Then he pulled away, his hands slipping down to unbutton her pants, and then pushing them down over her hips. She wriggled, helping him to undress her, the excitement of what was to come next almost too much. She was so wet; he would tell how aroused she was when he removed her panties. But he made no comment, didn’t tease her in any way, simply sighed with pleasure at the sight of her naked body.
“I have wanted to indulge myself in you since the first time you stood before me.” He traced his fingertips up her inner thigh, slowly finding his way to her heated core. “I have wanted to touch you, taste you, and be inside you. To feel you around me.”
He moved as he spoke, his fingers easing her thighs apart and then sliding inside her wet depths. Tara lifted her hips off the bed, pressing herself down onto his fingers as he moved them in and out of her sex. Dòmhnall pressed his thumb to her clit and she closed her eyes to stop the world spinning around her while he drove her to the edge of reason, and beyond. As the tension in her body grew, her orgasm hovered close, and then it hit her, sending her over the edge, her voice crying out his name. Her man, her mate, her lover. At last.
When her orgasm had passed, he slid up the bed, kissing her stomach, then her breasts, soft kisses across her shoulders and up her neck. Then their lips met and she kissed him, turning her body to his, wanting to feel him against her, for her to know this was really happening and wasn’t one of her fantasies that always ended in despair.
Not this time. He moved between her thighs, his body hovering over hers, and then he guided himself inside her. She tensed as he pressed forward, the head of his cock stretching her as he inched deeper. He kissed away her fears, his mouth soft, warm, inviting on hers. Tara lost herself to him, giving her body to him, knowing he would keep her safe. Dòmhnall thrust forward and she gasped against him, he had broken her innocence, taken what she had wanted to give him for so long. And now he drove her back towards the edge of the abyss she longed to fall into for eternity.
In and out he thrust, deeper, harder. She dug her fingers into his back, spurring him on. Tara wanted him to experience everything she was, to come inside her, to leap off the edge of the cliff into pleasure with her. Harder, he lunged into her, groaning out his desire, his mouth claiming her breast and sucking on the hard nipple, his teeth grazing the sensitive bud as he took her.
Then she came. Her body tensed, and then the tension broke and she cried out his name, her legs wrapping around him, tilting her pelvis up. The change in angle was enough to make him follow her over the edge. He lunged into her, roughly filling her over and over, his seed spurting deep inside her, making a new life, a new dragon, perhaps.
Slowly they came back to themselves, totally spent, but completely happy. This was how they were meant to be, as one. No longer two souls torn apart. They were joined now, their bond eternal.
When he moved to lie beside her, he pulled her into his arms and she lay still against his chest. They had finally done it. All it had taken was for him to lose his ability to change into a dragon and for her to lose her magic. Lying there, with him stroking her skin, she wondered if it was worth it. Was being with Dòmhnall, like this, really worth what they had lost?
He kissed the top of her head, his hand on her shoulder pulling her closer, as if he wanted to meld them together. At that moment, she wondered if yes, it was worth it. But then the thought of the wolf returned, how close they had come to being killed, and how dangerous it would be if the rest of the pack turned up to exact revenge for their fallen pack member.
At this thought, she gained some perspective on their joining. They may have consummated their relationship, but it would be worthless if they didn’t make it out of here. They belonged in the other world. For all they knew, the bond might be meaningless here. But it wasn’t; she could feel how deep her need for him went.
“You know, our magic hasn’t gone. It’s like someone put it to sleep,” she said as he absently stroked her skin.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Think about it. You still want me. I still want you. I think if the bond is still there, then your dragon is still inside you. Maybe we just have to try to fathom how we get him to come back out.”
He sat up, and looked down at her. “While I was out picking the hazelnuts, I tried, several times. But nothing. I can’t summon him. He might be asleep, but it’s more than that. I think my dragon is dormant inside me.” He paused, and then his voice shook as he finished. “But I can’t keep trying to summon him. It kills me. Little by little, the loss of who I was is taking a part of me away.”
“Dòmhnall. I’m sorry.” She sat up and kissed his shoulder, then rested her head on his chest as she said, “I will find a way to wake him up. I promise.”
He rose from the bed and went to the door, the magic between them broken. “We should go out and get what food we can. I suggest we stay together, one on lookout at all times. Then we come back here, light the fire and keep the door bolted securely. Hopefully that will keep anything out.”
She dragged her clothes back on, sensing a chill in the air. Night would soon be upon them; they needed to be safe. But she was scared she had lost the closeness they had experienced. His need for the dragon to come back to him was taking him away from her, away from this world. Is that what would happen? He would slowly fade away if she couldn’t make him complete again?
Straightening up, she promised herself, and him, that she would do whatever it took, whatever sacrifice was needed, to make this right for him.
“I still don’t see why you won’t let me carve up the carcass of that wolf,” Dòmhnall said, after eating an unsatisfying meal of green leaves and nuts. “Dragons are not built to be vegetarians.”
“You might be content to eat anything, but I am not. It’s a wolf, you don’t even know where it came from.” Tara was stoking the fire; he struggled to keep his eyes off her luscious body. All he wanted to do was take her to bed and claim her once more. It seemed as though he needed to make up for all the time they had lost circling each other, neither daring to let their defences down. Now that they had, well, he could hardly keep his mind on anything other than how sweet her skin tasted and how he wanted to massage her voluptuous breasts with his large hands. They fit together perfectly, just like other parts of their anatomy.
He should have kept his mind away from those kinds of thoughts, because now he was so hard he would struggle to think of anything other than being inside her.
“I suppose we had better get some sleep,” he said, his gaze drifting to the bed, his mind filled with images of her lying on it, naked.
“I’m so tired, but I don’t know if I could sleep. What if we are attacked in the night?”
“I am a light sleeper; nothing will come through the door without waking me.” Dòmhnall rose to his feet and held out his hand for her. She placed hers into his palm and he pulled her to her feet, feeling the heat from her body as she stood facing him.
“If you don’t feel like sleeping…” he said, shyly, feeling like such a corny geek.
“You have another suggestion?” she teased.
“It’s more than a suggestion,” he said, his hand losing hers and stroking her cheek. His fingertip traced the contour of her lips, and then he leaned forward and pressed his mouth to hers. She sighed, soft, gentle, so unlike the brash witch he had learned to spar with.
Slowly, he undressed her, his mouth tracing the curves of her body, along her cheek, then her jaw line, making her squirm so much he could smell her desire. Inside him, his dragon awoke from its deep slumber, but Dòmhnall still wasn’t able to call him, he was out of reach, so he ignored the loss and concentrated on Tara’s luscious curves instead.
She moved, her hand curling around his cock, squeezing it, driving him to distraction. He clung to his resolve, stroking her breasts, kissing the tips of her nipples, and then licking them. She whimpered against his ear, and that did it. Stripping her pants off, he used his body weight to manoeuvre her onto the bed. Then he ripped his clothes from his body.
Tara’s eagerness was obvious, she opened her thighs for him, and he contemplated kneeling before her and licking her sex until she came; he wanted to taste her, to make her cry out his name as he nibbled her clit. But he was a selfish soul, and the need to be inside her was too much.
Hovering over her body, he guided himself into her, nearing the point of climax when her tight inner walls gripped him, but he managed to put his mind elsewhere for a short time, and regain his control. Lying still, he allowed his desire to dwindle just enough to prevent him doing anything premature. A dragon lord should know how to control himself for long enough to please his mate, after all.
However, Tara did not help. She stroked his back, her touch soft, making the hairs on his arms stand on end. His cock responded, twitching deep inside her, but he kept himself together and began to move. In and out, completely impaling her, before pulling back so that her outer lips held just the tip of his cock. Then he would thrust home, and it felt like home. She made him complete; wherever she was, he would survive, even if it meant no dragon.
With long, hard lunges, he claimed his mate. She rose to the challenge, although he knew he would make her sore; she was tight, inexperienced. But above all she was his, and he wanted to make sure she never forgot it. Not now. He would never be parted from her again, and she would never escape him. But he aimed to make sure the notion of running away never crossed her mind.
And when she came around him, her sex gripping him, her voice calling out his name, he was certain that she never would. Because he was the greatest Dragon Lord of all time. As he filled her with his seed, his dragon roared, and Dòmhnall was surer than ever before that they could beat this. Whatever had happened to them was temporary; they just had to figure out how to escape it.
“Did you hear the thunder in the night?” Tara asked Dòmhnall, still not quite believing she was here in his arms. Even if she didn’t know exactly where
here
was.
“No,” he said stretching. Damn, he looked so good, even first thing in the morning, whereas Tara knew she probably looked hideous.
“So much for being a light sleeper,” Tara said, dragging her self away from him. But he reached out and pulled her back, kissing her fiercely. She could feel his hard length against her thigh, but knew they couldn’t spend the day in bed. They needed food.
“It’s your fault for tiring me out.” He stroked her cheek and then kissed her again. “So what do we do now?”
She sighed. “I can only think of two choices. Neither of them good. We either stay here, but we won’t survive unless we hunt for food. Or we walk on.”
“Or we walk back.”
“What do you mean? Go back to where we first arrived?” she asked, thinking this over. “Do you think we should have looked for a touchstone there or something?”
“I don’t know. But something tells me whatever, or whoever put us here, is not going to let us just walk out of here.” Dòmhnall swung his legs over the side of the bed and then got up. She watched him, her eyes feasting on his golden skin, as he got dressed. Those breeches hugged him in all the right places.
Shrugging these thoughts off, because otherwise she might be content to spend the rest of her life here in this cabin simply making love to her dragon, she got dressed. Together they headed back out to the small spring. Both of them drank their fill, and then they opened some of the tin cans.
As they thought, the food was off. “It smells as though it’s as old as you are,” Tara said, putting her hand over her nose.
“Charming. I think I’m a lot better preserved though, wouldn’t you agree?” he said tartly.
“Much better,” she said, emptying the contents of the cans onto the ground a safe distance away from their water source. Then she set to washing the cans out. It took a while before she was happy they were clean enough, and then she scooped fresh water into them. “It’s not going to be easy to carry them like this without spilling them, but it’s better than nothing.”
“It’s a shame there were no bottles in the cabin. It would be a lot better to have a lid on these things.” Dòmhnall said, taking two of the cans off her and sniffing them warily.
“They will have to do. I can’t bear the thought of not drinking for the whole day. And night. I mean, we might not find another source of water.”
“True. Look, that’s something we should consider. Since this is the only water and shelter we have found, I suggest we leave some kind of trail as we go. That way if we have to come back, we will end up right here.”
“Like Hansel and Gretel?”
“Yes.” Dòmhnall rummaged around in the undergrowth by the spring; he collected some small stones and then stood up. “Shall we go?”
“Yes,” she said, looking longingly at the small cabin. “I only hope we are as lucky tonight and find shelter if we don’t make it out of here.”
“We won’t know the answer to that unless we start walking.” With that, he led her in the same direction as yesterday, heading west while the sun rose in the sky. But it soon became clear that they would be spending another day in a featureless landscape. Trees, followed by more trees.
“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Tara said, sitting on a fallen log and rubbing her feet. “I seriously don’t think we are meant to leave this forest.”
“Then what are we supposed to do? Stay here?” Dòmhnall asked, his temper frayed around the edges.
“Maybe.” She sighed, sipping the now-warm water from a can. “Can you think of any reason why the dryads would send us here? What did they say? A gift from Artemis. What does that mean? You didn’t upset her at some point in your long past?”
“No. I never met her. At least if I have, I didn’t know.” He shook his head. “No, there is nothing I have done to bring this upon us.”
“She’s the hunter, right? I can imagine her leaving you able to turn into a dragon and then hunting you. I mean a dragon slayer is a title she might be interested in. Especially since you are the mighty Dragon Lord. But the rest of it makes little sense.”