by Leela Ash
“Robert would go down in history as the man who unified Scotland, and legends would grow about him that only one person on that field knew—Lily. Lily, the one whose arrow had ensured that he would survive the day, had ensured that the legend would grow.”
Chapter 7
“And then what happened?” Rose asked a few three quarters of a century later.
“Matthew came over to me, and kissed me, thanking me for saving the King,” Lily answered simply.
“Wow…” Rose exclaimed softly.
“What?” Lily asked.
“You know that by doing that, you basically saved the U.S., right?”
“What?”
“Yeah…I don’t know if you remember or not, but King James the First of England—
“The guy with the Bible?”
“Yeah. Well, before he became King of England, he was known as King James VI of Scotland…he became King of England when Queen Elizabeth died.”
“Okay, so?”
“He was a grandson of some kind of Robert the Bruce’s.”
“I never thought of that,” Lily answered.
And she hadn’t. After Matthew had kissed her in the midst of the victorious Scotsmen who had officially earned their independence from England, too much had happened between Lily and Matthew that the implications of her arrow had not fully registered to Lily.
Together, they had ridden back to Culcreuch to much fanfare. The entirety of the Clan Galbraith celebrated the exploits of Matthew and the strange woman at a feast held in the dining hall of the Culcreuch Castle. A few days later, and edict came from King Robert, granting ownership of a large tract of land in the area of Stirling Castle, the title of Baron, and the right to include the motto “Friend of the King” on his personal coat of arms from then on.
Matthew had asked Lily if she would accompany him to his new home…and she had agreed. The tension between them was palpable when they had first arrived, and finally, Lily had had enough of waiting for the erstwhile gentleman to make a move, and like the 21st century woman that she was, she made a move for him.
“Matthew…what do you want from our relationship?”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you want to see happen between us?”
“I—I don’t know what to say, Lily,” he answered.
“Well, if you don’t know what you want, there is no way that I can know. You need to know this, however: I have a life in my own time, and I will go back to it…unless I have a damn good reason to stay here.”
Matthew considered this for a minute, and finally asked, “What would be a good reason?”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want you to go.”
“Well, if you don’t want me to go, then why do you want me to stay?”
“Because in the last few weeks, I have fallen in love with you.”
“That is a damn good reason, Matthew,” Lily said, wrapping her arms around his neck, and pulling him in for a long kiss. At first, Matthew seemed unsure of himself, until Lily pushed him into one of the empty chairs, and began removing her clothes in front of him. When she stood there, wearing nothing but her undergarments, she turned to him and said, “Aren’t you going to take yours off?”
Matthew, finally realizing what Lily was saying, hastily began to remove his clothes as well. When he was completely naked, she instructed him to sit back down in one of the chairs. When he was seated comfortably on one of the velveteen chairs, she kneeled before him, lightly touching the tip of his lance with her tongue. When he let out a low moan that only Lily could hear, she giggled naughtily, making it plain that there was definitely more where that came from.
She continued this for a few minutes, waiting for Matthew to nearly burst from longing, and only then did she take him into her mouth. Slowly, with painstaking precision, she used her tongue to wet every inch if his large member. All the while, however, she was becoming more and more hungry as well, and after licking and sucking on his potency for a few minutes, she finally stopped and stood back up.
“Why did you stop?” Matthew asked in a voice that was pleading with her to resume.
“You’ll see,” she said, grinning mischievously. Slowly, so as to continue the process for as long as possible, Lily removed the last vestiges of clothing that hugged the firm curves of her body before finally standing completely naked before her lover. “Do you like what you see?” she asked in her most seductive voice.
“V—very much so,” Matthew answered, breathing in deeply the scent of her arousal which hung potent on the air. Lily turned around, exposing her rear to him, and sat, slowly taking in the inches of his dagger into her wet, quivering sheath. Her folds expanded and stretched as she learned to accommodate him, and when comfortable, she began to grind on him, slowly taking him in and out of her and relishing every amazing second of it.
Thanks to the large size of Matthew’s organ, it did not take long for Lily to feel the powerful waves of ecstasy that accompany a coming orgasm, and so she began to move faster, slamming Matthew into herself repeatedly.
“Oh my god!” she exclaimed, her eyes rolling in her head, “that feels so good!”
Matthew must have liked her vocal nature while in the throes of passion, because even through the clenching of the walls of her hollow, she could feel him stiffening as she rode and grinded on him. Finally, together, the two lovers both achieved release and collapsed on the chair, with Matthew holding her while they both fell into sleep.
***
“So…you slept with him?” Rose asked.
“Yes, of course!” Lily answered. “And we are going to get married!”
“How long do you think you were gone?” Rose asked.
“About five months…why?”
“Because in my time, you’ve only been gone for a week.”
“Wait, what?” Lily asked.
“Yeah, you weren’t even scheduled to be home until next week.”
“So you mean that I can use this necklace to stay there for a year if I want to, and still come back here every week?”
“Yeah, I would think so!” Rose answered. “Why?”
“Just because I’m living full time in 14th-century Scotland doesn’t mean I don’t want to see you, ho,” Lily answered. “I could come here and stay for a month, and the necklace could take me back so that I would only be gone from then for about five minutes if I want.”
“Seems like it!” Rose answered. “What’s your point?”
“My biggest fear about living in the past is that I have been worried about how hard it would be to keep in contact with you.”
“Well, with this necklace, you can come see me any time,” Rose said with a genuine smile.
“That’s great! Oh, I love this necklace!”
“Well, you may have control over time and space, but I have to get to work,” Rose said.
“Okay!” Lily said, standing to hug her friend. “When do you want me to come see you again?”
“I think once a week will be nice, so when you get a chance or just want to get away for a bit, come visit!” Rose answered, before turning to walk to her car.
The two women waved at each other, and Rose drove away. Lily, on the other hand, found a secluded spot, and whispered the words tempus imperium while grasping the necklace that she still had not taken off. When the gateway appeared before her, Lily stepped through it: back to both her past and present…to her one love.
Together, she and Matthew grew to an old age and had eleven children, the oldest of which was a girl. When Lily reached an old age and was ready to die, she gave her 14th-century daughter the necklace and started the legend of the necklace, thus continuing the loop.
THE END
Dragon Shifter Romance
A Dragon to Watch over Me
Dragons of Kaldernon 1
Leela Ash
Copyright © 2016 by Leela Ash. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any
form or by any electronic of mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
CHAPTER ONE
“Krista, come over here and dance!” Marcia called to her best friend, who was doing the same thing she usually did, sitting in the corner with a bored look on her face.
Krista sighed. She wasn’t in the mood for being out at the bar; she had only gone to offer her best friend some moral support. A man Marcia had a crush on was celebrating his birthday and she had been invited, but she had been too afraid to go alone and so she had begged Krista to come along. Krista wasn’t sure why she should be there anyway; not when Marcia would simply end up hanging all over the guy and leaving to give him a private gift.
“I’ve really got to be going,” Krista called back, shaking her head and pointing toward the door in case Marcia didn’t get the hint. Marcia gave her an exaggerated frown but disappeared back into the crowd, and Krista sighed in relief. She was free.
Or so she thought.
“Hey baby,” a drunk man said with a slur, blocking her way to the exit. She’d been heading toward the back door where she could sneak through the alleyway and toward the parking lot without running into any more of her friends. She didn’t recognize the drunk man and tried to push her way past him. “Feel like getting lucky tonight? I love that ass!”
She rolled her eyes in disgust and finally made her way past him. Despite being a virgin, Krista was used to men leering at her, and although she would have loved to go a night without being pestered, it appeared that tonight just wasn’t going to be her lucky night.
“Hey!” he protested as he was shoved aside and the people around him tittered with laughter. Fortunately, there were enough people between them that it didn’t matter what he said. She was able to get safely past.
Krista finally made it out into the dark, cool night and inhaled a deep breath of delicious fresh air. Sneaking out through the alley had been a good idea.
Suddenly, she felt a searing pain on her head and saw a flash of white in front of her eyes.
“Got her, tie up her hands!”
“What the hell?” she mumbled, trying to push herself to her feet. But before she was able to regain her balance, another searing flash of pain brought spots before her eyes and she collapsed again.
“Don’t move!” an angry man shouted down to her. She was surrounded and terrified, but decided not to move. They had her outnumbered.
“Finally, we’ve been waiting so long for this!”
“What…” Krista brought her hand to her head, wincing in pain and confusion.
Suddenly, she heard a growl, unlike anything she had ever heard before, and cowered into the crook of her arm.
“Don’t touch her!” a man’s voice boomed. She tried to open her eyes, but what she saw just made her want to faint. A giant black dragon was standing at the end of the alleyway. At that point, she passed out cold.
CHAPTER TWO
Clayton scowled down at the woman passed out on the ground and cast a challenging glare to the group of men who had been trying to kidnap her. He knew exactly who they were, and the knowledge infuriated him.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he growled, furious that they had the nerve to come anywhere near the woman most sacred to his clan.
But Clayton knew exactly what they were doing. Krista had been the main focus of both the self-proclaimed Guardians and the Kersh clan – and for good reason. She was extremely valuable, and the last living heir young enough to guarantee the continuance of the Kersh dragon clan.
“The girl is ours!” the small group’s leader hissed, leaping at Clayton and drawing a weapon from his side. Clayton flinched and jumped away, slapping the large gun out of his hand. Only Clayton knew it wasn’t just any gun – it was fully loaded with ammunition that would bind his powers and make it impossible to shift into his dragon form. From there, he could be killed as easily as any other mortal human.
“I don’t think so,” he growled, allowing himself to shift all the way into his dragon form. He normally restrained himself when he was in human areas, only shifting enough to take advantage of his powers while unleashing his fury on his enemy. But when he was protecting the one woman alive who was capable of ensuring the continuation of his race, he couldn’t take any chances.
The men’s eyes grew large and they all fumbled for their guns as Clayton let out a mighty roar. It shook the ground they were walking on and made everybody cower in terror. The heat from his breath was enough to singe off their eyebrows and they scrambled away, worried they would not be able to survive his malice, as he began to inhale and a burst of flames flickered from his mouth.
Krista was lying on the ground between his massive legs, totally limp, and now that they were alone, Clayton returned to his human form. He put on his cape to conceal his nakedness and picked Krista up, jumping into the air and flying her back to her apartment a few blocks away. He couldn’t let anybody see them, and his cloak helped to hide them from the people who might be glancing up at the night sky. It was imbued with the powers of his own world, a place he missed dearly.
Kaldernon, his home planet, was deeply missed by everybody in the clan, in fact, but they had been unable to find their way back to their own world. After a life-altering earthquake, the world seemed to open up and several of the dragon-born members of the Kersh clan had toppled through an invisible portal, landing in a world full of commotion.
They were concealed by a growth of trees near a ravine, and were able to see Kaldernon glimmering above their heads, haunting them with their inability to find a way through the portal. If they shifted into their dragon forms and tried to fly through, but they were knocked back violently and forced to recover for days from a blow unlike any other they had ever experienced.
Kaldernon had shimmered in the sky above their heads for hundreds of years as they perfected their underground settlement to protect themselves from the humans, and the Kersh clan watched as pioneers began to settle in the wilderness and construct a civilization of their own right next door. People were always drawn to the area for some inexplicable reason. It was as if they were seeking the immense power they sensed coming from Kaldernon and the group of dragon shifters that had made their home there.
CHAPTER THREE
One day, a distant relative of Clayton’s had an encounter with one of the village girls. Her eyes were a shimmering, smoky blue, and he hadn’t been able to resist her. They had been so powerfully drawn to each other that they had ravished each other right then and there, the woman’s legs splayed out with her back against a mighty oak.
When he brought her back to the clan, the others were astounded. It was clear that she was from Kaldernon, whether by some strange twist of fate or pure chance. The Kersh clan suddenly knew that other rips in the dimensional fabric separating Earth and Kaldernon must have opened up, letting in a group of people from their world who were renowned for their ability to carry the dragon-born children; the Lonis. They were exceptionally intelligent and artistic, and had created a civilization in Kaldernon that brought great joy and culture to those who lived there.
The young maiden was completely oblivious to the importance of her bloodline, but when she looked to the sky and saw Kaldernon for the first time, her eyes widened in disbelief and they knew it must be true. Nobody but descendants of Kaldernon were able to see it shimmering in the sky, taunting them from above, almost like a vision from a dream.
But when asked what she knew of her relatives, she had grown quiet and unhappy.
“It is only my sister and I,” she had said woefully. “Everybody else died onboard the ship.”
This meant that nobody had told them about Kaldernon. She quickly became infatuated with the dragon shifter and bore many of his children. The bloodline stayed strong with her descendants after that, but then, they had begun to die out. Now, it was only her sister’s heirs w
ho lived on, oblivious to the dragon-born, living their lives and doing their part to ensure the prosperity and culture of Earth’s civilization.
The Kersh clan was thinning out, though, and everybody had turned to Clayton for answers. He had been the descendent of the original leader of the Kersh clan, and his bloodline was not crossed with the Lonis. However, it was only a Loni that would be able to help them to ensure the continuation of their race, and he was terrified that if he couldn’t find the last woman of Loni descent, everything they had worked for would be lost. There would be no dragon-born left to ensure the survival of their beautiful lore, and all the progress they had made in researching the rift of time and space that kept them from Kaldernon was useless. Everyone who had lived before him would have died in vain.
And so the dragon-born had become extremely determined to protect the Loni descendants. They had tracked them through the ages, but had never needed their aid until now, when there was only one woman left who was capable of doing what needed to be done. But how could they approach her and ask the impossible of her? It was unfair, and odd, to approach a woman simply to ask her to be the unwitting carrier of a dragon-born child. She was coveted and precious to the Kersh clan, and had been secretly protected ever since she was a child.
Clayton had gotten his first glance of her when they were both around ten years old. She was walking down the sidewalk, secretly singing a quiet song that gave him a wistful feeling. It reminded him of the musical stories that had been shared with the Kersh clan before they had been spit out of Kaldernon. The imaginative Lonis had created many beautiful songs that still survived in his clan, and they were blessed with so many musical gifts that her little song immediately struck him as the most beautiful thing he had ever heard.
