by Romi Hart
Victor tried to loosen her grip, but she only tightened her hold. He couldn’t move. He craned his head around to look at her. When he did, he discovered her inspecting him with gleaming, narrow eyes. He couldn’t make out if she hated him or not. Did she even realize he was trying to help her?
At that moment, something changed between them. A sizzle of electricity went through him. A tremor of muscular convulsion traveled the length of her long body. It rippled down him with an unmistakable thrill.
When he checked her again, she rumbled low in her chest but she didn’t glare or fight him now. She undulated her coils across his scales. Then, with intoxicating slowness, she slithered in supple twisting spirals around him. Her rough skin trailed over his in sensuous, lingering waves.
Victor’s mind staggered. She couldn’t be doing this to him. She couldn’t be advancing on him when she just shifted for the first time. That made no sense. She had no idea what she was doing.
Her body acted on him beyond the rational. Her delicious strokes woke a part of his soul he couldn’t control. He didn’t want to control it. She felt good. She felt vibrant and enticing.
She knew exactly how to turn him on. How she knew, he couldn’t figure out. Shifting for the first time must have woken her baser instincts. Then again, he started this by tackling her. Maybe he did this.
She tumbled over and around him in sweeping, endless swelling currents. The quicker her scales rushed over his skin, the more aroused she made him. He felt himself harden against her. He couldn’t stop it.
Just then, she let go of his wing. He thrust it out and caught the air. He fluttered there to hold them both aloft, but she didn’t stop stroking him. She quickened her pace into a rolling, tumultuous dance of dragon ecstasy.
Victor tried to shut his mounting passion out of his mind, out of his very cells. The more he tried, the more she insisted. She clenched him in her coils and a chuckling sound came out of her. She knew exactly what she was doing. She felt his hardness and targeted the spots along his stomach to make him respond.
Every time one of her movements caused a spasm of agonizing desire in his guts, she noticed. She repeated it until burning lust tore him apart. He had to get her down on the ground, but the longer this went on, the less sure he became that he could do that.
He needed…..something. He needed this. He didn’t realize it until she touched him like that. He never experienced this in dragon form. If he ever had anything to do with a woman in human form, his brain orchestrated the situation for him. He could control how he responded and to what degree. He could control the pace and the depth of his own response.
He couldn’t do that now. He couldn’t stop hot blood rushing to his cock in spite of himself. His mind never once considered stopping it or pulling back. She fired him to smoking need. He needed her.
Fuck, she was hot like this! She knew it, too. She arched her head back to fix him with those hypnotic eyes. Her eyelids drooped in the most delirious way.
He had to hold her and himself up. That left her free to have her way with him. She writhed in ever-increasing excitement. She gasped and screeched in blatant craven longing. Maybe she needed it the same way he did.
On one of her mind-bending circuits, she caressed her warm scales against his rigid cock. She slowed to a brutal crawl to drag that motion out as long as possible. Victor shuddered. He couldn’t stand this.
At that moment, she flipped herself around. She whipped her tail up. So fast, so fast he couldn’t comprehend it, she slapped her long body against him and drove him inside her. Searing tightness and intensity seized him all over. He froze. He couldn’t fly. He could only hang suspended above the Earth staring at nothing in utter shock.
She didn’t wait around to see what he would do. She set up a devastating rhythm of sensual surges. She caressed her belly and chest and neck around him and over him and against him while she pumped her juicy opening along his shaft.
He couldn’t stop her. He couldn’t think. He never experienced such a mind-blowing sensation. It destroyed all his defenses and catapulted him into extreme infatuation and delight. In half a second, he exploded in devastating climaxes. They hit him one after the other without stopping.
She wouldn’t let up. She stroked him quicker. She ignored his cries, but he couldn’t fight this. He needed it. Nothing would ever be the same after this. She did something to him he couldn’t understand. This went way beyond being a dragon. Something in his very blood demanded that he respond to her.
She groaned under her breath and her eyes drifted closed in rising excitement. Her skin glowed with heat and pleasure. Fizzing juice gushed down his shaft. He couldn’t even ejaculate from all the crushing peaks she milked from his flesh.
Just then, she gave a violent contortion. She quivered all down her body. Those spasms infiltrated the glorious channel enclosing him. She shrieked in high, keening climax. Her chasm clenched around him in a ravaging fist. Her muscles rippled down his length in unstoppable waves.
The more she rocked in ecstasy, the more her reactions propelled him over the edge into more and more and more paroxysms of his own. Would they never end? Would he ever get free of her?
He could keep going like this for days and never finish. The thought scared him in a way he never felt fear before. He would lose himself in this woman. He had to stop this. He had to break the seal. She no longer locked him against her in that brutal hold of hers. She didn’t have to.
Her very sensuous nature kept him enthralled to the overpowering energy pulsating through him and into him and over him. It blinded him. It destroyed all that he was and all he ever hoped to be. He willed himself to push away, to untangle himself from her before it was too late.
At that moment when he thought he would die somewhere between agony and annihilation, she ripped off him with the force of a thousand supernovae. The icy wind hit his stomach. It chilled him instantly.
Another scream woke him from my stupor. He looked around and saw a tiny black speck shrinking to a dot in the distance. He could barely see it against the deep green of the Quag far below. He had to think hard to realize it was her. She shifted in mid-air. Now she was falling to her death.
Without thinking, he stooped and plunged. He drew in his wings and dive-bombed her. The wind stung his eyes and ripped tears from them, but he kept her in sight. Christ, why did he bother trying to rescue her after what she did to him?
Her black hair slapped around her head and she flailed her arms and legs in all directions. She screamed to the skies rotating in all directions—as if that could somehow break her fall. Of course she never once thought to call out to him for help. Oh, no. That would be the civil thing to do and she would never do that. God, no.
Victor smashed into her dropping at terminal velocity. He nearly missed his aim and shattered her into a million pieces. At the last second, he hooked one claw into her jacket and caught her.
She lurched against the momentum of her fall. The next thing he knew, she dangled from his talons still twisting and shrieking like he was the one trying to kill her. Jesus, did you ever see such a heartless bitch in your life?
He lowered her to the ground and set her down. She collapsed in a heap sobbing and groaning.
6
Riley gagged and spat into the grass, but nothing came out. She tried to haul herself onto all fours, but she couldn’t support her own weight. The hazy, distant memory of what just happened haunted her every thought.
That gruesome monster landed next to her. In the blink of an eye, it shifted into Victor. His knees buckled under him and he folded onto the ground. He hugged his arms over his stomach and sweat streamed down his forehead. He gritted his teeth and snarled down at the ground.
Seething rage foamed out of her. He did this to her. He made her this. She wanted to kill him. “You bastard! How could you do this to me?”
He peeked at her under his brows, but he didn’t say anything. His shoulders heaved and his chest strained under her
shirt.
“You son of a bitch!” she bellowed. “You fucking rapist bastard! I’ll kill you for this!”
He squinted at her for a second. Then, for no apparent reason, he closed his eyes and flopped over onto his ass. He threw back his head and his nostrils flared taking a deep breath.
His actions made her madder than ever. How dare he ignore her after what he did? He took advantage of her and…..Disgusting nausea gnawed at her guts when she remembered. How could he touch her like that? How could he…..?
She couldn’t think of it. She wanted to gouge out the sensation of him inside her. She wanted to die rather than feel it, but she couldn’t erase it. It happened. They did it in the air. They did it as dragons.
Just then, another dragon descended out of the clouds. A horrible black fiend landed on the grass several yards away. The moment it touched down, it shifted into that black guy—Finn, the men called him.
He chuckled low and sauntered across the grass. He slapped Victor on the shoulder still bubbling with mirth. “You the man, Victor.”
He walked away laughing at the joke of it all. Fuck, these backwoods assholes made her so steaming mad she could rip somebody in half right now!
“You stinking, cocksucking bastards!” she snarled. “You did this to me. You fucking raped me. You took advantage of me when I couldn’t protect myself.” She couldn’t vent all her pain and confusion. It would blast her apart any second now.
Victor pulled his head up. He examined her for a long moment. He shook his head and looked away. He propped his elbow on his knee and let out a broken sigh.
“I’ll kill you, you fucking asshole,” she growled. “I’ll make sure you pay for this. You can’t get away with this.”
“You did this!” he blurted out. Quicker than thought, he swung his head up and fixed his eyes on her. “You did this to me! When are you gonna wake up and smell the coffee, you stupid, vindictive bitch? You fucking restrained me. You held me down and forced yourself on me. Jesus fucking Christ, wake up!”
He shot to his feet. He stood before her vibrating with fury. He didn’t clench his fists, but his features smoldered with buried tension.
Riley blinked up at him trying to put the pieces together. She felt the first rush of taking flight. She saw him coming toward her out of the distance. “You…. you hit me. You grabbed me.”
“I was trying to help you, you heartless fucking witch!” he thundered. “When are you gonna realize that? I was trying to save your worthless fucking ass the way I always have. I was trying to stop this from happening.” He waved his arm to one side. “I knew you couldn’t control when you shift. I knew you could shift ten thousand feet off the ground and fall to your death. God!” He spun away. “Why do I bother?”
He stomped off into the trees and left her crouching there in my despair. She gaped at the space where he used to be. Could he be right? Did she do this? Did she force herself on him?
All that quivering, gut-wrenching power rushing through her insides—all that heady, delirious commotion of wind and sun and skin—she couldn’t have done it. She couldn’t have instigated this with him.
He was a dragon, but she didn’t see herself as one. She flew up there, but somehow she convinced herself she did that as a woman, not some winged reptile.
Piece by piece, she unraveled the scene. One impression at a time, it all came back—the blistering passion, the erotic swirling caresses. Holy fucking Christ, he turned her on! She wasn’t thinking, but she definitely did it. He was right. He tried to get away and she held him down. She knew he enjoyed it. That didn’t change the fact that she pushed it on him, did it?
Now she hated herself all over again. How could she do this? How could she treat him with such vile contempt after everything he did to help her? Even this time, he tried to save her from herself.
He thought she would shift in mid-air and fall, and he was right. Who was there to save her? Not Finn. Victor was. He was always there. He always saved her.
She wanted to puke, but not from horror and revulsion that he violated her. She wanted to die when she realized she did this to him. She could never forgive herself for that.
Across the clearing, Isaac and Lincoln regarded her with impenetrable expressions. Did they hate her for violating their friend? Did they laugh it off the way Finn did?
She couldn’t stand them looking at her like that. She swiveled away and sat down on the ground facing away from them. She pulled her knees against her chest in wretched despair. She couldn’t be this. She couldn’t do this. She needed to be far, far away from all this.
The men didn’t move it out along the trail. They just hung around doing nothing. They muttered to each other, but she didn’t try anymore to figure out what they were up to. She didn’t want any of this.
Christ, what had she become? She had sex with a dragon. She let a dragon have sex with her. She initiated it. That sensation ruptured her defenses in ways she never could have anticipated. She never experienced that rush of excitement and passion in her life.
Not that her sexual experiences ever made any headlines. She paid too much attention to her career. The few times she let herself get naked with a guy, it ended too soon and didn’t light her up the way it appeared in the movies. After a while, she got bored with it and stopped trying to hook up with anybody.
This! This destroyed everything she never knew about sex. The overwhelming onslaught of emotion and sensitivity exhilarated her every nerve. It attenuated her senses so she trembled at the slightest noise. Would it always be like this? Would she ever go back to the way she was before?
She swallowed down her horror. In a few days or weeks or whatever, she would get out of here and get back to Barksdale. When she did that, Victor would disappear into the swamps and vanish out of her life.
She shuddered when she remembered all the reports about sexual misconduct by military personnel. She could thank her lucky stars he didn’t have anything to do with the outside world. Otherwise, he could destroy her whole life. Who was she kidding? She probably already destroyed his without even trying.
An hour passed and the sky changed color. Pink and purple spread over the western horizon and the eastern rim turned deep blue. Maybe that’s why the men didn’t travel. They were waiting for morning to make their next move.
She sat there for a little while longer, but she couldn’t sit here all night. She climbed to her feet and stretched her legs. When she did, she heard a fire crackle out of sight. She inched toward the sound and saw Finn, Isaac, Bryce, and Lincoln lounging around the blaze. Victor wasn’t there.
She compressed her lips and took a firm hold of herself. She couldn’t just run off without at least owning up to what she did. If she ditched him in misery, the least she could do was apologize first.
Where was he? Forgotten senses attracted her toward a stream meandering between the trees. She didn’t know why she followed it. She couldn’t understand everything happening to her. In a way, she didn’t want to.
She spotted him leaning against a tree well away from his friends. He rested both elbows on his knees. He snapped twigs between his fingers and tossed them away. She cringed at the thought of facing him, but her mama always told her saying sorry means you didn’t mean it. She said saying sorry is how you prove you didn’t mean to hurt the person.
How quaint and trivial those far-off days seemed now. What Riley wouldn’t give to go back to a time when she never knew about stuff like this.
She took a deep breath and emerged into the open. She crossed to where he sat, but he didn’t look up, not even when she sat down next to him.
She fixed her gaze on the dirt. “I’m really sorry. I don’t know if you can ever forgive me, but I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you or take advantage of you. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“I know you didn’t mean to,” he replied. “You weren’t thinking. No one ever is in dragon form. You go into an altered state where you don’t think straight.”
/> She looked around. “Really? Is it always like that?”
He stared straight in front of him. “Yep. When you grow up with it like we do, you get used to it. You can think somewhat when you get into battle and stuff like that, but it never really goes away. I guess that’s why I responded the way I did. I wasn’t thinking, either. I let it happen because I wanted it.”
Her eyes bugged out. “You did?”
“I never would have let it happen if I’d been in human form.”
She hung my head. Those words stung, but she deserved them. He may have wanted it as a dragon, but he sure as fuck didn’t want it as a man. Why should he? He was a stranger from another world. Why should he want that?
Why should she want it? She didn’t know him from a hole in the ground. He represented everything she hated and reviled.
“Forget it,” he snapped. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll be moving out soon. Just forget it.”
“Okay. If you say so.”
He swung upright. “Come on. Let’s go get something to eat.”
Riley copied him. “Where are we going next?”
“We’re going down the Atchafalaya to meet up with my pop. He’ll want to hold you until you finish turning. He won’t want you around our people the way you are.”
He stormed off and left her in a quandary. She apologized the way she knew she should and he let it go. She should let it go, too, but his comments didn’t quiet her misgivings. What did he mean that his father would want to hold her? Would they lock her up so she didn’t force herself on another hapless man?
Good Christ, she had to pull herself together in a big hurry. She said she wanted to escape. Now he walked away from her without a backward glance. She wouldn’t get a better chance.
She glanced over her shoulder toward the darkening bayou. She could slip off in there and disappear. None of them would be able to find her once she got several hundred feet away. She knew how to walk in the wet patches to erase her footprints. She could hide in the trees so she never came down to the ground. She could survive for months out here without anybody finding her.