Chapter Thirty-seven
She was beginning to accept him, her body adjusting to accommodate his size, flooding her with the wetness of desire, bringing her to a near panicked writhing beneath him. Calidum’s entire world consisted of the feel of her – so tight, so fucking tight – he was losing his mind. She gripped him like nothing he’d ever imagined as he moved within her, withdrawing with careful slowness so that he could drive back into her.
Mine.
He hadn’t meant to think it, really, it was just there. She was his, and he was proving it.
His teeth played at her nipple; he had never wanted to sink them into something so badly in all his long, long life. He used the pleasure he gave her as a diversion and prepared to thrust into her again. He almost shook with the need to do so.
And then her hand was in his hair. He’d forgotten he’d freed one of them, releasing her wrist to cover her mouth.
The touch of her fingers was like magic; it sent pixie-dust sensations through his skin, re-focusing his mind. He heard her thoughts. She wanted to see his eyes.
Calidum released the nipple he so badly wanted to pierce and looked up, catching her gaze. There in the incredible beauty of those violet eyes, he saw his salvation. He saw this woman, this Legendary, this Nomad, this pillar of strength who had battled the Traitor over and over, who had become the most stunning dragon Calidum had ever beheld, and who could have rejected him, left him unforgiven as the outcast he’d been for thousands of years – and she was taking him in. She was surrendering to him. To him.
She wanted him to claim her. She was becoming his queen.
Mine, he thought again. And he smiled.
It was not a kind smile. He’d waited long enough.
With the full force of his fury, he shoved his hardness into her, eliciting another cry from her throat. But he let it sound out and used his hand on her body instead, sliding it across her taut, toned stomach to the curls between her legs. He parted them, pressing inward until he found the hard, telltale nub of her pleasure.
She bucked beneath him, and he laughed. His other hand released her wrist as well, and moved to her hair, grasping it firmly at the back of her head. Gently, he tugged, forcing her to arch her neck. The dual bites Arach had left taunted him. They waited, no doubt sore, and small drops of Eva’s fevered blood had escaped them to trail across her pale flesh.
He held her tight, knowing she would instinctively draw away. She wouldn’t be able to help it. He lowered his lips to her throat, closed his eyes, and inhaled. The scent of her blood tightened his grip on her, and his fingers at her core pressed harder. Eva moaned, bucking again, thrashing as if to get away. The pleasure was too intense; he could hear her scattered thoughts like shooting stars, burning themselves away as they crossed the night.
He increased his pace inside her, pulling out faster now so that she had no time to adjust before he was plunging back in, stretching her to her limits. She continued to move beneath him, arching her back against him in a way that drove him mad. But she was fueled by the strength his blood gave her, and by her own growing desire, and he needed her stillness for what he was about to do.
I’m going to have to tie her down, he thought distantly. But instead, he stayed lodged deep inside her, gently kissed the side of her throat, and pressed expertly on her clitoris. Within short seconds, Eva wrapped her arms around him, dug her nails into his back, and came around his cock.
She screamed again, this time in pure pleasure. Below, she clenched and unclenched, her muscles innocently massaging his dick so that he was suddenly seeing spots, and his vision tunneled. He ground out a desperate sound, low and deep, a growl that was more monster than man. And then, as she was wrapped tight in this cocoon of erotic bliss, Calidum carried out the rest of his plan.
He maintained his hold on her hair and brought his other hand to the side of her face. He touched her tenderly, in a way she would barely notice through her haze of contentment. Gingerly, he tilted her head, again exposing the length of her throat. He eyed the bite marks menacingly. These were more personal, more meaningful than the one Arach had left on her wrist. They had to be dealt with another way.
Calidum bared his teeth – and bit down.
His fangs slid tightly into the twin wounds, stretching them as he had stretched her below, but this time there was no pleasure in it, and he knew that. Another man had attempted to claim her. Calidum was a dragon, and not just any dragon. He was as dragon as they came, and dragons possessed their mates completely. Entirely. In every way.
They’d both known it would come to this, that Cal would make Arach’s marks his own. But the pain was the same, warning or not, and he’d been right that she would fight him.
She screamed, and beat at him suddenly, torn from her initial pleasure by the cruelty of teeth. But Cal kept his grip firm and didn’t move a muscle, waiting for her to calm down beneath him. She carved up his back; he felt blood running and it almost made him smile. She was bruising him, tearing into him, but he remained steadfast in his task.
This would be done.
His hardness throbbed inside Eva’s beautiful body, insistent and aching, not at all abated by the fact that he now tasted her blood on his tongue. His teeth were in her throat, his cock in her warmth. She was his – his – in every single sense, and he yearned for nothing more than to show her exactly what that meant.
But he waited.
And before a full minute passed, Eva released a shaking sob and returned her hand to his hair, gripping it as tightly as he held her. Thank you… her mind whispered. She’d wanted him to do it, to erase Arach’s presence from her once and for all.
Cal closed his eyes and sucked gently, pulling just the tiniest bit of her blood onto his tongue. It was like wine, heady and powerful, refueled with a Legendary’s magic by his own infusion. He could have kept drinking. He could have just stayed there and rammed himself into her again and again and taken them both over the edge of oblivion. But they both knew he wasn’t finished.
His free hand found her breast and tweaked the nipple just hard enough to be nearly painful. She gasped, and he did it again as he pulled his dick out a few precious inches. She moaned when he took that hardened nipple between his fingers and twisted, pinching hard enough that she arched into his hand to ease the pain.
As she did, he withdrew his fangs from the bite that was now his. Eyes still closed, he ran his tongue over his teeth and almost shuddered at the taste of her. As he slowly pressed his length back into her, he grasped her chin and turned her toward him for a kiss.
The kiss was hard and deep; he was running out of will, nearly at the end of his rope with need, and all the while he moved within her – in and out. He pulled away slowly, tauntingly, and drove forward brutally, deeply. They settled into a rhythm, and he heard her heart race, caught the scent of renewed desire, and knew he was once more taking her to pleasure’s plummeting cliffs.
The pain of his bite was all but forgotten when he again focused on her throat and the second bite mark. He was almost out of his mind himself at that point, driven near blind by the feel of her around him and beneath him. But he moved over the marks, bared his fangs, and did what had to be done, sinking them hard and fast into the holes already there.
This time, there was no scream. She made a sound, and her body lurched beneath him, but the sound was different and laced with lust, a mixture of pain and rapture, of surrender and pleading, the sound of a woman on the very, very edge.
Calidum smiled wickedly against her flesh and carefully drew her blood into his mouth, swallowing the precious liquid that made him drunk with power. He released her hair and let his hands slide down her body, circling her breasts before he squeezed them both gently and ran his thumbs over her nipples.
Again he twisted. Again he pulled. Eva responded to every manipulation like a beautiful, precious puppet on his wickedly drawn strings, and as he quickened the pace, driving harder and faster into her tight core, he took another drink and swallowed.
Mine, he thought again.
You.
Are.
Mine.
Eva exploded into her climax, her body going rigid, her breasts thrust forward, her head flying back as it rocked through her like an electric bomb.
Calidum saw stars when that pulsing, ringing climax mercilessly wrenched from him his own orgasm. He pulled his teeth from Eva’s neck and rose above her, roaring into the night as he came into her with violent fury. Again and again, he released his seed deep within her, searing her with yet another part of him as he once and for all claimed his mate. In every possible way.
Across the realms, dragons everywhere heard the bellowed cry, distant but strong, and knew what it was.
The Dragon Realm now had a queen.