Page 35 of The Dragon Queen Complete Series Collection

Chapter 35

I knew I’d done the right thing by doing the wrong thing. As I clustered around the table with the boys, I felt part of something: as we mixed treacle and coffee grounds together; as we poured it into each glove; as Ged cautioned us from pouring too much in, or it would come oozing out, warning Soren of the prank; as the offending items were handed back to me to return to their original resting place. This had welded us together more surely than training exercises would, creating a brotherhood of mischief. But when we were done, after Ged made us clean up any mess we’d created so as to not inconvenience the kitchen staff, the elation had worn off and exhaustion hit us all. My little dragon had already been asleep for most of that time, lulled by the warmth of the kitchen and the warmth and camaraderie she picked up from me.

“The prince will be performing his annual address to the new cadets tomorrow,” Lance told us. “All of the riders will be in full dress uniform and Soren will pull his gloves on just before.” A wicked grin spread across his face. “Everyone will see our prank.”

“Then you best be in bed, lest you miss the wake up call to attend,” Ged said, reaching for me when I went to head for the door. “No more pranks tonight. I need my beauty sleep as much as any man.”

The lads all nodded and promised they wouldn’t, scurrying downstairs to their dorm as I was led back to my room.

“How did you know?” I asked him as we climbed the stairs, Glimmer curled around my neck.

“Cloudy told me. He always keeps an eye on the young uns, reports in on any pranks. The other dragons ignore it, remembering our own mischief when we were cadets.” His hand settled on the small of my back and I felt a flare of heat that went beyond what his body transmitted. “But Cloudy is aware I need to know if any of the pranks are getting out of hand, and he alerts me.”

“So why did you come down to the kitchen?” I asked. “Treacle in the gloves seems to be a traditional prank.”

That hand slid around, gripping my waist and turning me towards him so I was forced to stare up into his grey eyes.

“My dragon has been uncommonly focussed on you since we landed on your estate.” He shook his head slightly. “Maybe before. It’s hard not to see the gods’ hands in this, the queen refusing to make you queen-in-waiting, the way we found you.” Ged stepped closer, looming over me now. “I only got a sense of you before we met, like a scent on the wind or a trail of fingertips over my skin.”

“If you smelled me before, you’d have gone running,” I quipped, my delivery ruined by the quaver in my voice.

“No, I wouldn’t’ve.” His smile faded and something terribly serious, terribly intent rose in his eyes. “Tanner’s son, remember? I know what it’s like to work like a fucking dog in amongst the stink. Of having people shy away from you because of it. I also know…”

His hand moved slowly, hanging in the air before running up the back of my neck and rubbing across my scalp.

“That your stepmother never got what she wanted. She needed to bring you down, shove you in the stinking mud, right where she was. But wash you off?” His head tilted to one side and then he came closer. “You were just what you always were. A queen.”

“Not a queen.” I stammered out the words, my tongue flicking out to wet my bone-dry lips. “Haven’t you heard?”

“If I was Draven, I’d have claimed you the first night I met you, bringing you back to the king and queen and declaring you my wife before the gods, and damn them if they said no to it, but…” He was so close now that our bodies touched and somehow I found myself leaning into him. “I can’t bring myself to regret the prince’s stupidity. I’ll make you a queen, Pip. The queen of my heart.”

He was offering me so much, I could hear that in the ragged sound of his voice, feel it in the tension of his body, but I didn’t know what to do about that. I reached for the correct responses from my etiquette training, but that was no help and neither were any of my other experiences. I was untouched in more ways than one.

His hand felt so hot, so immediate, and it created an answering burn in me. One that made my breath come in hard and fast, my eyes unable to look away from his. Glimmer was humming again, just a low buzz of a sound, but it filled my head, driving out all other thoughts than this.

Him. His full mouth. The thick bristle of his beard. The hard angles of his face. The sparsely freckled brown of his skin, so much like mine. And those eyes, waiting, waiting, with endless patience. And knowledge too. He knew what would happen if I pressed my mouth to his, if I opened my lips and let him?—

“I find I want to kiss you, Pip, more than I ever have any woman. I’ve watched you every moment I could, without copping a smack up the back of my head from Soren. I feel like I’ve memorised the shape of your mouth, dreamed of your taste?—”

“Yes.”

Just one word and my fate was sealed.

“Yes?” That boyish grin was back, but there was something harder, hotter there.

“I’ve never been kissed before,” I said, feeling like I needed to deliver my credentials first before we did anything, but he pressed his forehead to mine as both his hands went to cup my jaw.

“Yeah? Then give that honour to me, Pip and I promise I won’t make you regret it.”

I just nodded, not able to find any words, but that was all he needed. He tugged me close, sheltering me in the broad expanse of his body as his mouth pressed to mine.

Warmth, prickling beard and pressure, that was my first impression, but then came so much more. The sucking in of his breath through his nose, the slow movements as he teased my lips open. The feeling of surrendering to him that swept up and through me, setting me alight with the way his hard chest pressed against my suddenly tender nipples through my shirt. Then his hand slid lower, pressing my hips against his, something thick and hard rubbing against a place that started to ache.

Now I wasn’t being kissed, I was kissing, feverishly moving my mouth, chasing his when he pulled back slightly, only for him to slam it back down again. The gloves dropped from my grasp as my hands went around him, glorying in the feel of that broad muscular back, those wide shoulders under my hand. I wanted, needed, in ways I’d never really felt before: that itchy damp feeling I’d experienced when Soren was massaging me had doubled, tripled, creating an ache I couldn’t satisfy.

But Ged seemed to understand what was happening all too well. Making sure not to disturb Glimmer, he’d backed me up against the stairwell wall, hooking one of my legs around his hip and surging into the space he’d provided, making me see stars. He moved in low, slow movements, rocking against something that bloomed with every press.

“Gods, you drive me mad. You’ll set me into rut.”

“But not on the damn stairs, Rider Ged.”

We jerked apart like naughty teenagers at the sound of the intruding voice.

Gods above, the general stood there, already frowning before we moved, his expression only growing more severe when he saw who Ged was with.

“And not with a noblewoman. We had a conversation about this, Rider. She is not a doxy to be fucked like it has no consequence.”

“With all due respect, General, I’d get down on one knee and promise her the damn world if she’d marry me on the spot,” Ged said, and my eyes widened. “Cloudy and me, we’re pretty far gone on Lady Pippa.”

The general’s gaze softened somewhat at that.

“I was trying to make that clear. I just wanted to kiss her so fucking badly and she said yes and?—”

“I understand.” But then the general turned to me. “Cadet Wentworth, you’ll have an appointment with the apothecary and some of the serving women in the morning. I ask that you don’t take any… courtship activities too far tonight, because the information they have to share with you is very pertinent to the offer Rider Ged makes, and the offers you will no doubt receive from other riders.”

“Of course, sir,” I said, eyes downcast.

I was the picture of the penitent cadet, but that’s not how I felt. My body was raging, having been introduced to a pleasure it hadn’t experienced before; one that it wasn’t ready to relinquish.

“I trust you can get the cadet back to her own bed, alone?” the general said.

“Of course, sir,” was Ged’s only reply.

The man sniffed and then walked past us, going up several flights of steps before we dared move.

“Gods, lass…” Ged groaned, pulling me in a rough embrace and just holding me against him. “That went further than I meant it to, and in the damn hallway…” He pulled back and smiled down at me. “I’ll get you back to the suite and then I’ll… need to take care of things before I sleep.”

My eyes followed his down to where a sizeable tent had formed in his loose-fitting sleep pants. My hand moved of its own accord to touch it, but he gripped my wrist.

“Don’t do that. I won’t be able to stop if you do and we promised the general. He’ll have me running laps until I spew if I’m caught debauching a lady.”

“But you’re going to touch it.” I stared into his eyes then, hearing the far-off roars of dragons when I did. “That’s what you’re going to ‘take care of’. You’ll go into the… bathrooms?” He nodded at that. “And touch your cock.”

“And where did a fine lady like you learn such dirty words?”

His voice was a low growl, like he’d take to task the person who had.

“I was there when the men oversaw the mating of our mares, so I heard plenty.” I looked down at his pants again. “So what will you do?” My mind raced with the possibilities. “You’ll use your hand, pretend it’s a woman’s…”

“Cunt? Pussy? Quim? Plenty of words are used for it, but none describe the pleasure. A woman is all soft and slick, where my hand is hard and callused. It’ll do as a substitute, because that’s all I have to ease the ache in my balls.”

“So what do I do to ease my ache?”

I had his attention again, those grey eyes searching mine.

“You don’t know? Of course, you bloody don’t. Why inform a lady about her own damn body? Then you’d be giving her the tools to take pleasure from her marriage, not just endure being mated.” Ged’s eyes roamed the halls and then he quickly bent to pick up the gloves before dragging me down the hall and into the women’s bathroom, pressing me against the wall. “I’ll just set the queen down on her throne for this.”

He plucked Glimmer from my shoulder and placed her on a nearby chair, the gloves beside her. The little dragon sniffed at them then twitched her snout in reaction to the coffee before ignoring them to curl up and close her eyes. When Ged turned and stalked back to me, he moved much more slowly, so I was forced to track his every movement.

“I can show you how to take your pleasure, Pippin. Someone should, so it may as well be me. But no further, I promise you that, lass. Not tonight.”

I nodded in agreement. His hand slapped down on the tiles above my head, reminding me of Hallin and Maggie, making me think I knew how this would go. He would push his fingers into me, like Hallin had his cock, mimicking the same movement, so imagine my surprise when he raised my own hand to my lips and pressed my first two fingers into my mouth.

“Suck. Get them nice and wet. Good lass.” And then when he was satisfied, he pushed them down the front of my pants, past my underwear to… there.

I jolted, going stiff as a board as I felt that pleasure, much sharper and more immediate now.

“Whoever you choose, if he doesn’t know where your pearl is, he’s not the one. He might be a good man, a suitable husband, but if he can’t find this, you’ll be eternally unsatisfied. Forced to feel him rutting away on top of you, taking his pleasure, but not yours. Because this is where it all is.”

He was right and he wasn’t. I went up on tiptoes at the feeling, as it hit me so much harder now. A terrible tension, but a seductive one, wound me in its coils, making me throb with each frantic pass of our fingers. I could feel it, a little ball of a thing, shifting under his fingertips, sending great waves of pleasure out through me, even as the ache intensified. Because it eased nothing. Something much deeper cried out to be filled, just as the mare had been, to be thrust up as far as it would go, pulsing, pulsing until I?—

“Ged!”

My eyes flicked open as I gasped his name and he watched me with complete tenderness as I felt like a wave rushed over me, swallowing me up and sucking me down. Something flexed, then twitched, spasming over and over, making each rising note of pleasure intensify. My free hand clawed at his arm, wanting us to stop and unable to, until finally all of the tension leached out of me and I slumped against the wall.

Ged jerked himself away, shoving his pants down and revealing his manhood for just a moment until his hand wrapped around it. He jerked it harder and faster than I would’ve thought possible, panting through it until finally he erupted, too. He aimed his cock for the drain, shooting pulse after pulse of his seed into the hole until he was spent.

Hands grabbed mine, lips brushed mine, and he covered me with his body, more sensual than sexual now.

“I don’t know if I’m the man for you, lass, but gods damn me if I won’t try. I feel like I’ve been dreaming of you my whole fucking life. Just know if you want me, I’ll come running, for whatever you need.”

And with that, a gentle kiss was pressed to my forehead and Glimmer was collected up before I was escorted back to the room.

“Put the gloves on the table,” Ged whispered when we entered the room. “He will find them more easily there.”

I just nodded. I felt like I floated all the way into the suite, vaguely aware of setting the gloves on the table, before returning to my room. Ged stood in my doorway and smiled when I flopped down onto the bed, Glimmer curling up and into my side as soon as we laid down.

“Sleep well, lass, because we get to start this chaos all over again tomorrow.”

Just before I slept, I realised Ged had said ‘he’ will find the gloves, not Soren. I frowned slightly at that, but the overwhelming nature of all that had gone on today didn’t allow for me to think it through. I fell asleep moments later.