Arysteon wrapped his arm around his mate’s shoulders, pulling her close, and curled his tail around her from behind. The tip of his tail settled over Leyloni’s thigh. Serek reached out to take a loose hold of it.
“I have loved watching fireflies since I was young,” Leyloni said.
“Is that what you call them? Fireflies?” Arysteon asked, glancing at her.
“Do you have another name for them?”
He smiled as he looked back at the tiny orbs. “Lightning bugs. I suppose there is some bias in my clan calling them that.”
She chuckled and laid her head against him.
After a time, the youngling leaned back against Leyloni, his eyelids fluttering as he watched the lights. Leyloni smoothed her palm over his head.
“My people believed fireflies are a sign of good fortune to come,” she said, breaking the companionable silence. “Our oldest stories say that our ancestor, a great warrior-huntress, was led by a trail of fireflies to her dragon. She claimed him with her touch, and his blood became the strength of our tribe.”
Arysteon turned his head toward her hair, closing his eyes for a moment as he took in her scent. He couldn’t get enough of it, and it was sweeter each time he smelled it. Her scent filled him with a sense of peace, of belonging, of…love. Like he was finally at home after a lifetime of wandering.
“My good fortune has already come,” he rumbled close to her ear.
A shiver ran through Leyloni’s body. She turned her face toward his, tipped it closer, and grazed his lips with her own. “Mine, too.”
That teasing brush of her lips roused Arysteon’s spark and made his body pulse with desire, but Leyloni pulled away before he could claim her mouth and satisfy his yearning. Arysteon ran the tips of his tongue across his lips to sample her lingering flavor. He growled; that infinitesimal taste wasn’t enough. He craved more.
He needed more of her.
His stem pressed insistently against his slit, parting it. Arysteon tensed against the pervasive ache in his loins, gritting his teeth and squeezing his fist atop his thigh. The fiery need thrumming in his blood was almost more than he could bear. He had only mated with his female once, and rather than appease his appetite, it had made him impossibly more ravenous for her.
Leyloni’s gaze dipped down his body to settle on his lap. Her pupils dilated, and her lashes lowered slightly as her cheeks pinkened. His stem, painfully hard and throbbing, extruded fully in response, coated in secretions that glistened in the firelight.
His mate’s lips parted, and he groaned as he watched her tongue emerge to wet her lips. The longer Leyloni stared at him with that hungry light in her eyes, the harder it became for Arysteon to resist the urge to take his shaft in hand and grant himself release.
The harder it became to resist the urge to shove her to the ground and mount her.
But she was bleeding and had been in clear discomfort throughout the day. Arysteon refused to cause her more pain, especially not for the sake of relieving his own.
Leyloni finally looked away, turning her attention to Serek, who slept peacefully against her. She carefully gathered him in her arms and rose to her knees, leaving Arysteon bereft of her warmth as she moved away and laid the youngling in his makeshift nest.
Arysteon closed his eyes and tipped his head back. The tips of his longer horns struck the tree trunk behind him. Clenching his jaw tighter, he willed his body to calm, to cool, willed his stem to retreat, but his willpower accomplished nothing. His mind presented him only with more temptation—the memory of how her sex had felt around his stem, hot, tight, and wet, the memory of everything he’d felt as he thrust inside her, of her every little movement and sound in response.
The vegetation crunched beneath Leyloni’s boots as she returned to his side. But instead of sitting, she took his face between her hands and pressed her mouth to his. Arysteon opened his eyes. Hers were closed, and her unruly curls hung around her face, brushing his cheeks. Her lips were whisper light as they caressed his, coaxing him to respond in kind. It was a delicious sensation. She was delicious.
He closed his eyes, groaned, and reached for Leyloni, thrusting his fingers into her hair to cradle her head. He needed more than this gentle seduction. He crushed her mouth against his, kissing her deeper. His tongue traced her blunt teeth and flicked past them to beckon her tongue into a sensual dance. Her taste and scent filled his senses, instilling him with a hunger that would never be satisfied. He would always want for her, long for her, crave every bit of her. He would always want more.
Leyloni pulled back, breaking the kiss to press her lips to the corner of his mouth and follow the line of his jaw. She licked his ear, and an instant later, he felt the sharp sting of her bite. His body stiffened, and he hissed as the pleasure-pain of that bite jolted straight to his stem, causing seed to seep from its tip. He clutched her hair.
“Leyloni,” he rasped, opening his eyes.
She moved her soft kisses down his throat to his chest. Even through the thickest of his scales, he felt her touch, felt her heat, felt the wetness of her tongue, and it sent tingles through his body that only further built his spark. He let his head fall back and his eyes drift shut again as he reveled in the sensations.
She positioned herself between his legs and dropped her hands to his thighs as she trailed her kisses down his abdomen. His muscles twitched, his stem pulsed, and his breath quickened. She was getting closer and closer to his…
“Leyloni?” he repeated, lifting his head to look down at her.
She paused and turned her gaze up to meet his. She was bent over him, and her face was torturously close to his stem. Her dangling curls tickled his thighs and shaft, sending shivers of pure delight through him.
“Yes, my mate?” she asked, her voice thick.
The feel of her warm breath flowing over his aching stem was another unexpected source of pleasure-pain that had his body tensing. “What are you doing?”
Leyloni smiled. “I am pleasuring you. And…” She dropped her gaze to his stem. “I want to taste you.”
Arysteon’s heart sped, forcing his lust-heated blood faster through his veins. He had wondered many times what her arousal would taste like directly after sampling its scent with his tongue, had wondered what it would be like to lap the nectar from her slit, but he had never considered the prospect of Leyloni using her mouth on him in a similar fashion. Surely, she didn’t mean…
Before he could finish that thought, she wrapped her fingers around the base of his stem, lowered her head, and took him into her mouth.
The slide of her lips and tongue over his most sensitive scales was nearly his undoing. The air fled Arysteon’s lungs, his fingers tightened on Leyloni’s hair, and his back arched, involuntarily lifting his pelvis toward her and pushing his stem deeper. The pleasure she’d so quickly and easily caused echoed through him in waves, threatening to make him tremble.
She moaned. The sound vibrated through him, amplifying his pleasure by an impossible degree.
He uttered her name again, this time with the elation, reverence, and desperation of a prayer.
Drawing her head back, Leyloni released his stem to trail kisses along its length, her tongue darting out to twirl along each ridge. Panting, Arysteon watched, transfixed, as she again wrapped those delectable lips around him and sucked him deeper into her mouth.
He gritted his teeth, unable to hold back a growl of pleasure. Leyloni moved in a steady rhythm, sliding her mouth up and down his shaft with her fist just below it.
His head dropped back, horns scraping the tree trunk again, and his eyelids fluttered shut. The sensations were quickly becoming too much for him to resist. His breath was ragged within moments. His free hand fell to the ground beside him, reflexively curling to tear up a handful of grass. But there was no relief from the growing pressure in his loins—no relief but that which she could provide. It only coiled tighter and tighter with every stroke of her lips and tongue.
Leyloni
twirled that tongue along his stem and dipped it into the slit, licking away the seed seeping from its tip before taking him back into her mouth. She bobbed her head at a rapid pace.
But it wasn’t fast enough. It wasn’t deep enough.
Before he even realized he’d acted, both his hands were on her head, urging her to move faster, to take him deeper. He grunted with each pump of his hips. Leyloni braced herself with both hands firmly planted on his thighs.
Her teeth scraped the underside of his stem just as the pressure in him reached an impossible peak. Every muscle in his body seized at once. For an instant, he was still, and then pleasure exploded within him, shattering him utterly. His spark buzzed and crackled, charging the crashing waves of ecstasy with lightning as he snarled and emptied his seed into Leyloni’s mouth.
She made a surprised sound and curled her fingers, raking his scales. He felt her throat work as she swallowed. She moaned, still moving her mouth on him, slower now, teasingly, extending his pleasure. Her teasing made his muscles quiver and coaxed fresh seed from him, which she drank greedily.
When the tension drained from his limbs, Arysteon relinquished his grip on Leyloni’s hair and petted her soft curls. She lifted her head, releasing his stem from the hot depths of her mouth, and ran her tongue over his shaft, licking the remaining seed from his scales.
Arysteon opened his eyes and tilted his chin down to find her watching him, her lips red and glistening, beckoning him. She smiled.
With a growl, he reached out, caught Leyloni under her arms, and lifted her up against him. She gasped, but he cut the sound short by capturing her mouth in a kiss, tasting himself on her lips. Arysteon dropped his hands, cupped her bottom, and brought her along with him as he stood up. She moaned and wrapped her arms around his neck.
When he finally broke the kiss, he ran his tongue over his lips and grinned at her. “I have yet again been shown the immensity of my good fortune.”
Leyloni laughed, pressing her face against his neck to muffle the sound. “Perhaps you should thank the fireflies.”
Arysteon chuckled softly as he carried her to their sleeping blanket, pausing briefly along the way to ensure that Serek still slept soundly. He eased Leyloni down atop the blanket and lay beside her. She tucked herself against him, sinking into his embrace with a soft sigh. Curling his tail around her, he tightened his hold, needing as much contact as possible.
His desires were not nearly sated—they could not be when he had not yet pleasured his mate—but he would pursue them no further tonight. The scent of her blood in the air confirmed that she was still bleeding, and according to what she’d said, it would be a few more days before she was through.
That did not stop his stem from aching fiercely despite the release he’d just received. It was not the blood that stopped him from mounting her, but the pain she might suffer.
“Rest, my mate,” he said, running his claws through her hair, “as the journey ahead of us is long. But make no mistake, Leyloni—when you are cured of your bleeding, I will drink my fill of your essence. I will make you mine in all ways.”
13
Arysteon rolled onto his back and swung Serek up, holding the baby high above him. Serek’s delighted, high-pitched squeals mingled with Arysteon’s laughter, making Leyloni’s grin stretch somehow wider. Her cheeks were already sore from it, and she relished the feeling.
She added a piece of wood to the campfire and watched as Arysteon brought his tail up between his arms, teasing Serek with it. When the baby reached out to grab the bait, Arysteon tugged it away, and Serek’s little hands clapped together. The baby giggled uncontrollably until the tail came within reach again and the process repeated.
Leyloni held many happy memories of her time with her tribe, and she would cherish every one of them until her last breath, but these moments with Serek and Arysteon…they had become her happiest. She never would have expected to find joy so soon after tragedy, and though none of this had freed her of her pain and grief, the joy shined all the brighter after so much darkness.
There was a future ahead of her. There was hope.
There was love.
As Leyloni ran her eyes over Arysteon, her smile softened, and her heart quickened. She took in his backswept horns, his tangle of long, blue hair, the flash of his fangs as he laughed, and the glow of his violet eyes. He was not human, would never truly be human, but none of that mattered to her. She knew what that warm, frightening feeling in her chest was.
She loved him.
She loved him, and that was equal parts thrilling and terrifying.
Everyone else she’d loved was gone. Loving Arysteon—and Serek, too—could not be separated from her fear of losing them. Just the thought of it made her heart ache, made a chill creep up her spine and dread pool in her belly.
Arysteon was powerful even in this form, but all his strength, all his lightning, could not protect them from every threat. He’d chosen her and a mortal life over his immortality. He was not invulnerable.
She’d known he had lived for hundreds of years, a length of time she couldn’t quite fathom, but she’d been stunned when he had told her he could have lived for thousands more had she not touched him. It had taken him some time for him to ease her horror after the realization of what that meant had settled in. He hadn’t simply given up his form for her, he’d given up countless years of his life.
Arysteon had assured her with indisputable vehemence that he wanted this—a mortal life with her. That what years he might otherwise have had without her would’ve been empty. That he did not regret their bond, that he did not regret his change.
His words had made her love him all the more.
Leyloni didn’t know what she would do if she lost him—if she lost either of them. Arysteon and Serek had become her life, her reasons to wake each morning, to smile and laugh and keep pushing onward.
As though sensing her thoughts, Arysteon turned his face toward her and met her gaze. All the love, joy, and desire brimming in Leyloni’s heart was reflected in his eyes. Her heart fluttered, and something deeper, something hotter, pulsed in her core.
His eyes flared a little brighter, his lashes fell lower, and his desire rose to the forefront. His gaze promised more pleasure than Leyloni could imagine, promised that he would make up for the last four days they’d endured without pleasuring one another due to her bleeding.
Since the night she’d used her mouth on him, he had refused further pleasure from her—he’d insisted that he would accept nothing if he could not properly give back to her. She’d argued that she took joy in giving it to him, that she relished his taste, but he’d still denied her.
Her mouth watered as she recalled the taste of Arysteon’s seed. It had been sweeter than honey, and she wanted more.
Arysteon flinched, turning his face away from Leyloni and breaking that heated connection.
Serek laughed, having finally caught hold of Arysteon’s elusive tail. The baby leaned his head forward to clamp his mouth around one of the bony spikes protruding from the tail’s tip. His little teeth clacked softly against the spike, and drool trickled from his mouth.
Leyloni laughed. “Once again, the patient hunter has caught his prey.”
“I shall count myself lucky that he does not have more teeth,” Arysteon replied with a chuckle. He returned his gaze to her; it still bore a hint of that heat. “Yet I must contest his victory. I was unfairly—though quite pleasantly—distracted.”
Leyloni couldn’t quell the swell of delight his words produced in her chest as she rose. With an exaggerated sigh and a barely suppressed smile, she said, “If that is what you must claim to protect your pride, dragon. I would not want you to face the shame of being bested by a baby twice.”
“Just you wait until this baby is asleep tonight, human. Then we shall truly sort the conquered from the conquerors.” There was a growly undercurrent in his voice that was somehow unthreatening—but it certainly held more of the promise that had
been in his gaze. “The scent of your bleeding has faded, and there is much you are owed.”
Once again, her core clenched, feeling achy and hollow.
Soon.
Leyloni’s cheeks flushed. She bent down to snatch up her waterskin and rummage through her bag, taking out a couple soapberries. Fortunately, they’d come across a bush laden with the little berries a couple days before, and she’d been able to replenish her dwindling stock. “I am going to the river to refill this and wash up. I will return shortly. Could you feed Serek while I am gone?”
Arysteon sat up, lowering Serek—who was still chewing on Arysteon’s tail—onto his lap, and nodded. “Remain more vigilant than I have been, or you may suffer a similar fate,” he said, lifting his tail slightly.
Serek growled and bit down harder.
Leyloni paused, brows creasing as she looked between Serek and Arysteon. “Did he just growl?”
Arysteon grinned. “I will make a fearsome dragon of him yet.”
Chuckling and shaking her head, she left their little camp.
The surrounding forest was dense and imposing. The moss-covered trees grew close together, their exposed, tangled roots creating a web on the ground that would snag a traveler’s foot with but an instant of inattentiveness. It did not help that the thick undergrowth and uneven terrain hid many of the obstacles. For even an experienced huntress, this was difficult ground to traverse—but it held a beauty all its own.
Leyloni smiled as she brushed her fingers over the feathery leaves of a tall fern. Serek and Arysteon’s growls and laughter faded with each step she took away from them, giving way to the gentle sounds of the afternoon forest.
They had set up their camp earlier than normal today, leaving ample daylight before nightfall. When they’d come across that small patch of relatively flat, clear earth, they had been unwilling to pass it up—such spots had been few and far between as they’d progressed ever deeper into the woods.
To Love A Dragon; Venys Needs Men Page 12
