Deal with the Dragon (Immortals Ever After Book 1)

by Nicole Blanchard

  He gestured for her to place the tray on a table by the bed and she left with a smile in my direction. There were tureens of steaming, buttery vegetables and platters of herbed meats. Also on the table was an arrangement of roses from the garden. Once he noted how much I enjoyed them, he made sure there were always fresh ones. Every time I scented a whiff of their fragrance, it brought a smile to my face.

  “Thank you, this is wonderful. And beautiful. You didn’t have to go to so much trouble.”

  “It’s no trouble at all for you, my sweet. You need to build up your strength.”

  There were dishes I recognized, or that were at least similar to those we served in Aurelia such as the bitterroot, a potato-like root we roasted and served with herbs and pats of butter. I especially enjoyed the flank steak, though I didn’t ask what animal it came from because I wasn’t certain I wanted to know.

  Even more than the food, I enjoyed spending time, actual time, with Rhys. Time where we didn’t have to travel—didn’t have to rush to be somewhere. Time where it was just the two of us—with no interruptions. I hated it had to come under these circumstances, but I was going to enjoy it while it lasted.

  “What’s that smile for?” Rhys asked, once the dessert dishes were cleared away and steaming mugs of the Northlands coffee were served.

  “This has been the best day,” I said. “I don’t think it can get any better.”

  “I’ll take that as a challenge.”

  I giggled, perhaps from the wine, perhaps because being bound to Rhys was turning out to be everything I’d ever dreamed up, but never thought I could have. “What are we going to do now? I couldn’t possibly eat anything else.”

  Rhys took my hand and drew me close. “Then you’ll have to leave the eating to me.”

  “Now, Princess, didn’t I tell you to lie still?”

  I nearly screamed in frustration. In the two hours since Rhys had cleared away the food, he’d stripped me of my clothes and brought me to the edge of climax so many times I’d lost count.

  “I can’t,” I managed to say through heaving breaths. “Rhys, please. I can’t take it anymore.”

  “You can. You can take whatever I’ll give you.” The sting of his teeth on my inner thigh caused me to gasp. “Won’t you?”

  I couldn’t answer. There weren’t any words left inside of me that didn’t include more, please, harder, or his name. The only thing I wanted was him, but it was the one thing he wouldn’t let me have. It was like he knew how to give me just enough to make me want more, beg for more, but deny me just when I was nearly satiated. It was maddening. Fever stole over me, smoldering and suffocating. It blotted out everything but the shadow of him crouched, waiting between my spread legs.

  The mark on my neck pulsed in time with the furious tattoo of my heart. It, too, wanted. Needed. The thread connecting us both had never been clearer. He alternately tortured and tempted me, and each time, I got flashes from him. Of how I looked from his point of view, spread out much like the dinner we’d feasted on. I’d heard him say without words how much he wanted to feast on me.

  The longer he’d drawn out the seduction, the more the walls between us dropped, the clearer the connection between us had gotten. It thrummed like a constant hum inside me, wanting, needing me to make the connection complete. I didn’t know how to do whatever it wanted me to do. Rhys seemed to be working toward something with ruthless intent, but I was mindless to anything but when he would touch me again.

  “Won’t you?” he repeated.

  My head thrashed back and forth against the pillow as his mouth hovered over me, his breath lightly playing over the overstimulated intimate flesh. When his mouth latched onto me, and his tongue unleashed a relentless assault, I cried out and my feet dug into the quilted patchwork of muscles on his back, so I could lift my hips to meet what felt like my own damnation.

  He paused and when he spoke his lips brushed over me with each word. “Can you take it? Do you want me to stop?”

  The thought was so abhorrent, I reached down with a guttural cry that sounded nothing like me and pressed his mouth back to me, using my grip on his hair to keep him in place.

  But of course that didn’t stop him. He merely spoke directly to my mind. “I can keep this up all night, pet. I can bring you to the brink of pleasure and deny you. Again and again until you give me what I want.”

  “What do you want?” I asked, my voice breaking with force of desperation.

  “I want you to tell me you’ll take it. Take it all. You’ll have me, in every way, just as much as I’ll have you. I want you to be my mate in all things as long as you’ll have me. Claim me as I have you.”

  I couldn’t have stopped the wave of pleasure if I’d tried. I crested, seized underneath him, his fingers digging into my hips, my feet scrabbling on the bed for purchase as it overtook me. It was like he called it forth by words alone, like he understood and played my body better than I could. But the orgasm didn’t satisfy me. If anything, it only intensified the hunger.

  He crawled up my limp and throbbing body, a god in his own right, this man who’d pledged himself to me, came to my aid. This man who wanted to be mine as more than just in name only. Sweat sheeted his body, glinting in the moonlight shining through the bare windows that peered out into the open night. Candlelight flickered in his brilliant gold eyes as he came to rest on top of me, the brunt of his weight on his forearms.

  “I need you, Elena.”

  I could hear the truth in his words, see it through our bond. The pleasure I took from them was almost as great as the pleasure he’d given my body. He needed and wanted me. Not just because I was a princess, not because I could give him something in return. He wanted me forever, without restraint.

  For that reason, I shifted underneath him and reached for the heavy length of his erection and guided it to where I waited, empty and aching. He rolled his hips in one graceful movement and the feel of him gliding inside me stole my breath. There was something so explicit about the first breach, something so carnal and primitive. If I had a shifter form, I knew it would be clawing at me to shift, to mark him in some way that he would have visible signs of our union.

  Rhys’s dragon had come out to play. There were light red score marks over the pearly white of my flesh from when his fingers had lengthened into claws. He used them over the tips of my breasts, down the sensitive skin of my sides and on the inside of my thighs. Not enough to draw blood, but enough that it came rushing to the surface to sensitize me to every touch in those areas.

  I wanted things I’d never wanted before. To draw blood, to give into an animalistic state I hadn’t even been aware existed.

  I wanted to lose control.

  I wanted him to lose control.

  It was both terrifying and exhilarating.

  Alluring and horrifying.

  I didn’t even have a choice in the end. My body made the choice before my mind could catch up. I screamed in pain as a great heat seared my neck. At first I didn’t understand what was happening, but then I heard Rhys’s voice inside my head, talking me through it, his tone soothing and I followed it out of the pain until I resurfaced.

  His face was the first thing I saw.

  He brushed the damp hair out of my face. “Shh, love, everything is fine.”

  For a moment, I fought him, reacting on instinct, then I relaxed underneath him. His stroking hands, his calm voice allowed my heartbeat to slow and my muscles to unclench.

  “What in Goddess’ name was that?” I gasped, when I calmed down enough to speak.

  Rhys didn’t have any words for my question. I drew my hands up to his face and lifted him from where he’d been buried in my neck. “Rhys? Are you okay? Did it hurt you, too?”

  He trembled against me and I sucked in a breath when I realized he was still hard, possibly even more than he’d ever been any time we’d made love.

  “What happened?” I asked again.

  He struggled for breath. Instead of answering
, he said, “Let me show you.”

  My brows furrowed, and I opened my mouth to ask him what he meant when a vision blotted out the room. It was me, I realized after a stunned moment. Me, as Rhys saw me. I burned with embarrassment when I saw my face. Hair was plastered to my skin, my cheeks were ruddy with a blush, and I still hadn’t caught my breath completely. I was about to make a comment about my appearance when I caught the sight of the mark I’d received the night of the binding ceremony.

  “Holy stars,” I breathed.

  The mark had been snow white, even against my creamy skin. I’d grown used to seeing it in the mirror and hadn’t given it much thought since arriving at the castle. Now, it was burned into my throat with a black ink, a stark contrast to my pale skin.

  “No,” I said without thinking. “No, we can’t. This can’t be.”

  I struggled underneath him, wriggling and writhing, but only managing to make us both breathless as he was still poised over me and still very much aroused and inside of me.

  “Let me go,” I said. A wildness was overtaking me. My only thought was that I needed to get away. Needed to flee as far and as fast as I could.

  He bared his teeth, nearly snarling with intensity. “If you think I’m ever going to let you go, you are sorely mistaken.”

  He began to move then, and it was like nothing I’d ever felt before. Pleasure so intense seared me from all directions. From the physical stimulation, from the mental link he’d opened somehow between us, and through the bond itself. It was an assault of the senses for which there was no defense.

  “Please,” I begged. “I can’t. You have to let me go.”

  “You’re not going anywhere.”

  He thrust with an aching tenderness I didn’t even know he was capable of, like I was made of glass, fragile and delicate. His mouth coasted over my face, his lips and tongue caressing and tasting me as though he couldn’t get enough. He worked his arms underneath my shoulders, his hands turning palm up so he could use them as a counterpoint against his thrusts, which were still frustratingly slow.

  “Rhys, you don’t want this. You don’t want me like this. Anything could happen! I could die. You could be killed. You don’t understand,” I said thoughtlessly.

  His face didn’t darken, but shadows appeared in his eyes, like the ghosts of those things he had lost. “I do understand. Trust me, Elena, I understand more than you can imagine.”

  “Then, why?” I cried. “Why would you risk losing everything again?”

  “Because the true loss wouldn’t be losing you. It would be never having tried to keep you.”

  I ached with such beauty that I wanted to cry. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough,” I confessed.

  “I’ve never known anyone with more strength,” he said solemnly. “Fall with me.”

  Before my eyes, I watched as he arched his own neck, baring to me as his own mark flashed in the moonlight, then solidified as mine had into a permanent brand. A claiming mark. The bond between us was complete. Absolute. His rhythm faltered, but the same couldn’t be said for the bond between us. I grasped his shoulders, as it seemed to explode, blotting out the light, the room, the world.

  23

  Rhysander

  She was mine. Irrevocably.

  We may go down in flames, but for now, we belonged to each other. The marks on our throats were visible to other shifters for a reason. In the days of old, the claiming marks were a show of strength between bonds, to let other clans know the connection between mates was strong and therefore the clan was strong. It was also rare. And powerful, I hoped.

  Powerful enough to break a curse.

  “I have a surprise for you,” I told her the next morning.

  “What surprise?” she asked. “Can’t we stay in bed again?”

  “I’d love nothing more than to stay in bed with you for the next century, but there is something I want to show you. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. You should probably get dressed,” I added reluctantly.

  “I understand.” She walked naked to her closet, my eyes on her swaying hips the entire way there. “Should I cover up the mark? It’ll be obvious what happened.”

  I cleared my throat after a lengthy pause then cleared it again. “There hasn’t been a completed bond for my clan for years. Not since before the curse. They will no doubt be ogling. Let them. I want everyone to know you’re mine.”

  She returned, dressed in one of the new gowns I’d purchased for her, a light blue shimmery fabric that floated around her ankles like delicate snowflakes. I went to her, drinking her in with my shirt still untucked from my pants and undone at the throat. Even half-dressed she was utterly delicious.

  Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. I didn’t have to read her mind to know some part of her enjoyed how possessive I could be. I laid a hand over the mark on her throat. My eyes drifted closed and a sound of pleasure escaped my lips.

  “I’m glad it was you,” I said, before pressing a kiss to her surprised mouth.

  “Me, too,” she answered in my head.

  “Come on,” I said after fastening her dress. A combination of nerves and dread writhed in my stomach. She followed, content to let me lead and explain what we were doing in my own time. I was grateful. It would take the brief walk to our destination for me to work up the courage anyway. She was quiet, letting me lead her through the castle to the entrance for the crypts.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked, as I tugged her along a dark, cavernous tunnel. Her injuries were as healed as they were going to get and I no longer required a nap every afternoon to be at full strength. It was the second time she had saved my life, nearly sacrificing her own to do it. There wouldn’t be a better opportunity to lay it all bare for her than this one.

  “If I told you, that would ruin the surprise.” I led her around a corner, her hand in mine. I could have let her read my thoughts now that the connection between us was completely open, but I wanted to show her, to explain to her. I wanted to give her this truth myself now that there were no walls between us.

  “Don’t you think we’ve had enough surprises?” she asked wryly.

  “A good surprise,” I said, and I hoped it would be true.

  “These are the crypts, aren’t they? I thought I wasn’t supposed to go down here. Alaric told me I shouldn’t.”

  “I told him to tell you that. I didn’t want you to see it without me. I wasn’t ready⁠—I didn’t know how to tell you what I needed to until now.”

  She was quiet again as we moved deeper into the mountains. It felt right to have her here. I never thought I’d be able to share anything so personal with anyone, but she was my mate and she belonged here. She deserved to know all of my secrets.

  The closer we got to our destination, the colder it became. The light was dim, tinged with a blue-green hue. Magick pulsed as though it was a living thing, making the hair on my arms stand up.

  The hallway narrowed and soon we were squeezing through a space that only left a few inches for us to maneuver. When it opened up again, Elena looked up from where she was navigating through the rock and gasped, but the sound of surprise was drowned out by the constant pattering of water from the dark heights of the endless room. It seemed to suck up most of the sound, but not the buzzing hum that came from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

  There were eggs, as far as the eye could see. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Maybe even tens of thousands. They were displayed on pedestals and glowed⁠—the source of the blue-green light that illuminated the room. Inside the eggs, shadow forms writhed and danced. Her hand went to her mouth, and tears sprung to her eyes. This part I didn’t have to explain. These were thousands of potential lives that may never be born, cursed to a sort of half-life locked inside the shells, waiting. The part of me that drove the mating lust ached fiercely at the sight, and I thought of the hatchlings we might not ever have.

  “When I told you I wanted you to give me an heir, I hadn’t been lying. All I’ve ever wan
ted was to break the curse that kept my people from their birthright. I hope when the time is right, we can make one of these lives together.” She was too shocked to speak, so I kept going. “But before that happens, I want to tell you about Valeria. Then, if you want to leave and never come back, I won’t stop you.”

  “I’m listening,” she said.

  I pushed a hand through my hair, then gestured for her to sit with me on the steps. Her beautiful face was awash in the blue-green glow, her expression patient and open. I didn’t deserve her. Not one bit.

  “My first mate wasn’t a nice woman. She came from a long line of distinguished clansmen. Our binding had been arranged since we were hatchlings. I didn’t have an opinion one way or another. Having a mate was my duty. It wasn’t until after we were bound that I realized what she was.”

  Elena’s hand convulsed over mine. “What do you mean?” She licked her lips as though her mouth had gone dry with fear. Or maybe that was just mine.

  “Valeria was...cruel,” seemed to be the best way to explain it.

  “She was cruel?” Elena repeated. “To you?”

  I looked away. “Sometimes.” I wanted to tell her, wanted to lay my heart bare, but the words were so hard to get out. I didn’t want her to think less of me.

  “She hurt you?” Elena prodded gently.

  “She tried. I was much bigger, much stronger. I could have stopped her, but she always made me feel like I deserved it.”

  “Oh, Rhys. Of course you didn’t.”

  “She was very convincing, very clever. And I would never raise a hand to a woman, despite my reputation. So I took it, for years, because I thought it was my duty to be her mate, produce sons.”

  Her breath caught as she remembered how this particular story ended, but she didn’t interrupt.

  “One day, she was trying to provoke an emotion out of me, any emotion. Normally, I’d give in and give her the argument she was looking for, but I was tired of fighting her. So tired. All I wanted was for her to go away and I think she knew it.” Elena wrapped her arms around me. I felt the shudder of her breath against my side. I pushed on. “I tried to leave her screaming behind me and she followed me to the aviary platform. I told her I was done. That we’d have the bond annulled. I couldn’t do it anymore.”