With what looks like a great amount of effort, she squeezes out, “Bitch, you do not know who you are fucking with. You think you can come into my territory and start killing up my people? Nah, dragon, I’m going to find a way to punish you. You’re going to pay for this. And I will never beg you for any damn thing. Believe that!”
This she-wolf…she does not at all respond as expected. Rage consumes my flame, as I assure her.
“You will beg. For mercy most of all. For it is you who has no proper comprehension of whom she is fucking with.”
Before she can answer with another one of her emotional outbursts, I shove her away and send her tumbling back.
Then I quickly exit the room.
I can no longer trust myself. My patience...it has grown too thin. And there is this rather strange business of not being able to as she put it, “get inside her head.”
I have never in my comparatively long life been so vexed. Dogs were literally bred to obey us, and I can barely reconcile her immunity…or that this crass, defiant she-wolf is truly a compatible mate.
Yet the proof that she is remains. My male works have fully descended, just as they did the first time I saw her waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs at the Greek estate. And in the parking lot, when she placed herself in my car, humbled and collared.
Fortunately, my male works retract back into my body after the bedroom door slides shut behind me, placing some distance between us. But that relief is short-lived.
Before I reach my own room—a rather modest bedroom and bathroom, that the former gatekeeper had the temerity to refer to as a master suite—the clawing need has once again overtaken me. Demanding I return to her and remain beside her, no matter how infuriated she makes me.
Not yet. I need time. Time to recover from my rage and brace myself for the next battle.
This in itself makes me feel weak.
She makes me feel weak.
And that is a first.
A first I do not like at all.
I cannot get into her head.
But she has somehow managed to wriggle her way into mine.
Chapter Fourteen
OLA
I lie on the hard floor for a long time after Damianos shoves me away.
He makes me feel weak. Helpless.
And not in a good way, like that old Hamilton song they’re always playing underneath meet cute scenes in romcoms.
There are so many voices swirling around my head, but the dragon king's voice rises above the rest.
Dark and ominous. Telling me to stay down. Resistance is futile and pretty much every single mean thing a supervillain has ever said in any film where the hero takes a fall.
I squeeze my eyes close and try to focus on the other voices. The better ones of people who love me.
My Uncle Kyle advises me to set an internal timer for five minutes. When it’s done I’m no longer allowed to feel sorry for myself.
Bitch betta get to queen solving, Uncle Clyde advises, his voice Detroit frank.
But then another familiar voice floats in, small and sad. My twin sister explaining why she has to go hide forever on a secret island. I’m sorry, Ola, I know you want us to fight, but we have to run. He’s too powerful, and if he finds us, he’ll kill us or worse.
Fensa had been raised by gangsters and Vikings, just like me.
But even she didn’t think Damianos Drákon was a problem she and her family could solve.
So many voices….
But eventually, I open my eyes and heave myself to my feet.
More out of spite than anything else. If that huge-ass dragon bitch has brought me here to abuse and kill me, I’ll be damned if I’m going to make it easy for him. Get to queen solving it is.
The good news is that I’m finally alone, which means I can check the wall….
But the bad news deflates me again when I finally find the smart room’s control pad hidden behind all the dresses.
The pad’s screen is completely dead. It doesn’t so much as change colors when I touch it. I guess the closet must be set on a basic sensor. Anyone can open it.
Same goes for the bathroom door, but not for the one leading out of the room. Like the control screen, it doesn’t respond to my touch. The floor-to-ceiling windows are also super damn rude. It responds with underwhelmed clinks when I throw a heavy chair at it. And it merely lets out a muffled thunk when I run up against it with all my wolf strength, which fortunately hasn’t been dampened by the biocollar.
Not so fortunate? I end up landing right back on the floor after my first and only painful attempt, pissed off and cussing. The window must be made out of the same kind of industrial strength glass we have at the kingdom house. Translucent iron made to look like glass. Unshatterable no matter how many bullets or wolf bodies you throw at it.
A floor to ceiling window made out of this stuff must have cost a fortune. And I know that wasn’t in the original budget. Damianos must have hypnotized a few people on the construction project to make this happen—
A chill runs down my back as another thought, even more disturbing than that one suddenly drops down into my mind.
This house was renovated over six months ago. What the hell? Exactly how long had Damianos been planning to kidnap me?
The answer drops to my head just as unpleasantly as the previous realization.
Since I helped Xenon and Fensa escape from his lair.
I’d been wrong about this being about revenge against my fathers. It’s about revenge against me.
I sit with that thought. But not for too long. Less than five minutes, probably—though I can’t say for sure since, thanks to the biocollar, I no longer have access to my internal timer.
Weapons!
If I can’t get out of this room, I need to make a weapon for the next time that fire-breathing asshole comes in.
Okay, what can I use?
I pull the bar down from the closet, dumping all the nightgowns. This will do ‘er.
Instead of feeling sorry for myself, I dip my chin and start to go through the many self-defense drills Papa Olafr taught me. He tried to teach Fensa, too, but after a certain age, she was always so caught up in reading Aunt Alicia’s books about ancient wolf civilizations, that he could never convince her to come down to his gym.
But I showed up every morning. And now there’s another voice in my head.
You’re a warrior born, Ola, the father I was named after tells me. As long as you’re fighting, you can never be defeated.
I didn’t fight smart earlier because Damianos had pissed me off. But I won’t make the same mistake again. I start drilling everything Papa taught me about fighting with a stick. Dip my chin low, swing both ends at my invisible but easily imagined seven-foot plus opponent.
Fuck food, I tell my grumbling stomach after hours of practicing. Fuck rest, I tell my sore, only recently healed body. I don’t need to eat. I don’t need to sleep.
All I need to do is fight.
“The next time he enters this room only one of us is coming out alive,” I growl out loud. “Eye of the fucking tiger emoji—”
The fever hits me in a pulsing wave, so sudden and intense I drop the stick. It hits the floor with a noisy clatter as I double over.
What the…?
My muscles turn to jelly and I break out into a sweat, suddenly hotter than I ever felt before. In an instant, clothes become a thing my skin can no longer bear. I tear at the old-fashioned nightgown until I’m naked as the day I was born.
What the hell is happening to me? Did he inject me with something while I slept? Some kind of poison maybe? Panic claws at my mind as I try to figure out what the hell is going on with me.
Is this a fever? Am I sick?
Those last two questions stop me in my mental tracks, as yet another remembered conversation downloads into my head.
“No offense to Alisha, Chloe, and mom, but why does it always take them so long to realize they’re in heat in these books?” I onc
e complained to Fensa, after doing all the assigned reading for my Modern She-Wolf History class at my university’s top-secret Lupin Studies program. “None of them have ever been sick a day in their lives, because they’re freaking wolves, right? But in their books, they’re always like, oh no, I must be sick! Maybe I’ve got a fever! None of them ever seem to get they’re in heat.”
I’d laughed derisively before telling my sister, “If I wasn’t so loyal, I’d be telling the whole class how dumb they were at the next lecture.”
Fensa had laughed and commiserated.
But now I get it.
As my own dawning horror sinks in, I realize why the she-wolves who came before me would be eager to blame this feeling on something else. Sickness… a too hot temperature setting…a weird moon…because I too was desperate for this sudden fever to be anything—and I do mean anything but what it obviously was.
Heat.
I’m in heat.
But no…no…I can’t be. The denial instinct swoops back in, along with a desperate reason why this can’t be what it feels like. I get my heat control shot on the regular. Never missed an appointment at either the Michigan or North Dakota clinics. It has to be something else. Maybe this time, it really is some exotic sickness I’ve never heard of—
As if to confirm that I am currently living my worst nightmare, viscous liquid releases between my legs and a new, unfathomable smell reaches my nose. Sweet and filthy at the same time, and so, so, wrong. I recognize the scent immediately even though I’ve only ever heard tale of it. But I’m still surprised when it unleashes a powerful lust inside of me.
A raw whimper rushes from my throat as I quake with want and hunger. And my now soaking wet pussy clenches with a need more intense than anything I’ve ever felt before.
But then my nose gets hit with something even worse than the scent of my heat.
Fire and smoke and rich cologne.
No, no, no…I find myself once again following the she-wolf denial script. I argue, I demand, I plead with the universe.
But when I look up, naked and shaking with my sticky heat running down both thighs, there’s Damianos. Somehow even larger than I remembered him from just a few hours ago.
Chapter Fifteen
I try to swallow but end up making a choked horrified sound instead. There is no liquid to be had anywhere above my waist.
There is only the heat below. Pulsing and concentrated. On him.
But it can’t be him. It can’t… “Please, please, you’ve got to help me.”
A small smile crawls across his face. Like a deadly black spider. “I see you are already begging. Just as I said you would.”
Evil-ass motherfucker.
I grit my teeth to keep the curse from escaping and instead force myself to go against my promise of just a few hours ago and beg some more.
“Please, you’ve got to help me. Call the kingdom house and have them send a wolf doctor to stop this heat.”
He stares at me, his expression cold and unreadable. “Why would I do that?”
“Because if I don’t get the heat patch, then I’ll die unless I’m mated.” A very, very bad thought occurs to me.
Every word of Aunt Alisha’s book comes back to me. How she’d been forced to wait so long for Rafe Sr. that she’d gone through a terrifying list of everything that could possibly happen if she wasn’t mated in time. From her forcing herself on her gay co-worker to dying of heart failure.
And I have to ask, “Is this why you brought me here? To kill me in the most horrific way possible?”
He tilts his head dragon slow to the side. “I would see why you would think that. But no, that is not why I brought you here.”
Then he reaches behind him and closes the door.
I…
I…
“I don’t understand,” I say.
“Neither do I.” His expression is dark and bemused. “But it would seem you and I are sexually compatible. And after being stranded here for so many millennia, I find myself unable to ignore the opportunity to continue my family line. As the former drakkon king has apparently done.”
“The former drakkon king…” I repeat, only to trail off when I realize he’s talking about Xenon. The cousin he kept chained up in his villain lair for hundreds of years after he helped my dads and grandfather win the Great Serpent War. The cousin who mated my twin sister after she went into heat. Twice.
“You—you plan to mate with me?” I ask, my voice little more than a whispered shriek.
“Yes,” he answers, his own voice still perfectly calm. Like we’re making plans for what to eat tonight.
“Like, you’re going to force yourself on me when I’m weak?”
The idea shocks me to the core. But the lust, it surges. Not caring about his reasons. Just wanting to be claimed.
“Of course I will not force myself on you, Ola. I am a king. A true king. Not the silly powerless kind your ilk pretends to be. There is no need for force. What I want… whoever I want, I assure you; I will receive.”
With those words, he pulls out the chair Kirk was sitting on earlier and turns it to face me. He takes a seat, leans forward, and, I swear to God, steeples his freaking hands. Like evil fucking incarnate. “I’ll wait, Ola. As long as it takes for you to submit to me.”
I stare at him. Unable to believe what he’s proposing.
And he stares right back at me. Like he’s waiting for me to catch up.
No, no, no…
Those useless words stomp through my mind again. What can I do? What can I do?
I’ve got to fight him. Get out of here and find a doctor.
I make a run for the door. He doesn’t stop me. Just turns his head as I rush past him. That spider’s smile still on his face. “I’ll remain here until your return.”
No, no, I won’t come back. I’ll find a doctor. Or another wolf. Anyone. I’ll mate anyone but him. My fathers’ worst enemy, my kidnapper who kills on a whim.
I push through the door and head toward the stairs, only to stumble when a new wave of arousal crashes over me. Stronger than before. Crippling.
My legs give out and I fall to the floor before I can reach the steps.
I can’t get up, can’t even crawl. At least not in the direction of the stairs.
I feel an urgent force inside of me. My wolf, I dimly realize. My wolf tugging my attention away from the stairs, back to the room with the dragon inside of it.
“I’ll wait, Ola. As long as it takes for you to submit to me.”
No, no, it can’t be Damianos. Literally anyone but him. My wolf is doing this because he’s the closest option, I tell myself. She’d fuck anyone with a pulse, right now. It doesn’t matter who. Or what species.
One mating. One mating is all I’ll need to be able to stand up and walk out of here with a clear head.
“Colby…” I start to croak, only to feel bile rise in my throat. My wolf pitches hard inside of me, like it would rather eject itself from my body than sleep with the human servant.
The intense nauseous feeling recedes as soon as I stop trying to call out to the much better alternative to Damianos Drákon.
But the crazy heat doesn’t. Another wave of arousal hits me with so much force, I moan and roll over onto my back. The ache…it hurts…it hurts. Every nerve ending in my body is tingling with sticky need. Even the air feels too heavy on my naked skin. And when I look down, I find my pussy visibly clenching.
I want to be touched. I need to be touched.
I’ve never felt like this before. How many times had I watched porn simulations and felt nothing but a faint curiosity? How many times had I wondered what it would be like to actually want to have sex? Sex is always a decision for unheated she-wolves made from a place of curiosity or opportunity. Never desire.
Either we go into sex knowing that it will be uncomfortable verging on painful, or we trust our partner enough to make it good for us.
We never make it good for ourselves. It’s just n
ot an instinct any of us have.
But now…
Now the urge to touch myself, to rub at the ache between my legs overtakes me. Anything to relieve the painful need.
But no, I can’t. How many of my she-wolf ancestors did exactly that? So many that I already know what would happen if I gave in to the temptation… touching myself would only make the urge ten thousand times worse. So unbearable, I’d do anything to make it stop.
Including fucking my family’s mortal enemy.
“The first time with Xenon…it didn’t matter what he was. All I knew was that it had to be him.”
My twin sister’s story about how she came to be mated to a dragon floats through my mind. And for a moment, the lust threatens to overwhelm me. But then I grit my teeth and haul myself to my knees with a new plan.
I crawl back into the room.
“That didn’t take long at all, did it?” Damianos says as soon as I re-enter, his voice ringing with contemptuous delight. “Look how you drip heat as you literally come crawling back to me, Ola.”
And I thought I was a petty bitch.
I grit my teeth, and move right on past him, keeping my mind on the goal. But as soon as I start moving in the opposite direction of him, crawling becomes hard. It feels like I’m inching through quicksand, and my knees give out.
But I don’t give up. I can’t give up. I drag myself across the floor until I reach the bed.
“Are you truly attempting to chain yourself up so that you won’t submit to me?” Damianos ask behind me, his voice dark and chiding.
Ignoring him, I narrow my eyes on the silver cuff still dangling from the bedpost. It takes every bit of energy I have left to heave my arms up onto the mattress.
But just as I reach out for the silver cuff, it disappears from my sight.
Damianos simply removes the cuff from the bedpost and says, “Bathroom open.”
The bathroom door slides open and he tosses the cuff inside.
I turn to rush toward the bathroom, because even better if I can lock the door behind me, and chain myself up to something in there. But the door slides back closed before the new plan is fully finished forming.
Her Dragon Captor (Her Dragon King Duet Book 1): 50 Loving States, North Dakota Pt. 1 Page 9
