“You are never to do that again,” he said between his teeth. “Do you understand?”
“Dragos,” she said, speaking with care because he was still so upset. “You’ve got to stop giving me orders.”
No matter how gently she said it, it was still like a spark to dry tinder.
“Fuck you,” he snapped. He thrust his face down to hers, eyes flaring to lava and features hardening. “You’re mine. And you. Can’t. Leave.”
“Whoa, there. I don’t know what to say to you. You’re like some stalker guy on steroids.” She threw back her hands and rolled her eyes. “You are aware, aren’t you, that you can’t have slaves any longer. You know, abolition. Big war. Happened a hundred and forty, forty-five years ago.”
“Human history, human terms,” he snarled. “They mean nothing to me.”
She had already known she shouldn’t attribute human motives or emotions to him. Here was the reminder. The dragon was very close to the surface. The big body crouching over her was taut with menace. Every legend she had ever heard of a dragon’s possessive, territorial nature came to mind.
Damn, it was enough to make her swallow hard but not, she realized, in fear. Muscle by muscle she relaxed. “Okay then, big guy,” she said, soft and easy. “You tell me what you mean.”
“I don’t know.” That fierce, proud face was puzzled. “All I know is you’re mine to keep and protect. You can’t fade away, and you can’t die. I won’t let you.”
She thought it was not the time to point out that she was going to die at some point. She had too much human in her.
“So, I’m yours for how long?” she asked, curious now that she decided to explore this path. “Until you get tired of me, or you get bored again?”
“I don’t know,” he said again. “I haven’t figured this out yet.”
A sudden rush of affection surprised her. He wasn’t faking his perplexity. He wasn’t putting on an act. “That makes two of us,” she said. She thought of the Elven wayfarer bread, the hairbrush and the soap, and his thoughtfulness surprised her all over again. She reached up to run a finger down his throat. “So, for the sake of argument, if I’m yours as you said, to keep and protect, that seems to me like you would want me to—be all right. To thrive?”
“Of course,” he said. He looked down at her hand as she drew circles on his chest, and the menace he exuded turned darker, smokier.
“Dragos,” she murmured, “I don’t thrive when someone barks orders at me all the time.”
She peeked at him to see how he reacted to her logic. He was frowning. “It’s how I talk to people,” he said.
“It’s how you talk to your employees and servants, you mean?” she replied.
His frown deepened. She bit her lips to keep back a smile. How could she be so damn charmed by such a primitive thug? She had to establish a different footing with him or be mowed under by the sheer force of his personality.
“See, here’s the thing.” She kept her voice gentle while she started to rub his chest in soothing circles. “Someone barking orders at me makes me feel trapped and stifled. I understand you’ve gotten into a habit, but maybe,” she suggested, “you could try not ordering me around sometimes. You know, just until you get bored and let me go.”
He had grown heavy-lidded as she stroked him, but at that his narrowed gaze snapped up to her face. She smiled at him, nonthreatening and relaxed. “What if I don’t get bored?” he said. “What if I don’t let you go?”
She was jolted by a sense of longing that swept over her. She lost her smile and looked away. “We don’t even know what we’re talking about, anyway,” she said.
He loosened his grip on her hair, shifted his weight onto one elbow and took her luminescent hand. He tilted her arm and looked at it. “You’re remarkable. No, don’t!” he said, as she remembered and began to dampen the glow. “Let me see you as you really are, for a while at least. Look at how fast you’re healing.”
She looked. The ugly black bruises that had mottled her skin had almost faded. “I feel good,” she confessed. “Different, somehow. Better. More. Hey, am I the Bionic Woman?”
He smiled. “It sometimes happens with halflings when they come to an Other land,” he told her. “The heightened magic can help them access abilities and traits that might otherwise have remained latent.”
She tried to keep a tight grip on the hope that surged at his words but questions still leaked into her thoughts. Was this the explanation for everything she felt since they had crossed over? If what he said was true about her, might she be able to shift? What if she could end this sense of living a half life, the feeling of being caught between two incomplete identities, human and Wyr?
“I had no idea,” she said. “My mother always refused to bring me over to an Other place. I’ve never had enough Power to cross over by myself. I barely have enough for telepathy.”
In the dream, her mother had said it was dangerous for her to be here. She glanced around the dim coal-lit clearing. That meant they should leave soon. The thought lacked urgency.
“Ah yes, your mother,” he replied, sounding distracted as he inspected her slender fingers, the graceful tilt of her wrist. “Very soon we’re going to have a talk about your mother, who she was and why that dumbass Elf loved her so much. We’re also going to talk about why you’re not right in the head and if you have any more IDs or stashes of cash hidden anywhere.”
She snatched her hand back and smacked him on the arm. “None of that is any of your business! And just because he liked me but he didn’t like you doesn’t mean he’s a dumbass Elf!”
He gave her a lazy, predatory smile as he moved his torso over hers. “You’re not afraid of me at all anymore, are you?”
She sobered. Call her crazy, but she thought he would rather cut off his hands than hurt her. “So what if I’m not?” she muttered.
His beautiful, cruel mouth pulled into a smile. “I think if you’re not, it’s a very good thing,” he said. He moved, and before she realized what he intended, he had her hands pinned over her head. “It gives me all kinds of license to do bad things to you. With you. On you. In you.”
She jumped and her heart hammered. He looked at her splayed and helpless underneath him and insinuated one heavy thigh between hers. He pushed up with his leg as he bit her neck in the exact same place where he had in their dream. He drank in her gasp and held her with ease as she tried to tug her hands free. Not that she tried all that hard.
Excitement took the express shuttle through her body. She stretched for the sheer enjoyment of feeling herself slide against his naked torso, and his brilliant gaze tracked every movement she made. She was feeling less human by the minute.
She licked her lips. “Dragos, I don’t think . . .”
“You don’t think what?” His burning gaze swallowed her up.
“I don’t think I’m as good as I thought I was,” she whispered. Her eyelids dropped down and she smiled.
“That’s my girl,” he whispered.
He pushed her legs wider apart, settled between them and began a sensual assault on her, nibbling and licking. He pulled her lower lip between his teeth and suckled at the plump flesh, then thrust his tongue deep into her mouth.
They both groaned. He dug deeper into her, thrusting harder and harder. She tilted her head to open more to him. He shifted her wrists to one hand so that he could push the other under her tunic, running calloused fingers up to the soft swell of her breast. He grasped the plush mound with greedy care, found her nipple and began rolling it between his thumb and forefinger. He tugged at the sensitive flesh and gave it a light pinch.
Pleasure jolted through her as he played with her breast. Her breathing became choppy. She tugged harder, but he refused to let go of her wrists, his body hardening. She raised her legs to cradle his long body, shifting underneath him until his heavy, long erection lay nestled against her pelvis.
He hissed, face darkened with lust, and he reared up to grab hold of her
tunic.
“No!” she cried, stiffening.
He froze. God love him, that dragon didn’t even breathe.
“I don’t have anything else to wear,” she explained. She gave him a shaky smile when his eyes flashed to hers.
The stricken look left his face. He let go of her wrists and sat back on his heels as she sat and yanked the tunic over her head. She tossed it to the ground. He put his hands to her rib cage and ran them up to cup her breasts.
“Goddamn,” he said. His normal deep voice had gone hoarse. “Will you look at that.”
She looked down at them. The lines and curvature of her torso and breasts looked ultrafeminine against the brawn of his big hands and muscular arms. Her radiance and the dusky hue of his skin seemed to feed on each other. The paleness of her skin was creamier, the blush of her nipples pinker. The sinews of his hands and wrists shifted under skin that was a richer, deeper bronze.
She put her hands on his torso and watched as she ran them up his chest. Muscles rippled underneath her palms as he took in a shaking breath. She raked at his nipples with gentle fingernails. Part of her was ecstatic with shock. I am touching him. He is touching me.
He hissed and grabbed her fingers, coming over her as he bore her back down. He put his hands at her waist and, understanding what he wanted, she lifted her hips for him to pull the leggings off. He shifted to tear off his jeans and fling them aside. Then he slid back over her, heavy and hard and naked, and they were lying skin to skin.
If he had seemed hot before, he had since turned volcanic. She could feel his heart hammering against her breast. She lost herself in the enjoyment of rubbing herself against him, running her hands up the considerable musculature of his powerful back.
He slid down her body, running his open, shaking mouth along the length of her neck, down her collarbone, until he could feast on her breasts. He sucked and bit at the succulent flesh, gripping her nipples between his teeth and flicking at them with his tongue, one after the other until she arched and cried out, incoherent with sharp delight.
Then he slid down farther, licking and biting his way along the curve of her waist. He gripped the inside of her slender knees and held her splayed as he sucked the tender flesh of her inner thighs. She writhed in his hold, crying out again as she lifted her hips up to him.
He paused to look his fill of her. Elegant bone structure, radiant cream and dusky pink, she lay on an extravagant pillow of tangled pale gold hair. He could track his journey across her body in the luscious suck-bruises that were blooming at the undersides of her breasts, the insides of her thighs. Her violet dark eyes were huge and shimmering with desire, just like they had in the dream.
Just as he had craved ever since. Desire for him, the monster, the Great Beast.
But this was no dream, and he was so hard and full from wanting her he was in superb pain. He looked at the plump, fluted pink of her labia topped with a tangle of white-gold curls. She was slick with moisture, drenched with it, and his heavy cock leaped at the generous evidence of her arousal. He whispered, “I’m going to eat you until you scream.”
Her slender feet curled and a deep groan burst out of her. He lowered his head and continued his assault, licking and biting and sucking with shaking greed. He drew her stiff little bud into his mouth and suckled as she bucked and shook with the force of the pleasure spiraling through her.
She lifted up on her elbows, panting, and stared at what he was doing to her. That dark head and those broad shoulders between her shivering thighs, his blade-cut face drenched with arousal as he worked her, was a sight so erotic it hurtled her into a climax. She hung her head back and squealed as she came with an intensity she had never known before.
He never stopped. He kept licking and suckling, his mouth absorbing the ripples that cascaded through her. He put a flattened hand on her lower abdomen as she clenched, feeling the rhythm of her climax. He wrung her out and still he continued to suck.
The sensitivity became too much. She sank trembling fingers into his hair, tried to pull his head back. “Stop, I can’t . . . I can’t . . .”
He made a throaty sound, his hot gold gaze flashing as he focused on her sweaty dazed face and suckled harder. He plunged two fingers deep inside her, and just like that, he pushed her into another climax, this one longer and more intense than the first. He gobbled that climax down and without stopping shoved her into a third.
Her torso arched off the ground and the tendons in her neck distended as a thin, breathless scream broke out of her. She was completely taken over by what he was doing to her. The brilliant star-studded night sky disappeared as her eyes filled and spilled over.
At last he pulled away and crawled up her, breathing harsh, intent carving every flex and shift of his body. She had no words as she stared up at him. He was such a splendid aggressive male, the broad muscles in his chest and upper arms quivering, his large erect penis hanging long and heavy between rock-hard thighs. She looked into his eyes as she curved a hand around the broad mushroom head and stroked.
With that he went bat-shit crazy for the third time in three days. He lunged down at her, his lungs working to take in great gulps of air. He scooped an arm under her hips to yank her up for his entry. She guided him and he slammed all the way inside.
She shrieked at the invasion and dug her nails into his back. He was no delicate, diffident lover. He was like nothing she had ever experienced, a tsunami crashing over her head and destroying her old identity, reshaping her life.
He wrapped his other arm around her, clutching her by neck and hips as he began to plunge into her in heavy, powerful strokes. He was groaning in her ear with every thrust as they mated like the animals they were. The increasing pressure, the sound of their flesh coming together, her total lack of control, had her digging her nails into his back. She stretched and whimpered, lost in the inexorable rhythm of her body, and came again.
He threw back his head, face contorted in savagery, astonishment. With a last convulsive thrust he made a muffled sound and joined her in climax. She felt him pulse deep inside and she clenched everything she had around the delicious length of him, holding on to the sensation, on to him. He rocked into her, panting, eyes closed as he gushed into her. She put a hand at the back of his head, an arm around his waist, holding him as he held her, murmuring in his ear, yes, there you are, yes.
He turned his face, found her mouth and kissed her as he held them so tight together at pelvis and hip, for a while it felt as if they had fused together and become one creature, light and dark, yin and yang.
It was then her shattered consciousness caught up with what he had growled in her ear as he fucked her. Mine, he had said. You’re mine. You’re mine.
She drifted, looking at the silhouette of the back of his head against the sky as she rubbed her cheek against his, as his weight bore her down. Something in her was sputtering and trying to shift into overdrive in reaction to what just happened. It was too much. She couldn’t think.
He started to move his hips again, pulling out, pushing in, his breathing deepening. Oh God, he was still huge and hard. Not human. She made an amazed noise at the back of her throat, clutching at him as he worked inside her. It was too gorgeous. She thrust up with her hips, matching his pace.
This time a moan tore through his chest and he shook all over as he started to pulse. She worked inner muscles and rocked him through the climax, murmuring in his ear. He turned his face into her neck.
He pulled out, face drawn. She woofed in surprise as he flipped her onto her stomach and yanked her hips up so that she was on her knees. Her tangled hair settled in a cloud over her face. “Not deep enough,” he groaned. “Got to get deeper.”
More than willing, she spread her knees and arched her pelvis back. She reached between her legs to help guide him as he pushed into her from behind. The slick, hot, velvet length of his cock felt even bigger this way. She murmured a throaty encouragement as he buried himself to the hilt. She was taken over not j
ust by his overwhelming sexuality but by this strange creature who lived inside her body and who felt more sensuous, more female, and more desired than she ever had before.
He covered her, one arm low around her waist to hold her for his frenzied thrusts, the other hand planted on the ground beside hers so that he bore most of his weight. This time the pistoning of his hips was relentless. He drove hard and steady as he buried his face in the back of her neck, his breath shuddering against her skin. The pressure built again, but this time she wasn’t sure she could take it. She sobbed and clutched at the ground for purchase. Grass tore under her fingernails.
He sank his teeth into the back of her neck as his Power curled around her. Come with me. He shifted to put his hand between her legs, to rub long fingers along the place where he entered her and to pinch her clitoris. He shoved in hard one last time and held taut. His Power rippled over her, through her, with his climax.
Her mind went incandescent. She flew apart.
Dragos poured everything he had into her. It came roaring up from the base of his spine as he locked himself in the tight glove of her sheath. This wasn’t sex. He’d had sex countless times. Sex was a simple coupling and release. More often than not, half an hour later he would have already forgotten the female’s name.
This was something he’d never done before. This was something far more elemental and necessary than sex. Feasting on her didn’t ease his hunger but fed his need. Working inside her wasn’t enough. Climaxing didn’t assuage the lust. It built the frenzy. She absorbed everything he did to her and amplified it back, and bloomed even more lustrous and intoxicating. He had to drive into her so deep he never came back out.
He came back to awareness. He still covered her from behind, was still inside her, his hand spanning the graceful are of her pelvis. Tremors quaked through her body. The slender muscles in her thighs quivered against his. She gasped for breath in quiet sobs.
What had he done? He pressed his lips to her neck and drew them along the sleek angle of her shoulder. He withdrew his hand from her pelvis to brush the tangled cloud of her hair out of the way as he tried to see her face. “Ssh,” he murmured. “Easy.”
Dragon Bound Page 16
