Shadows (5 page)

Chapter Eight

“
She said yes!”
Kol vibrated with the excitement of her answer, unable to resist sending the thought out to all the others who could hear. Now he would be able to have her without betraying his brethren, forcing them into another long sleep.

“I heard her, Shadow,”
Kris sent the thought from somewhere in the darkness at the other end of the room.
“Don’t leave me hanging, finish the final step. It’s MY turn next.”

“Let me savor this moment. I know you’re eager, but trust me, I think we’ll both want time to recover so we can enjoy being a part of the Nexus. As will the others. And you can’t begin without all of us.”

“Kol,” he said, regaining his senses and gazing down at the beautiful woman in his arms. “My name is Kol. This may sting a bit.”

Hallie arched her back, thrusting her breasts up to him. Kol nuzzled them with his long snout and she laughed. “That tickles.”

“Sorry, I’m not used to staying in this form for very long. The world has always been a little too small for me.”

With a long, forked black tongue, he traced the pattern of the mark between her breasts: a medallion-shaped crest with a coiled dragon within—black to represent his color. She hissed in response to the sting and he quickly exhaled a steamy breath to soothe her skin. The magic of their bond wasn’t instant, but within the span of a heartbeat his craving for possession dissipated, replaced only with the need to pleasure her.

Unable to resist the allure of her twin, pink-tipped mounds he darted his tongue out to taste her.

She sighed and arched further, grabbing onto him and pressing her mouth against the side of his, her breast closer to his tongue.

“Go lower,” she whispered.

He complied, flicking his tongue along the smooth skin of her stomach. Her hips twitched and she spread her legs for him when he reached the fringed mound of her sex. Slowly and delicately he parted her slick lips with the forked tip of his tongue. She tasted of earth and rain and sky. He delved deeper, tasting, teasing, enjoying how her juices flowed over his tongue the deeper he went.

A low, contented purr rose up through his chest. She was his now, and her surrender to him tasted even sweeter than the creamy dew between her thighs. Her orgasm took her more slowly that time, washing through her over several seconds and leaving her limp and languid in his talons. Kol relished the clench of her muscles around his tongue, letting it linger inside her a moment before withdrawing and licking his lips.

She winced and shifted within his loose clutch.

“I can change if this is uncomfortable for you,” he rumbled.

“Don’t you dare. Now that I’ve had a taste of what dragon magic is good for, you’re showing me all the tricks.”

“I’ve never made love to a woman like this. I think I would hurt you.”

“What good is such a beautiful shape if you don’t use it? I’m sure we can improvise.”

Kol blinked at her. He couldn’t possibly… he glanced down at the massive ebony erection between his scaled thighs, easily the size of one of his arms in his human shape. He remembered how tight she had been around his fingers and tongue. It didn’t matter how juicy her sweet pussy was, there was no way he’d fit. Sweet Mother, he wanted to be inside her, but to abuse her perfect pussy that way was unthinkable. There had to be a way to please her without hurting her.

“As you wish,” he said finally. “But we’re going slow and we’re doing it my way.”

Eveline had asked him for one thing at the end, and he had failed her. He wouldn’t let Hallie be disappointed.

He shifted into his human form, leaving only his wings still manifested, twin extensions of his wide shoulders. He carried her to the pool, then stepped off the edge, still holding her cradled in his arms. Before his feet could hit the water, he extended both wings and hovered, lowering them slowly into the warm, dark pool until his feet rested on the bottom. He let his wings fade back into his shoulder blades.

“Stretch out,” he whispered when Hallie’s body broke the surface of the water. “I’ll support your weight.”

Hallie obeyed, stretching out across the surface with her arms above her head.

“That’s it. Arms out. Feel the warmth. Let it sink into you. You swam too quickly to find me earlier, the soak would have done you good.”

“Let me guess, dragon magic has healing properties?” she asked

“Among other things, yes.”

Kol kept one hand beneath the center of her back, then moved the other over her. She tensed when the additional support disappeared. He quickly bent his head and kissed her, a long, languid press of lips sliding across lips, tongue thrusting between until she relaxed again.

“Stay with me,” he said.

“It feels like I’m weightless,” she said. “But I can feel your heat. And your cock keeps rubbing against my hip.”

“I know,” he growled. “I’ll have it inside you soon enough. Can you feel this?”

He caressed the underside of her breast, tracing fingertips around and around until they converged on her nipple. She sighed, growing even more pliant under his touch. The scent of her arousal grew stronger with each caress and he inhaled. Eveline had smelled like this and he had always loved drawing the aroma out of her along with the sweet sounds she made. He gave Hallie’s nipple a light pinch and enjoyed her sharp intake of breath and the way her chest began to rise and fall more quickly.

He shifted his hand to the other breast, repeating the action while he bent to wrap his lips around the first. The skin of her areola puckered against his tongue.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Oh yes.”

“Shh. Quiet now. Just let yourself feel me.”

She nodded slightly and her mouth opened with a soft little gasp when his fingertips trailed lower, past her navel, and slipped between her pussy lips. Her bud pulsed under his touch, already swollen and ready again, but it would have to wait. He slipped two fingers between her lips and sank them into her, deeper than before. The magic that infused the water provided lubrication to supplement her own fluids. Her hips raised up to meet each slow thrust of his fingers and her slick muscles tightened around them.

Kol continued sucking and teasing her breasts with his mouth and gradually added another finger to her wet depths. Then another. Soon he had four fingers in.

“Tell me if you want me to stop.”

She shook her head. “No. I want to feel you. All of you.”

His cock throbbed hot against the soft swell of her backside. She could take him as he was in his human form, but not his true size. His siblings had always experimented with their sizes, the twins in constant competition with who could manifest bigger than the other. Preferring his human form he’d never quite mastered the middle-ranges. It was either his human form, or his dragon form, no in between.

He had an idea of how to find a suitable middle ground with Hallie. With her marked now, he hoped it would work.

“I’m going to add another now. Promise me you’ll tell me if I’m hurting you.”

“How… how many?” she panted.

He swallowed hard as he gently pressed, adding his thumb to the tight, wet sheathe of her. Beads of sweat trickled down his temples. Her pussy clamped like a vise around his hand.

“Relax. Take a deep breath and relax. Hallie, I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You’re not h-hurting. Oh, God, Kol. That feels too good.”

When she relaxed again, he pushed a little deeper and murmured in her ear, “What feels good? This?” He twisted his hand so that the knuckle of his thumb rubbed against her sweet spot, then slowly began to close his fingers into a fist. She bucked violently, splashing water and gripping his arm tightly with one hand.

“Oh God, yes!”

His closed fist pushed, rubbed, and pushed incrementally deeper. Soon, he’d reached her limit and pulled back out. The walls of her pussy clenched and released around him. Hallie’s head fell back and she moaned incoherently when he pushed his hand back into her to the wrist.

He found it hard to draw breath now, watching her come undone under his careful attention. Her pussy clenched around his hand, but she took it without complaint. On the contrary, she had grown even wetter.

It seemed that not a drop of blood was left in his head to keep him sane—it had all rushed to his pulsing groin, his thick shaft eager to be inside that hot, velvet chamber and feel her milk him until he came.

Hallie cried out, low and rough. He kissed her and held tight with his free hand while she came.

He carefully pulled his hand out of her and spun her on the surface the water so that her legs were on either side of his hips. “I think you’re ready. Promise me you will speak if anything hurts.”

She gave him a feverish, low-lidded look and nodded. The flush of her glowed in the darkness, but she seemed to see him, too, and stared in rapt appreciation.

“You know you glow in the dark a little bit?” she said. “Can I see more of you?”

“It’s just my sweat and breath. I can make them do things. Like this.” He tilted his head back and exhaled deeply. The breath luminesced in a cloud above them both, before settling over his skin, leaving a sheen that she could see.

She surged up in the water, wrapped her legs tightly around his waist and gripped his shoulders.

“You’re beautiful,” she said and pressed her lips hungrily against his.

He gripped her hips, guiding her pussy down over his stiff and, for the moment, still human-sized cock. He could have come from the single stroke, as long as it had been since the last time, but knew he had to make this last, for her. They’d have other chances for other fun afterward. A lifetime of other chances.

“Oh, baby, that’s it. Now get bigger. Show me that beautiful dragon again,” she said.

He took a deep breath, gathering the magic into him. The process of shifting was gradual, the transformation occurring over several seconds. His cock grew along with the rest of him, pressing tighter and tighter against the walls of her pussy. At the same time, he began fucking her, surging up into her slick, inviting channel.

As he grew, she took him. Every thick, swelling inch of him thrust into her. He was too lost in ecstasy to realize that he’d done it. He’d fully shifted and she hadn’t said to stop. Now, she was moaning and writhing hard against him, her legs splayed wide across his scaled hips, working herself on him. Her pussy muscles clenched and released while she gripped his shoulders, riding him and meeting the surging rhythm of his thrusts.

He clutched her hips in his taloned claws and bent his head to sweep the forked tip of his tongue around her nipples, both at once. With slow, careful effort, he lifted her up his length, then let her sink back down. The tight, wet friction sent tremors of pleasure through him, all the way to the tip of his tail.

Haunches braced beneath him, he leaned forward, laying her down along the surface of the water. She gazed up at him, face constricted in desperate tension, but she relaxed and let her arms fall back to float in the water above her head. With one gentle talon, he lifted each of her legs, pulling them up to rest her ankles against his wide, black-scaled chest.

“Give me your Nirvana again, Hallie. I want to feel it surge into me when I give you mine.”

“Y-you can feel it?” she asked breathily.

He resumed the slow, push-pull of his hips against hers and looked down to where they were joined. Her pussy was stretched impossibly around the thick, black girth of his shaft. Her pretty little clit throbbed bright pink in contrast. He dipped his snout and snaked out his tongue to tease at the tiny bundle. Her tangy juices tingled on his tongue. He licked again and she arched her back. The tighter clench of her pussy muscles and the sudden slackness of her legs spreading just a little wider signaled she was close.

“Give it to me
now
,” he growled, swirling his tongue around her clit and slamming hard into her. The hot friction drove him wild. He couldn’t hold back a second longer, but it seemed neither could she.

She yelled and thrashed in the water. He held her torso to keep her head above the surface. Wet ripples flowed over her breasts and stomach, lapping at her skin with the undulations of her body while she came. Her pussy pulled relentlessly at his cock, urging the hot stream of cum that flowed into her. A loud roar escaped his throat as he came and his balls constricted, sending every last drop into her willing depths.

She fell limp in his grasp, gasping for breath when it was over. Worried, he quickly shifted back to his preferred shape and lifted her, sliding his half-hard cock out of her. He extended his wings and lifted them both out of the water, landing at the edge of the pool.

Stooping, he began to lay her down, but the hard floor of his chamber wouldn’t do for her. With the power of a thought and a heavy exhale, a large, black bed formed in the spot where he’d lain asleep for five hundred years waiting for her to find him. He laid her gently on its soft surface, then climbed on behind her and tucked her into his arms.

“Women in this century are surprising, and wonderful,” he said, caressing her temple with his lips.

“No,” Hallie murmured. “Just this woman, and you’d better not forget it.”

Chapter Nine

H
allie woke a little later to the sensation of a warm, flesh-and-blood body beneath her cheek. She opened her eyes and glanced around in surprise. The chamber was awash in a warm glow from sconces like the others in the temple.

She looked at Kol’s sleeping face for the first time without the shade of darkness or invisibility between them. His fine features were startling. She didn’t usually go for pretty boys, preferring… well, large and
swarthy
, if she had to put a name to it. But she decided he was a far cry from unappealing, and he did have the
large
part down, even when he wasn’t in his dragon form.

His black eyebrows, twitched in his sleep, perhaps from a dream of her. His skin was very fair, almost translucent, but his hair was jet black and, at the moment, sticking out in every direction.

Full, pink lips parted when she grazed her fingertips over them. This was the mouth that had started it all—its wide bow shape was very kissable. She traced fingertips over the line of his jaw, down over his neck and shoulder, across hairless, angular planes of chest and abs. Strange, she’d had the sense of a kind of velveteen texture over his scales when he was in his dragon form and she could feel the same thing now, but couldn’t see it. Whatever it was, it tingled like soft down against her palm when she moved her hand lower. She paused at the swath of black fabric covering the rising erection that rested in a long, thick shape beneath his navel.

Hallie gently tugged the sheet off, baring him to her entirely from head to hips.

God, he was as magnificent like this as he was shifted. His cock twitched under her light touch, fully awake and aroused even while Kol still slept. The sight of him caused a pleasant, aching heat to grow between her thighs. Experimentally, she clenched her vaginal muscles tight, testing for pain, but there was nothing aside from a comfortable soreness.

She raised up slowly and quietly, straddled his hips, and lowered herself down the thick length of him, enjoying the pleasant friction of that first stroke.

With the third stroke he finally roused enough to push back, though it may have just been a reflex. His brow creased in confusion and his hands slid up to her thighs.

“Hmm, you just take what pleases you, don’t you?” he murmured, finally opening his eyes.

“I have this little mark that says I can, at least from you,” she said.

“You could never take from me, Hallie. All I am, I give you freely.” He shoved his cock harder into her for emphasis, then sat up, wrapping his arms around her.

Eyes as dark as night gazed into hers while she took him in. Did he even have pupils? She leaned closer and saw that yes, there was the barest hint of variegation in his iris, but it nearly disappeared when his pupils widened in response to the clench of her pussy around him.

His hands slid down her back to grip her ass and she shifted to wrap her legs around his hips. In movements that mimicked his water-borne fucking before they slept, he tilted her, laying her flat on the bed. The angle let him sink deeper and she sighed in pleasure at the way even his human cock could reach all the best parts of her just fine. But she was an adventurous spirit, she had to know how it felt to fuck a dragon.

This time she came only with the deep strokes of his cock rubbing against her slick walls and the whispers of endearment in her ear. Dirty endearments, like, “I loved the way your sweet pussy tasted when you came on my tongue. I love the taste of your Nirvana when you give it to me. It tastes like power. It feeds me.”

The pulse of his orgasm, hot inside her sent her beyond the edge and farther.

Her sensibilities kicked in when the pleasure subsided and she pulled away abruptly, that cold, “Oh shit” feeling sinking into her. She’d let him come inside her. Could dragons and humans even crossbreed? She shifted and sat at the edge of the bed, dipped her fingers between her thighs and brought back cream-covered fingertips. The heady scent of the two of their juices mixed made her a little dizzy and undeniable lust welled up in her again, but she’d already been a fool once. This she needed to know, and now.
More like yesterday
, she thought, but she’d been too overcome with the powerful pull of lust to think straight.

“Kol,” she said in a quavering voice.

“What is it?” he said, immediately by her side with a comforting hand at her back.

“Can… you get me pregnant?”

She stared straight at him, watched concern mix with confusion and a kind of pleased curiosity. “If you want me to, I will, but it isn’t possible in the temple.”

She shook her head, confused. “No, I mean
dragons and humans
. Can we… you know… have babies. Christ, I can’t believe I was so stupid not to even
ask
before. I brought condoms but nobody’s done any screwing during this trip besides Erika and Eben. I haven’t been on the pill in months.”

His brows drew together. “You don’t want to get pregnant?”

“Will you just answer the goddamn question?”

“Yes! That’s what we do. It’s the whole point of the ritual, to find suitable mates for the purpose of, well,
mating
. But…” His face relaxed and he lowered his head and sighed. “This is about the man who chased you. The baby you weren’t prepared to have … or to lose.”

Hallie couldn’t respond, her throat already too knotted up with frustration and incomprehension.

“Hallie, there is no such thing as an unwanted, unexpected dragon child. We breed when we are ready.” He touched the black emblem etched above her heart. “Your mark ensures that even if I wanted it, if you weren’t ready, it wouldn’t happen. And even if we
both
wanted it right now, it isn’t possible for a dragon child to be conceived within the temple. It prevents inbreeding in the last days before we sleep.”

“Why us, though?”

Kol sighed. “It’s a long story. Centuries long, really. We used to be hunted, feared. Our numbers dwindled so we had to take steps to ensure our race survived. Hence the ritual. But those of us that remained were too close by blood. Humans are the only race on Earth worthy of mating with.”

Hallie stood and walked away, needing a second to process the information. She slipped back into the warmth of the pool and dipped her head under water.

She could have everything with him. More than that, she could have her life back. And a child someday, too. His child, but only if she was ready. Lungs hungry for air, she breached the surface again and inhaled.

Kol crouched at the edge watching. “It’s a lot to digest in a few hours, I know, but this is only the beginning, Hallie. It is my only dream in life to make you happy. And only you.”

He slipped into the water and pulled her into his arms.

“Good,” she said and let him kiss her.

While they embraced, a slew of excited, chattering voices washed into the room and they turned. The entire crowd of their friends traipsed in through the doors and began diving into the other end of the pool.

“What the hell?” Hallie said, irritated at their interruption.

Camille swam up to them, eyes wide and mouth open in an excited smile. “Wow, Hallie. He’s pretty. Not as pretty as Roka, but he looks right for you.”

“What are you guys doing?” Hallie asked.

“Roka said the best place to bathe was in here, and since the phase was over and the doors unlocked, we just came right in. Gotta get ready for Kris’s big performance. He’s so, so excited. We just wanted to wash a bit of grime off first. It’s gonna get very,
very
dirty in there. I can’t wait!”

Kol chuckled when Camille swam away and was promptly lifted up and kissed soundly by a large, white-haired man who Hallie assumed must be the one called Roka. Roka passed her into Eben’s arms, who then diligently and carefully began rinsing her from head to toe. After a moment it looked less like washing and more like fondling.

“Don’t be mad,” Kol said. “They’re excited. The next phase will be a sight to see, and we all have to be there.”

A throat cleared from the edge of the pool and Hallie looked up. Corey gave her a tentative wave. “Hey,” he said with a sideways smile, then his brow quickly furrowed in concern. “You alright? I admit I heard… sounds that worried me.” His eyes shifted uncertainly to Kol.

Her face relaxed, pleased that he’d thought to ask. “Yes, I’m better than alright. Corey, this is Kol.”

Corey reached down and shook Kol’s hand amiably.

“I’ve decided to take him home with me after we’re done here,” she added.

Corey’s eyebrows raised. “Oh? I didn’t think you had a home, being on the run and all.”

Hallie blinked and stared at him, open-mouthed.

He grinned. “You think we didn’t all know from the beginning? Erika still insisted you were right for the team even though you were outright lying to us. That woman has the strangest instincts, but I’ve known her a long time and learned not to second-guess her.”

“Even about all this stupid
dragon stuff
?” Hallie asked pointedly.

He shrugged. “I’m still on the fence about it. Too much indiscriminate sex, as far as I’m concerned. And I’m still not sure where the hell I fit in considering all of you have paired up.”

“There are only two dragons unaccounted for,” Kol interjected. “Issa just left with Kris, and I don’t see her mark on anyone. She’s probably preparing him for the next phase.”

“Who’s the other one?” Hallie asked.

Kol stared at them both like they were imbeciles. “The other one is the Queen.”