The Unbearable Lightness of Dragons

“I don’t wish to hurt your feelings,” he said, a blissful look stealing into his eyes as the torte melted in his mouth. “Did you make the caramel yourself?”

“Of course. I have extra. I thought we might enjoy it . . . later.”

“We really should make some decisions tonight,” Thala spoke over the top of me, tapping on the laptop.

“Mm-hmm,” he agreed, eyeing the second piece I had brought for Thala. “Do you want that?”

“Yes, I very much want to proceed—”

“No, the torte.”

She shot him an outraged look before getting a grip on her emotions. “No. I do not like sweets, as you know.”

“If Jim were here, it would give that zinger only a three-point-five. I’m sure you can do better if you really try,” I told her.

She pulled herself to her full height. “Do you have any idea of the power I wield, human? I am the daughter of Antonia von Endres, the greatest of all the mages. I can raise the dead and make them walk amongst us. I can harness the powers of both the dark and the arcane, and bend them to my will!”

“But can you turn demons into men? Can you harness the power of the banana? And have you ever had a foursome with yourself? Because I can and have, and if Baltic would just help me bring forth some appropriate memories, I will do so again!”

The man in question looked up from the two now-empty plates. “I do not understand your desire to indulge in sex with ourselves, mate. It is unnatural.”

“You go too far!” Thala snarled at me. “Leave us! We have important things to discuss.”

“Do not give my mate orders,” Baltic said, frowning at her.

“Then you make her leave!”

He glanced at the laptop, hesitating, obviously not wishing to ask me to leave but at the same time wanting to finish his discussion with Thala.

“Don’t worry, you don’t have to,” I told him with a little smile. I picked up the tray and the empty plates and headed for the door, pausing at it to sigh. “I guess if you don’t want the extra caramel I made, I will just have to enjoy it by myself.”

Baltic had leaned over the laptop to look at something, but at the obvious undertone in my voice, he shot bolt upright. I gave him a slow, wicked smile and went off to the kitchen.

By the time I had washed the plates and cups, warmed a small bowl of caramel, grabbed a new pastry brush, and made my way upstairs to our bedroom, Baltic was on the bed, naked, and anticipating my arrival.

“You will not need to see our past selves tonight,” he said as I set the bowl and brush down on the nightstand. “Is that warm?”

“Yes. How pissed is Thala?”

He shrugged. “She is annoyed, but that is of little matter. She understands that to me you must come first in all things.”

If I had been about to read him a lecture about his pushy lieutenant, his matter-of-fact statement melted any and all intentions.

I sat on the bed, watching him as he poked at the caramel with a finger. “It would be better cold.”

“You think so?” I asked.

He grinned, his black eyes glowing with a sensual light that never failed to send shivers down my back. “It’s harder to spread cold . . . and harder to lick off.”

“Yes, but warmed, it can be drizzled. See?” I dipped the pastry brush into the warm caramel, then traced an artistic caramel spiral all the way up his penis.

His eyes widened as I made a little curlicue on the top. “Drizzling can be good.”

“Oh, yes, drizzling can be very good,” I said, leaning down to lick the caramel off him.

His eyes crossed as his hips thrust upward. “I begin to think that perhaps there is more to your fantasies than I first imagined.”

“There’s nothing wrong with a good sense of imagination,” I mumbled, licking off the last of the caramel. “You know, this is going to make us very sticky. We’re going to need baths afterward.”

“We always need to bathe afterward,” Baltic answered with a little grimace.

I swirled the brush in the caramel, ignoring the hopeful look in his eyes to ask, “You don’t like to take a bath, do you?”

“No. Water is not our element.”

“Our what?”

He nudged the bowl. “It will cool if you don’t use it now.”

“What element? We have an element? Why do I like a long bath if it’s not our element?” I moved the bowl out of his reach.

He looked down his body, then at me. “My cock is not happy.”

“It’ll survive a few questions. I can warm up the caramel if necessary,” I added quickly, forestalling his next objection. “Explain to me about the element.”

“Always you wish to talk during lovemaking,” he said, looking aroused and disgruntled at the same time, no easy feat. “I do not understand why you cannot simply focus on me as you should, and leave the questions for another time.”

“Perhaps because I know you’ll brush off questions asked when I don’t have you naked and lustful and willing to do whatever it takes to get me to coat you with caramel and lick off every square inch.”

He pursed his lips, obviously thinking it over. “Very well. I will be magnanimous and just this once allow you to have your way, but no more, Ysolde. You have had your way too long. Our relationship will return to what is right and proper.”

I smiled to myself and stirred the caramel.

“All dragon septs have an element that is sympathetic to them. Water is the element of the green dragons; thus I do not enjoy it.”

“But I love to swim and take long baths, and I was a silver dragon before I met you and became a black dragon. Why do I like water?”

“You were reborn human with a dormant dragon side. Humans, I understand, like water.” He looked meaningfully at the bowl in my hands. “That will change once the dragon inside you awakens fully.”

“Hmm. What was the black dragon element?”

“Energy.”

“Ah.” I thought for a moment. “Like electricity?”

“No. It is more akin to the energy found in elemental magic.”

A little tickle of a memory flitted through my mind. I closed my eyes to better focus on it.

“Are you going to use that, or should I reheat it?” Baltic asked, nudging my hands again.

“One moment. I’m thinking. There’s a memory just . . . Ah, got it.” I shivered as a sudden cool earthiness seeped into my pores. I opened my eyes to find that I was kneeling on a dirt floor, Baltic spread out naked next to me, an annoyed expression on his face.

“You just cannot leave the past in the past, can you?” he asked me, nodding toward something behind me.

I turned to see myself coming down a narrow stone passage, a small branch of candles in one hand, the flickering light from them casting eerie shadows on the rough-hewn stone walls.

“Here,” a male voice said.

I got to my feet as the other Baltic came into view, gesturing toward the wall.

“That’s stone,” the past me said, holding the candles high.

“It appears that way. I have hidden the door to the lair. You must learn how to access it, and how to use your power to hide it when needed.”

“What power? Dragon fire, you mean?”

“No, the power that fills all living things. It flows around us. Open yourself up to it and use it. No other dragons can do so but us. It is unique in the weyr. It is why our lairs are so hard to find—we use the power that only we can harness to hide them from other eyes.”

Behind me, Baltic sighed and got to his feet, brushing off his behind, pausing to cast a look of admiration at