Page 13 of Dragon Lord

D raknart grumbled with displeasure. “Aye. I will not taste you again.” He couldn’t resist adding, “I give you my word as a dragon.”

Einin gave a brief nod, then curled up next to the fire and closed her eyes.

He watched her for a while—soft cheeks, graceful neck, full lips, and lovely hips, those long legs, encased in nothing but britches. The longer he watched her, the hotter the fire felt. Since dragons, in general, weren’t known for their self-restraint, he stood and strode into the forest.

He wasn’t tired; he’d woken up from a long slumber mere days ago.

He wasn’t hungry for meat; the deer herd he’d eaten had filled him up.

He stalked through the forest for a while, hoping he might come across a bear he could wrestle for entertainment, but the bears stayed out of his way.

The predators in the area had scented the dragon, and none would come near.

At least, that meant Einin had nothing to fear, sleeping by the fire.

Draknart strode toward the faerie circle. He could not give up just yet. The gate was the key.

The sight of the toppled stones filled him with fury anew. If he ever got his hands on the men who’d done the destruction… For the first time, he thought smoke might come out of his ears instead of his nostrils.

If anger could rebuild the gate, it would have been standing already. But it couldn’t, so Draknart was going to have to do it the hard way.

He stomped to the nearest boulder and heaved until he righted it.

Even if the circle never worked again… Mayhap he was sentimental, but he’d seen those stones erected.

The men and women had been coarser and at the same time more refined than the ones in the villages now.

They had respected the old gods and followed the old ways.

There had been something sacred in their creating of the stone circle, so Draknart had watched them from the shadows and hadn’t eaten a single one.

Even the old gods had come to the circle, their curiosity aroused. The clearing had been a holy glen of theirs to begin with. They were so pleased with the humans’ gift, they made the stone circle into a gate.

Draknart lifted and heaved boulders that had taken ropes and oxen to raise back in the day. He put his shoulder into the work, uncaring of cuts and scrapes. Only when the circle stood once again, the sky lightening with the first rays of the sun, did he limp back to Einin.

By the time she sleepily blinked her eyes open, he was once again a dragon.

“Och!” Her hand flew to her sword. But a heartbeat or two later, she let go of the weapon.

She sat and yawned, then stretched. The effect of her body in those damned formfitting britches was the same on Draknart as it had been before. The man inside him stirred.

The day could not pass fast enough.

Her gaze turned calculating. “Do we return home?”

“We stay another day.” They had to wait until twilight to see if the restored faerie circle would work.

She turned toward the lake, thinking deeply about something, her shirt stretched over breasts perfectly outlined in the muted light of dawn. She raked tiny white pearls of teeth over her full, ruby bottom lip.

“I’ll go look around from above,” Draknart said and launched to the air to fly a few circles.

He spotted a bear—the one that had been too cowardly to challenge him in the night—a large pack of wolves, as well as some smaller game, but no men, not nearby at least. The nearest village was on the other side of the lake.

Draknart did go for a visit. He dipped into a low flyover when he reached the ragtag collection of huts—a lot of screaming and running about—but he didn’t set as much as a single thatched roof on fire. He was a picture of self-control, he was. Einin couldn’t find a fault in him that morning.

He returned to her, landing in the middle of their small beach. While he’d been gone, she’d washed her face, rebraided her hair, and eaten the second half of her rabbit.

“What will we do today?” she asked, with only a hint of wariness.

“I could take you flying.” He wanted to hear her laugh again. He would just have to find a way to ignore the feel of her slim thighs clamped around his neck.

“Yes!” Enthusiasm replaced the wariness in amber her eyes. “Please. I mean, thank you. I would like that.”

Draknart held still while she climbed his scaled body, her small hands all over him. The sooner they were in the air, the better. “Ready?”

“Aye!”

He flew a lazy loop around the lake, smiling when she squealed in delight. “How ’bout a swim? We have plenty of time.”

Einin shouted toward his ear, but the wind whooshed by too loudly for him to hear her as he dove for the water, then under the lapping waves.

Her arms and legs tightened around his neck.

The muscles of her thighs squeezed him. Pleasure tingled through his body.

But then she gripped tighter and tighter, communicating a different mood from his.

He bumped back up to the surface and floated. “What is it?”

She gasped for air. Coughed. “I can’t swim.”

“All living things can swim. Some might not like the water, but they can all paddle along enough to save themselves in a flood. Cows can swim.”

She coughed some more and refused to loosen her grip.

He held her safe with one wing as he shifted to his back and stretched out on the water, plopping her back on his belly. At least they could see eye to eye this way.

She lay flat on top of him, all wrung out, holding on for dear life. “I never learned. The creek near the village is too shallow, and even the closest lake is too far away.”

“Humans cannot swim?”

“Not unless taught.”

“Huh. A species with many shortcomings.”

She elbowed him in the ribs.

He decided not to tell her that he had high hopes that someday, the villages would disappear altogether. A heavy flood might help—the gods willing. And, if they all didn’t drown, maybe a new plague.

He floated around the middle of the lake. After a while, Einin’s death grip eased, and she relaxed against him.

“It’s peaceful here,” she told him. “I’ve never been this far from the village before.”

Why it should please him to have pleased her, Draknart couldn’t fathom.

Yet a rare contentment came over him. Should a plague come, he was glad Einin would be with Belinus.

The god would keep her safe. And should Belinus have sent her back to her village by then, Draknart decided he’d swoop in.

A plague could take all mankind, for all he cared, but not his Einin.

The sun warmed his belly pleasantly, but not as pleasantly as her body.

When he could smell her light, sweet sweat, he splashed some cool water on her with a wing.

And when she laughed, he did it again, playing like a dragon pup, a long-forgotten feeling.

He only stopped when her stomach grumbled again.

“Was the rabbit not enough, sweeting?” He would have thought, as small as she was, the meal would satisfy her.

“’Twas, and I thank you for the meal,” she said, but watched the water with a wistful expression as if searching for the fish he’d promised.

“You eat every day?” he asked. He was reasonably familiar with humans and their ways, but not with every little detail.

A fond look came over her face, as if reliving pleasant memories. “During the good times, even twice a day.”

Dragons ate but once a sennight, could easily go a fortnight, and would survive a full month without a feeding. While they slept the long sleep, they could go without food for years. Draknart didn’t forecast humans a bright future. As a species, they were most ill-suited for survival.

“Come and gone , ” he muttered under his breath. “Mark my word.”

“Mark what?”

“Never you mind.”

No sense in vexing her just when they were beginning to get along so nicely.

He floated to shore with her and let her off on the sand before turning back into the water. “I’ll see about some fish.”

He swam out and plunged into the deep, zoomed by half a dozen pike, picked a lively one that gave him some sport, and carried it to Einin in his maw. She already had wood gathered for a fire. He dropped the fish, then used a talon to gut it.

“That’s a five-footer,” she said, wide-eyed, heaving to lift the pike by its tail. “And weighs three stones at least.”

Draknart smiled modestly, if such a thing was possible for a dragon. So maybe he was showing off for her a wee bit. He wanted her to see him as something other than an evil beast. He wanted her to remember him well, after she went to the god.

He lit the fire, and she handled the roasting, a piece so small, it was hardly worth bothering with. While she ate that, he swallowed the rest of the raw fish.

“I thought you said you didn’t eat every day,” she remarked.

He shrugged. “No sense in letting good food go to waste.”

She’d loosened her braid to dry from their earlier swim, and her hair spread around her shoulders, cascading down her back.

Her still-damp shirt stuck to her skin. The man inside Draknart craved and demanded.

He couldn’t trust himself with Einin much longer.

He hoped Belinus would come to the circle at twilight.

Einin looked across the fire. “Before the curse, could you turn into a man?”

“Aye, at will.” A form close enough to human so humans wouldn’t know the difference. That was how he’d swived the usual virgin sacrifices. Then he’d turned back to a dragon and eaten them.

Einin’s gaze flickered over him. “Why not stay in the shape of a man and live in one of the villages?”

“If you can be a dragon, always be a dragon.” He was a little offended at the suggestion.

“How old are you?”

He tried to think back through all the changes of the human world he’d witnessed: the great plague, the wars, the succession of kings. “I’ve been in the hills since before the first villages.”

She stared at him. “But that’s a thousand years, at least.”

Sounded like a lot when she said it like that. “And you?”

“Twenty.”