Page 38 of Wings of Ashes (Wings of Ashes #1)

CHAPTER

“ R emind me again why you are here, old man?” Bael asked Thierry as the men returned to the living room to talk. “Because I think my time is better spent fetching Nixie another towel—”

“ Focus ,” Thierry scolded him.

“Know that I am only half listening to you while I half listen to Nix’s nightgown slip to the floor and her naked body step under the shower.”

Frustrated, Thierry ran a hand over his face to keep himself from using that same hand to slap the incubus.

My mate is naked in another man’s home while I am in a different room, chatting like my dick is not the hardest it has ever been , Thierry thought to himself.

His inner instinct roared at him to go join Nix under the hot spray of the water. To clean her with his hands, then his tongue. Thoroughly.

“You are…friends with her, aren’t you?” Thierry asked Ryker and Bael. “You care about her safety?”

“More than my own,” Bael replied in such a serious and genuine tone that Thierry sat momentarily stunned.

For the incubus to care so much for Nix, was Bael also her mate? Was Thierry willing to share the woman he had waited years for and risked turning to stone forever without?

Thierry said, “Then, we need to discuss what I saw in her room.”

“Lace panties?”

Damn incubus . Thierry growled.

“What?” Ryker asked him, trying to assist with staying on topic. Thierry had never taught Ryker Infernox, but he already preferred the dragon to Baelfire Obsidius.

“For starters, the fire was very peculiar,” Thierry shared. The way the burn marks started around her bed, yet there had been no scent of gasoline…

Bael leaned forward from his seat on the couch and flicked out his blade. “You think someone set it?”

“Could be.” Thierry hated to admit it. “Her room also appeared to be completely vandalized.”

The rising male anger was palpable in the atmosphere of the living room.

Ryker gruffly grumbled, “Explain.”

“Her bedsheets had been ripped to shreds, most likely cut with shears. Red paint spelled out nasty messages on her wall. And to make matters worse, her textbooks were viciously torn up.” Thierry hardly held back the rage in his voice.

For someone to have destroyed the books of a good, dedicated student like Nix—the act implied the specific desire for her not to learn. To withhold knowledge and keep her from truth. That pissed Thierry off.

“The book thing really messed you up, huh?” Bael asked.

“To burn a book is to shrink a mind.”

Bael rolled his red eyes.

“Nasty message?” Ryker asked, bringing the dreadful image back to Thierry’s mind.

Thierry’s fingers cracked under the force of his tight fists. He had never been so inclined to violence as this night, learning of his mate and those who wished to hurt her. “Someone spitefully painted ‘whore’ above her bed.”

Bael’s nostrils flared as his eyes widened into red lasers of death. “Say that again.”

“Someone painted ‘whore’ on—”

A loud cracking sound came from Ryker’s side of the couch. Ryker had broken the couch arm from tensely gripping the side. Fabric tore where wood now punctured it.

“Who?”

Thierry scoffed. “I don’t know.”

“I thought you knew everything,” Bael remarked.

“There was no scent of anyone else left in the room. Whoever they were, they covered their tracks well.”

“A group?” Ryker clarified.

“It was a lot of damage for one person to manage.”

“This academy needs security cameras,” Bael ranted. “Doesn’t fucking matter that they are human technology—we adopted ice cream into our cafeteria. But we turn our noses up at their other inventions like we are so much better.”

“If someone did set that fire to—” Thierry cleared his throat. “—hurt Nix, then she needs one of us with her at all times.”

Bael’s arm shot up, volunteering. “I claim the naked times.”

Annoyed, Ryker slapped the back of Bael’s insolent head. Yes , Thierry decided, I like the dragon shifter.

“We can set up times—a schedule,” Bael said, rubbing where he was slapped. “I thankfully have her two morning classes with her.”

“She has combat with me,” Ryker added. “After lunch.”

“You think those psychos will actually try to hurt her again? And do you think they were actually trying to kill —” Bael cut himself off, sniffed the air, and looked up, where through the ceiling, Nix showered.

Thierry’s own nostrils flared as he inhaled the scent of her arousal.

Ryker broke another piece of the couch as he gritted through clenched teeth, “ Fuck .”

The dragon shifter’s pupils enlarged into big black saucers as a low masculine rumbling began in his chest.

OTHERS COVET MY MATE. KILL.

Thierry violently stabbed his glasses higher on his nose and squeezed his thigh as Nix’s delicious, sweet scent floated down the stairs. Steamy, sweet, and…

Was she touching herself in the shower?

“Shit, Ryker,” Bael warned.

Glancing back to the dragon shifter, Thierry saw how Ryker’s animalistic eyes had glazed over. Predatory and dangerous.

Ryker shot up, darting toward the steps, and Bael instantly tackled him.

“What’s happening to him?” Thierry asked, standing in a rush at the sudden violence.

“I thought you knew about dragons?” Bael taunted.

Straddling Ryker, Bael slapped a hand across the dragon shifter’s face. Ryker released a deadly growl and snapped his teeth at him.

“Man, calm down,” Bael said. “Come back.”

“Dragons can only mate with other dragons due to the exchange of fire that occurs during intercourse—”

“Yeah, professor, we don’t need a lesson. Last I checked, Nix isn’t a dragon.” Bael slapped Ryker’s face again and bonked his nose. “I know she smells good right now, and you are all pent-up with the lack of female dragons around, but I need you to control yourself. Go walk it off if you have to.”

Ryker rubbed his fists into his dilating eyes and growled again.

“That’s it. Fight it. She can’t survive your fire orgasms, buddy.”

“Should…go,” Ryker grated.

“You got control over yourself again?”

“For now.”

Bael stood, moving off the dragon shifter. He whistled when he saw the bulging snake in Ryker’s pants. “Damn, you’re hard.”

“Will leave.”

“Probably for the best tonight,” Bael said, clapping a hand on his back in sympathy. “Sorry, man.”

Ryker looked up to the ceiling, wearing an expression of pure yearning. “Will be…in woods.” He nodded at the men and jogged out of the front door, his erection bouncing as he raced away.

“He wants her,” Thierry said grimly. At the same time, he thought, Who wouldn’t?

“He will stay away,” Bael reassured him. “He knows he can only sex up female dragons without charring his partner to death.”

“Aren’t female dragons mostly extinct?”

“Hence the large bottle of masturbatory coconut oil upstairs.”

Thierry nodded awkwardly. Ryker had better stay away from his mate. A dragon’s flames would kill her. Thierry had already saved her from one dangerous fire that night.

Nix’s sweet, aroused scent became stronger, thickening the air. Thierry expanded his sense of hearing until he picked up on the soft huffs of her heavy breaths and light pleasured sounds as she touched herself in the shower.

Fuck . His cock still stood ramrod straight for her, aching to release inside his mate for the very first time. I want to touch her. I want to make her like me.

Thierry had a lot to make up for and a lot of bad attitude to explain.

“So, our girl is horny up there,” Bael remarked, rubbing his hands together. “What are we going to do about it?”