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  Magnus’s fingers curled into the cushion’s edge, leaving small tears in the fabric. He would accept the child into his household, even as he knew it would turn his stomach each time he looked at her. But her father…he intended to kill her father and leave his bloody, eviscerated remains at Leida’s feet.

  He touched her then, curving his palm around her jaw. Leida opened her eyes slowly, and within their depths, he saw a near-dead hope. It twisted him in knots. He wanted to say no, that any child born of her body should have been his, and no others were allowed into his family. But he’d seen the determination in her gaze, believed her words when she’d told him she’d kill herself trying to escape and return to her daughter.

  “It’s near dawn. We’ll leave soon and travel by foot during the day. Gersel’s page says your village is three days’ journey by dragon flight.” His eyes narrowed as she smiled, a true smile of great joy and relief. For a moment, he thought she’d throw herself into his arms, but the moment passed, and she stared at him with a more somber expression.

  “Thank you, my lord. I have no right to ask for your trust, but I want you to know I will abide by my sentence. I will be the perfect servant.”

  Magnus gazed back at her, taking in the small changes that time and maternity had marked upon her. His emotions remained twisted with resentment, hurt and the painful knowledge that someone else had loved her as he did and shared a child with her.

  He ignored the small voice warning him not to ask the question hovering on his tongue, the one whose answer he both dreaded and hungered to know. “Do you love your daughter’s sire?”

  Her stricken look caught him off guard, and there was no mistaking the anguish in her voice. “Oh yes. Besides the child he gave me, he is my most beloved.”

  Again, she’d crippled him with her words, and he regretted not listening to that inner voice. The black jealousy returned full force with nausea hard on its heels. He rose, staring down at her with what he hoped was a blank expression.

  “He is lost to you now, Leida.”

  She curled in on herself, as if the position somehow helped contain her emotions within her. “He was never mine to lose.”

  Chapter Three

  Leida hefted her pack over her shoulders, adjusting the weight so that it fit comfortably against her back. They were in for a grueling walk through underbrush too thick to ride horses. Years of dragon magic had transformed this woodland into a thick, tangling maze, hard to navigate, easy to get lost in, nearly impossible to escape. She looked to Magnus, watching as he slung his own pack across his back, seemingly unaffected by its weight. He carried the majority of their supplies, including a sharp scythe and a leather harness he’d don for when he flew at night, and she rode on his back.

  Gersel spoke quietly to him, words Leida couldn’t hear. But the disapproving looks he sent her way spoke volumes, and she could guess at his argument. Leave her to her own devices. There were other human women to take as favorites, younger women with fairer faces and voices spun from sacred fire. She wondered if Gersel knew Magnus already had another favorite, a lovely girl named Sivatte.

  Leida didn’t fault the dragon lord for trying to convince his kinsman she was not worthy of such trouble. Dragons were prideful creatures and while generous with their servants, most often considered humans and other races beneath them. They kept them as servants, sometimes elevating them to the status of favorite. And in very rare instances, a dragon lord would bond closely with his favorite, fall in love with her and make her his mate in all things. She became the equivalent of a wife well-loved.

  Magnus himself once told her of an ancient Dragon King who took a human woman to wife. When she died of old age, his grief over her passing ultimately destroyed him. He followed her along the Shadow Roads two years later.

  The dragons were fond of that story. It represented a conundrum for most of them, a riddle of emotion, of gentler love and an abiding faith that they, even with their vast storehouses of knowledge and lives long-lived, could hardly comprehend. As a race, they only tolerated each other for short intervals.

  Leida loved that story as much as the dragons, if for a different reason. She understood the devotion between the Dragon King and his human wife. She envied it, and wished to the depths of her being that such a story could have been hers and Magnus’s. But fate and dragon nature intervened, leaving her in a place far below and more desolate than the one she’d left four years earlier.

  “Are you ready, Leida?”

  Magnus’s question snapped her out of her reverie. She nodded and came to stand next to him, bowing to Gersel as he passed her. The dragon judge frowned at her, shook his head, and disappeared back into the cave entrance, his entourage of retainers close behind him.

  They started out at a brisk pace, but soon slowed as the underbrush grew thick and tangled. Magnus cleared a path for them, swinging the scythe in a smooth, continuous arc to hack his way through twisting vines and thorny bushes. He sometimes used a spell to free them from the clutching weeds, but kept the use of magic to a minimum so as not to alert any human wizard who might be in the vicinity. By midday, they had gone a fair distance, and Leida was both thirsty and hungry. They came to a small, clear stream, one fed by the snows of the nearby Parcius Mountains. She smothered a sigh of relief when Magnus turned to her and called a halt.

  Leida shrugged off her pack and made quick use of the water. It was icy, a shock to her skin, but felt heavenly as she bathed her face and neck, her fingers skirting the silver choker. She paused in her ablutions to watch Magnus as he dropped his pack and scythe and divested himself of the harness as well as his tunic and shirt.

  She caught her breath at the sight of sun-burnished skin and hard, lean muscle glistening with sweat. He was even more beautiful than she remembered, graceful and sinewy as he bent to the water, letting it cascade from his cupped hands so that it raced in shining rivulets over his shoulders, chest, and belly.

  “You will attend me, Leida.”

  Once again, his voice pulled her free of her bewitchment, and with numb fingers, she took the small cloth he offered her. He sat on the stream bank, facing her with an expression both scoffing and challenging. He’d agreed to take her to her daughter. She had promised to obey him without question. Now it was her time to prove her words held true.

  This was familiar territory, a ritual performed between them during the years they spent together. The nostalgia nearly brought her to tears as she dipped the cloth in the water and wrung it out. Whether she washed lustrous scales or smooth, heated flesh, it was the same as it had always been, a pleasure to serve him in such a way.

  He smelled of sweat and sunlight as she knelt before him, keeping her gaze level with his chest, even as she felt the weight of his stare on her. She bathed him with leisurely strokes, running the cloth in a long path over his shoulders and down his arms, passing over his narrow waist and the hard, flat abdominal muscles. His nipples tightened, sensitive to her touch as she lingered, gliding her thumb across each one in a seductive caress.

  The rhythm of his breathing changed, quickened in pace, and Leida risked a quick glance at his face. He continued to stare at her, unblinking, his features still and expressionless. Were she not so close to him, touching him, she might not have thought her touch affected him.

  She licked her lips, flushing as his gaze lowered, focusing on her tongue as it glided across her lower lip. She ached to have him kiss her, open his mouth over hers so that she might taste him again, feel the slick heat of his tongue as he filled her mouth. But he stayed still beneath her hands, watchful and silent as she leaned to dip the cloth into the water once more.

  Magnus bent his head, leaning into her as she rose higher on her knees to reach his back and nape. He’d tamed his hair with a leather tie, and she pulled the dark mane over one shoulder, exposing the back of his neck.

  Water sluiced down his spine as she continued to bathe the heat and sweat from him. Her fingertips tingled, sensitive to the fe
el of his skin. He felt good, better than good, and the temptation to lower her head and follow the path of the cloth with her lips was great. She knew the taste of him, remembered the flex of corded muscle as she sucked and bit gently along his neck, the way he shivered and arched his torso when she laved him with her tongue.

  Birdsong and the stream’s bubbling laughter faded as the world narrowed to just her hands, Magnus’s broad back, and the feel of his breath as he leaned closer and placed a light kiss on the swell of her breast above her thin bodice. Leida dropped the cloth, reaching to clasp his dark head in her hands.

  She moaned, a faint quavering sound, as Magnus nuzzled his face against her, his arms coming up to encircle her back and pull her close. Leida arched into him, fingers kneading his scalp while he trailed a line of open-mouthed kisses over her chest, pausing to clamp on her nipple and suckle her through the bodice’s material. Desire coursed through her blood, traveling from her toes to her thighs, coalescing into an ache that made her squirm in his arms and open her legs in silent invitation.

  Magnus paused in his ministrations, finally drawing back so that she could see the damp spot his mouth made on her bodice. He raised his head, pinning her with a hard stare, his haughty features drawn and flushed. The green eyes burned with promise, and his mouth turned down at the corners.

  “I cannot give you gentleness this time, Leida. I have had four years to imagine this. You are again my servant, but I give you this one choice. Nay-say me now or I will take you. Here, in the sun, beside the stream, exposed for any to see. I will ride you until you cry out my name and acknowledge my possession.” He kissed her hard, sucking on her lower lip briefly before pulling away. “What say you?” he asked, his voice harsh, challenging.

  Leida didn’t hesitate. Like Magnus, she’d had four years to remember moments between them such as these, and imagine more of them. There was so much bitterness and anger remaining, questions unanswered, resentments unresolved. But he had shown a kindness in taking her to retrieve Vala and accept her into his household. A small flame of hope burned within her, as bright as the fires of her longing for him.

  She kissed him back, a more tender gesture than his had been, but no less passionate. “I say yea,” she whispered against his mouth.

  Those three words, more breathed than spoken, resounded in his ears. Magnus pressed his palms between her shoulder blades, arching her closer so that her breasts flattened against him. Leida tipped her head back, the motion highlighting the graceful lines of her neck. He accepted her silent invitation, bending to press soft kisses against the skin above the choker. The feathery touches soon changed, became harder as desire heated his blood. She tasted of salt and apple blossom as he flicked his tongue along her jaw line, trailing a damp path to her ear and the sensitive spot behind it.

  He laughed, a low triumphant sound, when she shuddered in his arms. It was as before. Those dips and crevices, unique to her body, were still familiar to him. He knew the ones that made her whimper, made her moan and shiver at his touch. The inside of her right thigh was especially sensitive, and he was eager again to caress all those places and hear her gasp with pleasure.

  Her hands slid from his neck, massaging and kneading as they passed over his back and his trews, slipping inside to circle around to his abdomen and cup his bollocks. They both moaned then, and Magnus thrust against her hand as she lightly rubbed the ultra sensitive skin, her fingers playing across the ridged surface.

  Lust, passion—both rushed through his veins, made him desperate to get inside her, fuck her until she screamed his name while he emptied four years of bleak loneliness into her willing body. He kissed her roughly, filling her mouth with his tongue even as he filled her hand with his swollen cock.

  She uttered a half-hearted protest when he shoved her blouse off her shoulders and broke the ties of her bodice. The action bared her breasts, and Magnus buried his face in their fullness, marveling at the silky softness of her skin, the way she filled his hands. Her grip on his shaft tightened, sliding back and forth at a faster pace when he closed his lips over her pink nipple. The friction sent his senses into an uproar, and he suckled her breast with a slow tugging motion while teasing the other breast with his fingers.

  She writhed in his arms, whispering his name in a pleading voice. His hips moved with the stroke of her hand, the head of his cock and her palm becoming slick with a warm trickle of seed. Magnus took his mouth from her breast, leaving her nipple rosy and stiff from his ministrations. It was difficult to remain coherent, especially now with his woman draped half-naked in his arms, his shaft worked back and forth in her slippery grip. But he found his voice, slightly breathless, to bewitch her even more.

  “Do you remember,” he murmured against her cheek, “the fire festivals, when the young dragon queens prepared for their first mating flights? I presented you to the Dragon King who remarked on your unusual beauty.” Leida stilled in his arms, her hand pausing in its sweet torture. Magnus swirled his tongue in her ear, nearly purring. “The caves were hot, lit with the great fires and crowded with dragons. I was consumed with the mating fever, though I chose not to join the males in the mating flight and kept my human form. Do you remember?” he asked again.

  “I remember,” she said on a groan. “You took me, quick and hard in the shadows of an unlit pyre while your brethren roared and celebrated around us.” She squeezed him in reaction to the memory, and he gasped with the pleasure-pain of it.

  “You were so wet,” he growled, nuzzling her neck, “so ready for me. You came for me in moments, strong enough that I had to cover your mouth to smother your cries. You drew blood when you bit my hand.”

  “I’m ready now,” she panted and lunged for him, crushing her mouth against his, opening it so that it was she who plundered him, sucking on his tongue and kissing him hard enough that she split his upper lip, a stinging pain that served only to heighten his lust.

  Magnus spun her around in one swift motion, forcing her to her hands and knees. He shoved her skirts up to her waist, baring the pale, rounded buttocks to his appreciative gaze. His hands were dark against her skin as he spread her cheeks, exposing a small hint of dark curls and the curving strip of glistening pink flesh. The inside of her thighs were wet, and his nostrils flared at the scent of her arousal. Later, he promised himself, later he would remind himself of her taste, suck her into his mouth and feed from her until she was mindless with pleasure.

  For now though, he couldn’t wait. His cock throbbed, the pitch and swell of blood flowing into his groin almost paining him. Leida’s hips swayed, enticing him with their smooth, bare fullness. He lowered his trews, freeing his shaft, and plunged, sinking to his bollocks in her wet heat. She grunted at the invasion, a breathless whimper escaping her throat as she knelt, impaled on his cock.

  Magnus arched into her, his eyes rolling back at the incredible, familiar feel of her surrounding him. He stayed still for a moment, to savor that first flood of sensation and emotion swamping him and to allow Leida time to adjust to him. It didn’t take long. The alluring sway of her bottom fired his passions, and he gripped her hips with hard hands, driving into her with long, deep strokes.

  It was a mating, both primal and forceful and tempered by the swell of emotion that played havoc with his heart, even as the rocking motion of her bottom against his thighs played havoc with his body. Magnus traced intricate patterns over her torso with his fingers, tickling, squeezing, loving her even as he fucked her with abandon. His heartbeat thundered in his ears, almost drowning out the sounds of her moans, his own groans and guttural responses as he thrust faster into her tight heat.

  His climax struck him in a wave, his seed spurting from him in long pulses, filling her. He squeezed her waist, bending to kiss her nape and nuzzle the long black hair draped over her shoulders. She shivered when he gave one last thrust and slowly withdrew, his cock sliding out of her sheath on a milky stream of semen. Sweat poured off of him, and he breathed in short, heavy pants, mesmer
ized at the picture she made, quivering thighs spread and glistening with the result of his climax and her own arousal.

  The sun beat down, hot and bright on his shoulders as he sat back on his calves, bringing her with him so that she knelt upright, her clothing bunched between them. Magnus gazed over the graceful slope connecting her neck to her shoulder, admiring her breasts, the blush staining her normally pale skin and reddening her pink nipples.

  Leida’s head fell back against his shoulder as he cupped her left breast, teasing the nipple between thumb and forefinger. His other hand fought through the layers of skirt and shift, sliding over her thigh until he cupped her, rubbing the soft, damp curls against his palm. She pushed against his hand, a silent plea to do more than simply hold her.

  Magnus nibbled at her earlobe, giving her instructions as he continued playing with her nipple. “Spread your knees, my beauty. Wide.”

  She did as he asked, choking on a gasp when he slid two fingers inside her, his entry made easy by the lubrication of his spending. He plunged his fingers into her, using a third to smear his seed along the inner folds of her cunnus and over the tiny nubbin of flesh swelling at his touch.

  “You drip onto my hands, Leida. So wet, filled with my seed.” He bit gently on the slope between her neck and shoulder. “Fuck my fingers, Leida, as hard as you fucked my cock.”

  Leida writhed in his arms, moaning and pleading in a wordless chant as he thrust into her, rubbing her until she groaned loud and long, drenching his hand. She sagged in his hold, her body turned boneless as she gasped for breath and tried to control the shivers racing through her body.