Chapter 7
Holly felt as if she had entered a parallel universe as Dylan told her he had been born sixteen hundred years ago and repeated that one of his brothers had been King Arthur. That the eight suits of armor in the entrance hall of the castle belonged to the remaining Pendragon brothers, and it was Dylan and his other nine brothers who had been Arthur’s personal army, not the Knights of the Round Table, as legend claimed.
The fact that she almost laughed when Dylan told her the table hadn’t even been round but rectangular was a testament to how surreal she was finding all this. Or, more likely, that hysteria was becoming her primary emotion.
As for the invisible island of Annwn, situated off the Welsh coast, where Dylan claimed he and his brothers had been born to ten Welsh goddesses and fathered by Uther Pendragon…
Uther Pendragon had been real and was recorded in history. But, as far as Holly was aware, there had certainly been no mention of his having fathered eleven sons, one of them Arthur. That part of Arthur’s legend was all due to the romance of Hollywood, a romantic notion to add color to the movies.
Holly rose back to her feet. “Well, thank you for sharing all this with me. It’s all very interesting.” She gave him an insincere smile.
“I haven’t finished yet,” he said wryly.
She began to edge her way toward the door. “I’m feeling a little tired after my drive here, so I think I’ll go to bed now. You can tell me the rest of this tomorrow.” Hah, as if she was going to be here tomorrow! She intended to wait in her suite only long enough to be sure the household was all asleep before getting in her car and leaving.
Thank God she hadn’t actually told Dylan where she lived. With any luck—
“My brothers and I are all dragon shifters.”
Dylan’s latest statement didn’t seem so off-the-wall after the nonsense he’d already told her. Which definitely proved hysteria was taking over. “Well, of course you are.” She gave him another one of those placating smiles.
Another couple of steps and she would have reached the door—
Holly reared back as Dylan suddenly appeared between her and that door. “How did you do that?” A second ago, he’d been standing across the room, and now he was blocking her from making her escape.
He shrugged those impossibly wide shoulders. “Dragon shifters have preternatural speed. Amongst other things,” he added enigmatically.
“What does that even mean?” Holly snapped her impatience with this nonsense. “That you and your brothers can all turn yourselves into dragons?” She shook her head in disbelief.
“Well, not in here,” he conceded. “There isn’t enough room,” he added dryly. “And we call it shifting rather than turning.”
She huffed. “I’m really sorry you’re so ill, but I have no intention of endorsing your brothers’ tolerance of your wild imaginings. Nor do I appreciate them leaving me in here alone with you when you are obviously mentally disturbed and should be admitted to a clinic for treatment.”
“I really didn’t want to do it this way,” Dylan stated grimly before holding up his hands.
Holly gave a strangled gasp when she saw the long black talons that had pierced and now curled lethally from the tops of his fingers.
Dragon’s talons?
No, it had to be a trick of some kind. Dragons didn’t exist, were as much a part of myth and legend as—
As King Arthur?
“I was flying as my dragon the night I was brought into the hospital.” Dylan decided to forge ahead with the truth while Holly was still stunned by the sight of his talons. “Then everything suddenly went black, and I fell from the sky.”
“You fell from the sky,” she repeated through stiff lips. “Because you were flying as a dragon.”
“As my dragon,” he corrected smoothly.
Some of the shock was starting to leave her expression. “If you had fallen from the sky as a dragon or anything else, you would have broken every bone in your body.”
“And my dragon would have healed them.”
Holly closed her eyes briefly before opening them again. “You were fully dressed, didn’t have a scratch on you, and were completely human when you were brought into the hospital.”
“As I shift fully dressed, I’m always dressed the same when I return to my human form, and my dragon would have healed any injuries long before any human found me,” Dylan added.
She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation. It wasn’t surreal, it was bloody madness! “How are these things attached?” She grabbed one of his hands, turning it from side to side to see how those talons were fixed to the ends of his fingers. However Dylan was doing this, it was very clever, because she couldn’t see an attachment anywhere.
But neither did she believe they were real. That Dylan was really a dragon shifter. She really would be in a parallel universe if that was true.
“I know all this is difficult for you to believe,” Dylan soothed. “But I assure you, it’s the truth.” His other hand moved to stroke her cheek.
A hand that was now free of talons, Holly noted a little numbly as she released his other hand.
Or, perhaps not so numbly.
The caress of Dylan’s hand against her cheek brought back a return of the desire that had consumed her ever since she saw him again.
Was that only a few hours ago? It seemed so much longer!
Nor was it a desire, considering his delusional state, she could in all good conscience allow herself to act upon.
She leaned away from that caressing hand, able to breathe a little easier now that Dylan was no longer touching her. “It’s your truth,” she acknowledged. “Fortunately, I’m completely sane, so—”
“You’re my fated mate.”
Holly wished he would stop making these ridiculous statements. Statements so ludicrous, she felt compelled to refute them. “I don’t know what that means either,” she bit out. “Nor do I want to know,” she continued as he would have spoken. “I’m going to my room to collect my things, and then I’m leaving. And you are going to let me,” she added firmly.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” he said quietly. “Nor do you really want me to.”
“I just said—”
“I know what you said, Holly.” He stepped nearer, so close she was aware of every inch of his muscular body, the warmth of his breath ruffling the hair at her temple as he leaned closer still. “You kissed me earlier, and now we can’t be apart without causing both of us extreme discomfort, even pain. Something I cannot allow where my mate is concerned.”
For the moment, Holly chose to ignore the arrogance of that last statement. “What sort of discomfort?” She was in discomfort now. Very aroused. She had been so since Dylan touched her cheek. Her nipples were once again a tormenting ache. Her stomach churned. Her core burned and throbbed, and she was trembling all over.
“The same physical discomfort you’re suffering now, but tenfold,” he said softly.
She chewed on her bottom lip. “How do you know— Don’t tell me, your dragon senses told you!” she snapped angrily.
“Partly,” Dylan conceded. “But also because the moment you kissed me on the beach earlier, the mating heat began. When a dragon shifter meets its mate, he produces an aphrodisiac in his saliva—”
“Eww.”
“It isn’t as nasty as it sounds.” He gave a slight smile at her disgusted expression. “But because you’re my mate, that single kiss on the beach means some of that aphrodisiac has now entered your bloodstream. It causes extreme arousal, and I don’t need my preternatural vision to see your nipples are now so hard, they’re pressing against your bra and blouse. You’re also wet between your thighs, and it’s making my mouth water for a taste of honeysuckle and ripe peaches.”
Holly gasped. “Honeysuckle and ripe peaches?”
He nodded. “It’s your unique smell—”
“I do not smell!” She glared. “Damn it, I took a bath earlier.”
“Aroma, then,” he corrected gruffly. “It’s delicious, and it intensifies when you’re aroused.”
Holly’s cheeks felt as if they were on fire. “How long have you known I’m…I’m your mate?”
“Since the moment I met you. I just had a few things I needed to sort out before I could claim you,” he added as she frowned.
“Such as?”
“Why I blacked out in the first place. It’s never happened before, and the fact that it hasn’t happened since but did so again when you arrived here tells me that the two, your presence and the blackouts, are connected. That the surge of the mating aphrodisiac I found in my bloodstream is the probable cause. I’ll know more once I’ve tested my blood from today.”
She gave an impatient shake of her head. “I’m not going to stay here and listen to any more of these incredulous ramblings from a man who is obviously not completely sane.”
He gave a hard smile. “Sane or not, you want me.”
“I do not—” Her words were cut off by Dylan’s mouth claiming hers.
There was nothing in the least gentle about his kiss as his lips and tongue took and claimed, his arms holding her tightly against him.
Holly was barely aware of dropping her bag to the floor before her arms came up to grasp his shoulders. Muscles flexed beneath her palms, the hardness of Dylan’s chest crushing but also easing the ache in her breasts as he kissed her long and deeply.
Finally, Dylan’s lips moved to her jaw and down her throat, causing quivers of pleasure down the length of Holly’s spine before centering at her core. “You want this, Holly. You want me.”
She did want him. The unexpected climax in the bath earlier was nothing compared to the desire that now raged through her and held her completely in its thrall. In Dylan’s thrall.
“Tell me.” His teeth gently bit down the length of her throat, his breath a hot caress. “Tell me how much you want me to suck and fuck you.”
Wanting him in that way and actually voicing that want were two different things. Holly couldn’t—
She let out a low groan as the heat of Dylan’s hands moved beneath her sweater to cup her breasts. He watched her through narrowed lids as the soft pad of his thumbs stroking unerringly across the turgid nipples.
“I can ease this ache,” he promised gruffly. “If you’ll let me.”
“I don’t— I can’t—”
“You can. Tell me you want me,” he encouraged fiercely. “Say it!”
This was wrong, on so many levels. Not least because Dylan believed himself to be sixteen hundred years old, King Arthur’s brother, and that he could turn—shift—into a dragon at will.
He wasn’t completely sane.
Well, then neither was she.
How could she be when she made no protest to the warmth of his hands kneading and squeezing her breasts, increasing Holly’s need to have him take the hard pebbles at their tips into his mouth and suck on them?
“I want you,” she gasped as his thumbs and fingers, as if in answer to her need, now squeezed and pulled on her lace-covered nipples. “Oh God, I need you.”
She cried out in protest as, instead of continuing to caress her, Dylan removed his hands. That cry turned to a groan as Dylan swung her up into his arms and carried her through to the bedroom. He switched on the bedside lamp after laying her on top of the bed and kneeling beside her.
“These have to come off.” He unfastened her blouse and bra before removing them completely. His eyes darkened as he stared down at the fullness of her naked breasts. “You’re so beautiful,” he breathed huskily, his hands once against cupping her breasts before he lowered his head.
Holly’s back arched upward as Dylan’s moist tongue laved each of her nipples before drawing each of them in turn into the heat of his mouth.
At last.
The pleasure of having Dylan alternately suckle her nipples was pleasure beyond description. A feeling so intense, Holly’s release built up inside her, coursing hotly through her veins, until it exploded with a moist gush of juices.
“Hmm, as I said, honeysuckle and ripe peaches,” Dylan murmured with satisfaction as he rose to unfasten her jeans.
Holly was still too lost in the pleasure of her release to offer any resistance as he peeled her jeans and panties down her thighs before they joined the rest of her clothes on the floor. Or any embarrassment at being completely naked when Dylan was still fully clothed.
Dylan’s jean-covered knees nudged her legs apart, one of his hands moving to grasp her hip as the fingers of his other hand caressed through the trimmed auburn hair covering her mound. “So pretty,” he murmured huskily. “And so wet for me,” he added with satisfaction as those fingers now caressed where her nether lips were moist and swollen. He held her gaze with his as he raised those fingers to his lips and sucked and licked them clean of her juices. “Delicious.”
Holly had gone way beyond feeling self-conscious about her nakedness or anything else. She wanted more. Of Dylan. Of the pleasure he could give her.
Once again, he held her gaze with his as he lowered his head, and the moist heat of his tongue laved the remaining juices from those swollen lips before moving slowly upward to where her clit throbbed for his attention.
Holly couldn’t look away, was held mesmerized as she watched the intimacy of his hot and rasping tongue lick and lash her pulsing clit. Over and over again, until that nubbin was once again erect and sensitive to the slightest touch.
“Come for me, Holly.” His hot breath seared her aching flesh before his lips parted and he sucked her swollen clit into his mouth.
Holly was completely unable to resist his command, her hands reaching down to grasp hold of Dylan’s shoulders as she arched and thrust into yet another lengthy climax.
Holly lost track of time after that. Lost awareness of everything except Dylan and his pleasure-giving hands, mouth, and tongue. She had no idea how many times he took her to the top of that pinnacle before allowing her to crash over the other side. Half a dozen? Ten? Twelve? It didn’t matter how many times Holly climaxed, because each time that pleasure receded, she wanted him again. And again. It became a never-ending cycle of arousal, intense pleasure, and then a need to have that release again.
“I can’t,” she finally choked, fingers digging into his shoulders as she attempted to push his face away from her mound. “Dylan, I can’t.”
“Just once more,” he pleaded as he glanced up at her. His face was flushed, his lips slick with her juices. “You want me to.” His fingers stroked and caressed her swollen and throbbing clit.
“Once more,” she groaned at her body’s betrayal.
Somewhere after that last onslaught of intense pleasure, Holly lost consciousness.