Page 23
Love of Dragons
Every lore of every clan, across time and space, dreamed of dragons. Did you ever wonder why?
Lizzy did.
And she now knew the answer: dragons were real.
Pure Ones, Dark Ones, Elementals and Beasts…they all existed. Once upon a time, gods existed too.
She herself had been one of them countless millennia ago. The most powerful god in the universe.
For a time, she was split apart into two, the fearsome Twins, to keep her powers divided. Contained. Then, she became something else. She cycled through all of the different types of beings, before finally becoming what she was meant to be:
Human.
She loved being human.
Still, Mated to an immortal dragon as she was, Lizzy was definitely more than human.
She possessed a Pure soul, had Awakened to her unique Gifts, and was immortal herself, according to Ben, because of their Bond. There were pros and cons to this that she hadn’t yet fully absorbed. But she was certain, instinctively, that the pros outweighed the cons, because she and Ben would never be apart again.
Today, three months after she first introduced Ben to her family, they were all here in a meadow of wildflowers, beneath the majestic mountains of the Yukon, to witness Lizzy and Ben’s official joining as man and wife.
Ten dragon Beasts and their Mates stood in the first line on each side of the dirt path that led to a flat rock platform where Goya awaited as their chosen officiant. Wolfe and Rui, Andros and Divina, Kai and Eir, Brigid and Sai, Annie and Merlin, Shai and Heba, Lancelot and Arthur, Cloud and Aella—they were all here.
Behind them stood honored guests of all Kinds: Sophia, the Pure Queen, and her Mate, Dalair. Maximus, Goya’s son, and his Mate, Ariel. Rhys Evans, an eagle Beast and a frequent visitor of the Yukon. Tristan du Lac, his Mate, Ayelet, and their daughter Isolde, who had been Ben’s sometime playmate in his childhood, now an immortal Pure One.
Ishtar, Inanna and Sorin stood next to each other on Ben’s side of the family in the front row, while Tal-Telal, Ere and Gabriel stood on the dais as his best men.
The guests on Lizzy’s side were vastly outnumbered, but some of Ben’s friends helped fill the ranks. There were Goya’s Mate and the local café owner, Maddie, and her Beast-Mated friends, Mikayla and Yasmin.
These were Serena Lin’s people, apparently. From the moment the women met, they’d been thick as thieves. Meg stood bravely by herself as Lizzy’s Maid of Honor on the rock platform, her eyes permanently rounded into saucers as she took in the supernaturally beautiful people all around her.
Howie and even Carter sat at her feet like perfect gentlemen fluff balls. Perhaps it was the fact that the King of Beasts, Goya, the great white tiger, stood only a few feet away. The kitties regarded him in awe, their big blue eyes round like Meg’s.
Yes, Goya tended to have that effect on just about anyone, especially fellow felines.
Over the last three months, Lizzy and Ben spent half of the time getting to know her best friend and parents, and the other half visiting with the residents of the Pure Ones’ Shield, the Dark Ones’ Cove, and the Beasts of the Yukon.
They decided that Meg, and certainly David and Serena, could be trusted with the secret of the Immortal Kinds. But Lizzy rather suspected that none of them really believed it until they finally arrived three days before the wedding to the Yukon valley to meet Ben’s family and friends.
A part of Lizzy, a very large part, wished she could have her parents and best friend forever the way she now had Ben. She shared her wistful thinking on it with them. Not surprisingly, they didn’t wish for immortality; they were happy being human and aging gracefully.
“Sounds like I’d have to find an immortal Mate to be immortal myself,” Serena had commented.
“But why would I ever want to do that when I have David? He’s The One for me. And even if I have a second life, I’d still find a way to be with him.”
David squeezed her hand at that, and her parents shared a look of such love and contentment, Lizzy couldn’t help but sigh with happiness for them.
Meg had a different view of things.
“Theoretically, it’s interesting to consider eternal youth and immortality,” her friend mused.
“But, I don’t know that I’d want to live that long. If I had my way, I’d simply stop aging after a certain point—bad joints, menopause, thinning hair, organs breaking down and other health issues I’d like to avoid at all cost, and all that. And if I can just pass away peacefully in bed dreaming a happy dream when I’m a hundred years old, why not? It’s nice to strive to live a full life and make the most of our time on earth. You know me, I’ll be a lazy procrastinator without a definite timeline.”
Lizzy had looked at her doubtfully at that. Meg was always a flurry of activities, timeline or no. The only indulgence she permitted herself once in a while were romance novels. Even her vacations had packed itineraries.
Lizzy now stood in a simple white dress, the same dress she wore in Bangkok where Ben and her first met (this time around, anyway). Beside her, David Winters stood proud in his full dress white naval uniform, Lizzy’s hand linked around his arm, ready to walk her down the makeshift aisle.
But first, the flower girls and page boys had to pave the way.
Nine little dragonlings decked out in colorful outfits that matched their dragon scales in Beast form toddled ahead of Lizzy and David, throwing flower petals from baskets and solemnly carrying the wedding rings on pillows, to the indulgent oohs and ahhs of the gathered crowd.
Lizzy still couldn’t believe they’d only been hatched three months ago, and already their human forms looked like they were about three or four years old! Ere was rather astounded that they’d been able to turn human at all, for when his first incarnation hatched as a dragonling, it had taken hundreds of years for him to find his human form as an adult.
Sorin muttered that Ere was simply the anomaly, a late bloomer, not the little ones.
“All aerial Beasts find their human forms a few weeks after hatching,” the Phoenix shared. “More often these days, they are born directly in their human form, given the increased mix of human in the Beasts’ genetics.”
Lizzy couldn’t help but wonder what that meant for herself and Ben. She certainly hoped she wouldn’t be laying eggs to reproduce! And she really, really , wanted babies of her own.
Ava Monroe Takamura, a geneticist in the Dark King Ramses’ employ, assured Lizzy that procreation should not be an issue, even though Pure and Dark Ones very seldom had offspring. Some quirk of the Universe to keep the Immortal population under control, Lizzy supposed.
It was still a little mind-boggling that she had been the one to create many of those unwritten rules that all living beings were governed by. After all, the Immortal Kinds that remained in the world today were all imagined and brought to life by the Pure and Dark Goddesses. Two halves of her original incarnation.
“Ready?” David asked quietly beside her.
“Absolutely,” Lizzy answered with a beaming grin.
She seemed to float through the ceremony on cloud nine, so incandescently happy and light that a stiff wind could have lifted her off her feet like a feather. But Ben kept a firm hold of her hand so she didn’t float away.
They exchanged simple vows to love and cherish each other, and then they recited the Pure Ones’ Mating vows too, for they both possessed a Pure soul.
Then, Ben took the Dream ring that a little dragon boy proffered up and slid it onto her finger. The ring immediately conformed to her size, fitting her snugly. She took the Song ring and slid it onto Ben’s.
“You may kiss the…groom,” Goya said bemusedly after Lizzy already leapt upon Ben as soon as their vows were done, and he caught her around the thighs to hold her to him as she wound all of her limbs around his body.
Everyone cheered, clapped and whistled. Gabriel, Ere and Tal lifted a few flower girls to dump entire baskets of petals on top of their heads.
But Lizzy only focused on Ben.
With their foreheads together, she murmured against his lips, “So, Mr. D’Angelo…”
“Yes, Mrs. D’Angelo?” he rumbled back.
“How long do we have to stay for the celebration feast?”
A purring chuckle vibrated through his chest.
“In a rush, are you?”
She nodded vigorously.
“Impatient to get in your pants, Dragon King.”
“Mmm,” he hummed. “What will you do when you get there?”
“Oh, all kinds of wicked, dirty things…” she whispered against his ear, biting down on his sensitive lobe.
Not surprisingly to everyone present, the newlyweds disappeared after the first hour of toasts, food and one waltz, in which Ben took his “warrior angel” form and literally swept Lizzy off her feet. They didn’t even stay for the cake cutting. But they were assured by a bemused Gabriel and Tal, and a playfully disgusted Ere, that no one would begrudge their early departure.
So, Ben whisked Lizzy off to his cabin as he waltzed her into the sky and flew them away. Once in the privacy of their own home, they tore each other’s clothes off with ruthless efficiency.
They landed on the gigantic four-poster bed in a heap of naked, tangled limbs and giddy laughter. Lizzy’s giggles subsided into wanton moans and sighs when Ben kissed his way down her body and licked between her thighs.
There, he settled for a good long while, torturing her to the point of sobbing and thrashing and pulling his hair. He brought her to climax countless times with his tongue and mouth, delving hotly into her, sucking continuously on her pearl. He added his fingers too, three long digits inside rubbing her knot, with his thumb pressing perfectly upon her clit as he licked the juices from her opening and fed them back to her in a voracious kiss.
“Now, Ben, now!” she demanded, pulling him on top of her.
He removed his fingers and rubbed the wetness from her body around his swollen length with his fist, clenching hard around the thick base of him as he pulsed on the verge of coming.
They both looked down together at his cock in his hand, slicked with both their juices, notched against the dewy lips of her pussy.
Lizzy bit her lower lip at the stark contrast they made: him so big and hard, her so tiny and tender. It didn’t look like they’d fit, but she knew of course that they were made for each other.
Sure enough, as he began to push in, her body flowered for him. Opening and stretching. Leaking honey. Throbbing in welcome.
It seemed to take forever as he buried the most intimate part of him inside the most intimate part of her. It might have been the agonizing yet tantalizing slowness with which he prolonged the invasion. Or it could have been the fact that her husband was extremely well-endowed.
But, God! She could have watched him do this forever. Merge their bodies together along with their hearts and souls. There was something so primitive yet poignant about their joining. Tears pricked behind her lids to see him take her like this.
When he was finally seated inside her to the hilt, they both groaned with abandon, their bodies already shattering in bliss, pulsing together, their scents fusing in the heated air of the cabin.
Sex and love. Joy and passion.
Now, he held her face with one hand and clutched her hip with the other. Their eyes caught and held as he began to thrust deeply, his body surging inside hers like an endless tidal wave.
“Lizzy…” he husked against her mouth, licking the seam of her lips but not plunging inside.
“Sweetheart…”
She moved with him, in perfect sync. She clutched a handful of muscular ass cheek in each hand and squeezed .
He grunted at her surprising strength and shortened his strokes, rutting into her harder and faster, pushing her over the edge again and again, until she could barely catch her breath.
Her orgasms made her body into a silken clenching vise, continuously convulsing around him and squeezing him tight. Pulling him into the undertow of her climax like an unstoppable tsunami.
Until he broke apart too on a guttural roar, his body shaking uncontrollably, his sex kicking within her as hot seed flooded her womb.
She tucked her face into his throat as he came. And in the throes of his ecstasy, she sank her Pure fangs into him, taking his hot, sweet blood, along with his cream, triggering wave after wave of orgasms within him.
She could feel every clench of his scrotum, every pulse of his cock through their link and against her skin. Around her. Within her. She could feel his every breath and heartbeat.
This was what they were made for, she knew in her very bones. Inside each other body and soul. Never to be apart again.
When their cataclysms subsided to tremors, she pulled out of his throat and pushed him onto his back, disengaging their bodies. He looked wrecked lying there, all that golden maleness against pristine white sheets and pillows.
Wrecked and blissed out. Yet his eyes glittered with insatiable hunger. Likely reflecting the same voracious hunger that blazed in her own gaze.
Like he did earlier, she kissed her way down his body, though she was less gentle, more needy. She pushed his heavy thighs apart and took one of his balls in her mouth, making his undying erection jerk to attention, leaking honey from its swollen slit.
“I love the way you smell,” she muffled into his groin, breathing him in.
“I love the way you taste.”
She pushed until he lifted his hips a little and widened his legs. She spread his cheeks apart and dove right in, licking all around his anus and spearing her tongue inside.
His voice broke on a shout as his body clenched around her, his hips bucking helplessly in tandem with her thrusts. Soon, she replaced her tongue with knowing fingers, two of them massaging his knot inside just like he did to her.
Meanwhile, she took his engorged cockhead into her mouth and sucked it like the juiciest plum until he came. And kept him coming with her fingers against his prostate, her thumb against his perineum. Relentlessly rubbing, swallowing, then sinking her fangs into him too.
His hoarse, guttural cries were music to her ears. The more Nourishment he gave her, the more Sustenance she gave back in pure, healing energy. It throbbed between them, imbuing them with lightness and life.
“Lizzy…” he croaked, his fist wrapped in her hair, tugging enough to sting.
Perhaps she was too gluttonous with the bounty of his body, she thought. But she was too much of an addict to care. She brought him to climax a couple more times before finally pulling off and out of him, and crawling back up his body. She straddled his hips and took him inside her again to the hilt.
There, she stilled and stayed, looking down into his eyes, satisfied at last.
For now.
“Happy, Mrs. D’Angelo?” he murmured, his voice like gravel from the way she wrecked him.
The take-no-prisoners way she loved him.
Tenderly, he tucked a stray strand of sweaty hair behind her ear.
She wiggled on top of him, and he bit back a groan.
“Ridiculously happy,” she sighed.
“Where do you want to go from here?” he asked, curious.
“First, the kitchen for some refueling. Then, the shower for round two…”
He squeezed her butt in chastisement even as he grinned at her, baring his teeth.
“That goes without saying,” he quipped. “But that wasn’t what I meant.”
“I know what you meant,” she replied, leaning down to kiss him deeply with plenty of tongue.
God! He tasted so good! She’d never get enough.
Finally, after what might have been five minutes or half an hour, she pulled back to answer him seriously.
“I want to be where you are,” she said.
“I like it here in this untamed land. I like this cabin too. I love your family and friends already. And, yes, I realize that some of them are even borne of our past incarnations. Goya. Sophia…”
Now that was a doozy of genealogy that took Lizzy some time to fully grasp.
“And?”
“And I want new babies with you,” she proclaimed. “I want to be a real mom this time, the way I never was in the past.”
“You were a good mother to Ninti,” he murmured.
She shook her head sadly.
“Not good enough. Not at the end.”
He rubbed her arms to soothe her.
“It’s in the past, love.”
“But I’ll never forget it,” she vowed. “I’ll always remember the mistakes my past incarnations had made, so that I will never, ever, make them again.”
“Lizzy, you never could,” he said definitively.
“You are everything I’ve always hoped for.”
“And you, my Dragon King,” she said against his mouth before pressing a long, lingering kiss there:
“You are everything I’ve ever dreamed.”