Betrothed to the Dragon Read online

  He narrowed his eyes. “That was different, and you know it. What you’re offering is something else.”

  I folded my arms. “I value my freedom.”

  He stood up and crossed the room, putting himself in my personal space. “Marriage is not slavery just as sealing is not slavery.”

  He was too close, smelled too good. I backed away from him, keeping my arms crossed. “Anything you’re forced into without free consent is slavery. Don’t you want more from a marriage than just power-sex? Don't you want companionship? Don't you want to get to know the other person? Don’t you want to have a choice?”

  There, was that blank, emotionless face of his, as if he were facing some terrible monster. “What if you had the choice now, Sophie?”

  To make a lie believable, you have to lean into it. You have to make yourself believe it, and above all, with men, you have to physically distract them, or at least that’s what Grandma always said. I unfolded my arms, reached out to him, and began lightly tracing a vein up his forearm, around the curve of a thick bicep. “I want to save my grandmother. But I don’t want to marry you, Hunter. If sex is what you need, well, that I can offer.”

  His hand was on the small of my back. He pulled me against him, and I could feel him hard against my belly.

  “I accept.” His mouth crushed mine.

  Fire roared up within me to meet him, wanting him, needing him to touch me. Desire blazed, but there was more to it than mere lust; something was waking what had slumbered inside me for my entire life. I clung to him and his strong arms, trying not to drown, trying to keep my head in the inferno of sensations that buzzed around me.

  Hunter’s voice was low and thick against my neck. “I keep my promises, Sophie. I was very clear about my intentions toward you.”

  A memory of him vowing to taste everything flashed. Hunter chuckled at the goosebumps that covered my skin. His hand slid up my shirt. My voice trembled as I asked, “This sealing isn’t going to be permanent, right?”

  “Not if you don’t want it to be,” he said, undoing my bra. I wanted to purr at his touch. I hated how much his voice affected me; I responded to him as if I were already a servant of his power. He kissed me, and I melted into him as if I knew him though he was someone I had met today. Or was it yesterday? The only thing I was sure of was how much I wanted him. “But it will require repetition.”

  Primal desire for him intoxicated me. One hand slid to my front, cupping my breast, his thumb on my nipple. A spark pinged downward to my core, and I felt myself slicken.

  I broke free of his kiss. My fingers climbed the outrageously muscular landscape of his torso. “You don’t need to enchant me to get me to have sex with you.” My voice was breathy and unrecognizable.

  “I don’t use magic to coax consent.” His fingers tilted my chin upward. The fire was in his eyes, honest and primal. “Never.”

  I looked away, unable to bear the weight of his gaze.

  I fingered the pink towel around his waist. His hand closed around my wrist, holding my hand against him. “Wait,” he said. “Not yet.”

  I had to take advantage of this momentary lull before I truly lost my senses. I attempted to tease him, to regain some measure of control. “Oh, right,” I said, hanging a smile on my face. “I haven’t asked you for your consent.”

  He removed the towel and dropped it to the floor, revealing his very large and obvious consent. Involuntarily, I clenched at the thought of that, of him, inside me.

  “Oh,” I said.

  In the space of a breath, he yanked me to him, crushing me against his chest hard. I opened to him and his mouth was on mine, his hands peeling off my yoga pants. He splayed his hand on my mound, sliding a thick finger along the cleft. I shuddered at the slide that barely grazed my clit and fought the urge to grind myself against his hand. “You’re not going anywhere this time,” he rumbled. “Not when you’re so wet. Ahh, Sophie, I’m so hard and you’re so ready, I could fuck you right now.”

  His words brought on a surge of needful desire. “Then do it,” I said. “Fuck me now, Hunter.”

  His fingers teased my clit, and I could hear the smile in his voice when he said, “No.”

  I reached for his cock and wrapped both hands around him. Every one of Hunter’s muscles tightened, as if he were holding himself back with tremendous effort. “What?”

  His fingers toyed with the crotch of my panties. “Oh, I have every intention of sheathing my cock in you.”

  He shoved two fingers inside me. “Just not yet.”

  I gasped at the intimate invasion. His thumb hard against my clit.

  And like that, with one hand inside me, he lifted me off my feet in a display of inhuman strength. I tried to steady myself with my arms around his neck, but every movement only drove sparks of hot pleasure through my system until my body convulsed.

  Oh my gods, had I just orgasmed from a few touches of his fingers? Which were actually still inside me…. And I was still clenching against him in little aftershocks.

  “Stop using your magic,” I gasped. “It’s not fair.”

  “I’m not using magic,” he said with a satisfyingly smug voice, grabbing my breast with his free hand. He pinched my nipple hard. “You’re just fucking hot for me.”

  Pleasure ricocheted from my breast to my core, and I let out an animalistic moan. His fingers flexed, his thumb rubbed, and I fucking came again.

  “You just going to stand there and finger fuck me all night? Does this get you off?”

  “Feeling you orgasm on me?” A happy male smile spread across his face. The look in his eyes was toe-curling. “Yeah, actually it does.”

  His hand was on his cock. I reached down to touch him, but he merely shifted me upward. “No, Sophie, not yet.”

  “Is the big bad dragon so afraid of a little hand job?”

  “Taunt me. Tease me. But you’re not denying me this.”

  With his hand still inside me, he lifted me and set me on his mouth. The unexpected display of his strength, mixed with the insane feeling of his impossibly long tongue flickering against my clit and the shadow of his beard rough against my inner thighs, turned my limbs to jelly. “Hunter!” My voice came out in a breathy plea.

  He kept going, his fingers gripping my ass tight, holding me immobile against his mouth. I pulled at his thick dark hair, and he only laughed and kept going, pressing me harder against his mouth.

  I said his name again—and again, moaning it out as his hot mouth melted all my common sense.

  Only after I’d come again did Hunter relent, but only to a degree. He lowered me to his lap.

  I straddled his big body, his cock sliding against my nether lips, grazing my clit.

  To say he was thick would have been an understatement.

  I savored the sensation of his naked cock pressed against my most intimate place, a sensation I had never felt before. With my human partners, I always had to do the safe-sex thing with condoms—to avoid questions more than anything else. But shen didn’t get human STDS, nor could we pass them on. And pregnancy only came if a shen wished it to be.

  The feel of him bare to me was one of the hottest things I had ever felt.

  And by the look in his eyes, Hunter fucking knew it.

  “You’ve only ever been with humans, haven’t you?”

  “It was always safer that way.”

  “Safer, yes. Humans have their charms. But you are shen. And I am dragon.”

  A fluttery panic set within me. Something desperate clawed inside me. He was going to be disappointed—better do it now. “I don’t know what you expect. Remember, Hunter, for all intents and purposes, I have as much magic as an average human.”

  “So you said. Those exact words, actually. We shall see.”

  “You’re going be frustrated—” I gasped at the sudden sensation of heat caressing my skin with a fervency that mirrored the renewed desire within me.

  “I don’t use magic to coax consent,” he said. “I use it in
the way it was meant to be used.”

  Sparks flew and skittered around my skin. I felt his magic teasing me, touching a place within me I hadn’t even known was there. I squirmed against him, feeling the impossible pressure build.

  “Please, Hunter,” I cried, wanting something I hadn’t even known was possible.

  He slid a hand underneath my ass, keeping my entrance on the blunt head of his cock as he stood. I tried to take in more of him, but he only held me still, effortlessly overpowering me, and smiled.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Making sure I don’t burn down your cabin.”

  He carried me to the hallway, where he kicked open the bathroom door.

  Then he turned and set me down in the shower and turned it on.

  I screeched in fury as cold water hit my skin.

  And then his mouth was on mine, his body on mine, his fire on mine, the contrast of cold and wet stinging my skin, maddening my hunger. I needed him, needed his magic and his cock inside me, more than anything I’d ever needed in my life.

  “Sophie.” His voice was hard and guttural with an accent of power. “Look at me.”

  I wrapped my legs around his waist and gazed into his eyes.

  And then with a hard, brutal thrust, Hunter shoved his cock, his heat, his fire inside me.

  Power shot through him and hurtled through me, and I was consumed with pleasure. I clung to him as he stretched me wide, driving into me faster and harder than humanly possibly.

  And I welcomed it.

  I convulsed around him again and again. He’d shift, and my core would clench down on him hard, and then he’d thrust again and start over.

  Impaled against the wall, steam hissed around us as I could feel his power, his magic thrusting within me, embracing me, licking my virgin magic with a thousand flickers of desire.

  He was fierce, he was hot, and I was magnificently full. And then he began to quicken his pace.

  I could feel it suddenly, a pressure crowding me, surrounding me, tightening in a space that I had been stuck in all my life. All I wanted was to be free. Power invaded me, unstoppable, immense, delicious.

  I reveled in his growing frenzy, in his low, rumbling, inhuman groans. My legs were spread wide and wrapped around him, my heels at the small of his back. I rocked against him. “Please, Hunter, please.” I forgot all my pride, begging him because if he didn’t start moving faster, I knew I’d go up in flames.

  His fire spread to encompass my flesh, the hiss of water on fire, the steam surrounding us. He was in me, around me, a part of me physically and magically in a way that no one had ever been.

  And to my surprise, it felt shockingly right.

  “You are mine,” he said, his mouth against my ear.

  I recognized the words — sealing words. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say, so I tried a line from a dragon tale I once read. “My fire is yours,” I said, the words dropping from my mouth with the heavy weight of magic.

  He gave a deep, victorious smile. One that I knew I would remember for the rest of my life, no matter what came after.

  His big body drove me against the wall, his hips holding me in place.

  And he fucked me, incredibly, amazingly slowly, withdrawing before driving back into me so hard, fire burning so hot, my clit vibrating from the hammer of his hips against mine.

  The fierce burgeoning detonated within me. I screamed as a startled frenziness rushed through me, through him in a magical surge of flame. Our bliss burned, beautiful, unstoppable, and undeniably ours.

  Ours.

  8

  “Holy gods, Hunter,” I said, taking a colorful rainbow towel from him.

  “There are no gods,” he said, quoting a famous one of my ancestors, showing off his knowledge of my family. “Just shen.” His undisguised dragon gaze told me he wasn’t through with me yet.

  Something inside me quivered in hot anticipation.

  As I wrapped the towel around me, I heard something cracking.

  Maybe I felt it more than heard it, as true magic didn’t have a sound.

  And then I saw them: Grandma’s wards were briefly visible as they dissolved into tiny nothingness.

  Suddenly, I heard her voice in my head.

  Little fox, I am proud of you.

  And then she was gone.

  No. No. No.

  My cheeks were wet. I wiped them with the back of my hand, took a deep breath, and realized I was crying.

  Why was I crying? I didn’t even know for sure if that was really her, or just another random echo I was imagining.

  I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hands and looked at Hunter, who had the strangest look on his face.

  “Your magic.” He began to laugh, an odd note in his voice. “You’re a Justice.”

  “A what?” I was listening, I was speaking, but all I could think about was that Grandma might be gone.

  I heard something breaking, a sound like rock crumbling. I looked around but couldn’t see what it was.

  “I didn’t even know Earth had Justices.”

  I felt hollow. I wiped my cheeks again and took a breath. “What the hell is a Justice?” The rumbling continued. Hunter turned, looking for the source of the ominous sound as he spoke. “In the histories of the world from which we came, there are stories of Justices. Always rare, always feared.”

  Hunter stopped, and my gaze followed his to the north wall of the cabin. Before our eyes, cracks in the white plaster crawled upwards towards the ceiling.

  “That doesn’t answer my question.” I said, unable to take my eyes off the wall.

  “Where they walk, people will sicken, the milk will spoil, and good works will crumble to dust,” he said, as if quoting something. “Dragons hunted Justices to extinction a long time ago.”

  The cracking stopped. I stared at the wall. That shouldn’t have happened. I scrambled away from him and picked my clothes off the floor. “What are you talking about?”

  “Justices erase magic. Originally, they were known as balance-restorers, those who could reset things to a state as if they had never been altered by magic. Restoring Justice, they called it.”

  I threw on my bra, and then put on my T-shirt. “Why did dragons start hunting them?”

  “Over time, dragons began to rely on magic more and more, building everything with it. Cities, spaceships, hospitals. A Justice became a weapon that the dragon kingdoms used mercilessly against each other. The histories say Justices brought an end to the Golden Age. And so as a result, they were hunted because they were a weapon thought to be too dangerous to exist.”

  I took a step back, horror sinking cold teeth into my skin.

  He realized I was backing away from him. “I didn’t hunt them, Sophie. This was all well before my time.”

  I shook my head. “No. I can’t be. I may not be able to use my own magic, but I’ve been able to use my grandmother’s spells, enchanted objects.”

  “You said yourself you don’t need magic to use those.”

  I looked at my hands. “If I am an eraser of magic, then why aren’t you dead?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Dragon fire is not magic in the way that you think it is.”

  “But I felt you. Wait, aren’t you trying to use me as a magic battery?”

  “Shen power is different. Sealing converts it into a form I can use.”

  And there I realized what he was truly saying.

  I didn’t have the power he thought he needed.

  I was totally useless to him.

  I turned away and put my clothes on as fast as I could so that he couldn’t see my face, swallowing the odd bitterness in my mouth. I had to focus on the problem in front of me.

  How could my grandmother have missed what I was?

  She wouldn’t have.

  I reached behind my shoulder, to where her sigil was. I couldn’t feel that tingle any longer.

  “Your grandmother’s sigil. It locked in your power and kept it from disrupting her
spells.”

  He picked something off the ground and handed it to me.

  I stared at the black umbrella in my hand, and I knew something fundamental had changed.

  I tested a thrust forward.

  It remained a normal umbrella.

  Oh no.

  I jumped off the couch and threw open the trunk. The sword was still there.

  His voice came from directly behind me. “I didn’t know that was still around.”

  I pointed to the sword. “Pick it up and tell me if you feel any magic in there.”

  He looked at me as if I had told him to pick up a scorpion. “It’s not going to bite you.”

  “With what I heard, I wouldn’t be surprised.” He took the sword from me and studied the hilt for a moment before setting it down. “It feels like an ordinary non-magical sword to me.”

  My shoulders sank. It wasn’t a touch thing, it was something that had happened during sealing. Apparently, I had just erased the power from one of the last great magical weapons of the shen. Wonderful. I picked up the sword, which felt like what it always felt like to me: an ordinary sword.

  “I don’t know enough about how the magic of Justices work or how shen magic works,” he said. “There might still be magic there.”

  I set the sword down and moved away from him to open another ottoman; Grandma had a particular love for multi-functional storage furniture. I picked up a leather harness with several sheathed knives and put it on over my shirt. “If I’m a ‘justice’ as you say, then I guess I can’t be your magical battery.”

  I saw the moment he realized what I was trying to say. I spoke faster to get it over with and occupied myself with strapping the leather harness to my chest. “If I can’t be your magical battery, there’s no need for us to be betrothed. And no need for you to be here.”

  His hand was warm on my shoulder. “Sophie, you’re in danger. I’m not going to leave you to face it alone.”

  I knew I should move away from him, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Still, I couldn’t let myself look at him and let him see the turmoil I was struggling to hide. I forced condescension into my voice. “Don’t be foolish. If you plan on going up against the Devourer, you undoubtedly have magical items at your disposal. You can’t risk bringing me along.”