Flight of Dragons

by Elianne Adams, Sadie Haller, Zoe York, Shelley Munro, Zara Keane, LC Alleyne, Skye Jones, Evanne Lorraine, Ann Gimpel

  Lachlan groaned and buried his hands in her hair. Her mouth felt silky, scorching as she suckled his ridged flesh. He showed her the motion he needed. It didn’t take long, maybe half a dozen strokes in and out of her mouth, and his balls snugged against his body. She must’ve known how close he was, because she upped the pressure and grazed the delicate skin around the head of his cock with her teeth. Control fled and pleasure spewed out of him in hot, burning jets of ecstasy. Maybe he should’ve spilled his seed on the cave’s floor, but she didn’t give him any choice, holding him closer once the first spurts flooded her mouth.

  He joined her on the floor and pulled her body full length against his, murmuring brokenly in Gaelic. He kissed her and tasted the sharp flavor of his semen. His cock, which had barely deflated, sprang to attention instantly. He strung kisses lower until his mouth hovered over the junction between her neck and shoulder. Lachlan sank his teeth into sensitive flesh until he tasted blood. He drew back and licked the wound clean, sealing it with magic.

  “What are you doing? I’ve heard of love bites, but—”

  “Ssht, lass.” He rolled onto his side and smoothed wild locks that had escaped from her braid away from her face. “Ye know I’m a dragon shifter. Kheladin reminded me of his part in the mating ritual.”

  “But we haven’t actually had sex yet. Although,” she moved a hand between them and curved it around him again, “it looks like we could. You’ve got plenty left where the last climax came from.” She smiled devilishly at him and pushed her hips against his body suggestively.

  “Gwydion could marry us.”

  “I’m sure he could, but he’s not here now, and we are.” She turned her blue gaze on him. “From what you said earlier, the sooner we make love, the sooner that powerful magic will start brewing.”

  Lachlan started. What she said was true, so why was he staving off such an important joining?

  Knowledge hit him like a runaway carriage. Somehow, against hope and reason, Rhukon was still within these walls. Maybe not all of him but enough to subvert the magic that would eventually be his undoing. For some unknown reason, Maggie was immune to the black wyvern’s magic. Thank the goddess for small favors. Even Kheladin was doing his part by forcing the mating bite.

  Lachlan fanned magic around them, creating a double warding. If he was correct, Rhukon would intensify his efforts the moment Lachlan sank himself into Maggie’s willing body.

  “Well?” She gazed at him through eyes that looked ancient beyond measure.

  He didn’t answer with words, just pulled her close. He rolled her body atop his and guided himself home inside her. When the heat and warmth of her body closed around him, it was all he could do not to shriek his joy. The sensation was so intense, he rushed toward a precipice. There’d be no control, no gradually bringing the lass to peak after peak while he controlled his lust.

  “Ride me,” he gasped through gritted teeth. “Take your pleasure. I willna last. Not this time.”

  She sat over him, ribcage arched like a bow. Her head fell back, showing the cords in her neck. Blonde curls cascaded around her body as her braid disintegrated. She twirled her nipples with both hands and pushed her nubbin against his pubic bone.

  Dark magic battered Lachlan’s ward with a fury, but Rhukon wasn’t strong enough to break through. And then nothing mattered but Maggie, the heat of her, the musk of her arousal, her hands that had moved to grip his shoulders. His cock bucked and shook as he came again. Maggie screamed when she peaked, the sound deep and primal with need. Her muscles milked him, intensifying his climax tenfold.

  She collapsed atop him, breathing hard. Lachlan closed his arms around her and held her tight, his shuddering cock still buried in her body. The deed was done. She was his.

  Maggie turned her head to one side and said, “I felt something…evil trying to get us.”

  “Aye, lass. But he dinna topple my wards.” Lachlan repositioned them so they were lying on their sides with him still inside her. He stroked her cheek with one hand. “It took me a while, but I finally realized part of my reluctance was Rhukon’s intervention.”

  She crinkled her nose and laughed. “Oh ho! Now you’ve had me, you’re not so certain about that marriage proposal.”

  “Nay, lass, not at all—” he began, before he understood she was teasing.

  “Good. Because now I’ve had a taste of you,” she contracted her cunny muscles around him, “I’m probably spoiled for any other man, ever.”

  “Only probably? Ye’ll never have another man—”

  “Pfft. Stop. Don’t go all Neanderthal on me. If I could go years without fucking anyone, I don’t think it’s a big risk that I’ll suddenly turn into a hoyden and screw everything that moves. Besides.” She laid a hand over his on her cheek. “I like you. A lot. And I trust you, which is more important than almost anything.”

  Lachlan’s head spun. He needed a dictionary to translate some of what Maggie said. “Aye, lass. Trust is important. So is this.” He flexed his shaft and was rewarded with a squeeze from her.

  “Ah, whoops.” She bit her lower lip. “We should’ve used something. I’m not taking birth control anymore. Why would I be, since I didn’t plan to break my sex fast with anyone?”

  “I only understood part of that. If ye’re worried about bairns, I control when my seed creates life. ’Tis one of the lesser magics and easily mastered.”

  “Okay.” She nodded. “That’s one less worry, but they had sexual diseases back in the sixteen hundreds. You may have called it some sort of pox.”

  Lachlan drew back, struggling with righteous indignation. She canna know I’m immune to such things, he reassured himself. He clamped his jaws and made an effort to speak calmly. “The same magic that allows me to determine when I create new life also tells me if a woman is infected with disease. I would never—”

  “Never mind.” She patted his hand. “I should’ve known.” The corners of her mouth twitched into a smile. “I was too swept away by your considerable charm to bother to check. Witches have a similar radar. We’re good at avoiding anyone with communicable diseases. And at protecting ourselves if we have to have contact. It’s one of the few magics I cultivated.”

  “Why would ye pick that one?” He shifted to a more comfortable position, and his cock slipped from her body.

  She rolled to a cross-legged sit. “It will take a while for you to learn about all the ways the world changed while you slept. I told you I’m a doctor. We spend most of our time with sick people. While I was in medical school, and my first year of training after that, I spent a lot of time in hospitals. It was convenient not to fall prey to staph, strep, and other bacterial infections when they ran rampant.”

  “Bacterial infections?”

  Maggie grinned at him. “Aye, wee beasties that get inside your body and make you sick.”

  Lachlan chuckled. It morphed into a full-blown laugh. “Now ye stop that. I’ll admit ye can do a credible Highland accent, but I prefer it when ye sound like yourself.” She shivered. “Ye’re cold.”

  “Yes, and hungry, too. Do you have food down here?”

  “There’s cold, pure water from a spring, but for food, we shall need to return to the world above.”

  She looked around her, shuddered again, and reached for her discarded clothing. “I still feel it.”

  “Feel what, lass?”

  “It’s hard to describe, but it’s like a dark shadow scrabbling at the edges of something you have draped around us.”

  “The lass is perceptive,” Kheladin said.

  “What was that?” Half into her top, Maggie whipped her head around.

  “Kheladin.”

  “Oh right. Your dragon.”

  Lachlan thought about it and murmured, “I think he would say I’m his human.”

  “Regardless.” She flowed to her feet in one easy motion and reached for her pants. “Why can I hear him?”

  “Because ye’re bonded to the both of us.”


  She gifted him with a curious grin. “Hmm…sounds kind of kinky.” Apparently reading his confusion, she clarified, “It means sexually deviant.”

  “I resent that.” The dragon stirred within him. Lachlan fought back steam and smoke that threatened to pour from his mouth.

  He got to his feet. “’Tis just that she doesna understand. Times have changed since ye and I walked the Earth.”

  “I don’t know if I can manage telepathic speech.” A broad grin wreathed her face. “Hey! I’m doing it. Anyway.” She bowed slightly. “I meant no offense. I was being a smartass, er, sarcastic. I was being sarcastic. It was uncalled for, and I’m sorry.”

  “Apology accepted,” Kheladin said. “Ye carry my mating bite. Ye belong to us now. Both of us.”

  “I’ll do my best to be worthy of the honor.” She swiped at cheeks damp with sudden tears. “Sorry. Guess my emotions are pretty close to the surface. When do I get to see you?”

  “If I had my way—”

  “Soon,” Lachlan broke in. “Verra soon.”

  She cocked her head to one side. “Witches live for a long time—often hundreds of years—but certainly not forever. Are you certain you both want me in your lives? Maybe an immortal woman might—”

  Lachlan was by her side in an instant. The lass was skittish as an unbroken colt. He wrapped his arms around her and stilled the rest of her words with a kiss he hoped would put an end to that line of thought.

  Maggie gathered the rest of her clothes, shrugged into her jacket, and bent to push her feet back into her shoes. Lachlan picked up his breeks. He considered chucking them and getting another plaid from his clothing chest, but the lass thought it important for him to blend in.

  “Do ye suppose we might purchase something that isna quite so tight?” He grinned sheepishly. “If I dinna have a constant cockstand around you, ’twouldn’t be such a problem.”

  “Sure.” She grinned back. “I had no idea how big your, um equipment was when I went shopping for you—or that it would be hard all the time. Although I must admit the shop girl and I had the most delightful conversation imagining what you might look like.” Maggie lowered her voice. “I promised her I’d report in if—” A low rumble filled the air, dust rose around them. Her eyes narrowed. “Rhukon?”

  “Aye. I fear he’s doing a better job blocking the tunnel than he did last time.”

  “That won’t be a problem, will it?”

  Lachlan drew the breeks up his legs and fastened them. Then he pulled Maggie against him. The lass was trying to sound brave, but he heard a tremor in her voice. “Nay, lass. I can use magic to move us out of here. Gather your things.”

  She ducked from under his embrace and picked up her bag and sweater, tying it around her waist. “I have everything.”

  Exhorting the dragon to lend his power, Lachlan wove complicated magic. Their underground location meant he couldn’t simply blast Rhukon to the ninth circle of Hell without compromising the integrity of the cave’s structure. Though he’d told Maggie about the red wyvern and the Morrigan, he didn’t mention them now. No reason to alarm her since he didn’t know if they were a part of Rhukon’s current maneuvering.

  In truth, he was absolutely certain he didn’t command enough power to subvert the red and black wyverns and the Morrigan. If he and Kheladin couldn’t spring them from the cave, he’d have to find a way to reach Gwydion and Arawn.

  Because it couldn’t hurt, and the lass needed to develop her power, he bent close. “I know ye’re green as the grasses that dot the moors, but look through your third eye, and add your power to mine when I ask for it.”

  Chapter Ten

  Maggie balled her hands into fists so hard her nails cut into her palms. It didn’t take magic, or her well-honed intuition, to tell her Lachlan was holding something back. For him to ask for an infusion of power from her must mean things were far more desperate than he was letting on. She stared at him. His hands interlaced in intricate patterns, and the air around him fairly buzzed with power. If she looked through her third eye as instructed, she thought she could see a huge, dragonesque form hover around him. Coppery light arced between them.

  Kheladin?

  The harder she stared, the more indistinct the dragon essence became, almost as if he didn’t want to be identified.

  Maggie fought against helplessness. She’d never cared for the sensation of being mired in a tar pit. Adrenaline soured her stomach and set her nerves jangling. Knowing it was her fight-or-flight response, and that her current level of discomfort was because both avenues were unavailable, didn’t help her control her body’s autonomic nervous system.

  She opened her mouth to talk with Lachlan and then clacked it shut. He appeared to be concentrating—intensely. She didn’t want to sabotage their chance of escape by diverting his attention. Rocks showered down from above. A sensation of drowning, of being buried beneath tons of earth, nearly undid her.

  So she wouldn’t start screaming, Maggie forced herself to breathe. One steadying breath in, followed by an equally deep exhale. As she repeated the cycle, she took stock of her body. Aware of every synapse, every nerve ending, Maggie felt intensely, vibrantly alive. She swallowed hard, choking on realization. The life she’d been living was a mere parody of what being alive could mean. She’d emerged from a long sleep into bright, searing daylight. Her body thrummed with dazzling energy, but lust for the man standing a foot away with magic churning around him trumped everything.

  Though far from a virgin, she’d never felt such an intense physical connection with her other lovers. In fact, sex had been so blasé, it hadn’t felt like a sacrifice to do without it. The men who’d wandered through her life never truly interested her. There’d been points when she’d wondered if she was gay, but women didn’t ring her chimes either. In her worst moments, she’d seen herself as asexual.

  Mid-breath, she bit back a chortle. If today were any marker, asexual wasn’t anywhere on the table. Despite danger blossoming about them, if Lachlan dragged her to the cave’s sandy floor and pressed his glorious cock against her pussy lips, she’d welcome him back inside. Desire knifed through her at the thought of him. He had a physical magnetism that literally stole her breath. Was that what had been wrong with her twenty-first century lovers? Had they been too…domesticated? Too tame?

  Maybe I was waiting all my life for him and just didn’t know it.

  Grannie knew.

  Maggie considered that. Her grandmother had known…something. When Maggie walked away from the coven and their training, she’d walled herself off from magics that were only taught to acolytes who signed the coven’s pact with their blood.

  “Lass.”

  Though she’d never taken her gaze from him, Lachlan’s voice startled her. “Yes?”

  “Take my hand. Gather what power ye have and imagine it streaming into me.” His voice held a desperate edge.

  Maggie closed the short distance between them and grasped his outstretched hand. Contact with him jolted her like an electric charge and reinforced her earlier impression that her other life held all the allure of a photographic negative. She imagined her essence flowing into him.

  “Aye, beloved,” he murmured. “Give it all to me. Imagine our bodies joined and send the energy into me. All of it.”

  She tried hard to do what he asked. Once she touched him, her consciousness of the doom surrounding them escalated dramatically, as did her sense of the dragon’s burning core. Kheladin was furious they were under attack. He wanted to lay waste to the world with fire, but Lachlan held him back.

  The peril they faced came into sharp focus and scared the living shit out of her. Her gut tightened. She wanted to shriek her fury and her fear, to rake her nails down Rhukon’s tawdry beauty and mar him for life. Her gaze swept the cave. Her eyes said they were alone, but her other senses, the more arcane ones, told her otherwise.

  “Ye’re not concentrating.” Lachlan closed his other hand over hers, sandwiching it. Thunderous booming s
ounded above them. More dirt drifted down, mingled with thick, choking dust and small rocks.

  Truth rammed home. Maggie’s teeth chattered. Talking took gargantuan effort, as if by giving voice to her terror, it might be one step closer to coming true. “Rhukon’s trying to bury us alive.”

  “If ye help me, he willna succeed. Ye’ve power within you. Throw the floodgates open. Doona worry, I can channel all ye have.”

  A chant from her childhood rose from some forgotten pit in her psyche. Maggie mouthed the words and felt power coil upward from the base of her spine.

  “Aye, lass. There’s my bonny lass. Keep it coming. Goddess’s tits, but ye’re strong. I knew it.” Exultant laughter rose from him as smoke and fire spewed from his mouth.

  Maggie sensed Kheladin’s magic. It was deep, eldritch, and different from Lachlan’s. She opened her mind to their three powers. It was like watching three waterfalls, pouring multi-hued water down a rocky cliff. The water braided together. Once joined, it exploded, showering everything in its path with destructive force. No stranger to focusing the power of her mind on outcomes, she imagined Rhukon dead. Dead, goddammit.

  Hell, I’ll take dismantled, disemboweled, imprisoned by the Celts. Anything.

  She dug deeper within herself. The cave walls flickered and dimmed, then reformed. Understanding at an instinctual level that they’d nearly escaped, she dragged every last ounce of strength from her soul.

  This time, they fairly shot from the cave. When the world stopped spinning, they lay on the ground in the circle of beech and ash where they’d started. Maggie’s gut seized. She flipped over onto her belly in time to vomit what little was in her stomach into the dirt. Dry heaves shook her, but she couldn’t stop them.

  Strong hands rubbed her back and shoulders. “Naught to be ashamed of, lass. ’Tis the magic. It always exerts a price, but ’tis higher when ye’re untrained.”