Dragons and Magic

by Blair Babylon

  His shirt loosened around his waist, and her fingers slipped against his bare skin.

  He arched at the shock of ice water splashing on glowing coals.

  The burning pain retreated.

  Math slipped his arms under her shirt and around her back, dragging her against him. He wound his leg between and around hers and trapped her under him.

  Her hands moved on his back, leaving trails of healed skin. “Math, what are you doing?”

  He pressed his mouth to her neck, inhaling the cold air that blew off the ice of her skin.

  “Oh.” Bethany’s body coiled more tightly around him. Her lips touched his temple, a wisp of cool air in the inferno, and she whispered, “You sure?”

  He clawed his shirt off of himself, trying to get closer to her. When the horrid cloth was off of him, he shoved her shirt up. His stomach contacted her skin, and he swore he could hear the sizzle of the fire leaving his flesh.

  Math covered her mouth with his, their lips and tongues tangling as he breathed her in.

  Fire still scalded his throat.

  He pulled Bethany’s clothes off of her, his hands careless and rough. Bethany squirmed in his grip, maybe helping him but certainly running her cool lips down his throat, a path of healing. In seconds, her clothes were off, and he was crushing her stomach against his chest, drawing her breasts into his mouth while she gasped, and then he moved lower.

  He heard her gasp, “Oh, wow. Dragons—”

  The sweetness of her soft flesh soothed his tongue, and her thighs cooled his shoulders and down his back. He burrowed into her with his tongue and lips, the relief in his mouth slowly releasing his mind. He grasped her hips with his hands, holding her down so he could slide through her folds with his tongue.

  Her fingers threaded into his hair, the relief of ice water on his scalp under a burning sun.

  Her body shook in his hands and throbbed under his tongue. Her fingers clutched his shoulders as she gasped, “Please, enough. Please.”

  Gods, he did love the sound of her pleading with him, even when most of his body was being consumed by fire.

  He crawled up her and settled himself between her legs, driving his tongue into her mouth and himself into her.

  Bethany gasped, clinging to him, and the fire was sucked back and deeper inside him.

  He moved in her slowly, dragging his skin across the ice of her body, melting her with his heat.

  She was whispering, telling him she loved him, her breath cool in his ear and her words balm to his soul.

  She whispered, “I love you. I was wrong. It’s crazy, but I was wrong.”

  “I love you,” he whispered, the words like smoke in his mouth. “Bethany Aura, I love you.”

  “Math,” she murmured into his skin.

  “Mathonwy,” he said, knowing this was right. “It’s my name, my true name. I need it. I need to hear it.”

  She repeated, “Mathonwy,” mimicking his Welsh accent.

  His body surged at hearing the magic of his name, driving more deeply into her. “Bethany Aura.”

  “Mathonwy Areleous Draco.”

  More magic poured through them, swirling with the fire in his flesh.

  Her fingernails pinpricked his shoulders. “More.”

  He knew what she needed.

  He opened his mouth on her shoulder, biting her, chewing her skin and releasing a morsel of his dragon venom into her blood. In humans, dragon venom is just slightly hallucinogenic, but it wears off in half an hour or less. When the venom had absorbed, his kiss healed her skin.

  She was clinging to him as he drove into her, panting and delirious with the venom, tossing her head on the pillow. “More.”

  Yes, everything they said about dragon lovers was true.

  He plowed his body into hers, rougher, harder than he’d ever taken a woman before.

  Harder than he’d ever allowed himself to.

  She was meeting him with her hips, bucking against him, her breath cooling his shoulder and her skin all around him, her arms and legs and body pulling the fire from him, though his core still burned for her.

  “Mathonwy Draco,” she keened, his name magic in her mouth. “More.”

  He held her down and surged into her, his body released from decades of holding back.

  She whispered, “Bite me.”

  He savaged her, raking his teeth over her shoulder and reveling in their flesh moving together. More of his venom entered her.

  This was everything. She was everything.

  She cried out, “Burn me.”

  Math growled, his body fire and magic, movement and heat, “Bethany, no. Dragonfire burns don’t heal.”

  “I need it. I need you. I need more. Please, Math.”

  The dragonfire rose in him.

  Need to release it consumed him.

  Dragonfire swirled in his soul and chest, an explosion with no escape. “No.”

  “Mathonwy, please. Now!”

  His name in her mouth became a command.

  He was helpless before its power.

  His fire burst from his mouth, pouring over the skin on her shoulder with a blue-white beam of flame.

  She screamed, arching in his arms as she clawed at him, “Gods and magic, yes!”

  His fire danced on her skin, sparking into the curving shape of a dragon breathing fire down her breast.

  The dragonfire wasn’t burning out. The flame was burning deeper into her flesh.

  Mathonwy pressed his shoulder against hers, his tough skin tight over the forming brand, to smother the fire as he thrust into her.

  She was crying, screaming, “Yes!”

  The fire under his shoulder pierced his flesh, joining their magic.

  Math pressed his forehead to the pillow beside her ear and drove himself into her.

  The dragonfire consumed their separateness and became a bond, a hot, golden cable of magic that ran between their hearts and souls.

  Bethany’s body throbbed around him, a tight pulse of flesh that drove thought from his mind. As she clenched, he could feel the response in his spine. A wave of pleasure barreled into him.

  The power of his release shot through him, a string of firecrackers up his spine and into his head, and he rushed into her.

  Bethany cried out again, her nails raking his back as he came.

  He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe for a minute, and only barely managed to hold himself off of her so he wouldn’t crush her fragility under his heavy body.

  His head spun. He clutched her in his arms, holding her as they both trembled, exhausted and still euphoric.

  As he backed up, lifting himself on his arms, Bethany was still panting, and her arms released his neck only reluctantly.

  On her shoulder, an intricate, shaded tattoo of a golden dragon was impressed into her skin.

  Math looked down at his chest.

  On his rounded pec, a matching dragon—the mirror-image of hers, though darker—marked him.

  These were the markings of a mated dragon pair.

  When Bethany opened her eyes and stared at him, still breathing heavily, her eyes were the vast darkness of space, glittering with a thousand stars rushing inward.

  She had transformed into a dragonmate.

  “Bethany—” Horror filled him that he’d forced the mating on her. “Did you want this?”

  She blinked sleepily at him, and a smile slowly spread over her face. “Oh, heck, yeah. That was incredible. I haven’t ever—”

  “No.” He touched the dragon marking on his chest, which still sparked with magic. “We’ve mated.”

  “Oh, yeah. I know.” She curled her arms near her head and stretched.

  The horror of it filled his voice. “Did I force it on you?”

  She stretched her arms over her head. “Of course not.”

  “I mean, I know you consented to the sex, but we’ve mated.” He gestured to his marking again. “There’s no going back now. We’re married. Even more than just being marri
ed, we’re mated.”

  “Yeah,” Bethany said.

  Math relaxed a bit. Forcing any woman to do anything, even if he had been out of his head with pain, wasn’t part of him.

  He rolled off her, luxuriating in the absolute lack of burning agony in his body. He drew a deep breath that didn’t hurt and sighed hard. “You’re okay with it? I didn’t force you?”

  “No. Do you feel forced?”

  “Of course not. I’ve wanted to form a mating bond with you for weeks. I didn’t know what I was feeling. I thought it was that you were great, and I liked you, and I wanted to be around you and give you precious metals and diamonds to wear. And touch your skin and your hair. And feed you chocolate cake. And make you smile. And spend every waking minute with you. And never let you out of my sight or my bed or my arms. And then to give you some more diamonds.”

  Her grin was like cool sunshine on a cold day with no burning at all. “And that didn’t tip you off, huh?”

  He shrugged. “My dragon isn’t the talkative type.”

  “Are any dragons the talkative type?” she asked.

  “Not really,” Math said. “I don’t think they have a language so much as needs, wants, and the hunger to fly and mate. They need regular exercise.”

  “Sounds like a dog.” She rolled closer to him. “We had dogs while I was growing up. Mostly black Labs and golden retrievers.”

  “Not exactly,” Math said. “A dragon is more demanding, and they need attention when they want it. They’re finicky about the people or other dragons they’re around. If they don’t like someone, you might as well give them up. If they do like someone, well,” he gestured between the two of them, “it’s hard to keep him off of them.”

  Bethany laughed. “So, your dragon is a cat.”

  Math considered it. “He likes to play with his food before he eats it, so there might be something to that.”

  “Are we going to have to eat live goats for supper or something?”

  “Oh, no. He eats dragon kibble most of the time, and he can catch his own snacks.”

  Her jaw dropped. “Where does one buy dragon kibble?”

  Math laughed. “I’m kidding. We share a body. I eat, and he doesn’t have to. But I do eat a lot.” He gathered her—such a soft bit of fluff and fragrance—into his arms. “Are you sure you’re okay with this? You came in and said yes, and I didn’t give you a chance to reconsider.”

  She grinned and rolled her eyes, but she wound her arms around his waist. “After you hit me with the dragonfire, there was a minute where—I don’t even know how to describe it—but I had to let it—and you—join with me, or something. There was definitely a conscious choice in there, somewhere.”

  “Oh.” So that was the surrender to the mating part.

  Probably.

  Maybe there was more to it than merely allowing the bond.

  A surrendered mate was the term dragons used.

  Math ventured, “Hey, I’m starving. Could you get me a sandwich?”

  Bethany’s raised eyebrows got the point across that he had lost his mind. “The phone’s on your side of the bed. When you call room service, get me a turkey club while you’re at it. Extra bacon. And fries.”

  So, the surrender term was, indeed, an anachronism.

  Good to know.

  He picked up the phone to order before he joined Bethany in the shower.

  After the Mating

  LATER, after room service delivered their sandwiches, Bethany and Math sat in bed, eating them.

  Bethany crunched through the bacon in the sandwich, the sheet drawn up around her chest because she just couldn’t deal with eating while naked and available for inspection.

  And, oh God, she was so frickin’ hungry. She might have to order another one of these sandwiches. Or an entire cheesecake.

  Math kept eyeing her, his golden, glittering eyes blazing as he ran his fingers down her arm or her bare leg that stuck out of the sheet. His eyes were entirely consumed by the sparkling fire, no hazel left at all. They were absolutely beautiful.

  His gaze kept returning to the dragon marking on her chest that still felt a little alien, but at least it was pretty. It was exactly something that she would have chosen to tattoo herself with.

  Math stroked his finger down the back of the dragon tattoo’s head. “I can’t believe this worked. I can’t believe it created a marking instead of a terrible scar.”

  Bethany swallowed toast and bacon. “Did you think you were going to hurt me?”

  Math looked away from her. “You told me to do it, and I couldn’t stop it. I was praying I could heal you afterward, like I did with the sea serpent venom and when I’ve bitten you while we’re—” He gestured toward the bed they were sitting on.

  Bethany laughed and set her sandwich down and moved around behind him to hug him around his waist. “Good grief, you’re just as wound up about sex things as I am, aren’t you?”

  He shrugged, his broad shoulders moving under her fingertips and lips. Muscle rounded on both sides of his spine, and he did indeed have dimples on the small of his back. She would lick those later, she was sure. Or dig her nails into them. “My parents were uptight like you wouldn’t believe. They didn’t express any affection toward each other around other people, even me.”

  She hugged him and laid her cheek against the back of his shoulder, pressing her boobs against his strong back. “I hope you’re a little better than that.”

  He laughed and reached around behind himself to stroke her back. “I think I’m not quite as repressed as they were.”

  “Well, they produced you, somehow.” She tightened her arms around his waist and kissed the back of his shoulder.

  “Yes, they did manage to mate.” He shoved another bite of sandwich into his mouth and choked on it.

  He coughed hard and pounded on his chest, his eyes wide as he glanced back at her, behind his shoulder.

  “Math, are you okay?”

  He coughed some more but managed to swallow.

  “Jeez, Math.” She patted him on the back and watched to make sure he didn’t turn blue. “Lumpy sandwich?”

  He swallowed hard and then stared straight ahead at the wall, his golden eyes wide. “My mother’s mating mark was on the back of her shoulder. I always thought it was because she was so modest that she didn’t want people to see it.”

  Math twisted his body and looked down at where Bethany was pressed against his spine, her mouth right above the back of his shoulder.

  Oh. “Well, I guess you learned something about your parents today.”

  He shook his head. “I could have happily gone my whole life without knowing that.”

  Serpentus marinus fellacio

  AFTER their mating, Bethany and Math had stayed in the penthouse suite for a week, making sure that sex after mating was every bit as good as sex during mating.

  And it was. It really was. The magical bond between them fed back their sensations until both of them were overwhelmed, every time.

  They’d slept a lot, too, absolutely exhausted, flopped over each other’s naked bodies.

  They’d also ordered room service five times a day and again for a midnight snack.

  Bethany seriously could not eat enough, and she had lost three pounds. Her slacks had loosened around her waist, but her bra seemed oddly tight.

  When she’d been getting out of the shower the day before, while Math was still in there washing himself off a second time, a full-length mirror had captured her reflection.

  Her waist was nipped in, and her breasts had become fuller.

  Somehow, straight-stick, floppy Bethany had grown a slim, hourglass figure.

  She could even see the taut lines of toned yoga-tummy muscles on her lower belly.

  This dragonmate thing had its benefits.

  Even beyond having an insatiable, ravenous dragon for a mate.

  And he had a dragon metabolism, too.

  But after a week of isolation, Math had checked his em
ail and found a list of increasingly panic-stricken messages from Smedley the HR Squid and the people at Dragons Den, Inc. He’d groused, but they’d left the penthouse the next morning to try to deal with the chaos and the impending visit from the angel investors.

  The ballroom still needed a lot of work, and Bethany summoned the meerkats, whom she suspected were snickering at her behind their crayon-colored paws.

  Which brought them to this moment and Bethany trying like heck to whip the ballroom into shape while they both procrastinated dealing with the slimefest full of sea monsters at the casino’s entrance.

  She performed one last incantation maneuver, a sweeping magical movement ending on her tiptoes with both her arms in an upward stretch, to direct her apparitions who were putting the final touches on the space.

  Power rushed through her bones, so much power.

  Her apparitions—now a troupe of fifty candy-colored gorillas—were marching tables and chairs through the two sets of double doors at the far end and positioning them under the glowing chandeliers. The spirit manifestations were so much bigger than before, and so many more of them had popped into corporeal being than had ever answered her previous calls. Twenty new spirits had swung over to take a look at her and perform the ritual greeting ceremony.

  That was odd.

  And awesome.

  She felt like a real witch and everything.

  “We have to look at that dang thing sometime,” Math said to her.

  “No, we don’t.”

  “Unfortunately, we do.” He was sitting at one of the tables, typing furiously on his laptop, and he looked funny to her because he was wearing clothes. She’d gotten used to running her eyes, fingers, and tongue over any part of him she wanted to, and he’d evidently become accustomed to the same with her. “We can’t avoid it forever.”

  “Yeah,” Bethany said, cringing inside.

  “They’re going to be here in two days.”

  “Yeah,” Bethany said, cringing harder.

  He laughed. “I felt that. It’ll be okay. We’ll figure something out. If we need to, I can hire someone to cast a glamour over the whole thing and make it disappear.”

  “Angels can see through glamours,” she fretted.