Page 7 of Davoren (Dragon Master Daddies #1)

The absurdity of it—me, Kara Lyris, cosmically bound to a dragon—should have made me laugh.

Instead, I felt tears tracking down my cheeks.

Not from fear, exactly, though terror certainly played its part.

More from the sheer overwhelm of having my understanding of the world shattered and rebuilt in the space of minutes.

"I am going to be sick," I informed him, my voice barely a whisper.

"That is a common response," he rumbled, and was that amusement coloring his inhuman voice? "The first viewing often overwhelms human senses."

I pressed my palms against my eyes, trying to block out the impossible sight of him.

But the image had burned itself into my memory—every scale, every horn, every impossible inch of him.

When I lowered my hands, he was still there.

Still real. Still mine, according to the mark that wouldn't stop singing in my shoulder.

"What happens now?" I asked the dragon who held my fate in claws the size of sword blades.

His great head tilted slightly, considering. When he spoke again, I felt the words as much as heard them.

"Now, little one, we fly."

Fly?

"Stand." The command in his dragon voice allowed no disobedience, no hesitation, no thought beyond immediate compliance.

My legs moved without consulting me, muscles obeying an imperative that bypassed my brain entirely.

One moment I was crumpled against the wall, the next I stood on feet that screamed their protest. Blood had dried between my toes, gluing them to the cave floor, and fresh wounds opened as I shifted weight.

The pain should have dropped me again, but the command held me upright like invisible strings.

"I didn't—I can't—" My voice broke as I tried to process what had just happened. My body had betrayed me, responded to him like a trained dog to its master's whistle.

"The mark allows it." No apology in that rumbling voice, just acknowledgment of fact. "Your feet require tending, and the fortress has supplies." His great head lowered toward the cave floor, neck creating a scaled ramp that led to the spot where his wings joined his body. "You will ride."

The logistics alone made my head spin. He wanted me to climb up that neck, position myself on his back like the heroines in children's stories who rode dragons to defeat evil sorcerers.

Except those stories never mentioned the sheer physical impossibility of it.

Never described how every movement sent scales sliding against each other with sounds like armor plate grinding.

Never warned that dragon-heat could dry your throat to sand in seconds.

"Now climb," he rumbled, "or I will lift you in my jaws like a hatchling."

The threat should have terrified me more, but the mark interpreted it differently. Not danger but protection. Not predator but guardian. The distinction made my head ache almost as much as my feet.

I approached his lowered head with all the enthusiasm of a condemned woman approaching the gallows.

This close, I could see how his scales overlapped like the world's most perfect armor, each one catching light and throwing it back transformed.

They looked sharp enough to flay skin, but when I tentatively touched the side of his neck, they were smooth as polished stone.

The contact sent lightning through every nerve.

I jerked back with a gasp, palm tingling where it had made contact. Not pain— definitely not pain. The sensation was closer to touching a live wire, if electricity could be made of liquid pleasure and molten need. My knees went weak for entirely different reasons than terror.

"That is the bond." His voice held neither mockery nor pity, just understanding. "It will grow stronger with proximity. Mount, little one. Let me carry you to safety."

Safety. Right. Because climbing onto a dragon the size of a house while my body betrayed me with unwanted arousal was definitely safe.

I reached out again, this time prepared for the jolt.

It still stole my breath, sent heat pooling low in my belly, made me bite my lip to keep from making sounds I'd regret.

But I gripped the ridge where two scales met and hauled myself up.

My feet screamed protest at taking my weight, but the sensation of scales sliding against my palms drowned out everything else.

Each movement was torture of the sweetest kind.

His scales might be smooth, but they had texture—tiny ridges that caught at my torn dress, pressed against skin in ways that made me gasp.

The dress, already ruined from glass and blood and rough stone, gave up entirely as I climbed.

Silk tore away in strips, leaving more and more skin in direct contact with dragon scale.

By the time I reached the junction where his neck met his body, I was trembling with more than exertion.

Every breath brought his scent—smoke and spice and something wild that made my mouth water.

Every shift of muscle beneath those scales sent new waves of sensation through contact points I couldn't escape.

My thighs gripped his neck for balance, and the pressure combined with the bond's influence pushed me toward a edge I didn't want to acknowledge.

"Higher," he commanded, and I whimpered at how the word resonated through his body into mine. "Where the largest spine provides an anchor."

I dragged myself up until I found it—a horn-like projection that rose from his spine like a handle designed for desperate hands. Gripping it put me in a position that pressed my core against his scales, and the contact sent sparks through every nerve ending I possessed.

"Hold tightly," he warned, wings beginning to unfurl. "And know that I feel your pleasure as you feel mine. There is no shame in the bond's demands."

Shame was the farthest thing from my mind. Survival, sanity, the ability to think beyond the heat building between my thighs—those were my concerns. But before I could form a coherent response, his wings swept down in a movement that lifted us from the cave floor.

The sudden motion pressed me harder against him, and I bit back a moan that would have echoed off the cave walls.

This was insane. I was sitting on a dragon, gripping his spine, fighting arousal while my feet bled and my former life burned behind me.

The fairy tales had left out so many crucial details.

"Ready?" he asked, though we both knew the question was rhetorical.

I tightened my grip on his spine until my knuckles went white, trying to find a position that didn't send quite so much sensation through our contact. Impossible. Every breath, every tiny shift, every beat of my racing heart translated into friction that the bond amplified beyond bearing.

"No," I answered honestly.

I felt more than heard his chuckle—a rumble that started deep in his chest and traveled up through his body into mine. That vibration, combined with everything else, nearly undid me completely.

"Good," he said, and I realized with dawning horror that he'd been waiting for honesty, not agreement. "Hold on, little bride. Let me show you what it means to fly."

His wings spread to their full span, scraping both walls of the cave that suddenly seemed far too small for what was about to happen. Muscles bunched beneath me, power coiling like a spring about to release.

The last rational thought I had before we launched skyward was that the stories had definitely, absolutely, criminally left out the important parts.

The world dropped away beneath us with a violence that drove the air from my lungs and pressed me hard against scales that had already become my torment.

Davoren's wings swept down in a thunderclap of displaced air, launching us from the cave mouth into the burning afternoon sky, and every muscle in his back shifted beneath me in a rolling wave that made me cry out despite myself.

My thighs clenched around him involuntarily, seeking stability, but the action only increased the pressure against my core.

Through the tattered remains of my dress, every scale ridge pressed into sensitive flesh already swollen with unwanted need.

The bond amplified each point of contact until I couldn't tell where the physical sensation ended and the magical compulsion began.

Wind tore at my hair, whipping the elaborate braids into wild tangles.

My hands cramped around the spine-ridge I clutched, knuckles white with the effort of holding on.

But even terror couldn't override what his movement did to me.

Each wing beat created a rhythm—down-thrust that pressed me forward, glide that eased the pressure, down-thrust again.

The pattern worked against me like a lover's careful attention, building sensation I desperately didn't want to acknowledge.

"Breathe, little one." His voice came not through the air but through the bond itself, resonating in places that had nothing to do with hearing. "You're safe. I won't let you fall."

Safe.

I wanted to laugh at the word, but all that emerged was another helpless sound as a particularly strong wing beat ground his scales against my clit through the silk.

My body interpreted his powerful movements as something far more intimate than mere flight, reading dominance and control in every shift of muscle beneath me.

The Fire Wastes spread below us like a jeweled carpet of destruction.

Rivers of frozen lava wound between obsidian dunes that caught the late afternoon sun and threw it back in rainbow fractures.

From this height, I could see the patterns my tutor had described—the mathematical precision of destruction, the beauty in catastrophe.

My caravan's wreckage was already invisible, swallowed by the vastness of black glass and scorched stone.

I should have been mesmerized by the view.

Should have been terrified by the height, by how small everything looked from dragonback, by the reality that only his will kept me from plummeting to certain death.

Instead, all I could focus on was the heat building between my thighs, the way each wing beat pushed me closer to an edge I didn't want to acknowledge.

"Look." The command came with a subtle shift of his body that made me gasp. "See what you would have traveled through. Three days by caravan through the valley passages. Twenty minutes by wing."

Another wing beat, another roll of muscle, another wave of sensation that made me gasp.

The ridge of scale pressing between my thighs had found a spot that sent lightning straight to my core.

I tried to shift away, to find a position that didn't threaten to undo me completely, but the motion only made it worse.

Made it better. Made it impossible to think beyond the building pressure.

"You're fighting it," Davoren's voice resonated through our contact, not heard but felt. Each word vibrated through his body into mine, adding another layer to the sweet torture. "The bond requires surrender, little one. It demands it. Let go."

"I can't—" The words tore from my throat, lost immediately to the wind. But he heard them, or felt them, or simply knew them through the connection that blazed between us.

His next wing beat was deliberate, I realized.

The way his muscles rolled, the slight adjustment of his spine beneath me—he was controlling the pressure, the rhythm, the exact placement of that maddening ridge against my most sensitive flesh.

My hips moved involuntarily, seeking more friction even as my mind screamed at the insanity of it all.

"Your pleasure is mine," his voice rumbled through me. "Your release, when it comes, will sing through both our souls. Why deny the bond?"

Why indeed? Pride? Stubbornness? The desperate need to maintain some shred of control when everything else had been stripped away?

All of those and none of them. But my body had made its own decision, hips rolling with his rhythm now instead of fighting it.

The wetness between my thighs soaked into his scales, easing the friction into something slick and perfect and absolutely maddening.

I found myself grinding against him with increasing desperation, that ridge of scale hitting exactly where I needed it with each movement.

Shame tried to surface—I was riding a dragon, literally riding him, while the wreckage of my old life still smoldered below—but the sensation drowned everything else.

The bond sang its approval, flooding me with his pleasure at my response, creating a feedback loop that spiraled higher with each passing second.

I was close, so close, balanced on an edge that felt like flying and falling all at once.

"Good girl," rumbled through every inch of our contact. "Take what you need. Show me how you burn."

Those words, that approval in his inhuman voice, shattered the last of my resistance. I ground down hard, finding the perfect angle, the perfect pressure, and let the sensations crash over me like a wave of liquid fire.

The orgasm hit with the force of a lightning strike.

My back arched, pressing me harder against him as pleasure exploded through every nerve ending.

I cried out, the sound torn away by wind but the emotion carried through our bond.

His satisfaction echoed mine, amplified it, sent aftershocks rolling through me until I couldn't tell if I was coming once or continuously.

My thighs trembled with the effort of gripping him.

My fingers had gone numb around his spine.

Every breath brought another wave of sensation as his scales shifted against oversensitized flesh.

I collapsed forward, cheek pressed to the impossible heat of him, feeling his pleasure at my release thrumming through the connection between us.

"This is only the beginning," his words promised dark delights I couldn't begin to imagine.

Through the haze of aftermath, I became aware that we were descending.

The landscape had changed, volcanic glass giving way to the lower slopes of a mountain that rose like a crown from the surrounding devastation.

And there, perched at its peak like a fusion of nightmare and dream, rose the Black-Glass Keep.