He was looking at me like I was the most beautiful thing in the world.

“What are we doing?” I asked. My voice came out quiet.

“You know exactly what we’re doing.”

His breathing deepened. Need and lust swirled in his eyes. I searched their depths for the familiar icy darkness, but it was gone. I had chased it away. He was focused on me completely and I drank it in. Oh, I wanted him.

I slid my hands up his arms, feeling the hard cables of muscle tense and bulge under the pressure. He made a low male noise but didn’t move. His body was hard with tension against mine, but he didn’t move an inch.

It dawned on me that he was waiting for me to decide.

“You’re being very patient.”

“I can be a good dragon, when the occasion requires it.”

I licked my lips. His gaze snagged on my tongue.

I had to decide. I couldn’t stand it any longer. Either we did this, or I needed to march back upstairs. I was a grown woman, damn it. I’d almost died less than twelve hours ago and he was here, protecting me, making sure my family survived the night. He didn’t have to do it. Maybe he was a sociopath, but if he was, for some reason, I mattered to him. In this moment, right now, he belonged to me.

“This one time, maybe you shouldn’t be.”

“I shouldn’t be what?” he asked.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be so good.”

He spun me around. My back pressed against the kitchen wall. His big muscular body caged me in. His blue eyes laughed at me. “How bad am I allowed to be?”

“I don’t know. Let’s find out.”

“Try not to scream.” He winked at me.

His magic touched my skin just above the knee, a familiar heated velvet pressure. His arms stroked mine, pinning them against the wall. Try not to scream, huh. Aren’t we full of ourselves . . .

The pressure burst, prickling my skin with raspy heat. Oh my God.

I gasped and his mouth sealed mine, stealing the sound. The taste of him flooded my senses, overloading me. I wanted my hands on him, but he held me tight, pinning my wrists against the wall with his left hand.

His magic stroked my skin and slid sideways, to the sensitive spot on my inner thigh just above my knee. It felt rough, a little like a burn, a little like pain, and a lot like pleasure. It lingered and slid up, higher and higher, setting my sensitive skin and nerves on fire. My head spun. I wanted sex. I wanted him inside me, right now. I wanted to feel the full length of him stretching me and feel his body shudder on top of mine.

I moaned into his lips. He kissed me, pillaging my mouth, the slick heat of his tongue taking over, and I teased him with my tongue, nipping at his lower lip. My breasts felt heavy and full; my body turned pliant. He was all hard muscle and rigid strength, and I stretched myself against him, seducing, enticing. He groaned.

The magic spilled over my inner thigh and licked the sensitive lips around my clit with its velvet tongue. Pleasure washed over me. I cried out. He caught it with his mouth, smothering the sound.

The heat was building between my legs, a crazy mix of pain and ecstasy. I was breathing too fast and I wanted more of him.

Please. Please, more. Please.

“Shhh, baby,” he whispered into my ear, his voice rough with desire. He kissed me again and again, trailing a line of kisses down my neck. Each touch of his lips sent bursts of electric shocks through me. His gaze roamed my body. “You’re so beautiful. You have no idea.”

I wanted to see more of him. “Let me go, Connor,” I whispered.

He hesitated for a moment and released me.

I pulled his shirt off and looked at him, taking in the solid strength of his shoulders, the powerful chest, and the flat hard lines of his stomach in a single supercharged second. The sheer physical power of him was overwhelming. He had the kind of body that made women sigh because they knew they would never be able to touch it. And here it was, all mine. Not a fantasy. Not an image on the screen. Right here, the reality.

His hands caught my T-shirt. He pulled it off, picked me up, and slid my ass onto the kitchen table, sliding between my thighs. My nipples were cold and as he pulled me to him, they mashed against the heated wall of his chest.

I wrapped my arms around him, feeling the muscles of his back roll in response to the pressure of my fingers. I was so far gone I felt like I was drunk.

He was kissing my throat, trailing a line of heat down my neck. I found his lips and kissed him, quickly, deeply. I was in a hurry.

“Say my name again,” he growled into my ear.

The magic licked me, each stroke pushing me higher and higher. My skin burned in its wake as if slapped. It was beyond anything I’d ever tried, but it felt so good. Aaaaah . . . Please, please, please please please . . .

“Say my name, Nevada.”

“Connor.”

The magic drenched me, wringing pleasure from me. I felt on fire. I dug my nails into his back. This was sweet torture and I didn’t want it to end. He bent down, his rough fingers teasing my nipples. His mouth closed on one tight aching bud and he sucked.

I arched my back against the liquid tease of his tongue. More. More.

We were about to have sex on the kitchen table. Some part of me insisted I should care, but it was so hard to hear it.

I found his belt, undid it, and reached inside.

Oh dear God. I might need two hands.

He made a harsh male noise and I slid my hand up and down the shaft of his cock, pumping the smooth skin . . .

His phone screeched.

“Fuck!” Rogan grabbed the phone. “What?”

A brisk male voice spat out the words, loud enough that even I heard it. “Semi and four ATVs coming fast.”

Shit. ATVs, light armored vehicles, served as the armed forces’ version of a Jeep. They carried personnel and each sat four people and sometimes a gunner, which meant more than a dozen attackers were coming our way. We were about to have company. I grabbed my shirt and threw Rogan’s at him. He caught it with one hand. “Which direction?”

“They just turned onto the west access road.”

The access road let trucks roll up to the back of the warehouses. We used it for tanks and armored vehicle transport. They’d hit us from the motor pool side.

“Correction, not a semi. A tanker truck.”

Better and better.

“ETA?” Rogan barked.

“Sixty seconds.”

Rogan ran for the motor pool, pulling his shirt on.

I ran to the alarm console and hit the internal panic button. A loud metallic screech rolled through the warehouse. I pressed the intercom’s button. “A tanker truck and four ATVs coming at us from the west access road.”

I ran for the motor pool. The two industrial garage doors were up, the light of the street lamp spilling through the rectangular bays. Rogan strode into the pool of light and went down the street. Unarmed.

I keyed the correct sequence into the laptop and the feed from four cameras flared up. I pushed the intercom. “I’m in the motor pool.”

Grandma Frida burst through the door in her yellow rubber-ducky pajamas.

“Grandma’s here,” I added.

“In position,” my mother reported.

“I’m up,” Bernard said from his post in the Hut of Evil.

“We have Matilda and Cornelius,” Catalina reported.

I heard the roar of a tanker truck picking up speed. Out of time.