“Will you shift for me? I promise not to faint.” Amanda’s body pulsed with need but she had to see this, had to accept all of Lorcan before she could make love to him again.
He nodded. Stepped back from the bed. Glanced about him as if checking the amount of space he had. As Amanda watched, Lorcan rippled, faded, shifted, all within a few beats of her heart.
Knowing now what to expect, Amanda fully appreciated the mystery, the beauty of the Dragon kneeling in the room. Naked, curious, more aroused than she could recall, Amanda rose from the bed and reached out to touch the iridescent scales covering Lorcan’s throat. He leaned his huge head close and nuzzled her shoulder.
He ran his long, rough tongue across her chest, leaving a trail of heat from one breast to the other. Followed that with an equally slow, unbelievably arousing lick between her legs. Amanda stepped closer. Her nipples were on fire, their tender tips abraded by the Dragon’s tongue, the sensitive tissues between her legs already weeping with need.
She wanted more. He was beautiful. More beautiful than any creature she’d ever seen. Magical. He was magic incarnate. Amanda wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her face close.
Lorcan’s voice rumbled out of the Dragon’s chest, deeper, rougher, yet still the same. “I cannot hold this form when the man in me wants you so badly, my sweet Amanda. Now you’ve seen, do you believe?”
Tears streaming down her cheeks, Amanda hugged Lorcan’s neck even tighter than before. She nodded against the warm scales and felt him shift once more, becoming Lorcan in her arms.
He lifted her, carried her to the bed and knelt beside her.
Then, very slowly, very thoroughly, Lorcan made love to her.
His elegant hands with their long fingers played music upon her body. Amanda arched beneath his touch and cried out when his mouth followed where his fingers had blazed a path. Lorcan moved between her legs and nipped at the tender skin of her inner thighs, suckled her blood-rich labia between his lips, then laved her swollen clitoris with the flat of his tongue. He brought her to the very edge of orgasm, then backed away.
Her body tingled and trembled with need, every inch of her on fire. She whimpered, raised her hips in blatant invitation and sighed when his tongue found her once again. Teasing, licking, suckling, from long, slow sweeps of his tongue to sharp little nips of his teeth, Lorcan brought her once more to the peak.
Then he left her, shivering and gasping, her body burning, needy and wanting.
His hands grasped her buttocks, kneading and massaging until her muscles felt malleable as warm clay. His fingertips teased the sensitive ring of muscle between her cheeks, pressed and released without entering, held her closer to his searching mouth, but still he wouldn’t let her come.
Moaning, whimpering deep in her throat, Amanda fisted the satin bedcover in her grasping fingers. Her head thrashed from side to side and Lorcan held her, a willing prisoner of mouth and lips, fingers, teeth and tongue.
When she thought she might explode, when every sense and synapse cried out for release, Lorcan suddenly raised up on his knees, moved close, rubbed the thick head of his cock in the moisture between her legs and thrust, hard and fast and deep.
Amanda screamed. His fingers tightened on her buttocks and he held her close, lifting her hips and burying himself even deeper, thrusting harder. She wrapped her legs around his trim waist, felt the thick pressure of his cock against the mouth of her womb, the heavy weight of his balls pressing into the crease of her butt, the fiery shock of climax taking control, lifting her higher, harder, faster, brighter than she’d ever gone before.
Gasping, sobbing, she threw her arms around Lorcan’s neck and held him close, clinging to him. Her pussy clenched, the muscles unwilling to let him go. Her fingers and toes went numb as every bit of feeling centered between her legs, inside her pulsing, shuddering, weeping body.
Lorcan thrust once more, then again. Suddenly he stiffened in her embrace, his fingers tightening around her buttocks with bruising intensity. He threw his head back, cried her name. “Amanda! Mandy, Mandy my love, Amanda.” The last he whispered against her ear as he lowered her to the bed and collapsed across her shivering body.
She felt each pulsing release flooding against the mouth of her womb, bathing her with his seed, each hot breath that tickled her throat below her ear. Her fingers stroked his sweaty back, fluttering over ribs and muscle, tracing the hollows of his muscular buttocks.
The stray thought flitted across her mind that they’d not used any protection, not once when they’d made love, something she’d never done in her life. Rather than feel fearful or foolish, Amanda smiled, wondering if Elves and humans were compatible, if this amazing lover of hers could give her a child.
If only they could actually consider a future together.
Impossible.
Lorcan belonged in some mystical land he called the Northern Realm, a land where Elves ruled and Dragons flew.
Amanda’s future lay in a kingdom just as mystical but not nearly so wonderful… the corporate fantasy that was Hollywood.
She’d always loved her life, her career, her chosen path, no matter how frivolous it often seemed. Why now, when this man offered her something just as insubstantial but twice as magical, did Amanda find herself afraid to follow a dream?
They made love once more, a sweet and tender coming together of two souls afraid of the truth. Lorcan had sworn his love for her. Had promised her a life in his kingdom unlike anything Hollywood might ever imagine.
Amanda had done her best to show him her love with her touch, with her mouth, her body, her heartfelt response. Unable to say the words, she’d let him take her back to her bungalow for a few hours’ sleep before the day began.
A soft knock on the door awakened Amanda. Disoriented, she sat up quickly and shoved the tangled hair out of her eyes. She vaguely remembered showering with Lorcan after they’d reached her room, but he’d gone as promised and left her alone.
Except for that incessant knocking. “Just a minute.” She wrapped a robe around herself and opened the door. Lester stood just outside.
He looked worried, almost distraught.
“Les?” Amanda opened the door wider and stepped back to let him in. “What’s wrong? You look upset.”
Lester nodded and entered the room. Without any preamble, he turned with his hands on his hips and an accusatory tone in his voice. “The prince says you won’t marry him. Why not?”
“What?” Amanda’s hand went to her throat. “I didn’t actually say no…”
“You didn’t say yes, either. The man loves you. He said he’d apologized for acting like such an ass the first night, that he thought you cared for him, but…”
Amanda sighed and reached for the coffee pot. She had a feeling this discussion might require a lot of caffeine. “Les, I’ve known him just a couple of days. Not nearly long enough to fall in love.”
“Are you implying I don’t love Tady?”
Amanda shook her head. “Of course not. It’s obvious you two have a special connection, that you’re meant to be together… I’m not sure that’s what I share with Lorcan. I need more time, Les. It’s a huge decision to make.”
Les sighed and took both her hands in his. “Remember, sweetie, it’s a decision that affects all of us.”
“What do you mean?” Amanda looked down at their linked hands, his twice the size of hers, dark as the coffee trickling into the pot yet more gentle than any hands she’d ever known.
Except Lorcan’s.
“It would break my heart to leave you, sweetie.” Lester squeezed her fingers tightly. “You’re the sister I wished I’d had, the daughter I’ll never have, the mother I never knew. You’re more important to me than I ever imagined and I love you so much! You are all the special women in my life, rolled into one perfect package. You. I need you.”
He took a deep breath and his shoulders slumped. “Thing is, I’ve found a love with Tady so far beyond anything I’ve experien
ced in my life, a love so complete that I can’t make myself give him up. He loves his prince the same way I love you. It puts us in a terrible conundrum -- does he leave his world to come with me, or do I leave mine to be with Tady? I can’t ask Tady to give up his life -- he’s a Dragon, sweetie! A gorgeous, full-sized flying Dragon and he lives in a world we’ve only imagined. They’re not immortal, but almost. If we go to the Northern Realm, our life spans will be just like theirs. We’ll eventually grow old, but not for a long, long time.”
He smiled, but there was no humor in it. “Think about it. I really don’t have a choice. Tady can take me to his world and make me a part of it… what can I offer Tady in mine?”
Amanda bowed her head. “I need time, Les. We’ve still got a few days. I would never ask you to stay with me no matter how much I love and need you, not at the risk of your love with Tady. I have to figure out where my life is going, where I want it to go. Most of all, I need to sort out my feelings for Lorcan.”
She raised her chin and looked deep into Lester’s amber eyes. “Les, you are my one true friend. I depend on you more than I’ve a right to. I love you and I admire everything about you. I will miss you terribly if you go with Tady and Lorcan, but I would never ask you to stay. All I ask is a little time. Can you give me that?”
Lester leaned over and kissed her full on the mouth. “You know I’ll give you whatever you want or need, including time. The question is, what about the prince?”
Sighing, Amanda pulled her hands free of Les’s gentle grasp and turned to pour each of them a cup of coffee. “What about the prince?” She smiled and handed Les a cup. “Time, Lester. A little bit of time alone, without his amazing presence affecting my decision.” She laughed, but there was very little humor in the sound. “I find it very hard to think rationally when he’s near.”
It was no easier to think rationally when he wasn’t near. Amanda sat under the shade of a palm tree and gazed at the waters surrounding Chimera. Dazzling turquoise blue sea, snow-white sands -- it was too perfect to be real.
How much of what she’d experienced these past few days had been illusion, how much reality? This was, after all, Chimera. She’d discovered the island not only welcomed Elves, there were other creatures beyond belief, vacationing, meeting, falling in love. She might have been vacationing on a Hollywood set, for all the fantastic things going on around her.
If she went back to LA, would this all be but a dream, an insistent memory of something that might have been?
The thought of returning had begun to fade. Was that the island’s doing as well? Was she somehow being coerced into making a choice that wasn’t her choice at all?
What would she be giving up if she took the chance this was real, gave into her heart’s desire and went with Lorcan as his bride?
She had no family waiting for her. Very few friends. Friendships and Hollywood didn’t really go together at all.
Her only true friend would be gone, living with the one he loved in a magical kingdom where men became Dragons -- and a prince could fall in love with an aging Hollywood actress.
She was thirty-eight years old. Ancient by Hollywood’s standards. William, her agent, had grown distant, the parts coming her way fewer and farther between. The audience was still there, but were they looking for the young ingénue they recalled or actually enjoying the traces of age beginning to show on her face?
William had mentioned plastic surgery.
Actually, he’d more than mentioned it. He’d given Amanda the business card of a well-known surgeon and suggested she set up an appointment as soon as possible.
Lorcan hadn’t noticed the lines around her eyes. Lorcan had feasted on her beauty, the beauty of a woman well into her prime. He hadn’t missed the bloom of youth long past.
He thought she was beautiful. More than that, he loved talking to her, teasing her, experiencing new things with her.
Am I so superficial I worry more about appearance than substance?
The idea left her cold. Was she really willing to give up a mystical, magical love with Lorcan for a few more years of shallow adulation from her fans?
A shadow fell across her. Amanda looked up and smiled. A large and particularly beautiful Dragon blocked the sun as it landed lightly on the sands in front of her. His huge, iridescent wings beat once, twice, then folded neatly along his back and sides. There was a brilliant green strip of silk wrapped around his neck. It matched the color of his eyes.
“Will you come fly with me?”
Fly? Of course! Why not? Laughing, Amanda rose to her feet and kicked off her sandals. Lorcan crouched low and dipped his neck. Without thinking beyond the moment, Amanda tucked her sarong between her legs and straddled his smooth, scaled back.
Lorcan raised his head and unfurled his wings. They glistened in the sunlight. “Hold on tight. Wrap your arms around my neck and grab onto the fabric. It’ll give you a better grip.”
Amanda did as she was told, hooking her heels beneath the large muscles where Lorcan’s wings attached to his body and tightening her grip around his long neck, the silk bunched tightly in her fists.
The Dragon lifted off with a huge jump and a powerful thrust of his wings. Rising quickly, following warm air currents over the island of Chimera, Lorcan flew in an ever widening arc, spinning higher, farther out over the sea, then back toward the broken caldera of the volcano. Amanda found herself caught between watching the gorgeous landscape unfolding below and studying the smooth undulations of muscle and sinew as Lorcan carried them aloft.
This was magic. Unexplainable, unbelievable, inexplicable… magic.
It came to her, a flash of lightning so obvious, so real, Amanda laughed aloud. What kind of idiot wouldn’t trade Hollywood for this? There she only pretended at fantasy, merely acted emotion, passion and love.
The only magic she created was scripted, directed and paid for.
With Lorcan, she would live it. Real, heartfelt, sometimes painful, always honest, true passion and emotion, the raw unedited fantasy of life… the magic she’d always wanted.
He landed high on the western flank of the volcano, way above the tiny bungalows barely visible along the edge of the jungle at the point where it met the perfect sands.
Setting down gently, Lorcan dipped his neck low so Amanda could slide off. Her hands were numb from holding on so tight and her bottom felt bruised from her seat on his muscular neck.
She’d never felt better in her life.
Lorcan shifted, his image wavered, and he stood before her, naked but for the fabric sliding down over his shoulders. Amanda realized immediately it was a sarong, just like Lester’s. Lorcan tugged it free then wrapped it around his hips and tucked the ends beneath the waistband.
Then he looked at her, his eyes filled with love, the question in them obvious. “I know Lester said you needed time…”
Amanda smiled and shook her head. “I’ve taken all the time I need.” She stepped closer, so close her breasts beneath the light silk sarong she wore pressed against Lorcan’s warm chest.
So close their hips met and his arms seemed to come up of their own accord and wrap her even closer, hold her even tighter.
Amanda reached up with her left hand and touched the side of his face, gently shoved the black hair back to reveal his perfectly pointed ear. “I love you, my prince. I love everything about you. I don’t know why or what I doubted. I’m not sure how to make the break from my world to yours, but if you’ll still have me, I’m yours.”
She raised up on her toes to kiss him, met his lips as he bent down to hers.
Magic.
The thought crossed her mind. Somehow it all seemed so right. She’d gone in search of the magic. Here on Chimera, the magic not only found her, it stole her heart away.
Epilogue
“Uncle Lester, Uncle Tady, look at me!”
Les and Tady glanced up from their game of chess as Micah, Amanda and Lorcan’s eldest son, raced into the room. His hair was as black
as his father’s, his eyes the deep, penetrating gray of his mother’s, but he was all seven-year-old boy and always a handful.
“Watch me.”
Lester grinned at Tady and they both turned their attention on Micah. You never knew what the little monster was going to come up with next, but with two doting uncles, a grandmother who spoiled him rotten and a little sister who thought he hung the moon and lit the stars, a bit of attitude was to be expected.
Suddenly Micah stood very still. His forehead wrinkled, his eyes shut in concentration, his pointed little ears practically quivered. His wiry form wavered, misted and shifted.
Tady looked at Lester and shook his head. “We’re in for it now, ya realize?”
Lester nodded and stared at the perfectly formed Dragon sitting in front of the chess table with a big toothy grin on its face.
Micah’s voice squeaked out of his Dragon chest. “Cool, isn’t it? Mom freaked.”
Lester laughed. “I bet she did. She has enough trouble with you when you’re a regular little boy. What’d your dad say?”
“His father said he’s never to shift without permission and is absolutely forbidden to fly unless Tady or I are with him.” Lorcan sounded stern, but Lester could see the pride in the prince’s eyes clear across the room.
“I told him he’ll have to answer to Uncle Les if he doesn’t mind his father.” Amanda followed behind Lorcan with four-year-old Meggie clinging to her hand. Only a month away from her delivery date, Amanda still looked youthful and absolutely gorgeous. “We all know what a meanie Lester can be.”
Even Micah laughed at that one. Then he shifted, reformed, and was once more the little boy everyone loved.
Lester glanced up and caught Amanda’s gaze. There were bright tears in her eyes and a huge smile on her face.
Les felt his own eyes well up, figured he was grinning like an idiot -- but he also knew that Amanda, more than anyone else in the room, understood exactly what he was feeling. Mainly, because he knew Amanda felt it too. They’d left the world behind in search of magic. Both of them had found love.
A.O.E.M.: Finding Magic Page 9
