Chapter 5
Morgan was still trying to perfect her control when she felt the fire. At first, she thought she was just having flashbacks from last night. She cursed because the flashes of desire were playing merry hell on her concentration. Breathing steadily to balance the increased nerves rumbling in her belly she was just to the edge of the grotto when the pain started.
It took her a few minutes to realize the pain was not hers. She lay there shivering and clutching her stomach, tears overflowing her eyes.
“Ladon?” She whispered it, Horrified by the pain he was feeling, but with the realization that the pain was not hers she could breathe again. There was a wave of heat so strong she was rolled by it. She ended up next to the hot springs, and something in the mist soothed her enough that she saw it as a lifeline and rolled right into the hot water, raggedy shift and all. The heat of the spring should have made it worse. Instead, Morgan could think again, at least enough to assess the situation.
Ladon was coming, of that she had no doubt. This must be the molt. He would come and when this was over, he would be a fully-grown dragon in his prime ready to mate. Damn it. There was no way she could keep her concentration enough to fly when this was upon her. Not when she could feel this need like a brand in the blood.
He would get his virgin sacrifice after all. She only hoped she survived it. After a while, Morgan could no longer stand the feel of her wet dress plastered against her sensitive skin and she ripped it off and tossed it away. She palmed her breasts, but the feel of her own hands was too much against her painfully tight nipples. At least she would get that bath. She used the soap, cleaned every inch of her body careful of her screaming clit, and flushed nipples, trying to ignore the open nerve endings and waves of need that nearly drowned her. At a calm moment, she used her fingers to comb out her newly clean hair. She spread it out on the stone lip and was amazed when it dried almost immediately.
She stepped out of the pool and as soon as she was out, she was dry. She could feel the magic working along her skin. Even the brush of her hair was too much, so she ripped a piece of cloth from her dress and tied her hair to the top of her head. When she couldn’t take it anymore, she jumped back into the water and sat so it was up to her chin. The relief was immediate. She didn’t know why, but the water seemed to serve as a buffer between the magic in the room and her yearning flesh. The swirl of the water kept her in a constant state of need, but it was still better than the alternative.
Then the heat built again and it was so strong, Morgan knew that Ladon had arrived. It didn’t occur to her to wonder how he could have flown in his condition until she looked up into two sets of gold dragon eyes. One was Ladon, still in human form, shuddering in the arms of a much bigger black dragon. She had thought when she saw Ladon's dragon shape that nothing could surpass its beauty and majesty. She had been wrong.
Morgan swallowed hard as the Dragon form before her swirled with magic and instantly the black became a seven-foot naked man with iridescent black hair and an erection that could not have been made with human women in mind. Too wide, too long, and it was growing before her eyes. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t seem to look away from that pulsing cock.
Then he was in the water with her, Ladon still in his arms.
Her eyes came to rest on Ladon, or tried to, but he sank under the water and didn’t come back up. Morgan shot forward thinking he would drown, but before she could reach him, she was pulled into the lap of a large naked man she didn’t know. She did what any other insignificant prey would do caught by a predator. She froze.
“He will come up when he has finished the change.” That voice. It rode across her skin leaving shivers in its wake. Her body responded by ramping up all the heat from the change into her pussy and nipples. She arched her back and her knees opened without any conscious direction on her part.
He stood up with a splash and adjusted her one handed so that she was straddling his lap despite her new efforts to close her legs. The more she tried to push away from him the closer he pulled her, until his hard cock was cradled up against her spread pussy. She froze again, her eyes flying to his face. His eyes were old gold, dragon eyes, but with an aged patina that added power and weight to his stare. She had never felt such power, like an oversized mantle pressing down on her shoulders.
“You are no dragon.” He said it in wonder, his eyes radiating stark possession. “Yet you are dragon mate. You are feeling his heat so you must be his. But I would know you anywhere.”
She shuddered at the power building up against her skin. Everywhere he touched her was a small invasion.
“I don’t understand any of this.” Her voice was a soft whisper in the dark, which was not at all what she intended. She could feel his reaction shiver up her skin and then his mouth was on hers in a hard possession that did not ask permission but took everything. His lips and tongue invaded and his magic, the essence of the man, followed.
She lost the ability to think with the first heady taste of him. She was lifted from the water. She didn’t care as long as he got no further than her arms and legs could hold him. His neck and shoulders was a hard column beneath her arms and hands. Her legs wrapped tight around his waist and hard thighs. They were dry before she vaguely felt the bed at her back, then he was closer, so close she was wrapped around him like a blanket and he was a heady weight crushing her down.
Her need to breathe had her rearing back with a gasp and he took the chance to run his lips down her throat. He stopped over her pulse, and the bite that Ladon had given her. He growled, then looked into her befuddled eyes.
“Mine!” He roared it, reared back until he found the gate to her slick pussy, and took possession in one thrust. Morgan screamed feeling ripped apart. Then his teeth pierced her shoulder and his magic thrust into her soul binding them so close together she was not sure which parts were hers and which were his.
She saw her life through eyes of old gold, the death of her parents was relived in all its horror. The faces of her family flashed before them, then the betrayal, their flight to the cold mountains. Her capture, her fear for her family and her time with Ladon, it was all there for him to see. Every fear she had ever had, every moment she had ever laughed or cried.
Then his long existence, which seemed to go on and on with no color, no love, no hope. She watched him kill repeatedly, without feeling, for justice, for the belief that what he did kept Dragon kind safe. He knew other dragons were taught to fear him and he accepted it. He watched the millennia pass in blood and death until all dragons avoided him. He watched them from a distance with their mates and hatchlings. He watched and believed they were right. That he was somehow unworthy of a mate because of what he was: The Executioner. Nightmare of dragon kind. The belief that he would always be as he was. Alone.
Together Morgan and Eben relived his meeting with Ladon. Searching for a way to feel again, if only for a moment. She felt the punch to his soul that he felt on first seeing her. So beautiful, so fragile. A gift of the light waiting in a sacred hot spring.
Morgan drowned in his need. He believed that he was unworthy of finding a mate. He had killed so many, and he was so old, so set in his ways. She would be better off with Ladon, he knew it, but he could not let her go. Death would come on swift wings to any that came between him and his mate. His Mate. Even thinking it was a miracle.
He had nearly killed Ladon for daring to try and take her, it would have been so easy, but there was no mistaking the twine of magic connecting aura to aura. To hurt one was to hurt the other. So he would keep them both.
He raised his head and watched in satisfaction as his mate bite closed dragon fast. Then he transformed one nail to a sharp talon and cut into his chest, holding her head up to the wound until the taste reached her lips.
Morgan struggled up from the hailstorm she was swirling in. Taking blood was a dark mage trick and she had been raised to see it as heinous. Such thoughts might have brought her to her senses but Eben had the
