by Ophelia Bell
“Like that?” he asked. He rose in front of her, his eyes wide and excited at the discovery, as though she’d revealed the best kind of secret. “How ‘bout this?” He bent and took one taut, pink tip gently between his teeth, then bearing down little by little until the pain grew to a bright, hot point that made her cry out and clutch at his head.
“Oh! Lukas, no. I can’t …” Sweet Mother, did she need more, but the craving for surrender was already frighteningly close to her ancient addiction to oblivion. The pain might send her spiraling into a dangerous pit she wasn’t sure she was equipped to pull herself out of again.
“Baby, I may not be able to see your aura the way you can see mine, but the Wind tells me all your secrets if I want it to. It’s nothing to be afraid of if you like a little pain. I just want to make you feel good, that’s all.”
Unable to help herself, she let out a breath of magic that filtered into his lungs and deep inside his mind. Instantaneously, she saw the raw truth of his words. All he cared about was her pleasure—he had no agenda of his own—no darker need for pain and destruction—just the desire to make her happy. Belah shuddered and arched her breasts up for him to take, clutching at his head to pull him back down.
“That’s a good girl. But remember—no hands yet,” he said, and she immediately slapped her hands back down against the bench.
Lukas stood up straight again, eyes never leaving hers as he unfastened his pants and released his erection. “I need to be inside you when I make you come,” he said, and Belah only nodded, beyond ready to have him.
His thick length parted her slick folds and he sank deep. The first stroke only managed to make her aching core crave more, and the renewed spark of pain his teeth inspired in her breast only made that need crescendo. He pulled his hips back and thrust deep with a swift, violent surge, biting her harder at the same time.
Belah struggled not to reach out and cling to him, instead crying out her affirmation. “Yes! Ohh, yes, don’t stop!”
The blue velvet of her dress slipped down, tangling around her thigh. Lukas cursed and gripped it hard in his fingers, ripping the front of it with a fierce pull that rent the fabric like gauze. The velvet parted and fell away around her hips, leaving her naked.
“Sorry,” he muttered with a slight grimace, but thankfully, he did not cease his steady fucking.
Belah clung to him, needing Lukas close against her now that she was fully naked. The dress was the last thing she cared about.
“Oh, Belah,” he moaned, pulling back to look down at her again. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I can’t … can’t hold back, baby.”
“Don’t!” she gasped, digging her nails into his shoulders and pulling him back down into a desperate kiss. His steady thrusting hit her at the precise angle to set her entire body aflame with ecstasy. She closed her eyes then and opened up her senses to feel him fully. All his thoughts and emotions became clear as day to her, wrapped up in the beautiful, puffy cloud of his aura. But when she opened her eyes and saw the reverence in his gaze, she knew without a doubt that he believed she was more than just a quick lay.
The awareness made her clutch him tighter. She cried out his name, letting her true voice out, the roar vibrating the room as his power rushed into her with his climax.
The power of the Wind surging through them both was too strong for her to resist, too strong to deny the pull of her true form seeking its own release. She suppressed most of it, but her wings refused to stay hidden and came forth with a loud snap and quivering stretch when she came.
Lukas’s own harsh cry sang out, and she opened her eyes just in time to see a pair of huge, feathered wings erupt from his back, shimmering with variegated gold and russet tones.
He grinned at her, panting and breathless. “Beautiful Blue Belah,” he said. “Your wings are amazing.”
“So are yours.” She stared, wide-eyed, at the wings that almost perfectly matched the feathered version from her dreams. Then she laughed out loud at the understanding, shaking her head at her idiocy.
“What is it?” he asked, one eyebrow twitching as he looked down at her, perplexed by her reaction.
“I never knew how wonderful making love to a Prince of the North Wind could be.”
She reached up a hand to his rough cheek, caressing him in wonder. Fate was having fun with her tonight, teasing her with one of Zephyrus’s line, only to finally send her a child of Boreas who couldn’t stop looking at her like he’d discovered heaven.
Lukas cringed. “No prince here. Those days are long past.” He shook his head, his wings folding back in and fading into nothingness again as he separated himself from her.
“I’ve been out of touch for a while,” she said.
“Ah, right … the Ascension was recent, wasn’t it? We don’t always get a memo, you know. It would be nice if you guys let the other high races know when you’re waking up. Five hundred years is an awfully long nap. We tend to forget.” He kissed her as though he were welcoming her home for the first time, even though she’d never been in hibernation. She had been as good as hibernating, however, and for a lot longer than five hundred years.
With a swift tug, he pulled her off the bench and lifted her up, cradling her in his arms and carrying her across the room.
“Where are we going?” she asked, disconcerted by the elation in his eyes. His smile infected her with mirth and she laughed out loud, his recent words nearly forgotten.
“I’m carrying you across my threshold. Because you are my One, and I’m never letting you go.”
“Oh?” she asked, delighted at his confidence. “And how are you going to keep me?”
“By making you so happy you forget there’s a world out there that dragons have to fear. There are no Ultiori in my bedroom, and no laws but love, baby. And I’m going to love you forever.”
“You expect to bind me with words, then?” She gave him an amused look and he laughed, his face splitting into a wide grin. Belah was secretly thrilled with his pronouncement. A turul would never use the word “forever” lightly.
“I have other means to make you behave, trust me,” he said.
After a swift ascent up a dark, narrow staircase, Lukas brought her into a vast apartment that fascinated her with its modernity, just like everything else she’d seen since returning to the world. He didn’t give her a chance to enjoy the architecture of the interior before he carried her into a room that only featured the barest hint of walls. They didn’t even extend to the ceiling, which was lined with bars and pipes that extended to the brick walls on the sides. She made a mental note to ask Erika about it later. Then all thoughts left her mind as he laid her down on his bed and settled over her.
“So tell me what it’s like,” he said. “Ascending, I mean.”
“Oh. Ah …” Belah tried to come up with an adequate response, and probably could have if he hadn’t been busy with his mouth on her. His talented tongue was making slow, soft circuits over her sore nipples, and he kept blowing on them in between. She realized suddenly that the Wind was what had driven her so mad before. And now he was using it again to ease the soreness he’d caused. She sighed under his ministrations.
“No answer?” he asked between breaths.
“You just made me forget. Does it even matter?” she asked.
His dark brows drew together with his frown. “You’re the first dragon I’ve met from the new brood. It’s new to you, so I want to know what it was like. How you felt … how you were received …” He sighed and rolled away, sliding up beside her and propping himself on an elbow. “Fine, I need dirt, all right? I need to know what the fuck the Council is doing. I’ve only heard rumors that laws have changed, but no word on what the fuck those bastards are actually going to do about the shit they caused.”
Belah’s skin prickled in response to his vehement need to hear about what she and
her siblings had done. Her body still craved his touch, but he was just lying there looking at her—expecting—what? A condemnation? Yet the look in his eyes told her he desperately needed to know something.
“Why do the turul care about three-thousand-year-old dragon laws?” she asked, wishing she was really as ignorant as she sounded. A new broodling wouldn’t know the first thing about the politics. She did know about the politics, but the turul were allies and had rarely expressed an interest in dragon law. That any of them would hold such animosity toward herself and her siblings—toward the laws they’d made to preserve their race or the reasons why they existed—was news to her.
“Most don’t.” His eyes darkened with emotion, and Belah couldn’t resist a look into his mind to find out why. He glanced away just as she was hit with a poignant combination of pain and loss, buried deep in anger for something that had happened very recently.
“Lukas,” she said softly, rolling over and reaching up to brush her fingers down his temple and urge him to face her again. “Who did you lose? Tell me what happened.”
He swallowed thickly and gazed back at her, his eyes glassy from emotion. “I forgot what a Blue could do—you can see right through me, can’t you?”
She nodded. “Only if you’re open enough, and I can tell you’re hurting now. Let me know why—maybe I can help. I’m good at other things besides reading you. I can ease the pain at least.”
Lukas shook his head. “It doesn’t matter what happened anymore because there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. She’s gone—my sister, Evie, is gone—taken and bled dry by those Ultiori bastards. I used to wish I could find the Council bitch who started it all. The Blue Beast, we call her. You know there are rumors among my people about how it all started? Do you even know what your leaders have covered up?”
A deep chill sank into Belah’s gut at his words. The Council bitch who started it all. She pressed tighter against his warm body, hoping that the closeness might obliterate her shame, but the squeeze of his arm around her torso only made it worse.
“I know they’re trying to fix it,” she said softly, though she feared it may be too little, too late if someone he loved had been lost already. And how many others had been lost in the intervening centuries? Too many. And no matter what she and her siblings or the Court did, they wouldn’t be able to undo those deaths.
Lukas turned onto his side with a heartbreaking sigh and pressed his face into her neck. “I’m just happy I found you,” he said. “Because believe me, I needed something good to happen. And baby, you’re even better than I imagined.”
“I’m nothing special,” she said.
“Oh, I disagree.” Lukas brushed his hand down her side and gripped her hip, kneading his fingers into her flesh in a way that set her alight again. He pressed her back against the mattress, moving to hover over her. “You’re perfect, Belah. I knew the second you came into the club tonight that you were for me.”
To illustrate his point, he grabbed both her hands and raised them up over her head, pinning them there. He rose onto his knees, straddling her torso. Something soft slipped around her wrists and she craned her neck back to see what he was doing. Her pulse quickened when the rope bindings he’d wrapped around her wrists grew snug as he tied them to the sturdy iron headboard of his bed.
“This turns you on, doesn’t it? Even more than me telling you not to touch me. And the little bit of pain I gave you—that drove you even wilder. I’ve never met a dragon like you before. Usually your kind are disappointingly assertive. How did you wind up so pliant? So fucking perfect?”
“Don’t …” she started, but didn’t finish when he regarded her with a raised eyebrow.
“Don’t what? Don’t pleasure you?”
She swallowed, unsure how to express her fears of going too far with him. She could easily break the flimsy bindings he had her in, but it felt too good to hover on that edge of giving up control, and once the ropes were tied, she didn’t think she’d want to break them.
“Do you take pleasure in it? In taking away my control … causing me pain?”
He sat back, regarding her quietly. “Not as such, no. There was a time when I needed it just to feel like I had some control over a life that was otherwise under Fate’s thumb. It was never about the pain unless my partner asked for it, though. Now it’s always about her pleasure, and my magic lets me know all the little secrets of a woman’s darkest fantasies. I think yours used to be darker than they are now, just like mine, but you’re scared of who you are, aren’t you? It’s nothing to be afraid of—that need for submission. And I’m not some kind of crazed sadist who gets off on hurting people. If you don’t like it, just say no.”
Lukas slipped away from her without waiting for a response, and a moment later returned with a lit candle. The flame flickered as he settled back over her, his thick muscles offset by the shadows cast from the candlelight. His magnificent erection rested hot against her belly when he straddled her hips again, holding the candle above her breasts.
She knew exactly what the candle meant, but more than that, the sweet sensation of his skin against hers was already enough to make her core ache with need again. To be so utterly at his mercy now, anticipating the things he was about to do to her, she couldn’t help but let out a soft moan even before the first drop of wax hit her chest.
He started slowly, tilting the candle and letting a small trickle of hot wax trail down between her breasts. He paused and waited, watching her intently.
“Yes or no?” he asked in a low voice.
Belah’s breathing quickened as the wax cooled and hardened on her chest. Wet heat pooled between her legs and her core ached anew for everything this man could give her. Did she dare go down this well-trodden path and risk falling off that cliff again? Oh, but he had said the perfect things. He promised pleasure and nothing more, and she so wanted what he was about to give her.
“Yes.”
“Remember, eyes open,” he said in a voice thick with desire. She was dimly aware of his hips shifting ever so slowly back and forth against her, his soft sac sliding against her mound and his cock leaving its own hot trail just beneath her navel.
She couldn’t stop watching him. Those deep gray eyes gazed down at her with such unrepentant emotion, obscured on one side by that errant lock of his straight, dark hair. His lips parted as though he were hungry to taste her skin, but he held off. The candlelight moved, and a searing drop of molten wax hit the tip of her breast, making her cry out with the pleasure of it. She pressed her thighs together and tilted her hips up against him, wishing like mad that he’d move his hips lower.
“Is this good?” he asked. “Or do you want more?”
She panted her answer. “More, please. Hotter.”
His eyebrows twitched. “Hotter, hmm? That’s right, you are more tolerant of extremes, aren’t you? I’ll have to see what I can do.”
With a soft breath from his pursed lips, the flame flickered and grew even brighter. The next drip of wax hit her other nipple and trailed down beneath her breast. The heat was even more exquisite, sinking into her sensitive skin, and sending a blazing rift straight between her thighs.
“Let me hear you, baby,” he murmured. “Tell me what you want.”
“Lukas,” she said, unable to bring any thought to mind but the syllables of his name, as focused as she was on the pleasure he gave her. “More, please. Don’t stop.”
Chapter Eleven
Lukas paused with the candle held over her belly. He could paint her with the molten fluid for hours and never get tired of her enthralling reactions. Her back was arched, her hands gripping the frame of his bed. He hadn’t needed to bind her, but the presence of the ropes around her wrists had pleased her as he thought they might. And the red trails of the wax stood out starkly against the creamy perfection of her skin.
Again, he was astounded at how readi
ly she’d given herself to him, at how perfectly she’d melded with him when they made love, and how his entire body still hummed from the orgasm they’d shared. She’d lit him on fire from the inside out, and the Wind in his soul made him burn even hotter for her, just as the candle flame flared from the tiny breath he let curl around it.
Her body, more than her words, signaled how much she needed the pain he was giving her. That a dragon female could give up her power so easily amazed him. They weren’t generally submissive to anyone but their own kind. That she’d chosen to submit to him was an even greater gift. Her trust made it even more apparent that she must be the One—then again, he’d known that from the moment he’d set eyes on her.
Belah’s hips tilted up against his ass again, her soft skin brushing against the underside of his balls, causing his cock to throb ever harder. Her skin seemed to soak in the heat from the wax, her body growing warmer by the second. No wonder she needed it hotter. He blew lightly again on the candle’s flame, just enough to feed it, to make the wax hotter. He could only take it so far without it burning up entirely, though. He was nearly finished. At least he was nearing his own breaking point of need to be inside her again.
“Lukas,” she whispered. “Please. I need you.”
“One more second, baby,” he said, shifting down past her hips and gently pushing her legs apart.
She was skittish despite her obvious craving for pain. Some deeper demons kept her from letting herself go. He had to be careful, or he might scare her away. He’d heard enough stories of turul finding human mates, only to have them run because they were spooked by the instant adoration.
He slid a palm over her warm thigh and she obligingly shifted, spreading herself for him.
The way her pussy opened for him was mesmerizing. He wanted to taste her, but held back. She needed something different.
