by Lizzy Bequin
***
After Skal helped Katrine remove the remains of the iron shackles from her wrists, they sat across from each other on cushions, and Kat told him the story about how she and her friends had arrived here on the planet of Novatherion.
There were many things about her story that Skal did not understand, but as far as he could piece together, Kat and her friends were sorceresses of some sort or another, their coven had engaged in a forbidden ritual, and they had been transported through the Sea of Stars to this world. Some of the other sorceresses were missing. Another of them had been injured. Kat had gone to search for food, but had been attacked by a scimitar cat in the woods.
The truth is, Skal was having great difficulty concentrating on her story.
It wasn’t that he found it boring. In fact, Skal was a great lover of stories, just as all dragons are. But the presence of his lovely, half-naked atma kept drawing his mind away from her narrative. She had covered her mammary glands with her curly mane, but the springy pink nipples were peaking out, begging to be sucked.
And then there was that scent, wafting from between her crossed legs. That scent spoke volumes to Skal’s rushing hormones.
Her body was ripe, receptive. Ready to accept his eggs.
Skal gazed at her intently, drinking in that scent with his nostrils as his eyes drank in the beauty of her flame-lit skin.
His ears, however, were doing a poor job of drinking in her words.
It was only when Kat’s speaking tapered off into silence that Skal was roused from his lustful imaginings.
“Is something the matter?” he asked.
Kat’s features were taut. She seemed to be making a great effort to keep her eyes on his face.
“Um, Skal, do you need to…take care of something?”
“Take care of something? What do you mean?”
Kat’s eyes flicked briefly downward toward his crotch, then back to his face. A deep blush filled her cheeks until she was nearly as red as the scales on his arms.
Skal looked down too and realized what had startled his atma. It was his mating appendage—his ovipositor. Goddess, he was as stiff as a war pike down there. As he had been gazing at Kat’s half-naked body and breathing in her enticing scent, his arousal had gradually hardened to total erectness.
He reached down and brandished his mating appendage like a weapon.
“There is nothing to ‘take care of,’ as you put it,” Skal purred. “I am merely prepared to mate with you, my atma, as soon as possible.”
The ache within his sacs had deepened. The urge to implant himself inside the human’s egg receptacle was overwhelming.
Kat glanced downward again, and her eyes widened. Then her brow wrinkled and her face set as she took on an angry expression.
“Have you even been listening to a word I’ve said?”
Skal paraphrased what Kat had told him so far about the events that had befallen her and her fellow sorceresses.
“Yeah, okay. I guess you got the gist of it,” she admitted. “So then you understand that I need to go find them. Nora and Blair first, and then the others.” She paused, and her voice took on a grave tone. “If they are still alive.”
Skal could see that Kat was worried about her friends. He did not like to see his atma troubled this way, and he wished to help her, but how would they find her companions.
“This shelter that you mentioned,” Skal said, “The one beneath the boulder. Where is it?”
Kat shook her head in frustration.
“I don’t know. I’m not from here, remember? All I know is that it is in a forest, and it must not be far from the village where you found me.”
Her eyes brightened with an idea.
“Skal, if we work together, we can find it. You can fly over the forests near the village, and I can ride on your back. I’m sure if I spot the place from above, I’ll be able to recognize it.”
Skal thought silently for a minute. The female’s plan was a good one, but there was a problem.
Mordragg.
The human female had been intended for the elder dragon as a sacrificial meal. Surely by now Mordragg had woken from his winter slumber to find his offering stolen. At this very moment, he was probably flying into a lightning-breathing rage. If Skal encountered him now, with a human female riding on his back, the black stormdragon would easily put two and two together, and that would be a problem.
Challenging Mordragg was one matter—it was a fight that Skal would likely lose. He was not afraid of death, but with his atma added into the mix, that changed everything. He could not risk her falling into Mordragg’s black talons.
“No,” he growled firmly. “It is out of the question. You will stay here inside the mountain.”
Something curious was happening to the little human’s face. For a moment, Skal thought that perhaps she was a shapeshifter like himself. Her features scrunched, her mouth turned downward, her chin dimpled, and tears filled her eyes.
His atma was crying.
“So that’s it then?” she said defiantly, “You’re just going to keep me here as your prisoner.”
“Not my prisoner,” he rumbled. “My atma.”
“I’m having trouble discerning the difference.”
Skal lounged back on the cushions and exhaled a breath of smoke and annoyance.
“The world out there is dangerous, Kat. There are things out there that would like nothing more than to gobble up a morsel like you, as you have already discovered. You will be safe here within the mountain, so that is where you must stay.”
“Don’t I get any say in the matter?” Kat sniffed.
“No.”
She glowered at him, then turned to stare into the fire. The light of the flames glinted off the tears edging her eyes.
Skal said nothing. This was not going as he had envisioned. Again he considered taking his mate by force. It was, after all, his Fatebound right to claim her. And it would be so easy to pin her weak body to the floor and force his hard member inside her soft body.
But he did not want to do it that way.
No, when the time came for mating, he wanted her to beg for it, as a good atma should do.
The long silence was broken by the sound of a growl. It came not from Skal’s throat, but from his belly.
Goddess, in all the excitement of finding his new mate, he had totally forgotten about his breakfast. He had not eaten a bite since awaking from his hibernation. And his atma, he suspected, would be hungry too. Yes, that would explain why she was so irritable as well.
Skal raised himself off the floor and stood over her.
“You must be hungry, little one. I will get us some food.”
“I’m not hungry,” Kat muttered sullenly.
Right away, however, her belly betrayed her, growling in a tiny imitation of the sound Skal’s own hollow innards had made a moment before.
“You are hungry, Kat. I do not like it when you lie to me.”
Skal’s voice held an edge of menace, but the human appeared undaunted.
“Oh yeah?” she said, raising her voice in accusation. “Well, I don’t like being held captive in a cave!”
Her expression broke, and she started to cry again. She turned her face away from him toward the fire.
Briefly, Skal considered comforting her, but he did not know what exactly to say. This tiny creature was perplexing. Without another word, he turned and stalked off toward the side of the room.
A realization was dawning in Skal’s mind:
Having a human atma was not as pleasant as it seemed. This one was troublesome. She would clearly be a clawful.
Skal left the female behind and stalked off through the western archway, following the tunnel that led to his perch.
CHAPTER 11
Katrine did not feel bad about yelling at Skal. Why should she? After all, she was obviously in the right in this situation. The dragon man was keeping her here as a prisoner. Whether he really wanted to protect her or just
wanted to keep her as his own personal sex toy was beside the point. He was keeping her here against her will, and that was wrong.
What did bother Kat, however, was the way her behavior had mirrored one of her fights with Tom, her ex.
As always, the argument had ended with her exploding, yelling an accusation, then growing withdrawn and cold.
The difference was that Tom had been a man. Skal on the other hand…
Even more disconcerting, her pattern of behavior was now following the next step. Just as she had always done with Tom up until that final, horrible fight, Kat found herself following after Skal as he stomped away.
But this time, her motives were different.
She was not chasing after the dragon man to make amends. She was following him to see where he went, and hopefully to discover a way out of this crazy place.
Keeping her distance and sticking to the shadows, Kat tip toed along behind him.
The dragon man made his way along a winding corridor of stone. The passage had been carved into the living rock. Scant light was provided by torches set into the walls every fifty yards or so. The walls and rounded ceiling were roughhewn, as if they had been dug out by massive claws.
Had Skal made all of this by himself?
Ahead of her, Skal muttered to himself angrily, no doubt carrying on their argument in his own head. His body began to swell and enlarge until the crown of horns on his head nearly scraped the stony ceiling. At that point, he dropped onto all fours. His body continued to grow, and his limbs morphed, bones lengthening and changing proportion until he had resumed his original form.
Within a few seconds, Kat was no longer following a man, but a massive dragon. His red, scaly butt nearly filled the tunnel ahead of her, and his long, spiny tail whispered as it dragged along the stone floor.
Even with everything she had witnessed in the past twenty-four hours, that magical transformation still amazed her.
Here she was, stalking a dragon. It was utterly insane.
Still, Kat pressed on.
The passageway had a slight uphill slope to it, and after a few minutes of following the crimson beast, Kat’s lungs started to burn. She started to regret her habit of smoking, and she wished she had given it up long ago, as she had tried to do many times before. It took a great effort to keep from huffing and puffing so that the dragon would not hear her sneaking along behind.
At last, the flickering gold of the torchlight was replaced by a dim, silvery glow. The air changed too, as well as the acoustics, and Kat sensed they were coming to the end of the tunnel.
She held back a little farther now, so as not to be caught sneaking.
After a few more paces, the corridor indeed opened up onto a view of the night sky. This was not the cloud-choked sky of the planet that she had seen before, but a midnight blue scattered with multi-colored stars.
She heard the flapping of the dragon’s wings, and once the sound had faded into the distance, she stepped outside.
What she saw made her heart sink into her belly.
The tunnel opened onto a carved path at the peak of a craggy mountain. Beyond the edge of that path, the steep slope of black stone dropped away to a sea of clouds that extended as far as her eyes could see. A few more rocky spires emerged in the distance, like pointy islands of stone. And far away, she could just make out the flapping wings of the dragon, Skal. His scales glinted briefly in the starlight before he dove like a great seabird into the surface of the neverending clouds.
It was a breathtaking sight, but its beauty was lost on Kat.
She wasn’t interested in sightseeing. She was interested in escaping. And it was pretty apparent it would be impossible from up here. The slope of the mountain was far too steep. Attempting to climb down would be suicide.
Besides, she realized now that her shortness of breath was not entirely a result of her cigarette-abused lungs. The air up here was thin. There was no telling exactly how high up she was. She couldn’t even see the ground.
Shit.
With a sigh of defeat, Kat leaned against the side of the archway and gazed out over the star-silvered surface of sluggishly shifting clouds.
By reflex, her hand went to her hip before she remembered that she wasn’t wearing jeans anymore, but this ridiculous grass skirt. She had been reaching for her cigarettes and felt an addict’s panic at the sudden recollection that they were gone.
God, she would murder someone for a cigarette right now. Hell, she would even settle for a cup of that shitty Blue Mesa coffee.
Kat shoved those thoughts out of her head as best she could. Indulging in those thoughts would only make her cravings worse.
Besides, the lack of caffeine and nicotine were inconsequential at this point.
Nora and Blair were out there somewhere in that savage land. And maybe Petra and Mei too. There was no telling what might happen to them. There were the saber-tooth tigers—or scimitar cats, as Skal had called them. And the inhospitable tribespeople.
Not to mention dragons. Surely Skal wasn’t the only one on this insane planet. And the other dragons might not be as nice, for lack of a better word.
Kat smirked to herself.
She had yelled at a dragon. Lord, she really must be dreaming after all. But when she pinched herself on the arm, the sting was all too real.
Besides, weren’t dreams supposed to be about wish fulfillment?
Kat had never wished to be captured by a dragon.
Still, she had to admit, as far as dragons went, she could do worse. When Skal was in full-blown dragon form, he was beyond fearsome—sprawling wings, curving razor claws, and a terrifying reptilian face.
In his shifted, human form, he was fearsome too. But he had his nice features as well.
Kat caught herself picturing that beast of a man towering over her, his stern, handsome face framed in his lustrous black mane and inset with those two intense yellow eyes.
And then there were his muscles.
Kat had never thought that she was attracted to musclebound men. Tom certainly hadn’t been that type at all, and neither were any of the few boyfriends she’d had before. If anything, she would have said she went more for the exact opposite of muscley and intimidating.
But now, as she stood looking at the spot where the dragon had disappeared into the sea of clouds, Kat found her mind wandering back to thoughts of his body. The thick slabs of muscle that sloped from his bullish neck to his huge, boulder-like shoulders. His bulging arms lined with smooth red scales. His perfectly defined abs.
Kat stopped her mind’s eye from delving any lower down imaginary Skal’s nude body.
She didn’t want to think about that particular piece of his anatomy.
Even when he wasn’t excited, it had hung between his legs like a trunk. And later, when she had been relaying the story of her arrival on this strange world, that shocking member had grown.
It had started as movement on the edge of her peripheral vision. She had managed to ignore it at first, but after a few minutes, Skal’s naked penis had become fully erect, pointing straight up to the ceiling like a column.
That’s when Kat had made the mistake of glancing down at it.
That monster erection wasn’t like anything she had seen before. Not that she had been with all that many men before her ex, but she had a healthy libido, and she had used the odd dirty movie to help her get off from time to time. So yeah, Kat had seen her fair share of human dicks.
And what Skal was packing down below was most assuredly not human.
To begin with, there was the size of it. She’d never seen anything so long and girthy in her life. And instead of smooth, human skin, the shaft was lined with the same serpentine scales that covered Skal’s arms.
But the even weirder part was the shape of it. The bottom ridge of his meaty shaft was dotted with a line of slightly larger scales or bumps that looked like they were designed for a woman’s pleasure. This bumpy ridge continued down to his heavy sacs, which did not
appear soft and vulnerable like a human man’s balls but were encased in a hardened shell.
And weirdest of all had been the head of that snake. In fact, now that Kat thought about it, that is rather what it looked like—not blunt and rounded, but a flared, diamond-shaped crown like a cobra’s hood surrounding a hole that was noticeably bigger than a normal man’s slit.
The muscles of Katrine’s core clenched tightly.
A breeze came off the side of the mountain, stirring her grass skirt, and making her realize, much to her dismay, that she was wet down there.
Shit. That was so freaking wrong.
She hadn’t wanted to think about that cock of his, and now here she was, getting all hot and bothered.
“What’s the matter with me?” she muttered to herself.
And the thing that made it even worse were all those things Skal had said about her being his atma.
His mate.
This guy definitely wasn’t interested in taking things slow. And he wasn’t interested in casual sex from the sound of it either. He wanted to get her pregnant—to knock her up with a little dragon baby.
Was it even possible for a dragon to breed with a human? Skal certainly seemed to think so. But there was one not so little detail that he wasn’t aware of.
Katrine’s problem.
Her infertility problem.
It didn’t matter if their body parts were…compatible. Even if they were, Katrine would never be able to bear the alien dragon’s babies for him.
Something like relief flushed through her at the thought. If she could just explain to Skal that she couldn’t have babies, then perhaps Skal would be willing to let her go.
Yeah, and maybe he would decide to eat her instead.
Katrine doubted it, though. Skal could be aggressive, but he didn’t seem like a full-blown woman eater. Then again, she also doubted his ability to comprehend her infertility problem. She suspected that an explanation wouldn’t suffice. He would want to try, multiple times perhaps, before he finally accepted the truth.
Katrine’s core squeezed again, and she shook herself out of her thoughts.
There was no time to waste thinking. She needed to find a way out of here before the dragon returned.
