Free Vampire Dragon by Annette Blair

stood before her, kissing close, without lowering his head, learning her fingertips with his thumb, moving it over the tips of her nails and back, the silk of his skin against hers a wonder.
    “It was a church first, a long time ago.”
    “And in my dream, you were in danger, past or future, I couldn’t tell.” He slipped a hand to her waist.
    “I know. It’s like—We dreamed past and present mixed together,” she suggested.
    “We?”
    She touched his cheek. “Scorch the kitten was evil and struck you with lightning. I was with you every step of the way, even before you found me. Zachary didn’t mean to shoot you. I half expected to find cat scratch marks on your cheek.”
    He covered her hand on his face. “I came to save you, even if it meant getting shot.”
    “I need no saving at this moment.”
    “Then I will have to make love to you, instead.”
    Her legs turned to jelly and he had to hold her up. “You are safe then?” he confirmed.
    “At the moment. Am I safe from you?”
    “No.”
    “Fair enough. Darkwyn, do you believe in destiny or karma? You see, I have always believed it existed and that mine blows.”
    “ ‘Blows’?”
    “Sucks,” she clarified, delighting in his eye twinkle.
    “We shall see which of us wins the sucky karma prize another time,” he said. “Despite your past, I am here to prove you wrong.”
    “Do you know my past?”
    “I know from Vivica that you will be a good employer, and that is all I need to know, in addition to the way you affect my man parts. You should know about them. I am flawed. You already know that I want to be more to you than a bodyguard.”
    “I’m flawed, too,” she admitted. “Your flaws don’t bother me. Mine do.”
    Darkwyn raised a hand to trace her lips, and Bronte shivered, first on the outside, then deep at her core.
    “You have a generous mouth kissed by nature’s reddest berries and sculpted by an artist’s hand,” her blind knight said.
    “I am too tall.”
    He ignored that, she noticed, in all but expression. “I like the way your brows curve like a seabird on the wing.” He stroked her top lip. “The way your lips rise in the center like a heart. I would make turning them into a smile my life’s work.”
    “Goddess help me, I would let you. But be warned, I arrived on this earth wearing a frown.”
    “As did I. You were there. You saw me arrive.”
    She tilted her head, confused, but inclined to let it pass so as not to break the spell. “I barely know how to smile,” she admitted.
    “I will teach you.”
    “So you do know how, then?”
    “Not really. Let us teach each other.”
    The red sheers at her French doors embraced them, gently forced them closer together, dancing and wrapping them in a cocoon of the North Wind’s making.
    The wind of death blew from the north. Death of the old meant new beginnings.
    Death courted her, yet Darkwyn’s presence let hope flicker, though only a miracle would allow her to see hope bloom.
    “Your nose turns up the least bit. I know because I have been sketching you to keep my sanity until I returned.”
    “Returned,” she said. “Yet we barely know each other.”
    “I know your heart is open to mine. You, Bronte McBride, are my heart mate.”
    “I should be afraid,” she whispered, her lips against his, against her good judgment. “Is heart mate anything like . . . employer?”
    “In this case,” he said. “Yes.”
    “In for a penny,” she added, having revealed her fear. “Do you know Sanguedolce?”
    “No, but I remember that you mentioned him in our dream.”
    She tried to pull her hand from his. “Why do you suppose we had the same dream?”
    “As a way for the universe to bring us together?”
    “I suppose that’s as good an explanation as any, but it smacks of destiny, and you know how I feel about that. And bring us together with a positive force or a negative one? I mean, where did it come from?”
    “I do not know. I am not from this country.”
    She