“Fine!” I said quickly, crawling onto the middle of the bed while I clutched the box. “But I just want you to remember that you’re the one who didn’t want oral sex. Stop giving me that look! I’m opening it. See? The lid is . . . ahhh.”
It wasn’t really a word I spoke; it was more an exhalation of emotion. The box held a small object, somewhere between an oval and a circle, made of metal, but now dulled with age and time.
Recognition prickled along my skin as I gazed at it, waves of electricity seeming to ripple down my arms and legs. I knew this object. I knew it well, and yet it was both as familiar to me as the beat of my own heart, and foreign, something I had never seen before.
“Love token.” I spoke the words without even being aware of it. “It’s my love token. You made it for me. But how . . . ?”
“It was at Dauva, in my lair. You placed it there, along with all the valuables in the castle, before Constantine attacked. Kostya raided most of the lair, but he left that.”
So faint I could barely make it out, a roughly drawn tree was engraved into the silver token, with three upper leafy branches, and two lower ones bearing hearts.
I smiled, a faint memory returning to me. “It’s made of silver so it would not distract you when I wore it.”
He watched me closely. “You remember it, then?”
“No. Yes. Both.” I reached out to touch the token, wanting to feel it, to weigh its age in my hand, but the second my finger touched the metal surface, the world began to spin.
I cried out, feeling as if I would fall, but strong arms caught me, warm and familiar, his touch stirring the embers of desire that were always within me. The room darkened, the colors shifting from light to dark, large amber pools lit by tall standing candelabras, the light of the candles flickering and shimmering along the shadows of the room.
Figures shimmered, too, the figure of a man and a woman.
“A love token?” the woman said, smiling at the man. “For me?”
“I made it for you when I sailed from Riga to France.”
“It’s a tree,” she said, and her voice resonated within me, my lips parting to speak the next words with her. “A tree with hearts?”
“A tree because I knew it would please you. Three branches for you, me, and the sept,” Baltic then and now said, one voice slightly echoing the other.
I was pulled toward the figure of my other self as if I were made of nothing but light and shadow, hesitating a moment as I glanced back at Baltic. He nodded and I let myself merge with the memory of my former self. Baltic’s face changed as he, too, allowed himself to sink into his former being.
“And two hearts,” Ysolde and I said at the same time as we smiled up at him.
“I give you this token as a pledge of my heart,” he said, and tears pricked in my eyes at the love shining in his.
Ysolde and I kissed him, clutching the token to our chest. “It’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever received. I can’t believe you made it for me.”
“You have sworn to be my mate, and for me there is no greater bond, but you were raised with mortals. I thought you would like it.”
I was so touched, both at the time, and again now, that he would go to such lengths to please me. “It couldn’t have been easy to make it,” I told my Baltic as the other Ysolde cooed happily at the token before offering him her mouth again.
The two Baltics shimmered, the image of one overlaying the other.
“It wasn’t. I’m no artist. I almost severed my fingers a couple of times engraving the image in it.”
“Make love to me,” I pleaded as the other Baltic scooped up my former self and carried her to the gigantic canopied bed.
Baltic glanced at the memories of us when I moved against him, sliding my hands around to his back, stroking the muscles there, and wiggling my hips in brazen invitation. “Here? With them?”
“They’re us. We’re in your bedroom. Please, Baltic. I’ve waited so long for you, and now I can have you. You wanted to claim me yesterday—well, now I’m all yours.”
“First you are aroused by the thought of males loving males; then you wished to bare your breasts to everyone with a pair of eyes in his head; and now you want to engage in mating with other people?” He bent and picked me up, carrying me to the bed with an expression that mingled irritation with desire. “We will have a long discussion about these fantasies of yours,
chérie
. I am willing to oblige you this once, but I warn you—you are my mate, and I have no intention of sharing you.”
He laid me down on the bed next to the other Ysolde, who was now clad in what I recognized as a thin chemise, the black- haired Baltic kneeling between her legs, slowly pushing the chemise higher and higher.
“Whoa,” I said, unable to take my eyes from them, my own emotions as conflicted as Baltic’s. “This is . . . wow. On the one hand, it feels like we’re watching two people about to make love. But it’s us. So how can it feel so very . . . oooh. . . . kinky?”
Baltic, who had been removing his clothing, glanced over at the ghostly pair before returning his attention to me. He stood next to me, his hands on his hips, his penis fully aroused and saluting me. “As I said, we will have a discussion about this at a later time.”
I looked at his groin, making a mental measurement before sliding a quick look over at the other version of him.
“What are you doing?” he asked, accusation heavy in his voice as he climbed onto the bed.
“Nothing!” I said, quickly looking back at him.
His black eyes narrowed on me as he, too, knelt between my legs. “You were comparing me to him, weren’t you?”
“Of course I wasn’t! What gave you that idea?”
“I saw you looking at my rod. You looked at it, and then looked at his. You were making comparisons!”
“He is you,” I said, pointing at the other Baltic.
“The fact remains that you were judging my rod against his.”
“I was not!” He stared at me. I stared back at him. After about five seconds, I added, “Besides, it doesn’t matter. You’re bigger now.”
“Aha! I knew it!”
“Look, you’re making a big fuss over nothing,” I said, gesturing toward the other couple. I glanced at them as I spoke, but the words dried up on my lips, and my eyes bugged out when Ysolde, lying next to me, groaned and clutched the sheets, her head thrashing from side to side as Baltic pleasured her with his mouth and hands. My mouth hung open as I blinked at the sight. It was so wrong to watch such an intimate moment between two people—but those two people were us. That was me having an orgasm that caused me to arch up off the bed, calling Baltic’s name. “By the rood,” I managed to get out as I watched.
Baltic smiled smugly. “You always were fast to please.”
“By the rood!” I repeated as the other version of him crawled up her body, licking her with both his tongue and dragon fire. She growled, twining her legs around him as he eased himself into her warmth, her hands clutching his butt and pulling him tighter.
“Ysolde,” Baltic said.
“By the rood!”
I yelled as Ysolde arched again, her hips jerking upward. Her Baltic murmured something in her ear, pulling out just long enough to move his arms under her legs so that they rested on his shoulders, angling her pelvis for maximum penetration. “Can you do that to me, please? Like right now?”
He sat on his heels, frowning. “I do not like the fact that the sight of others making love excites you so much,
chérie
. You should be focused on me only.”
“I am focused on you. Holy—is he doing what I think he’s doing?”
“You wished to have a child,” Baltic said, not paying the least bit of attention as his other self crammed a couple of pillows beneath Ysolde’s behind, on his knees as he thrust into her with hard, fast movements. “I was simply trying to help you conceive.”
I blinked, unable to look away until Baltic bit my ankle. “Mate, I am the one you should be staring at with that look of lust and desire and besotted fascination!”
“Jealous?” I asked him, trying to look at both Baltics at once. It wasn’t easy.
“That would be foolish—” Even he stopped to look as the other version of us, with cries that were unmistakable for anything but those of completion, fell off the side of the bed.
“I knocked myself out for a few minutes by hitting my head on the floor,” Baltic commented as I peered over at them.
Sure enough, Ysolde was on the floor, making soft little happy noises, stroking the sweaty back of the man who was still evidently embedded in her, her legs rubbing up and down on his. He didn’t move.
“I hope you weren’t hurt seriously.”
“I wasn’t. Now if your voyeuristic desires have been satisfied, will you please attend to me?”
“Sorry,” I said, scooting back to my spot. Baltic looked peeved now. “But if you could do just what the other Baltic did, minus the falling on the floor and cracking your head, that would be really,
really
fine with me.”
“It is right that you wish to give me a child since you gave one to the usurper,” he said, approval softening his frown. “But first, I must claim you properly as my mate. Afterward, we will make a child.”
I opened my mouth to tell him that one son was enough for me, but I remembered the pain in his face when he had spoken to my past self of the child we’d lost. “We’ll talk later about adding to the family, all right? At this moment, I really would like you to do something other than frown at me.”
He dipped his head and bathed me in fire.
I screamed and almost came off the bed, my breath caught in my throat as he started pulling off my clothing. As it did before, the fire seemed to dance on my skin, pulsating as it moved up my legs to my stomach.
Baltic pulled off my jeans, sandals, and underwear with a sweep of his hands. I writhed on the bed as the fire swept upward. The corset top seemed to melt off me as Baltic snapped the laces one by one until all that stood between me and his fire was my bra.
“You, too, are bigger,” he said just as his head bent over the valley of my breasts, the bra coming off easily. His breath steamed my flesh, making me yearn for the inferno I knew he could build within me.
“I am not!” I looked down at my breasts. “You really think so?”
“I know it. You were plentiful before. Now you are”—he cupped one breast in his hand, his thumb gently rubbing across my nipple—“very abundant.”
“Fire,” I begged, squirming against him as his tongue flicked out over my now-aching breast.
“You must learn to use your own fire,” he chastised, taking my breast into his mouth. I moaned and grabbed great handfuls of the sheets just as the past Ysolde had done, my breasts thrusting upward.
“Fire!” I ordered, and writhed happily when he chuckled and said, “So demanding. That, too, has not changed,” before allowing his dragon fire to pour out of him and wrap itself around me. It burned, but it did not harm me. It warmed, but it was nothing compared to the inferno blazing within. It teased my flesh, but only Baltic’s touches, soft caresses with his mouth and fingers, made me feel like I was one continuous erogenous zone.
“Embrace the fire,
chérie
,” he mumbled into my breastbone as he slid lower, kissing and burning a path down to my stomach. “Claim it as your own. Use it. Shape it. Make it be what you want it to be.”
I wanted to. Oh, how I wanted to, but I couldn’t focus my thoughts on anything but the magic of him as he slid even lower, nipping at my hips with sharp teeth, soothed by long, slow strokes of his tongue.
“Accept the fire, my love.”
“I . . . I can’t,” I said as he nudged my knees apart.
“You can. You are my mate. You are a light dragon. Accept it.” Heat poured over me as he sent his dragon fire up my body again, the flames licking along my skin before sinking deep into me. His hands swept up my thighs, pushing them wider, his mouth hot on the sensitive inner flesh as he kissed a fiery path to my very core.
“I don’t think it’s possible,” I said, a fever of need and want and desire all mingled together, causing a pressure within me to push higher and higher.
“It is. You must try, Ysolde. Give the fire back to me.” I moaned again at the feeling of his mouth as he breathed fire on the most sensitive of flesh, gasping when he sank a finger into me. “Use it, mate. Use the fire.”
A long, low cry tore from my throat as the pressure continued to build, fueled by both his fire and the passion he was triggering with every flick of his tongue.
“Now!” he demanded, and my body trembled on the brink of something so profound, I couldn’t begin to understand it. The pressure inside me gave with a rush as the fire that I had absorbed roared to life, pouring out of me to consume him.
He made a noise deep in his chest, part growl, part mating sound that my heart recognized and answered. My body wasn’t just alight—I
was
the flame. Baltic suddenly reached underneath me, flipping me over onto my stomach, the arm beneath my belly pulling me upward as he covered my back.
“Mate,” he growled, his body hard and aggressive on mine. I arched again, unable to keep from moaning with sheer, utter ecstasy as he thrust into my body, his penis a brand that only drove the pressure inside me to the point where I knew I was going to explode.
The feeling of him within me, of my muscles trembling around him, was enough to push me over the edge. I spiraled into an orgasm unlike anything I thought possible, my soul merging with his as he joined me in a moment of absolute rapture.
My legs gave out and I collapsed onto the bed as he roared one word, his hands beside my hips as he continued to pound into me with short, fast thrusts until at last he, too, collapsed.
I tried to make sense of what had happened, but my brain gave a little whimper and told me I was on my own. I lay shaking with the sense of power that our joining had brought, Baltic’s heavy body pressing me into the soft mattress.