Dragon Guardian

by Ophelia Bell

  She found her clit again with the stream and forced herself to hold it there.

  “Ten … nine … eight …” Heat grew exponentially with every second, her entire body alive with sensation. Cool air hit her skin now that she wasn’t beneath the hot water, but all the heat was concentrated between her thighs. “Six … five … fo-ohh God …”

  It was just too much. The pressure built up deep inside her, right where she felt it when she drew on her magic to do a small spell. She needed release, but she had to see this through the way Neph had commanded.

  “Three … two-ahh … one.” She dropped the showerhead and grabbed at the window ledge just above her for balance as she caught her breath. Her entire body was alive with want, her core throbbing in time with the pulsing of the jet she’d held against her flesh.

  With a shaky hand, she dipped her fingers between her thighs and found herself slick with moisture. Her clit pulsed under her light touch, hard and swollen to twice its normal size so that it peeked out from her outer lips enough to be visible.

  She absently turned off the water, the sharp awareness of her own physical sensations distracting her from everything but following through on Neph’s instructions. Tossing a towel onto the lid of the toilet, she sat heedless of the water dripping off her and spread her legs, then reached for the hand mirror on the bathroom counter.

  Her reflection flashed into view for a second and she halted the movement of her arm, staring in surprise at the flushed woman who looked back at her. She had wide, dark eyes and full lips parted with desire. Vrishti knew what hid behind those eyes, but didn’t dare admit it yet. But learning a new thing was within the scope of possibility to her, even if that new thing was her own body’s reactions to touch—to pleasure.

  The body she saw in the reflection was sensuous and beautiful, but she only saw pieces of it at a time—the wet, black tendril of hair clinging to her cheek, the dewy curve of her shoulder, the slope of her breast down to the darker brown pebbled circle of her nipple. She tilted the mirror lower and watched more of her appear, reflected back to her as though it were another creature being displayed in that small, round looking-glass. Her belly with its smooth, caramel-colored skin offset by the dark black of the hair that covered her pubis.

  And there, nestled amid that dark nest, was the shining pink tip of her clitoris. It seemed to have its own heartbeat now, its own mind that screamed want at her. It wanted to be touched, and so she spread her thighs a little wider until her outer lips parted, giving her a clearer view of her own glistening pink sex.

  She traced a finger along the edge of one outer lip, tilting her head in fascination as she opened herself. Her lips parted like a flower opening to the sun, and she finally understood how very sexual all those beautiful paintings were that she’d admired in her Art Appreciation class in college. How very feminine in a much more primal way than she’d ever understood until now. They weren’t flowers in those paintings after all, were they? This was what they had depicted. Her sexuality and the very core of her power was right here, bound up in that swollen little bundle of nerves and in all the copious fluids that flooded from her opening to soak the towel beneath her.

  Slowly, she dipped her index finger between her lips and pushed it into her opening, biting her lip at the slight pinch as her invasion stretched her. There was no way a cock as huge as Neph’s would fit in there without pain. Could she prepare herself for him? Or was the pain part of what was required? No, that made no sense. It wasn’t pain that fueled the magic, it was pleasure. She knew that much from her studies, though now she finally had the empirical understanding to back it up.

  Pleasure was what she was after now, what incited that build-up of power in her core, and her finger felt nice sliding into her channel, then back out again to drive that need higher. She pushed a second finger in and her clit tightened and throbbed harder. She hadn’t even touched it, yet it ached for contact, for release. She feared now that if she actually did touch it, even the slightest amount, that she would come apart at the seams. So instead, she focused on her opening, sliding her fingers in and out, in and out, until her breathing quickened and her muscles clamped down, craving more.

  Only to the edge, she reminded herself. She was too enthralled with the sight to stop yet, however, gripping the mirror tightly in her right hand while she watched her fingers slide into her opening. Lifting one leg, she bent her knee and propped her heel on the edge of the toilet lid, then lifted the other and raised it high enough to rest her foot on the corner of the counter beside her.

  This forced her to lean back against the tank, but she had a clearer view of her entire nether region in the mirror, now that she was spread wide enough to see. Her labia parted and her fingers sank in deeper. She experimented with a different motion and gasped when her fingertips hit a soft spot on her inner wall, which she prodded gently. Pleasure shot straight to her clit and her legs twitched. Her heartbeat hammered and her body hummed with that building need that she had so far only ever felt in her dreams of Aodh.

  She abruptly stopped moving her fingers, but in the mirror she could see the shining flood of her juices running down from her spread opening and coating the tight rosette of her asshole. She withdrew her fingers, caught up in the fascination of discovery now, curious to see what other reactions her body might have to different stimuli. Only a small part of her brain still clung to the idea of treating this as an experiment; the rest of her just wanted to feel more, now that she’d opened the door to this knowledge of herself.

  Her fingers glistened with her slick juices and she slid them down past her perineum to circle around the darker, creased skin that surrounded her rear opening. Perhaps that was the key to building pleasure but not crossing the point of no return. It felt nice … ticklish at first, then just good once she’d traced a slick circle around her hole a few times. With a swift little poke, she shoved the tip of her finger inside.

  “Oh, fuck!” she yelped at the sharp and unexpected jolt of pleasure that went through her. Her clit thrummed with renewed need, but complete release remained just beyond that thin barrier of control she managed to keep testing.

  Biting her lip and acutely aware of the salacious things she was doing to her own body, she twisted her finger around, simply feeling the slight sensations that resulted from different movements. She could feel everything back there. Every time her knuckle passed that tight ring, she felt the little bump and rub, and it felt good. Not quite the concentrated, unbearable pleasure of the shower’s jet against her clit, but a different kind of pleasure that she sensed had the same potential for mind-blowing release if she let herself go that far.

  She wanted more. If her goal was to get to the edge, she needed more, but she needed both hands free to go further.

  She set the mirror down, deciding she could look again afterward. Her ass was still slick with the juices of her arousal and her finger easily penetrated without any other assistance. Now that her other hand was free, she began teasing again, starting with her nipples, then sliding two digits between her folds and deliberately grazing over her stiff clit to test her endurance.

  Her needy little bundle pulsed with desire, and she pressed the heel of her palm against it as though the pressure would help stave off the inevitable. It helped only slightly, but it was enough for her to push a second finger into her backside. That hurt a tiny bit, which pushed the rising tide of ecstasy back a little more, but the current swiftly regained momentum when she released the pressure of her hand from her clit and grazed a finger over the swollen bundle.

  An involuntary exhalation escaped her lips and her head buzzed, feeling just as swollen with sensation as every single inch of flesh between her legs. Another soft stroke over her clit and the swelling sensation increased.

  Close, but not over, she reminded herself, but sweet Gaia did she want to go over so badly now. Her entire womb felt like it was about to burst with t
he pleasure of those two simple sensations … the two fingers sliding in and out of her ass, not even that deep, and the feather light touch of her other finger over the sensitive skin of her clit.

  She didn’t even have anything in contact with her vagina, yet she knew without a doubt she would lose herself with only a little more of what she was doing now.

  The reminder of that emptiness in her core where her fingers had been earlier incited a sudden image of a huge cock, only this time it was attached to a naked, lust-ridden Aodh and not the huge Satyr she’d seen earlier. “… bury myself inside you so deep …” reverberated in her ears, and her already weakening hold on her self-control faltered. The wetness flooding her pussy increased, and she very nearly lost her mind.

  “No!” she cried out, yanking her hands away from herself and sitting up, the mirror flying off the counter as she knocked it to the floor with her foot. She clamped her thighs together and pressed her bare feet to the floor, doubling over as she resisted the overwhelming need to fall over that edge of pleasure.

  She stared down at her face looking back at her from the mirror. Her eyes were wild with pent-up desire, but she looked different somehow. There was an awareness in that look that hadn’t been there before. A want for something she hadn’t known she wanted, not even after those late night dreams of Aodh.

  The dreams had been nothing more than abstractions of desire, her craving for his presence tied up with her memory of their first and last touch—her body filling in the blanks in the only way it knew how, but without the aid of actual physical sensation to drive it all home.

  Now she knew what true pleasure felt like. Or what the beginnings of it did, anyway. And she wanted more. The light brown eyes gazing back at her from the mirror on the floor told her as much, but they also expressed the fear she didn’t want to admit she had. The fear that allowing herself to find that pleasure before she found Aodh … to cross that barrier without him … would be a betrayal of the most important promise she’d made him. That he would be her mate … and that she would be his.

  She rose and shakily wrapped herself in the terrycloth robe Cade had handed her before leaving her to bathe. Turning on the hot water faucet, she leaned on the counter to regain her bearings, deliberately avoiding looking at herself in the mirror again. When steam billowed up from the sink, she washed her hands, then wet a cloth and carefully cleaned the arousal from between her thighs, avoiding too much direct contact with her clit. She’d cooled off a bit in the last few moments of self-flagellation, but her body still felt like a live wire and she didn’t trust that she wouldn’t accidentally throw herself off that ledge.

  No wonder people talked about taking cold showers when they were turned on. She contemplated standing under a cold stream now, but knew it wouldn’t help, given her ursa resistance to cold.

  By the time she exited the bathroom and softly stepped across the hall into Emma’s old bedroom, her desire had subsided and exhaustion nearly dragged her down. She fell onto the big bed and buried her face in the pillow, demoralized and yet strangely excited. The contradiction of emotions only made her feel worse.

  She had to do this for Aodh. For love. And she owed it to herself to know her body better. There was nothing wrong with what she was doing, so why did it still feel like a betrayal? It wasn’t like she was in love with Neph. Her magic worked a certain way, that’s all. Any other ursa would do the same and not think twice about it. Her cousin Revna used her magic all the time.

  “But she doesn’t fuck anyone to use it,” Vrishti said into the dark. That was a poor argument. Revna might not fuck anyone, but she sure as shit took pleasure in using her magic.

  Vrishti had seen it in Revna’s eyes when she’d cast a powerful spell one day. “It’s like having an orgasm, if you do it right,” Revna had said to her. But until she finally had a proper orgasm, Vrishti wouldn’t ever know what it was supposed to feel like if she did it right.

  Now she had an inkling of what that was supposed to feel like, and she was forced to keep from going that far. This was torture. But it made sense despite the discomfort she was in now.

  She rubbed a thumb over the slightly upraised mark her mother had left in the center of her breastbone. The power of Summer would be hers at the Equinox, but she already had a link to it and could call on it if she needed to. Unfortunately, Summer’s power wasn’t quite the same as the power of the Source, and the Source was what Neph needed to access in order to use his powers to take them to the time and place where Aodh had been imprisoned.

  Vrishti closed her eyes and sighed as she traced the sunburst of power on her chest, aware of both that power and the power of the Source that still thrummed between her thighs. Every drop of desire that flowed from her was for Aodh, and she would take herself to the edge as many times as it took to access the power she needed to find him.

  Chapter Seven

  Neph

  Sheets of thin ice covered the creek, obscuring the flow of the water beneath, but Neph could still sense the current with his eyes closed. He sat silent on the bank, letting his mind become part of the current, following it all the way to the bigger river it fed and on to the ocean. The meditation told him nothing new, because the connection this creek had once had to the Haven had been severed shortly after his arrival. Still, the exercise calmed him and helped him focus.

  At least he had found his nephew and could sense the other satyr’s power through their shared connection to the River. There wasn’t much to learn from that connection other than that Calder had grown even more powerful … the kind of power that could only be gained via blood melding with one’s mate. Mates, he corrected himself.

  He’d considered joining their search for Nereus, but every vision he had made it clear there was no place for him in that quest. Vrishti’s arrival had only reinforced that his purpose lay elsewhere. Aodh’s ancient connection to their enemy may come into play somehow, and that meant he and Vrishti had to follow through on her mission to find the dragon.

  He’d spent thousands of years questioning Fate. After expelling Aodh from the Haven, he’d no longer believed the bond they’d had was anything more than wishful thinking spurred on by several decades of secret trysts and hundreds of sessions melding with the dragon. He should have left well enough alone … They’d had a good thing. Why had he insisted on inviting a female to join them?

  Meri would only have been a mask for them to wear. Another lie to tell—to themselves and everyone around them. But Vrishti’s arrival had reminded him to look for Aodh’s timeline, and with that simple search, he’d been forced to revisit those old memories, and was surer than ever that Aodh and Vrishti both were fated for him.

  Vrishti’s raw determination to find the dragon was refreshing, but also terrifying. She was innocent, barely even understood her own nature as it was, and yet was willing to dive into his world with her eyes wide open. Somehow it gave him the drive to try too. Though at some point, he would have to explain to her where the two of them fit together in all this. For the time being, he would let her believe they were only after a shared goal to find her chosen mate. Soon they would be three, and when they were, she would have to understand that Fate intended them to be three. Not just two.

  Baby steps. Vrishti’s innocence required that he take things slowly. Her willingness to follow through with triggering her estrous was proof of her determination, though it would require a level of intimacy with him she may not be ready for. He doubted she’d easily be able to accept that Aodh wasn’t the only male meant for her.

  He stood and stretched, adjusted the thick wool scarf around his neck, and rubbed his gloved hands together to generate a bit of warmth. It was still early, with the gray dawn light barely beginning to illuminate the blanket of snow that had fallen the night before. The entire forest was soft and silent and he turned, taking slow, measured steps back the way he’d come, careful to place his feet back into the sam
e footprints to avoid disturbing the near-perfect serenity of the morning.

  Vrishti would be hungry when she woke. And she’d likely still be hesitant to do what was needed to trigger her estrous. The prospect both worried and aroused him, which was an incredibly confusing combination. As innocent as she was, he found it difficult to justify the things he must ask her to do, and he had to remind himself yet again that she’d embraced this quest and would likely keep trying no matter what.

  But despite the fact that he would have full command of time itself once she could provide him a link to the Source, they still had to move quickly. Time did not stop flowing, even once they started diving into the River at different points, and the more they distanced themselves from their true present, the more power would be required to access those points, and the more time they could lose as a result.

  They would both need strength, and at least feeding her was one thing he could do today to ensure they had it. Hopefully his choice of breakfast would satisfy her. He was decidedly better at cooking that meal than he was at supper, at any rate.

  On the way into the cabin, he loaded up his arms with firewood, which he deposited into the inset box to the side of the fireplace. He tossed a couple big logs onto the fire, then shed his coat and boots. It was still chilly in the house, and he would need it warm if he was going to tolerate what he expected he’d need to do later.

  “Hoping, you fool. Just admit you’re hoping it comes to that,” he muttered, holding his hands out over the rising flames that licked over the fresh logs. He’d commanded Vrishti to spend her time here naked, learning that physical comfort, particularly with her own body, was one of the keys to unlocking the tight shackles she had on her sexuality. Most ursa females were long past sexual discovery at her age.

  He’d seen the look in her eyes when he’d stripped and shifted in front of her the night before. That sharp spark of arousal that had overcome her had swiftly been shut down by some misplaced sense of propriety that made him wonder who had raised her. That was no matter now, but at least he knew he could incite lust simply by being naked around her, so if that was what she needed, he would happily give it to her. Just not until the fire had warmed the place a bit more.