Chapter 15
The wind whistled through Reyna’s hair. She flapped her arms and legs in every direction. She couldn’t get the sad reality to penetrate her mind. She was falling through thin air, plunging toward the jagged rocks far below.
Harkniss Keep zipped out of sight. Its craggy summit stuck up into the air above her head. It got smaller and smaller the farther she fell.
The cold night air blasted through her clothes. The Keep’s warm halls would never drive that chill away from her again. She would never see Damen or Rose or any of her friends again.
This was the worst of all possible outcomes. If she stayed on the planet, she would have Damen. If she left the planet, she would have Rose. Now she would have neither of them. She would crash to her death and oblivion would take her.
Why, oh why did she hesitate to make her decision? Why did she shillyshally around what she really wanted? Why did she waste the precious hours of her life worrying about what Rose or Fay or anyone else would think? She should have seized her life with both hands and never let go until she wrung her own heart’s desire from it.
The last rays of the setting sun touched the mountaintops and turned them bright lavender. She had to say good-bye to this beautiful world, too. That hurt worst of all. Just when she thought she’d found what she was looking for, it slipped through her fingers. Now she would never know the happiness she enjoyed in these last brief days.
Something changed in the sky above her. Out of the clouds, a shape pulsed with golden sunlight. Then the shadows swallowed it again.
All of a sudden, the shape reappeared and a dragon rocketed toward her from above. She twisted around to get a better look at it. It was the same color as the violet sky behind it, so she couldn’t see it clearly. Her mind flipped. It was Damen.
He streaked out of the sky so fast she never had a chance to cry out. He folded his wings against his back and dove straight at her. He screeched through the air with the wind whining over his scales.
He hit her with all his great bulk, and his talons closed around her body. He knocked her out of the sky, and the next thing she knew, he was soaring upwards with her into the gleaming clouds.
Reyna dangled from his claws in limp shock. What was happening? She couldn’t force her mind to function. He swooped over the Keep and down into the black valleys. He whooshed past trees and between crags to a part of the forest she never knew existed. She hadn’t been out of the Keep since she set foot on this planet.
The sun sank below the mountains, and the clouds turned dark grey. All the light drained out of the world, and the stars twinkled between the clouds. Damen took one more wide sweep up into the sky and came back down to the ground.
He laid Reyna on the cold grass next to a stream. He stepped in a circle around her with his head weaving to and fro. He studied her with his fierce eyes.
She stared up into the sky for a moment. Then she rolled over into the fetal position. She closed her arms over her stomach and groaned.
“Reyna? Are you all right?”
Damen knelt down next to her, and his hand rubbed her back. She couldn’t look at him. She closed her eyes and buried her face in the grass.
“Reyna? Look at me.”
She couldn’t look. She couldn’t see a man where that dragon used to be.
He took hold of her shoulders and turned her over. He tried to pry her body apart to straighten her out. Reyna exploded in a frenzy of twisting and convulsing. She wrenched her body back and forth to shake herself loose from his grasp. “Let go of me! Leave me alone! Get away from me!”
He held on tight. The harder she twisted, the tighter he held. “Reyna! Look at me!”
“I can’t! I never want to see you again. Leave me alone.”
“What’s the matter with you? You’re distraught. You almost fell to your death.”
“Get your hands off me! You’re a monster! I never want to have anything to do with you again. I’ll never let you touch me again.”
“I can’t leave you here, Reyna. We’re miles from the Keep, and you would die out here overnight. Let me take you back to the Keep where you can get warm. Then you can decide if you ever want me to touch you again.”
“You want to tear me apart with your claws. I saw you. You changed into a dragon when I came into your room. I saw you then. You’re a hideous lizard. I never should have let you touch me in the first place.”
“Don’t talk like that, Reyna. You love me, and I love you.” His voice cracked.
“Everybody warned me, but I wouldn’t listen. I turned Whitney away. He’s the one I should be with, not you. You disgust me. You’re filthy. You’re not human. Get off of me!”
He stopped trying to reason with her. He folded her in his arms and crushed her against his chest. She flew into a rage of kicking and scratching and biting at the parts of his shoulders she could get at with her teeth. He weathered the storm and clutched her against his body until she went quiet and still.
She slumped into his embrace. Her arms fell onto the ground. Damen loosened his grip and held her back to look at her. Her head lolled sideways when he laid her on the ground. Then he stretched out behind her and curled his body around her.
How much time passed before Reyna came back to herself, she didn’t know. She woke in the dead of night. The cold air smarted on her skin. She shivered and hugged herself.
Damen’s arms closed around her tighter. “You’re cold.”
Her teeth chattered so she couldn’t answer.
“We have to get you back to the Keep.”
“Not yet. Not yet.”
“You can’t stay out here.”
“Can’t you light a fire or something?”
“Not in this dark.”
She didn’t say anything for a while.
“I have to get you back to the Keep, but it would take all night to walk there. I could fly you there in a matter of minutes, but that would mean I would have to change. I don’t want to frighten you again and send you into another fit.”
She closed her eyes and buried her chin against her chest. She couldn’t remember her convulsion very well. Someone else said those words. She never kicked and fought to get away from her Damen. She never wanted to push him away. Her own terror did that, not her.
“There is one other way I can keep you warm tonight, Reyna, but I don’t want to run the risk of sending you into shock again.”
“What is it?”
“If I change back into a dragon, I can wrap myself around you and keep you warm with my body. Our skin radiates warmth, but if I don’t change, it won’t be strong enough to keep you alive.”
“Do it then.”
“Are you sure you won’t fall apart on me again? You won’t lose your head and fight me off?”
“No, I’m okay now. Go ahead and do it.”
He peeled himself off her back, and the cold air rushed in to take his place. She huddled into a ball to protect herself from it, but the next moment, something hard and rough and warm surrounded her on all sides. Thick muscled coils wrapped all around her and pulsed warmth into her frozen limbs. Her teeth stopped chattering, and she started to relax.
She dared not open her eyes to look at him. Seeing him hurtling out of the sky to tackle her in mid-air was bad enough. She’d seen his outline in his room, and she saw shades of him when he first took her. She saw him for a brief instant outside the eastern entrance, but never face front in all his magnificent fury.
Would she ever get used to this? Could she ever reconcile herself to mating with a dragon? How could she ever look at him the same way again?
The deep rumble purred against her back. His massive sides rose and fell with his breath, and she breathed into his warmth. As long as she kept her eyes closed, he was still her Damen, the man she loved, the man she would sacrifice everything for her. The purple dragon didn’t exist.
His warmth put her to sleep, and she dreamed the same pleasant dreams she’d grown accustomed to in this place. She soared over the countryside on outstretched wings. She scouted forests and mountain ranges and tumbling streams.
She woke with the sunshine on her face. She blinked and opened her eyes before she remembered. A thick length of something purple and scaly lay across her field of view. She studied it at close range. Purple spikes ran down its length and disappeared somewhere under her head.
When she moved, she found the thing propped between her knees. Heat radiated from it into her crotch. She ached to press herself down on it, to ride it to the peak of orgasmic fulfillment, but she didn’t dare. She peeled her cheek off it where her head lay pillowed on its warm surface. She looked around. It ended in a pointed tail.
It heaved and slithered away when she sat up. She turned away and pushed herself up onto her feet. What was she doing, cuddling up to that thing in her sleep? Did Damen slide his tail between her legs and under her head, or did she do that by herself without knowing it?
The instant she got onto her feet, he twisted and flipped over. His tail whipped out of the way, and his long neck uncurled. His huge body contorted around, and he rolled up onto his four legs. He stepped around to face her. “I’m sorry, Reyna. I should have changed back before you woke up. Turn around, and I will change now.”
Her hand shot out. “Wait! Don’t change yet. I want to look at you.”
He stood still in all his purple grandeur. Reyna stared at him. Why did he surprise her? She’d seen him a thousand times in her visions. She just never realized that Damen—her own beloved Damen—and the purple dragon were one and the same being.
She gazed on him for the first time. A good night’s sleep settled her mind, and the terror of her near-death fall passed away. She could look at him now. She could hold his dragon self and his human self together in her mind and accept them.
He moved his head from side to side. She took a step toward him. He cocked his head sideways and scrutinized her with piercing eyes. He rustled his wings along his back. She took another step forward.
She walked around him in a complete circle. She studied every inch of him, from his spiky head to the tip of his tail. She stopped next to his shoulder and put out her hand. Her fingertips hovered over his shining purple scales. Then she let her hand drop onto his skin.
A shiver of excitement went through her at the touch. She ran her hand down the smooth scales. The purple color glowed between her fingers. She couldn’t move her hand up, though. The scales caught her and held her hand still.
She petted his sides until he closed his eyes and purred. She could barely murmur under her breath in wonder. “What does it feel like? What’s it like to be a dragon?”
He opened his eyes and craned his neck around to look at her. “It feels perfectly natural. It’s the man who feels strange sometimes. I can understand how Rahni feels.”
“What do you mean? How does Rahni feel?”
“He prefers to keep his dragon form. He prefers to live as a dragon in the mountains than as a man in the Keep. He almost never comes inside anymore. Sometimes I wonder if he can still change back into a man or if he’s forgotten how after all these years.”
“He can change. I saw him as a man up there.”
“You did?”
“He was sitting with Asya. They were having a conversation.”
“Hmm. I suppose that’s good. I envy him sometimes. He lives his own life, without answering to anyone.”
“Would you leave and never come back?”
He bent his head low and nuzzled his forehead against her hip. “I will never leave —at least not as long as you’re here.”
“And if I leave?”
“I might. I wouldn’t want to stay around if you weren’t here.”
“You wouldn’t take a wife from another Clan?”
“I don’t want a wife from another Clan. I want you. You’re not like them.”
“I’m not a dragon like they are.”
“That’s what I mean.”
He ran his head down her leg, and his long coils traced her curves. That sensuous movement sparked a tidal wave of overwhelming emotion in her. Her cunt ached for him. Her heart yearned to circle her arms around his neck—his dragon neck, his human neck, any neck he had.
She closed her eyes and let the yearning suck her down into the dark depths. She leaned her cheek against his shoulder and took shelter in his presence. He was…he wasn’t a dragon or a man. He was only himself. She loved the spirit inside that body, inside any body he happened to be using at the time.
He slithered his head back and forth across the crease where her ass met her legs. His spikes bumped into her cleft and touched her ass. She leaned her ass back into his powerful curves while her head rested on her folded arms against his side.
His breath rasped through his smoking nostrils, and he rumbled deep in his throat. All the doubts and questions from the Keep drifted far away and evaporated with the morning mist. Nothing remained but the two of them, here alone.
He sighed and moved away. He left her in a torment of excitement and desire. He whipped around to face her. “Climb on my back, and I’ll fly you to the Keep.”
She opened her eyes and gazed up at him. “Forget the Keep.”