Page 7 of Dragon Lord
D raknart expected the wee maiden to tremble with desire in his arms.
She kneed him in the groin.
“You black-hearted bastard! I’m not here for swiving! I’m here to die for my village.”
While she backed away, Draknart breathed evenly and deeply against the abrupt explosion of pain.
The weakness of his cursed human form still caught him by surprise now and then, and it enraged him every time.
As a dragon, he was nigh indestructible.
His nightly turns as a man were a gross indignity.
Although, he hadn’t minded it so much tonight—until the abrupt contact with Einin’s pointy knee.
He breathed through his nose and calmed himself before he spoke, so as not to frighten his amber-eyed maiden. “Why the rush, sweeting?”
She wore britches once again, and Draknart admired her fine form.
If the gods were kind, mayhap they’d see to it that britches caught on among the young maidens and came into fashion.
For a moment, he envisioned a world where the lasses ran around in the same tight leggings as the men, and he smiled.
Einin eyed him with suspicion and undisguised loathing. “So you’re half man, then?”
“All the man a woman can handle and then some,” he reassured her.
Her expression only tightened. “But before, you were a dragon.”
“I am a dragon. Cursed to take human form from midnight to dawn,” he admitted his great shame. Cursed to be a halfling . ’Twas like a sickness, an insidious disease that had taken over his body. He’d spent a century searching for a cure, but to no avail.
For a moment, the lass only stared, then her voice grew unsure as she asked, “Old magic?”
He could smell her unease, and new layer of fear. He gave a brief nod, didn’t intend to go into the particulars.
Her amber eyes grew wider and more luminous. She eased back another step. “To have been cursed by an ancient power…” She appeared disappointingly disinclined to disrobe for Draknart’s pleasure. Her shoulders sloped with exhaustion. “What have you done?”
Draknart turned and strode into the cave. He could grant her a brief rest. “Come along.”
For the first time ever, he wished he owned a chair, or even a small stool. He resented his human form, so he didn’t indulge it. A couple of furs on the rock ledge where he slept were his only concession. He turned back before he reached that ledge, pleased that she followed.
The cave was shrouded in near darkness, but his human eyes retained the ability of his dragon vision. Einin’s hips swayed as she moved. She was well shaped, her body likely formed in fights with her brothers and in hard work. Slim but strong arms; lean but strong thighs.
She had the roundest breasts he’d ever seen. He ached to taste her, ached to have her on the furs next to him, under him. He pulled off the dragon-scale reinforced leather tunic he’d donned to dazzle her and tossed it aside, leaving only the linen shirt he wore underneath.
He rarely wore clothes while in his hated human form. ’Twasn’t as if he regularly entertained visitors. He’d dressed just for her.
She stopped a good distance from him, smartly out of reach, her jaw clenched, her loathing gaze stabbing at his heart.
The sleeping ledge would be definitely too soon.
Draknart sat on a natural rock formation that resembled a throne he’d once admired in a church in a faraway city whilst eating the congregation.
He’d done some of his best thinking here, in the middle of the night.
He contemplated her with more attention than he’d ever given a human before.
Their first meeting had not gone as he’d expected, and this second one was quickly following tradition.
She stood still and straight in the darkness of the cave, as if waiting for the executioner’s ax.
When a single tear came into her eye, she quickly blinked it away.
Her chest rose as she drew a deep breath.
Then she said the most unlikely words, mumbled them to herself, but Draknart’s sharp dragon hearing caught them. “I wish I were a runaway goat.”
He blinked at her. “You are a strange one.”
Her shoulders sagged as she nodded. “And twisted too.” Misery laced her tone, her fingers picking at her britches. “And unnatural. Out of the natural order.”
“No need to be too hard on yourself, sweeting. No human’s worth a spit. ’Tis not your fault. ‘Tis the way the gods made your kind.”
Instead of thanking him for consoling her, she glared at him. When she glared, her fiery eyes sparkled even more. The dragon fire inside Draknart responded.
They watched each other in silence, Draknart with anticipation, Einin with her fiery resentment, likely seeing nothing more than a shadow among shadows.
’Twas that spark inside her that drew Draknart the most. How she’d fought him just a fortnight before!
But now he wanted to tangle with her another way.
His body stirred. He leaned forward in his throne, ready to lift her astride his lap if she came to him. “Submit to me, Einin of Downwood.”
Her chin—managing to be delicate and stubborn at the same time—rose a notch. “I’m in your power. You have the strength to take me. But know this, Draknart, be you dragon or man, I will never submit to you willingly.”
Heat pooled in his loins at the hot flames that burned in her eyes. “You are mine, Einin, by your own pledge. I will claim your sweet body and savor it. You will plead with me not to stop.”
She rolled her eyes hard, thinking he couldn’t see her. And because he knew she couldn’t see him, he allowed himself a grin.
He let his gaze travel over her, thoroughly investigating every inch. “Take off your boots.”
“I will not disrobe for your lecherous eyes.” Her hands fluttered at her sides, then fisted as if she were wishing for a weapon, regretting that she’d come unarmed.
Draknart caught a small tremble in those hands. She was angry, but she was scared too. He meant to have her in another mood and soon. “I merely wish to see that you are not hiding any more knives.”
When she neither moved nor responded, he added, “You did have that hidden kitchen knife the last time. A longer blade, and you would have been the end of me, sweeting.”
Dragons were tough bastards as a lot, but a direct hit to the heart could be lethal if the blade was angled to slide between the scales. And the way he was now… Curse the goddess, Draknart’s human form had any number of deplorable weaknesses.
Einin lifted her chin. “I’ve given you my word. I will not fight. My life is forfeit.”
“Even so.”
With a furious growl, the likes of which he had never before heard from a maiden, she shoved off her boots and kicked them away. Her voice was pure bravado as she asked, “Satisfied?”
Not nearly so.
“Now shed your britches, sweeting. Best to make sure you have no knives stuck in the waist.”
Her full, ripe lips thinned as she pressed them together. He did not know whether her fingers trembled with fear or anger—probably a combination—but she did untie her britches, then let them drop. She stepped out of the worn material that pooled at her ankles, another step away from Draknart.
Her coarsely woven shirt hung low enough to cover her to her knees, but as she moved, he did catch a glimpse of lean, naked thighs. His body hardened. He shifted in his seat. He felt alive in a way he hadn’t in a long time.
“Now come to me, sweeting.”
“I have pledged to return to you,” she said, standing immobile. “I have come to the dragon’s lair. I’ve come this far, but I will go no farther.” She was a brave lass, but courage had limits, and she’d reached hers.
Blood rushed faster and faster in Draknart’s veins as he watched her.
The familiar urge to take rose inside him, along with a strange impulse to make her unafraid.
Instead of grabbing her in haste as his body demanded, he slid off the rock throne and strode to her slowly, lifted her into his arms gently, though she flailed and fought, slippery as a spring eel.
“On my dragon’s honor, I will not violate you, lass.”
At last, she stilled. Did she believe him? He happened to have meant the words, but… Had no one told her that dragons had no honor? Did humans leave their pups completely uneducated? Draknart shook his head as he carried her to his sleeping furs.
He took care not to hold her too tightly. He was large, even in his despised human form, and she a slight maiden, stiff as battle armor in his arms, and as cold. He looked forward to softening her and filling her body with his heat. She was a woman to be savored.
He smiled at her. “I shall gift you with a slow seduction.”
Einin held on to her fury so she wouldn’t give in to her fear. Draknart. Even in his human form, he was a great beast.
“I’ve come for a swift end, you perverted spawn of Satan!” She scrambled away from him on the stone ledge until her back hit the cave wall. “Is a quick death too much to ask?”
He seemed intent on debauching her in the night before devouring her in the morning. And what if he did not eat her the very next morn? The blood ran out of her head at the thought. What if he kept her to torture her for who knew how long? To be at his mercy like this… Never!
The moon dipped to an angle where its silver light now shone straight into the cave, and she could see better. Draknart watched her, reclining in the middle of the “bed,” blocking her only path of escape.
The soft furs of his bedding stood in stark contrast to the man, with everything hard about him. Einin fought to keep her gaze above his chest. He was larger than any of the men in her village, made entirely of muscle, the thick cords bunching and relaxing under his shirt as he shifted closer.
“No!” She snapped out the word, warding him off with her hands.
She didn’t expect him to obey, but he stopped and stayed where he was. Then he said, with exaggerated patience, “Einin, sweeting. I am a man, for the moment. You are a woman…”
“I have come to die. Not for… that !”