by Ophelia Bell
What she sensed now that she let herself see his essence wasn’t a man at all—at least not a human man—and everything suddenly made perfect sense. The awareness made her clutch him tighter to her. How could she have been so oblivious? The fact that she’d intended to find a human mate rushed back. It hadn’t occurred to her to find a mate among the higher races. She was too far gone now to ponder the discovery further. She cried out his name, letting her true voice out inadvertently, the roar vibrating the room as his power rushed into her with his climax.
The power of the Wind surging through them both was too strong for her to resist, too strong to deny the pull of her true form seeking its own release. She suppressed most of it, but her wings refused to stay hidden and came forth with a loud snap and quivering stretch when she came.
Lukas’s own harsh cry sang out and she opened her eyes just in time to see a pair of huge, feathered wings erupt from his back, shimmering with variegated gold and russet tones.
He grinned at her, panting and breathless. “Beautiful Blue Belah,” he said. “Your wings are amazing.”
“So are yours.” She stared wide-eyed at the revelation of what he really was. Then she laughed out loud at the understanding, shaking her head at her idiocy.
“What is it?” he asked, one eyebrow twitching as he looked down at her, perplexed by her reaction.
“You’re a Turul. Are you a prince? You must be with a surname like ‘North’. Oh how didn’t I see it before?” She reached up a hand to his rough cheek, caressing him in wonder. Fate was having fun with her tonight. Lukas North, a Prince of the Wind. No wonder he’d managed to seduce her so well with his music. Dragons could never resist a wind as strong as the North Wind. Not even a dragon as powerful as her. Perhaps especially not one like her. She’d been so hyperfocused on finding a human man, she’d neglected to see him for what he was—and he was wonderful.
Lukas cringed. “No prince here. Those days are long past. I could swear you knew what I was already, though.” He shook his head, his wings folding back in and fading into nothingness again as he separated himself from her.
“I’ve been out of touch for awhile,” she said.
“Ah, right … the Ascension was recently wasn’t it? We don’t always get a memo, you know … it would be nice if you guys let the other high races know when you’re waking up. Five hundred years is an awful long nap. We tend to forget.” He kissed her as though he were the one welcoming her home for the first time, even though she’d never been asleep. She had been as good as asleep, however, and for a lot longer than five hundred years.
With a swift tug he pulled her off the bench and had her cradled in his arms, carrying her across the room.
“Where are we going!” she said, disconcerted by the elation in his eyes. His smile infected her with mirth and she laughed out loud, his recent words nearly forgotten.
“I’m carrying you across my threshold. Because you are mine and I’m never letting you go.”
“Oh?” she asked, delighted at his confidence. “And how are you going to keep me?”
“By making you so happy you forget there’s a world out there that dragons have to fear. There are no hunters in my bedroom, and no laws but love, baby. And I’m going to love you forever.”
“You expect to bind me with words, then?” She gave him an amused look, and he laughed, his face splitting into a wide, mischievous grin.
“I have other means to make you behave, trust me,” he said.
After a swift ascent up a dark, narrow staircase, he brought her into a vast apartment that was fascinating to her in its newness, like everything she’d seen since returning to the world. He didn’t give her a chance to enjoy the architecture of the interior before he carried her into a room that only had the barest hint of walls. They didn’t even extend to the ceiling, which was lined with heavy metal-looking bars and pipes that extended to the brick walls on the sides. She made a mental note to ask Erika about it later, then all thoughts left her mind when he laid her down on his bed and settled over her.
“So tell me what it’s like,” he said. “Ascending, I mean.”
“Oh. Ah …” she tried to come up with an adequate response, and probably could have if he hadn’t been busy with his mouth on her. His talented tongue was making slow, soft circuits over her sore nipples, and he kept blowing on them in between. She realized suddenly that the Wind was what had driven her so mad before. And now he was using it again to ease the soreness he’d caused. She sighed under his ministrations.
“No answer?” he asked, between breaths.
“You just made me forget. Does it even matter?” she asked.
His dark brows drew together with his frown. “You’re the first dragon I’ve met from the new brood. It’s new to you, so I want to know what it was like. How you felt … how you were received …” He sighed and rolled away, sliding up beside her and propping himself on an elbow. “Fine, I need dirt, all right? I need to know what the fuck the Council is doing. I’ve only heard rumors that laws have changed, but no word on what the fuck those bastards are actually going to do about the shit they caused.”
Belah’s skin prickled in response to his vehement need to hear about what she and her siblings had done. Her body still craved his touch but he was just laying there looking at her—expecting—what? A condemnation? Yet the look in his eyes told her he desperately needed to know something.
“Why do the Turul care about dragon law?” she asked, wishing she wasn’t really as ignorant as she sounded. A new broodling wouldn’t know the first thing about the politics. She did know about the politics, but the Turul were allies and had never expressed an interest in dragon law before. That any of them would hold such animosity toward herself and her siblings—toward the laws they’d made to preserve their race—was news to her.
“Most don’t.” His eyes darkened with emotion and Belah couldn’t resist a look into his mind to find out why. He glanced away just as she was hit with a poignant combination of pain and loss, buried deep in anger for something that had happened very recently.
“Lukas,” she said softly, rolling over and reaching up to brush her fingers down his temple and urge him to face her again. “Who did you lose? Tell me what happened.”
He swallowed thickly and gazed back at her, his eyes glassy from emotion. “I forgot what a Blue could do—you can see right through me, can’t you?”
She nodded. “I can tell you’re hurting now. Let me know why—maybe I can help. I’m good at other things besides reading you.”
Lukas shook his head. “It doesn’t matter what happened anymore because there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. She’s gone—my sister’s gone—taken and bled dry by those hunter bastards. I used to wish I could find the Council bitch who started it all. You know there are rumors among my people about how it all started? Do you even know what your leaders have covered up?”
A deep chill sank into her gut at his words. The Council bitch who started it all. She pressed tighter against his warm body, hoping that the closeness might obliterate her shame, but the squeeze of his arm around her torso only made it worse.
“I know they’re trying to fix it,” she said softly, though feared it may be too little too late if someone he loved had been lost already. And how many others had been lost in the intervening centuries since? Too many. And no matter what she and her siblings or the Court did, they wouldn’t be able to undo those deaths.
Lukas turned onto his side with a heartbreaking sigh and pressed his face into her neck. “I’m just happy I found you,” he said. “Because believe me, I needed something good to happen. And baby, you’re even better than I imagined.”
“I’m nothing special,” she said.
“Oh, I disagree.” Lukas brushed his hand down her side and gripped her hip, kneading his fingers into her flesh in a way that set her alight again. He pressed her back against the mattress, moving to hover over her. “You’re perfect, Belah. I knew the second you came
into the club tonight that you were for me.”
To illustrate his point, he grabbed both her hands and raised them up over her head, pinning them there. He rose up on his knees, straddling her torso. Something soft slipped around her wrists and she craned her neck back to see what he was doing. Her pulse quickened when the slippery rope bindings he’d wrapped around her wrists grew snug as he bound them to the sturdy iron headboard of his bed.
“This turns you on, doesn’t it? Even more than me telling you not to touch me. And the little bit of pain I gave you—that drove you even wilder. I’ve never met a dragon like you before. Usually your kind are disappointingly assertive. How did you wind up so pliant? So fucking perfect?”
He slipped away from her without waiting for an answer and a moment later returned with a lit candle. The flame flickered from his movements as he settled back over her, his thick muscles offset by the shadows cast from the candlelight. His magnificent erection rested hot against her belly when he straddled her hips again, holding the candle above her breasts.
The sweet sensation of his skin against hers was already enough to make her core ache with need again. To be so utterly at his mercy now, anticipating the things he was about to do to her, she couldn’t help but let out a soft moan even before the first drop of wax hit her chest.
He started slowly, tilting the candle and letting a small trickle of hot wax trail down between her breasts.
“Remember, eyes open,” he said in a voice gruff with desire. She was dimly aware of his hips shifting ever so slowly back and forth against her, his soft ball sack sliding against her mound and his cock leaving its own hot trail just beneath her navel.
She couldn’t stop watching him, though. Those deep eyes gazed down at her with such unrepentant emotion, obscured on one side by a lock of his straight, dark hair. His lips parted as though he were hungry to taste her skin, but he held off. The candlelight moved and a searing heat of molten wax hit the tip of her breast making her cry out with the pleasure of it. She pressed her thighs together and tilted her hips up against him, wishing like mad that he’d move his hips lower.
“Is this good?” he asked. “Or do you want more?”
She panted her answer. “More, please. Hotter.”
His eyebrows twitched. “Hotter, hmm? That’s right, you are more tolerant of extremes, aren’t you? I’ll have to see what I can do.”
With a soft breath from his pursed lips, the flame flickered and grew even brighter. The next drip of wax hit her other nipple and trailed down beneath her breast. The heat was even more exquisite, sinking into her sensitive skin, and sending a blazing rift straight between her thighs.
“Let me hear you, baby,” he murmured. “Tell me what you want.”
“Lukas,” she said, unable to bring any thought to mind but the syllables of his name, so focused was she on the pleasure he was giving her. “More, please. Don’t stop.”
Chapter Six
Lukas paused with the candle held over her belly. He could paint her with the molten fluid for hours, so enthralled was he with her reactions. Her back was arched, her hands gripping the frame of his bed. He hadn’t needed to bind her, but the presence of the ropes around her wrists had pleased her as he thought they might. And the red trails of the wax stood out starkly against the creamy perfection of her skin.
Again, he was astounded at how readily she’d given herself to him, at how perfectly she’d melded with him when they made love, and how his entire body still hummed from the orgasm they’d shared. She’d lit him on fire from the inside out, and the Wind in his soul made him burn even hotter for her, just as the candle flame flared from the tiny breath he let curl around it.
Her body more than her words signaled how much she needed the burning pain he was giving her. That a dragon female could give up her power so easily amazed him. They weren’t generally submissive to anyone but their own kind. That she’d chosen to submit to him was an even greater gift. Her trust made it even more apparent that she really must be the one—if his very soul hadn’t already been crying out that fact to him from the second he’d set eyes on her.
Her hips tilted up against his ass again, her soft skin brushing against the underside of his balls, causing his cock to throb ever harder. Her skin seemed to soak in the heat from the wax, her body growing warmer by the second. No wonder she needed it hotter. He blew lightly again on the candle’s flame, just enough to feed it, to make the wax hotter. He could only take it so far without it burning up entirely, though. He was nearly finished. At least he was nearing his own breaking point of need to be inside her again.
“Lukas,” she whispered. “Please. I need you.”
“One more second, baby,” he said, shifting down past her hips and gently pushing her legs apart. He tilted the candle over her stomach and let a continuous stream of wax run in a long line down the center. With a spark of creativity, he altered the path to make a full circle, then continued in a tightening spiral. It pooled in her navel and she cried out a breathy moan, her belly tightening and quivering. He continued lower still, using his knees now to push her legs even further apart.
She was panting hard now, her breasts rising and falling rapidly. He held the candle upright for a second to let more hot wax collect in the caldera around the wick. Keeping it poised there, he bent his head between her spread thighs and captured her swollen clit between his lips, unable to resist a taste before he gave her the final gift. Her velvet flesh was hot and slick, and it was all he could do to release her instead of delving in with his tongue. He pulled back just far enough to give himself room and tilted the candle over her flesh.
The red stream trickled across the top of her cleft first, and she jerked against her bindings. Lukas paused. “Too much?”
“No, Sweet Mother, I love it.”
The brief taste of her had already made it clear how much she loved it. Her sweet snatch was dripping with her arousal, her clit hot and swollen with need. With a slight turn of his wrist, he let the rest of the wax pour out, right on target.
Belah’s hips bucked up as though inviting more of the molten fluid to flow between her legs. With his free hand, Lukas gripped the back of one knee and pushed it up and wide, then sent another hot stream of wax against her sensitive flesh, this time letting it trickle further down between the cheeks of her ass.
She let out a resonant cry that included his name repeated over and over, the sweetest sound he’d ever heard.
He blew out the candle and tossed it to the floor, then bent and blew on the still cooling wax. It instantly hardened, and he kept blowing until it froze entirely, cracking from the shock of the quick temperature change.
“Please, please, I need you,” she cried, even as her flesh before him trembled beneath his breath.
“You got me, baby.” Lukas brushed the fragments of frozen wax away from her pink folds and released her leg, moving close between her thighs, his cock in hand where the candle had been moments earlier. This time he’d fill her with his own molten fluid.
He thrust hard into her, reveling in the way her muscles immediately clamped down around him, as though she never wanted to let him go.
She struggled against the bindings and he reached up to swiftly untie her, but didn’t let her move her hands down. Instead he twined his fingers through hers, holding them above her head while he pistoned into her with hard, urgent strokes.
“That’s right,” he said in response to the look of utter worship she gave him. “You’re all mine now, aren’t you? Let me feel that sweet magic when you come for me, baby. Give it to me, Belah. My love.”
She answered with her body’s silken curves undulating beneath him, rising to meet each of his steady thrusts. She didn’t speak again, only lifting her head to capture his mouth with hers. He sank down atop her, devouring her lips and tongue with his and simply letting their shared orgasm carry them both away like the current of a strong breeze beneath their wings.
“I never want to stop,” he whispere
d once his climax subsided and he could gaze into her eyes again with a somewhat clear head. “How in the world do I stop after finding you?”
She gave him the sweetest smile, that for some reason seemed tinged with sadness and a regret incongruous with the moment they’d just shared. “There’s more to making love than having you inside me,” she said. “Though that is my favorite part, after being bound and teased the way you did. You seemed to enjoy it almost as much as I did.”
He nodded and slipped out of her with only a tiny bit of regret. He gathered her in his arms and pulled a blanket over them both, holding her against his chest. “I confess it wasn’t always something I enjoyed. After my sister Evie died, my brother and I had a tough time coping with the helplessness of the situation. It was his idea.” She turned to look at him, her brow furrowed. He hurriedly explained. “Iszak and I never … not together. He simply suggested certain practices as a healthier outlet than self destruction, which was the path we were both headed down trying to find her killers.”
“Her killers?” she asked.
“The Ultiori Hunters.”
“The Ultiori would have found you first,” she whispered.
“Yes. And if we wanted any chance at finding them, we had to be smart. But they’re …” He shook his head, frustrated at the lack of progress they’d made getting to their sister’s murderers.
“They’ve been hunting longer than you’ve been alive,” she said, her voice shaking with more emotion than she ought to have.
“Hey, hey,” he said, cupping her chin and turning her head toward him. “It’s not your cross to bear. You weren’t even awake when she died. That was over fifty years ago. Nothing you could have done, either.”
She gazed up at him, lips trembling and tears brimming in her eyes. He loved her in that moment—wholly and completely—but when he bent to kiss her, she pulled back with a shake of her head.
“No, Lukas. I can see in your eyes what you’re feeling, I don’t even need to read you to tell. Just know that I feel exactly the same way when I say what I have to say. I love you, but please listen.”