The Snow Leopard's Christmas Surprise

by Emilia Hartley

  “Put me down right now!”

  He shook his big head and looked into the distance. They could go for a trip around his part of the Territory. It wouldn’t hurt. If she didn’t change, at the very least she got to see Snowdonia from the best angle.

  His wings beat the air and he surged forward. She squeaked in his hand. She squirmed this way and that, trying to break free. Where did the tiny woman think she would go once she was free? They were easily five hundred feet off the ground.

  Her form burst free. Black scales unfolded into the world and a small, agile beast darted through the air. Her wings flapped, unsure of what they were supposed to do. Gareth let himself fall through the air to catch up to her. It was going to hurt when he hit the ground, he thought. It was worth it if he could keep his mate from hurting herself.

  She was beautiful. The scales that flowed along her body were the deepest black he’d seen on a dragon, but they faded into a blood red at her haunches and a brilliant red on the tips of her toes and across the top of her muzzle. This was his mate. He was not bound to a human that couldn’t share in the joy of the dragon form.

  Finally, his claws reached her. Tenderly, he wrapped them around her body while he snapped his own wings open. They glided through the air while she figured out how to adjust her own wings to do the same. He felt like the training wheels on a child’s bike. It made his beast smile.

  She was flying with him.

  After a long while, he let go of her. She wobbled in the air before finding her own balance. She threw her head back and roared with happiness. Ahead of them the clearing appeared. Gareth banked around her and turned toward the clearing. He knew he was large and that was small compared to him, but he didn’t realize how tiny she really was until she touched the ground beside him.

  Rhiannon was still young, he reminded himself. Her dragon form was probably still growing in size. Her dark form was roughly half his size. He felt as though he could reach out and squash her with his foot. Or, he would if he didn’t think she’d bite it off before it reached her. She was fierce, despite her lack of size. It also meant that she was nimble where he would be bulky and clumsy.

  She darted around him, reminding him of a small lizard. To test just how nimble she was, he tossed his tail toward her. She dodged most of his playful strikes. One hit her in the flank and another, a few swings later hit her in the stomach.

  They had been flying and play fighting for a while. She was most likely feeling sluggish from the unfamiliar effort of it all. Soon, she would have to eat.

  A sharp pain shot through his flank. She pounced and bit down on him while he’d been worrying. He swung around and let out a menacing growl. She looked up at him with her teeth embedded in his flank before bouncing away and out of his reach. He looked to where her kitten sharp teeth sank into his scales.

  He let go of his dragon form. It folded back, against the wishes of his beast. It wanted to play with their mate more. Gareth had to remind it that their mate needed to be fed. She might act with bravado, but he was almost certain she was feeling the drain of the unfamiliar change.

  Human and half clothed, because he himself barely had the energy to deal with a shirt, he approached his mate’s dragon. Narrow, gold eyes looked down at him. The red nosed beast bent to rub her head against his face. He raised his hands to rub her cheeks and closed his eyes.

  The beast knew of their bond. It knew that they were mates and it reveled in the knowledge. He doubted that Rhiannon would feel the same if he told her the truth. He held onto the moment a little longer before telling the beast to give Rhiannon back. It might not understand human words, but it understood his request. And, it didn’t want to give in.

  The beast put a paw on his chest and knocked him back onto the ground. He fell with a hard thud, the form of her dragon already climbing atop him to curl into a sleeping position. He laid, nearly helpless, beneath her beast and found laughter bubbling up through him. The beast cracked an eye as if to say be quiet. He smiled and folded his hands beneath his head.

  Chapter Nine

  Rhiannon woke atop the dragon man. His eyes were trained on the clouds above them, but when she stirred they flicked to her. She felt her face warm when she realized she’d been sleeping on his chest. Her body lay along the length of him, touching from head to toe. A thick arm was thrown over her waist like a heavy blanket. It had been too comfortable and Rhiannon wasn’t sure what to think of that.

  Instead of pursuing the thought, she clambered off him. He stretched, languid like a cat. A great big mountain cat, she thought.

  “How long did I sleep?” she asked.

  He glanced back up to the sky, pointing in one direction and then to the sun while he calculated its movement. “About three hours.”

  “And you let me use you like a mattress that whole time?”

  “In my defense, for the first hour it was against my will. Your beast decided I looked like a fine mattress. When she receded, I figured letting a woman sleep on me was much more favorable to letting a dragon sleep on me.”

  Rhiannon felt her face warm. She turned to the basket of food a few feet away because she had to look anywhere other than Gareth at that moment. She remembered the feeling that her beast held toward him. It was warm and the happiest that she’d ever been in her life as the feeling spread from the beast to her. The beast acted as thought it had known Gareth it’s whole life.

  Maybe… There was a chance the beast remembered Gareth from before GOE killed her parents. That had to be it. Her beast remembered him as an old friend. Yet, when she cast a sidelong look at him, her eyes roved over his stubble covered jaw and his bare chest. The way her body reacted to the sheer sight of him told her that something else was afoot.

  Wilson had written books about dragons and their desire to take human mates, she thought as she opened the picnic basket. The book spoke about how dragons liked to capture their human mates and secret them away from the world, mainly keeping them to the bedroom. Rhiannon always thought that his book was a load of anti-dragon propaganda, but the word mate was now stuck in her mind.

  The half-naked dragon man sitting beside her had quickly become her only friend in the tumultuous time of her life. She trusted him long before she had any reason to trust him. No, that was wrong. He had come to her and begged her not to take part in a mission that she, herself, hadn’t believed in. Instead of using his dragon strength to force her decision, he camped outside of her home. He made a peaceful protest for what he believed in.

  That dragon could very well be her mate. As a dragon, she was sure to have one out there somewhere in the world. The idea of it turned her upside down for a moment. Love was promised to her. Magic bound her to another soul and promised happiness with that soul. But, first they had to survive GOE’s efforts to destroy Snowdonia and what it was to the Welsh dragons.

  “What are you thinking so hard about? Did the cheese melt while we were gone?”

  She snapped back to the present and looked up to the dragon man that had crawled toward her on all fours. The sight of him crawling toward her moved something inside of her. She thought of the kiss they shared in his home. It very well could have led to other things had Drystan not interrupted them.

  Now, she wanted to know if what she felt for him was a magic that bound them together. Chewing her lower lip, she crawled toward him.

  He flipped them over. She laid beneath him, their bodies cradled by the grass. Her body lit up with flames everywhere he touched. It drove her mad. It made her rake her hands over his bare shoulders. She could feel the slight scars from earlier.

  He’d done that to protect her.

  She couldn’t remember the last time someone tried to protect her. Rhiannon always had to stand on her own two feet, no matter how precarious the situation. Not even Everett had thought to protect her and she’d given him the pleasures of her body.

  Now, Gareth leveraged himself above her, looking down at her with his sky colored eyes. She reached up and
ran her hand over the stubble on his face. She had a curious urge to ask him to grow it out, to give her something to grab so that she could pull him down to her hungry mouth.

  His brows fell together, but before he could ask, Rhiannon’s hand slipped behind his head and pulled him down to her. She chewed at his lips like she could devour him bit by bit. He moaned into her mouth and it felt like flames licking her from her lips down to her core. It left her breathless.

  “What is this?” she breathed. Was this the fire that mates felt for one another?

  “No questions,” Gareth growled as he reached down for the waistband of her pants. He glanced back up to her face, as if in silent questioning. Could he embark on that path?

  In response, she shimmied her hips so that her pants lowered. He growled and yanked them the rest of the way off her legs. Before he could do more, she wrapped her bare legs around him and pulled him back into her body. Her teeth grazed along his neck. He was defenseless in her grasp. She felt him shudder beneath her as she bit down on his skin. His hands rose to grasp her hips, tight as he lost control.

  When he opened his eyes, they were dragon gold. Her own beast stirred in response, purring like a happy cat. Rhiannon envisioned reaching inward and grabbing the beast by the scruff of her neck to shove her back. She needed this to be of her own free will, not a demand made by the animal voice in her head.

  There was time for that later, she thought.

  “Lay back,” Gareth growled at her. His teeth hovered above the skin of her throat. The vibration of his words rumbled through her neck. She reached up and gripped his hair one more time, jerking his head back to set her hungry lips upon his once more before doing as he said.

  He laughed at the dominant woman before lowering himself upon her. His lips and teeth traveled down her toned abdomen, down where the sweet smell of her was emanating. He slid her panties down her legs before pushing them apart. The sight of the rugged man between her legs was enough to make her core pulse with warmth.

  His head dipped down and she felt the first flick of his tongue between her labia. His growl of pleasure vibrated through her core. She laid back and chewed her lip. How was she going to survive this? She felt like she could be molten metal.

  His tongue pressed into her again, lapping her up. Shocks of pleasure radiated through her. She swallowed the moan that threatened to escape. Her back arched as she pressed herself into his lips. He laughed, his calloused and scarred hands travelling up and down her thighs.

  “You will come for me at least once before we go any further. Do you hear me, Rhiannon?”

  Unable to speak, she nodded. Above her, the open blue sky seemed endless, but she was bound to one single spot on earth. She was bound where his lips met her labia. She reached down to grip his hands while his tongue pressed deep and his nose gently nudged her clitoris.

  She could feel the warmth building while his tongue made quick circles around her entrance. He pulled a hand from her grip and she felt a finger slip beneath his tongue and inside of her. She cried out into the clearing. A flock of birds startled and took to the sky. He pushed it deeper, another finger joining it.

  It had been too long since she last laid with a man. Her entrance was small. Too small for a man the size of Gareth, she thought. As his fingers stretched her vagina, her pleasure was mixed with a small amount of pain. When his tongue reached her most sensitive spot, all of the pain vanished. The pattern of his tongue pushed her into waves of pleasure.

  She felt the heaviness building in her core. She needed it. She wanted it. She arched into his mouth once more and he responded. His hands came around to grab her bare ass so that he could press his face deep into her. Tongue and lips pushed her over the edge.

  She screamed her pleasure into the clearing. The waves crashed over her until she was breathless and writhing beneath him. Finally, her tired body collapsed on to the ground. Every nerve inside of her dang with joy as the tiny aftershocks jumped through her body.

  “You enjoyed that, did you?” Gareth asked. She watched him suck the last of her from his fingers like it was something sweet and delicious.

  There was only one reason for what she was feeling right then. She had suspected, but now she knew. The bond between them was alive and singing. Gareth was her mate.

  She pushed herself up onto shaky arms. This was not over, she thought. She summoned the beast inside of her for help, for the power to still her shaking arms. The beast surged forward, too happy to oblige. She felt her eyes swirl between brown and gold.

  Gareth’s eyes darkened as he watched her crawl toward him. She gripped the waistband of his jeans and used her new strength to tear the button from the fabric. The bulge beneath the fabric was huge, bigger than any she’d ever seen before.

  “You did not finish,” Rhiannon and her beast growled. She shoved his jeans past his hips. The length of him burst free of the fabric’s constraints. He was thick in her hand as she rubbed back and forth. His eyes rolled back and his hands moved to push her back.

  “Before we do this,” Gareth struggled to say as he closed his eyes. “I need to know who is asking for this. Am I talking to Rhiannon or her beast?”

  “Both,” they responded.

  His eyes opened. “Good.”

  He shrugged off his jeans to better lean over her body. She spread her legs wide, wrapping them around him so that she could pull him as deep as she wanted. All of him belonged inside of her. She needed it. He needed it.

  His tip rubbed her pussy, making small circles. She’d forgotten how small her entrance was. She gritted her teeth and pressed forward, easing him inside. She could hear his breathing quicken.

  “Deeper,” she told him.

  “I’ll hurt you,” he said, his voice breathy.

  “Do it.” To push the matter, she reached and gripped his buttocks to pull him deeper inside of her. A small whimper escaped her, but he was halfway in.

  His hands gently stroked her body and her breasts, he eased back and forth to gently open her wider before plunging deep. Once he was hilt deep Rhiannon gasped. He seemed to fill every available inch of space inside of her. She felt nothing but him in that blissful moment.

  Once he was fully inside of her he began to thrust. Waves of pleasure crashed over both of them in quick succession. They moaned their pleasure to the wilderness around them. She locked her ankles behind his back to keep him close to her, to keep him inside of her. She couldn’t get enough of the sensation of him. He invaded every dark space inside of her and cast a fiery glow of pleasure.

  He fought her grip, pulling out to rub the head of his cock in small circles around her opening. She growled and reached for him. He laughed and thrust himself home. She cried out, arching her back.

  Once more he pulled out and thrust hard. She could feel the pressure of another orgasm building inside of her. She teetered on the edge, fighting the urge to fall head first. She reached out and gripped his hips and pulled him as deep as she could manage. Unable to contain it anymore, she fell over that edge.

  Her climax burst through her body. She clenched around him. He growled in satisfaction and slammed harder over and over again, sending tiny shocks through her. She writhed beneath him while his breathing came faster.

  Finally, his head fell back and he roared into the clearing. She felt him spill his seed inside of her. She didn’t worry about it. She was barren, unable to carry children. The doctor had informed her of this at a young age.

  Her mate collapsed on top of her, sated and happy. She ran her fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his sweat covered forehead. How could she tell her mate that she wouldn’t be able to give him children? It was something she’d come to terms with a long time ago. Her old life didn’t seem fit for children anyway. Now… now that she knew what she was, knew that this man was her soul mate, circumstances changed. It wasn’t right that the option to raise children had been ripped away from him.

  She didn’t say anything just then. It didn’t fe
el right. It, most likely, would have spoiled the moment.

  ***

  Gareth watched her reach for her clothing, thin layers of black that slipped over her skin like the scales her dragon bore. Being with her had been like nothing he’d ever known before. Every time he’d prowled through the city on rutting night, a part of him had hoped that the woman that took him home would be the one. He hoped that he would miraculously find his mate among the thousands of human women prowling the city.

  Instead of a human mate, he managed to find a dragon woman working for the enemy. He couldn’t understand why she made the first move, though. She was still adjusting to the new life that was thrust upon her, still trying to come to terms with the realization that she was not fully human. Gareth wondered if he had mistakenly taken advantage of her confusion. Guilt slammed him in the heart.

  Fully clothed, she reached for the basket of food, her motions languid. She pulled a piece of cured meat from its package and rolled it before taking a big bite.

  “You did most of the work,” she acknowledged. “Why don’t you come eat with me?”

  Gareth hesitated. “Later on, will you regret what we have done here? Will you regret laying with me?”

  She cocked an eyebrow at him as though he was being funny. He wasn’t. He fell headfirst into her, but it was a foolish action that could cause her to resent him later. He couldn’t afford that to hang between them.

  “Answer me,” he begged, refusing to move from where he stood.

  Rhiannon sighed. She took another bite from her piece of cured meat, her cheeks growing red. “I know what we are.” Her voice was a mere whisper, but he heard it.

  Shaky knees brought him closer to her before they dropped him to the ground.

  Her dark eyes rose to meet his. “I kissed you because I needed to know why I felt this way about you. I slept with you because I realized that you’re my mate. I feel… I feel good. I don’t think I could use the word love just yet, but I feel hopeful for my future for the first time in weeks. In time, I think that maybe I could fall in love with you. I already feel a strong amount of like.” A wry smile curved the corner of her mouth. “I must admit that I was charmed by the dangerous man who chose to camp on my deck to protest Wilson’s plan.”