The Passionate Queen Read online

  “Yes.” And taking ten giant steps back from him, I shielded my eyes just as he released the fire of his transformation.

  Moments later I was cradled in the cage of his claws and sighing happily. It seemed hard to believe that this was now my reality and not my fantasy. For so long I’d dreamed of this life. Always sure it would never happen to me.

  About thirty minutes later Ragoth landed on the topmost cliff of a large mountain range. I frowned when he released me, eyeing the sights below. At least a hundred feet below was the twisted, dark labyrinth of the Hatter’s forest.

  “Ragoth, I cannot meet them yet. It grows dark and—”

  A burst of light flared, and then he stepped out of the fires a man once more. “We won’t go to them tonight. But nor will we return to the castle. I need you alone, Lena. Without the eyes of so many upon us.”

  I shivered to hear him say it and turned toward him, gasping when I spotted a small tent behind his left shoulder I’d not spotted before.

  “Are we to camp the night?”

  “Yes, like we sometimes would as children. Out in the wild, without anyone else in the world around us.”

  His surprise so touched me that I found myself bursting out in tears.

  “Lena?” he asked with confusion in his voice.

  Unable to speak, I rushed up to him and threw myself into his waiting arms, unable to speak for a second because I couldn’t seem to stop my tears. They came in a torrential flood as memory after memory took me.

  All the pain and hurt and horrors of my past came crawling up. And then I felt something I’d not felt from him in a long time. Ragoth leaned his face to mine, and his dragon tears mingled with my own, so that I no longer drowned in the pain. This cry was a healing cry. I was finally letting it all go, and he was here by my side as he’d always been as a child.

  At least ten minutes passed before I could speak again. And I did so haltingly. “Dru will worry.”

  He shook his head. “She knows. She helped me pack all your toiletries for the night and forced me to bring you a change of clothes that would ‘bespeak regality’ as she put it, for our trip tomorrow.”

  I chuckled, sniffling and wiping at my nose. Of course she would. “I must look a frightful mess.”

  Shaking his head, he took my hand and led me back a few yards to a brook I’d not heard. Kneeling with me, he tugged a handkerchief from his pocket and dipped it in, wetting it enough so that he could run it wetly across my face.

  “Why do you paint yourself this way, Lena? You need nothing to make yourself beautiful. You already are. You’ve always been.”

  I could only stare and tremble as he cleaned up the layers of face paint. The exaggerated lip and eye colors. The heavy white I used to camouflage that I was even human.

  The colors dripped onto the stone beneath me, gathering in a puddle of swirling reds, whites, blues, and black.

  Then he smiled broadly, and my lashes fluttered when his knuckles brushed along my cheeks. “I love your glow. I’ve always loved your glow.”

  “I wish I could see myself the way you do.”

  “Then close your eyes, and I’ll describe you.”

  Giving him a lopsided grin, I did as he asked, feeling strange at first.

  “You have such pale, smooth flesh on your face, and it’s soft, like the satiny feel of rose petals. Your lips are a perfect cupid’s bow shape, slightly fuller on the bottom than the top.”

  I sighed when his lips brushed delicately against mine. Just that feathery brush made my blood start to sing.

  “A nose that turns up just at the tip.” Another soft kiss against the tip of my nose.

  “There’s not a mar or blemish on your porcelain features. No freckles, no birthmarks. Simply utter perfection.”

  I gasped when his fingers began running lightly along my cheeks and across the bridge of my nose.

  “I’m...I’m sure I don’t look this way,” I gasped when his other hand moved to the column of my throat and he traced a line from the tip of my chin down to between the ‘v’ of my breasts.

  “Ssh.” He admonished me gently. “It’s my turn to talk.”

  I grinned at his high-handed manner. The man was a beast, and I adored him.

  “Now, where was I?” He paused in his exploration of me. “Oh yes, here.” He framed my throat with the width of his palm, and I gasped, feeling small and oddly excited.

  His voice had dropped an octave, and I couldn’t seem to stop trembling. A cool breeze brushed against the heated flesh of my body, and all I wanted to do was rip my clothes off and do the same to him.

  There was nothing stopping us now but us.

  I curled my fingers into a pool of fabric, groaning as his hard, calloused hands scraped against my lotion-softened skin.

  “Your eyes are so blue, they always remind me of the skies of home. Vast and enchanting.”

  He kissed first one closed eyelid and then the other. I knew I was panting like a wild cat in heat, but I couldn’t stop myself.

  I opened my eyes, knowing he could read not only the lust for him, but the raw, unmitigated desires and yearnings. I’d only ever wanted Ragoth. From the moment the dragon boy had stepped into my life, he’d been my one constant. My one craving. The only thing I did not want to live without.

  Moving up on my knees, I dug my fingers through the vest of his shirt, twining the fabric tightly in my grip.

  His jaw clenched, and I could read the same frenzied desire for me reflected back in his gaze.

  “This is forever, Lena. With me, this is forever. My life is eternal, and yours will be tethered to my own for all our days. Do you understand this?”

  I nodded. And knew it was now my time to fess up. Grabbing his hands with my own, I forced him to look at me. “I must tell you something.”

  His brows furrowed in confusion for a moment as he clearly sensed the weight of what I was about to say.

  “Anything.”

  Nervous, I plowed through the words before I lost my nerve. “Ragoth, if we do this. If we sleep together my morphlingism will reactivate again and I will be your equal in power. With Charles I was his better, because the power was not something innate to him but contained within the ring. You, however, are magical. With you, I would be your equal. It is the truth of my heritage that my kind has kept hidden from their mates, but I would have honesty with you in all things from here on out.”

  I waited on bated breath to hear what he’d say. Whether he’d reject me or not. I knew dragons were a prideful, stubborn lot. Maybe my beast would not enjoy no longer being the more powerful of the two. But—

  “Do you honestly believe I’d have it any other way?”

  My answer was a kiss.

  But that quick kiss turned into something far deeper and more sensual than I’d anticipated. His tongue was hot as he slid it along the seam of my mouth, begging without words for me to open wide to him. I did and drowned in the taste of the dragon that he was.

  The first time we’d ever tried to kiss like this, he’d burned through my soul. And this time was no different, except there was no pain, no fire eating at my flesh. I was royal blood now, able to mate my soul to his.

  Ragoth was wild; his hands were all over me, and all I kept hearing was the tearing and rending of fabric. He used his claws to rip through my habit, shredding it so that there was no hope of ever wearing it again. But he wasn’t the only one.

  I was wild and reckless. I wanted everything this beast had to offer me. I tore straight through the collar of his shirt, popped off button after button, sending them flying in every direction. In moments, my palms were running hot down his bare chest, marveling in the feel of such hard, sculpted muscle.

  “Goddess, I love you, I adore you, all mine. Always mine, my Lena. Always...”

  I smiled through his words, muttering my own nonsensical words. Something to do with killing any woman who dared to try to take him from me again.

  But soon there were no words. I keenly fe
lt the powerful magic of the calling resting heavily in my bones. The moment I slept with Ragoth, he was king in truth. The wedding would only be ceremony, for here lay the true binding. The union of our souls, I’d merge with him, and he’d merge with me, and I wanted that.

  Now.

  A fire, a type of passion I’d never known I’d possessed, overcame me then. All the heat I felt whenever Ragoth was near consumed me.

  Raking my nails down his chest, leaving deep, vertical red slashes in my wake, I threw myself on him. Forcing him to take my weight as we both crashed to the ground.

  Straddling his hips, I wiggled to a sitting position. The stones and hard rocks beneath my knees bit into my flesh, abrading them with each movement. I’d be scuffed when this was over, but I had no power in me to ask him to move. If I didn’t feel my beast now, I would howl.

  Evincing the same sort of desperation I felt, Ragoth tossed the tattered edges of my clothing off, leaving me only my translucent chemise. I bowed against the support of his strong hands as he ran them hotly up my back and gasped when his hot mouth found my nipple.

  He nibbled, suckled, and laved his tongue along its tight bud over and over again so that when he popped it free, the brush of air against the damp fabric brought on an entirely different kind of sensation. A play of hot and cold that made me mad for more.

  “Devil,” I cried, delirious with sensation when he moved to my next breast, giving it the same delicious treatment as the other.

  “Lena,” he growled, and the sound of his voice, it drove like a spear straight through me.

  “Oh gods, Ragoth,” I moaned, desperate to get him inside me. It’d been so long since I’d lain with another. “So long. Too long.”

  I couldn’t seem to stop from mumbling. My fingers felt clumsy and stupid as I reached down between us to try and extract his cock from his trews.

  I tugged and pulled on the laces, mewling in frustration that I couldn’t seem to get at that bit of male flesh I so desperately needed to feel inside me right now.

  “Just rip the damn things off,” he snapped before latching his mouth against the column of my throat and suckling gently.

  Head dizzy with a wash of primeval lust and need, I blinked. “I...I can’t. Bloody damn things,” I snapped, tugging harder.

  Without a word, he slapped my hands aside, and using his incredible strength, ripped his pants open, freeing his hard thickness to my greedy inspection.

  He was long, veined, and curled slightly at the tip. I wet my lips, eyeing the head of his cock with shock and need. He was so big; how would he fit, how could it not hurt?

  I’d had my fair share of men, some much bigger than others. But Ragoth was by far the biggest. Taking my face in his hands, he forced my eyes to his and whispered, “Breathe, my beauty. Just breathe. We’ll fit as we always have. You and I are a perfect match. The fates have decreed it.”

  The manic fluttering of my heart eased just a little, and I nodded, then kissed the meat of his palm, nuzzling his hand and breathing in deeply the spicy warmth of his skin.

  His chest moved up and down with great, mighty heaves, as though he tried mightily to contain his desperation. “Are you okay now?” he asked after a half minute.

  Smiling gently, I nodded. “I want you, dragon. I’ve always wanted you. Ease into me slowly.”

  Rucking up my garment so that it puddled around my hips, and exposing my heated core to him, he moved into position. The tip of his cock brushed my slick warmth.

  I bit down on my lips. “Oh goddess,” I moaned, half delirious with madness when he gently eased inside.

  He was thick, long, and for a second I panicked as he continued to move deeper and deeper inside of me. No man had ever been within me so deep; I could hardly move when he’d pushed in to the hilt.

  Holding me steady in his arms, he nodded. “Relax and accept me as your own,” he murmured, dropping rows of tiny kisses along the curves of my face. My chin, my cheeks, the tip of my nose, and the center of my brow.

  Each loving stroke calmed my nerves. I’d always heard dragons were big in all ways, but I had to admit that I’d not been prepared for just how big. He stretched me wide and filled me full.

  It took me several breaths before I felt confident enough to make the first upward stroke.

  But when I did... Squeezing my eyes shut, an animalistic sort of sound I’d never made before in my life vibrated straight through me. I felt his smile against the corner of my jaw as he met my strokes with deep, penetrating thrusts of his own.

  “Damn it all to Tartarus,” he ground out between clenched teeth, and I wasn’t sure why he’d said that, but I didn’t really care.

  I needed to feel him, forever, inside of me.

  Mouth parting, I pressed my cheek against his, wrapped my arms around his neck, and squeezed as my body moved with a rhythm all its own. His hands cupped my breasts, playing with them as his cock stroked me deep and long, filling me up with such pleasure I knew I would die from it.

  Heat like I’d never felt before in my life began to bloom, radiate outwardly from deep within me. Right from the point where he and I were joined.

  “Look at me,” he grunted half a second later.

  It was all I could do not to cross my eyes when I finally forced myself to open them. What I saw had me gasping.

  My dragonborne and I glowed in truth. I’d never seen the glow he’d always told me I possessed, but I saw it now.

  A blue radiance of it shimmered up from the pores of not only my skin, but his as well, coalescing into a tight pool around us. The very air prickled with so much raw power, all I could think was, “This is a great way to die.”

  He chuckled and shook his head. “Not die, my treasure. Live.”

  Then he thrust up as I moved down and my world exploded into chaos. A rush of such fiery power consumed me, burning me up alive.

  But it was glorious, and all I could do was laugh as I scorched. My hair, my flesh, every part of me was consumed in that blue flame. Ragoth wrapped his arms tight around me, still moving, still consuming me.

  “I love you,” I whispered. “I love you so much.”

  And with those words we screamed our release.

  It took several long moments before either of us could breathe normally again.

  Somehow I’d wound up pinned beneath him. He lay on his forearms, keeping most of his weight off me, but his eyes were wide and full of awe. I smiled as I framed his jaw with my hand.

  Turning into my touch, he kissed me then said, “We are one, Lena. Do you feel me inside you?”

  I knew he wasn’t speaking physically. Because I did feel his presence. A vast, deep cavernous chamber that’d not been there before, full of power that brimmed to the very surface. His glow, his very life, beat inside my own. I felt the strength of the dragon curl within me.

  My morphling heritage had sucked him and it never occurred to me that I’d still had the ring of hearts on my hand and not on his; the heart stone was a dull flat color. The magic that writhed within me had not come from the ring, but from the dragon.

  I felt such power as I’d never felt before.

  I looked at him, shocked and almost terrified by the breadth of this gift.

  “Ragoth...” I whispered, not sure what I was saying but desperately needing him to make sense of it.

  Taking my fingers, he kissed the pads of them gently before grinning and saying, “I feel you inside me too, Lena. A little ball of glowing light.” He pressed a dark palm to his chest. “Your soul and mine have merged and we are forever one.”

  Stunned, I didn’t know quite what to say. “This never happened with Charles.”

  “Because he wasn’t me.” He said it softly. “Because I claimed you long ago, you were always mine. My greatest treasure, my loveliest jewel.” He traced a finger along the bridge of my nose, the touch so feather light that my stomach curled with burgeoning desire all over again.

  I did not think it possible that I should be ready ag
ain, but I felt the awakening of desire rush through my heavy limbs. The heat and warmth of him filling me up from the inside out.

  His gaze rolled down my body, and he winced. “Your knees are bleeding.”

  “Are they?” I looked, and sure enough, the stones had cut straight through my tender skin. “Huh.” I laughed softly as I finally became aware that they hurt.

  But not for long. Ragoth had moved down my body and was now kneeling over my knees, gifting me his tears. The cool touch of them rolled like sun-kissed honey over my abraded flesh, healing them instantly.

  He ran his hands across my knees almost reverently once he’d finished. “I never want to see you hurt again, my love.”

  His tone was reverential, almost worshipful. Opening my arms to him, I implored him to come back to me. And he did, moving up my body slowly, dropping heated kisses along the way, kisses that made me burn and increased my hunger, my need for him all over again.

  Brimming with magic and power, I laughed as I called for a canopy of fresh spring buds to spring forth from the packed dirt soil beneath me. We lay in a verdant garden of wild blooms as my dragon lover brought me once more to the very heights of carnal ecstasy.

  ~*~

  Ragoth

  Since the union of our souls, it was pure torture to let Lena out of my sight. I knew why now my parents, along with most dragonborne, opted never to bind as she and I had.

  I had few weaknesses in life.

  But she was definitely one of them.

  We’d made love through the night. The passionate possession of our first mating giving way to more exploratory and sensual delights as the night had worn on. Eventually she’d passed out from exhaustion, but I’d lain awake, watching her.

  She was mine in truth now. Nothing and no one could part us.

  “How did I get to be so lucky?” I whispered, and even in her sleep, she smiled. She wore no clothing; only a light blanket covered her, but one of her breasts was exposed, and I couldn’t help but tease at the shell-pink nipple as I studied the birthmark of her morphism upon her left breast. The bleeding heart marking was delicate and beautiful. Just like her. She needed sleep, but I couldn’t seem to keep my hands off her either. I wasn’t sure a lifetime of touching her would be enough.