Dragon's Chosen Mate

by Riley Storm

  She chewed on her lower lip. Should she answer him? Or just ignore that it had happened and try to push forward?

  So far, pushing forward hadn’t worked with him, though. He was very adept at ignoring her, doing as he pleased and pretending as though she was blind to what he was doing. Perhaps then, a different tactic was needed now. Something that would get his attention.

  How could it go worse than what she’d just seen him doing against the demon?

  “What are you confused about?” she asked, throwing caution to the wind in an attempt to penetrate the barrier Altair kept around him at all times.

  “You think I’m abandoning you? Leaving you?”

  She looked away as he spoke, stunned by the punch to gut his words had just delivered. This was supposed to be her trying to get through to him! Why did it hit so hard?

  “Yes,” she said after taking a minute to compose herself. “Because you would be, if you do something like that.”

  “You don’t like that,” he said quietly.

  Christine bowed her head, thoughts and emotions connecting inside her mind that she hadn’t even realized she’d been having. Not consciously, at least.

  “Yes,” she said, accepting the truth of it. That she didn’t want him to go. That she liked having him around. Around her, in particular. “I don’t like it. I hate it in fact. There, are you happy?”

  Altair was moving his head back and forth slowly. “But, there’s nothing between us?”

  She sensed the lack of conviction in his words the moment he started speaking.

  “Yes, there is,” she said, correcting him. “Unless you just go around kissing all the women you can, of course?”

  Altair flinched, leaning back from her, but remaining silent.

  “I really wish you would stop lying to me,” she said bluntly. “I had thought we’d developed some sort of…I don’t know. Friendship? Something. Enough that at least you would be willing to tell me the truth, instead of lying to my face.”

  It was the first time she’d tried to quantify whatever was going on between them, and she was finding there really wasn’t an accurate label for it. Friendship didn’t feel right, because of the pure heat she’d experienced in the library while in his embrace. Friends didn’t feel that way about one another.

  Was it something more? Could it be something more? Christine had so many questions that she needed answers to now, and nothing was helping her figure it out, least of all Altair himself.

  “You…you want me to stay?” Altair asked, still on her slip of the tongue.

  Now that the jar had been opened, she didn’t really need to think about it much before answering. The truth of it was right there in front of her. All she had to do was accept it.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I would like it if you stuck around. If you could stop feeling like you needed to give up your life on some wild quest. If nothing else, I kind of enjoy our banter, I guess.” She shrugged, not able to process why she was saying what she was, but knowing it was the truth, nonetheless.

  “But…how did this happen?”

  She frowned. Altair sounded like he was talking to himself, not to her. As if he’d been purposefully avoiding letting any sort of interaction between them blossom into more than just perfunctory conversation.

  “Is this not what you wanted?” she asked, fearing the answer. “Were you trying to avoid this?”

  “I tried so hard,” he said quietly. “To prevent this from happening.”

  “Well, I don’t know how it did,” she said. “But it did, Altair. So now I’m here, saying so to you. Can’t you feel it too?” she asked, now beginning to wonder if she was imagining everything that had gone on between them.

  Altair was quiet for so long that she started to believe in her inner doubts, giving them strength and voice. Christine began dissecting everything, including that one solo physical moment between them. She started analyzing it from different directions, trying to figure out where she’d gone wrong, where the mixup in her head—and it seemed, her heart—had been.

  “Yes,” Altair whispered at long last. “I can feel it. I feel it, and I’m afraid.”

  Licking her suddenly dry lips, Christine asked the next question. “Afraid of what?”

  “I’m afraid that if you stay with me,” he said slowly, lifting his eyes to finally meet hers. “You’re going to die.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Christine

  He was terrified, she realized. Paralyzed with fear for her life.

  “Why would I do?” she asked. “I don’t understand. Do dragons eat their other half or something?”

  Several witches had already gotten together with dragons. Some permanently, others just for fun. Christine hadn’t heard any horror stories like that, but technically the dragons, despite all their human characteristics, were aliens. Sort of.

  “Ew. Of course not,” he said with a snort. It wasn’t a laugh, but it was some sort of emotion that wasn’t fear or anger, and she latched on to that.

  He was in there, somewhere, beneath the fear and whatever else it was that was holding him back. The real Altair, the one she’d seen in bits and pieces, lurking, never allowed out, but occasionally shining through. It gave her hope. Hope that one day, he might be set free. With her.

  “Then why?” she asked, pushing as gently as possible.

  “Because,” Altair said heavily. “I’m not a very good protector.”

  Christine opened her mouth to ask for more information, to ask why not, to get him to explain, but something dark and terrifying crossed behind his eyes. Whatever it was about, the sign was clear. It was a warning. Don’t push it. He was opening up to her more than he had before, and if she kept diving deeper, eventually he would retreat.

  Sometimes, it paid to be content with the victories won and come back another day, instead of trying to win the war all in one go.

  “You won’t be a good protector,” she said quietly, mulling that over, analyzing the sentence. There was so much wrong with it, she wasn’t sure where to start. In fact, it was so bad, it was almost comical.

  And just like that, she had her plan.

  Smiling openly, warmly, almost amused, she stepped forward, right into his personal space. The look on her face was disarming, she knew. That was the point. To let her get past his barriers.

  Because if he knew the shitstorm she was about to bring down on him, he’d have been stepping back already.

  She lifted her finger, focusing some of her magic, and she poked him right in the sternum. Hard.

  “Ow!” he yelped, her finger amplified by the magic of her spell, allowing her to hit him hard enough he felt it painfully. “What was that for?”

  “That,” she said, dropping her happy visage, and replacing it with the frustration she felt within. “Is for thinking that I need your protection.”

  She poked him again. “And that, is for being so blind to your surroundings that you’ve failed to realize the most basic truth about me.”

  Altair blinked. “I…what are you talking about?”

  Christine stared at him, open-mouthed in shock at his continued ignorance.

  All at once her surprise turned to anger. The ever-present staff, so comfortable in her grip it seemed an extension of her body, came up and slammed down into the ground. Fire blazed in the intricately carved runes along its length, and the tip brightened considerably.

  “I am fully capable of protecting myself,” she growled. “Without you.”

  Altair swallowed nervously.

  “I have spent twenty years of my life studying, training, practicing and pushing myself as hard as I can, so that I don’t need to rely on anyone else. How dare you think that just because I’ve taken an interest in you, that I say I want you around, that it means I suddenly need you to shelter me from everything.”

  The dragon shifter backed up, but she didn’t let him escape. Christine paced him, step for step. Sparks shot out from the base of her staff every ti
me it hit the floor. The power of her birthright, of who she was, flowed through her and through the instrument she’d spent years training with.

  “I am a grown adult. A witch wise in the ways of magic!” she shouted, power flowing into her, whipping at the skirts of her robes and billowing her hair out behind her. “And a pretty darn powerful one at that!”

  “Christine, I—”

  “I’m not finished!” she shrieked, light surging from the top of her staff and disappearing into the ceiling above. “If I think you are worth the risk, then that is my choice. My decision. It is not yours. Do you understand me?” she shouted.

  Altair stammered, trying to respond. The wind howled and whipped around her as her anger bled into energy. But Christine was better than that. She calmed herself, and the light faded, and her voice returned to normal.

  “Your attitude, your assumption that you must be my protector, it screams of invalidation. Of tossing aside a lifetime’s worth of work. As if you have no faith in me,” she said quietly, pinning him in place with a glare. “As if you don’t trust me, or my ability to protect myself.”

  “It’s not that,” Altair managed to stammer out, looking around for an escape, any way out of the predicament he’d found himself in. “I never looked at it that way.”

  “Of course not,” she said, shuffling slightly to the side, blocking his direct path to the exit. They were having this conversation whether he wanted to or not. “You’re too wrapped up in your own guilt, your own grief, that you aren’t focused on the rest of the world around you. Only yourself. Like the eye of a hurricane, you ignore everything else as it spins around you, thinking yourself the center.”

  “How…how did you know?” he gasped.

  “How did I know?” she shook her head. “Altair. It’s written all over you, plain as day, for anyone who takes the time to look. Your face says it, your actions say it more so.”

  “But I don’t understand. If you know this about me, if you can see all this, then why is it that you still want to be with me?”

  The pain went deeper than she thought. What was he hiding? What could possibly be so bad, so horrible, that he thought himself so unworthy of the caring of others? Christine’s heart ached for him. He must feel so alone as well. Pushing everyone away from him, trying to ensure that he didn’t bring anyone else down with him in his spiral, as he viewed it.

  Well enough of that. He needed to be cared for, tended to and, maybe after all was said and done, loved. She wasn’t going to commit to anything, but nor would she rule anything out.

  “I’m interested in you,” she said, shuffling slightly closer. “Because I’ve seen the other side of you, Altair. The side you think you’re hiding. The side of you that must be what you were before whatever happened. You think you need to wrap yourself up in guilt, in torment. That you need to push everyone away, because that’s the only way to atone for your perceived sins.”

  “It is,” he whispered hoarsely, nearly failing to get the words out. She could feel the pain in them, in him.

  “No,” she said quietly. “That’s the easy way. To give up, to blame yourself and to think you must suffer. Tell me, does anyone else put the blame on you? Do they say that you must pay?”

  “Not in so many words,” he said. “But I know they do. They must.”

  “Why?” she challenged. “If people aren’t saying it. If they aren’t accusing you of anything, if they aren’t trying to punish you, then why do you automatically assume they’re all lying? Do you not trust anyone to tell you the truth?”

  Altair’s mouth worked frantically, but her logic was pushing through his defenses, even as she slipped closer, further into his personal space.

  “Are you surrounded by liars instead of friends?” she challenged.

  “No…”

  “Then why do you assume they lie about this?” she said. “I’ll tell you why. It’s because you’re afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  There. She saw it, in his eyes. A spark of anger. She was challenging him, accusing him of fear. The one thing he was doing his best to pretend he had none of, when it came to himself. Fearing for her was one thing, but being afraid of something, well that was quite different.

  “You are afraid of living,” she growled. “Afraid of exposing yourself, of putting yourself out there. Because you might experience hurt again. You might experience pain. And you’ve felt it once, and you are afraid of it now. It got the better of you. It beat you.”

  “That’s not true,” he snarled, eyes glittering dangerously. “I am not afraid.”

  “Oh, you’re not?” she challenged, stepping closer. Less than a foot separated them now. “You’re not afraid?”

  “No. I am not. I fear nothing. Not even death.”

  She grinned. “Oh, I know you don’t fear death. Death is easy. Death is lazy. It’s a loophole. A way out. I think you’re afraid of being alive.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Am I?” she said, reaching down, untying the knot that held her robes tight.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m calling you out,” she said, shrugging out of the robes. “If you aren’t afraid, if you’re as strong as you think you are. Then prove it. Show me how alive you are, Altair of the Storm Dragons. Show me.”

  Her shirt followed the robes to the ground.

  “Christine?” he said uneasily.

  “See,” she said, undoing her loose pants, letting them too fall to the ground. She stepped out of them easily as Altair backed up another step. “I knew you didn’t have it in you. You want to take the easy way out.”

  “Stop saying that,” he growled, the spark igniting again.

  “You don’t want to be brave anymore,” she said.

  Her bra slid off. His eyes inadvertently slipped down, staring at her chest for several long moments.

  “What are you waiting for Altair?” she dared. “Prove it. Prove you still want to live. Prove to me, that you’re willing to fight for something other than yourself.”

  He hesitated, and for a split second, she feared that he was too far gone. That the spark wasn’t enough, that he was still going to reject her.

  His eyes darted around, taking her in, then going vacant and distant for a moment. Watching him, she saw his nostrils flare. His chest heaved.

  Then the spark became a fire, and she grinned.

  There he was.

  Strong hands took her by the waist as Altair surged forward, lifting her from the ground, pulling her in tight to his body. Her arms slid around his neck like they belonged, while her legs did their best to wrap around his powerful waist.

  “I am not afraid,” he hissed.

  Then he kissed her.

  Flames spread across her body.

  I believe you, Altair. I believe you…

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Christine

  It was wild. Crazy. She couldn’t believe they were going to do this.

  But there was no stopping him now. His hunger was undeniable and she succumbed to it without a fight, letting him take her.

  Fabric ripped as he simply tore his shirt from his body, in too much of a hurry to lift it up. Her eyes swelled as his muscles bunched and he ripped the material with ease. Thick pecs and stiff, washboard abs greeted her eyes in the dim light of the arena.

  Christine felt her tongue flick out and across her lips, wetting them as she dropped out of his grip and to her knees, bringing his pants to the ground as she went.

  His cock sprang free, rigid and ready. It practically throbbed as she wrapped her hand around it. Altair’s groan nearly swept the rest of the strength from her knees as he trembled at her touch. He was hers, right then, to do with as she pleased, when she pleased.

  Christine was in charge, and the feeling of power that surged through her was unlike anything she’d experienced before. It wasn’t like magic, physical, tangible sort of thing, but rather an experience, a feeling.

  Her mouth
opened and she took him in slowly, using her tongue, looking up at him, eager to watch his face. The pain that was always written in the corners of his eyes disappeared as she bobbed up and down with painfully precise, measured strokes, never moving too fast. She wanted him to savor this, to enjoy it, just like she was doing.

  Fingers slid through her hair, loosening the ponytail but not getting rid of it entirely. Altair pushed her down gently and she went deeper, beyond the tip of his head. Blue eyes rolled back into his skull almost immediately. She wanted to grin, to giggle with delight, but that was made a little difficult by the object in her mouth.

  Instead, she reached up to cup his sack, gently massaging it, enjoying the moment. He was hers, putty in her hands—literally—and Christine knew that whatever she wanted from him, she could get.

  I guess I’m already getting it, she thought, her lips tugging tighter around his shaft with a smile. Her wild plan, if one could even call the spur of the moment actions a plan, had worked.

  “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” she said, pulling free for a moment, using her hand to gently rub her saliva along his soft skin. Altair squirmed as she ran a thumb along the underside of his shaft from base to tip.

  “We can stop,” he said.

  “What if I don’t want to?” she asked, giving him her best innocent voice.

  Flames blazed higher in his eyes as he responded. “Then we won’t stop until you tell me to,” he growled, reaching down to cup her chin, lifting her back to her feet by it.

  Christine stood, and for the first time she felt truly exposed. Vulnerable. Altair’s eyes swept over her body, examining it, taking it in, and she just stood there. Waiting, practically trembling with nervous excitement, and perhaps just a bit of fear.

  After all, he was a specimen of masculinity. Rock-hard muscles, insane definition and a dick that would hit all the right places. There was quite literally not a single imperfection to him. Comparatively, with her thick stomach, large, swaying breasts and extra skin everywhere, Christine didn’t feel like a prized catch.

  “My God,” Altair breathed.