Dating A Dragon (The Mating Game Book 2) (9 page)

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Nikolai asked, glancing over the edge of the cliff.

“It’s necessary,” Cynthia said firmly, shooting her son an annoyed glance.

“If anything goes wrong…” Nikolai’s brow creased in worry.

“It won’t. You’re my backup plan.”

“No pressure there,” Nikolai muttered.

Cadence was pacing around in front of the stony hut on top of the mountain, clenching and unclenching her hands. Her eggs had been removed a week earlier, and she was still a nervous wreck. The operation had been a complete success. There was a video feed at the hatchery, with a camera pointed right at the incubation chamber, and she had access to it via her laptop. She and Orion kept checking it again and again throughout the day. She’d gone to several festival planning meetings over the last couple of days, but taken the laptop with her. She was always accompanied by guards these days when she left the Garrison lands, at Orion’s insistence; he didn’t know what Humphrey might try next.

Finally, as soon as Orion left for a mine inspection, Cynthia had made her move. She’d sent Nikolai to tell her that Cynthia wanted to see her and had urgent business to discuss. Still, Cadence had refused to leave until he’d told her that it involved her eggs – a lie that had made him unhappy, but Cynthia had insisted that he get Cadence on top of that mountain, and his mother was a hard woman to say no to.

As Nikolai shifted and flew off, Cadence walked over to Cynthia. “So, what did you want to talk about?”

“I hear that you’re running into a wall with your training.”

“I’m getting better,” Cadence said. “But I still can’t completely change form when I want to. What does this have to do with my hatchlings?”

“If you’re going to be the mother of my grandlings, you need to do better. You need to be able to fight to the death to defend your children.”

“You think I wouldn’t do that?” Cadence said indignantly.

“I think you’d be willing to die for them, but not necessarily able to defend them,” Cynthia said. “You need to get to the point where you can change quickly and on command, like the rest of us. Otherwise, you are weak, and that is a danger not just to you, but to Orion, to your children, to our entire clan.”

“Cynthia.” Cadence looked at her with exasperation. “I’ve had my relatives whack me with hard sticks. I’ve meditated, I’ve visualized, I’ve jumped off hillsides, sprained my ankles, limped back to my room covered in scrapes and bruises. There’s only so much I can do. I mean, it’s not like I’ve made no progress at all. I’ve gotten to the point where I can create a blizzard that covers a hundred square feet, and my icicle spears are pretty damn impressive, if I do say so myself.”

Cynthia arched one delicate eyebrow and looked down her nose at Cadence. “Icicle spears will work – against humans. They’ll bounce right off a dragon’s scales. They’re not going to cause harm unless you’re lucky enough to get one in the eyeball, or if its mouth is open but not blasting out flame.”

Cadence rolled her eyes. “I assume you had me flown up here for a reason. What else are you suggesting I can do?” she demanded.

“This.”

Cynthia crouched down, seized Cadence, and lifted her high. Then she hurled her off the cliff edge.

Within seconds, she shifted and dove after her.

Cadence was falling, falling, not shifting… Still in human form… She appeared to be completely limp…

Damnation.

Time for the backup plan

Nikolai was crouched on a crag below the cliff, and he shot out, his red scaly body twisting, his mighty wings beating as he raced to catch Cadence.

Then there was another flash of brilliant red as a female dragon shot out of the cliffside, and Cynthia’s heart stuttered in her mighty plated chest.

It was Viola. Viola, who’d been banished to the far side of the Garrison property, who’d been bitterly complaining about how poorly Orion had treated her.

She’d been hiding out in one of the mountainside’s many craggy folds. How long had she been waiting there? Possibly days, or weeks. Waiting because she knew that Orion loved to take Cadence up to the mountaintop.

Viola sent out a fire blast at Nikolai, and he disappeared in a ball of flame. Of course, flame couldn’t hurt him, but it disoriented him, and he slammed into the mountainside so hard that the mountain shuddered. Cynthia thought she heard a crack – had one of his wings broken? Yes. He started to plummet to the ground, madly flapping his one good wing. They were hundreds of feet in the air. A fall from this height could kill him.

Her son or the mother of her grandlings?

Cynthia had to make a split-second choice.

She dove after Cadence.

Panic seized her, and she flapped her wings frantically, but she knew she wasn’t going to make it. Cadence was falling too fast. She’d hit the ground and die; every bone in her body would shatter.

About fifty feet from the ground, Cadence’s human form vanished and there was a mighty white beast in its place, enormous leathery wings beating the air. Viola headed straight for her, and directed a stream of flame that Cadence barely dodged.

Cynthia changed course, diving after her son. She slid underneath him and supported his weight, slowing his fall. They both landed on the ground with a hard thud, and he rolled off Cynthia and staggered, disoriented and groaning.

His wing hung limply. He wouldn’t be able to fly for weeks.

He shook his mighty head and glared at Cynthia.

Cynthia hung her head and closed her eyes tightly. She’d screwed up really, really badly. She’d nearly killed her son and Cadence both.

Then she heard a whistling sound and saw Viola plummeting from the air.

Viola, covered in a thick coat of ice, her wings frozen solid, fell from hundreds of feet high and hit the ground so hard that Cynthia felt the vibration running through her feet. She lay shuddering and twitching in her death throes.

Cadence landed near Cynthia in the meadow and shifted into human form. She stalked up to Cynthia, who was also human again now. Nikolai was still in dragon form, shooting looks of pure rage at his mother.

“You idiot!” Cadence screamed, fists balled. “I fainted when you threw me off the cliff! How the hell am I going to shift if I’m unconscious?”

“Wait!” Cynthia wailed, holding up her hand. “I had a backup plan! There was me, and then there was Nikolai! So I had two backup plans.”

“Yeah, that didn’t work out so well, did it?” Cadence spat at her.

Before Cynthia could answer, Cadence hauled off and punched her in the nose. Pain exploded in Cynthia’s head as her nose shattered and blood flew everywhere.

“That is for throwing me off a damn cliff!” she yelled. “If you ever do anything like that to me again, I will freeze you into a giant corpsicle!”

Then she shifted into dragon form in mere seconds, lifted into the air, and flew back towards the castle.

“Worth it,” Cynthia muttered through the blood that dribbled down over her lips.

Nikolai let out a blast of flame in response that singed her hair and blackened a patch of grass.

When Orion got back that afternoon, everyone excitedly directed him to the south meadow – where he was greeted by the sight of an enormous, beautiful white dragon. The dragon had blue eyes blinking at him under white lids, and lay curled up waiting for him, tail wrapped around her body. The tip of her tail was spade-shaped, almost like a heart. She glittered like an ice sculpture in the sun.

She shifted into human form as he approached her.

“You are the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen,” he said. “By the way, my mother apparently broke her nose, and Nikolai is limping and his arm is in a sling. Do you happen to know anything about that?”

“Sounds like they’re pretty clumsy.” She smiled politely. “I took care of it.”

“You are an amazing, amazing woman. I’ve also addressed the issue. They’re both living next to the pigsty for a month, and will be cleaning the sty out every day. No, don’t argue, she could have killed you with that idiotic trick, and Nikolai should have called me up and warned me.”

“You could maybe just do it for a week,” Cadence said. “I’m furious too, but I can shift at will now. So there’s that.”

“You would have gotten there on your own,” Orion said, reaching out and taking her hand. “Shall we go fly together?”

It was thrilling to soar through the sky with Orion. Her wings sluiced the air as she hovered, beautiful silver-blue membranes like shot silk, holding her effortlessly aloft.

Orion swooped around her, his huge, horned head nuzzling against her flank, then dived and sped away in an airborne dragon version of kiss-chase.

She soared after him, enjoying the feel of the sunshine on her scales as she cut through the brisk air. The world was laid out beneath them like a map drawn on green velvet, spinning slowly and drawing closer as they circled towards the ground in broad, graceful arcs.

They landed side by side, and curled up with each other, twining together on the ground like a yin and yang symbol as they got their breath back from their play-fight in the air. Male and female; fire and ice.

Then their wings furled back into their bodies, their scales melted back into their skin, and they shifted back into human form, ending up in an intimate tangle of limbs.

Orion wasted no time in kissing her. He wrapped his arms around her and rolled her over, kissing her hungrily and running his hands over her curves. Their tongues tangled as Cadence trailed her fingers over his bulging biceps to cling to his strong, broad shoulders.

Orion rolled again so Cadence was on top of him, their bodies pressed closely together. She spread her legs to straddle him, and kissed him hard on the mouth, nipping and licking, fluttering kisses over his jaw and down to his throat, where his pulse throbbed against her lips.

She slid down his muscled form, the firm flesh of his chest abrading her nipples, and planted kisses down the center line of his body. A graze of her teeth made his firm belly quiver and twitch.

She followed the line of hair that ran from his navel down towards his thick, hard cock, then circled her hand around his shaft, steadying him. She swirled her tongue around the glistening purple head, tasting the salty savor of pre-cum. He groaned and stroked the back of her head, his fingers trembling slightly as he touched her.

She ran her tongue over her lips to wet them, then wrapped them around his cock and slid down, taking him in, inch by inch. She moved slowly, deliberately, allowing the anticipation to build until Orion was panting and squirming beneath her.

When she’d swallowed his full length, her lips pressed against the crisp curls of his pubic hair, she drew back again, deliberately torturing him with little flicks of her tongue as she went.

She hollowed her cheeks to glide up and down his twitching length, moving faster and more forcefully as Orion’s breathing sped up and became harsher, his fingers tighter against her scalp. She rolled his balls gently in her palm as she bobbed her head, making him gasp and curse, and he reached down to haul her up against his body.

She straddled him, squirming so she could feel him, hot and rigid, sliding against the slick lips of her pussy.

He gazed up at her with a dazed expression, his hands going to her hips. “You’re magnificent,” he husked, his voice low and hoarse.

Cadence bit her lip as she rose above him and positioned him at her entrance. He groaned with anticipation, and she held her breath as she slid slickly down his length, sighing when their bodies were pressed together, and moving her hips in teasing circles.

Orion skin’s was burning. She could almost have sworn wisps of silvery smoke rose from her cool skin where his fingerprints grazed her hips. She felt that with the slightest movement, they might flash into fire.

She kneeled up, never breaking eye contact with him, then plunged back down, driving him into her quivering center. He closed his eyes, his lips parting, and ran his hands up the sides of her body, over the dip of her waist and her rib cage. He took a breast in each large palm, squeezing the soft flesh then sliding his hands to the sides to he could tease her nipples. He grazed the rough pads of his thumbs over the tight, aching peaks, and sensation thrilled all the way down to her center, where it settled and pooled.

He gripped her hips again and braced her, taking some of her weight so she could move more easily above him. With each downward motion she rolled her hips, and Orion thrust up to meet her so they came together and parted, came together and parted, lost in the wild electricity they were building between them.

Excitement twisted and coiled in her belly and between her thighs, and when he arched his pelvis and slammed into her, bliss bolted through her, rebounding and echoing and building on itself until she felt like she was flying.

Orion cried out – a wild, wordless shout as he came, trembling with the intensity of their shared climax.

Cadence rolled to the side, gently disengaging from him. She felt sore and sticky and utterly satisfied. She snuggled up next to him, splaying her fingers on his chest and nuzzling his throat.

He was so hot he felt like he was burning up. His skin was still beaded with sweat, even as he caught his breath and his heart rate returned to normal.

She looked up into his eyes and put her cool, soothing hand on his hot brow. He smiled. She felt filled with warmth and sunshine.