by Alisa Woods
Which was exactly his thought.
“I’ve decided I’m going to seduce Nyssa.” The words felt hollow, so he poured some of his anger into them. “If nothing else, I’m going to give her a hell of a ride.”
Leonidas’s eyebrows hiked up, and he dashed a look to his mate.
Rosalyn was scowling. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“No.” Leksander’s voice was far too bitter, and he needed to rein that in. “I’m not fine. I’m angry. I’m upset. I’m fucking pissed.” He sucked in a deep breath and tried to get hold of himself. Or at least channel that anger into something aggressively sexual. “And I’m going to use that.”
Leonidas still looked surprised, but now he was nodding. “That just might work.”
“So where is Dirk?” Leksander asked, his voice rough. “Because if he’s still in her bed, he’s about to get kicked out.”
“Okay.” Leonidas handed the baby over to Rosalyn. “Give me a moment. I’ll see what I can do.” He stepped back but didn’t go far. Then he closed his eyes and clasped his hands together, extended in front of him. His runes rushed down his arms and danced around his wrists. Leksander watched as he summoned the fae court, taking down the wards around his lair and reaching into magic space. He’d seen Leonidas do it before, and Lucian had once as well, and Leksander was sure he was capable of it, given he was stronger in his fae magic than either of them. But his agitation was too high at the moment.
And he was in no mood to calm the fuck down.
Rosalyn watched her mate warily.
“Maybe you should take the baby to another room,” Leksander said as gently as he could in his agitated state.
But she nodded readily and hurried off to the bedroom down the hall, the guest room that had quickly been repurposed into a nursery when they returned.
Then a soft pop sounded, and the air seemed to overpressure for a moment, but a male fae appeared at Leonidas’s side. The pointed ears and ethereal good looks were indications enough, but Leksander recognized this particular fae as Kalen, the queen’s minion and, according to Leonidas, her lover. He had long red hair, with a thin braid on each side, bright green eyes, and runes writhing angrily across his nearly bare chest.
“The queen is indisposed,” he spat. “Don’t bother her—”
“She can make time for me.” Leksander stalked forward, quickly coming face-to-face with Kalen. Leksander’s own runes scurried across his skin, and the air pulsed with the power rolling off this fae. Regardless, Leksander demanded, “Take me to her.”
Kalen’s face twisted with an arrogant disgust. “Know your place, prince of the House of Smoke. My queen will summon you if she has need of you.” Kalen didn’t seem to think the chances very high on that.
“She has a member of my House,” Leksander growled. “She will return him immediately, and I will take his place.”
Kalen’s disgust turned into a frown that looked slightly alarmed. “What is the meaning of this?”
Leksander ignored him and turned to Leonidas, who was still locked in his summoning stance. “Call her again,” he ordered. “This servant of hers is useless.”
The fury on Kalen’s face rolled through the air like a heat blast. He made some kind of inarticulate sound of anger then turned and disappeared in a flash of light.
“Well, that’s a dangerous game,” Leonidas remarked quietly. “I hope you know what you’re doing, my brother.”
Before Leksander could respond, Kalen was back… with Dirk’s arm gripped in his hand. He shoved Dirk away, and the hapless dragon stumbled and nearly fell to the floor. He managed to grab an edge of the couch and remain standing. It looked like Kalen had ripped Dirk straight from the queen’s bed and through the transdimensional window between the fae realm and the human world. His face was flushed, he was naked, and his cock was hard and dripping.
“My lord,” he rasped out. “Have I done something wrong—” He was cut off by Leonidas conjuring clothes to cover him and signaling him to keep quiet, which he dutifully did.
The disgust was back on Kalen’s face. He looked down his nose at Leksander. “The queen will now allow you—”
“You talk too much.” Leksander stalked up to him and stared him in the face. “Take me to her.”
Kalen’s fury hummed the air with power again. Leksander thought maybe he had already overplayed his hand—this fae could swat him like a bug if he chose—but then Kalen just gripped his shoulder and wrenched him through space and time.
It was momentarily dizzying, and Leksander had to blink twice to adjust his eyes to the change in scenery, but Kalen’s rough shove away from him brought back Leksander’s senses. He was standing in a vast room with hazy yellow walls and a carpet of grass. Vines dangled from the ceiling, diaphanous butterflies—or sprites as the queen had called them—flitted through the air, and a whole fleet of couches and beds surrounded the large, snow-white bed in the center. It was ancient in design, four posts with gauzy netting pulled back, and in the middle of its vast white sheeting sat the Queen of the Summer Court.
Naked.
Kalen dropped his voice to a growl. “The moment my lady wishes me to remove this trash—”
“That is all, Kalen.” She waved him away, and Kalen disappeared so fast, Leksander wasn’t sure if she had banished him with her magic or if he’d beat a voluntary retreat.
A slow, amused smile spread across the queen’s face. “Curious, are we, dragon prince?” She was even more breathtakingly beautiful without the elaborate silver dress she had worn to the throne room. Her breasts were high and proud and flushed with what looked like small red bite marks. Her silver-white hair fell across her chest but didn’t cover it, falling down her back as well and pooling on the bed. She sat on her heels, her knees slightly spread, and her sex was bared and obviously ready for attention.
Attention Dirk had no doubt been giving.
Leksander was tempted to magick away his clothes and simply dive between the queen’s legs, but this seduction, if it were to work, would need to summon more than just an orgasm or two. He kept his clothes on but stepped up onto the bed, stomping across the white sheets with his boots until he reached her.
Judging by her wide-eyed look up at him, he was piquing her curiosity. Good. He reached down and grabbed a fistful of her long-flowing hair, tilting her face up. Her lips parted, and he could see the hunger in her eyes surge.
“A queen deserves better than a lowly dragon of my court.”
“Do I?” she breathed.
He wasn’t yet touching her skin—he knew the effects of that from watching Dirk melt in the throne room—but she seemed entranced by his little play of dominance. The energy rolling off her was intense.
He held her head firm. “You deserve someone who knows just how to love you.” Then he lightly brushed the thumb of his other hand across her lips. The effect was instant and intense—a wave of knee-weakening pleasure washed through him, and his cock instantly sprung to life. She must have felt it, this head-swimming vertigo of pleasure, because she sucked in air across his thumb, and her mouth opened further, inviting him. She was at the right height to take his cock… but not yet. He still had on his clothes, but those were easily magicked away. No, he needed her wanting it far more before he actually gave her anything.
He pulled his thumb away, breaking the contact. His body had gone so long without—and he’d never felt anything like this—just that one brush was nearly intoxicating.
“So different…” she breathed. Then she licked her lips and peered up. “That lowly dragon didn’t have your magic, prince of the House of Smoke.”
His magic? She must mean his fae blood. The original dragon who seduced a fae queen—his ancestor—did it without fae magic in his veins. But Leksander’s fae blood must add power to that pleasure-drenched connection.
He bent down, still gripping her hair but now bringing his lips close to her face. “I haven’t made love for a hundred years, Nyssa. You aren’t go
ing anywhere for a while.” Then he brushed his lips across her cheek. Like his thumb across her lips, it flooded him with dizzying amounts of pleasure. His cock strained against the royal trousers he still wore from earlier in the day.
Her gasp was followed by a shudder when he didn’t pull away. When his lips reached hers, he nipped them instead of kissing then pulled slightly away, breathing in her face. “Your mother took a royal dragon to bed. It nearly broke her Court. Are you sure you want to play with this fire?” Given she could toss him across the room with her fae magic, he wasn’t doing anything she didn’t like. But he was asking for more than just a fuck, and in a manner which he hoped she would find impossible to resist. Did she want to risk taking him to bed? It was rebellious. Naughty. It broke every convention and pulled at the taboos of their joint history. Not to mention, the King of the Summer Court might have an opinion… although it was well known that the Queen ruled in Summer just as the King ruled in Winter.
She could have Leksander if she wished.
With just the tip of his tongue, he tasted her lips, and the contact made her eyes drop closed. He drifted away from her mouth, skimming her jawline, not touching her with his lips, but dashing his tongue out in a steady beat of pleasure that pulsed through them both. His cock was starting to ache. He could think of worse fates than losing himself here. It would be empty of love, but fulfill every other need he had.
He pulled her head back further, opening her neck to him. This time he roughly seized her breast, holding her tight between both grips while he worked down her neck with small, erratic licks, each a little longer than the last. Her nipple drew tight against his palm, literal sparks of magic leaping between her flesh and his. When he reached her shoulder, he bit into it hard, as much to release the tension coiled tight in his belly as to give her pleasure.
She gasped.
“Answer me, Nyssa,” he growled into her shoulder. Then he released his hold, his hand on her breast and his mouth against her shoulder, leaving only his grip in her hair as he rose up to her face again.
The contact was gone, taking its opiate of pleasure with it.
She whimpered deep in her throat. “Again,” she breathed, eyes still closed.
He tugged harder on her hair. “Answer me.”
Her eyelids fluttered but only opened half-mast. “I want you in my bed, dragon prince.”
The pleasure that flushed through him was even more powerful than the magic touch. Satisfaction. He could please this fae queen, play her games, play her body, and she would want all of it. She would beg him for it. His touch. His cock. His magic. She would want him… unlike an angeling who wanted anything but him.
The intrusion of Erelah on his thoughts made him growl.
He wrenched Nyssa’s hair back so hard he pulled her halfway to the bed. Then he grabbed hold of her breast again and pressed her back, crushing her with his body to the feather-soft whiteness of the spread. His cock strained against his clothes, and he ground their rough hardness against the creamy softness of her skin. Her moan was exquisite and just the salve he needed. Her aching need for him was a balm for the wrenching pain inside.
Nyssa wanted him. He could give her something no other being could—a magical pleasure that mere fae could not, nor a simple dragon. For he was both. And the pleasure he could bring was unparalleled. Nyssa would have everything Erelah never would want from him… and Nyssa would beg for it, whereas Erelah would only disdain him. Her high-and-mightiness, her angelic purity, was too good for the likes of him… but Nyssa understood.
And she craved everything he had to give.
“More,” she begged.
He was lighting a line of pleasure with the tip of his tongue across her cheek while rasping her body with the coarseness of his clothes plus the hard muscles and cock buried underneath. He kneed her legs apart to grind the bulge of his cock against the nerve center between her legs.
“Yes!” She arched into him.
“Tell me you want this,” he commanded as he slowly traveled the length of her body.
“No more teasing, dragon prince.” She bucked against him.
He grinned and pressed her harder into the bed. His lips brushed against her neck. “Say it,” he breathed against her skin.
“For the love of magic, dragon, I want you.”
“What will you give me, Nyssa?” His whisper haunted her neck, sliding down to her collar bone.
“Anything.”
“Anything?”
“Yes.” She was breathing hard underneath him.
He worked hard to keep his voice cool. “I want your love.” He dragged his tongue across the rise of breasts.
“Yes.” He could hear her heart pounding.
“All of it,” he breathed against her skin, ghosting up toward her neck again. “Everything you have, Nyssa. I want it all.”
“All my love.” There was a catch in her voice.
It spiked through him. She meant it. There was something… something broken in her that made him flinch. But he continued on, sliding against her body until his lips brushed her ear. “And a child,” he whispered.
She gasped then shuddered as he bit into her neck just hard enough to electrify them both. It was too early to ask, and she wasn’t answering, and yet… she hadn’t said no.
He renewed his grip on her hair and pressed her, with his body and his words. “I need it, Nyssa,” he panted, anger stiffening his words and every part of his body. “Give me what I need, and I’ll give you everything you want.”
She bucked against him, but it was a shuddering, gasping kind of motion. Like she wasn’t entirely in control of her own need… and he knew that feeling all too well. He restrained her, held her down, fought against the rebellion of her body against whatever was going on in her head.
And then she released a long, slow breath. “A child,” she said in the tiniest voice.
Yes. “Say it again.” He bit down on her earlobe.
She arched into him. “Take me,” she gasped. “Leksander, please.”
Good enough. He closed his eyes and nuzzled his face against her jaw. More than good enough. It was more than anyone had ever given him, and he’d only gotten started with her. His lips brushed her neck, surging even more of that magical pleasure-rush through them both. “I’ll give you everything, my love,” he whispered, but it made him wince. He kept nuzzling her body, but there was only one woman he had ever wanted to call my love. Only one he’d said those words to in his fantasies, the sexual ones where he climaxed calling out her name and the tender ones where all they did was touch. Hand to hand, lips to lips. He’d pictured this moment a thousand times, and always it was a blonde beauty with wings spread beneath her and curves that could make a man cry.
Erelah.
Only after he’d pulled in a breath did he realize he’d said that out loud.
The queen’s body stiffened underneath him. A split second later, he was blown from the bed, sailing through the air, and lashed by the hanging vines which quickly wrapped around him and held him suspended in the middle of the room.
It all happened so fast, he barely had time to suck in a gasp of surprise.
But when Nyssa rose up from the bed, naked, hair fanned in all directions, arms spread wide and fury on her face… Leksander well and truly understood his mistake.
“Who is this… Erelah?” Nyssa floated through the air, like a terrible goddess of wrath.
“No one,” he said, eyes wide. The vines tightened, threatening to both tear him apart and squeeze him to death. “Nyssa, wait!” He thrashed against their hold as one snaked around his neck. Dragons were extraordinarily hard to kill… but the Queen of the Summer Court could easily accomplish it in any of a hundred ways. And given the treaty was established by magic from her mother… Leksander had the sudden, desperate, and terrifying thought that she might be one of the few who could kill him by her own hand.
“Who is she?” The boom of her voice shook the vines and the couches and ev
en the floor rippled under its power.
But the death-strangling halted momentarily. Enough for him to breathe. “She’s just… she’s just someone I love.” He couldn’t even bring himself to put it in the past tense. Because he knew that wasn’t truth, and Nyssa would brook nothing else from him right now. “Someone who doesn’t love me back,” he added, hoping that might help.
Maybe he would be too pathetic to kill.
For a moment, her face contorted into some unidentifiable emotion—something like hopelessness? Definitely pain. And then the fury came raging back. “Kalen!” she screamed, and it shook the walls.
The red-haired fae appeared in an instant, looking alarmed.
Before he could get a word out, Nyssa stabbed an accusing finger at Leksander. “Take out this trash.” Her growl was a thunderstorm clawing the air.
Kalen disappeared and reappeared at Leksander’s side. The fae gripped his arm, and an instant later, they twisted through space and time to land back at Leonidas’s lair. But Leksander’s boots barely touched the ground before Kalen grabbed him by the throat and hoisted him in the air. Leksander struggled against it, but it was like being choked by a mountain.
“The only reason you live, beast,” Kalen hissed, “is the treaty. If I could kill you, you’d be ash.” Then he flung Leksander against the bookcases lining the wall, breaking shelves and raining down many books and Leonidas’s collection of bronze sculptures.
Kalen turned and disappeared.
Leonidas came running from the nursery, skittering to a stop when he saw Leksander slumped on his carpet amidst the wreckage he had caused.
“So… I’m guessing that didn’t work out so well?”
“I’m still alive.” Leksander hung his head. His best chance, and he blew it. All because he couldn’t get her out of his head. He grimaced and peered up at his brother. “I wouldn’t recommend going to the Summer Court for favors anytime soon.”
