She compared him to a horse. Of course, horses were gentle, lovely creatures, and he discovered a compliment buried in her analogy. “Indeed. I am who I am,” he agreed, only to walk alongside her in silence while controlling his misplaced anger.
It wasn’t her fault.
“Were you one of the royal family’s mounts?” she asked in a tentative voice. “Did you have a rider?”
His stride slowed, and then he tilted his head and gazed at her. “I’ve never had a rider, but I had hoped to change that this eve. Would you like to try?”
“Me? Ride you?” She swallowed. “I’m not sure I wish to dangle from your hands again. It was… disconcerting.”
She called them hands, and she would never know how much joy such a simple statement had brought him. He looked down at his claws. Each individual talon hooked inward with a sharp curve, designed for spearing and mauling prey.
“I scared you that day,” he stated before lowering his body against the grass and resting on his stomach. “But I will never pick you up again, my princess, unless you desire it.”
“You were quite angry, not that I can blame you.” She frowned down at her hands. “Beast, something has troubled me for a long while.”
“Then speak your mind, and perhaps I may answer.”
“Why did you attack the first adventurers who came here? I know there are always two sides to every story, and we never heard yours. Father said he sent peaceful explorers. They were to find a flower and bring it home.”
While lying on his stomach with his chin against the tops of his claws, they were eye to eye and he no longer towered above her. “This is my home,” he answered. “I may be alone here, but every inch of this mountain is my home. I awakened to find humans trespassing in a place sacred to me. Stealing. Tell me, if you were to find strangers unknown to you in your personal library, taking your favorite books, would you forgive easily?”
“I’d be upset, I suppose, but… I wouldn’t eat them.”
“I have eaten no one,” he grumbled. “I chased them from the mountain and told them their foolishness would cost their lives. I sent the king a warning.” And he’d had no intention of raiding the villages or her kingdom until the king pursued him with dragonslayers and knights. The fury had overtaken him the second time, and he’d shook with intense rage while dismembering each subsequent explorer, especially the knight Sir Henry of Kirkwall, a monster from Dalborough who had killed so many of his countrymen. It had been insult to injury.
“I’m sorry my father sent men to hunt you. You see, we need that flower for my mother.”
“Your mother?”
“Yes, my mother. She was a great sorceress once, but they say mortals cannot handle the strength of fairy blood for long. Over the last few years, her mind has… addled. She’s a shadow of her former self,” she told him, voice sad. “Stories say the twilight rose can cure her, and that it can only be found here, in these gardens. Though I guess it really is just that, a story. I’ve seen no magical blossoms.”
“A sorceress,” he repeated. His mother had been the best in Ocland. Their queen and a grand enchantress who fell for her general and mount. Within a year of their wedding, Alistair became the first dragon shifter crown prince. “Why did the king not ask for it?”
“I… I don’t know. I suppose he didn’t know anything intelligent lived here.”
“Oh. I am but a beast after all,” he agreed in a quiet voice. All the more reason to believe he was doomed to spend the remainder of his short life in a large, cumbersome dragon body, never knowing the warmth of a woman again, the comfort of a bed, the delight of a fine meal at a table again.
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean it like that.” Her fingers twitched, and she reached out, only to hesitate and drop her hand. “I’ve touched you before but never asked permission, and it was rude of me to assume. Is it all right that I touch you? Your scales, they’re so lovely. They look like fire caught in glass. They’re so warm and smooth, I can’t help myself.”
“If it pleases you, my princess.”
Anastasia touched both hands against his warm snout. “I only meant, when he first sent explorers up here, he had no idea anyone lived in the castle. It’s been thought long abandoned. Then all they knew was a dragon had taken offense. You’re the first dragon I’ve ever met, Beast. I had no idea your kind were so intelligent and thoughtful.”
Her touch filled him with turmoil and grief. How he would have loved for her to touch him as a man, but instead, she saw him as an animal. Intelligent, but an animal nonetheless. Relishing the tender contact, his eyes closed and he made a small, rumbling noise of appreciation in his chest. “Will the same happen to you one day, Anastasia? Your mind?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “Maybe, but I’m not as strong as my mother was in magic. Nothing like she’d want me to be, I’m sure.”
“What do you want to be?”
“It doesn’t m—” She stopped, but his mind filled in the blanks. After a last sweep of her fingers across his scales, she dropped her hands and cleared her throat.
“You wish to be powerful,” he guessed.
“My desire for the power to protect myself and others is second only to my hope to one day restore my mother,” Anastasia admitted. Her eyes raised to his. “Does this flower exist, Beast?”
The roses only bloomed in twilight, during an hour when Anastasia never visited the rear of the garden. He tucked his chin and sighed. “It does.”
“Would you show it to me one day?”
“Yes.”
Her palm returned to his cheek, and solemn, blue eyes gazed at him. “I’ve changed the mood of our meeting, haven’t I? Why are we here?”
“I hope to give you something few humans have ever received.” Her brows raised as he bowed his head low and settled on his belly. “Fly with me. This evening, you are the Witch Queen of the mountain.”
“I… but I’ll fall,” she protested.
“I would never let you fall. Do you trust me?”
At first, the princess watched him through wide eyes, only for a look of determination to overtake the terror. “Yes,” she said. “I do.”
Using the upraised scales protruding from his muscular arms and broad shoulders to boost herself onto the base of his neck, Ana squealed and grasped ahold of the pale gold horns studding his nape.
“It’s almost like riding a horse!” He glanced behind him, and she quickly added. “A much larger, fire-breathing horse. Where do I hold you?”
“Where you are holding me now will do, lass. Squeeze with your legs.”
“Squeeze with my legs,” she repeated.
Her body emanated heat, a reminder of where they made contact. The women of Cairn Ocland wore nothing beneath their dresses, but Ana had donned something thin and made from cotton. What he wouldn’t do to touch her there as a human without a barrier between them, breathing in her feminine scent before he savored the taste of her.
Anastasia released him abruptly. “Did I hurt you?”
“No. Why?”
“You groaned as if you were uncomfortable.”
Very uncomfortable. Being a dragon didn’t deter very male and masculine thoughts about what he wanted to do to her. Shifting his stance, Alistair adjusted the position of his wings and glanced back at her again. “Are you ready?”
“Promise you won’t allow me to plummet to my death.”
“I would never.”
“Then I’m ready.”
With a running start, he loped across the empty green space to allow her time to adjust to their motion on stable ground. Her hands were on his horns again, and her thighs squeezed snuggly with the practiced grip of a seasoned rider. His wings thrust out and swept down, lifting them into the air on one powerful flap.
Anastasia squealed and tightened her hold. Taking their first flight slow, he found a gentle current and made a lazy circuit downward from the mountain to the lake in the valley below. Little by little, his princess’s death gr
ip loosened.
“Are you afraid?”
“No! Don’t stop! I love it!”
Elation shot through him, a bolt of joy lancing straight to his heart and topping all prior experiences in his life.
“Would you like to go faster?”
“Is it safe?”
“If you slip, the water will cushion your short fall.”
“Then yes.”
He soared low over the lake, the tip of his speared tail leaving a wake behind them as it trailed through the surface. Ana’s laughter filled the air, caught by the wind, and ripped around them. Despite her earlier reservations, she maintained her seat and never lost her balance, as if she had been made to ride him. His heart swelled at the thought.
“Higher, Beast!” she cried above the wind.
“Are you certain?”
“Yes! I want to see the world from high above as you do!”
“Then hold on, my princess.”
Powerful downward drafts sent them shooting up into the sky. Ana’s hold on him tightened, but her excited shout assuaged his worries. Higher and higher he flew, until the air cooled and the world below them appeared minuscule. He snapped open his wings and held them outstretched, gliding across the sky.
The tension melted from her stiff and rigid posture, and without warning, his princess sprawled against his neck. She turned her cheek to his warm scales and sighed a blissful, euphoric sound. “I wish you could take me to the stars.” Her words were barely more than a whisper against his neck, but he heard them as clearly as if they had seared through his soul.
And he wanted nothing more than to give them to her.
Crisp mountain air tossed Alistair’s hair around his face and pulled at the tartan around his legs. The entrance to the hedge maze loomed before him, and the scent of summer flora filled the air. Wildflowers surrounded them, and night-blooming twilight roses twined over a white trellis near the entrance to the maze.
Anastasia stood beside him, her hand small and fragile within the grip of his calloused fingers. Startled, she turned her face to stare at him with wide, moss-green eyes, then tightened her fingers on his hand.
“Princess?” he whispered.
“Prince Alistair?”
He had no prior recollection of dreams resuming where their predecessors ended, but he also had no complaints if it gave him more time in a day to enjoy Anastasia’s jubilant smiles, more time to hear her laughter. Whether she was a dream facsimile or not, he wanted her.
Weeks had passed since the last time she occupied his dreams, although he’d believed their newfound friendship was to blame, and that he no longer needed the phony Ana when the real one gave him affection so freely.
Is this a dream? Am I dreaming at all? he wondered.
Recovering his wits, he greeted her with a welcoming smile. “Shall we brave the labyrinth?”
“Are you certain we won’t get lost?”
“There’s a trick to it. A pattern,” he whispered as if they might disturb someone. “Left, right, right.”
The hedges rose tall around them, muting the light and the sounds from beyond the maze. A hazy green glow lit their path and pixies drifted in and out of the thick growth.
Ana kept her hand in his as they meandered at a sedate pace down the first leafy corridor. “May I ask you a question?”
“You may ask me anything,” he replied. “Whether or not I may answer is another issue altogether,” he teased.
How funny that her dream self was as inquisitive as the true Anastasia.
Ana pursed her lips and slanted a studious gaze up at him. “You say ‘may’ as if something prevents you from speaking truthfully and openly with me,” she said.
His gaze darted to her, but he said nothing. Was it possible to violate the terms of a fairy’s curse while asleep? He didn’t dare to trust it, and little by little, he began to doubt his ability to separate reality from fantasy.
“Is this real?”
His steps slowed, and then he stopped to hold her against his chest. It felt right there, comforting, her cheek over his wildly beating heart. “I wish that I knew,” he whispered. “But I do know I’m happy with you, precious Anastasia, whether this is real or not, it changes nothing of how I feel when you are near.”
Kiss me again, he tried to will her with his thoughts alone. If this is a dream, do as I want. Kiss me.
She didn’t kiss him as she had during their previous meeting, so he seized the moment for himself and claimed her lips in a passionate kiss. She reciprocated after a startled gasp against his mouth, burying her fingers against his shoulders.
No other woman had ever felt so good in his arms. No woman had ever made his body hum with desire and come alive with desperate, burning need. He traced her curves, following the hourglass created by her corset and craving something to squeeze. In his dreams, he had arms to hold her, hands to caress and touch, and lips to kiss and enjoy the flavor of her mouth. She reminded him of ripe, sweet berries plucked fresh from the vine.
When they finally broke apart, Ana’s breathy sigh against his cheek only provoked visions of her writhing beneath him in bed, her fists clutching handfuls of the sheets. He wanted more than her quiet whimpers; he wanted her pleasured cries and the sound of his name on her lips delivered in passion.
But he wanted them for real.
“This way,” he murmured, taking the lead again and resuming their walk. He glanced at her pink cheeks, noting her eyes were hazy with lust, and began to doubt again. He ached for her beneath his tartan, hungering in a way kisses couldn’t satisfy. Could a dream impart so many sensations and make him question reality?
Or was it a fabrication of his mind helping him to escape the brutal reality of his death looming ahead of him in a few short weeks? He dismissed it, preferring to focus on the uncomfortable tension beneath his tartan instead.
“Tell me more about Cairn Ocland,” Anastasia demanded suddenly.
“What would you like to know?”
“Everything. What lies beyond it?”
Given ample distraction from his hard cock—as well as his fear of death—he chuckled and indulged her in conversation about distant lands and places he’d traveled.
“There are many places beyond Cairn Ocland’s eastern borders, Princess. Savage, wild, and beautiful societies.”
“I’ve never heard of any other kingdoms but the ones in the alliance,” she said. Her brows dipped.
“The kings of Creag Morden, Liang, and Dalborough are short-sighted monarchs. They know only what they are told and see only what hovers before their faces.”
“You’re right.”
“I am?” His brows raised.
“My father can be obstinate at the best of times, yet I still love him. Is that strange? He tried to marry me off to an awful man and abandoned me in that dismal place, but I still forgive him.”
“Isn’t it in the nature of children to forgive their parents’ wrongdoing? They birth and nurture us, after all. We’re here only by their blessing and love.”
Alistair awoke, keenly aware of his huge bulk.
Only a dream, he lamented. The logs in the hearth crackled and popped, the only sound in the sleeping castle. Not even a mouse stirred
If only the true Anastasia felt for me here as she does in my dreams, the curse would be lifted and I would at last know the joys of true happiness.
Chapter
BEAST’S UNEXPECTED RIDE across the skies had restored an essential element to Anastasia’s happiness. It had taken hours to fall asleep the previous night, and when she’d finally succumbed to physical exhaustion, she’d dreamed of her prince. Alistair dominated her sleep for the first time in weeks, catching her by surprise with a kiss so vivid she’d awakened restless with a soul-deep craving for more.
In the recent days, Beast had become strangely docile, and all hints of his former temper vanished. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d raised his voice. He was her constant companion, and when her monthly t
ime arrived, rendering her too unwell to traipse around the grounds, he chatted with her beyond the window while she curled up in bed around a hot water pouch.
When he talked, she listened, and of course, she tried to wiggle more information out of him, but some topics he still refused to touch.
Beast is hiding something. I’d love to know what mysteries he keeps from me. What is his true name? Is he perhaps the son of Queen Liadh’s mount? she wondered.
The poor quality of her sleep left her groggy, and to shake it off, she took a brisk walk in the cooling air. Their mountaintop world had transformed into shades of glorious gold and orange, and red leaves, vibrant against the stone backdrop of the castle, stretched before her. It seemed only days ago it had been summer; the time had flown by so fast.
“Princess!” Beast called from a high parapet. He scrambled down the side of the castle and loped to her like an eager pup she’d once had as a child. She giggled and turned to look up at him.
“You’re certainly cheerful today, Beast.”
“You give me a reason to be happy, Princess.”
He escorted her to the cairn where she settled in the grass to begin her meditation, her skin tingling and abuzz with energy. For a time, she felt true peace, a sensation of being centered she’d never felt before.
When she closed her eyes, the sun was bright. They opened to the blush purple of dusk.
“Are you ready for dinner?”
“Dinner?” she asked, flabbergasted.
“Many hours have passed,” Beast told her, chortling at her flustered behavior. Her eyes grew wide, and he stopped. “What is wrong?”
“You laughed. You’ve never laughed before.”
A soft smile came over his draconic face. “Indeed. I suppose I have not, lass. Come.”
“Beast?” she asked quietly after he had seated her.
“Yes, Princess?”
“Why do you never eat at the table?”
“I take my meals afterward.”
“Why?”
In the time since she had become his captive, Anastasia had learned a dragon’s face could become very expressive. The ridges above his ochre eyes raised, giving him a quizzical, even comical expression.
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