“Have you run out of things to do with him?”
“No!”
“Well then, why don’t I give you a few tips on what’s considered erogenous on a dragon man? Then treat him just like that, a man.” She couldn’t believe she was doling out sex advice to the master.
Nikki colored deeply, her dark skin pink-hued.
“What have you done?”
“Nothing. Mind your own business,” Nikki hissed as Quince and Henley approached.
Quince wound his arm around Nikki’s waist possessively. Adrianne found herself a bit jealous, though of whom she wasn’t sure.
“We will stay for the evening meal,” Quince said.
One would have to be blind to miss the way Quince and Nikki stared at each other. She was sorely tempted to tease. Here stood the Queen of the one night stand madly in love.
After Nikki and Quince left, Navarre joined Adrianne for a picnic dessert under the stars.
“Quince has particular tastes,” Navarre said carefully. “I doubt very much that you would enjoy them.”
Adrianne stiffened.
“Easy, sh’niedra. What you find arousing is not necessarily what another does.”
“She asked me if it was possible to.” She paused, feeling her face grow hot. “You know, do the deed while Quince was in his other form.” Disgust laced her voice.
They sat on a blanket spread in the middle of their woods. Behind them, the bones of the Dragoon’s mansion were silhouetted against the sky. Navarre wrapped his arms tightly around her, tucking her head beneath her chin.
“She is not the first to ask, nor will she be the last,” he said finally.
“Is it possible?”
“Are you thinking of surprising me? It is not something that would appeal to me, but if it pleases you…”
“No!”
He chuckled.
“They are so in love.” She sighed.
He nuzzled her ear. “You are jealous.” He made it a statement not a question. It was impossible to hide her emotions from him.
She looked at the mansion’s shadow looming before them and knew somewhere in the darkness lurked Henley and probably his brother Hennison, her perpetual bodyguards. “What we have is not the same.” She laced her fingers through one of his hands, marveling at how delicate her hand looked against his.
“We have responsibilities.”
“And will always.” Another sigh. She shifted in his embrace, turning so that she could see into his face. “We’ll have to pick out good matches for our daughters. Or will you be open to letting them pick their own?”
His grip tightened. “You have a side of you which enjoys tormenting. Perhaps I was mistaken. You and Quince might get along quite well.”
She grinned. “There are nine girls.”
“I would have been just as pleased if there were none,” he murmured, jade eyes glimmering in the darkness like a cat’s. He kissed her lightly on the lips.
“Liar,” she whispered.
He pressed her flat against the blanket, looming over her. “Are you calling the father of your children a fraud?”
The moonlight set his hair ablaze, turning the golden strands almost white. His arms pinned her on either side. He was silent for a long time. “Nine daughters,” he said finally, wondering.
“We will have to be so careful of the bloodlines or so Vespero says. I’m kind of glad he’s too old. The thought of him flying one of our daughters is creepy.”
“He would be kind,” Navarre said offhandedly. Then his elbows buckled and he collapsed on top of her, catching himself a moment before he crushed her.
She gasped.
“Teasing you is pleasurable,” he murmured, rubbing his face through her hair.
“Kissing you is more so.” She arched up and did just that.
His mouth met hers halfway, lips searingly hot. She felt branded, as if any who saw her after their kiss would know she belonged to him and him alone. His lips pressed against hers, demanding more. Her hand crept to his neck. His supported her head. His tongue’s foray was nothing but gentle. She let him taste her, then eased back. His eyes shone in the moonlight like jewels. She wondered if hers did the same.
She glanced into the shadows. “Will they watch?” she asked, indicating Henley and Hennison.
“They’d participate if you wished it.”
She wrinkled her nose. “No. One’s quite enough, thank you.”
“I would have protested if you wished another.”
“But acquiesced? Would you fight for me?”
“You would not relish being fought over like a possession. Make no mistake. You are mine.” He kissed her lightly on the forehead to banish the strength of the statement or perhaps to reinforce it. “It is not in your nature to accept no as an answer. I merely circumvent the argument by agreeing, knowing you will not act on it.”
She should have been angry by that revelation but he was unerringly correct. “I’m not dignifying that with a response.” Navarre grinned back, a flash of white against his bronzed skin. “Again, are they going to watch?” She shouldn’t have bothered asking. She already knew the answer.
“Probably. Do you wish to go indoors where they cannot?”
No, she’d been indoors for far too long. The wind ruffled Navarre’s hair. Somewhere in the darkness an owl hooted and another responded. Were they courting too? She wanted him here, in the midst of the night, with the earth guarding her back and the tree branches sheltering them. “They are too far away to see anything,” she said finally.
“We have excellent night vision.”
“Spoilsport.” She slid her hands beneath his shirt. She’d never get enough of touching him. His chest was solid and smooth beneath her fingertips. She ran her hands up his stomach and chest, then skimmed them down his sides so she could slip them around and up his back.
He groaned softly. Her fingers were chilled and his body so incredibly warm. Closing his eyes, he pressed his lips tight. Her fingers played with the waistband of his pants. She lingered in the dip of his back, itching to glide down the curve, to play with his muscle-taut buttocks. She was so wet, so ready for him.
He lowered himself, freeing his hands. His fingers tangled in her hair, fanning it out around her face. “You are so beautiful,” he breathed.
She blushed. He buried his nose in the hollow of her neck, kissing and licking softly. Fumbling with the buttons on her blouse, he managed to open two before giving up. He licked the tops of her breasts.
Her hands stopped their roving, concentrating on tugging down his pants and underwear. Zipper lowered, she slipped the clothes over the rise of his buttocks. Her hands caressed his firm butt cheeks, kneading the underlying muscle.
He all but panted. “Erif… Adri.”
He had no idea how utterly feminine his noises made her feel. “Here.” She arched up and he tugged both her panties and skirt down. Hurrah to elastic waistbands. Why waste time with silly zippers and clasps?
His skin was liquid gold in the moonlight, caramel to her cream. He laid his palm flat upon the juncture of her thighs. She curved to meet him. Her body already knew what pleasures he could give it.
“Please,” she whispered, voice thick.
His breaths were as short and as fast as hers. He lowered into her. They sighed in unison.
The moon and surrounding woods pleaded for soft, slow lovemaking. Even the light breeze whispered of romance. Wings rustled overhead. Perhaps the owls finally surrendered to one another. She and Navarre’s movements were perfectly coupled, her rise to his fall. A stroke of his hand across her stomach made her whimper. Their hearts hammered together. When he felt her close to falling over the edge, he laid his cheek against hers and they came together. She shuddered beneath him.
“In that briefest moment, when it seems you hover between one breath and the next, life and eternity, there are no thoughts in your mind but of me,” he murmured into her neck. “I love that.” He traced the curve of her ea
r with his tongue. “And when you choose life, gasp, and clench around me, there is nothing at all up there, just pure carnal bliss. I delight in that moment as well.”
She squeezed him tightly. What words could she say to match that? None, so she kept quiet and still beneath him, feeling the strength and warmth of his body pour through her. She dozed briefly, warm and safe in his arms.
He shook her tenderly awake. “Time to return to the children.” He knew she didn’t like them called eggs.
“Mmm.” She heard Navarre call her softly again, whispering some endearment in Labyrinthine. She drifted. Wasn’t that something she always feared? Drifting too far away and finding herself unable to return?
But someone other than Navarre was calling her as well. And whoever or whatever it was had a stronger tie to her than Navarre. She couldn’t help herself. Leaving her body behind, she went to it, him, her, whatever.
She opened her eyes.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Navarre shook Adrianne a bit harder. Her breathing was steady, her eyes closed. He reached for her mind. Erifydal?
It was as if someone had erected a barricade between her mind and the outside world. He beat invisible fists against the wall. Erifydal!
Pulling her into a sitting position, he held her to his chest. “Henley! Hennison! Come quickly.” Someone had stolen her right beneath him. How could they have? Why would he have not felt it? Because he was in an unprotected orgasmic haze. He was an irresponsible fool. If he had let someone hurt her…
Henley dropped to one knee before him. “I am not trained to fight these kind of battles.”
“Help me get her to the eggs,” Navarre said. Her own tenuous tie to herself was what first permitted him to call her to them across the galaxies. He should have known the enemy would find her weakness. All their training and he’d never once warned her about being yanked from her own body. Only who was he fighting? Wasn’t the Hunter dead?
Adrianne moaned softly, turning her head from side to side.
“Come back to us,” he pleaded harshly. “Come back to me.” He would not let her go without a fight.
* * * * *
Adrianne was in the hospital room she’d been in after her plane crashed. But that couldn’t be right. How did she get here? She tried to touch herself, but her hands were tied down with restraints. She was wearing a backless papery hospital gown. Where was Navarre?
“Welcome back, Ms. Harris,” the doctor, her doctor, said. He stood beside her bed at her left, holding a clipboard and clucking softly over its results. She wasn’t sure if he even realized he was making that noise.
Her throat felt incredibly dry. She licked her lips. “Where am I? Why am I tied down?” Panic bubbled through her as if her mind already knew what the doctor was about to say.
“You had an episode,” the doctor said gently.
No, no, it wasn’t possible. She shook her head. This doctor wasn’t hers from the emergency room, though he did look familiar. This one was young and pleasant, with a mop of curly blond hair and piercing blue eyes.
“Who are you?”
The doctor glanced down at his coat, then seemed surprised when he didn’t see a name tag there. “Baker,” he said finally. “Dr. Andrew Baker.”
“What day is it?” she insisted. She tugged at the restraints. Her hands were firmly tied. Navarre! she silently screamed.
“May twentieth.”
She reeled. There had to be an explanation. Deep breaths, take deep breaths, she instructed herself. Her panting resonated through the room. “How long have I been here?”
“We rescued you along with the others November the twenty-third last year. You’ve been in and out of a coma ever since.”
“No, that can’t be. I was the sole survivor of the plane crash.”
The doctor shook his head again, ever so gently. “No.”
The sun poured through the blinds of her window. She wanted to put her face into its warmth and let it wash away the fear. The fear was a tangible thing now. She tasted it, sharp, metallic, like old blood. She clenched her hand into fists.
“Navarre. Quince.” She raised her chin, trying to keep the tremor from her voice. “Benito. The Hunter.” Names had power.
Dr. Baker checked his clipboard. “We had to heavily medicate you from time to time. You were quite delusional.”
Navarre! she screamed again. There was no answer.
Oh God, she’d slipped, hadn’t she?
“But I can fly,” she whispered.
“You certainly think so.”
“What brought me back?” She was thankful for the restraints. Without them, she’d have slipped beneath the covers like a rag doll. How could Navarre not be real?
“Are you fully here?” the doctor countered.
She did not answer him. She didn’t know.
“I think you’ve reached the end of your dream sequence, but others are not so sure. I need to show you something, Adrianne. I need to make sure you are here with us. Are you ready? Are you sure you will not hide in your fantasy world again?”
“I’m sure.” She felt drawn out, empty. What was there left to live for without Navarre, without her children, without the Dragoon? Anger flared, beating tiny fists against the encroaching darkness. She had a life before the Dragoon. She had Nikki.
Dr. Baker pulled back the drape separating her from the next patient’s bed. A dead man’s eyes stared back at her. “Can you tell me what prompted you to kill Mr. Bansten?”
She recoiled. She’d never seen a dead person up close before. His eyes were like marbles, sunken into the skull. Fear stained the face like garish makeup on a hooker. Blood soaked through the man’s white shirt, bleeding yet onto the white sheets he lay on. “I didn’t kill anyone.”
Dr. Baker tsked. “You wouldn’t be restrained if you weren’t a hazard to yourself and others.”
“I didn’t kill anyone!” she screamed. The dead man was missing his heart. Wait a second. She could clearly see the ragged chest tissue through the hole in his shirt. What was this? Shock therapy? Dr. Baker was smiling faintly at her, pen poised above his clipboard. She stilled.
The man was missing his heart. All the Hunter’s victims had been missing them as well.
Come on, Adrianne. What was more plausible? Slipping off the normal train and going psycho or the idea that she was some alien Queen? She bit her lip.
But the man was missing his heart.
She looked at Dr. Baker again, testing her restraints. Those bindings extended beyond the physical. She could actually feel the walls someone had erected around her mind. Or was it just a game her mind was playing with her? Six months ago she wouldn’t have had the ability to examine those invisible boundaries. She didn’t test the barrier further for fear of setting off a trap.
Taking another deep breath, she looked Baker in the eye. “I don’t believe I did that.”
Dr. Baker sighed. “That’s not the answer I wished to hear, Adrianne. Please be honest with yourself.”
She twisted her arms in their leather restraints to look at the scars on her wrists. I am not that person anymore. She had been grieving when she did that. She could handle grief now. She could handle the loneliness now too, the bogeyman that hid in her shadow, even in daylight, especially in the daylight. She had Navarre, the Dragoon, her unborn children and Nikki. She wet her lips and looked down at her wrist. The sun basked upon it, warm, extending light-drenched fingertips to caress her scars. She raised her hand a fraction.
Her hand cast no shadow upon the sheets.
Dr. Baker continued to watch her.
“I think you’re lying,” she said carefully and threw every ounce of energy she had against not her restraints, but Dr. Baker.
Baker’s body rippled as if he were merely a paper-cutout tossed in hurricane winds. Then his body began to break up, piece by piece. A crackling sound filled her ears. A flake of Dr. Baker drifted past her, a hint of nose and a single eye.
“What have you
done?” he asked her.
She saw the piece with Dr. Baker’s mouth form the words, but the sound echoed in her head. She felt the leather cuffs vanish from her arms. The chest strap dropped into her lap.
She climbed out of the bed. She was no longer dressed in the paper hospital gown. Her own power clothed her, pearled white light, her scales etched against her skin. “Who are you?” It was a demand.
Baker laughed the Hunter’s laugh.
“You are dead,” she said simply. “This is not real.”
All the bits and pieces of Dr. Baker shattered.
She was standing in the hatching chamber beneath the Dragoon’s ship. Navarre was holding both her hands, eyes closed, head tipped back, lips forming words she could not hear, but felt wash through her. He possessed power as well. She’d never been so acutely aware of how much though.
His strength of will eddied around her like a hurricane. Her skirt rippled in the unnatural wind, her untucked blouse’s edges flapping as well. She laid her finger upon his lips and called him back to himself. “Navarre.”
The wind died.
A ring of ancient swords, points embedded into the clay soil circled them. Outside the ring, each member stood behind a sword, even Quince.
Navarre opened his eyes. “Erifydal?” he whispered. His voice was raw.
“Yes, I’m back.” She wrapped her arms around him. “Thank you. Thank God for all of you.”
* * * * *
Baker was physically thrown back into his chair as if an unseen creature had simply tossed him aside like a discarded toy. Which was exactly what he was. He had failed. He felt the disapproval as if it were a material weight upon his chest, intent on stealing the last bit of oxygen from his lungs. He sat in the darkness of his office for a moment, panting. At least he thought it was his own breathing. He held his breath. The panting continued.
Leaning forward, he flicked on his lamp switch. Three big black dogs lounged around the facedown body of a man. Baker had seen all manners of death before, but the sight of one of the dogs calmly chewing on a raw portion of the dead man’s arm was enough to make him vomit. He did retain the presence of mind to turn his head and puke into the trash can rather than spew across his desk.
The Last Queen Page 27
