Monsters, Book Two: Hour of the Dragon

by Heather Killough-Walden

  He had braced his arms against the wall on either side of Annaleia, his teeth still firmly buried in her throat. Through it all, he’d been careful not to tear her flesh at all, his teeth held deep, but they were smooth, and other than the small holes they’d made in their claiming bite, her skin was unmarred. His teeth just weren’t going anywhere yet.

  Ares held her up against the wall with his body pressed against hers and his knee braced between her legs while he continued to drink, knowing he could literally drink from her all night. The spell would replenish what he took from her, maintaining her health for as long as he needed it to. There was something so deliciously gluttonous about that knowledge. Maybe it was because he knew he was doing things to her as he took what he wanted – delicious, naughty, somewhat cruel things.

  You taste so good, little one, he told her. That was putting it mildly. And really, that was a strange way to describe the way blood made a blood-drinker feel. It wasn’t so much a taste as a spreading, all-encompassing sensation that began with the teeth, continued on the tongue, and then moved throughout the body like a potent alcohol laced with sensual pleasure. It spread and built, moving to center on the drinker’s core until it felt like one long sexual climax that rolled through them over and over again. It was an effect that the taste of the blood had on its taker, so “taste” was how they’d come to describe it.

  Every donor tasted differently. Some tasted like sufficiency. They were meals, nothing more. Some tasted bad, something they’d done, some supernatural aspect to their existence having soured the blood.

  And then there were the walking orgasms.

  Anna half-heartedly tried to turn her head, tried to move against him, tried to do anything at all that would change the position in which she found herself – in utter and complete submission to his teeth. Not that he let her. But he knew why she tried.

  She was normally so full of fire, so fast to rise to a challenge and so slow to back down, being dominated in any capacity was not something she was accustomed to.

  This, here, was hard for her. He didn’t have to read her mind to know that much. He simply knew his best friend. She was experiencing vast amounts of pleasure while being forced to succumb to the iron-handed will of another, and not just any other, but a man. She had grown up in a society lacking some of the most basic equal rights that people today took for granted. This made her feel helpless.

  A part of him wanted to apologize for what he was doing, despite the pleasure she was getting from it. But it was some small, insignificant part of him that wasn’t in charge at the moment. So he kept his apologies to himself and remained silent but for the occasional growl he couldn’t help but emit when she struggled a little and wound up brushing pleasantly against him.

  Fuck. This was almost unbearable.

  He wanted more. He needed all of her. She was making the most beautiful, helpless sounds under her breath. He knew her breasts would be so over stimulated they’d be tender by now, her core on fire with pulsating need, her nipples no doubt standing erect, swollen and ready for the slightest attention.

  Ares swore again internally. Now he was in pain with need for her, so he removed a hand from the wall to cup the side of her face while he drank. She sighed softly at his touch.

  His desire rose with each swallow, increasing just as fast as his sense of satiation. It was a dichotomy that made no sense, but that was love.

  He wanted more.

  This was only the first of his bites, and each would be an assault on her senses. He needed to go easy on her. But damn it to hell, he wanted more.

  His hand slid from her cheek to the other side of her neck, where he encircled her gently out of sheer instinct to control her. But having his teeth so firmly planted inside her was enough, and she gasped harshly against him with only the slightest pressure, so he moved on.

  He wanted to move on. He wanted more.

  The sounds she was making were stronger, more urgent, echoing his own growing need. His fingers brushed over her collar bone, following the line in admiration before they moved lower, nudging the fabric of her sweater down as they went. There he found the scar those same fingers had left on her fifty years ago.

  He felt its smooth, slightly raised mark beneath his touch and experienced a strange thrill. She bucked against him suddenly, trying to throw him. He growled low in warning against her throat, slamming his hand back against the wall so he could press his body hard against hers. She would not deny him something so basic, something so rightfully his.

  Rightfully his… a hint of some recognition flashed through his thoughts, but his mind was too clouded with lust to clarify it. Especially when rather than be cowed into submission, Annaleia arched into his body as he pushed her into the wall. It was like she needed that pressure. Desperately.

  Ares stilled against her, but she rolled her hips again, pressing into his painful hardness as if she knew he was in as much need as she was. His mind spun as he again removed his hand from the wall. Go easy, Ares, he told himself. But he needed some part of his body, any part, to be inside that slick core of hers that he could scent like candy.

  But when his gaze fell on that scar again, he hesitated. Rather than move lower, Ares ran his fingers along the line of the scar.

  Anna shuddered hard, moaning softly. Colors contrasted brightly all around Ares. His throat rumbled in a ceaseless growl – and he did it again running his fingers possessively over the mark he’d given her. At the same time, he instinctively pulled harder against her throat, as if he were a lover leaving a hickey. This drew more deliriously wonderful blood from her veins, sending his senses soaring.

  Mindlessly, Ares placed his palm over her scar, feeling it heat up beneath his touch. His little Raindrop cried out in his grip as a hard orgasm claimed her. She bucked with the strength of it, threatening to damage her where his teeth held her tight.

  Ares slowly and regretfully withdrew his fangs from the most precious, irreplaceable thing they had ever claimed and leaned back enough to study his beautiful mate. Her eyes were heavily lidded and half-closed, her lips were parted and wet, her cheeks were flushed, and she was panting. That was when he fully realized what that scar actually was.

  He’d always thought he’d given it to her by accident. But looking back now, had he really?

  He’d known he wanted her from day one. And in all his life, he had never felt that strongly about anyone. Now his dragon magic, his den’s augmentation of it, and the spell’s added strength were working in tandem, amplifying what had been there all along.

  The scar was his first claiming mark on his mate.

  It would always be inexorably linked to intense pleasure for her when he touched it.

  No wonder, he thought as he watched the bite marks in her throat close and she pressed her legs together with a need that was already building again. She hadn’t been trying to throw him off her when he’d touched the scar the first time. She’d been trying to get closer. She’d been straining for more. Because she was already mine.

  Don’t worry, little one, he told her. I promise I’m far from finished with you.

  And black dragons made no promises lightly.

  Chapter Forty-eight – Dragon’s Den and surrounding land

  Annaleia slipped the book she’d been pretending to read back into the shelf and left the reading alcove to make her way to the cave’s conservatory. She could feel his eyes on her every step of the way, until she finally disappeared around the winding path within the enormous enclosed space and was no longer in his view.

  Anna had been even more shocked to find this makeshift greenhouse than she had been to find the conservatory in his home in Santorini. The logistics of it were not something she would have thought possible. But of course, he wasn’t human, and this wasn’t the mortal realm.

  The inner garden’s “walls” were the stone of the cave for three-fourths of its mega-circle, which stretched literally a mile or more across at its diameter. The last quarter of the
circle wall was sheer rock crystal, completely free of inclusions and clear as glass. It stretched from the ground to the apex of the dome it created, allowing visitors to the garden to view the stars and planets in the dragon realm cosmos.

  And just as the conservatory in Greece had been, this internal garden was also climate controlled. It was a strange but highly enjoyable change that Annaleia never found herself uncomfortable with the temperatures in Ares’ homes. They always seemed to be just the temperature she needed them to be, whether she wanted cool, fresh air or warmth. More magic, she thought. Of course.

  Once Annaleia felt she was alone in the conservatory, she made her way to the section hosting a vast Zen garden of varying levels. She climbed the stones leading to the sandy area – she had no idea what it was called – and then slipped off her shoes. After a deep, cleansing breath, she took a moment to admire the perfectly drawn lines in the sand, the carefully placed stones in the stone piles, the koi in the nearby pond, and the absolute serenity and order of the entire affair. And then she jumped into the sand and began kicking her feet wildly like an angry toddler in a schoolyard sandbox.

  She did this for several minutes, making sure not to leave a single inch of it untouched. And then quite satisfied with her work, she stepped out of the sand and brushed off her feet. It felt good. It wasn’t nearly enough, but it helped. Anna picked up her shoes and headed back toward the main area of the cave.

  Unfortunately, she’d only made it half-way through the conservatory before she was thinking about Ares again. Thinking about him wasn’t an apt description for what she was doing. She was yearning for him. His eyes, his scent, his touch, his teeth…. Her breasts felt swollen again suddenly, her nipples sore and sensitive against her bra. She swore under her breath as a dizzying wave of warmth and yearning hit her hard, nearly pulling a despairing sound from her throat.

  She stumbled to the nearest tree and held onto it, panting softly.

  On any given day, were Annaleia to be dressed in full plate body armor and Antares in nothing but a pair of jeans and a dark, winsome smile, she would still be vulnerable to him. He simply had that effect on her. He always had.

  When she’d first set eyes on him, standing alone in the hall of her school, she’d been frankly shocked. She’d been surprised as hell that someone so beautiful existed, much less in her part of the world, and much less in her school. That he was alone and she was alone – well, it was so unlikely, it honestly felt like magic. She could remember the way she was blushing when she was taking him to the administration office. She took the first opportunity to turn her face away as much as she could as they walked so he wouldn’t see the evidence on her cheeks. But the whole time, she wondered what he was thinking. She wondered who he was, what he was doing there, and if someone like that could ever fall for someone in that town or that school.

  In the days that followed, Anna had fully expected him to branch off, find other friends, and possibly even transfer to some other school someplace bigger, busier, more worldly. Like New York or LA or even Milan, Italy. But rather than branch out or leave, he showed up at her locker the next Monday. The day after, he was there in the morning by the school’s entrance waiting for her when she arrived. He asked if he could buy her lunch.

  And he never moved away, never transferred.

  In that, he shocked her again. He remained very much in her life, and every day she realized that her attraction to him hadn’t waned. Not at all. It grew stronger. Every time he deftly made sure he was at a door before her so he could hold it open for her, she fell a little more in love. And when he would suddenly be there behind her to reach over her and open her locker for her – he knew her combination – and take out her books so he could carry them without even having to ask what she needed, she felt cherished. He paid attention to her, cared for her, and she fell even more in love.

  Even when he became irate with her, it was always over something that had placed her at risk. Or it was because of another guy. And she had to admit she didn’t completely mind that jealousy. She loved the flash of dogged tenacity in his eyes and the way that even in anger, he would still lock gazes with her as if he wanted to tie her up and strip her down and worship every inch of her. She could feel that he wanted her.

  And she wanted him. From day one, she had wanted him. She was vulnerable to him in so many ways, and because of that, at the very core of her, in her heart, she submitted to him. Every man did to every woman, and every woman to every man when they were in love.

  And so from the day she had met Antares Mace, Annaleia Faith had been vulnerable to the black dragon. But this… what was happening to her here in his den, under his amplified dragon’s sway, beneath the effects of Sterling’s incubus-tainted transformative spell…. It wasn’t fucking fair. She felt weak in far too many ways. And that really pissed her off.

  Ares knew. He could always read her so well, and hell now he could even literally read her mind. It was no doubt why after the first of the three bites he had to give her, he had told her that she would decide when the second would come. She would decide when they would continue with the spell.

  It was a little bit of power he was trying to give her. And in all fairness, it was the only amount he could give her. He was the one who had initiated this spell, and they were in his home and couldn’t leave until it was complete. Anna knew he was unable to pull back anymore on his influence over her. Not only because of the spell and the den, but because of who and what he was and the fact that he wanted her just as badly as she wanted him.

  Anna pushed off the tree and gritted her teeth, running barefoot the remainder of the distance to the cavern’s main living areas. She could feel his eyes on her at once, burning hot little holes through her as she rounded the corner to the hallway that led to the guest room that she’d claimed as her own.

  Feeling better now that you’ve laid waste to the gardener’s hard work? He asked, his mental voice amused if anything.

  Fuck you, she told him. As if he had a gardener.

  Low laughter followed her into her room, only dissipating after she had run straight to the bathroom and started up the water in the shower.

  Anna tried to console herself, tried to tell herself to be strong.

  Remember why you’re angry, Anna, she told herself firmly. She hoped that by remembering why she was forcing Ares to wait, it would help her not crave him so damn badly. You didn’t ask to be dominated, damn it! That should be consensual! Not that Ares was at fault. Or even Sterling really, since he was an incubus and he’d created the spell for his own personal use, and she was damn lucky he’d created it in the first place, but still!

  As far as sex was concerned, Annaleia had always been careful. She’d been careful when she was in school because not being careful with sex at that age was stupid in general. It was best not to do it at all, and if you were going to do it, then for goodness sake, use a condom. Of course, that was a hell of a lot easier now than it had been fifty years ago, which was why she’d simply abstained.

  Birth control wasn’t back then what it was today. For one thing, it wasn’t available to women back then the way it was today. Even women who suffered from debilitating conditions such as endometriosis, menstrual anemia, and some cancers, to mention a few, were forced to endure endless scrutiny, much of it physical and painful, and ostracized for their “harlot ways.”

  Due to polycystic ovarian syndrome, one of Anna’s classmates in school had been forced to go on a very early form of the pill with a host of horrid side effects. Yet, she was called such a variety of torrid terms and shunned in so many different ways for even owning this medicine – which was nothing more than a replacement for the hormone many women did not produce properly – she wound up undergoing the isolating effect of what Anna had come to term, “social excommunication.” Anna and Antares spent time with her, of course. But after a while, being excluded from all the things you loved and overhearing all the things no one tried very hard to keep you from he
aring, well it would get to you. And eventually Mabel felt there was nowhere she could go. Not to school. Not home.

  She committed suicide at the age of sixteen.

  Mabel’s grandmother didn’t come to her funeral. Grandma Marshall had been convinced that Mabel was only afflicted with her “female conditions” due to original sin, and she should simply buck up and accept that God knew what he was doing punishing women for Eve’s misdeeds. Mabel would ask her if Grandpa Marshall, who had fought to take down the KKK clan in a neighboring town, should have instead simply been punished for being white because some random white people years ago had owned slaves, and some white men today were descended from them.

  To which of course Grandma Marshall would lift her nose, scoff, and say, “If God had wanted him punished, he would have come down with an ailment instead of you. I think we both know who is wrong here.”

  Yes, Grandma Marshall, Annaleia thought now. Yes, we do. Bitch.

  The human race hadn’t come a huge way since then, not really. Everything was still skewed as hell. But lowering your fist and letting it happen certainly wasn’t going to change anything either. And so, Anna had always tried so hard to remain strong. Woman strong.

  And that was goddamn strong.

  Allowing a man to have so much control over her without her permission was wrong enough to her that it kept her away from Antares. Barely. It had only been a day.

  And she was breaking.

  Annaleia closed her eyes and let the steam fill the bathroom as hot water struck her shoulders and upper back hard, stinging her skin but easing the tension just a little. She put her head back, slicked her wet hair from her face, and let it pour over her as she tried to think of anything but the way it had felt to her when he had held her so hard against the wall, claimed her with his predator’s teeth, and sent wave after wave of orgasm through her.