Page 6 of The Dragon Queen

“Flynn, we can’t…”

I tried to bat his hands away, but as soon as I raised one, his fingers were wound between mine, grabbing hold as the other hand took up the work, unpinning me slowly.

“Flynn, Draven needs?—”

My lover went perfectly still then, closing his eyes and letting out his own sigh.

“You belong to me as much as you do to him,” he said. “More so. I didn’t play at hating you. I didn’t hurt you, reject you.” His eyes flicked up to bore into mine. “I’d walk away from all this for you.”

“I know.” I smiled, but it was a painful thing, because what else could I do? All this bloody longing and we still hadn’t resolved things in a way that let us love openly and that broke my heart every day. “And that’s why I love you the best.”

He scooped me up then, ignoring my yelp and carrying me over to a nearby windowsill, setting me on the window seat, disregarding the heinous cost of all this rich fabric by trying to rake up my skirts. When that failed, he yanked the fabric free of my body, leaving me naked and ready to ravish. But he didn’t, not yet and damn me, right when I was supposed to push him away and try to maintain decorum, I pulled him closer.

“You’re lying to me,” he growled, but that didn’t stop him from standing between my legs. “You shouldn’t be, but you are.” His hand slid between my thighs, his fingers finding the slickness there, slipping into it before piercing me through, right as his gaze did the same. “I’ll do anything to keep you by my side, Pippin. Anything.”

He pulled his glistening fingers free, rubbing them over his lips until they shone too, then he licked them clean.

“To hear your voice.” I could smell myself upon his breath as he moved closer, his lips hanging over mine. “To feel you lying beside me. To hold you close.”

He jerked me nearer, my legs wrapping around his waist. I could feel the cold leather of his uniform against my most tender flesh, and somehow that strange juxtaposition seemed right. He was armoured, ready for battle, where I was naked, shivering and open to everything.

“I spend my days thinking about being inside you, because when I am, I feel like I’ve finally pinned you down, tied you to me in a way you can’t escape. Tell me you want children.”

“Children?”

I felt like someone had doused me with a bucket of cold water to wake me from the spell I was falling under.

“I dream about it sometimes, when my guard is down, of you swollen with my child. It’s a terribly selfish thing, of course, to want to have children in a time of war, but…” His hands went to the ties of his pants, but mine were there before him, delving in, the two of us hissing as we felt how achingly hard he was. “You’d never be free of me if you were the mother of my child.”

“I won’t ever be, even if I bear no child,” I whispered back.

This was madness, pure heated madness, but that’s what we were driven to by Draven’s master plan. He was used to only taking judicious sips from the cup of our relationship, maintaining control at all times, but we weren’t courtly creatures. Flynn had opted to be a dragon rider to get the hell away from court machinations, having no head for it. I kissed him then, tasting myself on his lips, remembering the way he’d woken me up this morning, my arms wrapping around his neck.

“Flynn…” I hissed.

“I know, love. I know.” There was the furtive scrabble to free his hard length, then that first blessed brush as he spread my wetness across the crown, right before he pushed inside me. “Need this.”

That’s when his smile faded, when the mask he was forced towear at court, as a rider in the corp, was set aside. When I saw the real Flynn beneath it all. Pain, so much pain raged there, some caused by our frantic joining, but so much more besides. I knew then why he was here, why he sought me out. He could have slunk away from the war council and into a pub, drinking until he couldn’t stand. He could’ve jumped on Glacier’s back and ridden as far as his dragon could manage. Instead, he came to me. Draven had lost his parents, his brother, so he should’ve been the perfect person for Flynn to confide in, but right now my princely lover was more king than man.

“Need you, Pippin.”

That short admission revealed so much more. He stared into my eyes, willing me to understand, and I nodded, my arms wrapping around his shoulders. By clinging to him, he was allowed to do the same. Our breaths came faster and faster, in time with his strokes, until the sounds became ragged, but it was when they turned to sobs, I was forced to pull back. Tears filled his eyes, glittering in the midday sun, right as they went wide.

Would it always be like this? A great rush of pleasure so sweet it hurt. Every muscle tensed, flexed as the waves of ecstasy hit me. Over and over, they broke down everything we tried to do, to be, and just left us behind. A single tear rolled down his cheek, following the hollow of it, before dripping free, and I held him tighter.

“They’re gone… They’re fucking gone…”

This morning was an aberration. We thought we were waking up to a new world order, and, in a lot of ways, that remained true. It just wasn’t the pleasant one we expected. However, out of all of us, Flynn was hit hardest. His father, his brothers, his sisters-in-law, the children… His previous question made sense then. Something in Flynn rebelled in the face of this terrible news, grasping at life to ward away death.

But only for so long.

The first convulsion told me what was happening. Not the shudders of bliss, but of pain. My hands felt the tension in his back, the muscles locked tight, as if that would keep the tears away, but that’s not how it worked. I’d remembered the bright flames of misery thatfelt like they were burning me alive when my father died, and so I clung to Flynn. I couldn’t say anything, do anything to ease his pain. I knew that because no one could do that for me, but… Not going through this alone, there was some solace. I pressed my face to his shoulder, rubbed circles on his back, and made the same low crooning noise my mother made when I was small and had woken from a nightmare.

Only to find I wasn’t the only one.

Glimmer had curled up in a corner and was sleeping through my fitting. The bright fabrics interested her initially, but when she found the cloth of gold wasn’t actually made from gold, she got bored. Now her head rose, her eyes heavily lidded. Those golden motes that hung in the air during the heat of the day appeared to shine brighter, and that’s when I realised what she was trying to do. Her scales grew brighter and brighter still, until I reached out to her.

No, dear heart. This is a pain you cannot heal.

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