The Demon Prince's Dragon Queen

by Mina Carter

  Like the aches in some very specific places. She was pleasantly sore as a result of Rat’s… attentions last night. Biting her lip, her hands began to wander over her body. She might not look any different on the outside, but she felt it. It was like a switch had been flipped somewhere deep within. Like her body had suddenly come alive. For him. He’d awoken her to the potential in her own body… and awoken her to the pleasure it could bring. To her. To them both.

  Her hands cupped her breasts, sliding the soapy suds over the generous mounds. She tweaked the hard points of her nipples and hissed a breath in as the pleasure-pain arrowed straight down to her clit. He’d touched her like that… kissing and licking each breast before working his way down her body to latch on to her clit.

  Her fingers slid down between her thighs and her head fell back, a groan in the back of her throat at the memory. She found her clit and stroked the slick little bud. Even the memories from last night were electric, heat building in her body as she stroked herself.

  A growl sounded behind her and a second later the shower door was yanked open, a big, hard male body crowding into the space with her.

  “Rat! There’s no room in here!” she gasped and then shivered as a hard cock pressed against her ass and the small of her back.

  “Oh, I’m sure I can make room,” he growled, his voice low and rough with desire and heat. “You can’t put on a show like that and expect not to get fucked.”

  His fingers replaced hers between her legs, taking over stroking her clit with quick, sure strokes. Capturing her hands with his free one, he pulled them up and over her head, pressing her lightly against the tiled wall. The cool of the tiles against her hard nipples contrasted with the heat of the water and his body at her back.

  “Do you want that, little queenling? Do you want to be fucked by the big, bad demon?”

  “Oh… yes! Scales, yes!” she whimpered, shoving her ass back against his cock.

  Heat ruled her body, need and lust conspiring to steal every thought she had and leaving her to operate on pure instinct. The instinct to yield to him filled her, her pussy aching to be filled again. Over and over.

  “Your wish…” He breathed against her ear as he stroked faster, driving her arousal up higher. “Is my command, Your Majesty.”

  She whimpered with need as her hips rocked against his hand. He wasn’t playing about, pinning her against the wall as he forced pleasure from her slender body. A moan escaped her lips as he thrust two strong fingers deep into her pussy, sliding and pumping as he finger-fucked her, his thumb pressing against her clit.

  Her body tightened, the scream of pleasure torn from her throat as she came hard around his fingers. She didn’t get a chance to recover, her body still humming with pleasure as he kicked her feet further apart.

  “Oh!” Her gasp as he filled her in one, hard thrust mingled in the air with his deep groan. Held captive between him and the wall, all she could do was take it… as he took her.

  “Fuck,” he moaned, lips against her temple. “You’re so fucking tight, little queen. I’m not going to last long like this.”

  She nodded, her voice soft and breathy. “Just fuck me. Hard. I want it all.”

  He chuckled, the sound dark and dirty. “Oh, then you get it all, sweetling. No holds barred.”

  True to his word, he pulled back and slammed into her again. Her soft cries filled the shower as each thrust pinned her against the hard tile. He filled her completely, her pussy stretched tightly around him, and it didn’t take long before heat and tension built in her body again.

  He released her wrists in favor of a hand around her hip, the other arm around her body, braced against the wall and holding her safely within his embrace.

  “Take me,” he murmured in her ear. “Take me all, every thick, long inch. Feel me inside you, know who you belong to, little queen.”

  She gasped, hands clinging to him wherever she could touch. She rocked with him. Rode his cock as he impaled her over and over. Nodded at his hypnotic words in her ear.

  “Tell me,” he demanded, thrusting into her and rolling his hips. Her eyes all but crossed in pleasure as he pressed against her in all new and different ways. “Tell me who you belong to.” Another hard thrust made her moan. “Who do you belong to?”

  She caught her breath as he filled her again, his free hand sliding down to stroke her clit again. She managed less than three strokes before she broke, her scream of pleasure high enough to shatter glass.

  “You, Raterrenh!” she sobbed in her pleasure, the ecstasy of her release pouring through her. “I belong to you.”

  * * *

  Being with Baby was like nothing Rat had ever experienced before. She was tiny and delicate, but with a will of iron and a personality strong enough to match his own. Touching her, claiming her as his own… blew his mind. He still couldn’t believe she’d even given him a second look, much less let him touch her. Fuck her. Let him claim the heaven of her body… and him a demon.

  His body still shuddering from an epic release that had made even his legs shake, he pulled from her with reluctance. Even now, with his balls practically drained dry, he didn’t want to leave the haven of her body. He dropped a kiss on her neck as he moved, a small loving touch he couldn’t help.

  “Take your time. I’ll make coffee,” he told her and stepped from the shower cubicle. It was the work of a moment to towel off and pull on a pair of jeans to cover his nakedness as he walked through to the kitchen.

  The scent of someone else in the kitchen made his lips curl back from his teeth in a low, dangerous snarl. He’d been so wrapped up in Baby he hadn’t felt anyone enter the apartment. After the attack in the alley last night, that was an unforgivable lapse. Calling power to up under his skin, he made his runes flare, claws out as he stepped into the small kitchen.

  Right into the disapproving glare of Baby’s guardian and champion, Chase.

  The female dragon looked over the rim of her coffee mug. Even though she was much smaller than he was, she somehow managed to look down her nose at him anyway. He sighed. He and Chase went way back. They’d both “served” a megalomaniac determined to become the most powerful sorcerer in the world… by stealing Baby’s power. Sure, she’d been under a spell and he’d been undercover, but… old wounds.

  “I have no clue what she sees in you, demon,” she said, putting the mug down on the counter with a precise, controlled movement. “But if you hurt her, I will hunt you down and roast you alive. And I don’t care if I have to go down into the pits of hell to do it. Been there before. I’m more than happy to do it again.”

  He blinked at that nugget of information. “You’ve been into the pits? When? Why? How?”

  She arched an eyebrow, reaching into a pastry box on the counter next to her. The company name on the top was the same as the one on her coffee mug. It was the one just down the street, and the large box with two cardboard mugs said this was a morning ritual.

  “Compared to me, you are a mere child,” the dragon woman told him. “I remember a time when shadows and demons were allies. Before your king screwed us over and left us at the mercy of the other races.”

  He kept his face neutral. Demons were extremely long-lived but he’d had no idea that they’d had an alliance with the shadow-dragons. Hells, up until meeting Chase and Baby, he never even knew they existed. Everyone had assumed the shadow-dragon brothers, Baron and Duke, were a genetic anomaly.

  “Bullshit. There’s never been an alliance between hell and any of the up-top races,” he replied, walking across the kitchen to put the coffeepot on. He ignored the disposable mug next to Chase with Baby’s name on it. Prince of hell he might be, but even he wasn’t stupid enough to mess with a woman’s coffee in the morning. Particularly when he’d kept her up all night.

  Chase snorted. “Yeah, and how much of hell’s history does a half-pixie like you know?”

  He shrugged as he piled coffee into the filter and filled the pot with water. “My father wou
ld have told me.”

  Okay, so that was a total lie. Lakai would lie through his teeth about anything, even his own parentage, if he thought it would give him an edge. The only reason Rat knew he was a half-pixie was the fucking awful color of his hair. That and he’d been brought up in a pixie barrow before his demonic abilities had begun to surface.

  “Your father?” He heard the raised eyebrow even with his back to her. “Lakai is just as much a liar as his father before him. Telosa was a two-faced bastard and an oath-breaker. We were hunted to extinction because he refused to back us as he promised.”

  Ohhhh… Rat’s eyes widened as he lifted the mug to his lips, a reaction he managed to get under control as he turned around to face Chase. “Telosa was the reason you and Baby slept for so long?”

  Chase nodded curtly. “Ultimately, yes. The politics back then were very different. Other dragon species were evolving and threatening our territories. Without the backup of the demons, we couldn’t stand against so many. So Queen Megaris made the decision that her only daughter, her heir, should sleep in the earth until the threat was passed.” She looked down. “None of us expected that sleep to be so long.”

  Rat nodded, taking a sip of coffee. It slid over tongue in a scalding, bitter rush, the caffeine hitting just what he needed. He couldn’t find it in himself to be sorry that Baby had slept for so long. If she hadn’t, he would never have met her. But at the same time, a pang of sorrow filled him that she’d missed her childhood and growing up with a mother’s love.

  Their children would not miss out, a little voice in the back of his head informed him. Baby would be an excellent mother, protecting their children like the mama dragon she was.

  Before the shock of the thought could filter through, all his senses went on high alert.

  “Someone’s in the apartment,” he told Chase, dropping his mug in the sink with a clatter.

  He raced for the door into the rest of the apartment, the dragon hot on his heels. With every second that passed, his fear grew. There wasn’t just someone in the apartment with them… with Baby… there were demons in there. He felt their power prickling against his own, like a wet, odorous burn that was festering.

  A roar of challenge ripped from his throat as he threw open the door to Baby’s bedroom, where his instincts told him she was.

  It was empty, a sulfurous gust of wind whipping the drapes into a frenzy and a pop telling him that the portal they’d used to snatch her had just closed. With a growl, he strode forward. His skin was demon-red and all his runes flared as he shoved his hands out, reaching for the edges of the portal to rip it open and follow them.

  But he couldn’t find it. The space beyond the air where he should have been able to feel the portal was smooth and glassy. His eyes widened.

  Hell was closed to him.

  * * *

  Hell was closed to him. Him… a prince of hell.

  For a moment Rat stood in the middle of the room, stunned. How could hell be closed to him? He wasn’t just any prince of hell. Oh no, not at all. Anyone could be granted the title of prince of hell through the king’s whim or through hard work. Currently there were seventeen demon princes, two hellhounds and at least one human woman with the title. He wasn’t quite sure how a human woman had gained the rank of prince of hell, but he wasn’t about to argue with his father’s sometimes erratic appointments.

  But he wasn’t just any prince of hell. He was a prince of the royal bloodline. The amount of power required to close hell to him… was mind blowing.

  “Where is she?” Chase demanded, the scent of the dragon champion’s fury filling the small room.

  He didn’t answer immediately, his gaze locked onto the rumpled bed they’d spent the night in. The scent of lust and sex still hung on the air—an irresistible perfume to his demon senses.

  “Oi! Demon! Are you listening to me?” A hard shove against his shoulder should have sent him sprawling had he been a lesser creature. Instead, he absorbed the force and whirled around in anger.

  “I don’t know,” he shot back, his eyes maxed out with his demon and his runes flaring to life across his skin. “I can’t open the gate, okay?”

  Chase didn’t back down at the evidence of his demon nature but, by the sound of it, she was more than familiar with his kind. Her eyes were filled with her dragon. Being looked at by the two of them at the same time was a little disconcerting.

  “What do you mean you can’t open the gate?” Chase demanded. “Is your demon magic broken or something?”

  He snarled, lifting his arms as he called power. The windows rattled in their panes, the drapes whipping up into a frenzy again as all the doors in the apartment slammed shut in one go.

  “Not broken.” His voice was tight and controlled. Way too deep for anything even remotely mortal, it held all the sounds of a nightmare in the rough tones; the rapid beat of a terrified heart, the agony of a mother who’d lost her child, the dying screams of a thousand men on the battlefield. “Blocked. Hell’s gates have been closed to me.”

  Chase blinked, surprise flowing over her features. “Is that even possible?”

  “Apparently so,” Rat shrugged, striding across the room to recover his jacket, and from the pocket, his cell. Thumbing it on, he scrolled through his contacts.

  “For scales’ sake,” Chase snapped, pacing the room. “Is this really the time to update your social media?”

  He just glared at her as he picked a number and lifted the phone to his ear.

  “Ris?” he asked as the call was picked up.

  “Alley just off Twenty-Seventh and Third,” the familiar voice of the seer answered. “You’re looking for a second-level demon, possibly masquerading as a bag lady or a rough sleeper. I can’t get a fix on which.”

  Rat nodded, not at all fazed by the seer’s abrupt manner. The head of the PPA’s Temporal Crimes Prevention Unit, Ris was the most powerful seer they had… and the most sane. While he often slipped into the past or the future, he could usually drag himself back into the present when spoken to. Rat highly suspected he was more than he seemed, but he’d never had enough information to make it worth going down that particular rabbit hole.

  “Thank you. I owe you one, man.”

  “You actually owe me several, but who’s keeping count, Your Majesty?” Ris sniggered but before Rat could reply, the seer cut the call.

  “Well?” Chase, who had mercifully been silent through the call, demanded.

  “The gates of hell are closed but that doesn’t mean we can’t get in.” He offered a quick smile that had nothing to do with amusement. “There are back ways into anywhere. You just need to know where to look.”

  Chapter 8

  It took them less than half an hour to make it across town. Before the cubicle crowd had made it to their desks with their triple expressos or other caffeine-laced beverages in hand, they were crouched in an alley opposite Twenty-Seventh and Third.

  “Why couldn’t we have flown?” Chase groused, crouched beside the dumpster next to him. “We’d have been here in half the time.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Yeah, and alerted half the demon population of the city. Do that and we might as well take out a billboard in central square.”

  She rumbled in the back of her throat, the meagre mid-morning shadows around them writhing and coiling in response to her agitation. He noted the reaction. The ability to control smoke and shadows was a demon ability. It was interesting that a race of dragons had evolved something similar. Perhaps there had been some demonic influence way back when… which would make sense if the two races had once had an alliance, as Chase had claimed. He’d have to look into it when he had more time—not when he was trying to break into hell and rescue the woman he loved.

  The thought froze him in place.

  He loved Baby. With every fiber of his being. Even down to the core of the soul no one was sure demons actually had. He wasn’t going to argue on that point. All he knew was that Baby was it for him.

>   “And the instant we do that… every single demon in the city goes into hiding and we’ll never find a portal keeper,” he continued, keeping a sharp eye on the alley opposite. Demons liked shadows and dark places. It was just part of their nature.

  There was the usual comings and goings on the street. Shoppers headed into the city’s malls or back home, students and sightseers shared sidewalk space with cyclists and the odd dog-walker.

  His instincts went on high alert when he spotted a little old lady shuffling along further down the road. The crowds flowed past her as though she was invisible. And she might as well have been invisible to them. Dressed in the grubby, ragged clothing of the homeless, she pushed a shopping cart piled with her meagre belongings, a small dog tucked into the seat near the handles.

  “We’re on.”

  He nodded toward the woman as she turned into the alley.

  Chase took a breath and frowned. “Her? Can’t be. She’s human.”

  Rat chuckled, the sound of amusement echoing back at them from the brickwork of the alley walls, and slid out of cover.

  “That’s what she wants you to think. Lower-level demons aren’t that powerful, so they have to hide in plain sight.”

  She looked unconvinced as they ran across the road, a wave of Rat’s hand concealing the two from the human drivers as they wove between the vehicles. They burst into the alley, only to find it empty.

  “Where the hell did she go?” Chase rocked on her heels, half turning to make sure the woman hadn’t somehow managed to sneak behind them. “She can’t have just disappeared. She was—”

  “Not human. Which part of that didn’t you get?” Blinking to alter his vision to demonic, Rat shoved a hand out to his left suddenly. It closed around an unseen throat and he yanked the demon back into view.

  “Let me go!” it squealed, kicking and struggling against his hold. “I got rights, you know! You can’t do this!”