Page 2 of Driven by Dragonblood (Blood Born #3)

Jaxon

W ind whips through my hair. I can barely breathe from the air blasting against my face—but I can’t keep the grin off my face. Plummeting to the earth causes my heart to race. My muscles too tense. Elation swells in my chest and even makes my dick hard.

I can fly.

I can fucking fly !

The ground rushes up to meet me, but tingles erupted along my spine. Wings sprout from my back. Instinct has them spreading wide, catching wind, gracefully arcing me upward, toward freedom rather than splattering to my death ? —

I gasped, pulse pounding in my temples as reality slammed into my brain, ripping me from my favorite dream that had been on repeat in my head for as long as I could remember.

“Goddamnit,” I muttered, readying to stretch and reach for my throbbing cock?—

Couldn’t move.

“The fuck?” I lifted my head, blinking weariness from my eyes even as familiar scents flooded my nose and made my breath hitch and hair stand on end.

I wiggled my hands and toes. All four limbs were lashed down to a bed. A white gown covered me from neck to knees, my morning wood creating an obscene tent. A shift of my backside made the plastic sheet beneath me crinkle.

“No, no, no,” I whispered as the truth weighed on me, causing me to sink powerlessly into my restraints regardless of how my heart raced and legs twitched in desire to escape.

My dick remained hard, uncaring of our predicament, throbbing and letting me know nothing but the gown stood between its heated flesh and the air.

I glanced around the room, my sparse surroundings, the stark white walls, the scent of bleach in the air, the lone window with its bars to keep me prisoner?—

Lockwood.

Fucking Lockwood. Again!

What goddamned fuckery had I gotten up to this time that my parents had shipped me out over three hours from home into the middle of nowhere?

Snickering echoed in my mind, and I scowled, cursing at myself under my breath. I’d been well on my way toward proving I wasn’t a nutcase so my parents wouldn’t keep sending me away.

Wait.

I jerked my head up, straining my neck to see past the tenting of my gown. Wiggled my toes again—toes not covered by a cast. Legs bare. No pins sticking out, no bandages, or evidence of fresh wounds. Just a jagged scar from the time I’d leaped off a building while high as a kite.

“Oh, thank fuck.” I huffed a laugh, half-mad with relief even while adrenaline crashed through my entire body, making me feel as though I could rip through the straps tying me down to the hospital bed .

My paternal grandmother had been schizophrenic and, thinking she could fly, had thrown herself off one of the south rim viewpoints of the Grand Canyon long before I’d been born.

Unfortunately, I seemed to inherit the inner voice that promised me wings would sprout from my back if only given a chance.

Yeah, I wasn’t right in the head, and then when I’d become too much for my parents to handle, they had sent me to an expensive boarding school so they wouldn’t have to deal with their defective son.

The first time I actually listened to the voice though, I’d ended up with a shattered leg and, a few too many surgeries later, could pretty much run like a normal guy my age.

I would never be a medalist in the hundred meters at the Olympics, but as long as I could chase the ladies and be the best lay of their lives while getting my rocks off, I deserved gold.

I took stock of my body now, relaxing as I realized I was whole—and obviously still healthy. No searing agony ripped through me, leftover from a surgery to repair the damage I’d caused a body I’d believed indestructible thanks to drugs I knew better than to touch.

But I’d been weak. Lonely as fuck, worse than normal, even though part of my daily affirmations included reminders that I didn’t need anyone, that I was stronger on my own. Letting people into your head and heart only weakened a man.

Take my parents—the ones who were supposed to love me unconditionally and have my back.

Yeah, right.

They’d abandoned me countless times, the final being Christmas break this year. Rather than have me home from my senior year for the holidays, they jetted overseas on some lovely vacation, dining at five-star restaurants while I’d sat alone in my dorm, eating takeout .

The return of my so-called friends and their readiness to party after break had led us all down a path toward sure trouble and possible destruction.

Well, me, anyway. I was the only one of us who’d ever gone to the roof of our dorm, ready to leap off, believing I could shoot into the sky like a goddamned bird.

Just like Gramma ? —

“No.” I shook my head at my inner voice’s insistence, ridding my thoughts of her. I was nothing like her.

More snickering sounded between my ears, but I pretended to ignore it like I always did. Wished I could do the same with my throbbing balls.

Obviously, the madness I attempted to hide had reared its head while around others, but someone or something had stopped me.

I’d been lucky last time I did a swan dive off a roof that I only shattered bones in my right leg rather than cause my head to splat like a watermelon dropped to the sidewalk.

I wracked my brain, filtering through haziness to remember what had gone down. There had been liquor. A couple of shared joints—one had been laced with a funky substance. Had I hallucinated? Memories flashed through my head like murky shadows.

Stumbling upstairs.

Laughing like the Mad Hatter.

Howling into the sky like I was a werewolf or some shit.

A straitjacket

Sweet darkness finally quieting my consciousness that was louder than most humans’.

“Moron,” I muttered to myself, wishing I could scrub my hands through my hair and try to rip it from my scalp.

I’d been so close to full independence. A few months away from graduating, but even better, not long before I turned eighteen, when I would have complete freedom from the rule of my parents, who didn’t give a shit about me.

Having visited this lovely— not —place before, I expected a ninety-day stay with shit food, therapy, and playdates with fellow inmates who stared and drooled or threw violent tantrums regardless of the drugs they had shoved down their throats.

At least I didn’t have a roommate. Maybe I would manage to get some sleep?—

The familiar squeak of a cart came from out in the hallway, and I glanced toward the solid white door with its small square of unbreakable glass.

A pause in the noise assured me the orderly had stopped.

Sure enough, a beep sounded, and my room’s door swung open to allow a sweet-smelling morsel over the threshold.

My dick didn’t care about being caught straining toward the ceiling. It had a brain of its own, and exhibition was its kink, especially when it came to pretty ladies.

I grinned at the face I recognized from my last stint in Lockwood, the only good thing about being behind Lockwood’s walls. “Nurse Yum Yum.”

She snickered, shaking her dark head, cheeks pink as she glanced over my restrained form. “Yano,” she reminded me while I fought off the need to thrust into the air, desperate for a touch from one of the few people in this joint who hadn’t stared at me like I was some deranged criminal.

“I don’t know,” I said smoothly, checking her out from cleavage to Crocs in her blue scrubs, my backside shifting restlessly as pre-cum smeared between my cockhead and the gown. “Still looking as delicious as ever.”

Nurse Yano rolled her eyes and wheeled the cart closer while I stared up at her face, loving how I unnerved her. How she couldn’t keep her gaze from flitting to the tent above my groin. I flexed my cock every single time, expecting a wet spot had appeared, considering how much I leaked.

She bit her lip while putting the cuff on my arm, glancing once more at where I ached.

“Naughty girl,” I whispered, and she cleared her throat, pretending to be all professional and shit.

I’d tried to get into her panties when I’d last been locked up in this shithole, but with me being underage…fuck. I was still too young. But in three months?—

“No,” she stated firmly, and I huffed as she pumped the cuff full of air.

Same as last time, I was a caged animal being poked at, but at least she didn’t hold a needle.

“You’re no fun,” I muttered with a pout that included puppy dog eyes.

“Because you’re jailbait.”

I smirked. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

“Behave, Jaxon Denham.”

A snicker, both internally and from my own lips, sounded.

Serious mental illness ran in my family, but I wasn’t mad.

That inner part of me I shared space with was fulfilling.

Felt right. Peaceful even while mostly chaotic.

I called the fucker—whatever it was—my beast, which suited him just fine. “You know me better than that.”

She listened briefly to my blood pressure before retrieving my meds and a small cup with a straw. “Head up.”

“Oh, it’s up , all right.”

Another eye roll and shake of her head set my grin in place, but I was a good boy, sticking out my tongue.

Two pills.

A long pull on the straw, and I swallowed the lukewarm liquid that tasted like tap water.

Ugh. Gross.

“Were you high again? ”

Nurse Yano and I had been chatty when I’d last visited her workplace, and since being on her good side afforded me contraband in the form of caramel hard candies during my last stint, I filled her in on what I could remember while she finished doing her nursing duties in taking care of me—just not in the way I’d have preferred.

“You need to stay away from the drugs, Jaxon.”

“Don’t I know it,” I grumbled, tugging on my wrists’ restraints, twitchy with the need for freedom. “Can I get these off?”

“Doctor Holliday will be in to see you since you’re awake. It’s his decision to make.”

“That old fart is still here?” I asked, not looking forward to the probing of doctors attempting to make sense of my brain with endless questions and demands to talk about my dreams of flying.