Had he? “I don’t know. But it seems a sign that you and I are fated to be mates.”
“It seems a sign that I am now your bondmaid.” Her voice was tart.
“Hmm.” That didn’t sound much like his idea of marriage.
“I think it’s this slave collar,” she said. “Will you not remove it?”
“It’s your ring. So you said. I will remove it, if I can. But it flew from my hand to you, as if it had a mind of its own.” He heard her sob in the darkness. Moonlight glinted on her wet cheeks. “Don’t cry,” he said. He held up his right hand. “Can you see my hand?”
“Faintly.”
“Lean into one of my fingers, so it touches the ring. I don’t want to bruise you.”
A moth brushed his pinkie finger. “Release me,” she begged.
“Leave Zofie’s neck,” he said.
The moth flitted away. “It didn’t work,” she said.
He hadn’t expected it to. Some deeper, older magic was at work here. “We will think of something,” he said. “Where will you sleep? Do you have a nest?”
“A nest!”
“You do seem to spend a lot of time as an owl, Princess.”
“I have a home in a tree. With a bed. But I do not want to go there tonight.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. It is as if the ring forces me to stay at your side.”
“Then make yourself comfortable, Princess, for I am going to sleep.”
“Where?”
“You may share my sleeping bag if you wish.”
“That would be unseemly,” she said primly. “I will sleep on that branch.”
“Just as you please. But who would know?”
“I would know!”
“Please yourself, Zofie mine. But doesn’t it get lonely keeping yourself from lowering your standards?”
“You don’t understand. If I fail in my duty, I will not be able to rejoin my people.”
What he did not understand was why she wanted to be part of such an inflexible set of folks as her elven brethren. What he said was, “Sleep, Zofie, things will look much less bleak in the morning.”
He pulsed a little talent in the air to reinforce his magic. Calming prey was part of his talent. He was glad to use it to give his little mate some rest. After a few moments, he heard her breathing even out. Just a soft murmuring on the breeze.
But despite his fatigue he did not sleep. Zofie was such a puzzle. At once timid and resolute. Naive and yet wise in her way. In many ways, confined as she had been to this tiny island, it was as if she had been asleep for a thousand years.
She had a plan for curing her loneliness, he had to give her that. But sailing west had to be a euphemism for death. He didn’t think she was the least bit suicidal. Or stupid. She needed rescuing from this half-life of waiting for an opportunity to die.
He didn’t think a dour Finn was anyone’s idea of a knight in shining armor. Poor lonely Zofie had probably dreamed of a polished lover. However she was stuck with him. He would just have to try to become the man of her dreams, instead of the monster of her nightmares.
Easier said than done. He had lightly listed the qualities he wanted in his wife. What did Zofie want in a husband? Not a dragon. Couldn’t be done. An elf. Not going to happen. He could manage kindness. And, if he could figure out how to get her back to normal size, affection.
If such a condition was indeed reversible. She could start by eating. She had watched him eat without partaking. Had she been starving herself since she was abandoned?
She needed love. Fated mates were supposed to love unto death. His mate would need his love. He needed love too. If he could get her love to him, he could undo ten centuries of emptiness and please himself into the bargain. How, he wondered, as sleep claimed him, did you persuade a pixie to fall in love?
***
His mission was to get through the fence of thorns that surrounded the castle where the sleeping princess was imprisoned. He was armed only with a broadsword. He hacked and hacked at the brambles, but he only blunted its gleaming edges.
The thorns ripped his clothes to rags and covered him in welling scratches. Blood mingled with sweat. He was getting no closer to the princess. She would continue to sleep inviolate for another hundred years, until a real hero found her. Rage filled his heart at the thought of another male looking on the face of his fated mate. Enjoying her sweetness.
He would burn the hedge of brambles to ash. And immolate the princess? If he could not have her, no man would. She was his. Yet it gave him no pleasure to imagine his black-haired mate’s rosy limbs engulfed in an inferno. He renewed his attempts to cut through the brambles.
Now he was entirely bare, the thorns had snatched him naked. Blood and sweat ran into his eyes in stinging rivulets. His shoulders and back throbbed under the torture of a thousand cuts, and still he had made no progress.
At his next blow, the sword snapped, leaving him holding only the hilt. The blade tinkled like glass as it shattered. A shard pierced his heart. The agony was instant. He was going to die.
Just like that, he knew what he must do. He leapt into the air and became a dragon. Huge. Armor clad. Invincible. He soared over the briars and up to the undefended parapet. The battlements were deserted. Dust and leaves blew around. He stalked unobserved and unobstructed around the ramparts until he reached a door.
He was too large to go through it. He returned to human. Pulled the sliver of metal from his heart. The pain was excruciating. His blood ran freely. He prowled naked through empty corridors, opening doors to rooms as vacant as his heart felt. Where was she?
There was a narrow stone staircase winding up into a tower. He had to turn sideways to mount them. But he felt her presence as surely as if she beckoned him on. He climbed steadily. Higher and higher. Higher than he could have believed the tower on this castle to be. His calves burned with the effort.
On the topmost landing a door stood closed and barred. He unbarred it. The door swung inward on creaking hinges. The room was draped, not in dusty cobwebs like the rooms below, but in snow-white gauze. Silver and palest blue ribbons floated in the breeze from an open window. And there, buried in a mountain of blue and white quilts, was his mate.
Black-haired, black-eyed, round and shapely. And smaller than his hand. He had to kiss her to break the spell, but how could he find her lips when she was so small? He was in the wrong damned fairy tale. His heart was pierced. If he did not receive her kiss, he would perish.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Zofie~
Although he had claimed to be weary, it took Marc Valli a long time to fall asleep. She was troubled to the heart. What ought she to do? The ring was still stuck fast around her neck. She felt a warmth there, as though he had heated the metal when he touched it. As though she were made of ice, and his touch was melting her, as the sun melted the ice sculptures of Jack Frost.
Time passed. There was something she needed to do. Something important. A favor she must ask of the moon. If only she were not so sleepy.
She was weeping by the gray walls surrounding the well of the world. Her tears made no sound when they fell into the inky water. A snake poked his mottled head out. His red eyes were evil slits. His tongue licked the air.
“Why do you sob as if your heart is breaking, sweetheart?” he asked.
“I have lost my cousin,” she said. “And I do not know where she may be.”
“Is that all?”
She ignored his scornful tone. “It is enough to break my heart twenty times over.”
“Such a dainty and tender organ.”
His sneering face and threatening tongue frightened her. “Why don’t you go back where you came from, and leave me in peace to mourn my kinswoman?”
“What if I could bring you your cousin?” He leered at her.
“I would give anything in the world for her. All that I possess.”
“All I want is that ring on your finger.” His long, forked tongue flickered at her.
>
She shrank back. There on her hand was the ring her mother had put there when she was named. Its five sapphires held her whole fate. “Not my ring. I will give you anything else you desire. But you cannot have my ring.”
“Then I can’t help you, Princess. It must be that ring, or nothing.”
“Nothing. Go, snake, back to where you crept from.”
There was a loud splash and water from the well wet her skirts. She woke with tears streaming down her face. Marc Valli was asleep on his bedroll. He had invited her to share his bed.
Her dream had left her deeply shaken and chilled to the bone. The heat from her ring no longer warmed her. She gazed longingly at his sleeping bulk. He would never know if she warmed herself with his sleeping body.
She curled up by his head, but even his comforting heat could not lull her back to sleep. Her dream had terrified her. Was the snake at the well of the world Jörmungandr or Marc Valli? She had to admit that Marc Valli had never frightened her. Or leered at her.
He had just insulted her many times over. And suggested she was foolish enough not to know if she had shrunk or not. But in truth, how would she have known? Year after year, the seasons came and went. Misty Isle did not alter. Not after Odin sunk the causeway and made her home an island. A prison. She suppressed that rebellious thought.
When the causeway vanished, the hill on which the king’s palace stood had also fallen into the sea. Where the great elf king had ruled, now only the peevish black-legged gulls lived. All the splendors of King Erriki’s kingdom were gone. Now time rolled on, unchanging and endless. If she had not kept careful count, she might have been alone ten years or ten decades, instead of ten centuries.
In her youth, in the elven court, she had never been bored. Never. Those distant days seemed more real than the ones she had lived through since. Once she had dreamed of a prince who would love her. But never of a blunt-spoken churl like this dragon. So why did he make her feel warm and safe? A princess ought to be above such simple temptations. Hold herself dearer.
She crept a little closer to her churl’s tempting warmth and told the moon her troubles. Her eyes closed.
The hero opened the iron-bound door to the princess’ bedchamber. He was naked and bleeding. His body was scratched from scalp to toe. Blood flowed from a deep wound on his chest. He bent tenderly over the sleeping princess. His blood splashed onto her face. She writhed in her sleep as if she had been doused with acid.
Her sleeping face lengthened. Its beauty morphed into the fearsome, scaly face of a reptile. She yawned and stretched. Her talons and spines tore the dainty blue and white bedclothes. Her open mouth was filled with teeth like knives. Great horns sprouted from her forehead.
The dragoness opened her eyes and gazed unblinkingly at the man leaning over her.
“Arise,” the hero said. “Let us leave this place together.”
He led the dragoness to the open window. “I will go first.” He threw himself into the air. In the blink of an eye he was transformed into a dragon as hideous as his princess.
But he did not appear to find her ugly. He spread his great blue wings and danced in the air for his bride’s delight. She was creamy white below and rosy pink above. Her horns and talons crystal clear. He was celestial blue and glittered as if he had been forged by Brokkr the dwarf who made Odin’s spear.
Their dance was tender. Joyful. Sensual. It made something inside Zofie yearn for what she knew not. Faster and faster, the two dragons spun in the air, until with a great bugling cry the blue dragon raced into the dawn, pursued by his mate. Zofie watched them enviously until they were only specks on the horizon. She turned back into the room.
Marc Valli was standing behind her in the princess’ bedchamber. His chest was still bleeding. His dragon tattoo blinked at her. He held out his hand. “Your fate has been changed,” he said. “It is no longer enough for you to watch and wait. Will you not allow yourself to be happy?”
She wanted with all her heart to fly up to his hand and be held warm and safe. But her feet would not leave the ground. He smiled beguilingly.
“Help me,” she whispered.
“Willingly.” He lifted her. His great hands spanned her waist with ease. He raised her to his lips.
His mouth was hot. But not fierce. Yet he kissed her as if she were a goose girl and not an elven princess. As if passion was not unknown to her. And his hungry mouth ignited an answering heat in her. He set her on the princess’ torn bedding.
“It must be your choice,” he said. “You must choose whether to be locked up behind a barricade of thorns, or to be set free to soar with me.”
She put her hand over his heart. His chest was hot and smooth as beaten gold. “You’re bleeding.”
“I am wounded. Without your touch. Without your love. I will die.”
“Am I then so powerful?”
“Is there any doubt, my love?”
“Do you love me?”
“Yes, Zofie daughter of Ulrik, I love you. You are the one woman in the world made for me. Will you not share my fate, my bed, my fortune?”
Doubt cramped her heart. “Is it my ring you desire, or me?”
“Your ring binds our fates together. But I love you more than gold or silver. More than life itself. Will you have me?”
“Yes.”
That one word was all it took. He began to unfasten her gown.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Zofie~
He knelt on the bed before her seated form. His hands trembled slightly as he unfastened the ribbons at the shoulders of her gown. His face was intent, his eyes hot. He kissed her mouth softly and pulled her bodice to her waist.
“I’ve died and gone to heaven,” he breathed. His fingers drew tiny circles on the upper slopes of her breasts, while his eyes feasted.
She could feel her nipples drawing tight as if he had touched them with his hands instead of his eyes. He grazed the tips of one with his lips and then drew the other deep into his mouth. He suckled while lightning flashed behind her eyes and her womb pulsed.
He took his mouth away. “Wow. I guess you like that.”
“I do, Marc Valli, very much.”
He bent his head and repeated his caress on the other breast. Again her womb leaped. She felt wet and needy. He pulled her against his heart. The wound on his chest was still seeping. She kissed it. He swayed and caught her even closer.
“You ravish my heart,” he cried.
“A heart for a heart,” she returned. “Is only fair trade.”
“Do I have your heart, my love?”
“You do.” Happiness suffused her. “Kiss me more,” she pleaded.
“Wrap your legs around my waist,” he whispered.
“They won’t fit,” she whispered back.
“Do it.”
And amazingly her ankles locked above his firm buttocks. He groaned as her sex rubbed against his ridged belly. Suddenly even her gossamer gown was a barrier to her pleasure. She willed her clothing away. Marc Valli groaned louder.
His golden beard tickled her lips delicately as his tongue probed the seam. He slipped inside her mouth. She felt the hot glide of his tongue against hers, velvet against velvet. Her breasts swelled against his hard chest. Her sex grew hotter and moister. She squirmed against him wanting the pleasure she had heard women gossiping about in corners.
“Easy,” he breathed into her mouth. “We have time enough.” But his hands moved from her waist to her buttocks where he squeezed gently until her pussy pulsed harder.
By the whiskers on Thor’s chin! He was seducing her with kisses. For the first time she understood why Lexi had given Jörmungandr the ring of Rothgar. She wanted to give Marc Valli the pleasure he was giving her. She wanted to hold him so closely that where Zofie began and Marc Valli ended would vanish as they became one.
Now his hands were parting her flesh and testing her gently. “Yes,” she moaned.
“You are so soft and wet, Zofie,” he murmured.
&nb
sp; A finger probed her shallowly, withdrew and dabbed caresses all over her folds. Each gentle tap spread a sizzling excitement all through her body. Her womb clenched tight. Her legs gripped him harder. Something wondrous was about to happen to her.
He pulled her tongue into his mouth, but before she could explore as he had explored hers, he began to suckle it. It felt as if her tongue was connected to where his fingers played the same rhythm on her sex. Stars exploded behind her eyes. Bliss shot through her, as bubbles rise in beer. Fizzy and chaotic.
He supported her and stroked her back gently until she came back to herself. “Are you ready, Zofie?” he asked.
She was ready for anything. He raised her slightly and set his cock at her entrance. He lowered her slowly. She opened to him wanting more.
“Slowly, dearest.” His chest was damp with his exertions. He lifted her again, as far as her gripping thighs would permit, and when her needy pussy whimpered – or she did – he lowered her down a little further.
She could feel every long inch of him pressing against her nerves. The pleasure built again. He raised and lowered her while his lips nibbled hers in the same tender cadence. Ripples of ecstasy surged through her. He thrust once more. Her head fell back. She thought she might have shrieked his name.
Certainly he chanted hers as they rocked together. His every movement sent a fresh wave of delight through her. Her breasts tingled. Her womb beat like a joyful drum. And then Marc Valli was bellowing her name into her tangled curls.
She felt his pleasure as surely as he must be feeling hers. A cloud of bliss surrounded her. She floated in it, free and yet tethered to Marc Valli. They collapsed together on the princess’ blue and white bedclothes.
He gathered her into his arms. “You are mine, Zofie. And I am yours.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Marc~
The dawn chorus roused him. All around him birds caroled their lust for their mates. He felt around for his. He was alone, tangled in his sleeping bag. Of course he was alone. Despite his dreams, nothing had changed. But he felt rested. Recharged. Energized. Where was Zofie?
Dragon Enchanted Page 5