Viper moaned in ecstasy as I rode him savagely, eager hands pulling me down so he could suck at my breasts. I pounded against him, forcing wild sounds from both of us as lust blanketed my thoughts and drove me to that primal place where nothing mattered but bliss.
“Spread yourself over my face and ride my mouth. I want to taste you,” Viper growled.
With a low snarl of delight, I slid off his shaft and moved up his body to straddle his mouth. Viper's strong hands went to my ass while his tongue split me and flicked over that most wondrous place. I undulated over him, using more than his tongue for my pleasure. The angle of his chin and the point of his nose were both delightful, taking me closer and closer to that beautiful apex. Viper sucked and moaned and licked at me as if I were the most delicious thing he'd ever tasted while his hands roamed up from my ass to my breasts. Squeezing, pinching, massaging, claiming. So much damn pleasure; it was vibrating beneath my skin. I wrapped my tail around his cock and started to stroke him. Viper cried out against me, hips bucking up into my grip until he lifted me with his powerful arms and rolled us.
Wings crushed beneath me, limbs splayed wide, and tail beating the earth helplessly, I felt momentarily vulnerable. A pinned insect. But then Viper was with me. Inside me. His face bathed in moonlight, his eyes feverish with lust, and his hips slamming forward as if his life depended on it. I felt the same; as if I would die if he didn't fill me. Then my lover leaned down and licked the blood from my cheek. I came with blinding intensity; that soft, wet, hot caress sending me over the edge. As soon as I began to scream, Viper lifted himself up to roar his release.
When the shouting was over, Viper fell forward but braced himself on his forearms before he crushed me. As he breathed hot and fast on my neck, his cock began to harden inside me, and I smiled wickedly up at him.
“Ready for round two?” I whispered.
“Shift back,” Viper growled. “I want all of you soft and yielding beneath me.”
I shifted but instead of moving inside me, Viper pulled out and turned me onto my hands and knees.
“I am yours, Dark Star,” he whispered in my ear. “But you are mine as well, and there is one place where I've yet to take you. Tonight, you're not my goddess, you're my woman, and I will claim all of you, Vervain.”
Viper slid himself into that other place, and I cried out in surprised pleasure.
“It's about fucking time,” I growled at him over my shoulder.
Viper laughed—a low, erotic rumble—and drove himself deeper into my ass. I bucked back against him as his hand slid forward to rub my sex. Deliciously full, stimulated in ways I hadn't been for so long, with Viper's fingers flicking over me, giving me pleasure with the ease of a long-time lover, I came in mere moments. But when I finished screaming, he was still far from reaching his release. He kept up his savage pace, driving me back into ecstasy with the pound of his flesh, and I glanced to the side to see my other commanders doing the same with their lovers. All of us in perfect sync. Their stares sought mine and then roamed my body, avidly watching Viper slam into me as they took their dragon women.
My whole body trembled, and I began to scream again.
Chapter Forty-Four
You know that moment in the morning when you're on the verge of waking up? Your mind hasn't realized yet that your dreams aren't real. And if they are dreams, not nightmares, you try to hold onto the feeling they give you. You clutch it tightly with your mental fingers and try to drag it into the waking world with you. You try to remember.
I clung to my dreams every morning now because those were the only waking moments I had when I was truly me. A glimpse of dreams that quickly faded beneath glittering darkness. A place where I was real. Where I held my children and missed my husbands. Where I saw the truth and recognized the monster I had become. I had seen this beast before; in the eyes of a madman.
Every visit to the Dream Realm, every moment I spent with my children, had strengthened me. The real me. Their love had reminded me of who I was and cleared away the darkness. But then I'd wake up, as I was doing now, and my mind would stumble. I would struggle to stay me. To fight back the evil invader. But I had taken magic; not to hold or possess it. I had taken it to feed on it. To consume its energy and add to my power. And there, in that place of focused ambition and merciless greed, was where evil lived. Vainamoinen may have tainted me, but my actions sealed the deal. I couldn't win the fight because I'd already given up victory. I had handed my heart to evil. All I had now were my dreams, and when I woke up, I became her again. The Dark Star. I'd lose myself in her until I fell back into the comfort of sleep. It all felt so hopeless. Except for one small thing. That moment when I was me in the morning? That moment was growing longer.
I had mere seconds; I knew it. But I had been planning this coup for awhile now. My children and I had come up with it together. The thought of
