Page 35 of Her Dragons

My voice cracked.“Don’t do this, Mark.”

“Why?Why should I ‘not do this’?What did Alex do, Lily?What did he do for you that I couldn’t?”His voice became something like his deeper dragon voice.“Did Alex make you feel in bed the way I made you feel?Do you know how I felt when they told me you were with him — one of my so-called friends who were meant to be loyal to me, meant to take up for me, and turned on me and abandoned me when I needed them the most?”

“What were they supposed to do?” I almost sobbed.

He roared at me and made me flinch again.“Defend me!Protect me!Speak up for me, not against me!The Firewings were meant to be about loyalty, about watching each other’s tail!And when I needed them — my friends, my brothers — they gave me up.”Quieter, but just as angrily, just as stung, he said, “And then I learned that you were with Alex Duvall.”He sounded as if he could breathe fire on me and roast me where I sat.“And I knew what you must be letting Alex Duvall do.I knew he must be doing things to you that you should only let me do.Me and no one else.”

I looked away from him, my tears starting to flow.

“Nothing to say, Lily?” Mark demanded.“You’re not going to tell me I’m right?You’re not going to tell me that youwent to bed with him?Went down on him?Let him fuck you?Because that’s what you did, isn’t it?You let my old so-called friend slip you his cock, night after night after night.You laid under Alex Duvall in bed and let him put his cock inside you where he didn’t belong.And the other one — Jake.You let him do the same.You sucked his cock and let him fuck you — him and Alex both.I can’t believe you stayed with both and only had one.They both fucked you, didn’t they?”

Mark grabbed me by the shoulders.His hands were now scaly and partly clawed, and I had a flash of memory of what those hands did to me so many times.He was capable of effortlessly tearing me to pieces.I screamed.

Enraged, he bellowed, “Answer me!Answer me, goddamn it!You let Alex and his friend fuck you, didn’t you!”

Angrier at my wordless sobs, he slapped me with the back of one hand, and the pain of it shot through my body.I crashed down onto the bed and began to cry hysterically.

Seething, Mark went on, “Two other dragons, humping my treasure.Putting their cocks inside you when you belong to me.And you…letting them.”

I buried my face in the bedspread, muffling my desperate weeping.

“They’re not going to get away with that,” said Mark.“Just like my old friends aren’t going to get away with turning on me and abandoning me.I told them one day I’d come for them.That’s today.I’m ready for them today.”

My face was drenched with tears as I looked up fearfully from the bed.“What…?What are you going to do?”

“It so happens I’ve been working on a secret project.I’ve diverted some of the resources of the company into an idea of mine.There’s a new anabolic compound that some of my associates and I have been developing, off the company’s records.We’ve been testing it, and we’ve been successfulin selling it to very select customers.We’re ready to take our business a little wider now.But first…I understand the Firewings are having themselves a reunion.I’ve decided to invite myself and my associates to it and catch up on old times.Watch this, Lily.”

He let himself go into full dragon form, and before my horrified eyes, Mark Reinhardt transformed into something I’d never seen before — a bigger, more powerful, more fearsome male Drake, with spines on his arms and shoulders and sharp, blade-like scales running down his tail.I put a hand over my mouth to stifle another scream.

In this new, more terrible dragon shape, Mark’s voice made me think of stones grinding together.“This is the result of my experimental anabolic compound.After testing it out on other subjects and seeing how well it works, my associates and I sampled it for ourselves.See what we are now.We’re the most powerful Drakes in the world, the most powerful who ever lived.We’re going after the Firewings.And we’re going to wipe out every last one of them.And your Jake Hudson too.Every.Last.One.”

Utter terror took hold of me.I sat up on the bed, still crying, but pleading.“Mark, please, no.Don’t do this.Alex and Jake weren’t trying to hurt you.They were only trying to help me.They didn’t mean any harm.Please, Mark, don’t go after them.Don’t hurt them.Leave them alone.”

In that horrible, grinding voice, he said, “You’d beg for their lives after you let them fuck you?After you went to bed with them night after night and gave them what was mine?”

Desperately, I said, “I’m sorry, Mark.Now that I’m with you again, I’ll never see them any more.You can take me away someplace where they’ll never find me.And I’ll be yours again, just yours.Please, just don’t hurt them.”

His altered voice now rumbled with unending wrath.“You care so much about Alex and his friend?They matter to you so much?Did I ever matter to you that much?Did you ever care that much about me, after the way I cared about you?What did I ever mean to you, Lily?Did I ever matter that much?Did it matter to you that it broke my heart when you ran away?Did it?Did it?!”

Through tears, I begged, “Mark, please…!”

“And you’re crying now…for them?!”

He raised his dragon hand to me and another scream tore itself from me.He brought down his hand onto me and pummeled me onto the bed.The sounds of my screams mixed with his insane roaring as he slapped up and down my body and then brought forth his tail to whip me cruelly all over.I squirmed in agony and curled up the way I did when he beat me before, and the blows of his tail and claws rained all over me, filling me with unbearable pain.

His rage subsiding, Mark took a step back and watched me curled up in helpless torment, and listened to my terrified, agonized weeping.

“It’s all right, Lily,” he said.“Soon you won’t have to cry for Alex or for Jake Hudson anymore.Soon they’ll be beyond your tears.And they’ll never touch you or anyone else ever again.”

I stayed curled up in pain, crying as if I would never do anything but cry again.I heard his footfalls crossing the room, the door closing and locking behind him.And I let out a long moan of total, all-consuming anguish.

He had actually told me it was “all right.”With my entire body a knot of throbbing pain and my spirit twisted up in fear and grief, I couldn’t imagine anything ever being “all right” — not now, not ever.

My voice crawled out of me.“Alex…Jake…”And then my words dissolved into tears that I thought would never end.

CHAPTER 15

Jake

---