Then he says, “Good night, Ola” just as I fork a huge bite of the revani Agda made into my mouth.
Why does he always bounce when I’m about to get my dessert on?
“Wait!” I try to say around the delicious syrup-soaked sweet cake.
But this time he does keep on walking. Without turning back.
I eat the rest of my dessert, and Agda comes out to clear the dishes. “No family time for the Drákons and your sweet boy tonight?” she asks, lifting her grey eyebrows.
“No, not tonight,” I answer with a little chuff. “I guess he wants a night off.”
Agda nods, her expression going from concerned to sage. “Tomorrow is your big day. Perhaps it is best that you all get some rest.”
“Yep, yep,” I agree, keeping my tone Unbothered 100.
But I am bothered. So, so bothered.
In fact, him cutting out on me is all I can think about as I make my way up the stairs back to my room. Which I’m hoping has a TV or something, since apparently it’s just me tonight. Alone.
My biosystem is turned off, but it feels like a bunch of sad face emojis are floating up my feed as I grab a pair of pajamas, and head to the bathroom to wash my face. I’d been deluding myself thinking that all this cozy family time would lead to a reboot of the relationship we had back at the North Dakota gatehouse. Reverence, my ass. More like Whateverence as far as Damianos is concerned—
I screech, throwing the pajamas I picked out up in the air when I find Damianos waiting for me in the bathroom.
He’s dressed in drawstring pants and a Henley shirt that looks like it was handwoven from the softest cashmere. Whatever the material, it clings to his muscles like it was specially designed to make me drool.
Panting emoji, but still, I have to ask, “Where did you come from? Is scaring the shit out of me, like, your new thing?”
“Did I scare you?” he asks, his tone as ancient and bored as ever.
“Yeah, you scared me. What clued you in? The heart attack I nearly had or the way I screamed?”
His amusement ripples over our mate bond. Free as it wants to be, no squelch. I guess he doesn’t have any problems letting me know he’s laughing when it’s at my expense.
“If your heart were really so weak, you would have died in childbirth.”
He’s laughing, but his point brings up another question. “Do you regret that? That I didn’t die like I was supposed to? That I’m standing between you and your revenge.”
The little bit of amusement he allowed me to feel cuts off abruptly. And cue nothing but numb coming down his side of our mate bond.
“Come now,” he says before I can ask him again. “It’s time for your bath.”
Chapter Twenty
Damianos steps aside to reveal four classical columns surrounding a whirlpool bath encased in a block of marble with stairs carved into it.
Now that the shock of finding him here is receding, I can hear the water bubbling and smell the same fragrance he used in the baths Other Him gave me at the gatehouse.
“You did this for me?” I ask, my heart constricting with all those memories.
Instead of answering, Damianos steps up to me and bends his head far enough to close the foot of space between our two heights. His golden gaze locks onto my brown one as his fingers find the deep V of my dinner dress. And his lips hover. Right above mine.
I feel his fingers compress at just the right spot on the plunging V of my dress. Then there’s a small click before it loosens enough to fall into a puddle around my feet.
I stand there frozen as the nanite shaper I’m wearing underneath meets the same fate. And then suddenly I’m naked as the day I was born.
I let out a shuddering breath.
Other Damianos never undressed me. He was more the watch in awe as I stripped type.
But Damianos…had I thought him disinterested? Because now…
Now, I can see the raw hunger in his eyes as his lips hover over mine. And I’m standing here in front of him without a stitch of clothes. The loving father he showed me over the past week is gone. He’s a hunter. And I’m the prey completely exposed.
Will he try to kiss me? Consume me? My heart speeds up with both possibilities.
But then he takes a full step back.
“I shall help you into the bath.” The unspoken Reverence hangs thick in the air between us as he offers me his hand, without breaking our gaze.
And I find myself unable to look away, even as I climb the steps to the tub and lower myself down into the warm, bubbling water.
There’s a sponge waiting on the lip of the bath. But before I can touch it, Damianos snatches it up and pushes up the sleeves of his shirt. Is he going to…?
My heart thrills with remembered glee when the answer to that question turns out to be yes.
He begins to sud me up, just like his other version. But somehow not like him at all. Other Damianos was careful…reverent. Whenever he’d bathed me, I could feel his awe, uncloaked and pure, radiating over our mate bond
There’s nothing pure about the dragon bathing me right now. His gaze hits my body along with the sponge, hot and hungry. He soaps my neck, then my shoulders, then my breasts. He’s not quite back to his old size, but all those muscles are definitely on the comeback. I watch the tendons flex underneath his arm as he moves the soap over my body.
“Do you remember how you touched me when I was tied up to that bed? How your hand pumped my male works until they spilled seed all over me? I imagine it made you feel very powerful to see me so weak.”
I’m guessing contrite is the way he wants me to be feeling right now. But not going to lie, he nailed how it felt for me to make him come like that. Powerful is the exact right word. In fact, a new heat rises inside of me at the memory, even as I playfully inform him, “It was the only way to shut you up.”
“I wonder how it would feel to have me exert such power over you.”
Before I can answer, he plunges his arm downward. And cups my pussy.
“I would like to see you come for me the way I spilled for you,” he says kneading. “I would like to hear your helpless cries. Watch you tremble in your submission.”
Apparently I’d like to see that too. As he spins his fantasy, my core pushes into his hand with a mind of its own.
The needy sensation won’t last long, I know. Other Damianos had tried this once, and it had been a fumbling disaster. His fingers were too big and blunt, and I was too impatient to make for a good teacher. Real talk 100, his clumsy rubbing did the opposite of turning me on. So I’d grabbed his hand in both of mine, and said, “You know what? Let’s take this show straight back to Licky Town.”
But I soon find out that this Damianos doesn’t have a fumbly finger problem. When he starts rubbing, the sensations don’t stop. He kneads my core a few times, the ball of his palm circling my clit. Then, holding my gaze with his, he easily slips his two middle fingers into my not-dry-at-all hole.
The sudden invasion makes me gasp. But what comes next makes me mewl. His hand becomes heavy on top of my pussy, anchoring me so I can no longer mindlessly push into his hand. At the same time, long fingers curl upwards, rubbing some secret part of me that makes my entire core light up with a needy excitement. Then the ball of his hand continues to circle, but this time with a lot more pressure.
Suddenly his fingers no longer feel too big. In fact, they’re just the right length for this impossible action. My mewls soon turn into helpless moans.
“Your flame is lit up with surprise. Did he not touch you like this?” His dark, resonant voice fills up my ear.
“Once,” I admit. “It didn’t go well. How…?”
“As I said, we drakkon are quick studies.”
Usually, I find this version of Damianos Drákon arrogant as fuck. But right now with the magic he’s creating down below I’m like Amen, you speak on that, boy. At least that’s what I was planning to say.
My quip ends up coming out as an even louder
moan as deep pulses of sensation start shooting through me. Closer and closer. I think I’m going to com—
Without warning, Damianos pulls out and says out loud, “We will see to your hair now.”
“Wait…what?” My voice cracks as Damianos grabs a golden jug from the far edge of the tub instead of finishing what he was doing. The jug is so large and shiny, I assume it’s got to be a synth job at first, made to look like real gold.
But one whiff of it up close tells me the real story. Years of polish aren’t enough to cover up its ancient spell. I can just hear my anthropologist cousin, Koko, saying, “That artifact should be in a museum!” as I sniff at it.
Damianos, however, dunks the priceless golden jug into the water and then raises it back up.
“Close your eyes,” he instructs.
That’s all the warning I get before he pours the bathwater over my hair, drenching it. Again, nowhere near as gentle as Other Him.
Okay, well…
He’s obviously punishing me for leaving him with blue balls that one night. I know that. Yet it is kinda hard to act like he didn’t get me just as bad as I got him as he washes my hair. Worse even.
Because guess what the only thing more erotic than a man washing your hair is. A man bringing you to the straight edge of coming, then stopping everything to wash your hair. My body stays a tingling as he completes two rough shampoo cycles, then starts to detangle it with some Greek conditioner I’ve never seen before.
It’s been a few too many days since I last cleaned my hair. Under any other circumstances, I’d be grateful not to have to deal with a long-overdue wash and detangle session myself. But the way my body is throbbing as he does his thing… Gratitude is impossible.
But I guess, my time with Damianos has taught me something after all. I grit my teeth, refusing to give him the benefit of a response.
DAMIANOS
She refuses to speak her upset out loud, but I can feel her frustration and rage burning over our mate bond. I can also see it quite clearly in her flame.
Good.
It makes it all that much easier to mask my own reaction to having watched the way she’d responded to my retribution. The press of her hungry core into my hand. The way her bountiful breasts bobbed underneath the water, the entire upper half of her body writhing when her lower half could not…
The incomplete orgasm had been meant as a punishment. A brutal withholding of pleasure that would reestablish my dominance over her. And I believed forcing her to sit through a hair-braiding session would only enhance the torture.
That supposition was correct, but I had failed to properly account for the mate bond.
How clever she had been in North Dakota to put space between us after she left me chained to the bed unable to do anything about the deep ache she’d stirred within me. I needed that distance now, especially since unlike me, she was doing nothing to mute her side of our mate bond.
As it was, I could feel her need like it was my own. Painful and aching, begging me silently to cease this punishment and take her. And that makes it rather difficult to pretend she has no effect on me. For I know if I dared to look down, I would see my flame would be just as red with ardor as hers.
But my flame matters not. For my father’s honor, I must remain strong.
With that resolution in mind, I replicate the style I learned to make from a video earlier this week as quickly as possible. When I’m finally done with the installation, I do not pause to admire my work. Or even to tease her about her heightened state of arousal.
I’m not sure I could speak these words even if I were to force myself to. The competing instinct to worship her glorious form…to finish what I started and release us both from our misery is overwhelming.
“We’re done here. Please preserve the style for tomorrow’s event.” Quickly rising to my feet, I leave her to get out of the tub on her own.
“You forgot to say goodbye, Reverence.”
Her husky voice drops into my head, stopping me at the bottom of the steps.
I turn my head and say out loud, “Good ni—”
“But that’s not how you do it, right?” She rises from the bath, water sluicing down her brown skin as she comes to a bold stand. I watch her climb out of the tub, and my male works press urgently into my scales. Rendering me unable to do anything but stare as she walks toward me, seemingly unconcerned with the water she drips in her wake.
“Good night, Reverence…” She wraps her left hand around my wrist and raises my right hand into the air to touch her right palm to mine. “Isn’t that how we’re supposed to say good night? That’s how Xenon and my sister say goodbye.”
No, it isn’t. She has performed the male part of the ritual, and with the wrong hand. Besides, females never initiate a parting. That is the male’s job when paying reverence.
Which I have yet to do.
Shame rises like steam inside of me, uncaring of my duty to my father. Only to her. But I quickly suppress the feeling before it is able to ripple across our mate bond.
My refusal to respond does not make her release me, however. Instead, she observes me, her head flame lit up with suspicion.
“You lied to me,” she says, still refusing to release my wrist.
“I did not lie to you,” I answer. “I merely meted out a slightly crueler version of the punishment you rendered upon me. Count yourself grateful I did not tie you to the bed first.”
I am trying to bait her. But she tosses me a vexing half-smile and answers, “Ooh, my wolf likes the idea of you tying me up.”
Naughty she-wolf…I only barely keep my answering lust from blasting across our mate bond.
Nevertheless, her eyes narrow suspiciously on me. “There you go again, not letting me in. You know what I think, Reverence?”
My flame flares at her use of such an intimate title, but I refuse to answer her query.
She continues on anyway. “You said you could never be him. But I think it’s the other way around.”
She presses her incorrect palm even more firmly into mine. “He is you, deep down inside. He’s the dragon you’re holding back every time you send a bunch of numb down our mate bond. The dragon you’re holding back now instead of taking your queen into that too fancy bedroom and fucking her like you know you want to—ooh, there it goes again. I guess that means I’m totally right. It’s so cold on your side of the bond. I must really be turning you on.”
I somehow manage to remain outwardly calm, but inside…my flame doesn’t just flare this time.
It roars.
She finally releases my wrist, but only so that she might step closer to me and place her hands upon my chest. “I want this to work. Imagine the happily ever after we could have if you let go of all those feelings inside of you? We could be everything, you and me. Maybe you should let me in.”
Her touch upon my chest, her direct gaze…it feels as if she is unraveling me. I don’t answer. It would be too dangerous to answer. For I don’t trust her or myself in this moment. And I am quickly coming to regret this scheme.
I think of the sword I left lying on the ground at the North Dakota kingdom house. How close I came to taking the mind of the male who murdered my father. My ultimate revenge…it would be mine now if not for her.
Yes, my unceasing desire for her has pulled me down a rabbit hole. And if I am not careful I will never find my way back to my original plan.
This I remind myself is nothing more than a temporary fantasy I have chosen to indulge. I will allow her this small triumph and tomorrow’s celebration. But after that it’s back to my previous plan.
No more lingering in this fantasy with Ola. The morning after the celebration I will exact my final revenge upon her fathers and the Betrayer King. And this time I won’t allow her to stop me with the wild fantasies that crazed pretender put in her head.
For those reasons and more, I do as I should have done before she baited me with her demand for a reverent good-bye. I turn and put as much di
stance between her and me as I can.
Chapter Twenty-One
OLA
I should have felt triumphant when he rushed out of there like I was some kind of dangerous, not him. But when he left me alone in the overly grand bathroom, all I felt was bereft.
The thing was, I meant what I said. I want us to be a happily ever after. So bad. I think of the promises I made Other Damianos right before he disappeared.
I’ve been trying to make good on those vows ever since I found this Damianos in the gatehouse basement. And I can envision our future so clearly. Liking each other more and more every day until suddenly it’s love. For both of us. Just like with Other Him.
But that vision won’t work if only one of us is willing to open ourselves up.
I huff over to the touchscreen catalog inside the large walk-in closet right off the bathroom. I had pulled a pair of my new pajamas earlier, but now I swipe past all the other nightwear choices in search of the one purchase I couldn’t keep myself from making. Hopefully, it was on the easily replicated list, not the custom one.
It was!
“Yes,” I whisper when one of the long nightgowns I wore exclusively at the North Dakota gatekeeper’s house pops up on the screen.
A few moments later, my heart sighs with a strange sort of relief when I slip it over my head. Sighs then sinks.
The nightgown reminds me of Other Damianos. I miss him so much. And even though I think I might have just won tonight’s battle, it feels like I’ve lost—
Wait a minute, is that my hair?
Her Dragon King (Her Dragon King Duet Book 2): 50 Loving States, North Dakota Pt. 2 Page 13