Plugging It In(18)

Holy shit …

The mating fire.

Tyson twisted in his seat, frantically looking around the beachfront café even as he felt like he was burning up. No one stared back. No one gazed at him with open hunger. No one stalked toward him with single-minded purpose or made coy goo-goo eyes from afar. The only one paying him any attention was the old duck with the sour-lemon face, and there was nothing hungry or sexual about the way she stared at him. She looked as if she were about to pull an Uzi from her handbag and save the world from a psychopath.

She leaned toward him, eyes narrowing behind her pink glasses. "Are you on drugs, son?" Her lips-painted the same pink as her coke-bottle glasses, Ty noted in a brief moment of surreal detachment-pursed tighter. "Are you tripping?"

Fresh fire scalded his flesh, so hot, so intense, he gritted his teeth. His cock throbbed with such impatient insistency he feared he was going to erupt. He blinked at the old woman. Opened his mouth. Closed it. His throat wouldn't work. His balls felt ready to burst.



       
         
       
        

Mating fire? How could he be experiencing the mating fire? Since when were there female dragon shifters in Syd-

A woman jogged toward the café, holding the leash of a massive animal that could be a dog but looked more like a hairy … thing … loping beside her. She moved at a leisurely pace, dark-red ponytail flipping behind her head like a dancing flame, slim body radiating energy, breath slipping from her in streams of delicate mist Tyson knew only he could see.

She ran past the café, dog-slash-thing keeping pace, and Tyson's entire body went up in flames. Heat and lust and want. Need.

Urgent need. Hungry want. Dire lust.

His heart slammed into his throat. His mate. His Fire Mate. Fuck, he'd seen his Fire Mate. And she was-

He bolted to his feet, stare locked on the woman jogging through the crowded footpath. His table went skidding, bumping into the old duck's. The remains of his pizza clattered to the floor, along with his untouched beer, his phone and the old duck's glass of wine. Beer and wine splashed his ankles, dribbled inside his shoes, but he didn't care. He had to catch her. Had to-

"Sonny," she hissed. "Do you know you're making noises like a-"

Dragon.

The word reverberated through his head, drowning out whatever word the old duck had used just as the crowd swallowed up the jogging woman.

Dragon.

He was making noises like a dragon. A dragon in heat.

He was making noises like a dragon in heat because he was a dragon in heat. And Christ on a pony, his Fire Mate had just jogged by, oblivious to his existence, triggering the mating fire-and she was human.

Human. How the fuck could she be human? Surely he was wrong. True, he didn't detect the distinct honeyed-sulfur scent all female dragon shifters exuded … but since when did dragon shifters mate with humans?

Since never, that's when. They may fuck them every now and again, but mate with them?

No. It wasn't possible.

Of course it isn't. So tell that to your body.

His body, however, wasn't listening to logic and millennia-old fact. His body was well and truly on its way to shifting-shifting for fuck's sake!-and unless he did something soon, something drastic and/or crazy, the busy Bondi Beach esplanade was going to find itself plus one very horny, very large, very medieval mythological dragon.

He stumbled away from his table, trying to find the woman-his mate-in the flow of pedestrians filling the footpath that ran between the café and the beach. He had to get to her. What the hell he was going to say, he didn't know, but he had to get to her and, if nothing else, kiss her. And hope to all things holy that simple contact would quell the shift. 

"Sonny, did you know you have a very large erection?" his ever-informative elderly neighbor asked, hissing again, her voice somehow punching through his stunned disbelief.

Tyson blanched. He jerked his gaze back to her, down to his groin, to the bloody obvious hard-on tenting his cargoes, and then back to the woman. "Err … "

She smirked, and for an insane moment, she didn't look old at all. Or duckish.

And then fresh fire razed Tyson's flesh, licked at his balls, his groin, and he forgot about old ladies. Fresh fire accompanied by a bone-deep shudder, and he knew his Fire Mate had turned around. She was jogging back toward him.

Fast.

He bolted. Vaulting over chairs, tables and the café's neat row of potted palms. There was a shocked shout from behind him, a few loud what the hells, a bray of stunned laughter-and then nothing.

Nothing but the thumping of his heart and the roaring of blood in his ears.

Bloody hell. He was about five minutes away from an uncontrolled and unwanted shift into dragon form, he was still fighting a mean case of heartburn and he was sporting an erection the size of a cricket bat. What a perfect first impression to make on the complete stranger he was going to kiss right here on the busy Bondi Beach foot-

He ran straight into her.

There was a startled oof, a growl, a warm and firm body pressed to his … followed by an explosion of heat over his flesh, through his body, into his soul.

Two wide, stunned blue eyes stared up at him-and then Tyson crushed her lips with his. He kissed her and invaded her mouth and let the demand pounding through his body be consumed by her sweet, destined blaze.

A stranger's tongue was in Sera's mouth. In her mouth.

Holy smack, a stranger's tongue was in her mouth. Rolling and sliding over her tongue. The stranger was kissing her. No, not just kissing her. He was fucking her mouth. Making goddamn love to her mouth with his tongue while something long and thick and wicked hard that was most likely an impressive erection poked at her belly. He was cupping her right breast in a strong, kneading caress, teasing her hard nipple, and what was she doing?

Just what the hell was she doing?

Was she fighting him off? Was she pushing him away and kicking him in the balls? Was she letting Hannibal rip said kicked-in balls off?

She sure as hell wasn't paying heed to all those stranger-danger lectures from when she was a kid, that's for certain.

No. She was standing there like some kind of skanky ho, letting him. Letting him. His tongue was practically playing with her tonsils and she wasn't putting up a fight. Far from it. She was kissing him back. Her tongue was stroking his, her lips were parted and she was kissing him back big-time. Holy smack, she was even moaning.

What the hell was wrong with her? It was like she had lost control of herself the second the guy slammed into her. Shit, even her hands had strayed to his chest-his broad, hard, smooth chest that seemed to burn under his light-cotton shirt with a heat that should have screamed fever but instead it made her pulse quicken, her pussy throb and her tongue stroke his some more.

This had to be some random-and thoroughly surreal-act of impulsive seduction. Like the guy in New York who gave out hugs, except this guy gave out mind-blowing, tonsil-stroking kisses. Had to be.

She had to stop him.

Except she didn't. Someone else did.

"Hey, hey, hey," a man barked to her right, a second before the tongue-fucking stranger was hauled backward. "There'll be none of that here, mate."

Something growled. An animal. A big animal.

Sera snapped her gaze to Hannibal, but her cousin's dog was just sitting at her heel, licking his balls.

She jerked her gaze back to her stranger-her stranger?-and almost let out a yelp.



       
         
       
        

She hadn't gotten a good look at him before, just remembered a quick flash of hunky, dark yumminess a second before he crushed her lips with his. Now he stood glaring at the cop holding his arm, very much still hunky and yummy what with his dark, floppy hair, equally dark straight eyebrows and dark-dark eyes. Very much hunky and yummy but oh so very much frightening. Menacing. Malevolent.

As dark and hunky and yummy as he was, he looked like he was about to rip the head off the cop who suddenly didn't seem to appear as brave and determined and authoritarian as he had a second ago. Now the cop looked scared.

Scared of her stranger. The guy who had come out of nowhere, kissed her until she moaned and was currently glaring at the cop, nostrils flaring, chest heaving, growling in an utterly inhuman way that turned Sera's pussy to liquid.

Oh God help her, she'd just French-kissed a psychopath. And was horny about it.

Oh wow …

"Y-you can't … " the cop stammered, stumbling back a step.

Her growling, nostril-flaring stranger sucked in a breath and swung his gaze back Sera. "I can smell your want."

The claim was a low murmur through barely parted lips. His eyes seemed to glint, another growl rumbled in his chest and, with a shudder unlike any Sera had ever seen, he turned and sprinted away. Through the bustling pedestrians on the footpath toward the crowded sands of Australia's most famous beach.

He didn't slow. He didn't deviate from his path. He ran straight for the water, stripping his shirt as he went, and splashed into the surf, still wearing his cargo shorts and shoes.

"What the hell?" Sera whispered, watching him.

Without breaking his break-neck pace, the sun glimmering off his bare torso, he dove under the first wave and was gone.