Paying the Dragon's Price

by Diana Rose Wilson

  “Look for lost puppies?” Mano suggested mildly.

  “Fuck you, Mano.”

  “All right, stop.” Marcie sighed and wriggled up from her seat, slapping away Mano’s hands, which were attempting to restrain her. “I’m going to check on dinner. Make sure they aren’t going to need to run out for something else with the energy shifts in here.” She gave Mano a long look until he held his palms out to her and flicked a submissive smile up through his lashes.

  Vans expected Mano to start in the moment Marcie left the room, but he laced his fingers behind the nape of his neck and stretched out more fully, toes wiggling. Silent.

  Ursa looked troubled still and reached to Travis, giving his arm a squeeze. “How can you continue to work with someone so obviously trying to do harm? Even her husband seemed pretty bent out of shape about what she’s doing.”

  “If they don’t have me doing the job, who do you think they’ll have do it? Someone not as…conflicted?” Travis asked and looked at Mano.

  The man rolled his shoulders, behaving as if he agreed.

  “That sounds reasonable,” Leo answered instead, low voice thoughtful. “If the old woman doesn’t see right through your lies.”

  “What is the big deal about this guy anyway? I mean, I get he’s the only child and important to the Adler legacy and bloodlines and everything, but what if someone finds him and drags him back in chains to his mother? Then what? How old is this guy now? He looks barely twenty in the paintings in the hall,” Ursa asked quietly, looking from face to face for the answer.

  “He’d be over forty fucking years old,” Mano growled quietly.

  “That’s too old for his mother to be…controlling him,” Ursa said with a frown, and leaned into Leo. “They don’t really expect to use him like a stud bull on some woman, right? Clearly, if he wanted to be around, he’d be around.”

  “I was told the family is concerned he is hurt or in danger. They want to see him safe and whole.” Travis shrugged. “I’m not interested in putting him under their thumbs. I’m tasked to make sure he is all right.”

  Mano smirked, saying in a dry tone, “Their concern is so touching. If he were in trouble, what do you think you could possibly do?”

  Before Travis could answer, Marcie returned to the room and motioned to them. “Dinner is ready. Let’s take our seats at the table. No more work talk. That includes hunting missing Adler heirs. All right?” She fixed each of them with a steely gaze before Mano joined her, wrapping his arm around her.

  Vans was taken aback by the height of the man. He contained such an imposing presence that it took a moment to reconcile the difference in his size beside Marcie’s tall, slim body. She stood at least a head taller than Mano. Particularly in this dressed-down version, they were as strange a match as Ursa and Leo. Maybe even stranger, because Vans could not imagine Marcie with anyone she looked down on.

  Travis helped Vans to her feet, and together they followed the others into the dining room. His warm hand caressed the small of her back as he tried to soothe away the tightness there, but it was less a physical sensation than something otherworldly setting her teeth to rattling. She didn’t want to let the topic go. She wanted to keep at him until he gave up the hunt. It bothered her that the Adlers were using him.

  Marcie’s dining room was set up almost as elaborately as the Adler table had been, complete with gold-and-white china and matching gold-rimmed crystal glasses. Even the silverware looked antique and newly polished, tucked inside linen holiday napkins. The finishing touches were the fresh evergreen boughs and candles that had been lit down the length.

  “I’m not sure if you’ve met the chef at the other events. This is Chef Sean Torrez. He has agreed to attend us for the holiday, and I promised him we would not harass him too much and happily eat whatever he is willing to make. This is his cousin, Kenneth Harris-Wallace, who will be our server.”

  The men Marcie introduced stood at attention against the back of the room while the group took their seats. One man was dressed in a white chef coat with a long apron tied around his waist. He inclined his head at the introduction. Chef Torrez was tall and slim, with smooth, swarthy skin and black hair. Soulful brown eyes watched them, as though measuring them. The other man was obviously related, though dressed in a tux. Kenneth had matching curls, and his skin was richer brown, his eyes a bright jade green.

  After introductions, the chef withdrew to the kitchen, but not before giving Vans a curious look. She felt a prickling sensation between her eyes as he regarded her. He cocked one eyebrow up in surprise as though he recognized her. She didn’t think they’d ever met, but there was certainly something familiar about him.

  Casually, he pressed his knuckles to his breast, so quickly and subtly that Vans couldn’t pinpoint what was so poignant about the gesture. Surely he was just brushing his hand across his chef’s coat. He continued on his way before Vans could question him.

  Vans felt self-conscious about her battered condition. Despite being as dressed down as Marcie, she felt uncomfortable in the formality of the meal. She was reassured when she saw Ursa looked as ill at ease as she felt.

  “Don’t worry, I don’t bite,” Kenneth assured with a rather cute little smile. He drew in a deep breath and began attending to filling glasses with water and sparkling wine. The attention to each of the simple actions went above and beyond service. This was akin to ritual, and performed with elegance and reverence.

  Marcie stood once their glasses were filled. “I want to thank you all for spending this extended holiday with me. Most of you know I have spent my past five years alone, and usually keep to myself until after New Year’s. I hope this might become a new tradition between us. I couldn’t ask for better friends, or have ever imagined my good fortune in tripping headfirst into love. Thank you for sharing my life with me and for allowing me to share yours with you.” Her dark eyes twinkled with happiness, and she seemed close to tears. “And I look forward to spending some time together without masks for a change.”

  They shared the toast; none of them had dry eyes as they settled into their meal. Vans forgot her wounds and how rattled she felt at the very first bite of oysters with crème fraiche and caviar.

  “So, Kenneth is the son of the people I’m interviewing with tomorrow,” Marcie said cheerfully as the man made rounds with yet another wine to go with the salad being carefully plated for them.

  “That happened quick, didn’t it?” Leo asked curiously.

  “It wasn’t expected, but I do keep my information online. They must have stumbled on it.”

  “Convenient.” Leo chuckled.

  “Everything in its proper time. Right?” Marcie answered with an uplift of her glass, smiling a secret little smile.

  Before Vans knew it, she was actually enjoying the elegance of the elaborate meal with the careful attention to each of the dishes. By the time they finally made it to coffee, port, and their selection of pretty pastries, she wasn’t sure she would make it up to her bed under her own power.

  “So, did he sort of do something to the food?” Vans asked. She felt too fuzzy for the small amount of wine she’d tasted.

  “Well, he certainly prepared it perfectly,” Mano answered as he teased Marcie with her bite of cake, feeding her the dainty pink slice from his fingers. Mostly, he seemed intent on smearing her lips with the icing. No one, especially Marcie, seemed to mind his little game.

  Vans wanted to correct him and tell him what she meant, but instead she cuddled into Travis’s side, feeling more whole and well than she had in a very long time. “Well, I think I’m going to have to be the wet blanket and tap out early. I’m sorry, just feeling really sleepy now.”

  In fact, she fell asleep right there, like the Dormouse in Alice in Wonderland, snuggled into the curl of her fiancé’s arm, without a single care in the world.

  Chapter 7

  The Price

  December 22, 2015

  Vans woke, wrapped in warm softness, to the sound
of harp music. The song being played sounded familiar, but it was so distant that she couldn’t place it, the sweet sigh and pluck of strings filling the sleepy spaces in her head.

  Smiling to herself, she curled into the heat, reaching up to wrap her fingers around the feathers tickling her shoulders and sides. A surprised gasp of pleasure vibrated along her neck.

  She blinked awake fully and discovered her naked body was snuggled in silvery feathers, and quickly released the hold on the shafts she’d been trying to wriggle into.

  “I’m sorry!” The music continued off in the distance, the player skillfully working the harp strings.

  Travis pulled her in tighter, and it felt amazingly intimate in the snare of his arms and those big, strong wings. The feathers tickled her bare skin when he ruffled them.

  “No. Stay,” he whispered into her skin, purring low. “I like that.”

  “I didn’t hurt you?” she asked, and stroked the softer, fluffy covert plumage, away from the stiff primary and secondary feathers. They were impossibly silken, and under them, it was downy and warm where she touched his skin.

  He groaned low and shuddered with pleasure, breath catching in his chest. She felt his heart trip faster, thudding hard into her spine.

  “Fuck!” With a roll of his hips, he nuzzled his cock along her ass, hard and bare on her skin. “Fuck no, precious love. Perfect. Fucking perfect. I…have never had someone touch me like that.”

  “Virgin?” she teased, and gasped when he pressed a bite to her shoulder, nuzzling his face between the feathers and her hair. The delicious spread of pain and pleasure flooded through her, and she smoothed her fingers through his feathers, gathering both hands full to feel them tickle her palms and arms as she arched into him.

  “Careful, love,” he whispered, kissing around the bite mark to soothe the pain. The rippling expanse of pleasure from his strong, hot mouth made her yearn that he would apply another bite to her.

  “Why?” she asked in a soft, desperate whine while he continued to hold her, softly stroking her body. The night of rest had done wonders for her. She didn’t feel sore at all. In fact, she felt better than she had in months.

  “Someone was hit by a car,” Travis murmured through the kisses that moved down between her bare breasts. “That same pretty someone fell asleep in her soup last night.”

  She squirmed, but he didn’t let her escape. The strength in her struggles made him growl and bite along the swell of her breast, teasing with the nearness to the nipple without actually touching the pleasure point.

  “I fell asleep after I had the whole…meal—” she murmured as the underside of her tongue tingled with memories of the food. The cake in particular was borderline-illegal good.

  “Before I could enjoy my proper dessert,” he said quietly. “You didn’t pay the Dragon’s price yet, my pretty.”

  “The what? For what?” She started to laugh, but the way his touches swept along her body on all sides, whispering up and down in slow caresses, tore the mirth from her and replaced it with a raw need that moaned out of her. When his mouth closed over her nipple, she bucked her shoulders up, pushing the soft swells of her breasts into his lips.

  He growled low, lapping along the peaked tip before suckling, but then broke off prematurely so he could answer her question. Wet from his tongue, her nipple tightened even more, and when his voice whispered over her skin, she thought she might burst into flames.

  “The Dragon’s price,” he whispered, low and huskily, sounding amused. “My price.”

  It was difficult to focus, and she struggled with her need and her desire to stay with the conversation. He’d not mentioned a price for anything! Had she zoned out again? Did she forget?

  When she whimpered in anxiety, he soothed her with a growling, “Ssshh! It’s the cost of being mine.” He licked the very tip of her nipple with a single curl of his tongue. “And you must agree to pay it forever.”

  His touches seemed to be everywhere, and when she responded with a heady shudder of pleasure, he snarled in delight. “Fuck! I didn’t know it could be possible to make you even sexier, my sweet brat, but you feeling me…” His voice trailed off as he drew the length of one wing from her shoulder down the curve of her breast and across her clenching stomach.

  She melted under the touch that began as a soft tickle and quickly hardened to a rake of the strong primary feathers. They flexed against her as though they were nimble fingers. The tips scratched across her skin, leaving increasingly darker red marks as he teased her. A moan escaped her, and she rocked toward the touch for more. He rolled her over, letting her pin one of his wings under her back while he held her down with his big hands on her shoulder and hip.

  “Fuck!” she whimpered, blinking up into his gaze, feeling burned by the intensity of the lust and affection in that look. “I would pay any price for this! For you!”

  How had she never felt this before? These huge, strong wings all around her! Her mind spun with the reality that he could use those silken wings to cut her to little bits. The heat of excitement chased away fear and became a boiling hunger in her.

  Oh yes! She wanted to feel that!

  She pressed into the touches, feeling one strong feather pierce her skin just under her breast, barely enough for a single pearl of crimson to well up from her smooth skin.

  “God, you are going to kill me.” He sounded strangled as he watched her response, his pre-cum leaking from the swollen head of his cock—lovely pearls on her belly and hip where he hovered over her without touching her with that swollen, steely shaft.

  His thumb pressed against her hipbone, rolling along the flesh and then slipping toward her inner thigh, an ever-increasing grip of pain until she quaked with her need. The heat of her pleasure slicked her sex, coating down her inner thighs and ass as her legs spread wider and wider, as wide as she possibly could, in hopes he would nestle into her and claim her aching heat.

  “Don’t be gentle with me!” she begged, and then sucked in a breath when feathers caressed her cheek and neck—so soft, like silk, whispering down and shimmering along her flesh with the greatest care.

  “Ah, but I’m not used to this! Any of this! Feeling you. You feeling me. Seeing your expression when you touch… Fuck, Vanderbilt—” His voice shook. “I need to be careful with the most precious possession in my world. The price you’ll be paying is not in blood, brat, but another bodily fluid.”

  Bowing his head, he kissed the scratched spot, licking away her blood. Slowly, he traced along the rake marks until he reached their origin, the pale-pink lines marking pretty welts over her hip. Adjusting himself, he coaxed her hips up with wing and arm, drawing one of her thighs over his shoulder. He growled when she hooked her foot around the strong shoulder joint where feathers and flesh met, and cursed low in his throat, his cock bobbing lewdly, painting up her belly with his pre-cum.

  She started to reach for him, to cup his swollen cock in her hands, but he soothed her with a soft, “Lie back, baby. This is your time right now. Don’t you dare distract me more, or I will slide into you and pleasure myself and then leave you begging for release while I paint your pretty tits with my seed.”

  “Oh god! Please! Fuck!” She raked her fingers along his shoulders instead. Feeling utterly tangled and lost in him, she met his eyes, finding them bright and star-struck. She could have reached her climax on a word from him. Over their pounding hearts, she heard the sweet lovesick song the harp sighed out, not distant enough for her sex-hazed brain to block it all out.

  He pressed the heel of his hand against her sex, slowly rocking forward and back against her clit, and cupped his other fingers around her swollen, dripping pussy lips. She cried out brokenly, “Please, Sir! I’m going to…oh fuck!”

  “That’s it, sweet brat. Come for me. Let me have it!” he purred against her hipbone, applying steady pressure without ever increasing his speed or dipping his fingers into her.

  She came with a primal cry, arching as her climax rushe
d up her spine, coiled through her thighs, and throbbed through the tight, heated muscles of her sex. She arched upward into his touch, body bowed toward his chest and those contrasting soft and strong feathers. She felt like a harp string, the cry stretched and vibrating as she came, wet and hard, against his palm and fingers, soaking him and the bed with the unexpected fierceness of her climax.

  In the back of her mind, she thought she heard the song echo her pleasure, but lost it in the constricting spasms coiling and uncoiling through her. It was only Travis—her Dragon-Sir—and her. From the way his fingers pushed into the gripping wetness between her pussy lips, she was his sole focus.

  When he pressed his fingers into her, steadily deepening the entry through the pulse of her pleasure, his mouth hovered over hers.

  “I love you. I love you so much, my Vanderbilt. My perfect Vanderbilt.” He feathered the softest kiss over her lips, as though she were the most fragile thing in the world.

  Trying to control her orgasm was beyond her as his words rocked her. Destroyed her! She felt tears streaking down her cheeks as she sobbed out in pleasure and surrendered to him. She pressed into his kiss and he groaned into her mouth, letting her direct how hard the kissing would progress. The pain was hardly a whisper through the thrumming joy that overflowed her in a flood.

  She chased his tongue into his mouth and splintered into a new flurry of climax when he sucked against her, long and slow, in time with his pumping fingers. A second joined the first, and then a third as she rewarded his slow, steady strokes with another tightening of her body, fracturing and spinning out of control in an ever-wetter mess of pleasure beneath him.

  He broke the kiss as she melted under him. He licked along her lower lip, gingerly over where she was wounded, and met her eyes, his dark with lust. So dark. Consuming her.

  “Now you begin to understand the price!” he growled as his smile curled up his sensual mouth. Leaning in, he licked along the track of her tears and kissed her eyelids when they fluttered closed in bliss. “Are you all right, Vanderbilt?”