by Mina Carter
He growled in approval, walking her backward until the back of her knees hit the bed. A small push and she fell, his big, hard body following her down. She made a soft sound of pleasure, relishing the pressure of him over her, pressing into her. His mouth didn’t leave her breasts, moving from one to the other as though wanting to make sure neither felt left out. Bracing himself on one elbow, he used a hard knee to spread her thighs as his free hand slid down her curves.
She shivered and gasped at the dual sensation, her stomach tightening as his fingertips teased the soft skin. Abruptly nerves hit her. She was on the short and curvy side… did he like what he saw?
He reached the thin ribboned straps of her panties and hooked a finger beneath. She expected him to tease her, slide them down. But instead he wrapped the ribbon around strong fingers and she gasped as he tore them off her.
“Better,” he growled, kissing the underside of her breast and starting to move down. Her breathing caught and then practically stopped altogether as he kissed down her stomach, heading south. Heat burned her cheeks, her body tight with anticipation and need as he shoved her legs farther apart to settle between them. So wide she felt open and exposed… on display for him.
The rough masculine growl didn’t scare her. Instead it made her feel powerful and desired. Then he blew a cool breath over her pussy lips and her thought processes scattered. Grabbing the sheets on either side of her head, she couldn’t help a small groan as he swept a lick between her lower lips. Hot. Wet. Wanton… she needed more.
And he didn’t make her wait, latching onto her clit and sucking hard. She keened, the sound one of pure need as pleasure cascaded through her. Not letting up, he curled big hands around her thighs and held her still as he feasted on her like a starving man. She gasped and writhed beneath him.
Her hips rocked as the twin needs to get away from his teasing lips and tongue but also get more of the delicious torment drove her. With each pass of his tongue or hard suckle of her clit, he drove her higher and higher. Her breathing caught, her body like a live wire until, abruptly, she was there. Time slowed, her back in a hard arch as she waited for the next lick, the next touch, that would tumble her over into bliss.
But he stopped.
“No…” The word was little more than a guttural grunt. “When you come, it will be with me inside you… when you come it will be over my cock.”
She moaned in frustration as he pulled away, hard hands yanking her down the bed toward him. Before she’d processed the movement, he was there, braced over her as the broad head of his cock pressed against the entrance to her body.
His face was a hard mask as he pressed inward and she gasped. He was big… no, he was freaking huge. Whimpering with nerves and need, she pressed her hands against his steely upper arms, her mouth forming a small “ooo” as he sank into her.
Her body parted, stretching wide around the thick girth of his cock, and the sensation was pleasure that bordered on burning, stretchy… something. Not pleasure, not pain, but it felt right. Felt good. She held her breath as he pushed more, using his weight to drive his cock deeper into her depths.
Lifting her legs, she wrapped them around his hips, welcoming him into the haven of her body, and he slipped a half-inch deeper. This time he groaned too, his expression twisting from control to pure, feral need for a split-second.
He didn’t stop. Didn’t draw back. Just kept on pressing, parting her farther and wider as he sank into her. Finally, he was seated to the hilt, balls pressed against her ass and his entire thick, hard length throbbing within her. She moaned, hands spread on his shoulders as she waited for her body to adjust. She tried to move, but he stopped her with a small shake of his head.
“Don’t. Not yet. I’ve wanted this for so long, I might not last.”
The admission and the expression in his eyes made her pause, but before she could ask, he moved. Pulling back, he drove into her again, faster this time and her eyes rolled into the back of her head at the feeling. He did it again. Each time faster and faster until the bed rocked between them and her arousal, fed by his mouth on her pussy, ramped up to critical.
She gasped and moaned, whimpered and cried out, writhing beneath him on the bed, her hands, nails, across his back as she urged him on faster. Braced over her, he gave her what she asked for, every muscle of his hard, champion’s body bent to giving them both pleasure.
“Please… Sawyer. I’m gonna—”
He grinned as she broke off and slammed into her again. This time he added a roll of his hips. Grinding his hips against hers, he trapped her clit between them and she came hard and fast, screaming his name.
Pleasure rolled through her, fed by his movements as he sped up. Three hard, heavy strokes and he stiffened above her, threw his head back and roared…
Her name.
He’d found his mate. He just couldn’t keep her.
Frustration ate at Sawyer like acid as he emerged from the bedroom the next morning. Having Cadie in his bed, having her, had been the stuff dreams were made of. His dreams. Even now, he was still half hard, his cock pressing insistently against the inside of his pants.
She’d been so responsive, reacting instantly to his every touch, that he hadn’t been able to sleep. Instead, he’d lain awake next to her while she did, watching and waiting until he could wake her and make love to her all over again.
And it had been making love. Having Cadie in his arms was totally unlike any sex he’d had with any other woman. Even though he’d thought he’d been in love before, had thought he’d known what love was all about, making love with his mate blew all that out of the water. He’d tasted heaven and now he would never be content with anything less.
The only problem was it ended today. He couldn’t keep her, no matter how much he wanted to. She was a queen and he was… an ex-soldier born and bred on the rough city streets. There was no way he was even good enough to kiss her delicate little toes.
Keeping his dragon’s snarl to himself, he walked through the door into the kitchen and stopped dead. Cadie was in the middle of the kitchen, humming softly to herself. He leaned one shoulder against the door frame and watched her as she bustled around. She was making what looked to be coffee and toast wearing nothing but one of his shirts.
The early morning sun streamed through the large windows behind her, the shutters now raised, and bathed her in light. It caught her hair, giving her a golden halo and silhouetting her mouthwatering figure beneath the white cotton.
His heart turned over in his chest, filling with love. His dragon rumbled in contentment at the sight while the man looked on in appreciation. She was so tiny his shirt practically buried her, hitting her at mid-thigh, and she’d had to roll up the sleeves so they didn’t get in the way.
He didn’t care it was one of his best shirts. He liked it, his dragon liked it. Seeing her in his clothes was like a mark of ownership. It was something… even if he couldn’t give her his bite and bind her to him for eternity.
The reminder dampened his mood. A sudden, savage ache to stop time filled him. To pause everything and live in this moment—where she belonged to him—forever.
If he closed his eyes, he could see it. Waking up with her in his arms every day… Coming in here to cook breakfast together each morning… Coming home to her each night to take her in his arms and have dessert before dinner… Her swollen and big with his—
The sound of his cell ringing cut that thought off before it became dangerous, and he dug in his pocket.
“Huh, it’s your cousin,” he said at Cadie’s curious look. She pushed a mug of coffee in front of him as he swiped his thumb over the screen to answer the call.
“Sawyer.”
Nodding his thanks to Cadie, he took a swallow of coffee as Calan spoke.
“Sawyer? It’s Cal… You need to get back here with the queen. We have a development, and… well, neither of you are going to like it.”
Sawyer frowned, mug halfway to his lips. His mood turned
grim as Calan continued speaking.
“Henrick demanded to see Cadie this morning. Apparently there was some sort of alliance signed when she was a kid. She has to marry the prick.”
Chapter 8
“You have to be kidding me,” Cadeyra breathed as she looked at the scroll spread over the table in front of her. She looked up at the small group of her advisors clustered around the table with her and saw the same surprise and concern mirrored in each face. Obviously, none of them had ever seen the document before either.
In all honesty, she hadn’t believed what Sawyer had relayed to her before they’d flown back to the palace. The idea that Henrick had a scroll signed by both her father and his, outlining an alliance between their houses to be cemented by marriage—hers to Henrick—seemed utterly preposterous. Her father had always teased her about being too picky about her potential bridegroom, so the fact that he’d taken that decision away from her while she was still in the cradle didn’t sit right.
But here they were and the heavily ornamented, official looking scroll in front of her did indeed carry her father’s signature nestled alongside that of Gustav Ebya’s. She’d never seen it before in her life, but she’d seen…signed… many like it, and they were binding.
“I assure you, Your Majesty, it is.” Henrick, standing with his retinue on the other side of the room, broke in smoothly.
She flicked him a glance. He was as proud as a peacock, outfitted in a dress uniform covered in bling and braid, and practically twirling his stupid mustache. She barely managed to restrain her sneer at the sight of the uniform. If he’d ever done a day’s training with the army he apparently held a commission with, she’d eat the stupid hat he wore.
She shuddered, looking away from him quickly. She couldn’t even begin to imagine being married to such a man for a day… never mind a lifetime. Before she could stop it, memories of her night with Sawyer, standing silently behind her, crowded into her brain. The memory of his hard body moving over hers, driving into her, the soft kisses and tender embraces… being replaced by Henrick’s groping hands and oiliness. She felt sick and swallowed to force the nausea down. No, there had to be some way out of this.
She turned her attention to her advisors, still pouring over the document. “My father would never do this, surely?” she asked, a note of desperation in her quiet voice. “This was signed before I was even a year old, surely it is not binding now I am an adult and capable of making my own decisions?”
“Ahhh well…” Lord Hoosh straightened up, a grim look on his thin face. An emerald-green, he’d been her father’s legal advisor for years before becoming Cadeyra’s. “The monarch is a slightly different case from the normal run of the mill subject, even those with noble blood. The person of the monarch is considered an extension of the crown. Hence the reason we sent several of your father’s scales to certain parties on your father’s death… to fulfill contractual obligations, you understand?”
She nodded, her heart falling. She remembered arguing with them at the time, grief-stricken at the loss of her father shortly after losing her mother. That they then wanted to prize scales from his lifeless body seemed desecration to her.
“So, he could have signed away my right to a decision over who I marry? That is ridiculous. He would never have done that.”
Another of the men at the table, Lord Geranfall, straightened up and blinked at her myopically. Ancient, his dragon hoarded old scrolls and history books like most did gold, pouring over every word within them. His word was seen as absolute.
“I’m sorry, Your Majesty, but this is clearly your father’s signature and by all the old laws called upon, it’s binding on him and his heirs.”
Cadeyra closed her eyes as pain lanced through her heart. Binding. That meant she couldn’t get out of it, couldn’t refuse to marry Henrick without causing a huge diplomatic incident… possibly even starting a war.
She had to make a decision. Here. Now.
Love or duty.
She paused, blinking. It was love. She did love Sawyer. Like really heart filled with warmth and emotion, never wanted to live another day without him, loved Sawyer…
Duty or love. She couldn’t have both.
One would make her happy but condemn many, most probably the blacks and the man she loved, to death. The other would only cost her.
Opening her eyes, she looked at her advisors. “Make the arrangements.”
The snarl behind her made her back stiffen but she didn’t turn around.
“Cadie,” he growled, grabbing her arm to try and turn her to face him, but she held firm. Small she might be in human form, but she was a white. Which meant she was the equal or superior to any dragon she came across.
“You don’t have to do this,” he lowered his voice, the begging note in the deep timbres bringing sharp, hot tears to the backs of her eyes. “Please, little bug, you don’t have to marry him. You don’t want this. There must be another way.”
She lifted her chin, keeping her face impassive, her queen mask in place as she turned. “Please take your hand off me, General. I have made my decision.”
He shook his head, pain that almost broke her flaring across his face. “Please, you don’t have to… I–I love you.”
His heart-felt admission almost dropped her to her knees, her dragon keening deep within, but somehow she managed to hold firm.
“Duke Calan, Nikolai,” she ordered the two blacks by the door. “Please apprehend the general and confine him to the lower levels until he recovers himself and can behave with decorum.”
Her heart shattered into a million pieces as she stepped back. “When he can, assign him to the lower territories. I never wish to see him again.”
His worst nightmares had come true.
He’d lost her.
Sawyer sighed and leaned his head back against the stone wall behind him, eyes closed. The chains on his wrists clinked slightly when he moved, reminding him where he was. As if he needed any reminder. They’d put him in the dungeons, in the ground below the palace, slapped chains on him to limit his human form and put him in a spelled cell to suppress his dragon. Not that it made any difference.
On hearing those awful words from Cadie’s mouth, hearing her banish them from her presence, the beast had given a heartbroken cry and retreated deep inside. So far down into his soul, in fact, that he could barely feel it or draw on its power.
He might as well be human.
A sigh rattled from his chest. Perhaps he would do that… become human. Leave the council and the court to live among the humans. Given the circumstances, the others of the twelve would release him from service, no questions asked. He’d have done it for any of them. It would be the kindest thing to do. To allow him to remove himself from any reminder of what he’d lost.
He could get an apartment in some city without a dragon presence. Get a job. And he had enough contacts in the human world from his days in the military. Soldiers were soldiers, regardless of what blood ran through their veins, and there were still enough wars going on that he could find work as a mercenary. If he was really lucky, he’d die quickly on some battlefield somewhere.
It would be better than living without her.
A door somewhere down the corridor opened and then closed with a clang. He didn’t do anything more than absently note the sound. He had no idea how long he’d been down here, the days and nights merging into one. Endless hours of misery and pain centered around the ragged hole in his chest where his heart had been. They’d brought him food, water, and he’d eaten mechanically but hadn’t tasted anything. Nothing registered other than one blindingly painful fact.
She never wanted to see him again.
He understood why. Didn’t hate her for it. She was the White Queen. For her, duty and honor came above all else. It always had and always would. If he’d made her choose him… if he’d even been able to… the guilt would have eaten her.
He lifted his hand to scrub at his ragged beard. What was tha
t saying? If you loved something, let it go. If it came back to you…
A single tear tracked down his cheek. He had set her free but there was no chance she would come back to him. He wasn’t that lucky. Hell, he’d never expected to get even a night with her. Even though the memories of the heaven he’d glimpsed with her in his arms made his pain more acute, rawer, he wouldn’t swap it for the world.
That one night. Those memories he’d imprinted into his brain would have to be enough for the rest of his life. He would make them enough.
“How the mighty have fallen.”
The mocking voice made him open his eyes to find Prince Henrick on the other side of the bars. Sawyer sighed. How the fuck had the asshole gotten down here? It was a restricted section. He shouldn’t have been able to get past the guards.
“With all due respect, Your Highness,” Sawyer growled. “Fuck off. I’m not in the mood.”
He didn’t care that he might upset the prince. What else could they do to him? Flog him? He was in more pain than they could ever inflict anyway. Kill him? It would be a welcome relief from the agony of losing his mate.
“Oh, I would say not. Not after losing your delightful mate. She is your mate, isn’t she?”
Sawyer caught his gasp, looking at the foreign prince in surprise. Henrick smirked. “Oh yes, I know. I recognized the signs as soon as I saw the two of you together and realized I had to do something quick.”
Sawyer clambered to his feet, not taking his eyes off Henrick. “What do you mean? What did you do?” His voice was low and careful, a terrible suspicion forming.
Henrick smiled smugly. “Ensured that your beautiful little queen had no option but to choose me.”
Sawyer didn’t move.
“She only chose you because she had no options with the alliance her father sig…” He blinked, putting the pieces together. “Shit. It was a fake, wasn’t it?”
“Of course it was. You think I was about to let my shot at the throne be ruined by a mutt like you?” He sneered, raking Sawyer with a disparaging glance. “No fucking chance. We had one of the old king’s scales. It was a short step from there for my necromancer to call the spirit of the old king and make him sign a scroll we altered. No loopholes.”