor at the office, but as heir to a multimillion-dollar company, she continually found herself in the media spotlight—and not in a favourable way. Why couldn’t anyone see that her sexual appetite would in no way hinder her ability to run her father’s empire?

  She pushed back a cold shiver and shelved those thoughts to the back recesses of her mind. It was not the time for thinking about such bleak matters. Right now was the time to focus on the orgasmic pleasure Brian was bestowing upon her. She was going to need these hot, erotic memories to draw on later when she found herself all alone in the quaint, isolated town of Serene, New Hampshire. A town where she suspected everyone lived behind white picket fences, resided in matching houses, and had two point four kids. The perfect location for her to mend her bad-girl ways and start over.

  If the town was anything like Silver Springs, the neighboring community, where her grandmother used to reside—and Jaclyn suspected it was—she knew there wasn’t a chance in hell she’d find herself another bad-boy like the one between her legs. Which was exactly why Serene was the perfect spot to try on the good-girl persona and masquerade as something she wasn’t. The less temptation she found in suburbia the better. Because when it came right down to it, where sex was concerned, she had little to no self-control.

  If she was honest with herself, Jaclyn felt obligated to do something to appease her parents. She owed them that much. Twenty-four years ago when her biological mother had ditched her in a Chicago subway station hours after giving birth to her, only to end up dead a few blocks away, Benjamin and Marie Vasenty rescued her from a life of foster care. They had also given her every luxury and privilege one could ask for.

  She certainly hadn’t wanted to disappoint them, or for them to abandon her because of her wicked ways. Sex had always felt right, never dirty or wrong. She had yet to find one man who could completely and thoroughly sate the incessant ache inside her. At least not for any length of time. When it came right down to it, she suspected no such man existed.

  The door to the club opened and closed, and a pair of intense dark eyes swept through the room before settling on her. As she took in the man’s watchful gaze, a wicked grin tweaked the corners of his mouth and seduced her already-heightened senses. Heart racing wildly, Jaclyn turned her attention back to Brian and redirected her thoughts.

  She thrust her chest forward and placed one breast in front of his lips in offering. He flicked his wet tongue over her marbled nipple. The heat of his mouth felt like fire on her ski
n and escalated the tension between her legs. Brian continued to work his finger over her soaked clit. Small sinuous circles that drew out her pleasure as he feverishly pumped his thick cock in and out of her hot, tight pussy.

  Pressure brewed inside her, demanding to be addressed before she went up in a burst of flames. In no time at all, every ounce of bottled lust rose to the surface, and a powerful orgasm ripped the air from her lungs. She gripped the chair and tossed her head from side to side. Her mind shut down and she gave a broken gasp, her muscles tightening and contracting as a violent shudder overtook her. Her hands went to Brian’s hair. She grabbed a fistful, and she pressed against him harder, riding, rubbing and grinding out every delicious wave of ecstasy.

  Goddamn, that felt good. . . .

  Before she even had time to catch her breath, a warm hand curled around her waist, splayed out over her stomach, and began to ease her off Brian’s lap. A hot, sexy voice loaded with promise whispered in her ear, sending a barrage of wicked sensations straight to her throbbing pussy.

  She recognized the voice—lazy, laid-back, and a little rough around the edges, the callused hands, and the sinewy muscles leading up to broad shoulders. When Jaclyn inhaled, his rich, spicy scent singed her senses and slid over her bare skin like a powerful aphrodisiac.

  Kane . . .

  “Time to fuck, little lady.”

  Excited by the arousal in his dark, sexy tone, she sucked in a tight breath, the scent of her arousal and body language telling him just how needy she was, just how much she wanted to play it his way.

  Before she could respond, Brian scowled, cupped her elbow and hauled her back against him. “Hey, back off. We’re not done yet, Kane.”

  “Never said you were,” Kane responded in that low, sensuous cadence that always got to her.

  When she twisted her head to see him, those same gorgeous, intense eyes locked on hers again. His sheer strength and magnetism never failed to impress her. If they were pack animals, Kane would be their leader, their alpha—a trait that oddly excited the submissive part of her. When a guy like Kane said jump, the men in the crowd asked how high. He was a man who took what he wanted and never took no for an answer.