She reached for her breasts and rolled her nipples between her fingers for him, knowing how he already loved them. And it only made him harder, his cock all the closer to exploding with each small motion. But he held off, struggling to contain himself. So it was her orgasm that hit first, her channel tightening around him with each delicious pulse. Milking him.
And he felt it—felt her sweet pussy grasping, her body imprisoning his length, drawing him towards his explosion. It was then that he gave in, slamming into her with one final, hard thrust, his heat shooting through her in every direction. He’d committed the ultimate selfish act, and she’d committed the ultimate sacrifice. And when he kissed her a moment later, he wondered if he’d just ruined her life. But she pushed his chest away once more and offered him a sly smile, reading something in his body language.
“You and I are bonded now, Lyre, my Dragon,” she said, her breath heavy in her chest. “I felt it—I felt everything. And I can still hear, you know.”
“Just wait,” he wanted to say. “Wait until morning. Then perhaps we’ll know for certain.”
But he simply smiled back in an attempt at reassurance, hoping to make himself feel confident that he hadn’t just destroyed the most beautiful, wonderful woman he’d ever met. Hoping to convince himself that their world was perfect, and nothing could ruin it.
At least for a few hours.
* * *
That night, after several miraculous hours of love-making interrupted only by the odd break for a snack of a trip to the loo, Trix slept on her side. One massive man-arm was draped over her waist, a constant reminder of his presence. Of his devotion. Happiness was too insufficient a word to describe how she felt. Complete, perhaps. Whole. As though life now made perfect sense, and every second she’d ever lived had led to this moment.
Was she afraid of what the next morning might bring? Slightly, if she were to be honest. A new life would mean a change, and there was no denying it. Now she was bonded with a Dragon shifter. Her life would never, ever be the same, whether her hearing were enhanced or taken from her.
But any fear was overshadowed by the pleasant knowledge that Lyre was now her partner in all things. He would look after her, as she would do for him. Together they could get through anything.
When she awoke with the rising of the sun she rose from the bed, looking down at him, and moved to the window. A slight feeling of dizziness, like the residue of a bad hangover, was spinning through her head. A bit of fresh air might help, so she pried the window open.
When she heard the sound of gulls crying out, of the sea crashing against rock far below, she allowed herself a sigh of relief. Whatever changes were coming over her, they wouldn’t be what Lyre had feared.
She turned back to see him propping himself up on one arm, those intense, worried blue eyes searching hers.
“It’s fine,” she said. “I’m fine.”
He smiled, letting himself drop back down onto the bed. Thank God.
Trix leapt back onto the sheets, and laid a hand on his chest. “And you?” she asked.
He stared into her eyes. “The same.”
Oh my God, she thought.
That voice.
It had penetrated her mind, just as it had when she’d ridden his Dragon. But his lips hadn’t moved, and he was still in his human form. And in that moment she knew that everything really was going to be different. He was inside her head now, and a whole new world had just opened up to them.
“The same? No, nothing is the same,” she replied, instinctively aiming the words his way in spite of the fact that she hadn’t made a sound. “Not the same at all.”
She let out a happy squeal before throwing her arms around him, and he squeezed back, pulling their bare chests together.
“Do you know what this means?” his rich voice barrelled happily inside her.
“What?”
“I can tell you how fucking delicious your pussy tastes without using my bloody mobile.”
“God, yes. And I can tell you how much I’ve been wanting to get my mouth on your manaconda since I woke up.”
They both shook with laughter. A new intimacy had entered their lives, and neither would ever take it for granted.
Trix pulled back to look at him again.
“Lyre,” she said. “I still want to learn to sign, you know.” With both hands, she positioned her thumbs together, pointing downwards, and formed the curves of a heart with her other fingers.
“That’s a good start,” he told her, his smile the sweetest thing she’d ever seen, as his words shot through her. “But I have a sign just for you.”
“Oh? What is it?”
He crossed the fingers on both hands.
“I know what that means, silly,” she said, giving him a gentle slap on the arm. “Everyone knows that.”
“I don’t think you do. This is a special sign that I invented just now.”
“Okay, what does it mean?”
“It means ‘There’s a beautiful, beautiful woman sitting next to me, and I hope she lets me eat her out again, because I’m going mad trying to be gentlemanly, when all I want is to shove my face between her legs and lick her until she can’t stand it anymore and explodes.’”
“That’s rather a complex sign, if you ask me.”
“Well, we could reduce it to ‘Please, Trix, let me eat your pussy,’ if that’s easier.”
“Done. So, when I cross my fingers, we know what that means.”
“Yes, we definitely do. And if you want to give me an instant hard-on, that’s the way to do it.”
She lay her head on his shoulder and let out another soft, satisfied chuckle. The world was such an odd place, and her life had never been the typical one of a young woman. But now she’d bonded with a Dragon shifter, and here they were, speaking telepathically. What could possibly be next?
“Beatrix.” The voice came softly, as though in response to her silent question.
“Hmm?”
“We can’t stay here forever. We have a job to do, much as I’d like to do nothing but make love to you for seven or so…decades.”
“I know. Me too. But—maybe we could stay one more night?”
“One more night, then, though that isn’t nearly enough to satisfy me. But after that, I suppose we should do some sleuthing. Figure out where to start looking for the Relic and whatnot.”
“Well, wouldn’t we look in London? I thought that all four were there.”
“They were, originally,” Lyre’s voice told her. “But Neko and Lumen discovered that the first one had been moved, remember?”
“Oh, that’s right. They were hidden in new locations. So you think ours might be outside the city?”
Lyre shrugged. “It’s possible, but then again, you’re the one meant to find it, oh wisest of Beatrixes.” He flashed her a bright grin. “Speaking of which, I haven’t told you the verse yet. You are my Seeker, after all, in more ways than one.”
“What do you mean, in more ways than one?” Trix asked.
“You came here and found me. Sought me out. If you hadn’t done that—well, it wouldn’t have been good. You saved me, Lovely. You’re the Seeker of Lyre, as well as the Seeker of the Second Relic.”
She couldn’t help but laugh, her body shaking a little against his. “Saved? Hardly. Tried and tried to get you to listen to me, more like. If we’re to credit anyone with saving, it has to be Tryst. She’s the one who convinced you to tear my clothes off. Speaking of which—remind me to write her a thank you note, would you?”
Lyre’s body shook gently this time, a low chuckle rising up in his throat. “In all seriousness, my sweet Hunter, I need to tell you the verse. It’s my duty, just as it’s yours to find the Relic.”
She pulled away to face him, her expression earnest as her eyes met his. “So tell me,” she said out loud.
Lyre laid his palm on her left cheek and closed his eyes, and she followed suit, waiting for the words to come. And as they did, a new surge o
f energy filled her. With each syllable, their bond strengthened, the verse’s power flowing through her body.
The tower perches still above
A labyrinth concealed by grass and stone
Here, the Pendragon once sought out his love.
And now, the Relic of Air awaits its Seeker alone.
When she’d absorbed the words completely, Trix opened her eyes again to look up into his, a frustrated crease invading her brow. “Got it. But what does it mean?” she asked. “A tower? A labyrinth? Am I supposed to know where those might be?”
“Not necessarily,” he told her. “We can look for help in London.”
“There is one thing I think I know,” Trix said, thoughtful. “The Pendragon. Is that…King Arthur?”
Lyre nodded. “Most likely, yes. It’s a title given to many of the old Kings, but of course he was the most famous. And the most powerful.”
“And of course, his love was Guinevere. But I never heard anything of a tower on top of a labyrinth.”
A smile formed on Lyre’s lips, to watch her mind get to work so quickly. “We’ll figure it out,” he said. “No sense in torturing ourselves over it. I happen to know someone who knows a good deal about Arthur.”
“Who’s that?” asked Trix, drawing a finger along his arm, still enthralled to feel him under her touch.
“Aegis. You’ve met him, right?”
She nodded. Aegis was a mischievous, cheerful Dragon shifter, and Neko had told her that he was a good friend of Lumen’s.
“He was always keen on Arthurian legends,” Lyre told her. “Some ancestor or other of his allegedly knew the great King.”
“Really?” Trix found herself backing away from him, saying the word out loud. They both laughed, as though Lyre could read her tone of voice. Somehow it struck her as beyond amusing to think of a Dragon shifter being a fan of King Arthur.
“Yes, really,” Lyre’s voice pulsed inside her. “I realize that Aegis comes off as the type of bloke who likes to watch football and drink many, many pints in one sitting. But he’s a bit of a scholar, as well. I suspect that he can help us in our search. I’ll ask for a meeting at the Guild Hall.”
“The place under Hampstead Heath, where you took me the first time we met,” she said.
“Yes, that very place,” he said, easing a fingertip under her chin and moving in to kiss her gently. “A special place now, more than ever.”
“I wondered that day why you kept so far away from me,” she told him. “And then when I found out that you…I…well, I just didn’t care if you could hear or not. It did nothing to diminish how attractive I found you.”
“But admit it. You’d prefer a man who could hear.”
“No woman prefers a man who can hear. Particularly on days when she’s feeling gassy. A woman-fart isn’t charming to even the most advanced of males.”
Lyre let out the most adorable laugh then; half self-conscious and half uncontrolled.
“I wouldn’t care if you were filled with as much gas as a zeppelin,” he told her, granting her lips the gift of another kiss. “You’d still be my sexy Beatrix.”
“What a man. I knew there was a reason I liked you.”
Mending
Trix stood outside the next morning, a mug of steaming coffee in hand. Her eyes scanned the landscape, the seemingly endless wall of white cliffs drawing her gaze far into the distance as they bent along England’s coast. Long, sweeping grasses blew in waves of golden synchronicity along their summits, and whitecaps lapped at the beach below. Perfection. A wildly beautiful setting that she didn’t want to leave, much as she’d wanted to run away just a few days ago.
And indeed, she would have gladly stayed for weeks, basking in what had developed between Lyre and herself. Her blood pressure was lower now, and there was no denying how much her life had changed. And though she knew it wasn’t entirely true, she felt as though she’d be perfectly happy if she never saw another human or shifter again.
But her new life was that of a Seeker. And she could already feel a sense of duty pulsing through her, telling her that she wouldn’t be able to rest until her task was done. A Hunter’s instinct mixed with that of a Dragon, to seek out the treasure that would help the Guild of shifters to grow in power and skill. She would help them to gain strength, to take down their enemies—and the enemies of humans.
Lyre stepped up behind her, his hand moving to ease slowly down her back as he too looked out at the landscape that he loved so well.
“So, I suppose we need to head back to London sooner rather than later, and let the others know what’s happened between us,” said Trix silently. “That is, unless our lady Dragon friend has had a vision of us wrapped up in the sweet agony of sexual adventures, in which case she’s probably already given all our other friends a detailed play-by-play.”
“No doubt she has. But unfortunately, we do need to head back,” Lyre’s voice told her, his hand slipping around her waist as he pulled her close. Her mass of red hair came to rest on his shoulder as she smiled at the comfort of his touch. True, warm affection moved from his fingers through her, and her body purred with all the bliss of a person who’s discovered where she belongs.
“It’s been a whirlwind, this,” she told him. “This love affair of ours. But nothing’s frightened me about it, except for how hard and fast I fell for you…and then the possibility of losing you as quickly as I’d found you.”
“And I fell just as hard you,” Lyre replied. “I was so torn to shreds inside, thinking that I would never see you again.”
“You were, weren’t you?”
“Of course I was. You’re my treasure. My all. I want to protect you. And instead I was hurting you, not to mention myself.”
“But here we are.” She let out a happy sigh as the words drifted from her mind to his. She wanted to laugh, though, to think she’d never so much as spent the night with any man, and now she had every intention of spending every night with him until the end of time.
“After we find the Relic,” she said silently after a period of silence, her light eyes staring into the distance. “then what?” What will become of us?”
“There are two more to find yet, after ours. The Relics of Fire and Earth.” He swept a lock of hair away from her face. It had been blowing in the breeze, threatening to find its way between her lips. “We’ll help in any way that we can, and we’ll try and stop the advance of Forsaken before London becomes overrun.”
“The bloody Foreskins.” Trix felt like she hadn’t thought about their existence in days. She pulled away and looked into his eyes again. It was still odd to speak without moving her lips, and so again she said the words out loud. “Lyre, speaking of those bastards, there’s something I think I should tell you. Something happened. Neko thought it might be a bad idea to let the Dragon Guild know, but I don’t want to keep secrets from you.”
“What is it?” his voice asked her mind, his inquisitive eyes widening to give him an almost boyish look that she found beyond adorable. Such a wonderful change from the rigid tension that had occupied his features when she’d first arrived in Dover.
“The night when we—well, you, really—killed Farell. After you left me so abruptly in the pub…” she watched him wince at the memory, “I was walking home when I met a woman on the street. Well, ‘met’ is probably not the right word. She was following me. There was something so strange about her, but she was quite beautiful, really. She helped me, though I must admit that I wasn’t friendly with her. She told me to follow through on what I would be asked to do, and of course at the time I wasn’t sure what she was talking about. She said that she wanted to help the Dragons. I don’t know anything about her, only that her name is Amara. And there’s a part of me that wonders if she might be one of them.”
“She doesn’t sound like a Forsaken. As I understand it, they’re not kind or generous creatures, to say the very least. Something in the mixing of shifter and vamp has made them more feral than human. I can
’t imagine a Forsaken helping the Guild.”
“Well, she didn’t seem feral, or cruel. And I realize that I probably sound naïve, but I do hope nothing happens to her,” said Trix, shivering as Lyre put his arm around her shoulders. She spoke the next words via her mind. “I don’t know how to say it, other than that she was—is—good. And I wonder if there are more like her out there.”
“Perhaps.” Lyre’s voice had gone distant despite remaining firmly nestled in her mind. As though he were thinking about a far-off memory, or conjuring some other thought. “We’ll keep an eye out for her, shall we?”
“Yes. We must. I have a feeling we have an ally out there that we never suspected. Possibly more than one.”
He moved around to wrap his arms about her, holding her from behind. She loved that. Nothing in the world felt so comforting, so loving, as the heat of his body enveloping her own. Reaching for his forearms, she squeezed gently. Of course, there was nothing particularly squeezable about his limbs; he was all muscle, all hardness. A gorgeous, sexy man of heated stone. And to think he was all hers.
“We have another ally, you know,” she told him, her voice soft inside his mind. “Your brother.”
Lyre let out an actual sound then, a sort of skeptical Pfft. “I’m not sure about that,” his voice said, ringing deep and cynical in the depths of her mind. Their bond had been too badly scarred over the years for Minach to be any sort of reliable ally.
“I am,” Trix told him. “He worries about you. I think he’s cursed, in fact, with an over-abundance of concern for his twin. And also…”
“Oh? There’s something else?” the Dragon shifter chuckled, his deep baritone ringing in her head in the loveliest way.
“There is.” She pulled away, turning to face him, the sincerest of expressions on her face. As she moved to speak, though, a wave of dizziness hit, and for a moment she felt the world spinning around her. Lyre steadied her, his hands firmly supporting her shoulders.
“Are you all right?” the words moved through her as the world seemed to spiral about her head. After a moment, things seemed to settle and she refocused her eyes on his face.
Dragon Seeker Part Two Page 6