Page 21 of Caress of Fire
And her eyes met the sapphire stare of the dragoness. Nyra watched them with an intense curiosity, an intelligence that was all too knowing.
“No,” Marielle said between two moans. “Stop.”
Fedryc froze. Slowly, he brought his face over Marielle’s and she felt her skin become numb with shock.
“Your eyes…” She couldn’t say more. His silver eyes were slashed by vertical black pupils, and seemed to glow from within. His face had changed subtly as well, the bones more prominent, his features reminiscent of an animal more than a man.
A dragon. He looked like a dragon.
Fedryc stared at her for a long time, then shot a glance over his shoulder at Nyra. He got to his feet, pulling Marielle up with him. The dragoness was still there, her towering red form like a flaming sentinel. Shame burned Marielle’s cheeks at the thought that the dragoness had witnessed their embrace, and that the beast understood what they had been about to do.
“Will you take me back to the castle?”
Fedryc shook his head, his eyes on her with a ravenous hunger. “It is too late,” he said in a voice that held the repressed savagery of the animal, “I will take you as Draekarra, Marielle Jansen. You can’t escape the beast now.”
Without waiting, Fedryc left her side, then jumped on Nyra’s neck with an agility that spoke volumes about his alien strength.
A great screech invaded the air, then talons closed around her body, as long as her hand and as sharp as a sword’s blade. Marielle screamed as the beast took to the sky, but her voice was lost in the wind as she was carried away by the dragoness.
* * *
Marielle screamed long and hard,until her voice gave out and even after, until only a gravelly sound like broken glass escaped her throat.
Neither Nyra nor Lord Fedryc seemed to care that she was about to die of fright.
Somewhere along the way, she stopped screaming and stared, wide-eyed and nauseous, as Nyra flew over the endless desert, her talons securely around Marielle’s body.
She had no idea why Lord Fedryc had suddenly abducted her and was taking her to the most remote regions of the desert, although she wasn’t innocent enough not to know what he wanted to dotoher.
He was going to take her as mate. And that meant sex.
Nyra took a sharp turn, making Marielle scream again, but this time it was short-lived, as the dragoness started a nerve-wracking descent to a large rocky plateau over the desert plain. It was a cylindrical peak of rock, hundreds of feet high, like the finger of a God pointing upward in a vast flat section of desert.
A few seconds later, Nyra landed in a great cloud of dust. She set Marielle gently on her feet then stood there, her blue gaze locked on Marielle’s small body, something unreadable going on behind that reptilian façade.
Lord Fedryc jumped from her neck and landed neatly and gracefully beside his dragon. As his gaze settled on her, Marielle’s mind flooded with alarm. She stood on unsteady feet, her dress flapping around her legs in the high winds.
Fedryc stood there, totally unmoving, adorned in his rough leather riding clothes like some long-forgotten idol.
Even from a distance, she could see his eyes. Two silver discs reflecting the sunlight, set on her with a purpose as clear as the male way he stalked to her in fluid motions that had nothing human.
As he neared her, she could see the changes in his face—the high cheekbones sharper and more animal, the slight curve in the outline of his jaw, the way his pupils slashed his mirror-like irises like a dragon’s.
He was a beast, a creature of power and passion, and he was about to take her for himself.
She should run, but where? She was trapped, and there was no way she could back out now.
Her entire body shivered but it had nothing to do with the cool morning air. Every female fiber in her body reacted to Fedryc as he stalked closer and closer, until he stood right in front of her, radiating a hunger that left her breathing hard and shallow, her nipples painfully taut against the fabric of her dress.
“Why have you brought me here?” She didn’t recognize her own voice. It was small and frail, full of terror.
“I told you.” Fedryc’s voice was a low rasp, and the words rumbled off his tongue in an accent so heavy, she barely recognized them. “It is too late now. The beast in me cannot wait anymore. Make no mistake, Marielle, a Draekon is a beast disguised as a man. And the beast wants you now.”
“Here?” Marielle looked around the barren stones still covered in shadows. Surely he wasn’t serious? “Now?”
“It is a momentous occasion, one that can only happen once in a Draekon’s life.” He lifted his gaze for a moment, looking out to the heavens, then back at her. “A Draekar mating is not done on Dagmar as it is on Earth. Just you, me, and Nyra under the open sky.”
“So there will be no ceremony, no guests?” It was a relief more than anything, to think there would be no endless feast, no strangers coming to look at her like she was an exotic animal in a zoo.
