Dragon's Pleasure (BBW / Dragon Shifter Romance) (Lords of the Dragon Islands Book 3)

by Isadora Montrose

  “Potatoes?” Ivan asked disbelievingly.

  “Potatoes. It was either the gardens or the vineyards. Naturally, the bailiffs chose the gardens. People were starving. Every inch of arable land around the chateau was planted with crops or used as pasture.” Christina appealed to Kian. “Isn’t that so?”

  “Yes. The south lawn was fenced for sheep,” he said.

  “You would never know it to look at it now,” Ivan commented.

  The white gravel of the drive gleamed before them. The night might have been too dim for mortals to see clearly, but with their dragon vision, there was plenty of light from the slip of a moon and a sky full of stars. Christina tightened her hand on his arm as she bent to put her shoes back on. He gritted his teeth against the electric sparks that shot straight to his heart. His balls tightened and his pecker tented his pants. Just like he was some punky thirteen-year-old. Fan-bloody-tastic.

  The breeze wafted an unbelievably sweet fragrance directly toward them. “What is that?” Ivan asked in wonder.

  “Night blooming cereus,” she said proudly. “Tonight is the first time they have opened this year. Aunt Inge has huge pots of them by the fountain.” She slipped her hand down his sleeve and took his hand in hers.

  This time he felt her little quiver. He squeezed her hand with his and she shyly squeezed back. His cock pressed harder against his zipper.

  “Look,” she said.

  The wide expanse of garden lay before them. It was almost entirely green. In the center of the lawn an elaborate configuration of knots surrounded a fountain. Bridled dolphins leapt away from a trio of rejoicing nymphs. Water plashed from their open mouths and filled the soft air with babbling. Tall white pots stood at the four corners of the fountain as if the spouts were aimed at them. Huge many-petaled white flowers hung in clusters from green leaves.

  The closer they got, the more intense the perfume became. Ivan was suddenly glad he was sleeping in the windowless dressing room. The bedroom windows overlooked this garden and the intense scent of these flowers would quickly become overpowering.

  Belatedly he realized that the parterre was a maze. From the bedroom it had appeared as though the hedges were patterns cut into the lawn. But the design was created by hand high strips of boxwood bushes. The carefully shaped shrubs wove an intricate pattern in the corners of the lawn and again around the fountain. Loops and buttons and exuberant curlicues had been laid out with geometrical precision. Where, in other more traditional parterre gardens, the hedges would be set off by white pea gravel, in lady Lindorm’s, grass separated the hedges and formed the path in the intricate maze. Green on green.

  “You can walk the path,” Kian said stepping over the outermost strip of bushes and following the curve the grass took.

  “Be careful, Ki,” Christina warned. “One misstep, and Aunt Inge will skin you alive.”

  Ivan glanced at Kian’s huge feet. Christina was correct. One trample from those clodhoppers, and the hedges would need months to recover. Not his problem. He guided Christina back towards the fountain. He put his mouth to her ear. “What is Hector von Bulow to you?”

  She pulled away and glared at him.

  “Tell me?” he hissed.

  “Why don’t you invite the world to our conversation?” she hissed back.

  She was right. For Kian’s dragon’s ears had caught some note of antagonism or conflict. His handsome face was puzzled and he was striding across the hedges to his cousin’s rescue. “What’s up?” he called.

  “Lord Ivan was just asking how we are related to Prinze Hector?” she said glacially.

  “Nothing in that to get your dander up, Chris.” Kian laughed. “It’s complicated,” he said to Ivan. “Let me see. Uncle Reinhardt’s wife is Uncle Thor’s mother’s youngest sister. And Hector is married to Chris’ mother’s cousin. And we may meet up in half a hundred other places on the family tree. You know how it is, Sarkany, dragons marry into the same families, generation after generation. We’re all related to each other — through our mothers.”

  “So Prinze Hector is a sort of cousin?” Ivan asked.

  “Sort of. Chrissy is my first cousin on her father’s side. And my third or fourth on our mothers’. I long ago decided not to get too excited about exact relationships,” Kian explained carelessly.

  “Whereas, I am a stickler,” Christina interposed, every word knife sharp. “Hector and I have three degrees of relatedness. Closer than second cousins, but not as close as first.” She put a hand on Kian’s arm. “Shall we go inside, cousin.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “Claim your partners,” Aunt Inge caroled to the guests assembled on the terrace. “Each clue leads you to the next. Take a picture of each thing as you find it. The first team to collect all twenty is the winner.” She clapped her hands. “Begin.”

  Christina felt Ivan Sarkany behind her. His face was set. He bowed. “Lady Christina,” he said handing her a slip of paper with her name written on it in Aunt Inge’s spiky handwriting.

  “Ms. Lindorm,” she corrected. “I don’t have even a courtesy title.” As he well knew.

  “Shall we begin, Miss Lindorm?”

  She ignored Ivan’s provocation and read her slip of paper aloud. “Where the paths twist and turn, there will you find my heart.”

  “That’s easy,” he said. “The parterre. Each of the corners has boxwood cut into the shape of one of the suits of cards. You know: heart, spade, club, diamond.”

  “I’ve never noticed,” she said. “Shall we start there?”

  “On the way, you can tell me more about your relationship to Hector von Bulow.”

  She glared at him but he just smiled back. At least his lips moved sideways. “You already know he’s my cousin. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

  “So what were you doing with him in Switzerland? He’s a married man.” He sounded as outraged as any Lindorm.

  “For a dragon who’s had more women than I have had hot dinners, you are an awful prude.” She paused and enjoyed his black face. “Hector and his cousins were acting as my bodyguards so I could go skiing. Right up until he had word that Prinze Reinhardt had died.” She shook her head. “Naturally, at such a time, he had to leave me and go home.”

  “Huh.”

  They crossed the drive and came to the fountain. The water still splashed merrily from the dolphins’ mouths. But this morning, the white planters held only plain green plants covered in ugly, tight, pink buds. “What happened to the other flowers?” Ivan looked around as if the garden might have a second fountain.

  “Nothing. These are the same ones. During the day they close completely. At night they open into those beautiful white blooms. Night blooming cereus. Also known as Dutchman’s pipe, from their daytime shape.”

  “Huh.”

  Ivan pulled her across to the northeast quadrant. Sure enough in the center of the curlicues a heart had been shaped from a cluster of boxwood. Christina took a photo. “I’m willing to believe, that this is it. But where is the next clue? And why aren’t the rest of the family on our heels?”

  “Your aunt is too clever to give us all the same clues at once,” Ivan said. “Look around. There will be something that will lead us to the next.”

  “You’ve spotted it already,” she accused.

  “Guilty. Keep looking.”

  Christina spun in a circle. Then her eye fell on a brass garden label on a thin pole. A common enough device in a garden with many exotic plants and many visitors, but out of place where only grass and boxwood were growing. What was there to label?

  ‘“I shot an arrow from my bow and wounded many a one. But now never will I more, for arrows I have none’,” she read.

  “Cupid?” suggested Ivan.

  “Yes. There are two statues. One inside the house. And another in the cutting garden. That one is missing its quiver.”

  “Where is the cutting garden?” he asked.

  “You passed through it on your way out of the stables,” she
replied. “Let’s go.”

  “So tell me,” Ivan said conversationally as they strolled towards the distant stables, “Do you scream when Felipe is ramming into you, the same way you scream for me?”

  Christina glared at him. She glanced around her before she answered his deliberately insulting question. “Felipe and I are not lovers, Sarkany,” she hissed. “Not that it is any of your business.”

  “Now there you’re wrong, Princess. You are my mate, and the idea of you lying underneath Balcazar Mendez with your legs wrapped around his hips while he pumps you full of fireling, rubs me raw.” His grin was a savage spread of lips over teeth.

  “You are such a puritan!” Her teeth were clenched so hard her words could barely get out.

  He heard her distinctly enough that his face grew hot. “Only where you are concerned.”

  “You expected a virgin bride!” she taunted.

  “Wrong again, Princess. I’ve always dreaded having to marry some sweet young thing. I prefer a woman of experience.”

  “And yet now that you’ve found one, you think I should’ve should have been locked in a room waiting for you with my legs clamped shut.” She fluttered her eyelashes at him. “Instead I’ve been having the same good time you’ve been having.”

  “Yeah. Call me a male chauvinist prig. But I don’t like the idea of anyone having you but me.” He paused for a moment and then slid the knife home. “So how come you are all but engaged to Felipe if you don’t fancy him?”

  “I never said I didn’t fancy him!”

  “He wouldn’t have stood a chance, if you wanted him,” he said holding her eyes with his. “You take what you want. Like you took me.”

  “I told you, the Eldest made the match,” her voice was defensive. “Everyone said love would come.”

  “Whatever you say, Princess. What the hell does Lord Felipe have besides the prospect of a title?” Ivan’s voice was harsh.

  She smirked. “The Estremauras are rich beyond the dreams of avarice, and they own the most fabulous castle on the Island of Dragonera.”

  “Rich?” his voice was mocking. “Is that your brother Victor over there?” he asked indicating a group across the lawn.

  Christina turned her head in the direction he was indicating. “No, that’s my Uncle Sven’s son Lars. Vic is on active service this month.” She looked hard at Ivan. “What were you saying about the Estremaura’s wealth before you distracted me?”

  “Nothing,” he said casually, but his voice sounded strained to her ears. “Felipe has nothing his family hasn’t given him.”

  “It’s the same for you, I’m sure,” her voice was philosophical. “If your brother didn’t give you an allowance, you’d have nothing.”

  “That’s not the way it works in my family,” he contradicted firmly. “The day I graduated from the London School of Economics was the day Grandpapa told me that if I didn’t make money, I would have none. I admit he softened the blow by letting me use my trust fund to finance my investments, but he stopped making me an allowance that afternoon. Made me buy my own car, pay for my digs when I wasn’t at the Schloss.” He laughed as if the memory pleased him. “How I miss the Old One.”

  “He hasn’t been gone long,” she said, placing her hand over his. “You will never stop missing your great-grandfather, but you will grow used to the pain of his absence.”

  He turned his hand and caught hers so they were palm to palm. “How did you get to be so wise?” he asked.

  “I’m anything but.”

  “Anyway, the point I was making, was that Hugo and I are equal partners in Sarkan Industries. Which reminds me, what did you decide about those debentures that the Deutsche Bank just issued?”

  “Who told you to ask me about them?” she said suspiciously.

  “You did. In St. Moritz. You said you were going to have to look more closely at them before you decided if you would participate. You gave me the impression that you find modern financial instruments dodgy. Remember?”

  “No. Although, investments too complicated to explain in a sentence are all suspect in my book. Especially after 2008. And nothing I’ve been told about those debs makes me any more comfortable. Not only am I not buying any, they made me so worried, I’ve reduced our holdings in Deutsche Bank.”

  “I didn’t go as far as that,” he returned smoothly, “But I didn’t buy any either.” He began to quiz her about the prospects for the failed Icelandic banks.

  They didn’t win. While the others sped through the clues, they wound up sitting on the wall in the vegetable garden talking about his days at the London School of Economics. She confessed that she had actually gone to Stanford for her undergraduate degree, before doing an MBA at the Harvard Business School. They decided their courses had been much the same. When they finally strolled in, Aunt Inge laughed at Christina’s sunburnt cheeks and shook her head at their dilatory progress.

  “But we eventually found them all, Lady Lindorm,” Ivan protested.

  Inge Lindorm’s sharp blue eyes looked him over and she smiled as she turned to Christina. “Luncheon is being served on the terrace,” she said with a particularly warm smile that sent icy fingers running down Christina’s spine. Aunt Inge wasn’t malicious, but she was definitely up to something. The only question was what.

  * * *

  “I was afraid to show her to you, when she was born,” confessed Severn. “Did you know that, Eldest?”

  The brothers were standing at the French doors of Thorvald’s study looking out at the youngsters scurrying about looking for Inge’s clues.

  Lord Lindorm turned his head and smiled benignly. “It was obvious,” he said dryly. “You were worried I would tell you she was not of your get.”

  Severn smiled back ruefully. “I couldn’t believe my Anna would be unfaithful, but that infant smelled so peculiar! Do you remember?”

  “As if it were yesterday. She smelled like our great-grandmother. A little anyway. Still does, come to that. Father always swore Great-grandmama was a dragoness born. But what did you think I would do if the baby wasn’t yours? Tell you?”

  “Kill her,” Severn admitted.

  Thorvald snorted. “Even I am not that Gothic, Sev. But in fact Chrissy is a dragoness born and it is time, past time in fact, that she was mated.”

  Severn swallowed hard. “I am no longer happy with this match we’ve made with Felipe Balcazar Mendez, Eldest. Do you know he’s off playing polo, instead of coming here to court Christina? A week ago he finally declares his Mate Hunt, and then he goes off to play games. I don’t like it.”

  “Nor do I.” Thorvald cleared his throat. “What do you suggest?”

  “Anna says young Sarkany is snuffling around our daughter like a pig who has scented a truffle.”

  “Inge says the same. I’ve nothing against Lord Ivan, except that he’s as much of a womanizing wastrel as his brother.”

  “Hugo has settled down fine now that he is married,” argued Severn. “I like his countess. She’s a sensible young woman — not just a pretty face. Good head on her shoulders and bedrock solid values. And Sarkany adores her. Besides, ‘wastrel’ is unwarranted criticism. They don’t brag, but Chrissy says Sarkan Industries has more than prospered under Hugo and Ivan’s stewardship. Old Stephan was more interested in Guild politics than in making money. But until these recent troubles with Vadim and Landor, it was the other way around for those boys.”

  “They’re rich enough, I’ll grant you that. It’s too bad that it isn’t Hugo interested in Chrissy. Just the same,” Thorvald concluded apologetically, “There are those visions of mine.”

  Severn shrugged. “I no longer know, Eldest. Visions or not, I just want Chrissy to be happy.”

  “As do I, Severn. As do I.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Lord Lindorm had called an emergency meeting of the five-member Executive of the Grand Council and invited Hugo to attend. They were holding their meeting in a small room that Hugo had never entered before. He l
ooked around with interest at the narrow windows set with stained glass, the oak paneled walls and ceiling. Traces of gilding still clung the carving on the walls and coffered ceiling. The pointed stone mullions looked original, but the glass was modern. Sixteenth century, rather than twelfth.

  He was the only visitor. Lord Lindorm, the Treasurer, had told him where him to sit. He was off to one side of the long trestle table and down two seats on the left. Lindorm sat to the right of the head of the table, which Hugo reasoned was Voros’s place as Marshal. The scarred oak boards that made up the tabletop were as thick as his wrist and twenty feet long. The supports were just as brawny. Both were black with age. He thought he could date them to at least the thirteenth century. He smoothed the wood and smiled with satisfaction as his talent informed him that his estimate was correct.

  Fortunately, the chairs were modern. Nineteenth century, and very comfortable with their padded leather seats and backs and armrests. There was a small fire in the stone fireplace, which certainly wasn’t original to the castle. In the thirteenth century, nobles and peasants alike still endured smoky rooms if they had the benefit of an indoor fire. He was very glad that sometime in the past, chimneys had been installed in the Chateau de la Ghilde.

  The heavy door opened and Lord Drake the Warden came in and stopped. “What’s he doing here?” the Warden whispered to Lindorm. Or thought he whispered. Lord Drake was somewhat deaf.

  “He is my guest,” said Lindorm severely. “Believe me, we need him here, Warden.”

  Drake sat down. “Good day to you, Sarkany. What the hell is going on, Lindorm? What’s so damned urgent, hey?”

  “I will tell this tale only once, Warden,” Lindorm returned gravely. “I can promise you that you will not want to hear it twice.”

  Lindorm always looked dignified, but today he also looked pissed off and worried. Whatever was behind this session was of the greatest importance, yet far too secret to speak of by phone or email. Clearly, Lindorm had summoned his fellows to this special session without giving them any reason. Interesting.