Delight brightens his eyes. “Oh yes, mademoiselle. Please.”
I move behind his chair, between Roark and the king, and I sink into a cloud of silk, knees coming to rest on the hard floor. My sleeves trail from my elbows as I reach up, working at the hooks closing Roark’s breeches. I glance up, meeting his glittering gaze, challenging him with my own. Not a muscle in his face twitches as his cock jumps into my hand.
“Ah, here we are,” I breathe. Holding his gaze with my own, I sink lower, until I’m close enough to take the gleaming red hood between my lips. But first I lick the pearl of moisture from its tip.
The king lets out a loud groan. “My good man. How delicious.”
I grasp Roark’s hips, sliding my face over his cock until I feel it bump the back of my throat. I close my mouth, swallowing him deeper. The groan that vibrates inside him is barely audible.
I tilt my head back so I can continue to watch him. The satisfaction I feel at his powerlessness causes a swell of pleasure, and moisture seeps down onto my thighs. His lids lower, half veiling his eyes, as his gaze answers mine.
I begin to slide back and forth, slicking his shaft with moisture.
“Mon Dieu,” mutters the king, desperation in his voice.
I feel the slight twitch of Roark’s hips, and I know he’ll release soon. I slide almost free, curling my tongue once around the hood of his cock before withdrawing completely. Watching the sinking of his chest and shoulders, the bobbing of his desperate cock, I smile and rise to my feet.
I step back to study Roark’s form, resting an elbow in one hand and propping my chin in the other. Blue spirals pound beneath his skin. “Does it please Your Majesty?” I ask.
“My lady,” comes the reply from behind me. “I’ve never seen anything so wonderful.”
I turn. The king is staring at me with open lust. My gaze rakes down until it connects with the rise between the edges of his embroidered doublet.
I smile. “Would Your Majesty like to see more?”
“Indeed, Your Majesty would.” Unlike his gaze, his voice is low and restrained.
Moving behind his chair, I take hold of the back. “If it please Your Majesty?”
He rises, and I scoot the chair back a couple of feet, feeling my gown brush against Roark. I motion to the chair and the king sits.
“My Lord Roark,” I say without turning, “if you would help me with the fastenings of my gown.”
I wait, but not a word comes in reply. Not a sound.
“Well, go on, man,” orders the king, a choked laugh erupting from his lips.
I feel Roark’s fingers at my back, and a breath shudders through me. I pull the gown over my shoulders and let it slide to the floor.
I move, skirt of my petticoat swaying, to stand between the seated king and the table. Resting my backside against the edge of the table, I reach up and begin unfastening the hooks of my corset. Peeling back the edges, exposing mounds of bosom and just a peek of taut nipple, I say, “For Your Majesty’s inspection.”
The pattern of ochre leaves throbs along with my heart. The king rises to his feet, taking a slow step forward. I push my knees apart, inviting him to move closer.
“Stunning creature,” he breathes. “I’m so glad I’ve not had my dessert.”
Stepping around me, he sweeps the dishes away with a clattering racket. Plates shatter on the floor.
With a glance at the stoic shifter behind him, I scoot onto the table, smiling and lying back until the hard tabletop meets my shoulder bones.
The king bends over me, dark curls from his wig tickling my chest. He tugs my corset all the way open, and then he pops a cherry into his mouth, biting it in half. Removing the seed with his fingers, he carefully covers each hard pebble of a nipple with the dripping red fruit. The flesh between my legs burns like a furnace.
He lifts a boat full of plum sauce, dribbling it slowly over every line of color marking my skin. Moving to stand between my legs, he slides my petticoat up over my calves, my knees, and finally my thighs.
I can no longer see the king due to all the linen between us, but suddenly I feel something thick and velvety against my folded flesh. He gives a long moan and I realize he’s licking me. Fingers slide into the slicked opening, and something rounded and cold rubs and presses into aching tissues—I recall the large ring ornamenting the middle finger of the royal right hand. I groan loudly as the object begins to slide slowly in and out.
The king gives a cackle of laughter. “What fun, eh, Roark? But I’m afraid she’s got me at my limit.”
The king takes hold of my thighs and drags me down the table until my buttocks hang off the edge. He presses in close, bending over me, and his tongue snakes out to lap up the plum sauce. I moan and writhe beneath him, desperate to feel the hard press of a cock—his, Roark’s, the footman’s, anyone’s.
But he licks and laps up every sticky rivulet before dropping his head to suckle at each breast, tongue circling and cleaning the crimson stain from my skin.
Righting himself, he releases his cock from his breeches, grabs my hips in his hands, and plunges inside me. I give a cry of relief as he begins to pound into me in a circular motion, winding me up with every hard thrust.
His rhythm increases, jolting my whole body as he grunts in pleasure—not like a king at all, but like an animal—my breasts snapping high on my chest with every thrust. I grip the edges of the table with my hands for leverage to force him deeper.
“Mon Dieu!” he shouts as I scream with release.
Before I’ve even caught my breath, he’s slipped out and tucked himself back into his breeches. “Now come, my man,” he pants at Roark, “find some relief.”
He waves at my hard-used and heaving body.
Roark makes no sign of moving, and the king folds his hands behind his back. “I insist.”
Roark steps forward. “Are you satisfied, Isabeau?” he asks in Occitan. His dry tone barely masks a snarl.
“Almost,” I murmur, watching as he slips between my legs.
“What have I awakened?” he demands, grabbing one hip.
“More than you bargained for, My Lord Dragon.” I mean it as a taunt, but it comes out softer.
His grip suddenly hardens, bruising my flesh, and he rolls me onto my stomach.
I gasp as his hand comes down on my back, and then he’s pushing roughly inside me.
I listen to the raw rhythm of his breathing as my body rocks against the tabletop, his abdomen jamming against my backside with every thrust.
I won’t let him rule me, but mon Dieu, he will fuck me. Until I can’t walk or see straight. The king and his desire are but a smoky memory as the dragon fire consumes us.
The Dragon Lord
We erupt into the sky over Versailles. I feel teeth sinking into my flank and I roar with rage, somersaulting away from him. I want to scald him, but remembering what happened last time, I fly north without looking back, working my muscles, pushing myself to my limit. A hot blast of steam rolls over my back. The heat penetrates the scales damaged by his teeth, and I roar in pain. But I keep going.
I’m soaring over an expanse of forest when out of nowhere clouds appear. Thick and black, they behave like no clouds I’ve ever seen, drifting in from both sides. They seem to gather and follow my flight. Suddenly, with a crack of thunder and a bright flash of light, I feel a stab of white-hot heat against my other flank.
I lose control of my wings and tumble.
A silver-blue blur sails in from one side, colliding with my own deadweight, and I’m somehow moving horizontally again. It’s enough to get my wings back in working order, and I manage a controlled fall to a mountain meadow below.
I feel a gathering and sinking, and a moment later I’m stretched naked in a bed of purple and yellow flowers. Muttering an oath, I reach for one hip, yelping with pain as my hand brushes inflamed flesh.
Roark drops to the grass beside me, already shifted.
“What is the matter with you?” I s
hout, climbing to my feet. “You could have killed me!”
He bellows a long stream of syllables I don’t understand. I slowly shake my head, and gradually the stream slows to a trickle until finally it stops.
But only for a moment.
“I wanted to kill you!” he shouts back in Occitan.
“You’d kill me for what I did with the king? You selfish, childish brute! What right do you have? Why shouldn’t I kill you for taking what I never meant to give? At least now we are equals.”
At this last phrase—which I hadn’t actually meant to say—he suddenly stills. “Equals,” he repeats.
“I’m not your prize,” I snap. “The king never promised you that. You’ll be paid for services rendered, just like you wanted.”
“And you won’t be ruled by me, is this what I’m to understand?” His tone is still sharp, but his rage has cooled.
“My body answers to yours, and there seems to be nothing I can do about that. But I will choose whom I give it to. No, I won’t be ruled by you. Or by anyone.”
He studies me as my own anger cools, slowing my heart and the pace of my breathing.
“So you will work for the king now.”
“As do you.”
“You struck a good bargain. You got more than he wanted to give, and gave less.” He speaks honestly, with no trace of resentment. “But still you let him have you.”
“He let me have him.”
I see how he tries not to smile. “Yes, and he helped you put me in my place. I’ll know better than to underestimate you in future.”
“I should hope so.”
He steps closer, and I’m reminded that we’re both naked. “I want to propose a side agreement,” he says in that low tone that vibrates through my blood.
“What do you mean?”
“We need the king’s friendship, but it may not always be so. Or there might come a day when he seeks to cross one of us.”
I study his face, failing to understand.
“I won’t do it,” he continues.
“You won’t do what?”
“Cross you. I give you my word that I’ll never do it at the request of the king, or anyone. And if at any time he should fail to remember your agreement, I will remind him.”
I may not be as sophisticated as Louis and his courtiers, but I do know that there’s only one of the two men I’ve shared my body with that I’d trust not to hurt me. At least not irreparably.
“What of Aurora?” I ask. “I’m bound to her.”
“My proposal includes her. She’ll be released as soon as we return.”
Finally I nod. “Then I make the same oath to you.”
The hard, glittering gaze softens. “Roussillon will not pay my fee. I’ll not have gold sully our alliance. But you mustn’t let the king know, or he’ll suspect we are plotting against him.”
“You’re giving up your fee?”
“I’m exchanging it for something that’s worth more to me.”
I fend off an urge to raise my fingers to his lips. It occurs to me we’ve never kissed. I don’t count the brief hot, desperate press of lips in the cave. I didn’t want anything so intimate as a kiss from him then.
“I don’t understand why,” I reply.
He raises a hand to my cheek. His palm covers half of my face, and I feel his fingertips press lightly at the base of my skull. I don’t have to look down to verify the flush of ochre.
“Perhaps one day you’ll take me for a mate.” He lowers his face and I feel his breath on my cheeks. “The female chooses.”
“You might have told me that from the beginning.”
He laughs. “It wasn’t obvious? Do you think I’d feel so desperate about you if I had the ability to force you?”
This statement sticks a little, my thoughts trying to pry it apart for closer examination. Before I can reply, he continues, “I can only answer your desire. But even if you don’t choose me, I will always want you. We will always be kin.” He rubs the end of his nose against mine, whispering, “I’ll always want to fly with you.”
This new tenderness touches me in a place the heat and lust has not come close to. Yet the outcome is the same—we both pulse with color.
Raising his other hand, he cradles my face, and I feel the brush of his lips. The kiss is soft and supple, but he follows it by gently biting my bottom lip. I moan softly and push my tongue into his mouth. His lips seal against mine, welcoming me deeper.
His hand glides down my back, but before it reaches its destination I bound away.
Dashing across the meadow, I throw a glance over my shoulder. Catch me if you can.
My body leaves the ground in a rush of air. I whirl backward, head over tail, reversing direction, roaring with joy at the freedom this body gives me.
My challenge doesn’t go unanswered.
The shadow of his wings falls across me, and my heart races. I open my mouth to blast him with fire, but it’s a bluff and he knows it. The flame stops short of his massive body.
The excitement of this chase heats my blood, and I want to both escape and be caught. He seems to know this and toys with me, nipping at the flesh near my tail. Pulling ahead of me, dropping into a roll, and then drawing up even with me again.
We’ve almost covered the distance back to Versailles when I feel his claws at my shoulders, followed by his teeth at my neck. Steam hisses over my head and I roar and snap at him, but he stills me with a careful bite between neck and shoulder and latches on. I’m freed from the burden of flight and could easily fight him, but I feel the heat of his desire and don’t want to be anywhere else.
Massive muscles jerk and curl, and it feels like a tree has been thrust inside me. He works his wings harder, forcing us into the blazing sun. The angle of our flight embeds him deeper and I go limp in his spiky embrace, letting him do what he will. He turns us then, and we’re plummeting toward the earth. With three powerful thrusts I feel him stiffen and spend himself inside me, molten heat jetting all the way to my ribs. I shudder with pleasure, flame spewing from my jaws.
We somehow reach the ground without erupting into a ball of flame, and he crushes me against the soil with the final throes of his release. Massive nostrils nuzzle the back of my neck, and finally he rises. I hear the intake of air as he huffs and sniffs along my flanks, and then his tongue blots gently against the burns there. I rise and stretch, sending a teasing puff of smoke at him, and he barks a reply.
Filling my lungs with air, I lift again from the ground. He joins me, silver wings stirring up a windy caress. We point toward Aurora and home.
3
Raven Takes a Pearl
OHIO—NEW AGE OF STEAM
The Maiden
Raven stole my mama’s heart. I don’t mean that in any kind of poetic sense. It was the last bit of color she had in the world. The last bit of shiny. A fist-sized chunk of rose quartz, the last thing my pa ever hauled up from the mines. He promised her he’d polish it one day. “Polish it until it winks at ye, Esther,” he’d told her. But he never got the chance, because the very next day the ground above his head let loose on him and all of the men on shift that night. We never saw him again.
He stole the color, piece by piece, did Master Raven (as the townsfolk call him). Some even say he sucked the color right out of the sky, leaving this sort of sickly yellow-brown sheen on the world. But that wasn’t Raven. The fires that burn all night, the stinking factories, the smoking airships—they’re to blame for that.
All that shines under the sky, now that’s a different tale. It’s a fact Master Raven’s keep is surrounded by a moat, and that moat is filled to overflowing with all the glittery objects he’s taken over the years. A higgledy-piggledy monument to the memory of color.
My name is Pearl, and I live in a village called Dublin that has nothing to do with the original city by that name, except our mayor’s pa hailed from there. He once told my father the word meant “black pool” in some ancient language, and I suppose that�
�s fitting because that’s the only color they come in around here. On the topic of my name and the mayor, he’s never called me aught but “Ciara,” which he says in his old language means “little dark one,” on account of my black hair.
But here my pa would remind me that the way I talk makes people dizzy, so I’ll close the book on the mayor, who’s just about as useful to my story as he is to our village (which is to say, not very). Besides that, he’s a greasy, unpleasant old man who once got it into his head to ask my pa to give me to him for a wife, and that was the end of their friendship—and my pa’s teaching job at the primary school.
Sometimes I wonder if I’d married him, would my pa still be alive? But my ma says such wonderings only steal the life out of living.
My ma also says the theft of her stone doesn’t matter at all, which is how I know her heart is breaking over it. I can’t bring back my pa, but it’s high time someone stood up to that part-man, part-crow, part-machine who’s no more a master than I am.
That’s why I’m going after Mama’s heart.
Truth is, no one knows exactly what he is, or where he came from. He keeps to himself except when he’s thieving, and even then no one’s likely to linger long enough to start a conversation. We don’t even know if he can talk. Sometimes I see his shadow out my window, gliding over the field behind the house. Great long wings, black as coal dust. Blacker than night, blotting out the stars. I don’t know he’s part man by my own witness; other folk have glimpsed him scavenging in the junk heaps out past the cotton mill. Some say he steals babies on those midnight flights, but I say that’s folks afraid of something they don’t understand.
Not to say I’m not afraid, because I am.
Ma would be sick about where I’m going, so I don’t tell her. I say I’m going to Ida’s, to help my best friend pack up for Market Day, and I hope she won’t wonder why I’m taking more than normal care with my dress. I like bright colors, especially since they’ve mostly gone out of the world. I’m not overly vain, I don’t think, but I know I look fine in red, purple, and green. Not that we can afford fine things, but my pa had a big heart, and on payday he’d often come home with a shiny bit for me—a crimson neckerchief, or a length of emerald lace to sew on my petticoat.
Before She Wakes: Forbidden Fairy Tales Page 8
