Dragon Lords Books 1 - 4 Box Set: Anniversary Edition

by Michelle M. Pillow

  “What…?” Olek started to pull away.

  “What is wrong with you?” Nadja asked with a look akin to dismay. “Didn’t you hear me?”

  Olek furrowed his brow. He looked down at his pants around his ankles. His cock was bare and reaching toward her. Nadja glared at him.

  “How did I get…?” He quickly picked up his pants and tied them at his waist, clearing his throat in discomfiture.

  Nadja hopped down from the counter, pressing her fist into her hip as she did so. Glaring at him, the hormones making her surlier than usual, she demanded, “What came over you? You were all…weird.”

  Olek cleared his throat. “Sorry. It’s…you’re breeding aren’t you?”

  “Breeding?” Nadja’s cheeks flamed in a combination of apprehension and mortification. “No, I’m not!”

  Olek let loose a deep breath, smiling sheepishly. “I can tell.”

  Her frown only deepened. “I’m not pregnant,” Nadja denied hotly. “How dare you.”

  Olek chuckled. “Not carrying, bleeding.”

  Nadja tried to skirt past him, mortified. “I’m not discussing this with you and stop calling it that.”

  His hand stopped her and he rubbed a persistent trail against her arm. Olek’s gaze threatened to turn cloudy again.

  “I need a medical unit,” Nadja stated, seeing his ever-growing reaction.

  Olek blinked again, clearly doing his best to concentrate on her words. “A what…?”

  “A medical unit,” she whispered, trying to meet his hazed eyes with her calm ones. Seeing that he was about to pounce mindlessly on her again, she added, “Or a medical booth. Fast.”

  “Are you hurt?” His eyes instantly cleared in his worry.

  “Just cramps.” Seeing his nostrils sniffing at her, she pulled back. “If I can use a medical booth or a handheld unit it will take care of the pain. Please tell me you have one. If not then Lophibian slug cream? Poxian pills? Any type of pain reliever? I’d even settle for the Hippon witchdoctor ceremony at this point.”

  Olek nodded and awkwardly adjusted his waistband. The full height of his arousal pressed against the pants. “Yes, we have a medical booth. I’ll take you.”

  He led her from the bathroom. Nadja followed him out the door into the hall. She kept a steady eye on him as he led her forward. Her cramps became slightly worse and she frowned, glancing down at her waist.

  Before she could look back up, Olek had her pinned against a wall. His hand was on her breast and his mouth was seeking her throat. Nadja moaned in surprise. He found her thigh and lifted it along his waist so that he could press between her legs. His hard length rubbed against her, still at full erection. Hot sparks of pleasure erupted all over her skin.

  Nadja gasped, looking around the passageway. His wild passion was overwhelming, but she couldn’t help noticing they were in danger of being caught. She hit his arm, insisting, “Olek, stop it!”

  “Nadja,” he breathed hotly to her throat and she thought she might swoon from the rush of desire that overcame her. “Just…a little longer, please. I want to kiss you.”

  * * *

  Olek’s body stirred with a depth of uncontrolled feelings he’d never experienced before. They were raw, potent and primal. The dragon inside him threatened to shift if he didn’t fulfill the needs of the man. He couldn’t have sex in dragon form and shifting would ease his physical ache. Closing his eyes, he breathed her in. The pheromone he detected lit a fire in him. The scent of her filled his head and Olek took another steadying breath. It was hard to concentrate.

  “I just need to kiss you,” he said against her neck, unable to catch his breath. He felt his eyes burn, knowing if he pulled back to look at her they’d be filled with liquid gold. So help him if she tried to run right now. The pheromones were bad enough, but to add a chase? A man could only take so much.

  For the Draig, the woman’s breeding time was almost regarded as sacred. The pheromones a wife’s body emitted could make husbands mad with lust, and the need to procreate—or so the legends had said. If strong enough, it turned them into true beasts. And, from what he’d been told, although women were not made to conceive at such a time it didn’t stop the effect. Draig seed could stay within the woman, waiting inside her until her new cycle, causing a belated pregnancy.

  But Olek wasn’t thinking about procreation at the moment. He wanted much more than that. His body had been denied since their wedding night and the full effects of such deprivation surged forth to urge him on.

  “Mmm,” he moaned, fighting his innate desire to take her like an animal in heat. The dragon inside him wanted him to lay claim to his woman. His fingers prickled, threatening a shift so that his talons might cut through the material keeping them apart.

  He nipped at her shirt, as he kissed a hot trail with her breast cupped in his palm. His hips thrust wildly into her, grinding against her clothes. He wanted nothing more than to bend her over on the floor and take her wildly from behind.

  “Mmm, Nadja.” Olek groaned against her nipple as it peaked beneath the cotton material of her shirt, right between his lips. His hand was at her back, twisting insistently into her waistband, ready to strip her of her clothes.

  “Olek,” Nadja hit his arm harder to get his attention. “Oleeek!”

  Olek abruptly stopped at the panicked sound of her voice. Nadja heaved for breath. He forced all traces of the dragon out of his features before pulling away from her body.

  Panting, he gazed steadily into her eyes, unashamed of his actions. “Tell me to take you back to our bedroom.” He dipped forward to kiss and lick playfully at her parted lips. “You won’t regret it, I promise. I’ll make you scream my name for hours.”

  Nadja shook her head in denial. “Take me to the medic unit.”

  Olek grinned, despite the raging fire in his body. He let her go. “Perhaps that would be best.”

  The medical wing was deserted when they arrived. There was a row of large, empty beds against one wall, a reception desk by the other along with rows of glass cases. In the back were two private exam rooms and an operating room.

  Olek glanced at one of the empty beds, his eyes lit with suggestion. Nadja instantly shook her head in denial.

  “Don’t even think it,” she said under her breath, moving toward the private rooms to put distance between them.

  “But…” He affected a wounded expression at her heated denial.

  She held up her hand to stop his advance. “Where is the unit?”

  He lifted his jaw indicating behind her.

  Nadja backed away from him before turning to check the backrooms. The last room had a standard medical unit. He heard her turn it on before moving to follow. Coming inside the room just in time to see her grab a long, thin instrument off a nearby table, he watched her jam it lightly into the unit’s side panel. The controls slipped open and she smiled in satisfaction.

  Olek frowned, reaching to take the instrument from her before she ruined their medical equipment. “What are you doing? We only have one of those.”

  “I’m not breaking it,” she muttered under her breath, biting her lip as she reprogrammed the machine. She paused to press at her stomach as if willing the pain to lessen.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to…?” Olek tilted his head to the side to eye her firm ass as she leaned over. He licked his lips.

  “Stay back, barbarian.” Nadja glanced at him only long enough to direct him a frown. Her words lacked heat.

  Olek shrugged, extremely disappointed.

  “When is the last time you’ve had this upgraded?” she asked. “I haven’t seen this model for years.”

  “Are you a medical booth technician?” he inquired, curiously. She did appear to know what she was doing.

  “No.” Nadja finished. Pushing the panel back into place, she said, “There.”

  Standing, she climbed between the two plates of the machine and reached around the corner to press a button before drawing her hand to her s
ide. The plates came forward, trapping her within.

  The cloud of desire lifted from Olek’s one-tracked brain and he could again function rationally. The pheromone scent was gone. The machine beeped once and opened. Nadja climbed out, sighing in relief.

  “Are you better?” Nadja asked wryly. “I know I am.”

  Olek frowned. Indeed he was recovered. The desire was still there, but no longer the desperate urge to mate. “What did you do?”

  “I took my womanly away,” she smiled brightly. “No blood, no pain, no mess. I should market that little adjustment trick to women all over the stars. I would be a starrillionaire!”

  Nadja indeed looked very proud of herself at the moment.

  “You mean you made yourself sterile?” Olek asked in alarm. He wasn’t so pleased.

  “Well, yes, I suppose you could look at it like that,” she answered.

  Olek marched forward and pointed into the machine. “Get back in there and fix it immediately.”

  “What? The unit? It’s not broken,” Nadja answered, confused. “I just had to reprogram it so it would—”

  “Fix your body,” Olek demanded angrily. His face contorted and he took her arm, urging her inside the medical unit. She jerked away.

  “What —?” Nadja gasped suddenly as if finally understanding what he referred to. “I can’t change it back. It doesn’t work like that.”

  Olek felt as if she’d kicked him. She didn’t want his children.

  “It’s only for this month. It won’t last,” she said. “It’s never permanent.”

  That eased him some, but he was still hurt.

  “I thought we said we wouldn’t have children right away,” she defended against his silence. “I had no idea you wanted to knock me up so quickly.”

  “Knock you?” he questioned in disgust. “I have never hit you!”

  “What? No. Knock me up, make me in the family way, get me pregnant.”

  Olek scowled. Grumbling, he said, “Don’t call it that.”

  “Okay,” she sighed, shaking her head. “It’s just a saying. I didn’t mean anything by it. What’s gotten into you?”

  “Nothing.” His expression darkened and he knew he should just walk away before he said something he’d regret later.

  “Olek?” Nadja said in concern, coming after him.

  “Let’s just go home. It’s late and I have a lot of work to finish before tomorrow.”

  Olek stayed silent as he led her the rest of the way home. He tried not to glance at the spot in the hall where only moments before he had been pawing her like a mindless animal. Once home, Olek still said nothing as he went to his office.

  “If I didn’t know better, I would say you just started a womanly of your own,” she muttered to herself, clearly having no indication of how good his shifter hearing really was.

  Chapter 19

  Sleep did not fix their marital discord and Olek was still irritable the next morning. Nadja stayed out of his way. He left with a case full of documents around mid-morning without saying more than two words to her. Nadja let him go. There was nothing she could do about his mood. She told herself she’d be content to work in her lab.

  But that was before the patients started coming. Apparently, word had spread in the village that Princess Nadja could cure naturally, just as well as a medical unit. The villagers brought her everything from skin disorders, to a burn, to cuts and scrapes. When she asked why they didn’t just go to the doctor, one of the women told her that the man with the limp had proclaimed her touch to be a miracle and now everyone wanted to see for themselves what she could do. Nadja suspected a few of the wounds had been self-inflicted—nothing too dangerous, just cuts and scrapes that really didn’t need medical attention.

  The superstitious villagers, for one reason or another, all seemed reluctant to try a medic unit, which was still considered a new contraption to the planet. They kept her busy until the late hours of evening. Sending the last one out the door, Nadja sighed, shaking her head in wonder.

  Olek had not come home and she was too tired to wait up for him. Taking a quick shower, she crawled into bed and was asleep within seconds.

  * * *

  “What exactly are you doing?” Nadja demanded, her eyes narrowing in displeasure.

  She stood in the doorway looking into the bathroom. She’d just woken up and was going to clean her teeth when she discovered Olek on the floor. He was surrounded by the contents of her beauty bag.

  “Please tell me you are not putting on makeup,” she demanded dryly, shaking her head in dismay.

  Olek arched a brow, pressing his lips together at her statement. He eyed her beauty devices with an avid curiosity, trying to snap them open and make them work. “Zoran’s wife needs to grow her hair. Do you have something for that?”

  “That is an eyelash curler.” Nadja reached over to snatch it from his hands. “I don’t think that’s going to help you.”

  Olek picked up a pair of laser tweezers and began playing with them. Taking them between his fingers, he pushed at it to make the laser snap as the jaws opened and shut with loud clicks. Nadja took it from him. He gave her a small grimace, before smiling slightly as he picked up a blush tinter.

  “Your brother, Prince Zoran?” Nadja sighed, leaning over as she began putting the devices back into the beauty bag the way she liked them.

  “Yes.” Olek stood. He held the blush tinter in his hand and clicked through the color selector. Absently, he said, “It seems she did something and he had to cut off her hair as a punishment.”

  “That would be Pia, wouldn’t it?” Nadja said, remember what the queen had told her. She frowned. Pia was perhaps one of the most beautiful women on the ship. She had the prettiest blonde hair Nadja had ever seen. “Why would he do that to his wife?”

  Olek shrugged. “I hear she shamed him at the Breeding Festival.”

  “What kind of monster is your brother?” Nadja huffed, unable to imagine what she’d do if Olek tried to do anything to her appearance without her permission. Placing everything in the bag, she stood. Well, almost everything. She gave a dramatic roll of the eyes as she held the beauty bag open for Olek to drop her blush tinter into it.

  Olek frowned but gave the contraption back. “Do you really need all this stuff?”

  “Yes,” she defended as if it were the stupidest question in the world.

  “But, you’re pretty,” he offered, confused.

  “Thanks,” came her wry answer.

  “Well, do you have anything for Pia or not?”

  “Yes.” Nadja put her things back where they belonged and went underneath one of the counters. “Here. It’s a hair extender. It will grow her hair back in about an hour or so.”

  Olek took the hair-growing apparatus and frowned. It had a giant suction cup on one end, a funnel on the other and more buttons than a computer. He looked it over. Then, glancing curiously over his wife’s body, he motioned meaningfully at her lower stomach and asked in manly curiosity, “Can you use it anywhere?”

  Nadja again rolled her eyes at him. He grinned.

  “How does it work?” he asked when she refused to dignify his last question with a response.

  Nadja smiled. Suddenly, she had an idea. She really would like to see some of the other women—someone who understood her when she spoke, and whose voices weren’t marred with a handsome burring accent. “Why don’t I take it to her and help her?”

  “Would you?” Olek asked, sounding very relieved as if he hadn’t relished playing the role of hairdresser.

  “Sure,” Nadja said, in girlish excitement. She didn’t have a chance to make many friends before leaving the medic ship and, though they never really talked in depth, Pia had seemed very nice. “It doesn’t use a lifecell so I’ll have to charge it today, but I can go tomorrow. I wouldn’t mind visiting with her. I haven’t seen any of the other women since we arrived here.”

  “Perfect.” Olek nodded. He looked her over, before turning away from he
r. Clearing his throat, he said, “I must go now. I have to meet with the king and finish going over trade agreements.”

  “So, you’re not still mad at me?” Nadja inquired, biting at her lips. She wished she could take the words back because his face became a blank mask.

  “No,” Olek replied softly, sighing. The words were unconvincing, but he added, “I’m not mad.”

  * * *

  Olek didn’t like thinking about what she’d done in the medical booth. He wasn’t mad. How could he be mad at her alleviating her pain? But he was hurt. She didn’t seem at all interested in having his children and that fact tore at his heart. The life he’d dreamed of since before he could remember was slipping away. Marriage was not what he’d been taught to expect.

  Chapter 20

  Olek stayed with his father for the rest of the day, and Nadja refused to make the mistake of opening the door to the persistent knocks of villagers again. She had no desire to be the new village doctor, or more correctly, the village miracle worker. The knocks didn’t stop until late in the evening, after which she climbed into bed alone. Although, she did awake several times in the night swearing she heard more knocks, only to determine it was nothing but the sound chasing her in her dreams.

  Olek was home when she came out of the bedroom the next morning. He reminded her to go to Pia’s, giving her directions to Zoran’s home. He was quiet as he once more gathered up his case and left, telling her he wouldn’t be home until late.

  Nadja hated his inattention, but felt she had no right to complain. When he did give her attention, she batted him away. She had secrets she didn’t want to share. He kept secrets she desperately wanted to know. If they tried to communicate she would make him mad, or he would make her mad, or they’d make each other mad. It was a strange cycle they couldn’t seem to break out of. Throw denied passion onto their marital discord, and Nadja was left staring at a giant mess of a relationship with a stranger who she wanted but didn’t really know.