But I’m shut up with a hard, perfectly placed punch to the mouth, and I whip my body back in shock. Another fist comes blazing towards me, and although I’m faster than lightning, she gets me square on the nose!
And then she’s on her feet, punching and kicking, screaming and howling, coming at me with everything she’s got. I cover my face and go into a defensive stance, letting her have at me even though some of these blows carry some heat!
“How could you?!” she screams. “How could you do that without asking?! You almost killed me, Arthur! I might still fucking die! And if I don’t die, then what happens? What did you do to me? What the fuck is happening to me?!”
A ripple of pure fear goes down my back, almost bringing me to my knees. One look at her face and I know I just fucked up. Fucked up my fate. Destroyed my destiny. I made a choice that perhaps wasn’t mine to make. Most certainly wasn’t mine to make. What was I thinking?!
I back away from her, gasping as the shock sinks in. “I thought the only way to balance my Dragon’s power was to make sure my fated mate had her own Dragon,” I say, realizing that we haven’t even had a straightforward conversation about what I am, what Shifters are, what Addie is about to become very fucking soon. “Yes, I probably should have asked first, but I—”
“Probably? Probably?!” she shouts, hugging herself and just letting loose at me with a fire that would get me hard and ready under any other circumstances. I eye her curves as the need of my animal rises up along with the lust of the man in me. A part of me wants to end this little disagreement by sealing the deal, claiming her deep and hard, with passion and authority.
“You made the choice when you got on that plane, Addie,” I growl, pulling my shoulders back and standing at full height. She’s a little fireball in her flowing robe right now, and the swell of her bosom is making me so fucking hard I’m seeing stars. I should just take charge and make her submit, dominate her so thoroughly she won’t know which way is up, take her in every hole, make her come a million ways, a million times, live a million lives in one hard, wild fuck that will grab fate by the throat, kick destiny in the goddamn ass, prove that neither man nor beast can match my power, the power of the Dragonblood that flows in my veins, the Dragonfire that burns in my heart.
I rub my head as I realize that it’s already happening to me: The man in me is thinking like the Dragon, yearning for power and control, consequences be damned. That’s why I need Addie to have a Dragon too. It’s the only way to make this an equal union, a balanced marriage.
It’s the only way.
And it was the right way.
“All right, I will grant that it is a little rude to Turn you into a Dragon without asking,” I say, folding my arms over my bare chest (still not breaking out my pristine silk shirts from the vault—why wrinkle them and have to pay a drycleaner again) and shrugging. “But the fate of the world is at stake. Millions might have died if I’d claimed you, called forth my Dragon, and let it unleash three centuries of pent-up fire and brimstone in a rampage that could burn down entire cities at a time.”
She opens her mouth and widens her eyes at the same time, putting her hands on her dynamite hips and staring like she’s not sure if I’m serious. “So your excuse for biting into my fucking neck is that if you hadn’t, millions of people would die?!”
I raise an eyebrow and think. Then I grunt. “Correct. That is in fact my excuse. Is it not a good excuse?”
She rubs her eyes and groans, holding the position for a few long moments. Then her body trembles, and I step forward to pull her into my arms before she bursts into tears.
But before I get to her she looks up.
And she isn’t crying.
She’s laughing.
“Actually, yes,” she says through a chuckle and a head-shake. “It is a pretty good excuse. Now will you give me a straight answer to the question I asked before you went all vampire on my ass?”
“All right. Ask,” I say with a grin.
“What are you?” Addie says. “What are you, Arthur?”
I step all the way up to her and cup her face in my big hands. I look into those big brown eyes. It takes a moment, but I see it. Tiny, microscopic, but unmistakable.
A little Dragon.
Twisting and turning as it grows with devastating speed.
“What are you, Arthur?” she says again as I stare transfixed at the Dragon in her eyes.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” I say quietly.
You’ll find out soon enough.
8
ADDIE
And I do find out soon enough.
Too soon, in fact.
And much more than I ever wanted to know.
“So I’m a . . . a dragon now?” I say, holding out my arms and curling my fingers up like bird-claws. “Shit, I broke a nail on your face when I slapped you! You’re paying for my manicure, buddy.”
“Manicures are a waste of money. When we are married there will be no budget for vanity. You will live like I do: base-chested and always ready for your mate,” Arthur says from the far side of the kitchen, where he’s doing something in the corner. Plucking chicken feathers or something caveman like, I think. I don’t wanna know, in fact. All I know is I’m hungry, and I want protein. I want meat.
I feel my heart beat so hard my boobs are bouncing like bongos on a cruise ship. It’s not like my heart is racing or sped up from anxiety or stress (though there’s sure as fuck plenty of anxiety and stress right now . . .). No, my heartrate isn’t all jacked up from adrenaline. In fact it’s slow and steady—just stronger and louder than it’s ever been.
“The Dragon Essence goes from the vein right to your heart. Then the heart pumps it out to every cell in your body. Don’t worry about it. Things will settle down,” Arthur calls to me, pulling a handful of feathers from something that’s much bigger than a chicken.
“Thanks, Doctor Arthur,” I snap back. Then I narrow my eyes at what he’s doing. Part of me is grossed out, but another part of me is salivating like an animal on the hunt. “What kind of bird is that, anyway?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he says casually, glancing up from the mess of feathers and winking.
“Ohmygod, is that blood?” I say when I notice the feathers are streaked with red.
“No, the Phoenix has no blood. Or bones, really. Just a lot of annoying red feathers. Still not enough to fly all the way to the sun, unfortunately. Poor bastard didn’t even get close enough to get burned—which is a pretty fucking grim destiny, actually: For your entire existence to revolve around flying into the sun and getting burned to a crisp.” He wipes a bead of sweat off his brow and stands back. Then he looks up. “Of course, you won’t need to worry about getting burned. Dragons don’t burn. We do the burning.”
I feel my heartrate go up a little as I try to process everything this man just said. Take it one at a time, Addie. Go slow. Breathe.
“OK, so you just murdered a mythical bird that doesn’t exist and we’re going to eat it for dinner,” I say slowly, my eyes widening as disbelief and panic play havoc on my heart. “Also, you’re talking about how I’m going to turn into a different mythical creature that shoots fire out of its ass.”
Arthur shrugs as he stirs a massive stainless steel pot that swishes with something that smells warm and salty even from halfway across the room. “I assume you are joking about which orifice Dragonfire emerges from, but the little-known truth is that if you practice, you can in fact shoot it from your—”
“OK, we’re not going there,” I say firmly, holding back a laugh at the high-school level humor that feels as warm and wonderful as that broth my shirtless mate is stirring.
Arthur drops the entire defeathered bird into the massive pot of broth and washes his hands in the sink. “Also, I did not murder this Phoenix. They die by the dozens every Sunday on the East Turret roof. Exhaustion from trying to fly to the sun. I pick the juiciest one for dinner, freeze a few for the week, and then cremate the rest
and scatter their ashes in the wind at high noon.”
“So touching,” I say, touching my chest and realizing my heartrate is slow and steady again, albeit louder than a heavy metal band. I’m also calmer than I should be, happier than I should be, and way more accepting of this situation than I should be.
I keep my hand on my “new” heart as I watch Arthur (shirtless and rippling) stir the Phoenix-broth, and through the magical steam I see that he’s looking at me.
It’s that same look I saw on him the first time we met.
The look of possession.
The look that says he’s already decided I’m his, that there’s no question, no argument, no debate. I’m his and that’s all there is to it.
“Come here,” he says through the steam, his voice gentle but commanding in a way that makes my piggies curl up like touch-me-nots.
I pad over to him on the warm wooden floor, and by the time I get there I’m wet beneath my robe. My panties are in shreds somewhere (or maybe the pervert ate them—who knows . . .), and my wetness is shamelessly oozing down, getting me all sticky as my thick thighs brush together. My heart is so loud I can barely hear the roar of the seawaters outside the open windows.
Now I’m at the kitchen island, and I place one hand on the cool black granite. The cold stone sends a tingle through my body, like even this mute granite is alive with magic, lit up with life, filled with fantasy.
“You hungry?” he says softly, stirring the magical soup as I sense his black silk pajamas stir from the dragon in him.
“No,” I whisper, taking a shuddering breath as my nipples stiffen.
“Liar,” he says with a grin. “But you’ll have to wait. The soup isn’t ready yet.”
“I’m fine with waiting,” I say with a shrug, glancing down at his peaked pajamas and then back up into his eyes.
His Dragon twists and snaps at me from his eyes, and I gasp when I swear I feel something in my own eyes. I blink in confusion, and when I look back into Arthur’s eyes I realize my eyesight has suddenly zoomed in to a crazy level of precision! There’s no way a human can see with that level of magnification and focus, but when I zoom in, I can literally see every detail of my own reflection in Arthur’s eyes—all the way down to my own eyeballs in startling clarity!
And then I see it.
I see my Dragon.
And I feel it.
I feel my Dragon.
And I know there’s no going back to that old world, to that old life. I told myself I was stepping into a new world, and holy fuck this is new.
All new.
And all mine.
My fate.
My destiny.
My Dragon.
My mate.
“It’s time, Arthur,” I whisper as I turn the corner of the island and step close to him. A part of me knows he’s still hurting from the realization that it was a violation to Turn me without asking. And so even though I see his need to take me, he won’t do it without asking. He’s submitting to me in his own way by waiting for me to make this choice, to give myself to him, to allow myself to be claimed. “It’s time.”
9
ARTHUR
“This time I will not hold back,” I growl, breaking from a savage kiss just long enough to take a breath before I devour those sweet lips again. “Now that Dragonblood flows in your delicate veins, you will be able to handle my power.”
“Your power, yes. These over-the-top proclamations of your manhood . . . I don’t know.”
Her left breast is almost all the way in my big mouth before I hear her remark, and I gently bite down on her nipple just enough to remind her that I am a beast of tooth and claw.
“Ouch,” she whispers, licking her lips and arching her big, beautiful body back over the kitchen island. Her robe is open down the front, and the sight of her perfect triangle dead center, her shining red slit peeking out at me from her dark curls . . . fuck, it’s too much. Just too damned much.
“I need to taste more of you,” I groan, giving her nipple one last nibble and then running my tongue down her quivering belly. I place both hands on her hips and kiss that healthy round belly, and I gasp when I have a vision of Addie big and pregnant with our first born, swollen like the sun, shining like the moon. “Then I will put a child in here.”
“Seems like you’re putting an awful lot of things into me today,” she mumbles, squirming as I hold her hips firmly down and inhale the musky aroma of her sex. “Dragons. Babies. Am I just a vault for you to store booty?”
“You are my booty,” I say with a grin, leaning down and gently blowing warm air through her dainty curls until her clit stiffens and starts to vibrate like a hummingbird’s wings.
Addie gasps, and I pant and groan when I see a thick bead of her nectar peek out from the top of her cunt and slowly roll down her slit, coating it perfectly until her pussy sparkles like nothing on earth.
I kiss her just above her mound, making her gasp again. I am heating up to the point of eruption, but I want it to build to a climax that will shatter the eardrums of those angels in heaven, wake up those lazy bastards in hell, send the fucking unicorns in the Enchanted Forest into a goddamn stampede.
Because the Dragons are alive again.
There’s a new King in town, baby.
“How is it half the time you talk like you’re a fourteenth-century aristocrat and then sometimes sound like you’re a bro from Sigma Nu at the University of Tennessee?” she says, poking her head up and looking at me as I coat her belly with my aristocratic saliva.
“I did grow up as a fourteenth-century aristocrat, actually,” I mutter as the scent of her sex pulls my mouth down below the equator. “But then I spent the last fifty years watching a lot of TV before I got back into my art. Then all I did was paint. And wait.”
“I did notice there are a shitload of rolled-up canvases all over the castle. The walls are bare, though. Why don’t you get some of them framed and decorate these grim-looking stone walls, Arthur?”
“There will be no redecorating,” I growl against her mound, digging my fingers into her soft sides. “Do not anger me, Addie. This is not the time. Once I unleash what’s coming, the onslaught will be—”
“Actually, there will absolutely be some re-organizing of the crap all over this loner-bachelor-pad of a castle,” she says. “Not because I’m your mate. But because I still have to do the job I was paid to do: Organize your stuff.”
I look up and raise my eyebrows. “You know that was all made-up, right? There is nothing that needs organizing.”
But she’s going on, jabbing at me in a weird way that makes me wonder about the personality of the she-Dragon that’s growing inside her. After all, a Shifter’s animal colors the human’s character. Of course, it will be something in line with her core personality, just exaggerated and amplified.
So what aspect of Addie am I seeing here, I wonder with an excited smile as I caress her thighs and let her go on, let the energy of her Dragon slowly work itself out however it needs.
“I’m gonna re-organize this room, and that room, and the big turret facing east, and the back courtyard, and . . .”
I slowly descend on her and start to kiss her mound as she babbles on. I’m lost in the moment, the sheer perfection of listening to her talk as I enjoy her taste, her smell, the feel of her curves, the sound of her heart.
“You have a need to control things too, don’t you, Addie?” I say just as she trails off because my tongue is taking over with the words I’m spelling on her slit. “More subtle than mine. Redirected, almost. Like you’re self-conscious about it. Maybe even scared of it.”
“Now you’re reading my personality from between my legs?” she says in a muffled voice. I look up and see that she’s biting her tongue, as if she’s trying to hold back from coming all over my face.” What else is my pussy telling you?”
I snort and then gently spread her pussy with my fingertips, making her gasp, groan, and then settle down in a shudder that rippl
es through her flesh like a serpent sliding just beneath the surface of a pond. In my mind’s eye I see the slash of a dragon’s tail appear and disappear on her smooth belly, and I know her animal is coming into its own. What’s happening here is accelerating the Turning.
I press my ear to her sex and then look up at her. “It’s telling me it is time for you to stop talking, stop thinking, stop everything. It’s telling me it is time, Addie. All right?”
She blinks and opens her mouth to say something. Then she looks at me and nods, and I see a flash of fear in her eyes. Not doubt, but fear.
“I will not hurt you,” I whisper, drawing away and sitting back on my haunches. “I cannot hurt you, Addie. All my talk aside, I will not lose control. I will not give you more than you can take.”
Her eyes dart down to the massive peak on my silk pajamas, but this is no longer a time for jokes. Slowly I rise up to my knees. I undo the drawstring of my pajamas and let the smooth silk fall down past my muscular buttocks. My cock springs out, spraying a thin line of pre-cum all the way down the center of her body, from the top of her triangle to the dimple on her chin.
“Sorry,” I say with a shrug as my cock throbs like it’s trying to pull me to her. “Nature is a beast sometimes.”
She smiles, but I see the arousal in her eyes, the way her Dragon is twisting and thrashing in her irises. It already knows I’m its mate, and it’s going wild.
“Come here,” she says, staring at my gleaming cockhead and then looking up at me, a slight blush on her round cheeks. “Up here.”
I blink and swallow, glancing hungrily at her pussy before remembering the impression I got of her earlier: That she has a subtle need to control things, just like I do. That’s partly why she was so violently angry when I Turned her without asking. If I’d asked, she might well have said yes. But not asking took the control from her, and it drove her fucking wild.
All right, I think as I straddle her hips and then drag my cock up along the line of pre-cum marking her body. I coat her belly-button, her nipples, her chest, her chin. Then I touch my cock to her lips, and with a trembling sigh she opens for me.
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