Page 46 of Consorting with Dragons

He had such a beautiful typpid, long and hard, with a broad mushroom head and I urged him to bury it inside me. I twisted onto my back and reached for his balls to squeeze them, but he pushed my hand away. I laughed and began to hump him, wanting more friction, more touch, more everything. I was leaving trails of come on his tight stomach and he reached for my typpid to hold me in his hand.

It felt wonderful to have all of his weight on top of me, while he sucked at my skin and bit my shoulder, and I bucked my hips under him again and again, wanting more. More pleasure, more passion, more feeling, more everything.

“Mine,” he murmured in my ear, and I knew he was saying it for both of us, to reassure both of us and re-establish his claim on me. I was fully onboard with that as far as sex was concerned. I tried again to surge up to embrace him and pull him backdown, and though he allowed it, he made murmuring sounds to me to shush me and soothe me, like I was one of the dragons.

I strained against him and cried out so loudly I was afraid some of the servants might come in to investigate. I began spurting hot ejaculate onto my stomach and chest, and I couldn’t seem to stop. I wanted him to come inside me. I arched against him, as he thrust against me at the same time and then suddenly, he groaned loudly and collapsed over me, panting for breath. I could feel his hot come shooting deep inside me.

He was heavy, but I never wanted him to move. Not ever. I wanted to stay this way, with him buried deep inside me like this, because I needed this connection to him. I was drowsy and half asleep, but I still wanted more. I wanted him to stay and talk to me—fight with me if he had to, but figure this thing out between us, because I didn’t want him to leave and go back to the mountain camp with us so at odds. But he lay beside me for only a few minutes, panting for breath, and then he sat up, scrubbing his face with his hands, like he was coming back to himself.

I put a hand on his back. “No, don’t get up. Stay and talk to me!”

“No,” he said, getting back to his feet. “I hate this. I can’t control my feelings for you, and you use it against me.” He turned to look down at me, still deadly cold. I could practically see him building his defensive walls against me.

“I don’t use it against you. What are you talking about? I thought we were making love.”

“No, you were deliberately baiting me to make love to you. Walking around naked like a-a…”

“Oh wait, I know this one. Like a whore, right? And what is it that you hate so much? Making love to me? Or are you embarrassed to be with someone like me? Someone foreign and strange.”

“No, and you know that’s not what I meant. I hate being so out of control and unable to resist you. Iwillconquer this. I have to.”

I wondered if he’d forgotten for a moment that he was talking out loud, and if he knew that each word he spoke was like a dagger to my heart. Conquer it? He wanted to conquer what? His love for me? His attraction to me? His need to be with me?

Pain surged inside me as surely as if he truly had just sunk a knife into my chest. He wanted to resist me, huh? Well, maybe I could help him with that by putting some distance and space between us. Quite literally. I made up my mind in that instant not to be there when he decided to return. I stayed quiet, which for me, really wasn’t easy. I turned away from him, hoping he’d think I’d gone back to sleep. After a while, he began to get dressed. I heard him go to the door and hesitate.

“Rylan?” he called. His voice was soft, but I still thought it sounded unfriendly and cold. I never moved or even glanced over my shoulder at him. Then I heard the bedroom door shut behind him and he was gone. I continued to lie there, too heartsick to move, like I knew I had to do eventually. I had no choice but to find a way to go on. I didn’t actually want to be with someone who didn’t want to be with me, no matter what my stupid heart was telling me. I couldn’t think of anything that could possibly be any worse. I began to make plans to leave him.

Arguments are funny things, though. During one, people will almost say anything they can to hurt the other person and thereby win the fight. Terrible things they don’t even mean or only mean at the time they say them. Arguments and words can be destructive, because even if the words aren’t really true, they make the person they’re aimed at love you just a little less than they loved you before. Blake had told me of an ancient torture called “death by a thousand cuts.” I knew exactly what that meant now.

Meanwhile, it left me feeling so hurt and angry that I wanted to strike back at him. To wound him even more than I was wounded—this person that I claimed to love.

As the minutes passed by, and I really thought things through, I knew I didn’t want to go away from him. I still loved him more than I thought possible. But that would change unless we did something to stop this. I had so many big feelings inside me that I didn’t know what to do with them. I had tried to stuff them away deep inside, but they didn’t fit anymore. They were bursting out of me now and destroying me little by little.

Maybe I should just go home for a while and think things over. I loved him, but I couldn’t stand the idea of one day hating him. And if we kept on this way, I might. Maybe we could have some kind of long-distance relationship. It wasn’t ideal, but if we could keep our connection, then I wouldn’t have to stay at home like some housewife and slowly go insane. He might not even object. He wasn’t with me now, and I rarely saw him anyway.

Unable to keep going over and over it, I dressed in a hurry and took off outside, practically running to the enclosures to see Talon. He was so easy to love and always so glad to see me, no matter what, and I needed that just then. He stuck his head out through the bars of his gate inquiringly as he heard me running across the field. He was still munching on his first meal, and had fresh sheep’s blood smeared around his mouth and chest.

“Rylie!” he called out to me, clearly happy to see me. I knew from experience that later, he’d spend some time licking his paws and cleaning himself up just like an enormous cat, like the one Blake kept in the palace. He’d had Nilanium traders bring it to him when it was a kitten, and it had been hanging around the palace ever since, perching in windows, or basking in the sun or even sitting in Blake’s lap just to annoy Davos. My omak-ahn had that animal for a few years now and was talking aboutgetting a boy cat to breed it, but I thought that was probably just talk.

“I was eating after seeing Sulamon and the general off a few minutes ago,” Talon told me. “Are you sad that they left? The general seemed sad too. And mad. He said they had to go back to their camp, but I wish we could go too, don’t you? I could try to cheer him up.”

I managed to nod and smile, because I didn’t want him to see how upset I was. Of course he did anyway, because he was telepathic. He cuddled right up to me.

“Listen Talon, I was thinking of perhaps the two of us going on a little trip soon ourselves. To my home on Moravia. Would you like that? I just have to contact my parents, and they’d have to send a ship big enough to transport you. It would take a few days to do that, but I think I could get them to do it. Would you like to go to my old home with me? Back to where I used to live.”

“Yes, of course. I always want to go with you,” he said. “Do you want to go for a ride now, though? We could go to the lake, and you can lie in the sun. You like to do that, and maybe it will make you feel better. And I can swim and catch fish! You can talk more about the trip to me.”

I laughed a little at how happy the idea of a splash in the water made him, and maybe I needed something to distract me and take my mind off the terrible argument I’d just had with Quinn as well.

“I’ll go grab something to eat too, then. And maybe we’ll just stay for a little while. I don’t want to be stuck here all day by myself. Again.”

I ducked into the barn and told a couple of his handlers who were lounging around the door, probably listening to us, to get him cleaned up a bit and put his harness on, and that I’d be back in a few minutes. Then I went back to the house and quickly ate a little fruit and some fried bread the cook had made for me andasked her to pack me some food. I told her that I was going out and might be gone for most of the day.

By the time I got back to the enclosure, bringing my cloak and rain gear because of the puffy clouds that were around, the ones both Sulamon and Talon loved to fly through and get us wet, it was getting late, and I was anxious to be on the way. Quinn preferred it if one of the handlers went with me, but they were lazy and tried to get out of it when they could. It was just as well to me, because I liked to swim wearing only my breka or nothing at all, and I couldn’t do that if a handler went with me. Well, Icould, but Quinn would kill both of us.

I thought briefly about calling my grandparents to see if they might possibly still be in the area somewhere, but I told myself they were surely already nearing home by now. Besides, I really needed time to think about this and not just react out of pure anger—which I was still feeling. And as mad as I was, I didn’t want to stir Davos up. He was very perceptive at times, and he’d know if I was unhappy. Maybe I’d wait and see if Quinn called me that night as he usually did. He might apologize. Or he might call just to berate me some more. Either way, I hoped he’d call.

The truth was that I didn’t like being so at odds with him. I was aching a little in my chest, and I remembered my omak telling me that my uncle Anarr had pain in his stomach whenever my uncle Renard was angry at him. Horvathians prided themselves on not being quite the “animals” that Lycans were, as they never transformed into Lycan beasts. But maybe there were some vestiges of that beast inside them anyway, and it was now inside me courtesy of that bite Quinn had given me. I still had the marks of it on my neck. He’d told me when he’d done it that it meant we were mates for life. That there was no going back, and that he would never share me with anyone. I guess I’d thought then that it was mostly just sex talk. I guess I’d been wrong.

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