Page 16 of Dragon Lord
“Put me down.Now!”she demanded again with fury, flashing a bare thigh here and a bare buttock there as she wriggled.
Distracting, but after a few moments, Draknart managed to set her on the ground.
She pulled her spine straight, didn’t back away, not a step.She drew her lungs full, her fists coming up, ready to fight, her mesmerizing chest heaving under the rough fabric of her shirt.
Draknart wanted her naked and writhing with pleasure under him as he plowed into her, but he shook off the sharp need.There was something he wanted even more than the bliss he’d find between her lean thighs, wanted desperately, with every beat of his black dragon heart.He wanted the curse lifted.
He wanted to be what he’d once been: dragon dayandnight.
He steadied himself with a bellowing breath that sent a few harmless sparks around her, then said in a tone as friendly as he was capable of achieving, “Get yourself ready, lass.We are going on a journey.”
Her soft mouth dropped open in surprise.“We?The two of us?Together?”
“Aye.Traveling companions.”His stone heart thrilled, his mood lighter than it’d been in recent memory.If he were any happier, he’d be chasing his own tail around like a dragon pup.
He smiled at her.
She must have grown used to his fangs, because she barely paled.
Chapter6
A journey.
Einin stared at the dragon.
To run wild and free.To see some of the wide world…
No woman from Downwood had ever gone farther than Morganton, and that was Einin’s own aunt back when she’d married a fletcher.Most women never traveled beyond the surrounding village markets.Einin knew plenty of people who’d never once left Downwood.At least she’d gone to the markets in the nearest villages as a child, with her father, to sell goat cheese and milk.
She had dreamt of faraway places all her life, tried to imagine the people and landscapes from the tales of the few stray travelers who’d come through her village.The tinker always told such stories!And returning soldiers too, although their tales were much darker.The traveling priest shared little, the darkest tales yet, mostly about the burning of witches.
There had to be more.There had to be such wonders!
“What journey?”She tilted her head, her heart racing with cautious excitement.“Where?”
The dragon said, “Hmpf,” and kicked a shredded old shield out of his way, looking after it as if it held great interest.Embarrassed?No,Einin thought,could not be that.Not this dragon.Probably not any dragon.They were a murderous and conscienceless lot, down to the last one.
Yet he examined his sharp talons with undue attention as he said, “A bit back, I offended someone.”
This she could believe.“And you’re going to offer an apology?”
Once again, that did not sound like the dragon she knew.
Yet Draknart nodded.“Something of the like.”
Einin’s mouth gaped.The priest kept preaching about miracles.This might be the first one Einin ever saw.Where the priest had failed, the dragon might yet make a believer out of her.
She narrowed her eyes at the beast.He wanted to go somewhere, that she believed.Buttraveling companionher bony arse.He wanted to take her along for the easy swiving, then would eat her the first time he couldn’t find anything better.She’d be nothing but road provisions, eaten for lunch like she’d eaten her boiled eggs and bread on her way to the cave.
Yet would a long journey, out in the open, not provide more opportunities to escape than the closed-in cave?Shehadreturned to the dragon.Shehadfulfilled her part of their bargain.If the dragon had failed to eat her posthaste, the fault was his.She considered herself free of their agreement.
Free.Her heart leaped.
“The roads are dangerous,” she said, thinking fast.“I will not go without a blade.”
“We will not be going over the roads.”
A moment or two passed before she understood his meaning.She swallowed hard.Flying.Did he mean to carry her in his talons like an eagle carried its prey?She imagined the ground rushing far below her and grew dizzy from the thought.
