Thea Harrison - Dragon Bound

He sank his teeth into the back of her neck as his Power curled around her. Come with me. He shifted to put his hand between her legs, to rub long fingers along the place where he entered her and to pinch her clitoris. He shoved in hard one last time and held taut. His Power rippled over her, through her, with his climax.

Her mind went incandescent. She flew apart.

Dragos poured everything he had into her. It came roaring up from the base of his spine as he locked himself in the tight glove of her sheath. This wasn’t sex. He’d had sex countless times. Sex was a simple coupling and release. More often than not, half an hour later he would have already forgotten the female’s name.

This was something he’d never done before. This was something far more elemental and necessary than sex. Feasting on her didn’t ease his hunger but fed his need. Working inside her wasn’t enough. Climaxing didn’t assuage the lust. It built the frenzy. She absorbed everything he did to her and amplified it back, and bloomed even more lustrous and intoxicating. He had to drive into her so deep he never came back out.

He came back to awareness. He still covered her from behind, was still inside her, his hand spanning the graceful are of her pelvis. Tremors quaked through her body. The slender muscles in her thighs quivered against his. She gasped for breath in quiet sobs.

What had he done? He pressed his lips to her neck and drew them along the sleek angle of her shoulder. He withdrew his hand from her pelvis to brush the tangled cloud of her hair out of the way as he tried to see her face. “Ssh,” he murmured. “Easy.”

She was too weak to stay on her hands and knees without his hold supporting her. His softening penis slipped out of her as she sank to the ground. She rested her head on her arms. He shifted to lie on his side, one thigh draped over the back of hers. He smoothed her hair, rubbed her shivering back.

Her face seemed wet. Was she crying? Had he hurt her? The questions knifed him. He could have sworn she was with him the entire way.

He stopped breathing. He eased fingers under her chin to coax her head up and turn her toward him. Her face and those brilliant eyes were devastated and wide-open. She looked as beautiful and fragile as cut crystal. His gut clenched.

“I lost control,” he whispered.

That, along with the worry darkening his eyes, anchored her back in her body. Was he trying to apologize?

“So did I,” she whispered back.

“I’ve never done that before.” He touched the delicate skin at the corner of her eye, rubbed the ball of his thumb along her lower lip.

“Neither have I,” she confessed. A smile broke over her face.

His fingers dropped to trace the curve of her lips. “Are you—all right?”

She was a mess. She was euphoric, an emotional train wreck. She needed to go into a quiet, dark room somewhere and try to make sense of everything that had happened—and that he had done—to her.

But first she had to wipe that uncertainty off his face.

Her smile widened, and she told him the truth. “No,” she said. She leaned over and pressed a kiss to those incredible seductive lips. “You demolished me. I had no idea anybody could do the things you did. And I want to know how soon we can do it again.”

The worry vanished and an answering smile lit his eyes. He looked at her mouth. “I want a lot of things.”

“What you do with your tongue is a sin,” she teased.

That vulnerability he saw in her still lurked around the edges, but he chose to go with her attempt to lighten things up. He told her, “There are many advantages to being a bad man.”

“Such as?”

He sat up and pulled her onto his lap, turning her so that she faced him, torso to torso, groin to groin, her slender legs stretched out on either side of him. It was an intimate position made even more so by their nudity, a position perfect for making love. He wrapped his arms around her and she curled hers around his neck.

Even sitting on his lap as she was, his body was so much bigger and longer than hers, he had to tilt his head down to go nose to nose with her.

“A comfortable lack of conscience,” he said. “The enjoyment of unbroken sleep. An uncomplicated desire to discover every possible carnal pleasure with the beautiful woman in his arms.”

Her eyes brightened at the compliment and crinkled at him. He smiled back and kissed her, a long, leisurely exploration that curled her toes.

“Well, I think you keep a very well-hidden secret,” she told him when she could breathe again.

He cocked an eyebrow.

She tapped a finger against his chest. “There is a pretty charming creature buried deep inside there. You should let him out more often.” He laughed out loud, but then the look on his face turned calculating. She laughed too as she realized she found even that charming. God, she was a goner. She warned, “Don’t make me regret telling you that.”

“I’ll try not to take too much advantage,” he said.

“Oh, thank you very much.” She rolled her eyes. That probably meant he was going to wring everything he could out of it. Her stomach rumbled. “I’m starving again.”

They sat in reach of the pack. He gave her a leaf-wrapped wafer, which she unwrapped. She ate while he tried to run his fingers through her tangles. “We did a number on your hair,” he said. He sent a gentle pulse of Power through his hands and her hair smoothed out.

She swallowed a bite of the delicious wayfarer bread. “You ever get tired of being a multibillionaire businessman, you could make another fortune as a hairdresser.”

“I’ll be sure to keep it in mind,” he said. He didn’t tell her he had no interest in anyone else’s hair but hers. He looked around the clearing. “We’ve lingered too long here. We should leave as soon as you finish.”

“Right,” she said, looking around also. “And why did we come this way, instead of going back the way they brought us?”

“You’ve never been to an Other land before, right?” She nodded, and he continued, “This isn’t the best analogy, but it will work for now. Time and space buckled when the earth was formed, and the buckling created dimensional pockets where magic pooled. Picture them like lakes or large bodies of water. There are lakes of varying sizes. Some are quite small, more like ponds, and some stand by themselves. Others are almost as big as oceans and are linked together, with streams or rivers. I can sense that this”—he gestured around them—“is a very large area connected to other large land areas.”

“How do you do that?” she asked.

He frowned, not, she could see, from irritation at her question but more in an effort to figure out how to explain what he experienced. It must be something he had known how to do for so long it came automatically to him, like breathing. “I put my hand down on the land and send out my awareness. It doesn’t take a heavy pulse of Power. It’s more like a knowing that comes to me.”

She tried to imagine what that must feel like. Maybe it was the same kind of knowing she got when she sensed magic was around, or a spell had been cast, just more focused on the land. She wanted to try it out for herself sometime. “So there are different ways in and out of this place.”

“Correct. We had a better chance of getting away by taking off in an unpredictable direction than going back the way they had crossed over. We may even be able to go so far north that we can connect to New York or get at least close to it.”

“Since we’re talking, why doesn’t technology work in Other lands?”

“That’s a bit of a misnomer. Some technologies work if they’re of a passive design, if they utilize natural forces that are already present like water flow, and if they don’t involve combustion more complicated than a wood-burning stove or a boiler. Modern crossbow designs aren’t exactly passive, but they’re fine to use because they don’t ignite. You can also bring over things like factory-made glass windows, artwork, various convenience appliances like Melitta or French-press coffee-makers and even composting toilets, as long as what you bring over is not dependent upon electricity and you can transport it safely through a dimensional passage.”