“I’m sorry,” he said. “There’s something you need to understand. It’s not fair to go further without full disclosure. Even if fate has decided what’s going to happen, I need to tell you.”
Neko slipped the bra straps up onto her shoulders again before turning to face him. His pale eyes held a sadness, almost an apology.
“What is it?” she asked. Was he rejecting her suddenly? Had something happened?
“If we go through with this—if we are together, your life will never be the same. You will change, Neko. You need to understand that.”
She smiled. “I can imagine I will,” she said. “I’ve heard rumours about you Dragons…”
“I’m not talking about my sexual prowess, or anything like that. I’m talking about what will happen to your body.”
“My body? Are you worried about birth control? Because I’m on the pill…”
“No. Nothing of that sort. Here, sit,” he said, moving her jacket off the white chair and guiding her to seat herself. “You mentioned to me once that you knew of the Rituals—the sexual ceremonies of my ancestors.”
“Yes….Oh, my God. Are you suggesting that we’re going to involve another man?” The thought, Neko had to admit, wasn’t entirely horrific. Two Lumens would be…impressive, if overwhelming.
“No,” he laughed. “The Ritual is an archaic rite, and no longer observed. In the past it was used to grant a woman the powers of the two men. But even if the bond is only between one woman and one man, a certain give and take occurs. In our case, you will gain something of my skills.”
That first night when he’d been with her in her house, he’d mentioned that he could give her powers. Was that what this was all about?
“I’ll become a shifter?”
“No,” he managed a quiet laugh. “Only one with a shifter’s blood can come into those capabilities, and you’re all human. But you will find your senses heightened. Your skill for stealth improved. And likely other things will alter, as well.”
“You’re telling me—warning me—that I’ll become some sort of supreme ninja Hunter with panther-like grace and skill?”
“Well, I’d insist you’re already there. Let’s just say that you will find yourself…improved in ways that I can’t entirely predict.”
“And this is a negative?”
Lumen frowned. “I don’t know—is it?”
Neko didn’t reply. Maybe it was, after all. Did she really want to change into something else? There was no telling what might happen; how it might feel. And there would be no return.
“Take your bath,” he said, stepping away. “And then you and I can talk further about this.”
A swell of disappointment hit her chest. They’d been so close to the intimacy that she’d craved. Why stop now?
“Remember, Neko, that this isn’t a decision to be undertaken lightly. What happens between us wouldn’t be a simple fling. This is your life that you’d be offering me, just as I would offer you mine.”
“I understand,” she said. I think.
As Lumen turned and walked away, she undressed, climbing into the tub and turning towards him just as he disappeared into the bedroom.
“Wait,” she called as she dipped her body into the hot bath.
He turned back, stepping into the doorway. In his eyes, the hunger she’d seen so many times from him. But he didn’t say anything. Too generous to speak his mind, she supposed.
And so it was to her to be the selfish one.
“Please—don’t go,” she whispered.
* * *
He moved back to the tub, trying to avoid looking down at her beautiful body, the ebbing water lapping over her exquisite breasts. Silently he knelt down, taking the wash cloth that she handed him and dipping it into the water.
“Neko…” he said. “Are you sure you want me here?”
She extended an arm, taking the hand that was holding the cloth and pulling it towards her. Slowly, gently, she swept it over her neck, pulling it downwards and offering him the control.
“I’m sure,” she said. “It’s taken every ounce of strength for me to admit it, but I’m sure.”
Lumen let the hand slip down, dropping the cloth into the water as he stroked the place between her breasts.
Neko’s eyes closed, her lips parting as he explored her. His finger tips moved over her chest, barely touching her hardening nipples. Then down her belly, grazing her skin until they reached the place between her legs.
“I would devote years to this,” he said, fingers slipping over her clit. “To the pleasure it gives you.”
“I know,” she said, opening her eyes and looking at him. “It’s an extraordinary thought.”
“You’re an extraordinary woman.”
He lifted his hand again. Fingers stroked her cheek, moving to her chin as he turned her face towards him. She didn’t resist. Shyly her eyes met his, searching for that look of his. That mixture of need and want, of hunger for her.
She held her breath, waiting. Please don’t go away again. Please.
“I have to kiss you now,” he said.
She drew herself towards him, welcoming him, encouraging.
His lips were soft, swollen, need coursing through them both in that moment. Hungrily their tongues met at last, the sweet honey taste of want offering the briefest satisfaction; a sample of everything to come. It should have been enough, that, and yet it only served to make each of them want more. Selfish, greedy lust flowed through them both in waves. Beautiful, wonderful, erotic beyond measure.
“I want you,” Neko whispered against his lips. “Whatever it means, Lumen, I want you inside me. Not just once, but over and over again. I want to be a part of you, and you of me. It doesn’t matter if it changes me…because don’t you see? You’ve already changed me. Utterly, completely.”
“Are you certain?” he said. “My sweet, beautiful Neko…”
She nodded. “Yes, I’m certain. I’ve known since the first moment I laid eyes on you.”
Pressing his palms to the tub’s edge, he rose to his feet and took her hand. Slowly he guided her to stand, helping her to step out of the deep tub. Her naked body dripped water over the soft, white mat underfoot, and Lumen sighed at the sight of her.
Kissing her again, he leaned down and put one massive arm behind her legs, lifting and carrying her into the next room, laying her down on the soft bed.
Lowering her onto her back, his eyes followed his fingers as he slid them over her torso, tips brushing her breasts, pausing at the peaks of her nipples. Her breath deepened at the sensation; he was controlling her body, bending it to his will.
And she loved every second of it.
Rising onto his palms he moved over her, lips brushing against hers before finding her chin, her neck, her chest, landing soft kisses as he moved down, inch by inch.
His tongue explored the spot between her breasts, suggestive, sensual and teasing, before his lips found one nipple and pursed around it, tongue teasing its tip as he sucked so, so gently.
And then the other. Oh, God. A woman could die from so much perfection.
He moved lower, his expert lips and tongue searching out every erogenous inch of white skin until his lips met the thin line of dark hair leading him to that delicious, sweet place between her legs. He drew his tongue along it, her pelvis thrusting upwards, legs parting.
“Your body is wonderful,” he murmured. “So fucking wonderful.”
Lumen smiled as his eyes moved briefly to her face. Her hands were covering her eyes in a sweet, shy gesture. But on her lips, a smile. Pleasure, satisfaction. Happiness, even.
Neko had succumbed at last, it seemed.
“I’m going to finish what I started this morning,” he said softly, landing a delicate kiss on her sensitive clit. “Your body is begging me for my tongue.”
Neko didn’t speak, but moved her knees farther apart as though to confirm what he’d said. Yes. Please. Kiss me here.
Lumen tasted her again, his tongue sli
pping the length of her opening.
“That feels so good,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “So much better than fantasies…”
“No fantasy,” he said. More magical licks. “Only the reality of my mouth on your sweet pussy.”
Slowly she pulled her hands from her eyes to look at him. To watch him taste her.
You’re mine, she thought. You’re mine, Dragon, and I don’t even know what to do with all of this bliss.
Finally, her face at peace—she was, she told herself, purely happy in that moment.
The admission told her that she had finally come to terms with this. That she’d accepted what life had thrown their way, regardless of how insane it had all seemed.
She laid her head back, her eyes moving to the soft ebbing light above. The lake, lapping silently, their magical ceiling offering shelter from another world.
And in the moment when she came her eyes shut tight, fingers twining themselves in his thick hair.
“I want you,” she gasped. “I want you inside me…”
Her eyes opened to the sight of him moving over her, the swollen head of his cock prying her apart. This was it, she thought. They would truly belong to one another. Everything was about to change.
She wrapped her fingers around his enormous arms, preparing for the sensation to take hold as they became one, bonded.
Light poured over him, a glowing swath of warmth coating his flesh.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said. “You don’t even know.”
She smiled at him. “So are you,” she said.
It was only when a black shadow moved overhead that her hands clenched around his arms, a quiet panic overtaking her, instinct dictating that something was wrong. Lumen pulled back and away, turning his head to look upwards, sensing the same danger.
“What is that?” Neko asked, torn out of their perfect moment. “A cloud?”
And then another shadow came. And another, circling above them in a slow, even pattern. Dark entities threatening to dismantle what they’d only just begun to nurture. Above them, multiple dark forms were now moving, groping about in the water that had offered such reassuring shelter only moments earlier.
“It’s no cloud,” Lumen said, rising to his feet. “It’s the Lapsed.”
Part III
Dragon Hunter 3
Book Three
Under the Lake
Tempus edax rerum:
Time, that devours all things.
Neko shot out of the bed, her eyes searching the large skylight to count the number of dark forms above. Three of them. There are only three.
Easy enough to take down.
“We have to kill them,” she replied, her voice barely above a hoarse whisper. “You and I could easily…”
“No,” said Lumen. His face was still pointed upwards, features taut as he pieced together what was unfolding in the water overhead. “They don’t know we’re here.”
“What? Are you certain?”
“Oh, they trailed our scent, no doubt, to the lake’s edge. But they’ve lost the trail in the water. That’s why they’re circling; they’re confused. Lost.”
“They can’t come down the way we did?” asked Neko. “Through the entrance in the reeds?”
Lumen’s chin lowered and his beautiful eyes settled on hers. “No,” he said, offering a reassuring smile.
“But are you quite…” she began, distracted by the sight of his naked body.
“Certain? Yes. No one can enter that way but those I’ve permitted. No doubt they’ll eventually disappear—for a time, at least.”
After a moment, Neko could see that the circle was expanding as the creatures swam mindlessly, searching out something that wasn’t there. For a little, they even managed to look like nothing more than a few playful sea lions, enjoying a brief swim before going to bask on a warm rock. Of course, they were anything but. These creatures were vicious, mindless killers, seeking to obey the command of someone whose soul was composed of pure evil.
As the threat lessened, Neko realized that her heart had been racing in anticipation of the fight that hadn’t come. Only now was her body finding a way back to the calm that she’d enjoyed earlier. She was at last able to take in the full sight of Lumen, so gorgeously bare, standing on the opposite side of the large bed from her.
Once again a sense of deepening pleasure began to build, apprehension waning in favour of pure, exquisite lust. Her eyes trailed over his perfect form, unabashedly hungry. His muscles, extraordinary mountain ranges along his chest and arms. Marks of the strength of a Dragon shifter.
Her heart began a new dance now: a sort of choreography of leaps, acrobatically bounding through her chest. They had been so close, before the Lapsed had shown up. So close to the perfection that she’d so craved since their first meeting.
“Forgive me for being a little skeptical,” she said, working hard to steady her voice. “It’s just—they’re awfully close to us. Mere feet away. I was startled.”
“Give it a moment, and they really will disappear,” he said. “We’re at a strategic advantage. Though we can see them, they have no way to see us. We may as well be in a different world, though I realize that to you it must feel as though we’re under immediate threat. But trust me when I tell you that we’re quite concealed down here.”
“I’ll admit that yes, I did feel threatened. But I do trust you, Lumen. At least, I’m trying to.”
His mouth curled upwards in the sexiest smile; one that made her want to lunge across the bed and bite his lower lip.
“Soon, my beautiful, sexy woman,” he said, “you will begin to see the world through my eyes. You will understand the Lapsed better, and perhaps other things as well. They may return in the morning—in fact, more may come with them. But they lack the intellect to stick around a place where they can’t find their prey. And remember—we have many exits out of this flat of ours, should we ever require them. We are safe here, not trapped.”
And sure enough the Lapsed continued to prove him right, slowly peeling away, their forms disintegrating into the fading daylight.
The last rays of sun were filtering in a soft warmth, raining down on Lumen’s bare flesh and the white of the room surrounding them.
All of a sudden, Neko realized that she too was standing naked, a violent moment of self-consciousness hitting her. She crossed her arms over her chest, feeling deeply inadequate at the realization of what she must look like.
A hot mess.
While he stood, muscular and gorgeous, so close at hand. So damned extraordinary.
Lumen moved towards her, edging around the bed, seeming to read her thoughts and her nervousness. His cock, still hard, reminding her of what had been on the verge of happening between them when they’d been so rudely interrupted.
“Relax,” he told her, his fingers twining among hers, gently pulling her hands away from her chest. She allowed it, only a little reluctant to let him see what lay beneath. After all, a few minutes earlier his face had been buried between her legs; it wasn’t as though he was a stranger to her body.
“Our night isn’t ruined by any means,” he said. “And so I propose that we find our way back to where we were.”
“I’d like that. But I…”
He edged two fingers under her chin and raised it, forcing her gaze to meet his again.
“I love when your eyes get this look to them,” he said, his smooth voice as arousing as ever. “This beautiful shyness, so out of place on features like yours. You should be a walking bastion of confidence, Neko—a tall, beautiful woman like you. So independent. In need of no man, nor even a woman.”
She was so strong. And yet in his presence, her face took on the sweetest innocence. As though everything they experienced together was new to her, and even a little frightening. “But soon I’ll show you that we’re equals in all things,” he continued. “That you have nothing to fear, and that in many ways you’re as powerful as any Dragon.”
“I don’t feel so powerful, not always,” she confessed. “Sometimes, I feel…” she stopped the thought in its tracks. No. The word “vulnerable” was still too much to admit, even to him.
“Neko,” he said, his hands moving to her shoulders. “I won’t let anything happen to you. Ever.”
With those words she braced, her jaw setting in a hard clench. And there it was. That resolve that she loved to display. An insistence that she could function independently of his offers of protection. A stubborn strength, rising from somewhere deep within her. She would never be dominated, this one. And he was growing to love it about her.
“I won’t let anything happen to me, you should say,” she growled. “I don’t need protection, even at my weakest. I keep telling you that. I also don’t need to be patronized.”
“No. I’m sorry. Of course you don’t.” He was still smiling, despite the apology. Under the surface, she sensed that he was laughing at her. “You’re so beautiful when you’re angry, too,” he said. “I get tempted to piss you off, just to get to see that look on your face.”
“God, you’re infuriating. You know that?” she asked, flattening her palms aggressively against his chest. She’d wanted to do this since their first meeting, to move her fingers over his enormous pectoral muscles, just to see what they felt like. But now a part of her also wanted to shove him hard, to send him reeling backwards and to let him know that she wasn’t his precious little doll to coddle. She wasn’t some damned princess, lamenting her plight in a tower while a cruel giant kept her captive. Waiting, helpless, for her prince to come save her arse.
“I know I infuriate you,” he said, chuckling. “You do the same to me, for the record. With your constant assertions that you don’t need me, and your ability to jump to the worst conclusions every time I speak. The only difference between you and me is that I’m better at being honest. I need you, you see. Very much.”
He drew himself towards her, his powerful body easily resisting the pressure she was putting on his chest. Hungry lips found hers again, his hard length pressing its way between her slightly parted thighs, slipping over her still wet folds. A distinct giveaway that she didn’t find him that infuriating, after all.
Dragon Hunter Box Set: A Dragon Shifter Serial Page 14
