The Dragon's Captive (Dragon Brides Book 2)

by Renard, Loki

  “Okay!” she shouted to the dragon carrying her, not knowing if it could hear her or not. “Right next to the portal! Right next to Vilka!”

  The dragon began to circle down low, and Kate felt her heart thundering in her chest. The portal was still open. She could see the inside of her dingy little kitchen already as the ground came rushing toward them.

  “Pull!”

  She realized too late how they had decided to turn the portal off. They were using a mechanism much like a very small trebuchet that hurled rocks through the portal and into her kitchen. It was a stupid, brutish method to close the portal, but if they managed to hit the generators, or the power, it would probably work.

  “Down! Let me down!” She started to squirm furiously in the dragon’s claws, though she was still twenty feet from the ground and would have mostly been squished if she’d actually fallen from that height. The dragon dropped the last few feet, wings out to slow their descent and deposited her right next to Vilka, just in time to see a rock fly through the air into her kitchen and knock the left hand side generator over. She was less than an inch away from the portal when it disappeared, a howl of disappointment and anguish escaping her as she clutched as what was now nothing but grass in an empty field, falling to her knees with tears streaming down her face.

  “No! Dammit! You assholes! You absolute bastards! You’ve… No!” She cursed and wailed, rolling about on the ground, grass staining her sheet dress as anger and despair washed over her in twin waves.

  She was hauled up from the ground and given a swift shake by Vilka. She looked into his face with tears welling in her eyes and the expression she saw there would have been priceless if Kate had not just watched the doorway to her world, her only exit, be closed seconds earlier. Under less miserable circumstances she would have laughed out loud at the sheer disbelief written on his masculine features.

  “What the blazes are you doing here?” He growled the words at her, then turned his ire on the dragon who had brought her. “Why did you take her from my chamber?”

  “I did not take her from your chamber, m’lord,” the unfortunate dragon stammered. “She came to me in the grand hall and asked for my assistance to bring you important news regarding the portal. She said it was important that she got to you urgently. She had a lot to say on the matter and I believed her.”

  “She had a lot to say…” Vilka growled softly, glaring at Kate with his gleaming golden gaze. “Oh, I can believe that. This one always has a great deal to say.”

  “Like you’re an idiot for closing that portal,” Kate scowled at him. “You’ve just destroyed my life’s work, you’ve imprisoned me here for a simple mistake. I hate you!”

  She did not care that there were a half dozen other dragon men standing around looking at her with various expressions ranging from disdain to pity. She didn’t care that she was melting down in a way that did not allow for much in the way of dignity.

  “You don’t even know what you’ve broken! And by throwing rocks! Like some kind of Neanderthal. Is that how stupid you creatures are? You see something amazing and beyond your comprehension, and all you can think to do is break it?”

  Vilka’s arms were folded over his chest as she issued her tirade, stamping back and forth over crushed grass stems.

  “Are you quite finished, human?”

  “No. I am not quite finished,” she sneered. “I don’t think I will ever be finished telling you how goddamn stupid you are. Go to fucking hell, asshole.”

  If she had not been so very upset, she might have realized that she was being allowed enough rope to hang herself with many times over. As it was, she was too full of righteous indignation to consider anything other than the absolute certainty that she was right and he was wrong.

  * * *

  He shouldn’t have been surprised, Vilka thought to himself. She had never indicated any intent to obey him, and she was obviously inventive. Manipulating one of his own men into almost helping her escape was impressive. He didn’t have any time to stop to be impressed though; she was literally crying out for discipline—and she was going to get it.

  Taking hold of his disobedient and reckless young mate, Vilka tore the sheet dress from her, leaving her naked before not just him, but all the men.

  She let out a shriek of outrage and tried to cover herself, one hand cupping her sex, the other arm wrapped over her breasts. It did little to provide her with modesty, and if anything, only served to increase the shame she seemed to feel. Her face was flushed so bright red she would likely have glowed in the dark, her eyes filled with outrage and the glimmer of tears too.

  “Give that back,” she demanded. “You freakin’ pervert!”

  “You use your powers of speech badly, human,” Vilka informed her in those dominant, calm tones that were far more scary than his anger ever could be. “I told you before that you were spoiled, and I punished you then, but obviously it had little lasting effect. Perhaps a more public reminder will.”

  He tore a strip from the sheet and used it to gag her, wrapping it around her head and settling it between her teeth several times so that she could not use her tongue to hurl any more insults. Kate squirmed and wriggled, fighting his bindings, but he made them secure and she could not find a way to escape them, especially when he pulled her hands behind her back and tied them with a second strip of sheet, which left her completely vulnerable to his touch—and utterly bared to all the dragon men, who were now watching with open interest. Kate tried to avert her eyes from the group, but Vilka was smart enough to make sure that she was unable to look at the ground and hide her shame that way. He held her chin and lifted it until she looked him in the eyes, her nostrils flaring with each angry breath she took.

  “You have behaved very poorly,” Vilka lectured. “Screeching like a whelpling will not get you what you want in this world. It will only earn you punishment and pain.” He turned his head and looked toward one of the slimmer, darker dragon men. “Erias! Cut me a switch. This human needs a taste of wood.”

  A series of what he was sure were curse words were emitted through the gag. Her struggles had quietened a little now that she was totally restrained, but he could see the hellfire in her spitting eyes.

  Vilka understood the human’s rage. She was shaking with it, but she had to learn the same lesson every rebellious dragon that came to his fortress did—that she was not in control and that she could be punished if she crossed him.

  Her shyness would make a public punishment all the more effective, he was sure of that. Her blush consumed her skin from head to toe, and he could see glimmering tears of frustration as she looked at him.

  In short order, Erias had cut three switches, long whippy lengths of wood thinner than Vilka’s little finger, but strong enough to stand being brought down across a disobedient behind. He handed one to Vilka, who thanked him even as Kate struggled in his grasp.

  She had made it impossible to be kind. There was no way he could allow an outburst like that to stand in front of his men. Discipline was the only thing holding his fleet of unruly dragons together, and Kate could not, would not, be an exception.

  Vilka propped his knee up on the trebuchet device and put his naked mate over his thigh, pinning her in place by her bound wrists. Her bottom was nice and high, her pale, full cheeks making an ample target for his discipline.

  Without further lecturing, Vilka laid the switch across her cheeks with a rapid fire lashing that left red line after red line blooming on her bottom. Kate’s squeals cut through the gag without any trouble, and she kicked her legs both furiously and to no avail.

  He wasn’t getting any satisfaction out of doing this to her. He wished he’d been able to settle her earlier in the day and help her to see his point of view, but Kate didn’t seem to care about any point of view other than her own. Urging her to see that she was putting potentially thousands of lives at risk had had precisely zero effect, so he was reduced to spanking her long and hard, whipping the tender skin of h
er bottom so she considered her pain, even if not the potential pain of others.

  Vilka delivered a total of twelve strokes, enough to leave a dozen red lines across her buttocks, not enough to seriously harm her in any way, though by the way she squealed and carried on anyone would have been forgiven for thinking she was dying.

  He stood her up and turned her around, using a firm grip at the back of her head to keep her eyes on him.

  “Don’t you ever disobey a direct order from me again, girl,” he growled at her, keeping his face stern, his tone harsh like he was gargling rocks. It was a technique he’d perfected in the process of dressing down damn near every dragon in his command at one time or another, and it was just as effective on Kate as it was on a three-hundred-pound dragon soldier. “You want to mouth off, you’ll lose the privilege of speech. You want to try to undermine my orders, subvert my command, and use my men against me? You’ll find yourself in the deepest dungeon I’ve got, girl. I make the law here, understand?”

  She let out a little whimper behind the gag. Vilka thought for a second about taking it off and making her apologize in front of the men, but there was every chance she’d mouth off again more or less right away and force him to punish her further, which he did not want to do in that moment. He’d finish dealing with her privately, where he could let himself be fully affected by the sight of her gorgeous hips and full butt squirming against his body.

  “Move on out, men,” he said, addressing the dragons whose eyes were locked on them. “We’re done here. Good work.”

  The dragons took flight, and Vilka and Kate with them. He didn’t know how it felt for her to be carried through the air with her bottom blazing bright red and he didn’t bother to ask because she was still gagged. A little silence from the mouthy human wasn’t a bad thing.

  As soon as they returned to the fortress, he took Kate to his chambers. The doors were still closed, much to his surprise, and bolted. He’d half expected to find the doors hanging off on their hinges or something equally dramatic. Instead, they looked entirely untouched. Vilka stood there for a second, trying to figure it out. The windows in his rooms were not possible to escape through, and the drop beneath them was deadly. How had she done it?

  Kate was managing to smirk through the gag, quite an achievement.

  “Okay,” he said. “You’re going to have to tell me how you did that.”

  He unwound the gag from her mouth to allow her to speak, and immediately regretted it.

  “Magic,” Kate answered bitterly. “Abraca-fucking-dabra, motherfucker.”

  The public thrashing hadn’t broken her spirit, obviously.

  “You want another dose of discipline, girl?”

  She fell into a disgruntled silence as he opened the doors and led her back into his chambers. Once again, aside from the missing sheet she’d decided to wear, nothing had been disturbed. It was almost as if she’d managed to walk through the wall.

  “I didn’t think so,” he said, opening the doors and walking her back through. It was pretty obvious that doors alone couldn’t hold his mate, so he was going to have to take extra precautions to secure her. First things first, he took her to the bed, got her to lie down on her back—which wasn’t the most comfortable position for her to be in. It made her sore bottom press against the bedding, but the ties at the corners of the bed were still there and it was the work of a minute to secure her the same way he had the previous day, spread-eagled and blushing beneath him.

  “I reckon this might be the only way to keep you in one place,” he said, standing over her. “What do you think?”

  “You lack the education and intellect to understand what I think,” she shot back, arrogant and angry. “How fucking dare you.”

  “Easy there,” Vilka said. “Don’t let that temper of yours get the better of you, Kate. You got punished like anyone else would be punished. I don’t tolerate disrespect among my ranks, and I will not have my mate disrupt my plans and disrespect me in front of my men. You got lucky.”

  “How exactly did I get lucky?”

  “I could have done a lot more than whip your butt in front of them,” he said. “I could have had you service me with your mouth, your pussy, or even that tight little hole between your cheeks.”

  Kate’s eyes went wide.

  “That’s right,” he said. “There’s no limit to what I could do with you, so you’d better thank me now for being so lenient—before I change my mind.”

  “Thank you,” she mumbled resentfully. He knew she wasn’t grateful. She was resistant and pissed off. He’d seen that a thousand times before. She needed some time to cool off, which suited him because he needed some time to prepare.

  “You lie there,” he said. “And I know you’re going to be thinking about how to get out of here, but try to spend a little time thinking about why you’re tied to the bed with your bottom marked with my lash. Try learning something from this, Kate, so I don’t have to do it again.”

  She bit her lower lip angrily, but managed to keep her mouth shut. Maybe she had learned something.

  Chapter Seven

  Kate was humiliated and so damn angry she wished she were a hundred feet tall and she could squash Vilka like a bug. But she wasn’t. She was 5′4 and she was totally at the mercy of the commanding dragon. She couldn’t do anything about her predicament this time either. Being tied spread-eagled on the bed left her totally vulnerable and made it impossible to escape.

  She did not know how long he left her there, but it was long enough for her body to calm itself and her tension and struggles against the binds, even the small ones, to cease. She was caught. Totally and utterly and she couldn’t do anything about it.

  The door creaked as it opened and her mood lifted as Vilka entered the room. She didn’t want to be happy to see him, she just was. She couldn’t help it, even though it made her feel like a chained-up puppy wagging its tail desperately upon her master’s return.

  “You’re still here,” Vilka observed, wearing a triumphant smile. “Good. Simple ties can best your ability to disappear from a locked room. Fortunately for you, I have an alternative to having you tied to the bed for years.”

  “I’m not feeling fortunate,” Kate said, squirming. She hated the way the position left her sex spread, the bright copper down covering her lips failing to hide the way her body responded to restraint. Just looking at him made her react, her clit tingling as she started to get wet. Her nipples were two taut little buds atop her breasts as well, her belly rising and falling with the faster breaths she couldn’t help but take in her aroused state.

  His hands clasped behind his back, his body positioned so that he was facing her with every step, Vilka walked slowly around the bed, taking her in. He was wearing clothing for once, jet black leather armor constructed in heavy plates across his chest and torso and legs, curving over the broad lines of his shoulders and jointed with heavy studs at every point of articulation. She found her gaze drawn to the V-shaped plate that covered his groin and the thick, hard member that she knew lurked beneath. Her pussy quivered at the memory of him surging inside her, no small part of her wishing that he was not covered now. There was no denying that Vilka cut a much more intimidating figure clothed. It enhanced his size and made her feel much more vulnerable by comparison.

  “This fortress is designed to deal with the most troublesome soldiers we have. Did you know that?”

  She shook her head.

  “I’ve had hundreds of soldiers under my command,” he said, speaking while walking in a semi-circle, back and forth, his eyes roaming her body in a way that made her almost feel as though she was being touched. He could make heat flash across her skin with a mere look. “I have men here who have been found guilty of every crime this realm has a name for. And not one of them has been as much trouble as you, Kate.”

  She tried to stop a prideful little smile from rising to her lips, and failed.

  “Oh, you like that fact, hmmm?”

  “I di
dn’t come here to make your life easy,” she said. “And all I’m trying to do is get home. You’re making my life difficult, so I’m glad I’m doing the same to you. Makes this more fair.”

  “Fair,” he said, raising a brow at her. “Fairness is a strange concept, isn’t it, Kate. It is always clung to so fiercely by people who have no ability to get what they want.”

  He was toying with her, and there wasn’t anything she could do about it. She fell silent, waiting to see what he had in store for her. There was definitely something. She could feel it.

  Vilka stepped to the foot of the bed and loosened the ties at her feet, then walked to her head and repeated the process. She sat up quickly, curling up on herself to hide some of her nude shame.

  “I know you’re not going to tell me how you got out of my chambers…”

  “Damn right I’m not,” she interrupted.

  “That does not concern me,” Vilka said. “I do not know precisely how you opened a portal either, but I closed it anyway. I do not know how you escaped earlier, but I assure you that you will not have the same opportunity again. There are many ways of restraining a prisoner, ways I guarantee you will not find so easy to overcome.”

  “I’m going to escape, no matter what you do,” Kate snarled. “There’s nothing that can stop me, no matter how long it takes.”

  “I think differently,” Vilka said. “For starters, I have this, which will certainly pose more of a challenge than a locked door.” He took his hand from behind his back and revealed a slim round band of golden-hued metal shaped in a collar, open at a hinge. Attached to the collar was a chain of similar hue, stark and probably strong. Likely not actually gold, Kate figured, too soft for the purpose it was clearly intended for—taking her as a slave.

  Vilka reached for her, kneeling on the bed, his large body looming over her naked form as he snapped the collar around her neck and ran his fingers over the seam so that, like her clothing that had fizzled away beneath his touch, the metal sealed into one continuous ring.