Page 21 of Claimed by the Savage Dragons

My heart aches, wishing he would again. I’ve missed the other half of my soul.

But, though I wait with bated breath, he says nothing else.

‘We’re almost there,’ I say to her, walking further down the corridor.

She sways a little and then follows me to the final door. I open it and am met with a warm, humid blast of air. The lights come on automatically, dim but more than enough for even the human to see by.

I hear her gasp at the sight of the thermal pool, eyes flicking to the waterfall at one end.

‘What is this place?’ she asks, the awe in her voice palpable.

‘It’s dragon-made,’ I say. ‘We enjoy heat in both of our forms. The water flows deep underground, but we have ways of pumping it up by means of perpetual motion pumps for our use relatively easily. Most of our mountains contain these pools.

She goes to the edge and peers over the side carefully.

‘Is it deep?’

‘For a dragon? No. For you? Yes. Can you swim?’

She shakes her head. ‘Never learned. Bodies of water aren’t safe. Not in the south.’

I snort. ‘They’re not safe anywhere anymore. But this one is. There’s nothing lurking. It wouldn’t get past the grates andfilters as well as the other security measures. It’s perfectly fine. You’ll need to hold onto the side or onto me though.’

‘Can you swim?’ she asks.

‘Of course.’

She looks in awe again andhepreens under her gaze. I can feel him more at the moment than I’ve been able to in the past four hundred years. I feel whole.

I shuck my clothes, amused when she turns her eyes away. ‘You may as well look at my body,’ I tell her. ‘You’re going to be intimately acquainted with it in a few minutes.’

She flinches a little and a part of me wishes I had romanced her a little over dinner. I could at least have told her she’s pretty.

Because she is. She’s beautiful.

I feel him agree.

But it’s too late for that. Plus, it would be cruel to give her something like that when all she’ll have in our mountain is impersonal fucking, if she’s fortunate.

I look away from her as I think of how the others are treated. Will my brethren all want a taste of her in one night? I’ve seen them do that with the prettier ones. They all come with a spark in their eyes that dulls within weeks, and they wander around, performing the duties given to them mindlessly, disassociating from their reality as much as possible.

Can I bear to see Mari end up that way?

What do I care? I hardly know this girl!

‘Strip,’ I snarl.

She stares at me for a moment before she complies. Her shaking hands undo the buttons on the oversized sweater. The small tank top underneath that strains against her tits is visible for just a moment before she pulls it off and drops it on a plastic lawn chair someone picked up and brought here once.

The pants come next. She’s not wearing underwear, so she’s naked before me suddenly. I lament the lack of lingerie I used tolove in the late twentieth century. But I find I don’t need to see her in it to get hard.

I’m already there. I see her eyes drop down to me, widen, and dart away again.

I grin and take a running jump into the pool with an uncharacteristic whoop.

Heat envelopes me, shocks my cold skin and I kick back up to the surface to find her at the edge, looking worriedly at the water.

I put my hand up and pull her in when she takes it, laughing at her squeal.