“Where is your dress?” he asked.
“I left it behind. Did you not notice? It was too much to carry. I’m well covered!” she said.
“I suppose. I just don’t want to offend you, or your father.”
“My father doesn’t have to know, and I’m the one that chose to stand here in my undergarments.”
“Fair enough,” he replied, as she approached him and stood looking out over the opposite cliff just outside the thick forest that had helped him make it here. Now, he would have to hope he could get back home without revealing himself.
“Isn’t the moon gorgeous from over here?” she asked.
“It is. I wonder why no one lives on this island.”
“I don’t know. Only shifters would be able to live here due to the disconnect between the main island and this strip, but I’ve seen bridges that men have built over greater gaps. I guess, because of where it is compared to our surrounding villages, none of them really know about it.”
“I suppose so. It is gorgeous here. You want to lay in the grass and look up at the stars?”
“That sounds perfect,” she told him.
Lying down on the ground, they stretched out beside one another. Tio tried to resist looking at the beautiful curve of her breasts as they pushed against the bodice she wore. The evening had cooled quite a bit, evidenced by the hard points pressing at the thin cotton fabric. He could feel himself getting aroused and tried to think of something else as they lay there chatting about anything but how much he wanted her in that moment.
After a while, she told him she had to get home, that her father would be waiting. He challenged her to a rematch of their race here and was grateful when she took him up on it. Once again, he found himself racing through the woods and jumping the gap, landing quite a bit easier on the other side than he had on the first trip.
That was where his good fortune ended, though. A broken limb caught his flank in the darkness, tearing at his fur and the flesh below. The pain was blinding, but he couldn’t afford to stop, running until he reached the edge of the woods where they had started. Quickly, he shifted and yanked on his clothes before stepping out to wait for her. The injury had slowed him, leaving him only seconds before she landed in front of him.
“God, Tio, what has happened to you?” she shrieked after she had slipped back into her clothes and he had turned around to face her.
“Just caught my side on a broken limb while I was getting dressed at the edge of the woods,” he told her with a wince.
“You are bleeding like mad. Let’s get you back to the house,” she exclaimed.
“I’m fine. It looks a lot worse than it is.”
“Are you sure? It looks like it is bleeding quite a bit.”
“I’m sure. Let’s just get you home. I’m more frightened of your father’s wrath, than I am of a little scratch on my side.”
Maggie laughed nervously, obviously still worried, despite what he was telling her. He tried to cover his discomfort as they returned to her house. He said a quick goodbye at the front steps and waited until she was safely inside. Attempting to walk without looking as distressed as he felt, he made his way back toward the bunkhouse, but did not go in. Instead, he slipped into the nearby woods and stripped off his shirt.
There was a huge gash down the length of his right side. It would not heal as a human. Stripping off the rest of his clothes, he shifted into tiger form and limped toward a nearby shallow cave to take shelter. Several small animals and a few bats scattered away from him as he lay down and went to sleep.
By morning, the tear had almost healed; at least, it was well enough to tolerate as a human. He dressed quickly and rushed to the bunkhouse to retrieve clothes. He discarded his blood stained ones down by the nearby stream a bit later, as he and several of the others cleaned themselves up a bit before heading out to the fields.
“Tio, you look like you had a rough night,” one of the men teased.
“You have no idea,” he shot back.
“Let me guess. It had something to do with a woman?”
“Doesn’t it always?” Tio laughed.
Chapter 4
Tio awoke from the dream feeling disoriented. It had been a while since he had touched her, yet there he was again, tracing his finger down the curve of her long, slender neck. He could feel her presence as he hovered above her and gazed at her slender form, even before he began teasing her with his touch. He lowered his lips onto her skin, dragging them gently across her flesh as she moaned softly beneath him. His motions were slow and tender, almost magical. No one had ever touched her as he did. She was pure, and she was his. He knew her body intimately, as if he had studied it for centuries.
She shifted beneath the covers as he took his time exploring every inch of her body. It was dark and he couldn’t see her face, but he didn’t need to. He knew instinctively who she was. It was not the first time he had come to her in the night and taken liberties that weren’t his to take, but he found that she could not resist him as she had done on some past evenings. He overwhelmed her with his presence, demanding that she give in to him. Everything about her felt so right, and he knew that she wanted what he had to offer her. She gave in to his touch, allowing herself to get lost in his presence as he made love to her in a way that felt so intimate he wondered if they hadn’t somehow joined as one entity at times.
Wrapped tightly in her embrace, he lost all sense of time and space, unable to process anything but the sensations he was creating within her as he made love to her very soul. It was just the two of them existing in this little world, they created each time he came to her. Everything around him ceased to be while she was in his arms. His hands caressed her naked flesh with a tenderness that was as familiar as a favorite shirt and, yet, exciting beyond measure. He brought forth an inner light that poured through her body and generated thousands of tiny pleasure centers just waiting to explode with one more touch, one more kiss, one more gentle stroke of his wrist. She was on the verge of ecstasy, her entire body consumed by his passion.
She arched her back toward him as his tongue found her center and brought her closer to release. Her hands tangled in his thick hair as he pleasured her and caused her to moan loudly into the emptiness of her room. He was so close to orgasm that it felt as if he would burst into shattered remains at any moment. His head felt dizzy from the rush of blood flowing to the small pockets that throbbed between his powerful thighs. A dull ache grew until it was a longing so intense he would walk through coals just to get to her and satisfy his lusty need to be inside of her.
“Please, please…I want you inside of me,” she pleaded, but he hushed her.
“There will be time for that soon enough, Maggie,” he said, his voice bringing a calm over her as the mist that surrounded them dissipated into the sunlight that began to spill into the room.
Then, he was suddenly awake, and she was gone. His body was covered in perspiration as he struggled to bring his erratic heartbeat and labored breathing under control. Looking around, reality began to set in. He was in his bunk, exactly where he had fallen asleep. It was just a dream, the same dream he had been having since he had met her.
He always came to her in his sleep and ravished her in ways that only a dream lover can. He had stopped having the dreams for a few days, but now they were back with a renewed vividness that was hard to separate from reality.
Perhaps, it was a bit of uncertainty about the changes taking place in his life. The day before yesterday had been an incredible day. What he had thought was just a romantic outdoor picnic had turned into something completely different. Sitting on the edge of their favorite cliff to wait for the sunset, he had excused himself for a moment. She had been surprised when he had reappeared moments later and dropped to one knee beside her and asked her the question he had wanted to ask for weeks now.
“Maggie, I know I’m probably not the most perfect man on this Earth, but I love you with all my heart and soul. There isn’t a moment
of the day that I don’t think of you, and I want to spend every day of the rest of our lives together. Will you marry me?”
She was speechless for a moment, staring up at him as the bright sunlight began to drop further down in the sky. He had not expected to propose in that moment, but he had been overcome by his desire to do so.
“Yes! Oh, wow…yes!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms around him and kissing him ferociously.
“You have no idea how happy you make me, Maggie. I can’t wait to marry you,” he beamed as he brought her trembling hand up to kiss it softly.
“I think I might, Tio. Probably, just as happy as you make me,” she told him.
He had considered himself lucky to have garnered the attention from someone like her. She was an incredible woman. She was smart and beautiful, soft spoken, but firm in her beliefs. She was good natured and nurturing. With his drive and determination, there was no doubt that he would someday take over her father’s farm. For now, he poured himself into his work, and he loved her. Together, they made perfect sense.
Maggie was a bit of a misfit. One would think by looking at her that she had tons of friends and invitations pouring in to attend every social function happening around her. The opposite was true. While not shy, her tendency to be a bit introverted was obvious. Given her preference, she would rather be doing something with a few very close friends than surrounded by a ballroom of her peers.
More often than not, you would find her wherever you found her parents. Unlike many girls her age, she was not at odds with her parents and loved being near them. Everything about Maggie was almost a contradiction. He was certain that it was something that would only show to be truer with each passing year.
They walked through the meadows, just enjoying the afterglow of their formal commitment to one another in the afternoon light. It was a rare day off from his duties at her father’s farm, and they wanted to make the most of it. Tio had intended to tell her the truth about himself today, but had not been able to find it within himself to do so. He knew he couldn’t hide it forever, especially not now that they were to be married. She would want children, and if one of those children were a boy, his secret would unfold.
Even aside from that, what happened if she were in danger? He couldn’t very well let her shift into a dragon and protect him while he remained in human form to prevent her from finding out what he was. He had already lied to her on the night she had wanted him to fly with her, telling her he was recovering from an injury that kept him from flying for a bit. One day she would ask again and what was he to say then? It was a tangled web when you began to lie to someone you love, always telling another to cover up the one before.
He wondered how his father had been so bold to confide in his mother so quickly about who and what he was, and he wished he had asked him, but there was no chance of that now. There was always his mother, but that would involve revealing his identity to her. He still went into her village and had a pint in the pub, where she was often working behind the bar. She always made time for him, would come out and sit with him and chat. A huge part of him that felt she knew who he was, but neither of them had yet found the wherewithal to say the words. It was just another of the lies he lived.
“Maggie, would you still love me if I had a horrible secret?” he asked her.
“What? Of course, I would. What sort of question is that?” she asked with a soft smile.
“I don’t know. I guess I’m just not from here. You’ve always known the people here, and you trust them. I wonder what would happen if you found out something about me that I hadn’t thought to tell you, but that you couldn’t accept,” he replied, trying to shrug it off.
“Do you have a horrible secret?” she asked.
“No, nothing horrible,” he said, trying his best to say something that was partly truthful.
“Then I guess it is something we needn’t worry about then, isn’t it?” she replied.
After a long day out in the sun, they returned to her home, where he sat down to supper with her and her family, much as he did every night. The other men in his quarters teased him about his relationship with her, but he ignored them. They were only jealous and petty.
Rather than spending too much time dealing with their intolerable behavior, he made himself scarce. He had taken to going from supper out to the woods to shift and prowl about for a while before returning to the bunk to sleep. By then, they were all usually in bed and he was of no concern to them.
Each morning, he arose early and was out in the fields well before most of them were even stirring in their beds. It was only a matter of time before he left them behind for good and found his way to better things with Maggie. It was something he was looking forward to, and the sooner, the better. In the meantime, she continued to fill his nights with thoughts of what it would be like when she was his completely.
In his dreams, there was nothing but how she made him feel. He was enthralled by how her incredible body responded to his touch. Yet, it always ended before things went too far, leaving him aching for her throughout the day and ruining any chance he had of getting through work without being diverted by thoughts of how she felt and tasted. All he had to do was close his eyes for a moment, and he would lose blocks of time just thinking about his mouth on hers and his fingers inside of her. He couldn’t shake his need to have her near him.
Chapter 5
“Tio, come with me. I have something to show you,” Maggie’s father told him one day, pulling him away from the work he was doing in the field.
“What is it?” he asked curiously.
“Follow me.”
Tio walked away from the field and up an incline toward an old house that sat to one side of the property. It overlooked the fields, but from the opposite side as the large estate house the family lived in. It was a bit worn-down looking, but could be very nice with a bit of work. Tio wondered if he was planning to have him restore it for him once they had finished getting the fields squared away from the harvest.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“It looks like it used to be a nice place,” Tio observed.
“It was. I grew up here. It has been in the family for generations. We built another house when my wife and I got married, and my parents lived here until they passed. Sadly, I’ve not had the time to properly care for it, and it has been vacant since then, so it’s gotten pretty worn.”
“Yes. It seems to have seen better days.”
“It has, but I’d like it to see better days again. That’s why I want you to begin working on it when you can, when you aren’t in the fields. Get it restored to proper order.”
Tio’s heart sank. He wasn’t even going to wait until some of his time was freed up from the crops. It would be exhausting to try to fit this in after each long day of work.
“I will do all I can, but it may take a while with my other work,” Tio said finally.
“I know it will, but we will be done in the fields soon, and then you can spend a bit more time on it. You should have it in livable condition again by the time you and Maggie get married.”
“You mean for us to live in it?” Tio replied, unsure if he understood him correctly.
“No. I mean to deed it to you so that it is rightfully yours. This house sits at the very edge of our property, so it is no problem to deed it to you along with a few acres that surround it without interfering with any significant property lines.”
“I don’t know what to say, sir. It is a lot for you to give to us.”
“It is nothing to me. It is everything for a young couple trying to make their way in this world. You’ll be doing me a favor by bringing it back to life instead of me watching it crumble to dust before my eyes.”
“I’ll make you proud of it,” Tio replied. “Have you already told Maggie?”
“No. I wanted to talk to you first. I’ll leave that to you.”
“Thank you! Thank you so much!” Tio said happily.
“You ca
n tell her after you’re done for the day. We’ve still got work to do in the field for now,” her father told him.
“Of course. I’ll get back to work then.”
Tio could hardly contain his excitement as he returned to the fields to finish his work. He had been struggling to figure out how he would afford a place worthy of someone like Maggie. The small room in the quarters he shared with the other farm hands was certainly not suitable, and he had not yet saved enough for something better. He would work however long he had to in order to get the new place together for her so that it would be ready before their wedding day.
“That is fantastic!” she squealed as he gave her the good news later on that day. “I’ve always loved that old place. I used to play there when I was younger, even after my grandparents died and it was empty. Have you been inside?”
“No, not yet. I didn’t have time to look inside yet.”
“Come on. I’ll get us some candles, and we’ll go.”
They walked along the edge of the field, hand in hand and made their way into the old building. In the near darkness, lit only by the candles, it didn’t look so bad inside. He was sure it was a much different story in the daytime, but there was beautiful stone work and wooden carvings along the banister that led up the staircase to the bedrooms.
“This place is going to be incredible,” he told her as they walked into the master bedroom. He was surprised to see that everything in the house seemed to have been left exactly as it had been when inhabited. There was furniture downstairs, and even the bed linens were still on the beds, though they were tattered and dusty.
“I know it will be. You are so talented with your hands. I know you will bring it back to how wonderful it once was.”
“I will do my very best,” he told her, sitting his candle down on a small table near the bed and then taking hers to do the same.
Leaning across her small frame on the bed, he kissed her lips. Perhaps it was that she was so relaxed here, but she wasn’t trying to resist him. Everything felt so much more real to him now. He could feel her heartbeat and smell her warm, sweet breath as he kissed her. His large, masculine hands caressed her skin, moving lightly down her arms as his mouth trailed downward to kiss her heaving breasts, pushing her bra down to free a single breast. She let out an audible gasp as his mouth circled her nipple and began to suckle softly at the taut, pink nub. His hands tangled in her hair as her hips arched forward, inviting him in. He wanted to be inside of her, though he knew she would not give him that much of herself.
Seeking The Dragon Page 3