Page 24 of Storm of Blood and Shadow

“Relief?”

“Satisfaction. Pleasure.” When I tilt my head, confused, she sighs. “Do you want me to get you off?”

“I don’t understand.”

“God, you poor thing.” She laughs a little, as if my lack of understanding pleases her. Her body relaxes, the angles of her shoulders and limbs softening. “I suppose I’ll have to teach you what’s possible. But then you must promise to do something for me.”

“I can’t let you go.”

“That’s not what I’m asking,” she says. “My request is simple. Having so many dragons around the women’s cavern is distressing for them. Post a single guard over us if you must, but tell the other dragons to keep their distance during the day. Allow us to have some time there alone, in peace.”

As she said, it’s a simple, reasonable request. “Very well.”

“Thank you.” Her eyes catch the light of the dyre-stones as she walks toward me, her steps light and measured, yetpurposeful… and I realize that in this moment, I am not the predator. She is.

My skin tightens beneath my scales as she comes to me, naked, and steps between my front legs. Defensive fear lurches in my gut, and I fight the instinct to snap her up between my jaws and throw her out of my cave, as if she’s actually a threat to me. As if I couldn’t annihilate her with a single void orb.

The fear spiking in my chest is as primal as it gets—fear of the unknown. Fear of an experience I don’t understand and cannot control. Fear of finally receiving what I crave, and finding it a disappointment. Fear of losing what I can’t get back. The fears lash around my mind, my body, and my instincts, like the tongues of the voratrice that devoured my mother.

I lost her because I was a fool, because I couldn’t control myself, because I was terrified of my own power, because—

“Varex.” Jessiva speaks my name firmly, and I realize I’m trembling.

“You deserve a better dragon.” I force the words out through my teeth. “One who isn’t broken.”

“Want to know a secret?” She looks up at me, then places her hand on my chest. “I’m broken too.”

8

When I was with Lord Neran, I placed a barrier in my mind, created separation between the character I played for him and my true self—between my body’s actions and my aching soul.

With the dragon, I don’t create that separation—not within myself, or between us. The only barrier that exists tonight lies between us and rest of the world, dividing the dream we share from reality.

Within his cave, I am stripped bare, utterly revealed as the weary, needy, lonely, rejected wretch that I am, abandoned by the Queen who once praised me, forgotten by the suitors whocourted me, treated as a coin purse by my family, emptied of everything that used to beme.

The last thing I expected was to rediscover a part of myself here, on this island. And yet, when I danced by the fire tonight, I felt thejoyof dancing again. I sank into the movement, the music. I screamed through the lines of my body, sang with my steps, and spun the tale of my anguish and uncertainty with every pirouette.

He understood me. I saw it in his eyes, reptilian though they are, fiery and unfamiliar—he saw me, just like he did on the rooftop.

I press my body against him, not allowing myself to think of the differences—the huge muscles cloaked in smooth scales, the splayed forefeet and arched claws, the towering neck and immense jaws. I think only of pain and desire, two things we have in common.

His giant cock is pinned between my body and the scales of his belly. He’s panting heavily, entranced by the sensation of my bare skin against his sensitive length.

I could hurt him, here, where he isn’t shielded by scales. There’s a shard of rock not far away, with enough of an edge to do damage. And maybe I will grow so desperate that I decide to hurt him, after all. But not now.

Not until I’ve tried a new kind of persuasion and satisfied the urge we both feel.

Slipping both arms around his shaft is like hugging a slender tree clad in smooth skin instead of bark. I sink low, then rise, gliding my whole body against his length.

The dragon shudders and groans. “This isn’t right,” he says raggedly. “The mating season is the only time I’m supposed to feel like this.”

“Shall I stop touching you?” My voice is fractured, throaty, heavy with lust.

He lowers his muzzle and touches the top of my head, his warm breath stirring my hair and ghosting along my back. “Never stop.”

The song the other women played by the fire circles through my mind as I stroke the dragon, and before I know it I’m dancing with his cock—arching against it, sliding down it, hooking one leg around it so I can feel the heated thrum of his arousal against my clit.

He dips his head, nuzzling my shoulders and my back. When I lace both arms around his cock and arch backward, his tongue slips from between his jaws and slithers over my breasts, wet and warm. A gasp escapes me, and he pulls back; but when I say “Again,” breathlessly, he hums with pleased approval and bathes my breasts with his tongue once more.

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