Dragon Fall: Masters of the Flame 3 (Mating Fever) (9 page)

“No,” he echoed her, “you really don’t.”

She reared back to stare up at him.

Though his hand didn’t leave her ass, his jaw was clenched in denial. “I said I wouldn’t hurt you, wouldn’t frighten you,” he rasped. “I can’t…can’t say the same for the dragon.”

“The dragon
is
you.” Wasn’t it?

“It…has battles I can’t always fight.”

“The petralys.” She took his hand and held it between her breasts. “Is it worse?”

He inclined his head, but she sensed he was only half agreeing. “I am not free to pursue my own wants.”

He was a dragon prince, but even he wasn’t free.

She raised his hand to kiss his clenched knuckles. “I am free, though,” she said. “And easy. Maybe just for today, so you better jump on this chance.”

His lips quirked as he looked at her. “Jump you?”

“Unless you want to say no again…”

He whirled her away from the elevator and pressed her up against one of the columns. She didn’t know much about caves, but she knew the rock formations grew from water slowly depositing droplets of stone over aeons, and the dry formations were technically dead. But though the column where she braced herself with her palms flattened behind her didn’t feel dead. The stone was hard, smooth, impervious…but glimmering with the hidden lights of the gemstones.

Like Bale.

She wrenched up her skirt and gasped at the cool caress of stone on her bare skin. He made a noise too—more of a cursing groan—when he realized she had no panties. Ha, she was getting better at this.

She guided his hand to her mound, letting him feel the wetness gathering there. Whatever with the stone columns,
she
was very much alive. Her body vibrated with the promise of pleasure, and the fog that had lingered in her mind even after the alchemical intrusions had stopped was finally burning away. Vanquished by Bale’s touch.

“Yes,” she murmured. “Oh yes.”

He eased his middle finger into her body, squeezing the outer folds gently while he pressed the base of his thumb to her clit so that all the wild tangle of nerves down there fired at once, sending sparklers as bright as the burning gemstones across her skin. Writhing on his hand, she wrapped her fingers in the laces at his throat.

“Esme,” he groaned.

She tugged, pulling him down for a fierce kiss, her mouth slanting over his as he’d shown her, twining their tongues tighter even as she loosened the cords.

The braziers and the jewels around them flared brighter, as if linked to his tortured breath. She kissed the corner of his mouth and then the banging pulse at the corner of his jaw.

She unraveled the laces and let the sides of the shirt gap across his chest.

Scales. Hard as the stone and edged like the faceted gems.

His finger inside her crooked. “Esme…”

She whimpered and clenched her thighs around his hand. “Oh yes.”

“No,” he countered. “Don’t look.”

“Not looking,” she gasped. “Just feeling.”

It was a lie. He must know that, but she did have his hand trapped in her crotch so it wasn’t like he was going anywhere. She flayed open the shirt and dipped her head.

He tried to lean back. “It’ll cut you,” he warned.

“So will not knowing,” she said.

He paused, no longer resisting.

“Anyway, I’m tough,” she said. That last part was a lie, but it felt like some reflection of the truth.

Just like the scales were a piece of him, unwanted and defensive in this shape, but still part of him. She touched her lips to the stiffened flesh.

Silky smooth, almost hot, and though it was hard, she knew he must feel something through the scales because he shuddered at the caress. She ached, not just at the sweet torment of his stroking between her legs, but at the thought of him trapped between forms, unsound in a way that meant he could never be seen by human eyes.

Except hers.

His hand was in her most intimate place, but he was the one truly letting her in.

Gently, she traced the rim of one scale with the tip of her tongue. Though he held himself stone-still, all his muscles tensed under her fingertips, his chest heaved as if he couldn’t catch his breath.

Her own heart slam-danced behind her ribs, and she reveled in the evidence of how she affected him. It wasn’t just her vaunted virginity adding some special sauce to her desirability—he was responding to
her
, her touch, her sighs.

The scale
was
sharp and just very slightly serrated. The tang of blood flooded her senses, along with that other taste of something darker and more dangerous.

She’d thought it was from him, his failing ichor. But it wasn’t.

It was something in her.

Her budding delight in her sensual power faltered. What if she wasn’t just
doing
it wrong, what if
she
was
wrong? What if something was twisted in her from her time under Ashcraft’s spells?

No wonder Bale didn’t want to show her what he’d become. She almost couldn’t bear to let him see the same in her.

Maybe she was wrong about how this worked, but she’d told herself not to be afraid, and he’d promised not to hurt her.

She straightened to kiss him, distracting him with the curl of her tongue while she unfastened the cape from his shoulders.

He tensed, and he’d already been so frozen she thought he might crack.

“I warned you,” he rasped.

The cape fell from her hands, and the loosened shirt slithered down his chest, revealing more of the scales down his left side.

And his crippled wing unfurled.

Chapter 9

The dragon in him roared its outrage that he’d revealed the ugly weakness of the defiled limb. Half arm, half wing, utterly useless. His skin crawled as she looked at him, the weight of her gaze stinging like flung stones even on the toughened parts of his hide.

“Oh, Bale…”

Worse than pain? Pity. He half turned away from her, hiding the sight of his disfigurement. The bones and ligaments of the wing didn’t fold right, and since she’d already seen it, he let the awkward limb sag like a shattered kite.

A light brush against his other shoulder scalded him with shame, and he flinched away.

“Don’t,” she scolded. “I already told you I know what you are.”

“Dragon lord, you claimed,” he said bitterly. “But I’m not. Not since the stone blight.”

“Does it hurt?” she whispered.

“Always. For centuries. I should be used to it.”

Her hand traced down his spine, following the outline of scales where he knew they wrapped around his ribs.

She sucked in a little breath, and he knew she’d cut herself again. He’d tasted the blood on her tongue before.

He spun and grabbed her wrist, glaring at her.

She gazed back with deep, dark eyes. Slowly, she lifted her hand to touch his cheek. He smelled the blood and the musky sweetness of her juices on his palm. Swaying, he closed his eyes, seduced by the essence of her.

“What have I done?” he murmured. “I told you I wouldn’t hurt you.”

“But you said the dragon might, so I knew the risk.” She touched his lip, and he couldn’t stop himself from flicking his tongue over the razor-thin cut on her fingertip. So sweet and dark, so wild.

“You don’t, really,” he said. “With the stone blight destroying my ichor, I have less and less control over the dragon. One day soon, it will go cold and dark and deadly. I could bring the entire Keep, the whole Nox Incendi clan down with me before I die. I’m a threat to everything I’ve sworn to protect.”

“And you’re crushed under all that responsibility. So much for the stories that say dragons only care about treasure and sacrificial virgins.”

Her voice was somber, but for some reason her seriousness took the edge off his anger and regret. “Dragons like lusty wenches too.” He tilted his head into the cradle of her palm. “All the stories are wrong. Everything I wanted to do for the Nox Incendi has gone wrong. This world doesn’t have a place for us, and soon we’ll be nothing more than dust in this desert.”

“No.” She curled her hand back behind his neck, bringing his head down to hers to rest her forehead against his. “You made this Keep. You might live in secret, but you live.”

“Not for much longer,” he confessed. “I feel the petralys weighing me down, until my heart can scarcely beat under the burden. I am a shadow of what I was,
who
I was.”

“And I’m a ghost,” she murmured. “No wonder you make me feel safe and protected.” Her breathy voice dropped even lower. “You don’t have to be anything more than what you are with me, Bale.”

Not dragon or man, but some ugly, deadly fusion of the two. Not lord. But lover.

With a groan, he stripped her clothes from her with a single swipe of his dragon’s talon. The white fabric fluttered away, fragile as moth wings, and she arched gracefully against the stone. Gleaming jewel tones and firelight turned her pale skin to art more rare and precious than any ancient cathedral window. But it was in her unblinking obsidian eyes that he saw himself, reflected back dark and broken.

And still somehow beautiful.

He wrapped his withered wing behind her, shielding her from the stone and drawing her closer. She leaned into the tough membrane, and though he hadn’t used that arm in too long, he knew he’d rather cut it off completely than drop her.

Within the curtain of his wing, she sank to her knees at his feet. Her hands went to the fly of his trousers.

“Esme…” Desire strangled the rest of the words.

She gazed up at him through half-lowered lashes up. “Is this wrong?”

“By all the stars, no.”

Her fingers curled over the top band, tickling his belly. “No meaning I should stop?”

“Never.”

Her smile was secretive and just a little wicked. “Never ever?”

He threaded his fingers through the blond silk of her hair and tilted her head back. “You are playing with fire,” he whispered.

Her dark eyes sparked. “Promise?”

“With all that is left of my heart.”

Delicately, she undid the buttons. Indelicately, his cock surged out to meet her.

There’d been a time when he’d wished that part of him would turn to stone, to spare him the longings he could no longer fulfill with unsuspecting human women. After a few decades serviced only by his own hand, the urges had died out. Victim of the petralys, he’d thought with reluctant gratitude.

Now he realized the desire had only been hidden, waiting.

For her.

He growled out a curse as she stroked one hand over the thatch of curls at his groin. She made a softer sound, less curse, more invocation, and his cock thickened another impossible degree, yearning toward her.

She tilted her head to meet it, and he felt the susurration of her breath a moment before her tongue darted out to taste him.

Even stone would’ve been hard pressed not to react to that shy caress, but he held himself utterly still as she traced the flared head. Only his thigh muscles quivered when she worked down to the pulsing veins. His knees wavered when she moaned, sending a vibration through him. Her tongue swirled around his shaft in a slick, lascivious embrace, and then he could stand no more.

He hauled her to her feet and thrust her up against the column.

She wrapped one leg behind his calf, her thighs spreading to release the perfume of her arousal.

He growled low in his throat as he positioned himself at her opening.

She flung one arm behind his neck. “What happened to never stop?”

“It was an eternity.”

She angled her hips and he impaled her in one slow stroke, plunging up into her hot, wet core. Her tender cry speared him in return, striking deep into his heart.

He hadn’t meant to let her this close, not again, not when the dragon wanted her for more than a fuck. But she knew her own desires with a pure instinct and predatory intensity he could only admire. And fall before.

Midway into each thrust, she met him early, the rhythm speeding like their matched heartbeats, swapping breaths as they reached for the same peak. But he raced to lose, ignoring the sparks that flew from his gritted teeth each time she milked his aching flesh. She threw her head back, a keening cry tearing from her lips, and he felt her inner muscles clamp around him. He slowed, holding her on the edge of release while she thrashed her head, her hair flying out to either side in a veil that turned the blazing gemstones to miniature novas.

He pumped into her once more and seized with his own orgasm just as she flew, both arms wrapped around his neck, her pelvis grinding on his. His cock pulsed, and her eyes flew open at the tingling waves that washed over and through them.

His breath stopped at the sensation, grown unfamiliar after so long. Though he’d sworn to himself he wouldn’t drop her, he lowered her to her feet more quickly than he’d intended.

Only hesitantly did she unwind her leg from behind him, and her knees wavered.

He held her up in the cradle of his deformed wing while he eased himself out of her body. He knew he was being perfunctory, but he had to see.

See the glimmer of iridescence on his cock and smeared between her thighs.

Ichor. Running freely in his veins.

And elsewhere, apparently.

His dragon, seeking to claim her.

She followed his gaze. “Bale, are you okay? Is everything all right?”

She had no idea…

But how could she, when he was dumbfounded himself. “I…don’t know.”

She clutched his shoulder. The one that was half wing. And she didn’t seem to mind his warped body or the deadly scales so close to her delicate skin. And she wasn’t even thinking of herself; she was thinking of him. “What’s wrong? You’re scaring me.”

Did he look that bad? He reached down between their bodies and touched the shining essence. Not blood or semen, even more vital. “Dragon ichor.”

Her gaze flashed from his fingers upward, her cheeks pallid. “Oh god. Did I hurt you? Did I… I didn’t steal the last of your ichor, did I?”

He laughed in disbelief at what had happened. “Steal it? No. You reignited it.”

She pulled back a little to stare at him. “You made it seem like you… I thought you were in danger of…”