Emperor’s Throne: Desert Cursed Series, Book 6 Read online

  “I’d try to live with myself,” he kissed the top of my head, “if it meant you were safe. If it meant we could live a long life together without fearing the next monster we had to face. If we could just be together. And if by legend, you mean this infamous Indiana Jones you keep talking about, I’ve yet to see any evidence.”

  I grinned. “You’ll see. My father would not lie to me, and Indiana Jones is a real hero.”

  I looked up at him and he leaned in to kiss me. I sighed as his lips brushed mine, then a tiny set of claws tapped against my thigh. I froze, turned and looked down at Lila who sat at my feet, a wide grin on her lips.

  “What?”

  “Cubs?” She held up a bottle of țuică, the sweet plum liquor that the undersized dragon had an incredible nose for finding. Like a bee to flowers, she was drawn to the alcohol in a way that even she didn’t understand. She found bottles of it hidden around the desert like she was on a continual scavenger hunt.

  “No cubs,” I said even as I took the țuică and capped it. “Let’s save this for another night. Besides, if we’re going to talk cubs, how about we talk wee baby dragon hatchlings?”

  Lila sighed and looked down, scuffing at the dirt with her tiny claws. “Trick is off scouting ahead. He said he wanted a little bit of time by himself.”

  Trick was another dragon, but he was always dragon-sized, whereas Lila could shift from six pounds to more than a few zeros added to that six-pound figure. A recent feat, to be fair, but still pretty damn impressive. I frowned. “He didn’t want you to go with him?” That sounded strange. Trick had made it clear he was interested in Lila, even when she was small.

  She turned her face away a moment. “He said he wanted to go by himself. In case my father was around.”

  I shared a look with Maks and he shook his head ever so slightly. Dragon relationships were not my forte, but if we could keep Lila busy, Maks and I might actually be alone for the first time in . . . well, I wasn’t sure how long it had been. Time to see if dragons reacted the same way that I would. “That normal, for dragons to put their little women at home where the fire is to keep them safe?”

  With each word Lila’s scales along her spine stiffened until she looked like she was attempting to imitate a porcupine. “Yes. It’s how the males treat all the females. Like they are incapable of doing anything!” With each word her voice grew in volume, until Bryce snorted and put a paw over his head, muttering something that sounded like “keep it down.”

  I reached over and tugged on Lila’s tail. “You want to be that kind of lady dragon? Left at home to tend the fire? Waiting for him to come back?”

  “No,” she growled the word and shot into the air. “I’ll be back later!”

  I watched as she rose fast into the night sky, her scales catching the little bit of light from the fire, and grinned when she shifted to her larger form that blotted out the stars. “He is so going to get his ass handed to him.”

  Maks grabbed me by the hand and pulled me to my feet, his mouth hot against my ear. “This is our chance.”

  He dragged me away from the camp, past the two horses who gave us sleepy yawns and a low nicker from my gray gelding, Balder. Maks let go of me and shifted to his four-legged shape of a desert caracal. He had a tawny body, short tail, and black-tipped ears. In his cat form, he was long-legged and could run for a long time. Grinning, I followed suit; even if my four-legged form was only that of a black house cat, I had remarkable stamina, and far more power in my smaller leaps.

  We raced through the rock piles that made up this edge of the desert. My heart was pounding with anticipation. Maks wasn’t doing this for no reason. I’d seen it in his eyes, a need that had been building for almost as long as I’d known him.

  All this time together, and barely a single chance to be alone. Like really alone.

  My heart began to thump harder for more reasons than the fact that we were bolting along at top speed, bounding across rocks, leaping our way farther and farther from camp. Part of me knew it was not the best idea to separate from Bryce and Lila, but the other part that included my lady bits was basically telling me to shut the fuck up. Because when would we get a chance to be alone together again?

  Maybe never.

  Maybe we’d die tomorrow.

  Maks and I had been through enough that I could honestly say we deserved this moment. Hell, we’d earned it, and piss on every asshole we’d dealt with along the way that had tried to keep us apart.

  Ahead of me, he slid to a stop in a natural cove of rocks that gave the illusion of privacy from the outside world. He shifted back to two legs, leaned against the solid rock and crooked a finger. Like me, he could shift forms and retain his clothes. Which meant I was going to get to strip him myself.

  I wanted to dance on the spot.

  Dirty blond hair, blue eyes, muscles in all the right places, smelling like the desert, and he had the nerve to give me the smirk along with the finger crook and a wink. Yeah, so my libido was getting ahead of me in a rapid way because I literally shifted shapes in mid-stride and threw myself at him. I mean, what did he expect? How long had we waited for this moment?

  His eyes widened as he was forced to catch me, and he barely managed to steady us as I wrapped my legs around his hips. “Don’t crook your finger unless you’re going to catch me.”

  “Got it,” he growled as he grabbed my ass with both hands and dug into the flesh, pulling me against all of him as his lips landed on mine. “Too long, it’s been too long.”

  He wasn’t kidding.

  I grabbed the edges of his shirt and tugged it over his head, baring his chest to my greedy hands. Sliding my fingers across his skin, I tried to memorize the feel of him, of the cut of his muscles and the way his skin flicked under my touch. The way he smelled and tasted.

  He slowly lowered me so I stood next to him, his hands on my arms, sliding up and down, sending tingles to every part of me. Maybe it was his magic, but I felt it was more like just him and me.

  “Zam.” He growled my name, nothing but my name, and I wanted to melt into a puddle. Not Marsum’s voice, not Davin’s voice. Just Maks. I had to swallow the lump in my throat, or I was going to ruin this moment with tears. Damn my emotions and all they did to me.

  He leaned over and kissed one of the traitorous salty droplets off my cheek, then kept on kissing, making his way to my mouth, slowing us a little. His tongue moved in and out, lazily, and I matched his pace, reveling in the taste and feel of him.

  Part of me wanted to hurry, the other part wanted this moment to last and stretch as long as we could. I wanted all of him, every inch of his skin on mine until you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. I peeled out of all my weapons, laying the flail and my knives on the ground, then stripped off my shirt while Maks helped. Our clothes ended in a pile at our feet.

  He took a step back and just stared at me, his eyes tracing not only my body, but the scars.

  And I had a lot of them.

  “They each have a story.” He ran a finger over a deep scar that rested across my left hip.

  I nodded. “As I suppose yours do too?” He had more than his share of wounds and old injuries that were visible to my excellent night vision.

  I bit my lower lip and closed the distance between us. “Lots of stories, but not tonight. Tonight is just us.”

  He grinned down at me, his eyes picking up on the light above us, making them damn well sparkle. As if we were in some sort of romance novel. “No stories tonight. Tonight is about something far more interesting than old battle wounds.”

  My heart picked up more than a few beats as the color of his eyes deepened and his pupils dilated as if he were about to go hunting. But it was me he was looking at, and I was pretty sure I was looking back the same way.

  As if the cat were about to get the cream. He leaned in, his mouth finding mine, and after that, things got a little blurry.

  The afterglow was nice, lying naked in his arms, feeling his heart
come back to a steadier beat, feeling my own beating along happily. Was that even a thing, a happily beating heart? Probably not, but I could fool myself for a few minutes at least and pretend all was well with the world, that we hadn’t just lost a major battle and would most likely see our own deaths sooner rather than later.

  His hand traced along my hip, down my outer thigh and then slid to my inner, stroking the sensitive skin and sparking my thoughts into a direction I doubted he was ready for this soon after our first time. He was a guy, after all. I knew how things worked. I rolled on top of him. “Unless you want to go for a round two right now, I suggest you contain yourself.”

  Maks’s eyes narrowed even as he quirked an eyebrow. “Is there an assumption that I can’t get it up a second time?”

  “Well, you aren’t exactly a teenager, are you? And I’m not worried about the second time so much as I am about how quick round two would be after the first. Because, you know . . .” I held my hand up and then slowly let my wrist droop until my fingers dangled limply. I couldn’t help it, he was too fun to tease, and we’d had too many dark moments in our time together not to take advantage of this one that felt light and sweet and perfect. With the man I’d waited my whole life for—even if we were somewhere in the middle of the desert on the ground for our first time. And maybe second if I got lucky.

  With a growl, he flipped me onto my back, his body pressed against mine. In a flash of heat was proof that he could indeed keep up with me. That had me panting in seconds as I clawed at his back and our mouths worked in tandem against each other’s lips, his hands working magic on me.

  Maybe that was even some of it, some of our combined magic rushing through our blood and setting each other off, because I’d never had sex like this before. Like my skin was on fire and every part of my body could set off a series of climaxes with the barest of touches, with the lightest press of flesh on flesh.

  Yes, not a bad way to start the evening at all, if I did say so myself, not a bad way to wash away a rather shitty day.

  My body coiled, tightening as yet another climax whispered its way through me, the strength of it growing with each stroke of his body on mine as our hearts beat as one, drumming in my ears—

  “Sis, we have a problem!” Bryce hollered, breaking through the lust curling between Maks and me like a bucket of ice water, dousing the flames in an instant, my inner core tightening as I lost that climbing sensation.

  Fuck, talk about the worst possible timing.

  I rolled to my knees and jerked my clothes on with a speed I wouldn’t have thought I had in me. By the time Bryce rounded the corner, I was fully dressed, weapons on, and Maks . . . Maks barely had his pants on and was struggling to get things tucked away. He grimaced at Bryce.

  “Shit timing, man,” Maks said as he pulled on his shirt and picked up his weapon.

  Bryce slid to a stop, his nostrils flaring and then wrinkling, no doubt smelling exactly what we’d been doing. I held up a hand. “The peanut gallery can make his snide comments later. What’s going on?”

  He motioned for me to follow him. I glanced at Maks as he pulled on the last of his clothes and then we headed after Bryce, just a few steps behind him.

  “This had better not be just an asshole brother move,” I muttered as Bryce hurried us back toward the camp and the horses.

  “Yeah, walking in on my sister getting laid is just what I wanted to do tonight,” Bryce shot back. “That’s the stuff of nightmares, you know.”

  “Your brother walking in on you getting laid is the stuff of nightmares . . . you know,” I pointed out.

  Maks muffled a laugh, but I didn’t make another noise. As if we’d crossed some sort of divide that lay in the sand between the rest of the desert and our campsite, the world around us seemed to have changed in that short time we’d been gone. Already, my skin prickled with awareness, of something or someone that was not our friend drawing close.

  We reached the camp and the horses stomped their feet, restless and irritated. They had survived long enough to know that when bad shit was going down, it was time to run or fight.

  Balder bumped me as I went by, his nose pushing into my hand. “It’ll be okay, buddy.” I lied to him because I had no idea if it would be okay or not.

  The firelight of the camp had been doused to embers—or maybe we’d just been gone that long. That was possible. I checked the shine of the stars above, seeing where they were in relation to where they’d been as Lila left to go after Trick.

  We’d been gone fewer than two hours.

  I did a slow turn, quietly wishing to myself that I could have one fucking night off.

  One. Literal. Fucking. Night. Off.

  I drew in breath after breath, trying to scent what was coming our way, but didn’t find anything that shouldn’t be there. Just desert and sand and the occasional animal that belonged.

  Hares.

  Horses.

  Desert hawks.

  Frogs.

  Some undistinguishable desert lizard.

  All of them native.

  Bryce was doing the same as me while he walked slow circles around the camp. He pointed at the pile of saddles and gear where Lila slept. “I tried to wake Lila, to get her to do a sweep, but she’s out for the count. I didn’t even hear her come back,” Bryce said. Which meant he’d heard us leave and not said anything.

  Maybe I’d forgive him for interrupting then.

  I frowned, and looked down at my small friend curled up on Balder’s saddle. She was back already? Did she and Trick get into a fight? That was possible. And the opened bottle of liquor next to her supported that possibility. Damn Trick, if he hurt her!

  But even for Lila and her love of liquor, not being able to wake her up was a bit much. I bent and scooped her up, bringing her coiled body close to my face. She was breathing, but it was deep and there was a strange smell to her that I couldn’t quite pinpoint, but it was sour and sharp and had a tingle that worked its way up my nose like . . . I shook my head. Well, shit. “She’s been drugged.”

  Someone who knew how much she liked țuică had drugged her.

  Someone who knew she had a knack for finding the liquor in the strangest of places, like a bee to honey.

  Someone who knew she could be our eyes, who knew that she could get us out of a tight situation. Suddenly I wondered about Trick running off. Had it really been him at all? Ollianna had a connection to lizards and reptiles. Could she have taken the big dragon? It seemed a distinct possibility. More than that, though, was that Ollianna knew about Lila’s love for the sweet plum liquor.

  I ran a hand through my hair, frustration, anger and more than a little worry rolling through me.

  “Saddle the horses,” I said as I ran to do just that, cradling Lila in one arm. I grabbed my saddle and pad one-handed and tossed them onto Balder. He stood silent, his head up as he stared into the dark, nostrils flaring as he blew out sharp warning breaths like a mini trumpet. But his feet didn’t move, and I quickly had the saddle cinched and Lila tucked into one of the saddlebags. She wasn’t going to like it when she woke, but it was the safest place for her no matter if we had to run or fight.

  I glanced over Balder’s back to see Maks already up on Batman and Bryce pulling himself up onto a third horse we’d acquired earlier that day. A deep chestnut-coated horse with a flaxen mane and tail, and high white socks to his knees. He was about as pretty a horse as I’d seen in a long time. Bryce wasn’t as comfortable riding as me and Maks, but he could do it, and the gelding was a quiet type; his temperament not near as flashy as his coloring.

  The thing was we needed to conserve our energy, and the best way to do that was to keep a horse under each of us.

  Worst case scenario, if things got rough riding, Bryce would shift to his lion form and run on all fours. All these thoughts rushed through my head like a stack of dominos crashing into one another, taking the next and the next down.

  “I still got nothing. Nothing that doesn’t belong,
anyway, but the sensation of danger is stronger.” Bryce shook his head and turned his horse to the southeast. That was the sensation I got too—that whatever or whoever it was made their push from that direction.

  I swung up onto Balder and settled into the saddle. “Let’s go. Not running, but let’s move. Maybe whatever it is isn’t looking for us. Might just be my black cat shitty luck showing up and it’s a desert caravan or something.”

  Bryce and Maks agreed, but neither laughed. Because they knew as well as I did that if my bad luck was showing up, we were all in for a dance nobody wanted.

  3

  The four of us—Lila still snoring away in my saddlebag, I kept checking on her—rode straight north along the western edge of the desert. The night was not heavy, but it was a couple of miles before the sensation of being followed and watched eased. Not completely gone, but better, far less intense. I pulled Lila out of the saddlebag and held her in the crook of one arm on her back. Her tail flipped from side to side; she snorted in her sleep as her belly rose and fell.

  “She okay?” Maks reached over and scratched at her belly with one finger. She giggled in her sleep and rolled in my arm, curling herself around my forearm, hugging me.

  “She seems to be.” I pointed at the saddlebag and he pulled out the bottle of țuică that she’d been drinking from. He gave it a sniff, closed his eyes and then nodded. “Golden marushka. It’s a strong sedative. She’ll be out till morning or longer. Especially since she drank most of it herself.”

  I’d never heard of the drug before. I quirked an eyebrow at Maks. Was it his memory he was pulling from, or one of the other Jinn masters? I was betting on the latter. He shrugged, no doubt sensing my unspoken query.

  “But she’ll be okay?” I asked.

  He nodded and poured the țuică out, then tossed the bottle. “She’ll be fine. Fresh as a daisy. But I don’t know how long it will last on a dragon her size. Could be a day or more.” He paused. “If we’d all drank from it, I’d say the four of us would be out till morning.”