by Lisa Daniels
His hand touched her face. “I don’t know, but I dare say it will change the way you approach your job now.”
Annora closed her eyes and pressed her face into his hand, her mind trying to process what she had heard. It seemed impossible. Perhaps she was still in a fevered dream. Elian began to gently caress her face. Her eyes opened and looked down at him. The man had moved so that he now rested on one elbow.
“You haven’t taken care of your wounds yet.”
“None of them are too bad.”
“Are you just waiting for me to fix it?” The look in his eye said he was enjoying this too much.
Annora looked at his face now so close to hers, his breath moving the hair that usually framed her face. “No, I was waiting for you to finish healing since you seemed to be dying.”
He laughed, this time showing pain as the cavern rumbled with the sound. “You just contradicted yourself.” Her face wrinkled as she tried to figure out what he meant. “You were either waiting for me to heal, or you were waiting for me to die.”
Annora looked away and out of the cave into the clear blue sky. “What if I was waiting for you to die, but hoping that you survived? Will you continue to make fun of me?” Her face turned back to his.
He was so close to her. Elian’s hand wrapped around the back of her head. “I….” He seemed at a loss for words. Finally, he tried again. “May I?”
Annora tilted her head to the side, trying to figure out what he meant. He moved closer, his eyes boring into her own. She was suddenly aware of the way his muscles rippled even when he talked. His lips were inches from hers.
“Oh,” her cheeks flushed and she looked away.
He gently turned her back to face him. “May I?” The question was so sweet and gentle, that Annora gave him a small smile and nodded. The distance between them was immediately closed, and for the first time in her life she allowed a man to touch her.
When he pulled back from the kiss, Elian’s eyes seemed wild. Annora’s breathing was short and erratic, and her eyes moved down to his exposed chest and his stomach. Again her eyes were drawn to the large tattoo. Clearly there was more to it, but her mind simply could not focus on it. When she looked back at him, Elian pressed his lips against hers again, and this time his tongue slid into her mouth. Annora moaned and opened her mouth a little wider. She felt his hand gently pushing her down, his arm cradling her head. Her hands went around his neck and her leg suddenly felt fine as she wrapped it around his hip. Elian pulled back a little and looked down at her. His hand swept a few strands of her hair out of her face.
“I… this is…” Whatever was holding him back gave in when she put her hand on his face as her other hand pulled him back down to her. His body pressed into hers, and she pressed back. Suddenly his hands were working to unfasten her shirt and hers slid under his pants.
As his skin pressed against her, Annora moaned and arched up into him. Elian’s hand slid around her breast and traced it as he kissed her. His lips worked down her neck, over her breast, and covered her nipple. Annora let out a gasp as she ran both hands through his hair. He continued down her stomach, his hands working off her pants. Working his way back up to her lips, Elian placed a shirt under her head. His other hand pressed against her other leg and his body slid into the opening. Annora ignored the pain as she wrapped her legs around him.
Elian looked down at her, his hands brushing back her hair. His mouth covered hers as she felt him began to press into her. Her body tensed at the unexpected pain.
“Are you alright?” His face was a mask of concern. “I should have taken care of you.” He began to pull back.
Her face flushed as she pulled him back to her. “Just…” she tried to avoid his eyes, “first time.”
There was silence as he looked down on her. “I can’t. This isn’t right.” He began to pull away again, but it was obvious that it was very difficult for him to do.
“I don’t care if you aren’t human. You have done so much for me…” The look on his face was nearly shock and displeasure. “I want to… I haven’t been able to-” She couldn’t find the right words.
Elian moved away from her. “That’s not-”
“I can’t stop thinking about you. It’s never happened before, but I don’t care about your past or the fact that you aren’t human. I want to be part of your present and future. It’s hard to imagine not having…” Her voice trailed off as her body began to feel cold.
Elian’s eyes tried to read her sincerity. “You kill my kind. How can I…”
“I won’t. Not if you don’t want it.”
“How can you just give up like this?” He was trying to find an answer. “You barely know me.”
“And you knew nothing about me when you saved me. Again. And again. And again. You made me a prisoner, but now I think I understand why.” He looked at her, his hands still. “You felt guilty because you didn’t stop the man who hurt me that night. You let him run past and approached me instead. If you had stopped him, I would have found out about the poison and would have taken care of it that night instead of letting it fester.” Her eyes met his again. “Anyone else would have just shrugged it off, but you took responsibility for me, no matter what I did.”
“But you left.”
“I didn’t want to be trapped.”
“My life is nothing but cages and traps. I can’t drag you into that world.”
“You aren’t. I’m willingly following you. It’s not a promise of tomorrow or an expectation of what is to come. I just want to learn more about you and see if…”
Elian leaned forward, his ability to resist all but gone. His kiss was deeper this time as his body pressed her to the ground. This time when he began to press against her, Annora felt only pleasure. As he pushed all the way inside of her, she moaned his name.
The sun was nearly at its zenith when they finally stopped.
Chapter 11
Upon Waking
Annora’s mind was muddled as she woke. The smell of meat cooking was strange because the ground under her was clearly not that of a tavern. And her body ached in ways she had never experienced before.
Then the most recent events flooded into her consciousness.
She sat bolt upright, her eyes wide and wild. There was a fire and she could see the meat cooking, but Elian was nowhere to be found.
Quickly she stood and threw her clothes on, unable to look back at where she had slept out of shame. The dragon hunter reached the mouth of the cave when something to the right caught her eye. Turning, she saw a large black dragon flying toward the cave. Instinctively, she moved back into the cave. It was all she could do to fight the instinct to draw her weapons. The dragon was soaring toward the mouth of the cave, and just before its front claws touched, the image in front of her blurred, and then Elian strolled into the cave.
Annora’s hand covered her heart as she watched him enter. It took only a few seconds for his vision to acclimate to the cave, and then he turned to where she had been sleeping. When he saw that she wasn’t there, his head turned toward the food. She stood close by it, looking at him with what appeared to be fear.
Holding up his hands, Elian stepped toward her. “I’m not going to hurt you. Look, breakfast.” His hands were up in a nonthreatening stance and he gestured toward the food.
The dragon hunter’s eyes looked down and then back at him, her heart still racing, her eyes still wild. She said nothing.
Keeping his distance, Elian moved to the fire and removed the meat. “Sorry for being gone when you woke. I returned Lilou to the clan and told them I still had some unfinished business. I tried to make it sound official, but I think Leonides is onto me.” He felt the food, the put his fingers in his mouth. “It’s done. Would you like some?”
Annora swallowed and her eyes darted toward the mouth of the cave. All she wanted to do was get out of the cave and away from the shame and disgust she felt toward herself.
Elian put the food down and stood up.
“Are you alright? Here, let me fix your-”
She wanted to run, to get away, but she found it impossible to disobey him as he sat her down near the medicine and he adjusted some of her bandages. It was then that she realized he had already treated the ones she had neglected after the fight.
Looking at the top of his head while he checked her ankle, she asked, “Why?”
He had been chatting, about what, she was not sure. His eyes looked up at her, and her heart sped up. “I don’t understand the question.”
The pain on his face was there, although he was trying to hide it. Annora tried to choose her words carefully, but she always found it difficult to express emotions. Primarily she was both scared and confused.
“Why are you still helping me?”
His hand reached up and felt her forehead. “Are you fevered?” A frown crossed his face. Apparently Elian was not satisfied with the results, so he moved up and gave her a gentle kiss on the forehead. Both of his hands held her face as he pulled back. “You don’t feel like you are fevered.” He wanted to say something else, but only his eyes hinted at what it was.
Annora looked at him. “Why are you still here?”
The question clearly pained him. Standing up, he looked down at her. “Do you want me to leave?”
Shaking her head, the dragon hunter tried to figure out what she was trying to say. Bree was the one who had experience with this, an area of life that Annora had been desperate to avoid for over a decade. “I just thought… Don’t men usually leave afterward?”
Elian blinked at her a couple of times, then laughed. Annora’s face flushed as she looked up at him, her eyes threatening. He lowered himself and took her hands in his own. “Good. I thought we came to something of an understanding earlier.”
Annora’s face radiated confusion.
Searching her eyes, the shifter continued, “I thought you were willing to… give up hunting.”
Annora’s eyebrows drew together. “So you stayed to keep me from killing more of your kind? Wouldn’t it have been easier to just kill me?” Her voice had a chill to it.
The pained expression immediately made her feel guilty.
Shaking her head, Annora tried to fix what she had said. “Wasn’t what happened just a way for you to get leverage? I thought that this sort of thing…” She lost her voice as the young woman had not the ability to bring up what had happened. Her face was bright red as her voice trailed off.
Elian stared at her for a few moments before saying, “I don’t know if you are really that innocent or that repulsed.”
Annora pulled her hands out of his and ran them through her hair. “This is Bree’s area, not mine. I’ve always believed this kind of thing was just an exchange. A way of negotiating. Why else would people do it?”
Elian’s expression was priceless as he looked at her. For her part, Annora could not look at him directly any more. His voice was low and warm as he asked, “And what were you trying to negotiate this morning?”
“I don’t know!” Her breath started to quicken and she felt like her head was going to explode. “I thought you were going to die. Once it was obvious that you weren’t, I was so….” Her voice faltered. Turning her eyes toward Elian, they were pleading with him.
He reached a hand out and touched her face. “You were so pleased that you didn’t care what happened?”
She nodded, her mind distracted by the fact that Elian was being so kind. The feel of his hand against her skin made her heart race, and Annora tried to fight down the excitement it inspired.
Elian moved towards her, and the dragon hunter did not pull away as he gently kissed her. She did not resist as his hand rubbed her neck and down her back. Placing his forehead against hers, the shifter closed his eyes. “This is not a negotiation. More like a confession.”
Annora put a hand on the large hand cradling her face. His fingers wrapped around hers and she squeezed back. She murmured, “What kind of confession? That even I can act like a stupid woman?”
His head gently bumped against hers as he laughed. With a single motion he stood and pulled her up. Without a word, he carried her over to the fire. “You need to eat or you will never properly heal.”
“I’m glad to see you are so amused,” she mumbled, trying to cover her own disappointment as Elian moved away from her. They ate in silence, the dragon hunter keeping her attention trained on the food and cave entrance, the dragon shifter’s attention on her.
As soon as the food was gone, Elian quickly put out the fire and removed the remains that could not be eaten. Annora had not moved from her spot as she tried to sort out her feelings. It had always been so easy because she preferred to avoid emotions. They tended to make her careless.
Elian sat down beside her, his hands in front of him as he talked. “You seem to be having a really hard time with this. If you are not comfortable, you are free to go. I will report back that the problem has been resolved as they had expected without talking about The Fiend.” He paused. “If that is what you want.”
Annora looked at her own hands. Her head shook back and forth. “I don’t know what I want anymore.”
With a deep sigh, she talked about the memories she had spent most of her life avoiding. “Both of my parents were killed in dragon attacks. Not at the same time. First my father, then my mother a few years later. I was an orphan by the time I was 12 years old, and had lost three homes, so I had always thought that my fate was obvious.” She felt Elian’s tension as she proceeded to relay the worst of her memories. “Someday I would be killed by a dragon. It just seemed like the only possible outcome. Dragon attacks are pretty rare, and yet, I had been in the wrong place at the wrong time on three different occasions, and it had cost me everything. Not long after that, I met Bree. She thought I was a boy for nearly three years. I kept my hair short, wore boy’s clothes, and always carried weapons. I suppose it was the daily training that really made her feel safe around me despite the fact that I wasn’t that much older than her.
“It was only when we encountered Naya and Nyle that she learned I was always a girl. I never cared about my gender, so when it came time to wash, I went with Nyle. He was quite shy, so despite being older than Naya, he usually let her do all of the talking. I was trying to get him to talk to me as we got ready to clean up. We stripped down, I got into the little pond, and started splashing around. When I turned to talk to him, Nyle was just standing there, half-dressed, staring at me like I was crazy. ‘You’re a girl!’ were the first words he ever said to me.” She laughed. “I think he was about 13 years old at the time. Maybe older. I’m not good with that sort of thing.” Her hands were in front of her, and she was peeling at the piece of wood that had held her meat.
“It was the first time it ever occurred to me that it could be an issue, but I didn’t want to show how embarrassed I felt because of it. ‘So is Naya. Now get in here and clean up or I will tell her that you are neglecting yourself.’ Well, it was obvious that he was torn. The poor boy didn’t want to be naked in front of a girl, but he also didn’t want to get in trouble with his sister. She could be so fierce when it came to properly taking care of themselves. Finally, he removed everything except his inner pants, and that boy ran like he was on fire into the water. When I tried to approach him to wash up, Nyle quickly swam away, saying he could take care of himself just fine. He also asked me to leave. ‘But you have no undergarments now because you wore them into the water. What is wrong with you?’ He glared at me like I was making fun of him. ‘You’re a girl. You shouldn’t be here.’ At no point did he blame me for his actions; Nyle was never one to accuse others for the decisions he made. I got out and found him a new pair of inner pants. Since he clearly didn’t want me in the area while he washed, I ran into the clearing, threw them down, and ran back out.
“I was chatting with Bree and Naya when he finally emerged, his eyes looking from me to them. Naya saw his expression. ‘What is wrong with you, Nyle? Are you hungry?’ He shook his head
. She pestered him for a bit, but he didn’t say anything. Nyle’s eyes kept shifting to me as if asking why.
“When it was bed time, Naya put her arm through Bree’s and said the girls were going to head off to bed in a little space I had secured just inside the wall of one of the towns. Can’t remember where now. Nyle looked at me, then at them, then without warning, he shoved me toward them. Immediately his sister started to tell him he shouldn’t be so rough, that she and Bree would be fine, and on and on. When she finally stopped talking, his gentle voice spoke up, ‘You said the girls will go to bed. Are you really going to leave her behind?’ The look on their faces was priceless. Bree burst out laughing as Naya began to lay into him about how rude he was being. As she menaced in front of him, I put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Why are you so offended? He’s right.’ I think that Bree nearly died of a heart attack at that moment, because she had been under the wrong impression for so long. Naya’s face turned to look at her. ‘But you said…’ I walked off, hoping they would follow. ‘I don’t see what the big deal is. I would rather be mistaken for a boy than be treated like a girl. Come on. We will all sleep in the same place.’ And that took care of it. Saskia joined us later that year, and she was quite the handful. So full of questions about why a girl would dress as a boy. I suppose by then my figure made it easier to tell that I wasn’t a boy because the first thing she ever said to me was, ‘Why do you dress like a boy? You would be so pretty in a dress like mine!’
“It wasn’t long after that when I learned about Nyle’s prophetic dreams. It happened several times a year, and they were always terrifying. Saskia still had her father, so she stayed with him most of the time. Naya and Bree always slept through his panic because he was quiet, but I was a light sleeper. Whenever he would wake up shaking, I knew why and I would immediately hold him until he stopped.
“He got better at hiding it as he got older, and Nyle stopped telling me about what happened because one time I nearly got killed trying to keep one of them from happening. I was successful, but I was on death’s door for several days. He was already making a life for himself as a merchant, but he put all of that on hold to take care of me. At that time, I had already killed two dragons, and he wanted me to quit. Nyle proposed to me, saying that he would rather keep me safe than see me get killed in such a dangerous profession. I thought his proposal was out of pity, so as soon as I could walk, I left the town. It took more than a year for them to track me down. The three of them were living comfortably in a place above his shop. Bree was already working in her current profession by then, and Naya was helping her brother. Saskia was Saskia, doing whatever ideas came to her mind, unable to do anything for too long. It was Naya who finally tracked me down. The only way to get her to leave me alone was to go back with her to see everyone again. That’s when Nyle said he was going to become a dragon hunter, too. He was terrible at it; his weapon skills were pretty bad.” She smiled faintly at the memory.