by Mina Carter
He growled low in his throat and turned them, leaning back against the cold wall to pull her into him. His hands stole under the fur wrapped around her, the gap letting in the cold air until he pulled her flush against his hot, literally hot, body.
She moaned and pressed into him, trying to absorb the heat like a lizard baking in the sun. A hand sliding into her hair again, he nipped at her lower lip, and she gasped. As soon as she did, he slid his tongue past her lips to tangle with hers in an erotic slip-slide that had her clutching at his broad shoulders.
Heat rolled through her, her body aching for his as she pressed and rubbed against him, all her inhibitions lost as the simmer in her veins grew wilder. She ached for him… needed him like she’d never needed a man before.
He broke away with a rumble of pleasure and looked down at her.
“I never got your name, little one.” He smiled, the expression transforming his handsome features into something so stunning it took her breath away.
“It’s Zah…rina,” she added quickly, giving him the real full name she rarely used. He was a wyvern. She wasn’t sure he’d be happy about a dragoness in his eyrie.
“Zahrina. It’s a beautiful name.” He smiled again, reaching for her hand from under the fur wrap and bringing it to his lips. “I’m Roc.”
She hid her start of surprise under a soft blush and demure look down.
Holy shit… she hadn’t gotten herself kidnapped by just any wyvern but the most dangerous among them.
Roc—the king the wyverns said they didn’t have.
Chapter 4
She liked him. His little mate liked him.
Roc smiled to himself as she batted his hand away from her hair for the hundredth time and turned her head imperiously. For all that she was his captive, wrapped in a fur from his bed, she sat on the ground at his feet like a queen. Her back was straight, her chin up and her gaze cool and glacial as she looked around the crude meeting area on the plateau in the middle of all the eyries. It was protected a little from the elements by high rock walls, but he kept a close eye on her. She was tiny and delicate, his to protect and care for. He didn’t intend to be found lacking in that duty… not now he’d finally found his mate.
He caught the little sideways glance from under her lashes as he reached for his tankard. Pretending not to see it, he hid a grin. She definitely liked him, physically at least, the way she’d wrapped around him like a cat earlier proof of that. He’d kept his body heat higher since then to entice her to do it again.
Sure enough, despite the fire in front of her and the thick furs wrapped around her delicate, curvy little body, she’d been steadily scooting closer to him over the last hour, until her back and side rested against his knee and thigh.
He almost groaned at the contact, his body on fire for her. He’d been hard since their kisses against the cave wall earlier, all his male instincts insisting that he carry her to his bed and make her his immediately.
Fortunately, the human part of his brain overruled the cave-lizard part. To win her body, he’d have to win her mind first, or he would never truly have her. And he wanted all of her—the intelligence and quick wit he could see in her beautiful eyes as well as the stunning body he longed to hold against his.
The little glances proved she liked him, though, and more than just as a source of heat. The scent of her need in the air earlier was imprinted in his memory for all time and her kisses, the way she reacted to him… she wanted him as a man as well, despite her protests it was just because he was hot, her words giving the impression she’d have kissed any man she found attractive that way.
Rage surged, a snarl trickling from his lips. She shot him a startled glance from under her lashes but he ignored it, his hand so tight on his tankard the metal creaked. The thought of her in some other guy’s arms brought the beast out in him, and one way more dangerous than the wyvern who lurked beneath his skin.
Sure, people thought his kind were primitive and dangerous, from a time when Altoria was filled with predators of the prehistoric kind, but his wyvern side was more concerned with survival and protecting what it deemed as their territory. It wasn’t downright mean and ruthless, able to plot revenge for perceived slights and carry them out without an ounce of remorse. That sort of nastiness came from his human side, pure and simple.
Grimly, he fought down the rage, lest he rip up at her and demand a list of every man she’d ever looked at so he could go rip their spines out through their assholes. Instead, he simply offered her a small smile. She edged closer, despite his anger, and this time, when he reached out to wind a strand of her hand around his finger, she didn’t pull away.
His inner beast chuffed with pleasure, his eyes glued to the fiery lock in his hand. Wyverns made the icy wastelands of the planet their home, but anything to do with fire fascinated them, often staring mesmerized into flames for hours on end. That was how he felt looking at her—entranced.
She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen and she hadn’t moved away. She was getting used to him. Triumph rolled through his bigger body as he sat back, arms outstretched over the back of his crude “throne.” He had a mate and he was a king, what more could a guy want?
“We should have burned those villages,” Nesren grumbled from the other side of the fire, earning him a hard look from Roc. “What if they decide to move up here? There are empty eyries on the south side of the range that are within reach. If they got into those, they’d be like a bloody infestation. We’d never get rid of them…”
“They won’t.” Roc’s voice was a deep, forbidding rumble. “I’ve dealt with the issue. The council will have them relocated to somewhere more hospitable and suited for them. I assured him we would stay out of it.”
“Council, council, council,” the wyvern sneered. “Surprised you didn’t take them all as your mate instead of her.”
Roc curled his lips back from his teeth in unmistakable warning.
“Be very careful what you say next,” he advised in a rumble so low it hurt even his own ears, the threat of his wyvern loud and clear in the gravelly tones. There were other grumbles in the darkness beyond the fires but he kept his attention on Nesren in front of him. A slight movement, little more than a rustle of limbs to his right, told Roc that Arnor, his right-hand man and the closest thing he had to a brother, had taken note. Without looking, he knew the dissenters would be getting a little visit in the dead of night from the big wyvern.
Nesren’s gaze slid away from Roc’s. Sensibly, he didn’t look at the woman at Roc’s feet for too long, realizing that Roc was far more likely to tear him a new one over her than arguing over the villages.
“At least she’s pretty,” he commented. “Unusual hair. What did you say her name was?”
Roc felt her stiffen as Nesren addressed him as though she wasn’t even there. Their culture was all male. Women were very few and far between, and, he realized, seen as less. Playthings to be used in bed, and broodmares to bear their children. His breath hissed out between his teeth. No wonder the other shifters saw them as dinosaurs.
“Her name is Zahrina,” he bit out. “And she’s sitting right there. Talk to her if you want to know anything about her, not me.”
“Okay.” Nesren grinned, a sly expression on his face as he looked at the curvy redhead. “Zahrina… lovely name. How’s your brother, Talon, doing these days? Must be a busy guy… being the king of dragons and all that…”
Zahrina froze at the wyvern’s words as all eyes around the fire turned her way. Shit. She’d been so careful to not give Roc any hint that she was dragon-born. It was just her luck for one of his men to recognize her.
“Zahrina?” Roc’s voice was low and dangerous in the sudden silence. “Is what he’s saying true?”
She turned slightly, keeping her expression cool and regal. There was no point trying to deny it. Now he suspected, she had a feeling that he wouldn’t stop until he found out the truth one way or another.
“Yes…
Talon is my brother,” she admitted. Her soul somehow felt easier at the words, as if, on some level, she hadn’t liked keeping the truth from him. Even if he had kidnapped her and brought her up here to freeze her ass off, she didn’t like telling lies. A lie of omission maybe, to an enemy of her people, but it still felt wrong.
“Uh-huh.” He nodded, his gaze steady on hers. Dangerously steady… there was no hint of the lover from earlier, a steely-eyed warrior in his place. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She arched her eyebrow at him, like he was a youngling who’d made a stupid comment. “And when would I have done that? When you kissed me without so much as a by-your-leave… or when you carried me off like some sort of pillaging bloody…” She racked him with a look, her lip curled back as she hurled the word like an insult. “…wyvern!”
Despite the roaring fire in front of them, fueled by ember-rock and whatever the wyvern equivalent of dragons-fire was, the temperature dropped to icy. Roc surged to his feet.
“We’re done.”
A hard hand under her arm, he yanked her upright, nodding to the wyverns around the fire.
“Wait… what? Let go of me, you great bloody oaf!” she demanded, pissed off with the catcalls and ribald comments as Roc dragged her away from the fire. Trying to tear her arm free of his grip proved pointless. His hand was clamped around her arm like a vise. All she managed to do was hurt herself, pain lancing through her arm as she compressed her lips to avoid showing weakness.
Some bloody dragoness she was. She should have raked him with her claws and fire, shown him that while dragons weren’t built like tanks the same way wyverns were, they were just as dangerous... especially pissed off females who didn’t appreciate being hauled off on the wing.
But her dragon remained stubbornly asleep and unreachable, so she had no way to fight back as Roc shifted in a flurry of midnight scales and leathery wings to carry her off up to his eyrie clutched in his claws. She clung to him, unable to stop the shriek as he came in to land, expecting to be dashed against the cold, hard stone. Wyverns only had back claws and they needed them to land, so carrying something as squishable as a female dragon in human form….
He let her go to tumble against the hard rock of the landing cave a split second before he touched down. But it wasn’t a gap she could make use of… she hadn’t even made it to her feet before he was on her, his hand around her throat as he propelled her backward, pinning her against the wall. His face was a mask of rage as he looked down at her.
“Well… when were you going to tell me?” He snarled, lips curled back. “Or did you think that whatever trick you were pulling was going to last and I’d never find out you’re Talon’s sister? Perhaps you thought you could pull the wool over my eyes with your feminine wiles and hot as hell body and keep me on a leash… feed information back to your brother… is that it?”
He thought she was hot… no, he thought the curvy form she’d tried to diet into submission to attain the slender perfection most men idolized was as hot as hell. That thought held her immobile for a moment, until he shook her again and she remembered he was furious with her… which wasn’t a safe place for any dragon to be, much less a smaller female who couldn’t reach her inner beast.
“Zahrina…” he growled again, obviously wanting an answer. At the movement she spread her hands over his broad chest. The look in his eyes changed, shifted from rage to something else equally as dark and dangerous.
“No,” she said breathlessly. “I wasn’t planning on using wiles to get any information out of you—”
“Pity,” he breathed and swooped in. His lips crashed over hers in a maelstrom of heat, need and shared breaths. She moaned as he parted hers with a hard sweep of his tongue, driving within to plunder the heated depths of her mouth with a ruthlessness that took her breath away and had her clinging to him in need by the time he lifted his head. His gaze held her captive. “I’d enjoy it if you did.”
“I’m not spying for my brother,” she repeated earnestly, needing him to believe her. Quite why, she wasn’t sure, but she did. “I had no idea who you were at the council hall.”
“I know you’re not.” He flicked his long hair back over a shoulder, a smile in his clear eyes. She was glad to see it. For some reason him being angry with her made her edgy and upset, although why she should be bothered by what a kidnapping wyvern thought, even a kidnapping king of wyverns, she didn’t know. “You wouldn’t get anything, but I’d enjoy you trying.”
Zahra was dragon enough that a challenge like that couldn’t go unanswered. No way, no how.
“I wouldn’t get anything?” She lifted her eyebrow. “Are you sure of that?”
Before he could answer, she kissed him. She didn’t hold back, pressing herself against him and moaning softly in the back of her throat at the feel of her soft curves giving slightly when they met the hard planes of his heavily-muscled body. He might be a wyvern in his other form but as a man, he was hot.
He started in surprise and she held back her smile. What did he think? Two could play at those games and she wasn’t innocent by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, she hadn’t slept her way around Altoria or Earth and back, but she’d had a few lovers… a long time ago. As if to remind her how long it had been, her pussy tightened and her clit ached at the thought of Roc in bed… in her.
That need dictated her next movements and she rubbed against him, cat-like. Sliding her tongue against the closed seam of his lips with delicate little flicks, she tempted him to open up for her, a rock of her hips against his promising all sorts of carnal delights if he gave in.
He growled, hands hard around her waist as he surrendered, parting his lips and allowing her access. But she didn’t thrust her tongue into his mouth, instead she retreated, forcing him to follow and when he did…
She broke the kiss, leaving him hanging, obviously wanting more and on the back foot to find her suddenly not there.
“Still sure I wouldn’t get anything?” she taunted. She’d gotten him and they both knew it.
“Minx,” he growled, sliding a hand in her hair to hold her head still. Eyes wide, breath paused in anticipation, she waited for him to kiss her again, but he didn’t. Instead, he studied her, his expression direct and assessing.
“So, if you’re a dragon and Talon’s sister…” He paused for a moment to graze his lips against hers. A soft sigh escaped her at the much-needed contact, her trick turning back around and biting her in the ass like Ouroboros, the winged snake who made the world. “Then why haven’t you shifted and flown away from here. From me?”
Chapter 5
His little mate couldn’t fly.
Three days later Roc sat on the highest point by the eyries, looking over his “domain.” The wyverns and other clans on Altoria had taken to him being king without question. Well, apart from Nesren and his cronies, but they’d quit their bitching after that first night. Roc figured Arnor had sorted the dissenters, leaving him to deal with all the things the king of an Altorian shifter clan needed to deal with.
Which seemed to comprise of meetings. A lot of frigging meetings. Why he needed to be in half of them, he had no clue… What did he need to know about fishing rights in the tropics? He was a frigging ice-dragon for heaven’s sake… as in snow and ice, not the bloody tropics with its heat and sands. A shudder racked his body from head to the tip of his tail. He hated the heat…
But the endless meetings had provided some interesting information. Nothing to do with running a clan, and everything to do with the delicate little female he’d left sleeping safely in his bed this morning.
Zahrina couldn’t shift. Not anymore. According to the gossipy dragoness he’d spoken to, Zahrina… known just as Zahra… had been injured saving a child years ago and her wings had been so badly broken she hadn’t been able to fly since.
His heart clenched at the idea of the amount she must have suffered. Just the thought of her falling out of the sky, lying broken and dying somewhere… he roared his
rage and pain at the mountains around him. His mate had suffered and he hadn’t been there to ease her pain, to hold her in his arms and comfort her.
But it was worse than that. Not being able to fly… the idea made him shudder. He’d rather die than not be able to take to the skies. To never feel the wind under his wings again, to never swoop and soar, to dive in the air currents… it didn’t bear thinking about. And his mate had survived that. She’d suffered all that to save a child.
She was as strong as she was beautiful. Desire hit him at the memory of her lips parting softly beneath his and her lush, curvy body against him. She was warming to him. Slowly, admittedly, but there was a softening of her manner, and the way she’d kissed him to prove her point… carnal heat rolled through his veins, threatening his control on the shift as everything within him wanted to change back to his human form and take her in his arms.
She’d been right though. She only had to kiss him… hell, she’d only have to look at him with that soft, sexy expression on her face and he’d kneel at her feet, ready to do anything she asked. The fates had picked well for him; she was every inch the queen.
He grumbled in the back of his throat, turning around on his rocky perch, claws dislodging boulders to tumble down the rock faces below him. Which was when he heard it… a woman’s cry, quickly muffled. Spreading his wings, he caught the wind and used it for lift as he pirouetted on his tiptoes.
Peering down the cliff face, his heart stuttered to a stop in his chest. Zahra clung to the rock face five hundred feet below him, the long skirts of her dress fluttering in the wind as she tried to shelter from the falling rocks. He knew instantly what she was doing. Unable to fly from his eyrie, she’d chosen to brave the precarious path down the rock face, one even a goat shifter with a death wish would walk away from.
