The Time Weaver

pushed harder against me.

you have power, whispered the beast. He is the alpha but you have power over him. show him that you do.

His breeches were buttoned up on two sides, a style I did not know, but my fingers found the way of it.

One button at a time, forever and ever as his lips ravaged me, as his fingers slowly pressed their way inside me, another place no one else had ever touched.

your boots, commanded the dragon and I together aloud, and he pulled away from me abruptly, bent over and shucked them off.

I admired the flexing curve of his back. The sheen of muscle across his arms, how his tendons pulled, the hard hands firm over brown leather.

your breeches, we said, and he yanked them off as well, peeling the doeskin down his legs, pulling free his stockings and garters until he was as nude as he had once been at that bell tower in Spain. When I had not been able to look away from him against the new dawn clouds, but he'd never noticed because he'd not met my eyes. Shy, beautiful prince.

He met them now. He held them steady to mine as I found him and cupped him, shocked at my own boldness, but the Rez-dragon purredyes, yes, and so I kept going, learning the shape of him, so hot and firm. His skin there was softer than anything I'd ever felt. I curled my fingers and dragged my nails up along his length, to the full head atop, the most satiny skin of all.

His eyes closed; his mouth tightened. He pushed into me again, a forced caress, but I wanted so much more.

'Please,' I begged, no bold dragon to me now, just raw pleading. 'Love,' Alexandru said, and came atop me.

I was aware of the aroma of flowers and grasses and sweat. Of the pollen that had smudged between us, musky gold, mingled with the scent of our desire. The tight pull of the shirt, caught beneath my breasts. The crystal pendants flashed with moonfire now, a field of them beyond his shoulders, slight fallen stars littering the forest break.

He pushed that satin head into me, stretching the place where his fingers had been. And it hurt—but the dragon smothered that, chanted,yes, yes , again and slow, deeper, slow , and I did not think we had spoken out loud until he obeyed, and I was able to crush my fingers into his arms and gaze up, alarmed, at his face.

'This is how it is,' my prince whispered above me, his eyes locked on mine. 'This is how we are.'

He moved. It was a gentle rocking at first, a short stroke, and it hurt too. But beyond the hurt was something else, something Rez instinctively understood.

Hunger. Curling deep hunger, with the promise of a great rushing tide pressing closer.

He moved and he moved. I lifted my legs up to cradle him, a vermilion streak of flower upon my right thigh, smelling the grass and the moon and Alexandru, who captured my face with his hands as he worked deeper and deeper, plunging into me, as he ground me to the earth and began to break me apart.

It hurt, it didn't. It made me into the white fire, it lit me up and dissolved my bones. I was pure ache and pleasure and that wave that wanted to come, that was coaxed closer by his body thrusting into mine.

I tipped my head back and could not close my eyes. When my climax crested over me, when I came with white-wringing cries, I saw only black Sandu and the moon, and the bright silver flame of his gaze as he pumped his seed into me, shuddering and moaning a sound like my new name.

good, whispered the dragon named Rez. We lay with our arms wrapped around the prince, our legs at his waist, still stretching and yielding with his slowing respiration. That was good .

Chapter Thirteen

 Despite the many myths that abound regarding these two mortal enemies, the truth is that the dragons existed in peace before the dragon-hunters decided to shatter them.

Dragons drew their first breaths into raw lungs ages before mankind thought to mine the iron from the earth, to forge it into steel and shape it into barbs that might—might—stab through a glossy drakon scale.

Before spears, before swords or crossbows were the serpents of the skies, magnificent in their lives, solitary in their deaths.

But humankind does not well abide magnificence above it, and so the sanf inimicus came into being.

A loose collection of human clans at first, slowly they gathered forces, recruited more, refined their skills. The sanf shone most brightly in what we now call the Dark Ages, when men in chain mail took pride in wounding or destroying all things lovely and mysterious. All things of magic and stars.

It was the drakon , in fact, who granted them the title sanf inimicus: the soft enemy, villains without scales. It was meant as both a warning and an insult... but the humans seized it as a compliment instead.

They were the declared enemy of the dragons. They had caused actual suffering among the beasts, and it gratified them mightily to be so noticed.

Their wars swelled and lessened and swelled anew; the human weapons did reap their toll. Remorseless sanf chased the drakon over continents, over the seas, yet small as their numbers became, the dragons retained their unbending majesty. They would not surrender.

Surrender, no. But hide, on the other hand ... hide to safeguard their offspring, to ensure their future, to disguise themselves as their very foes .

For a long while, for time stretching into centuries, the sanf discovered there were no more dragons to easily hunt. Men who had bathed in the blood of the dying monsters were themselves dying out, until their stories became worn, thin and distant, and their lessons washed over the fresh ears of human youth with barely a ripple of meaning.

Eventually, the very notion of knights and dragons invoked little more than daydreams among the Others. Fairy tales, silly parables, nothing more.

So matters stood for lifetimes. Until one day there came a creature who decided to change all that.

Who decided to reignite the wars between monster and man, because the wrong side—the creature's own-blooded side—had survived, and so had won.

And thus, in the mad, latter days of eighteenth-century France, the sanf inimicus were reborn.

Chapter Fourteen

I had fallen asleep. I hadn't noticed when, or even dreamed. I had blinked, that's all, but when my eyes opened it was daylight, not night, and the prince lay behind me instead of above. I was on my left side, curled up, and he was spooned to my back, his upper arm a pillow for my head, and the blanket that had been spread beneath the food was now covering us both.

A blade of grass was brushing my nose. I think that's what woke me. I lifted my hand to wipe it away but it sprang right back. I mashed my hand over it to keep it flat.

Daylight. A warm, masculine body curved into mine, and his other arm slung across my waist. I blinked again, and this time everything stayed the same. Sandu behind me. Sunlight above. The grass at eye level such an opulent and vivid green it didn't seem real, like such a wet, heavy color could not even exist except in fevered imagination.