B00CGOH3US EBOK (46 page)

She began a slow, tortuous exploration of the tender flesh behind his ear. Baelin's entire body tensed and he sucked in air as she nibbled her way down his neck to his collarbone.

"I will do my best to restrain the urges of my inner beast."

"Oh, your inner beast can 'urge' all it wants." She rubbed herself slowly up and down the hard length of his erection. "Just try to keep it under twenty thousand feet."

He rolled, pinning her beneath him. "As my lady wishes."

Then, true to his word, he kept her body physically on the ground, but still managed to take her soaring to the stars once again.

When they finally drifted back down to earth, Baelin built a roaring fire with the worm-eaten timbers that had once been part of his ancestral home. Content in the afterglow, he was reluctant to venture out for real firewood, and Jill was as reluctant to let him. Too soon they would have to leave the sanctuary of this place, but for now, both were content to stay in the illusion of the two lovers they'd become.

"I am sorry I cannot offer you more, my lady."

"Are you kidding? I have a castle with the biggest skylight in the world. I get to lay here, watching the stars twinkle in the sky. A girl can't ask for more than that—except maybe that it doesn't rain any time soon." Jill rested her head on his shoulder. "You know, where I come from, little girls dream about knights in shining armor coming to their rescue. Who'd have thought one day I'd be living out the real thing." She ran her hand over his body, her fingers caressing each ridge and muscle within reach. "A knight, I might add, who looks even better without all that clanking metal hiding this deliciously naked body of his. Why, I'd be the envy of all my friends back home."

To emphasize her point, she ran her tongue down his chest, raising gooseflesh in its wake. But instead of eliciting the groan of returning passion she expected, the taut stomach under her hand growled loudly in response.

"Hmm, sounds like the dragon is hungry." She rose up and playfully called out into the night, even though there was no one to hear her. "Attention. All juicy maidens in the vicinity please report immediately to Gosforth Castle to be eaten by the resident dragon."

Baelin chuckled and pulled her back down to him. "There is only one maiden this dragon has any desire to eat." His stomach growled once more, not appreciating the teasing talk of food. "Yet it does appear all this mating has made me quite ravenous."

"There you go, using that 'mating' word again. You make it sound like we're two jungle animals having wild monkey sex. I prefer the term 'making love', if you don't mind. It's much more refined."

"Forgive me. 'Tis the beast rearing its ugly head once again. The dragon mates…" With a wicked grin, he nipped at her breast.

"Ow!"

"…while the man makes love." He placed a gentle kiss over the spot where he'd just bitten her.

"Hmm." Jill stretched beneath him, relishing the pleasurable torment his wicked dragon tongue was inflicting on her taut nipple. "Mating with a dragon and making love with a man…since it appears I've done both at once and we haven't exactly been practicing safe sex, if I get pregnant, am I going to have a baby or lay eggs?"

Baelin stilled and his eyes flew to hers, alarm erasing the jovial look they held only seconds ago. What she'd meant as a joke he had obviously taken all too seriously.

"We should wed as soon as possible."

Way
too seriously.

"Hold on. Let's not jump the gun here. We don't know if I am pregnant. Besides, it's the wrong time of the month."

A quick calculation in her head to verify that detail threw Jill into a major panic. How stupid could she be? It was actually the prime time of the month, or pretty darn close to it. She just prayed she wouldn't be taking any little souvenirs back when she returned to her time.

"That is beside the point. I have lain with you three times as only a husband should."

"Well, technically, the second time we weren't lying, we were flying," she said, making her tone deliberately glib to hide her unease.

Baelin wasn't about to be swayed by any attempt at humor. "We shall marry as soon as we can find a priest to do the deed."

"Slow down, Baelin. That's really not necessary."

"But it is. I will not dishonor you that way." He paused, staring deep into her eyes. "Besides, once a dragon mates, he mates for life."

"Stop referring to yourself as a goddamn dragon. You're not. You're a man. And in my experience, most men are not innately monogamous."

"This one is."

She looked into his eyes and knew he was deadly serious. Where the idea of a man like him loving her, being faithful to her for the rest of her life should have thrilled her, instead it felt like a weight around her neck. Boy, did their timing suck.

"Look, I know what you're offering and I'm truly honored. In another time, another place, I'd…Oh Baelin, I'm afraid marriage just isn't in the stars for us."

His jaw tensed and he rolled off her onto his back, turning his gaze up toward the real stars hanging overhead in the dark, black sky.

"Why? Because I am part dragon? You do not wish to tie yourself to someone who is only a man for one month out of each year?"

"There you go, bringing up the dragon thing again. Of course it's not that." Jill sat up and cupped his check in her palm, willing him to understand. "But think about it. When we break this curse, I will probably go back to my time. I don't want you to feel tied to me if I'm not going to be here. You need to be free to live a normal life, get married to a woman of your own time, and live the happily ever after you deserve."

He turned his blazing eyes to her, hurt and denial glistening within them.

"I do not want another woman. I want you."

Jill lay back down, resting her head against the starburst scar on his chest. "Baelin, let's not make promises neither of us may be able to keep, because no matter how much both of us want it, I may not be here to keep my promise to you."

The truth of her words broke her heart as surely as it was breaking the one beating strong and steady beneath her cheek.

He lay naked on the hard stone floor, no longer shackled upright to the wall. But he was chained, nonetheless.

A metal collar encircled his neck and heavy iron links bound him to the wall, kept like a hound in the kennel.

He heard her enter the cell, but he did not open his eyes. He did not have the strength to do so. He knew she stood just out of reach, the chain allowing him to move a foot or so, no more. Not that he could hurt her now. He was too weak, his body broken.

"Baelin. I tire of this game you play. It is time to decide."

He refused to answer her, for it was always the same.

"Do not force me to take the choice from you."

What did it matter? She'd taken everything else. Osmund. His men. His dignity. The only thing she could not take from him was his honor, and that he would die to protect.

She hissed, and he imagined her violet eyes flashing with indignation. "Very well. Uhtred, come."

In the beginning, she'd had her guards accompany her, and watched as they did her dirty work. Once he was too weak to fight, she came alone to taunt and torture him. This was the first time she'd brought another with her in weeks. But he did not care. Not anymore.

A heavy scrape whispered across the floor, so different from the footfall he was expecting. But he did not look up.

The void of the chamber diminished as a large presence filled the room. Still, he did not look up.

A deep growl rumbled off the walls, the eerily familiar sound vibrating through his bones. He opened his eyes then, and gasped at the sight.

The Dark Witch had summoned a dragon into the chamber.

Was this to be his end, then? Since he would not give in to her, she would feed him to one of her dragons? Somehow, he was not surprised.

"If you will not bend your will to mine, I have no choice but to make you that which I can control."

She reached out and plunged her hand into his chest, the searing pain tearing through his body. He wanted to scream from the agony, but no sound would come. She ripped his heart from his chest and he stared, disbelieving, at the bloody mass still pulsing within her grasp.

Baelin bolted up, his breathing shallow and rapid, his muscles tense and quaking. He clutched at his chest. There was no blood, no gaping hole in his flesh. But the pain was there, still slashing through him, crushing in its intensity.

Once his vision adjusted to the dim light of his surroundings, he remembered where he was. His parents' antechamber.

And who he was with. Jill.

He looked down at the woman sleeping peaceful at his side, oblivious to the war raging within him. He rested his elbows on his raised knees and tunneled his fingers through his hair.

How was it he could resist the Dark Witch for so long and not Jill for little more than a score of days?

But he knew the answer.

He loved her.

And that had proved his undoing.

He eased back down on his side and looked at her beautiful face, reaching out his hand to trace the delicate line of her cheek, his callused fingers not quite touching her skin so as not to wake her.

Each time he recalled how she felt in his arms, and remembered that sweet glimpse of heaven, his body hummed with the memory. Now that he knew her completely, how would he ever be able to let her go?

But as she'd so bluntly put it last night, he might have to.

He rose, careful not to disturb her slumber, and went to stand in the open break in the back wall. He watched the sun rise over the barren fields that had once been his domain, the day dawning anew before them. What had seemed so fresh and promising only hours before now heralded what little time they had left.

Two days. Two days to pass the last two challenges and find a way to do it without sending Jill back to her time.

In all his years of solitude, he'd never felt so alone as he did right now, even though the woman he loved slept not an arm's length away from him. Never had he been so close to another and yet been farther away. It was as if the centuries threatening to separate them already stood between them, vast and untraversable. Would that he could bind her to him with more than a vow. But if she was right, it would take more than words to hold her in this world.

Baelin wanted to howl in frustration, to call down the power of the dragon and the battle skills of the knight to keep her here. Time was his enemy, an invisible foe with no form, no mass, yet waging war on him just the same. But he could not fight what he could not see, or even begin to understand.

But there was one thing he did understand. Jill was his heart. And wherever she was, here or in her time, it would be so from now on.

He dared a glance at the beautiful woman sleeping behind him before returning his gaze to the brilliant sunrise. For the first time in over two centuries, he did not want to break the curse. Not if it meant losing her.

She was wrong. She had to be wrong. Fate would not be so cruel to bring her eight hundred years across time only to tear her away from him in the end.

But the truth of her words hung over him as the day dawned anew. For if the curse was broken, he would be a man whole but alone once more, because the woman he loved would go where even a dragon could not follow.

Baelin stopped so suddenly, Jill walked several steps passed him before she stopped herself.

"What is it?"

She watched him breathe in the air, his nostrils flaring like a hound on the scent. "We have entered another dragon's territory."

Jill sniffed at the air herself, not that she'd be able to detect anything unless it registered on the ammonia or gasoline scale. But that didn't matter. If Baelin said he scented another dragon, she believed him.

"Is it a dragon dragon or a human dragon?"

"That, I do not know."