by Alisa Woods
“I’m not giving up!” Her words were half cries, and her tears crested out, falling to mix with the blood that smeared between them. Blood and tears. Magic sparks and love. Why did he have to be so stubborn? Why wouldn’t he let her try again?
It’s too dangerous now. My time is coming. I don’t want you here when it happens.
Her chest hollowed out. He was sending her away! Because he was afraid for her, and he loved her, and that was just the kind of man Leonidas Smoke was.
He nudged her away with his head, gently. She clung to him. Panic clutched her chest. If she left, it was over. All hope was lost. Desperation made her search frantically for anything she might have overlooked, some way to stop this…
She pushed away from him, stepped back, and shook an angry finger at him. “You’re a fool, Leonidas Smoke! You shouldn’t love me. I tricked you into it.” Her heart was pounding so hard she could feel it beating against her ribcage. “I lied to you. I tried to steal from you. I’m this broken, terrible person, don’t you understand? And I… I hate you! I can’t even stand to look at you in this horrible, beastly thing you’ve become! How could anyone love that? It’s disgusting and terrifying.” Lies, lies, lies. Her tears were streaming from her face now, dripping past the blood smears and falling from her chin. But if she could just get him to stop loving her, to reverse the curse on his own…
You don’t mean it. His thoughts weren’t even ruffled. He huffed that small dragon laugh, the one that leaked wisps of blue magic dragonfire into the boiler room. You’ve always been such an awful liar, Rosalyn. You could never fool me.
Oh my God. Her heart was ripping in two, and she could barely see through the tears. She rushed at him and actually beat him with her fists this time. “Damn you! Damn you for being so noble and so stupid and so… everything. Why can’t you just be a bastard like every other man on the face of the planet!”
He curled his head down to brush against hers again. Oh, Sweet Rose. You really have to go now.
“No!” she cried out, grabbing hold of his bony-ridged head and holding hard. “You can’t make me!”
You have to. He pulled back, and he was too strong—she couldn’t stop him. He lifted free of her hold and gazed down at her. My wyvern wants you so badly, and it’s all I can do to hold him back. You have to leave.
“I don’t…” She was outright sobbing now. “I don’t want to go.”
You’ll be fine. You have your magic now. Go use it. Live well. Find someone worthy of your love.
Something broke inside her. Those words… they broke something. It was like a crack had been there all along, a fissure in the hard rock of her heart, and those words were the water that had somehow gotten between and frozen and expanded and… she was broken wide open.
“I don’t want anyone else.” Her tears suddenly stopped. It was like the sun had come out and dried them up. Because it was true—there was no one else who could be like him. And there never would be.
Leonidas stood absolutely still. Even the flicking of his spiky tail in the dark by the shelves stopped. What? That single word rang like a bell in her head.
“I want you.” She took a step forward, then two. Slowly. Deliberately. “No one else. Ever. Just you, Leonidas Smoke.” With each word, the power of it grew.
She reached him, but he was motionless, as still as if he’d been magically frozen in place. She lifted her hand to his face, but just as she touched it, just as her blood-and-tear-stained hand met his blood-and-tear-streaked cheek, his eyes flashed completely bronze.
In an instant, he was on her, the bulk of his body shoving her to the floor and trapping her with his chest. A wild roar shook his body, pinning her and vibrating her with its power. The cold, brick floor was hard against her back. Leonidas’s hot bronze scales smashed her chest. She could hardly breathe. But there was no panic, no worry, nothing but a broken-open heart aching for him.
She grappled him with every limb and pulled him closer—she needed to touch him, hold onto him, with every inch of her body. “You are mine, Leonidas Smoke.” She pressed her face against his heaving chest, making contact with the blood and tears and magical sparking skin. “Dominus! Captiva! I love you.” It was whispered and fervent, and she meant every word like she had never meant anything before in her life. She repeated it again and again as she reached inside to summon her power, her true witch. His body struggled against her hold, his talons scraping the bricks near her head. She squeezed her eyes shut and pictured that golden cage holding him. It was made of love and magic, and she wished with everything in her heart to free him from it. Even if the wyvern broke loose and consumed her. Even if she might die in the process of breaking it. If another witch’s love and death had created that cage, then maybe her love and her death could set him free.
His body convulsed against her. She held tight, eyes shut, focusing hard. He was crushing her as his body contorted and flailed, fighting against the magic. She could feel that golden cage of magic pulsing, live and hot, all around them, as if the golden bars had manifested in reality, expanding outward, flexing and bending and, if she had anything to do with it… breaking…
Leonidas let out a tremendous roar. The air singed with what could only be dragonfire. Heat swept over her, and she was saved by being trapped beneath his bulk. The roar went on and on, the heat building…
And suddenly it was gone.
All of it. The heat, the noise, the scales pressed against her face.
There was still a weight on her, something covering her body and pressing her into the bricks, but it was lighter… and softer… and sparking magical energy with every touch…
Rosalyn opened her eyes.
Leonidas’s gorgeous human face stared down at her in astonishment.
She gasped.
For a moment, neither one of them moved, surprise freezing them both in place. Rosalyn’s hands buzzed with the magic of holding him. He was naked, on top of her, and her hands were splayed across his back. His eyes shone, but they were wide with awe…
Then he kissed her.
Holy fuck. Was he dreaming? Was this real?
Leonidas was kissing Rosalyn on the floor of a dingy, ancient boiler room, and he’d never been more ecstatic to do any single thing in his entire, sordid life.
“Holy mother of magic.” The voice belonged to his brother. There were other gasps of surprise muddled with words.
Leonidas ignored them. They could either watch or get the fuck out, but nothing was going to stop him from making love to the amazing, gorgeous little witch underneath him right this fucking minute.
“Oh, my love,” he gasped between kisses, his hands finding their way into her hair and down the side of her body. That beautiful cream-colored suit of hers was covered with singe from his dragonfire and dirt from the floor, but that was okay—it protected her sweet body from the rough bricks below it. A body he had a raging need to bury himself in immediately.
She was clutching his head and digging fingers into his back. “You’re mine,” she said fiercely, and he thought his heart might swell right out of his body.
Instead, he growled and slid a hand down her leg, reaching the edge of her skirt so he could slip inside. “I need you,” he panted into her neck. “Right now.”
He vaguely heard the door to the maintenance room screech closed, but he was much more focused on the sparking touch of his fingers as they brushed the delicate skin of Rosalyn’s thighs. He lifted off her, finally holding his weight and not crushing her with his need to have full body contact. His fingertips found the delicate silk of her panties and shifted slightly to form a talon to slice them free of her body. Her hands were all over him—his shoulders, his back, his hair—flushing pleasure at every contact point.
“Oh, God, Leonidas,” she was gasping.
His cock was already hard as a rock and aching for her, and that desperate dance on his skin was driving him mad. He shoved her skirt higher and took her in one swift stroke. She cried out in p
leasure, and his heart nearly stopped with how tight and wet she was. How perfectly he fit. And that mewling sound she made as she squirmed under him just about made him come undone before they’d even gotten started.
“Holy fuck, Rosalyn,” he said, light-headed with all of it. He pulled back and thrust into her again, wrenching another cry of pleasure from her. She arched up into him, clawing at him, her lips parted and panting. “You are so mine,” he said. “So completely mine.” He pulled back and thrust again and again, punctuating every word with magic sparking between them, deep inside her body.
“Yes!” she cried, and his heart sang the joy of it.
He kept thrusting, and the boiler room faded. There was nothing but the hot sweetness of her body, the sparking magic of every touch, the tightness of her pulsing around his cock. Her hair spilled across the floor, and her mouth gasped with pleasure. She squirmed and whimpered, and every moment of it drove him deeper in love and closer to his own climax. It was a dizzying rush of hot, hot lovemaking that felt transcendent in a way nothing ever had. Then she bucked against him, and her body squeezed down on his cock, shivering and clenching. Her screams rocketed around the hard walls of the room, and he couldn’t hold back anymore. His peak rushed at him, a blinding hot pleasure as he emptied himself into her, wave after pulsing wave.
She was gasping for air, just barely over the top and coming down. He felt utterly spent. Emptied. Full of love but emptied of himself. Everything he was—literally his actual existence—he owned to this gorgeous woman who somehow, miraculously, incredibly had found her way into loving him. Breaking his curse. Bringing him back from the edge of madness. Love almost seemed like a word too small to hold the ocean of feeling he had for her.
Their bodies continued to pulse with magic.
His cock was still deep inside her, sparking along every inch. He could feel the effects, but he could also see it in her body with the delicate shivers, the delightful twitches of electrified pleasure. Her suit was rumpled, dirty, and hiked up to her waist. Her hair was mussed. But Rosalyn in this post-climax haze, cheeks flushed, lips parted, was the most erotic thing he’d ever seen.
He stayed inside her, loathing to break that connection. Instead, he just eased forward and gently brushed his lips against her still-panting ones.
“Oh, my love,” he breathed, gazing into her beautiful blue eyes. She was blinking and seemed barely able to focus on him. He grinned. “Shall I wait until you’ve recovered before I make you come again?”
Her eyes went wide, and she stared at him like he was crazy. Holy magic, his heart. Every time she looked at him, especially with any kind of passion, he felt like his heart might die of happiness.
Rosalyn slid her hands from their fevered clutch of his shoulders up to his cheeks. Then she lifted from the floor to kiss him. The brush of her lips wasn’t soft at all—more like a ravaging need for him expressed through the nip and bite of teeth and tongue and lips. He groaned and kissed her back. His cock twitched inside her, the magic still feeding a sizzling stimulation that charged his entire body. And as she consumed him with her lips, tasted him and clutched at him with her magic-sparking hands, he found himself growing hard inside her again.
This woman. His body had always been insanely responsive to her, but now that he knew her heart—now that she’d literally saved him with it—his body was hyper-ready to pleasure her in every way possible.
He rocked her back to the floor, easing in and out as his cock lengthened.
“Oh, God,” she panted when he lowered his aggressive devouring of her sweet flesh to her neck. “Again?”
“Always,” he breathed against her skin. Magic jumped between his lips and her tender earlobe, making her shiver. Sweet magic, he loved when she did that. “My love, if I have my way, we would never stop.”
“Leonidas.” Her voice had a tremble in it that made him pull back.
“Are you all right?” he asked, and he was alarmed to see tears in her eyes.
“I’m so…” She was fighting to keep them inside. “I can’t…” She swallowed. “Make love to me. Hard. Make this real. Because I’m afraid I’m having some kind of dream, and I’m terrified of waking up.”
Fuck. The last thing he wanted was any doubt.
“Then, my love,” he said, pulling out of her body and rising quickly from the floor. He bent to grab her hands and lift her up. “I need you to do exactly as I say.” He lifted her rumpled jacket and silk blouse quickly over her head, then sliced her bra loose. Her gorgeous breasts fell free, and he had to bite his lip hard not to just fall to his knees and worship those for a while. Instead, he turned her around. “I need you with your hands against the wall. Right now.” He walked her three steps to where a bare spot of cinder block beckoned. He ran his hand up her back until he fisted his hand in her hair, then with a good grip on it, he urged her forward. His other hand held her hip, forcing her sweet rear-end against his now-raging-hard cock. Her bunched-up skirt was in the way, but that wouldn’t last. He leaned forward with her. “Hands against the wall, love. And brace yourself. Because I’m going to fuck you so hard, you’ll have no question in your mind about any of it.”
She made one of those soft little sounds that went straight to his cock, then splayed her hands against the wall. Her red hair fell forward, hanging down where her breasts dangled in the air, calling to his hands. First, he shoved her skirt all the way up, baring her sweet bottom to him. Then he reached around her chest and grasped hard onto one breast. With the other hand, he steadied her hip, locking it hard in his grip. Then he took her from behind, sliding hard and fast inside her.
“Oh, God!” she cried. “Yes.” She pushed her bottom back against him, and that just wouldn’t do. He wanted her holding on for dear life, not begging for more.
He slid his hand from her hip to her sweet, sensitive nub around front. He pressed on that, the electric touch zapping her right where it would charge her most, then he pulled her back so he could sink deep. With that hold on her breast and her sex, he hammered into her, each thrust harder than the next. Her cries and whimpers grew into curses and pleas for more. He pounded into her, nailing her with the reality of his cock and his love and his utter and complete, rock-solid hold on her. His implicit promise was that, going forward, he would always protect her, always be there for her, devote every ounce of attention he had to her, just as he was now, driving her higher and higher into her climax. His own pleasure was off the charts. He was holding back from shooting off only by the sheer dint of willpower and the driving focus on pleasuring and ravishing her body.
When she came, it was a shuddering revelation. A string of curses, and her hands pounding the concrete wall. Her body shaking under his onslaught. He rushed to his own peak, spilling his hot seed into her again, the magic crackling everywhere, inside and out. The pleasure temporarily robbed him of every sense save the sparking magical slide of his cock in her tight wetness. When the quivering of her sweet body had settled, and his own emptying had finished, he gathered her up in his arms, pulling her away from the wall and holding her back against his chest. His hands naturally found her breasts, and her tight nipples just about drove him insane. He wanted to lap them and tease them and hear the sounds she would make when he did.
Instead, he held her, his face buried in her bounty of hair, and he thought of the seed he had just pumped into her… and how one day, soon, that seed would be the first step in making a child between them. A child. His head was so light and floating, he could hardly imagine it… but it was real. He knew it would be. She loved him. They would mate. They would make a dragonling together.
It was literally everything he never thought he would have.
“Does it feel real now?” he whispered into her hair. He wasn’t sure if he was asking her or himself—the buzzing in his head definitely said this is all a wondrous dream.
She reached up and encircled his hands where they held her breasts. “Yes. No?” She pulled in a long breath, like she was a
s light-headed as he was. “But if this is a dream, I don’t ever want to wake up.”
He nuzzled into her hair. “Agreed.” He ran the palm of his hand over one of her rigid nipples… it sparked the whole way. He swore to magic, he was getting hard again. “And as much as I want to ravage your body, Rosalyn Thorne, I don’t want to claim you here, amidst the dirt and the grime. Our mating deserves better. You deserve everything and anything I can possibly ever give you.”
She tugged at his hold on her then turned in his arms to face him. She held his cheeks in her hands, and he flashed back to how she’d done that when he was wyvern. How gentle and brave she’d been. But there was no danger of his wild beast coming out any longer. He was 100% bonded to her in every way except mating… and that would come soon enough.
“You gave me everything I needed,” she said, “when you came back to me.”
He kissed her softly because what else could he do?
Then he smiled gently. “The others are probably waiting for us.”
She blinked, dazed. “Others?”
“Cinaed?” he asked with a smile. “Guinevere and Leksander.”
She dashed a look around the room like she had forgotten they existed.
He touched her cheek to bring her back. “It’s all right. They’re just outside.”
She cringed with a sour look for the door. “They heard every word, didn’t they?”
He grinned. “And the screams, too.”
“Oh God.” She seemed to want to disentangle, but he wouldn’t allow it.
He pulled her close again and whispered, “Every single one of them is ecstatic for us, Sweet Rose.” He leaned back to peer in her uncertain eyes. “But we should let them back in. Once we’re dressed.” Then he released her and stepped back. With a flick of his wrist, he conjured clothes for himself that befit modern London. She scurried to pick up her clothes off the floor—the bra and panties were in tatters, but she tugged the rest into place.
