The Passionate Queen (Dark Queens Book 2) (28 page)

Moving up on my knees, I dug my fingers through the vest of his shirt, twining the fabric tightly in my grip.

His jaw clenched, and I could read the same frenzied desire for me reflected back in his gaze.

“This is forever, Lena. With me, this is forever. My life is eternal, and yours will be tethered to my own for all our days. Do you understand this?”

I nodded. And knew it was now my time to fess up. Grabbing his hands with my own, I forced him to look at me. “I must tell you something.”

His brows furrowed in confusion for a moment as he clearly sensed the weight of what I was about to say.

“Anything.”

Nervous, I plowed through the words before I lost my nerve. “Ragoth, if we do this. If we sleep together my morphlingism will reactivate again and I will be your equal in power. With Charles I was his better, because the power was not something innate to him but contained within the ring. You, however, are magical. With you, I would be your equal. It is the truth of my heritage that my kind has kept hidden from their mates, but I would have honesty with you in all things from here on out.”

I waited on bated breath to hear what he’d say. Whether he’d reject me or not. I knew dragons were a prideful, stubborn lot. Maybe my beast would not enjoy no longer being the more powerful of the two. But—

“Do you honestly believe I’d have it any other way?”

My answer was a kiss.

But that quick kiss turned into something far deeper and more sensual than I’d anticipated. His tongue was hot as he slid it along the seam of my mouth, begging without words for me to open wide to him. I did and drowned in the taste of the dragon that he was.

The first time we’d ever tried to kiss like this, he’d burned through my soul. And this time was no different, except there was no pain, no fire eating at my flesh. I was royal blood now, able to mate my soul to his.

Ragoth was wild; his hands were all over me, and all I kept hearing was the tearing and rending of fabric. He used his claws to rip through my habit, shredding it so that there was no hope of ever wearing it again. But he wasn’t the only one.

I was wild and reckless. I wanted everything this beast had to offer me. I tore straight through the collar of his shirt, popped off button after button, sending them flying in every direction. In moments, my palms were running hot down his bare chest, marveling in the feel of such hard, sculpted muscle.

“Goddess, I love you, I adore you, all mine. Always mine, my Lena. Always...”

I smiled through his words, muttering my own nonsensical words. Something to do with killing any woman who dared to try to take him from me again.

But soon there were no words. I keenly felt the powerful magic of the calling resting heavily in my bones. The moment I slept with Ragoth, he was king in truth. The wedding would only be ceremony, for here lay the true binding. The union of our souls, I’d merge with him, and he’d merge with me, and I wanted that.

Now.

A fire, a type of passion I’d never known I’d possessed, overcame me then. All the heat I felt whenever Ragoth was near consumed me.

Raking my nails down his chest, leaving deep, vertical red slashes in my wake, I threw myself on him. Forcing him to take my weight as we both crashed to the ground.

Straddling his hips, I wiggled to a sitting position. The stones and hard rocks beneath my knees bit into my flesh, abrading them with each movement. I’d be scuffed when this was over, but I had no power in me to ask him to move. If I didn’t feel my beast now, I would howl.

Evincing the same sort of desperation I felt, Ragoth tossed the tattered edges of my clothing off, leaving me only my translucent chemise. I bowed against the support of his strong hands as he ran them hotly up my back and gasped when his hot mouth found my nipple.

He nibbled, suckled, and laved his tongue along its tight bud over and over again so that when he popped it free, the brush of air against the damp fabric brought on an entirely different kind of sensation. A play of hot and cold that made me mad for more.

“Devil,” I cried, delirious with sensation when he moved to my next breast, giving it the same delicious treatment as the other.

“Lena,” he growled, and the sound of his voice, it drove like a spear straight through me.

“Oh gods, Ragoth,” I moaned, desperate to get him inside me. It’d been so long since I’d lain with another. “So long. Too long.”

I couldn’t seem to stop from mumbling. My fingers felt clumsy and stupid as I reached down between us to try and extract his cock from his trews.

I tugged and pulled on the laces, mewling in frustration that I couldn’t seem to get at that bit of male flesh I so desperately needed to feel inside me right now.

“Just rip the damn things off,” he snapped before latching his mouth against the column of my throat and suckling gently.

Head dizzy with a wash of primeval lust and need, I blinked. “I...I can’t. Bloody damn things,” I snapped, tugging harder.

Without a word, he slapped my hands aside, and using his incredible strength, ripped his pants open, freeing his hard thickness to my greedy inspection.

He was long, veined, and curled slightly at the tip. I wet my lips, eyeing the head of his cock with shock and need. He was so big; how would he fit, how could it not hurt?

I’d had my fair share of men, some much bigger than others. But Ragoth was by far the biggest. Taking my face in his hands, he forced my eyes to his and whispered, “Breathe, my beauty. Just breathe. We’ll fit as we always have. You and I are a perfect match. The fates have decreed it.”

The manic fluttering of my heart eased just a little, and I nodded, then kissed the meat of his palm, nuzzling his hand and breathing in deeply the spicy warmth of his skin.

His chest moved up and down with great, mighty heaves, as though he tried mightily to contain his desperation. “Are you okay now?” he asked after a half minute.

Smiling gently, I nodded. “I want you, dragon. I’ve always wanted you. Ease into me slowly.”

Rucking up my garment so that it puddled around my hips, and exposing my heated core to him, he moved into position. The tip of his cock brushed my slick warmth.

I bit down on my lips. “Oh goddess,” I moaned, half delirious with madness when he gently eased inside.

He was thick, long, and for a second I panicked as he continued to move deeper and deeper inside of me. No man had ever been within me so deep; I could hardly move when he’d pushed in to the hilt.

Holding me steady in his arms, he nodded. “Relax and accept me as your own,” he murmured, dropping rows of tiny kisses along the curves of my face. My chin, my cheeks, the tip of my nose, and the center of my brow.

Each loving stroke calmed my nerves. I’d always heard dragons were big in all ways, but I had to admit that I’d not been prepared for just how big. He stretched me wide and filled me full.

It took me several breaths before I felt confident enough to make the first upward stroke.

But when I did... Squeezing my eyes shut, an animalistic sort of sound I’d never made before in my life vibrated straight through me. I felt his smile against the corner of my jaw as he met my strokes with deep, penetrating thrusts of his own.

“Damn it all to Tartarus,” he ground out between clenched teeth, and I wasn’t sure why he’d said that, but I didn’t really care.

I needed to feel him, forever, inside of me.

Mouth parting, I pressed my cheek against his, wrapped my arms around his neck, and squeezed as my body moved with a rhythm all its own. His hands cupped my breasts, playing with them as his cock stroked me deep and long, filling me up with such pleasure I knew I would die from it.

Heat like I’d never felt before in my life began to bloom, radiate outwardly from deep within me. Right from the point where he and I were joined.

“Look at me,” he grunted half a second later.

It was all I could do not to cross my eyes when I finally forced myself to open them. What I saw had me gasping.

My dragonborne and I glowed in truth. I’d never seen the glow he’d always told me I possessed, but I saw it now.

A blue radiance of it shimmered up from the pores of not only my skin, but his as well, coalescing into a tight pool around us. The very air prickled with so much raw power, all I could think was, “This is a great way to die.”

He chuckled and shook his head. “Not die, my treasure. Live.”

Then he thrust up as I moved down and my world exploded into chaos. A rush of such fiery power consumed me, burning me up alive.

But it was glorious, and all I could do was laugh as I scorched. My hair, my flesh, every part of me was consumed in that blue flame. Ragoth wrapped his arms tight around me, still moving, still consuming me.

“I love you,” I whispered. “I love you so much.”

And with those words we screamed our release.

It took several long moments before either of us could breathe normally again.

Somehow I’d wound up pinned beneath him. He lay on his forearms, keeping most of his weight off me, but his eyes were wide and full of awe. I smiled as I framed his jaw with my hand.

Turning into my touch, he kissed me then said, “We are one, Lena. Do you feel me inside you?”

I knew he wasn’t speaking physically. Because I did feel his presence. A vast, deep cavernous chamber that’d not been there before, full of power that brimmed to the very surface. His glow, his very life, beat inside my own. I felt the strength of the dragon curl within me.

My morphling heritage had sucked him and it never occurred to me that I’d still had the ring of hearts on my hand and not on his; the heart stone was a dull flat color. The magic that writhed within me had not come from the ring, but from the dragon.

I felt such power as I’d never felt before.

I looked at him, shocked and almost terrified by the breadth of this gift.

“Ragoth...” I whispered, not sure what I was saying but desperately needing him to make sense of it.

Taking my fingers, he kissed the pads of them gently before grinning and saying, “I feel you inside me too, Lena. A little ball of glowing light.” He pressed a dark palm to his chest. “Your soul and mine have merged and we are forever one.”

Stunned, I didn’t know quite what to say. “This never happened with Charles.”

“Because he wasn’t me.” He said it softly. “Because I claimed you long ago, you were always mine. My greatest treasure, my loveliest jewel.” He traced a finger along the bridge of my nose, the touch so feather light that my stomach curled with burgeoning desire all over again.

I did not think it possible that I should be ready again, but I felt the awakening of desire rush through my heavy limbs. The heat and warmth of him filling me up from the inside out.

His gaze rolled down my body, and he winced. “Your knees are bleeding.”

“Are they?” I looked, and sure enough, the stones had cut straight through my tender skin. “Huh.” I laughed softly as I finally became aware that they hurt.

But not for long. Ragoth had moved down my body and was now kneeling over my knees, gifting me his tears. The cool touch of them rolled like sun-kissed honey over my abraded flesh, healing them instantly.

He ran his hands across my knees almost reverently once he’d finished. “I never want to see you hurt again, my love.”

His tone was reverential, almost worshipful. Opening my arms to him, I implored him to come back to me. And he did, moving up my body slowly, dropping heated kisses along the way, kisses that made me burn and increased my hunger, my need for him all over again.

Brimming with magic and power, I laughed as I called for a canopy of fresh spring buds to spring forth from the packed dirt soil beneath me. We lay in a verdant garden of wild blooms as my dragon lover brought me once more to the very heights of carnal ecstasy.

~*~

Ragoth

S
ince the union of our souls, it was pure torture to let Lena out of my sight. I knew why now my parents, along with most dragonborne, opted never to bind as she and I had.

I had few weaknesses in life.

But she was definitely one of them.

We’d made love through the night. The passionate possession of our first mating giving way to more exploratory and sensual delights as the night had worn on. Eventually she’d passed out from exhaustion, but I’d lain awake, watching her.

She was mine in truth now. Nothing and no one could part us.

“How did I get to be so lucky?” I whispered, and even in her sleep, she smiled. She wore no clothing; only a light blanket covered her, but one of her breasts was exposed, and I couldn’t help but tease at the shell-pink nipple as I studied the birthmark of her morphism upon her left breast. The bleeding heart marking was delicate and beautiful. Just like her. She needed sleep, but I couldn’t seem to keep my hands off her either. I wasn’t sure a lifetime of touching her would be enough.

No woman I’d ever been with had made me feel what she had. Just the touch of her lips to mine, finally getting to hold the woman I’d dreamed about over half my life.

“I love you.”

She sighed.

Brushing a lock of golden hair off the side of her face, I marveled at the stark differences between her skin and mine. I was dark, she was light. My flesh was calloused, hers was petal soft. She was utter perfection. I leaned over and touched my lips to hers.

“My beauty, time to awake. Today we make the landians love you as I have.”

Rolling over, she draped a corner of the sheets over the breast that’d been exposed. Which made me grumpy. With a snort of disapproval, I knocked the sheet off her and grinned wickedly when her pearl-pink nipples were once more on display to me.

Covering her round globe with my palm, I squeezed gently, and like the beautiful flower she was, she bloomed under my touch. Moaning and writhing for me.

“If we had more time, I would make you scream to the heavens,” I murmured, unable to resist the temptation of planting a heated kiss on the now pointed tip of her left nipple.

“Ragoth,” she whispered, but she didn’t run her fingers through my hair. Instead she curled them into the skins we’d lain on, as though she knew that if she touched me I would make good on my promise to devour her for the rest of the day.