by Jaci Burton
“Meggie,” he whispered. “If you’re mine, I’m yours. You won’t forget it, will you?”
But Meg said nothing, lying limp and warm and heavy all along his side. She was fast asleep.
Two
“What do you think they’re doing down there?” The sorceress stared broodingly across the gulf of night-dark space at the tiny twinkling lights far below. Her dwelling was older than time, built into the shoulder of the peak, carved of living stone. The chilly wind lifted the tendrils of black hair that brushed her snow-white hips, but even naked as she was, she didn’t feel the cold.
Huge ebony arms snaked around her waist from behind, the hint of scales under the skin abrading her flesh. “Insects,” rumbled the dragon djinn. “Who cares?”
The sorceress smiled without humor, the merest curve of thin red lips. She pressed back against her dragon lover, enjoying the monstrous size of him, towering over her by more than a foot. His massive pointed phallus burned so hot against her cool buttocks, the sensation was just this side of pain. She didn’t need to turn to know his reptilian eyes would be flaming with passion, ruby-red.
But in the end, she did turn, because she couldn’t help herself. By Shaitan, she hated this strange compulsion, her inability to be done with him, to discard him as she’d done with centuries of lovers. Fifty seasons they’d played together and fifty times she’d tried to extricate herself and failed.
In their hellish dance of lust and blood and pain, she could never be sure who’d triumph in the struggle for dominance. She knew only that she was addicted to the savage beauty of the djinn’s body, swaying under the lash, fascinated by his stubborn draconic endurance. Sometimes he was so fierce, she feared for her very life, and her slow ancient blood would run hot and heavy. Then it would be her turn to plead for mercy, cracked and broken and exalted. The razor’s edge of peril intoxicated her.
And oh, she loved his magnificent body in either form, man or dragon, black as midnight in the pits of hell. But in general, she preferred something in between, as he was now. The best of both worlds.
Stepping back, the sorceress wrapped long slim fingers around his jutting phallus, though she had no hope of closing her fist. The dragon djinn rumbled his pleasure, his forked tongue flickering over a brutal mouth. His organ writhed in her palm, undulating like a cat, the slitted tip curling back to dab a wet kiss on the back of her hand. A mortal would discover his bodily fluids burned like acid; the sorceress felt only a tingle pleasantly reminiscent of pain.
Her lips drew back from her teeth and she squeezed hard. “Even after all this time,” she murmured in her voice of frozen silver, “I am amazed by this cock.” When she dug into his flesh with the tip of a pointed nail, the djinn hissed, leathery wings arching behind him. With dainty precision, the sorceress lifted her finger, black with dragon’s blood, to her lips. She sucked, purring with pleasure, not taking her gaze from his for an instant.
“You, my love,” growled the djinn, “are an evil bitch.”
The sorceress dropped a mocking curtsey. “Thank you.”
“I have something for you.”
Her smile broadened. “I already have it.” She used both hands in a vicious twist and the djinn’s phallus bucked.
He froze, his vertical pupils narrow with pleasure-pain. “Release me,” he commanded, and to her own annoyance, the sorceress did.
“Come.” Taking her slender hand in his huge paw, he led her from the dizzying height of the mountain ledge to the bedchamber behind the tall carved doors.
For the hundred thousandth time, she thought how difficult he was to read, how dangerous, how delightfully unpredictable. Her heart began to knock against her ribs, though she breathed hard through her nose in a fruitless effort to control it. Not for Shaitan Himself would she allow the djinn to see her vulnerability. He’d kill her if she did.
My love, he’d said. The first and only time in fifty seasons.
My love.
The shriveled heart concealed behind the veil of her Dark Arts soaked up the words like a thirsty desert, even as every instinct screamed in warning.
The dragon djinn retrieved an unremarkable leather case from the corner where he’d tossed it the moment he’d arrived. Lost in the backwash of turbulent air and flame, alive with anticipation, she’d barely noticed at the time.
“Something different tonight.” Like a great cat, the djinn extended a gleaming ruby claw and beckoned her closer, the hulking width of his shoulders dominating the room despite the massive baroque bed of dark wood, the sumptuous hangings of figured crimson brocade and gold. Opening the case, he drew forth a small bundle of ivory velvet.
“What’s that?” asked the sorceress, losing the battle with her curiosity. “A gift?” He’d never given her anything before—only ecstasy inextricably linked with pain.
“Yes.” Those strange eyes drilled into her. “You will not speak again until I bid you.”
The sorceress opened her mouth. Then she closed it again, too intrigued for defiance. The djinn was perfectly capable of backhanding her and stalking out to launch himself into the night, falling like a stone until he shape-shifted scant feet above the hungry rocks, his wings snapping out in a great leathery swathe of black. And when he left, he went Shaitan knew where. She had no idea.
The djinn shook the garment out, revealing an exquisite scrap of a corset.
The sorceress curled a lip. Pretty.
With great care, he fitted the bodice to the pert curve of her breasts. One great hand spread over her stomach, the velvet soft and tight against her belly, and he rumbled, “Bend.”
When she did, her breasts fell snugly into the low-cut cups, and the djinn smoothed the dark fall of her hair aside with a touch gentle enough to be alarming. One-handed, he seized the laces at the back and yanked, brutally hard. All the breath left the sorceress in an undignified whoosh.
Shaitan, she hated to look a fool! The sorceress glared over her shoulder.
The djinn smiled his beautiful, terrible smile. “Stand and face the mirror.”
When she did, she was hard put to conceal her shock. The corset was dainty, virginal—and utterly sinful. Wonderingly, the sorceress ran her fingertips over the smooth, plushy velvet, purest ivory, but not cold or stark. Instead, it was suffused with the faintest tint of warm cream. Across the front ran a row of tiny satin roses in the tenderest of shell pinks. The cups were cunningly constructed to cradle and offer the breast flesh, ripe for a man’s mouth. The upper crescents of her areolas peeped out seductively, a dusky, lip-smacking temptation. The garment framed her mons, its very delicacy making the ravenous pink of her sex, the dusting of black curls, deliciously obscene.
When the dragon djinn bent his dark head to bite her white shoulder, she gasped. His gaze met hers in the mirror. “It’s a bridal corset,” he said. “Breathe in and then out.”
Her heart gave such a bound that she wasn’t ready when he set his knee in the small of her back and hauled the laces even tighter. Her head spun as her ribs were unbearably compressed. Godsdammit, bridal—? Surely he didn’t mean—? Did he?
“The villagers of the southern plains are deeply superstitious.” The djinn concentrated on threading the laces, tweaking each crisscross with a claw, working down methodically from the top. Watching in the mirror, the sorceress could see they weren’t ribbons after all, but finely plaited satin ropes. Pink. “They send me girls dressed as if for a wedding. Fools.”
The sorceress hissed as the boning bit brutally into her soft flesh. What did he do with them, those terrified village maidens?
As if he’d read her mind, the dragon djinn licked her throat with his forked tongue. A frisson of hot erotic pleasure ran straight to her sex and she gushed and softened in the most delightfully humiliating fashion.
“This one,” he purred. “This one had the guts to look me in the eye as I ripped the gown off her body. She told me to go to hell.”
When he threw his head back in a gravelly laugh, his
long teeth flashed white and sharp. “I told her I was already there. But in return, I gave her the swiftest death I had in me. And I kept the corset. For your pleasure, love. And mine.”
Shaitan, he was magnificent! Love, he’d said it again. Her dark, terrible love. The only one who’d ever matched her—in power, in wickedness, and in dark desire.
Holding his eye, she made a production out of smoothing the translucent silk stockings over her legs, but when the djinn had her brace her foot against his thigh so he could adjust the rose-trimmed garters himself, her dissolution was complete.
“Tonight, you are mine.” Those slit-pupiled eyes bored into hers. “To torture, to control, to fuck.” His third eyelid flickered across, a sign of some deep feeling she couldn’t interpret. “To eat.” A glimpse of fang.
Outside, thunder boomed, shaking the mountains to their stony roots. The wind howled and the rain slashed. And in the red chamber, the dragon djinn played his games of erotic torment. The sorceress had expected a whipping. In truth, she’d been looking forward to it. The djinn was a master with the lash, the only lover she’d ever had brutal enough, ruthless enough, to lift her out of herself to that silent inner place of blood-soaked peace.
Instead, to her furious chagrin, he treated her like a naughty little girl. Seated before the mirror, he turned the sorceress over his knee and spanked her bottom with his scaly palm until the blood rose scarlet beneath the skin and she couldn’t prevent the instinctive squirm, though she refused to permit any sound to escape. Her face flushed and sweaty with mortification, barely able to breathe, she dug her nails into his leg and bit her lip until it bled. Her head swam.
The sorceress loved it.
By way of retaliation, she rubbed her velvet-clad belly against the rock-hard erection beneath her and had the satisfaction of hearing the djinn’s breath hitch. But her triumph didn’t last long.
“Watch,” he rumbled, pulling her head up with a fist in her hair. “See how dirty you are.” He laughed and slid a long finger into her dripping core, teasing her with the implicit threat of a claw. “How dirty we are.” When he followed the first digit with a second, a thin whimper fell out of her mouth, despite all she could do to strangle it at birth.
“Keep looking.” Releasing his grip on her hair, he returned to hard, leisurely slaps, the fingers of his other hand lodged deep inside her. The sorceress was forced to arch her back in the unyielding corset, fighting to keep her balance, anchored by the clutch of her internal muscles on those diabolical fingers. Desperately, she tried not to grab at his calves, but it was impossible.
After an eon, he lifted her to her feet between his knees and ravaged her mouth, stabbing deep with his hard, forked tongue. The sorceress gave as good as she got, though it must be the constricting corset that caused tears to burn her eyes and tiny lightnings to swim in her vision. When the kiss ended—though it was more a duel of mouths—she sank down gracefully to nuzzle his huge cock, running her tongue over the incised ridges, caressing the scales beneath heated ebony skin. With one hand, she grasped it by the broad root, with the other, she gripped his heavy testicles, hard enough to hover just this side of hurt.
Normally, the djinn relished watching her struggle to service him. Sometimes, his cock writhed so violently, she had to nip at it to keep it still. But not tonight.
Tonight, he used her hair again, wrenching her away, leaving a trail of burning moisture across her cheek. Without a word, he pushed her down to hands and knees on the rug before the mirror and knocked her thighs apart.
“Watch,” he repeated as his cock snaked its way between her dripping folds. “And remember!” With a grunt, he shoved himself forward, brutally hard.
The sorceress screamed, high and shrill. Between the giant phallus wedged deep inside her and the cruel grip of the corset, it seemed there was no room left for her, for her soul, her heart’s breath. He’d never been so deep before, because she’d never been able to take him, not all the way to the root. But now she was all receptacle, all narrow vessel stuffed full to bursting with him, her perfect dragon lover. Something in her dark heart sheered off and tumbled willingly into the cup of his ruthless hand.
Glancing over her shoulder at the mirror, she watched, panting, as the djinn withdrew, inch by torturous inch. The small pink mouth of her sex flexed around his gleaming black girth, panic and arousal sucking at him, pulling him back in. Where he belonged.
The djinn’s lip lifted and a snarl of lust rumbled in his chest. “Good?”
“Shaitan, yes!” The sorceress pushed back with her hips, relishing the edgy bite of the abrading scales on her delicate flesh. The delightful ache would live with her for days. “Harder, harder!”
The djinn’s laugh boomed around the chamber, louder than the thunder of the peaks, and the sorceress thought he’d never looked so brutally handsome, so compelling, so unholy.
Leaning over her body, he tugged the velvet cups away to bare her breasts. Then he reared back on his heels, wings spread for balance, and pulled the sorceress, still thickly impaled, into his chest. His fingers meeting around her tightly corseted waist, he lifted her and forced her down, again and again, staring over her shoulder at the demonic image in the mirror.
Tears trickled down her cheeks and the sorceress didn’t care, though no one had seen her cry in long dusty centuries.
The pace grew savage, the djinn’s wings thrashing behind him, the sorceress shrieking her pleasure and pain. With a final vicious thrust, he froze, his cock swelling, rippling. His hot breath lifted her hair as he roared, a primal bellow of male satisfaction. The mountain shuddered with the power of it.
But the sorceress heard the sound as if from far, far away, in a world beyond a veil. Reaching around her with one long arm, the djinn flicked an expert claw against her clitoris. There was no time for more than a keening whimper as all the breath left her body in a whoosh. The grip of the climax, the most ferocious she’d ever experienced, was more than doubled by the constraint of the boned corset. Her vision hazed, then clouded over. The djinn’s hot seed washed into every crevice, every fold, burning as it went. All the muscles in her body contracted and released in an endless clenching rush.
She sagged, boneless, and her dragon lover caught her effortlessly in his massive arms, lowering her gently to the rug. The sorceress lay, still rigidly encased in the corset, her cheek pressed to the soft pile beneath her, and thought longingly of the cock ring she’d had made specially for him—the one with the cruel silver studs on the inside and the attachment for a leash. Next time.
The djinn disengaged. When she winced, he chuckled, giving her an absentminded pat on the rump. She gazed into the mirror as he used one of her nightgowns to wipe himself down. Very, very slowly, she rolled over and sat up, staring at her reflection in disbelief. She’d never looked more beautiful. Rumpled, yes. Ruined even, with the djinn’s smoky seed smeared over her slim white thighs. But alive, as if she were mortal still, the skin above the ivory velvet flushed pink with lust and love.
“Ah, that was good.” The djinn stretched luxuriously, his dark, handsome head nearly reaching the ceiling. The unreadable, alien gaze dropped to her face and he reached down to haul her to her feet. He stared at her a moment longer, then his mouth curved in a sardonic half-smile. “Good-bye, my dear. Keep the corset. It suits you.” The lamplight burnished the pattern of scales on his deep chest with bronze-green sparks.
Despite herself, the sorceress blinked. “Good-bye?”
Three
The djinn pushed her chin up with his big fist. “Consider it a parting gift.”
“P-parting?” Distantly, the sorceress heard a crystalline sound, as if something small and precious had shattered. Or perhaps she felt it in her bones, that breaking sensation.
“I make it a rule,” rumbled the dragon djinn, “to be the first to walk away.” He shrugged. “Or fly, in this case. Less potential for boredom.”
“B-but—” stammered the sorceress, fumbling. “It’s b
een—”
“Fifty seasons. Yes, I know. You think the tedium is worth continuing?”
The sorceress choked on the bile in her throat. “Tedium?”
“Tonight was amusing, I grant you. But that was the corset.” He ran a talon down the flowing curve from armpit to hip, scoring the velvet pile in a single continuous line. “You should wear it often, with other lovers.” The djinn shook his head, apparently in sorrow, though the gleam in his eye told the sorceress he was mocking her. “Remember me, love.” He swept into an ironic bow, magnificent in nothing but his ebony skin.
The sorceress hauled in a breath and came up against the constriction of the boned corset. The action, small as it was, ignited the dreadful hurt within her, her rage rising until it was white-hot in a matter of moments. For an instant, she was numb save for her terrible pain. And her overpowering fury. Shaitan, Dark One, help me!
“No one,” she hissed, “no one scorns me. I am the sorceress of storms.”
“In a teacup, perhaps?” Arrogant as ever, the djinn tapped her on the cheek with a ruby claw. “Once again, farewell. I wish you the best—and the worst.” Grinning, he turned to go.
The sorceress snarled a spell and a long dagger with a smoking blade appeared in her hand. Murky smears of evil Magick oiled the shining metal.
Unperturbed, the dragon djinn paused. “Oho,” he smiled. “What now? You want to play a different game, love?”
The sorceress stepped forward, right into his arms. “I do not play,” she spat. “And I am not . . .” In a single smooth movement, she thrust the dagger under his jaw, deep into his carotid artery. “Your love!” With a vicious twist, she jerked the blade free and shoved it back again.
The djinn choked and staggered back, his huge hands clamped against the wound. The sorceress followed, pressing close, avid. With every beat of his great heart, draconic blood spilled over his fingers in spurts. Against the ebony of his skin, it was almost too black to see—until it soaked into the pale velvet of the corset.