Dragon Fall Read online

  He made an objecting sort of rumble when I pushed past him into the bathroom. I took off my clothes, noting some grubby dirt and soot marks from the fire that morning and wishing again that I had a fresh outfit to put on. By the time I was clad in nothing but a towel, Kostya entered the bathroom naked, complete with erection and frown.

  “Silly me,” I said, noting both. “I assumed that the act of physical pleasure would make you stop scowling.”

  “Scowling? I’m not scowling,” he said, putting his hands on his hips and deepening his frown. “I never scowl. I am a wyvern—my feelings are hidden from all. That is the way of dragons.”

  “Seriously?” I turned him so he could see the mirror and pointed at his face. “That’s a scowl. Or if you like, a really annoyed frown. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.”

  His frown shifted to a glare directed at me. “I am not frowning.”

  “Yes, you are. See how your eyebrows are pulled together? That’s a scowl, pumpkin.”

  “I am not a pumpkin, and my eyebrows look normal.”

  “Well, they’re not. That is to say, I’ve seen them locked into normal position, and what you have now isn’t that.”

  He snorted. “I look as I always do, and since I know you will ask, no, I am unable to change my human form. If you find me unsightly, I will take reasonable steps to improve my appearance, but there is a limit to what I can do.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh at both the fact that he seriously didn’t realize he was frowning and at the notion that he was unsightly. “Kostya, you are anything but unsightly.”

  He glanced at the mirror. “I admit that I do not think of my human form much. It is what it is, although I did have a tooth replaced when the silver wyvern knocked it out.” He pulled back his upper lip to show me a gold tooth along the side of his mouth. “It was a vanity, but one that makes eating easier, so I indulged myself.”

  “It’s very nice, and completely understandable. All of you is nice, more than nice, really quite yummy, to be honest. That widow’s peak is seriously sexy, and I love the cleft in your chin, although I have to admit I want to bite it more than I probably should. You have nice shoulders when they aren’t broken, and I love your hands, but I’ve always had a thing for men with big hands. And your legs are good, and of course, your butt is really outstanding, and honestly, I can’t ever say that I’ve seen a man with a six-pack before, but you definitely have one. All in all, you could quite easily grace the cover of GQ and not look out of place, so about that, at least, you can relax.”

  He stopped scowling, and instead looked pleased. “I am glad my form gives pleasure to you. Now that you have cataloged me, take off the towel so I can do the same.”

  I clutched the towel a little tighter. “I’m not even remotely comfortable with standing here stark naked and letting you examine me. For one, I could stand to drop a few pounds. And for another, I got horribly out of shape when I was at the crackpot center, and I lost a lot of muscle tone.”

  “You just invited me to shower with you,” Kostya pointed out with maddening reason. “And yet now you do not wish for me to see you unclothed?”

  I raised my chin. “I never said I made perfect sense all the time. Besides, there’s a difference between soaping each other up in a steamy shower and standing around staring at someone while they stand awkwardly wishing they’d used the treadmill in the nuthouse gym.”

  “You stared at me. I simply wish to have my turn.” He tried to tug the towel off me.

  I slapped at his hands. “You are gorgeous. I mean, seriously, Kostya, just look at yourself. You’re all muscles, and lovely bulges, and don’t at all look like you need to join a Zumba class, whereas I do.”

  He frowned again. “What is—”

  “Aerobics. Stop trying to take my towel, dammit!” I backed up toward the shower, still holding tight to it.

  “You have no reason to be concerned that I won’t like your body,” he said loftily, which just made me want to pinch him. “Even if you were deformed in some manner, which I do not believe is the case, I would pay it no mind.”

  I stopped backing up to stare at him for a few seconds. “I… I don’t… holy cranberries, Kostya, I don’t know how to take that. It’s flattering and yet at the same time condescending as hell. Honestly, I feel like your arrogance is showing, and I really don’t like that.”

  He gave one of his martyred sighs, then marched forward and, before I could stop him, whipped the towel off me, pulling me up against his body when I started to protest. “No, no more stalling. You wish for me to make love to you, and I will do so happily, no matter what image you have of yourself. I find you… enticing. Your breasts are enjoyable. Not so large as to be ungainly and yet sufficient to tantalize. Your body pleases me. You please me. Tell me that you accept me as I am.”

  I stopped rubbing myself against him, feeling that I had to know the worst before I could commit myself any further. “I please you? Like… like a book pleases you? Or a nice meal? Or a gift from a loved one?”

  “No one has ever given me a gift,” he said, sidestepping the issue. His eyes were a combination of onyx with little molten flecks of silver.

  I pinched his arm. “Kostya, I need to know what you’re thinking. No, I need to know what you’re feeling. Are we just giving in to perfectly ordinary lust, or is there something more going on here?”

  “We are not, in any sense of the word, ordinary,” he murmured, his hands suddenly busy with my behind, while he slowly pulled me against his chest, his mouth hot on my shoulder as he kissed a path toward my neck.

  “You are seriously the most annoying man I’ve ever met. Also the sexiest, but the annoying is threatening to win out,” I warned him.

  He gave a little exaggerated sigh and gently bit my shoulder. “Do you think I would even consider intimacy with any woman who was not extraordinary?”

  I smiled into his neck, arching my back when his hands slid around my hips and back up to my breasts. “Extraordinary. That’s a start.”

  “You are also stubborn, do not appreciate the importance of my position, and are likely to drive me to the brink of my sanity, but I can’t resist you. I must have you, Aoife.”

  I didn’t know if he meant just in the sense of immediate sex or as a permanent fixture in his life. I curled my fingers into his chest hair, scraping him lightly with my fingernails. “Is this your way of saying that you think we have something serious going on?”

  “I am always serious,” he said, kissing a hot path across my collarbone. “You are the only woman I would consider doing this with, if that is what you are asking. I do not desire a woman in my life, but if I must have one, then you are the one I choose.”

  My toes curled into the plush bath mat at his words. I kissed his jaw and whispered, “I want to ease the darkness inside of you, Kostya. I want to show you what it is to be cherished. I want to bring you peace.”

  He froze for a moment, slowly lifting his head to look deep into my eyes. “You do not think I am at peace?”

  “Are you?” I countered.

  Silence wrapped around us for the count of twenty. “I wasn’t,” he finally said, his hands sliding up to take possession of my breasts just as his mouth closed upon mine.

  Just the feel of my skin against his had sent my brain into overdrive. I danced my tongue around his, feeling the pull of his fire and wanting to bathe in it.

  I pulled back, afraid I’d set the plane on fire, my breath ragged.

  “Tell me,” he growled. His head dipped as he lathed fire across my breasts.

  “Oh, Lord, it’s a good thing I’m not a spy, because at this moment, I’d tell you anything,” I answered, moaning and doing a little dance of delight at the feel of his fire sinking into my flesh.

  “Say that you want me.” His tongue was as hot as his fire as it tormented my right breast.

  “Holy Odin and all the little cherubs, I thought I’d made that pretty clear by now. Yes, yes, I want you. Now do t
he left one.”

  “Tell me you accept what I am.” He obliged by turning his attention to my left breast. I stood on tiptoes and thought seriously that I might just expire at the sensation of his mouth on my aching breast.

  “A dragon, you mean?” I wiggled my hips against him, dragging my nails gently up his sides and back. “So long as you don’t expect me to have sex with you when you’re in your other form, then yes, I accept that you’re really a dragon in a super-hot man package. And speaking of package…”

  He pried my hands off his genitals, saying as he did so, “If you touch me now, I will not be able to last, and I would like to look at your thighs and hips and legs and all the rest of you, and then taste you, and finally, claim you.” His eyes were like deep pools of water with light glinting off the surface. Heat emanated from him—his dragon fire—leaving me wanting to dance in the inferno that only Kostya could create.

  “C’mon,” I said, backing up toward the shower, pulling him with me. “Let’s take a fast shower, and then we can address the issue of my hips and thighs and all of your really marvelous parts that I desperately want to touch and taste and possibly rub myself on.”

  Just as I reached the shower door, he asked, “Why do you wish to take a shower now? I want to make love to you.”

  “Well,” I said, waggling my eyebrows just a little, “who’s to say we can’t accomplish both things at the same time?” I entered the shower and turned on the tap, adjusting the water until it was warm but not too hot. I expected Kostya to heat things up.

  He stood outside the shower, frowning as I grabbed the complimentary body shampoo and spread it across my breasts, lathering them up with a thoroughness I’d never before thought necessary. “It is more comfortable on the bed.”

  “Yeah, but way more slick in here.” I soaped up one leg and cocked an eyebrow at him. “Why don’t you come and soap up my other leg, hmm? Then I’ll return the favor.”

  He hesitated, an amusing array of expressions crossing his face. First lust danced past, followed by regret, desire, and uncertainty.

  I stopped doing my version of an enticing “come shower with me” dance and faced him dead-on. “All right, what’s going on? Even with the flabby lack of muscles and few extra pounds, I shouldn’t disgust you to the point where you don’t want to take a shower with me, especially since you keep looking at me like I’m a bit of roast beef and you’re a starving dragon.”

  He made a face and said slowly, “Water is not… Black dragons do not like it. It is not our element.”

  “Your what?”

  “Each sept has an element with which they are sympathetic. The green dragons like water—we do not.”

  I turned off the water and reached for a towel. “Are you saying you don’t ever bathe?”

  A look of distaste flitted across his face. “Of course we bathe—we are not animals! It is a necessary evil, one that must be borne so that we are clean. But we do not enjoy the experience, and we do not linger in water.”

  “That’s a shame, because there’s nothing I like more than a good long soak in a bath, but I guess that means I just get all the hot water to myself. All right, you win, the bed it is, although I want to point out that it’s more romantic to romp in the shower than the plain ole everyday bed.”

  “No,” he said, wrapping an arm around my waist as I was about to leave. “Not the bed. I have changed my mind. We will remain in this room.”

  “It’s… uh… not terribly suited to such activities.”

  “Nonetheless, it has one benefit to the other room.” His head dipped, and he took the tip of one of my breasts in his mouth, his hands sliding down my back to dig into my behind. I clutched his shoulders and saw stars for a moment, relishing the flash of heat as it swept through my body.

  “What… sweet sweating sailors, I’m never going to get tired of that… what benefit?”

  He lifted his head, his eyes like molten onyx, if there was such a thing, a little smile making the corners of his mouth curl. “It has lots of marble, and marble does not burn. You, however, will.”

  “Oooh,” I said, wiggling my hips against him in blatant invitation. I was a bit shocked at my behavior, but the sane part of my mind got shouted down by the rest of me, which said that I was exactly where I was supposed to be—in Kostya’s arms. I bit his lower lip, sucking on it to take the sting away before saying, “We should probably be responsible and discuss things like disease and birth control before we get carried away.”

  “I am a dragon,” he murmured, kissing a hot trail down my neck to my chest, and thankfully attending to my second (and very needy) breast. “We do not have human diseases.”

  “Oh good. I’m not on birth control right now, because there was just no need for it at the crazy castle, and frankly, if I had to stop right now in order to find you a condom, I think I’d die of sexual frustration. I take it that it’s not possible for dragons and humans to have a baby?”

  “It is possible,” he murmured against my breastbone as he dropped to his knees. He proceeded to kiss along my belly, stopping to nibble on my hips. “But the conception rate is much lower than it is for dragons.”

  I thought for a moment. “It’s been three days since… yeah, I should be okay. But if we’re going to go on like this, one or both of us is going to have to take precautions. Not that I don’t like kids and all, and I’d like to have them someday, but I’d rather not be surprised. Oh my God, you aren’t going to do what I think you’re going to do, are you?” I looked down at his head. He had slid his hands up my thighs, shifting my feet wider. A little whiff of smoke drifted out of his nose as he glanced up at me, the corners of his lips curling even more.

  “I am going to blow fire on your woman’s part.”

  “Yes, please,” I said, my fingers clutching his shoulders hard without any consideration for his previous injury. I yelped when he breathed fire on me, but it wasn’t from pain. The heat sank into me, making my own personal inferno go into overdrive. But when he put his mouth on me, his fingers doing a fiery little dance of their own, I knew I was a goner. “Herregud, Kostya! I’m not going to be able to last if you do that again.”

  He pulled me down to the floor, his mouth literally trailing fire across my flesh. “I like how you taste, Aoife. You are spicy and sweet, and you inflame my senses.” He buried his nose in my neck and breathed deeply. “Your scent intoxicates me. It drives me insane with the need to possess you and to claim you for my own. I must mate with you now.”

  “I hope so, because I really am going to die of frustration if you don’t.” I tried pulling him down onto me, but he hesitated, his face twisted for a moment with pain.

  “I must… I cannot—” With a low growl, he flipped me over onto my belly, one arm beneath me pulling me upward. “You are mine now, Aoife. Tell me you understand.”

  “I understand. Honestly, I don’t give a damn what position we do it in, just so we do it right now!” I yelled, clutching the bath mat that was beneath me.

  He moved, and suddenly I was invaded, but oh, what a welcome invasion it was. He was as hard and hot as I imagined he would be, moving within me with a rhythm that, impossibly, made the fire inside me burn even hotter. And then his dragon fire was there, inside me, around me, coating us in a cocoon of want and need and sexual ecstasy manifested in fiery form. I caught at it with my mind, twisting it around first me, then Kostya, my back arching when an orgasm claimed me. The fire slid out of my control for a moment, but even as Kostya growled his own climax, I spun the fire back into him.

  Pain blossomed to life for a moment on my hip, hot and searing, but just as that sensation registered in my brain, it was gone, leaving me with a warm, tingling spot. I fell forward, gasping for air that apparently was consumed by Kostya’s fire, my intimate muscles still clutching Kostya in a grip that surprised even me. I shook with little tremors of pleasure and wondered, with the tiny part of my brain that was still working after the orgasm to end all orgasms, just how I wa
s going to survive sex with Kostya on a regular basis.

  He rolled off me, his broad chest heaving as he attempted to get air into his lungs, his eyes closed, one hand flung over his head. His skin was damp and shiny with the effort, and after observing him for a moment—which was really an excuse for me to try to get my brain working again—I leaned over and bit his arm.

  The look he gave me was filled with disbelief.

  “Now you have to take a shower,” I said with a grin.

  He made a face, then to my utter delight, answered my smile with a rueful one of his own. “It was worth such a sacrifice.”

  “Oh, definitely.” I rolled over onto my side, intending on saying more, but a little pinch of pain had me sitting up and examining my hip. “What did you do to me? I’ve got some sort of a burn.”

  I touched the shape that was high on my left hip. It looked like a faded henna tattoo of a vaguely phoenix-like dark tan beast with wings curving overhead and a barbed tail.

  Kostya looked away, but I could see that his scowl was back in place. “I don’t know what you are speaking of.”

  “Like hell you don’t.” I slid my fingers across it. It was smooth, just like a tattoo. “I felt you do it. My hip was all hurty for a couple of seconds; then it faded away.”

  His jaw worked for a moment; then he shook his head. “The mark is unimportant. Do not speak of it to others.”

  “Unimportant? You burn a mark onto my hip and act like I did something wrong—no, sir! I told you that I’m not a doormat, and I’m not going to let you get away with that. Nor am I going to let you spoil what was a wonderful—if incredibly intense—intimate experience. Okay, so you suck at pillow talk, but that doesn’t mean you have to snap my head off when I point out that making love to you left me physically scarred.”

  “It is not a scar. It is a mark of the black dragons.” He got to his feet and stepped into the shower, quickly and efficiently cleansing himself before taking a towel and going to the bedroom.