Queen of Dragons: Steamy Fantasy Erotic Romance (Dragon nights Book 1) (2 page)

The Bull Tavern was noisy and full. In the week
since the men had returned business had been good. They had come back with the
spoils of The North, having sacked the famous vaults at Castle Ranchester, and
were keen to drink away the memories of what they had seen. Alexandra looked
out across the crowded tavern to where the home-comers sat, surrounded by the
young women of the village, who listened enthralled to their tales of heroism,
giggling as the old soldiers light-heartedly put each other down and showed off
their battle scars.

“This one’s from a claymore strike on Basford
Ridge” said Kit, shrugging his tunic off one shoulder to show a jagged red line
to the pretty redheaded girl who sat on his lap, she gave him a mischievous
smile and bent her head to slowly kiss the now-healed wound.

“Come off it Kit,” Someone shouted. “That’s from
when you fell down the steps outside that cheap brothel in Dundsley Marsh.”

Kit blushed crimson and looked at his sister.
“Alexandra, that’s not true, I never visited any brothels, not once” he said.

The whole table burst into laughter, drowning out
Kit’s further protests. Alexandra did not care about her brother’s
indiscretions in The North. She knew what soldiers got up to, she knew about
the need to bury battlefield memories in warm flesh, and how the horrors of a
brutal life could be briefly forgotten in a comforting embrace. Ever since the
men had returned she had felt the sexual tension in the village. The men were
in fine high spirits while they were drinking and joking in the tavern, but
when the doors shut and they went back to their beds none of them wanted to be
alone. Some needed someone to hold them, to stroke their hair and tell them it
was all over now, that they were going to be alright, but most just needed a body
to plunge into, to fuck away the rage that had built in them after years of
being forced to kill or be killed. She let her eyes wander over the table,
imagining with a shiver what each of the men sitting around it would like to do
to her shapely body.

She caught the eyes of the broad stranger from the
square. He had tried to talk to her a couple of times since he had first seen
her, explaining in a warm west country accent that he wasn’t leaving the
village, and that he’d taken lodgings in the boarding house. Over the past week
she had come to realise that she was far luckier than some in the village, those
women who had stood in the square until well after it was dark, silently
waiting for men who in their hearts they already knew weren’t coming home. She
had lost her father, but her brother had made it home, and she supposed that
the stranger couldn’t really be blamed for her father’s death, as Kit had told
her many times since he had come home; “That’s the fault of the Bastard King
John and the fucking Pretender and their stupid highborn arsehole wars.”

But she still felt a deep sense of annoyance that
the man felt a need to protect her. She had survived those ten long years just
fine on her own, she didn’t need a new man in her life trying to take care of
her.

On the other side of the bar, in a bad-tempered
silence, sat the men who had stayed in the village. No one accused them of cowardice,
and some of the returning soldiers had even thanked them, after all the crops
still had to be brought in and the roofs repaired. But these men, who had ruled
the village for a decade, had now felt the balance shift away from them. They
knew that with the return of the fighters they were emasculated, seen by the
soldiers the same way they viewed the elderly and infirm. Alexandra tried to
avoid meeting the eyes of that particular table, she knew that a man whose
masculinity is threatened is a dangerous thing indeed.

 “Alexandra!” Shouted Matt Tindall.

Alexandra turned towards Matt and a raised her
hand to signal that she would be with him in a second, she was busy serving
James Flaxford, one of the four men who had been blinded at Othem Moat.

“Alexandra, another ale!” Matt slurred drunkenly.

“Just a second” She said, annoyed at the way he
was addressing her, with his jutting chin and heavy brow Alexandra would not
have been the slightest bit surprised to find that there was orc blood in Matt
Tindall and his oafish  sons.

“No. Now you little bitch, now!” He roared,
slamming his empty tankard down onto the wooden table. “Do you think you can
just ignore me and the men who kept this village running just because few
whore-poxed soldiers have come home from the brothels?”

The hubbub of drinking and conversation died away
and Alexandra heard the sound of fifteen chairs being pushed back at once. The
men rose as one, transforming suddenly from a group of agricultural workers,
tired from a day in the fields, into a regiment of fighting men.

“All right lads,” spluttered Matt, who even in his
agitated drunken state was able to see the danger he had put himself into. “I
was just joking with her, wasn’t I Alexandra? We’re mates, you don’t get our
humour, been away too long, I was joking, tell them Alexandra.”

“Oh, piss off Matt!” said Alexandra, turning back to
James Flaxford as the soldiers roared with laughter.

Later that night after the drinkers had gone home
Alexandra stood sweeping the dirty sawdust from the tavern floor. The candles
were guttering in their holders and from across the field she could hear the
hoot of a barn owl. From one of the rooms above the tavern came the exited squeals
of Miranda Carter, the pretty redhead Kit had been showing off to earlier. From
the sound of her delighted cries Alexandra could tell that her brother probably
had learned something from those northern brothels he claimed never to have
visited. She tried to block out the sounds, they were making her uncomfortably
turned on, and she felt strange getting off on the sounds of her brothers lay.
Still as the cries grew in volume she could not stop fantasising about being
pinned down by one of the soldiers from earlier, maybe the big handsome
stranger who she should hate for letting her father die, he looked like he knew
how to satisfy a woman like her.

There was a faint knock on the door and Alexandra
walked to open it, thinking that Viviana had probably slipped out of Loxley
Hall to update her on how she was getting on with Christian. She had not seen
either of them since the day the men had gotten home, and she felt worried for
her friend who had placed so much importance on a happy reunion. To her Christian
had looked like a completely different man than she remembered, the gentle
humour seemed to have left his eyes to be replaced by a dark and powerful fire.
She opened the door and found herself face to face with Matt Tindall and his
three burly sons.

“Hello Alexandra” Matt said, shoving her roughly
backwards as he entered the tavern.

Alexandra shouted for her brother, but the noise
of him cavorting with the red-head was now reaching a crescendo, and there is
no way Kit could have heard her cries for help over Miranda’s wild orgasmic
squeals. Matt advanced on Alexandra slowly, shadowed all the while by his
smirking sons. When they reached where she stood, backed up against the hard
wood of the bar. One of the younger men clamped his hand over Alexandra’s mouth
and Matt moved in front of her, leering horribly as he began undoing his dirty
work-stained trousers.

“Oh you silly girl,” he said. “You really
shouldn’t have made me look stupid earlier. You know I don’t like people
laughing at me.” He slipped his trousers past his hips. “I might not have gone
away to war, or learned to fight with a sword, but I’m by far the most
dangerous man in this village, and you’d do well to remember that.” Alexandra
could smell the reek of alcohol on the four men over even the unwashed stink of
the hand that pressed down on her mouth.

She tried to scream, but through the rough
calloused palm clamped over her lips the sound came out as a muffled grunt,
which mingled with the sounds ecstatic cries from the room above. Another of
Matt’s sons stepped forward and grabbed the neckline of Alexandra’s plain dress
in his dirty fists, ripping it open to her navel with one sudden movement. Her
soft white breasts shook as she tried to struggle free, the centre of her chest
flushed red with the anger and humiliation she was feeling. Matt advanced on
her and reached out to put his hands on the outside of her knees. He slowly
slid the skirt of her ruined dress up over her smooth white thighs and past her
hips, exposing her fully to his sons’ hungry stares. Alexandra tried to plead
with her eyes for him to stop, this man she had known all her life, but looking
at him she could see only rage and lust in his face.

“Silly, silly girl!” He spat. “You know I’ve
wanted to do this for a long time. Ever since you were fifteen, I should have
broken you years ago.” He took the final step towards her and leant in to bite
her neck, Alexandra felt the rough bristles of his unshaven chin digging into
the her soft skin as she struggled to get free.

“What the fuck is going on?” Came a thundering
shout from the doorway. Matt turned around in time to find himself felled by a
heavy punch. Alexandra was thrown roughly onto a table as the man who had been
holding her pulled a knife from his belt and moved towards the incomer, she
could now see it was the broad grey haired man from the square. The man she had
told she didn’t need looking after, his eyes were dark with anger and there
seemed nothing of the amiable West Country man about him now. Another of Matt’s
sons pulled out a knife, and Alexandra saw that the third held a short leaded
club, with horror she realised the danger her self-appointed guardian was in.
The three young men stood in a semicircle facing the stranger, Matt himself lay
unconscious on the floor between them, trousers around his ankles and his at
best unimpressive manhood fading into flaccidity.

The stranger looked at each of Matt’s sons in turn
while slowly unbuttoning his white shirt, his thick fingers moving assuredly
over the buttons, Alexandra could see that his huge wide chest with its salt
and pepper grey hair was latticed with scars, and a fading blue tattoo over his
right pectoral showed that at one point he had probably been to sea. He dropped
his shirt to the floor, raised his fists, and spread his legs into a fighting
stance.

“Now lads, much better men than you have tried,
are you sure you want to do this?” He said in a deep clear voice. Matt’s sons
looked at each other and then down at their unconscious father. The stranger
took two steps to the side, leaving the doorway open, and nodded at the man who
lay on the floor. “Come on boys,” he said. “Pick him up and fuck-off home”

The three young men hesitated for a moment,
looking at each other, uncertain what to do. One made a half-hearted feint
towards the stranger with his knife and found his wrist clenched in a vice like
grip, the stranger moved so fast that Alexandra barely saw his hand shoot out.
Finally the grey haired older man bellowed, “Go! Get out!” and as one the
Tindall boys scrambled to pick up their father and sprinted into the night.

Alexandra ran to her rescuer and threw herself
into his embrace, after a moment he gently pushed her away to arm’s length and
lifted the two ruined sides of her dress back over her shoulders, covering the
curves of her breasts.

“So you don’t need looking after?” He said with a
grin, he didn’t seem in the least bit phased by what had just happened.

“You saved me” said Alexandra, gasping for air and
struggling to regain her composure. “And I don’t even know your name.”

“Harper” he said looking down on her. “My name is
Harper. Now where is that useless lanky sod you call a brother? He needs to
learn to take better care of his house when it’s got a beautiful girl like you
in it.”

He smiled and Alexandra noticed the corners of his
eyes break into a concertina of wrinkles. It was almost impossible to believe
that a man who had looked so intimidating, so ready to kill, only seconds
earlier, who had frightened off three armed men with only his voice, could now
look so friendly.

“Thank you.” Alexandra said, looking up at him.

The door from the stairs burst open and Kit ran
in. “What’s going on” he said, I heard shouting. “Alexandra are you alright?”
Alexandra and Harper looked at him, and both burst out laughing. Kit was
completely naked, from the state of his manhood it was obvious he’d just jumped
off the red headed girl and ran downstairs, and there was no shame in that
Alexandra thought, but he was wearing a pair of woman’s garters, and his face
was painted with a garish rouge.

“Everything’s fine” said Harper with a smile. “I
like your outfit Kit, you should have worn that when we attacked Basford Ridge,
it might have scared them a bit more than your swordsmanship.” Kit blushed
crimson. “Anyway I’ll be on my way now” Harper continued.

 “Wait” said Alexandra. “Why don’t you bring
your stuff over from the lodging house tomorrow morning? You can’t stay there
forever and I’d feel safer with you living here. If Matt doesn’t like being
told to piss off he’s certainly not going to like being punched unconscious
with his cock out.”

Harper roared with laughter and Kit looked from one
to the other in confusion, before a shout came from the stairs: “if you don’t
get up here right now I’m finishing myself off!” And Kit ran back up towards the
waiting Miranda Carter and the bedroom.

Viviana walked towards Christian’s cottage in the
grounds of Loxley Hall. She had been planning the day Christian came back for
years. In her imagination they’d gone running through the woods to the swimming
hole in the river, then they’d climbed Buck Hill and Viviana had pointed out
all the changes that had been made in the time since Christian had gone away.
She had wanted to demonstrate the improvements she had made to the grounds, the
new trout ponds she’d had dug above the western lawn, the new beehives she’d
had constructed and placed in the orchard. It was Christian who had first got
her interested in the productive potential of the land outside her window, when
they’d gone off hunting mushrooms in her father’s woods, or foraging for
blackberries in the hedgerows. But since Christian had got back he had not
seemed interested in any of the things Viviana tried to show him, and he hadn’t
seemed interested in Viviana at all.