Page 36 of Prison Moon
“I still have no idea what you say but I no longer smell your fear. You’ve no reason to ever fear me, Sarra. I would never harm you.” He leaned in and kissed her, his lips brushing across her own. “You are mine. You have been since the moment I saw you.”
As many times as he’d said,you are mine, she’d never given the words much thought. Now she did. Now, she really understood exactly what he’d meant by them and the lengths he’d gone to prove it.
When she’d left the ruins and fallen off that cliff, he’d saved her.
When she ran away from the dragon and was chased by the others, he’d saved her.
When the tree-monster attacked and tossed her as if she were a twig, he’d saved her.
When the lone alien came into the cave and attacked, he’d saved her.
When the wyvern took her, the dragon had ripped out its throat and saved her.
Toren had always been there for her. In his eyes, she was his. She belonged to him. She realized now as she looked at him that even if she wanted to leave, he’d never let her go and—she was okay with that. His use of the word, mate, held a much different meaning than it had an hour ago. In his eyes, they were a pair. Mated—the human equivalent of spouses. So not only had she been abducted by aliens, dropped on a prison moon, and forced to survive, but she managed to get hitched to a shape-shifting dragon man. Only her life would be so bizarre.
Toren looked around the cavern. “I’ve not been here in centuries. It will take time to clean it of all the dirt.”
Centuries? “Just how old are you?”
Toren smiled and gave her a quick kiss then stood, his naked flesh lit in firelight. She eyed all that bare skin as he crossed to where she now noticed the basket with all their supplies. That, along with the wood for the fire, must have been what he’d carried in.
He dug inside and pulled out a pair of pants and slipped them on, much to her disappointment. When he bent down and picked something else up from the basket and stood, the knife in his hand, he turned toward the shaggy beast he’d dropped earlier, and she realized why.
He dragged the animal toward the opening and spent the next hour hacking away at it. It smelled worse now than it had whole and if it hadn’t been for the water she kept gulping and sitting with her back to him as she inhaled the smoke from the fire, she would have puked.
The sun had gone down completely by the time he came back to the fire, a hunk of meat in one hand. The flat cooking rock they’d used in the other cave had been packed into one of the baskets, along with the sticks they used to skewer meat. Another half hour and the scent of cooking goat-cow beast filled the cavern.
Toren rolled the offal from the goat-cow inside its hide and gave it a toss out the cave entrance. Something would eat it. She was just glad Toren hadn’t. Now she knew why he had no aversion to eating things raw.
He washed his hands and joined her at the fire. “Teshen hides makes thick blankets. I’ve nothing to prepare them with here though. Once we make it to Dra’lera, we’ll be able to save and use them.”
As they ate, he told her of Dra’lera, home of the Draegon. It was under the mountain and was where dragons were born. His people had lived there for centuries, hidden from even the people who had worshipped his kind and with luck, others had survived.
When the last of the cooked meat was gone, her belly was full, her fingers greasy. She was staring at her hands when Toren took her left in his own and brought it to his mouth. When he started sucking on her fingers, cleaning the grease from each one, the sensation of his tongue swirling around each digit, she grew wet in an instant. That tiny grumbling growl rumbled in his chest as he cleaned her other hand, his gaze locked on hers, and the last time he’d sucked her fingers flashed in her mind’s eye. He’d been licking her own juices off of them. Remembering that night, and all the things he’d done to her, made her womb clench tight, that throb between her legs growing by the second.
His nostrils flared, and he inhaled a breath, those odd slitted irises of his growing a bit larger as he stared at her. He looked down the length of her body. With his sense of smell, she had no doubt he knew how turned on she was.
He nipped her thumb with his teeth then stood and held his hand down for her to grab. “Come, Sarra. We can wash in the pool.”
“What pool?”
He ignored her and reached down, pulling her to her feet, then leading her across the cavern to the fissure she’d found earlier in the wall. When he let go of her hand and disappeared inside it, she froze. “Toren?”
He walked back into the cavern a moment later. “Come.” He smiled and motioned her forward. “It is a narrow path and long, so brace your hands on the walls and keep walking. I’ll be right in front of you.”
Sara glanced around the cavern again, then turned and followed him into the darkness of that small crevice. The air was humid once she stepped inside and she could see nothing. The floor was dirt and the rock walls were far enough away she wasn’t bumping into them.
There were several curves in the dark path and a dim glow shined up ahead a few moments later, the light slowly filling the tunnel-like fissure enough she could see Toren in front of her. When he stepped into a cavern larger than the one she’d been in all day, she stood gape-mouthed.
The glowing light was more of those strange butterfly-moth things she and Marcy had found in the old ruins. They covered the walls and ceiling and what looked like thousands of them fluttered over a body of water that looked more like a small lake than a pool. There was moss growing on the nearby walls and large patches grew around tall Stalagmites jutting up from the ground. The air was sultry and smelled of rotten eggs. Did that make the pool, as Toren called it, a hot spring? That trail had led them inside the mountain and she had to wonder, if the pool was heated, was there a magma flow underneath them? Was this mountain actually a volcano? It would explain why it was so warm.
Toren tugged her forward and led her to the edge of the water. “Nothing here can harm you.” He glanced over the pool once before looking back at her. “Nothing lives here other than the lightwings.” He glanced up at the glowing butterfly-moth things. Those lightwings, as he called them, were throwing off enough of a glow to cast him in shimmering shades of blue that made his eyes appear to glow. He shucked his pants and waded in and she watched his taut behind until he’d gone deep enough to cover it.
Sara could see the steam rising off the water when the dim light caught it just right. It was definitely a hot spring. Pulling the oversized shirt she wore off, she let it fall to the ground and stepped into the water, hissing in a pleased breath. It was so warm. She waded in deeper. It was like walking into an oversized hot tub.
She looked up to find Toren’s gaze tracing her curves before lingering on her breasts. The heat in his gaze as he looked at her nearly burned her alive and she knew she was about to get ridden—hard.