A Shade of Dragon 2(54)

The tunic came up over his head and I lost my breath a little bit. Even though I had seen this fiery prince fully nude before, it had never been in a context wherein I might be lying with him that night. In fact, we were married now. The realization kept occurring to me in surreal and giddy washes. In fact, tonight was our wedding night. I didn’t know about fire dragon customs, but in America, that was the night that you were finally ravished by your groom. He had said, after all, that I was going to give him the greatest gift: “a healthy child.” I hadn’t really thought about it before, since I wasn’t sexually active; did I even want a child? I was only nineteen, and still a student, but then—had I not already, in so many ways, shunned that life for this new world? And if there was one man in the entire multiverse with whom I wanted to have children, was it not Theon?

And even if I wanted to wait, did this strangely medieval realm practice contraception?

Theon turned and glanced over his shoulder at me, smiling as if he could read my thoughts. The firelight fluctuated on his bare golden skin. He smiled, suddenly impish, and turned toward me again. The crotch of his pants protruded blatantly, and I pretended like I didn’t notice and it wasn’t distracting.

“You know,” he informed me, “you have seen all of me before. But I have only seen your eyes. While your soul is laid bare in every kiss we’ve ever shared, other parts of you remain shadowed and mysterious.”

He took a step closer to me, and his eyes threw the firelight back to me like two golden coins.

His hands reached around me, and untied the corset of my gown, letting it unfurl for him.

I shuddered as the warmth of his touch moved over my body, and seemed to spread downward like ripples fanning from a fingertip.

“A receptive woman, they say,” Theon murmured, his hands returning to my face, coming to cup my chin and jaw, “is the key to a man’s longevity. In life, and in love.”

With this, he swept me into a kiss of such depth and magnitude, the city around us seemed to crumble. He pulled me against his chest and scooped me off of the ground, carrying me to the bed and laying me out as tenderly and reverently as if I was a priceless shroud. Again, as his eyes moved over me, I had the sensation that he was not only enamored, but drunken with readiness.

When he descended atop me, our bodies tangling as easily and naturally as if there never were any boundary at all, the heat which swept and ballooned through my body brought me to the edge of ecstasy in and of itself. Clothing fell away, and we left them behind, soaring together. His electrical fingertips danced along my most sensitive skin, and I forgot that we were in a hostile city; I cried out for him with a head emptied of all rational thought. When I thought that I would become delirious with the satisfaction, sodden with sweat and hardly able to use a single muscle without trembling, it was only then that he allowed himself to let go, and I wondered if he too forgot where we were, as he called so loudly to the gods. For the briefest of moments—though, in retrospect, it must have been an hour or two—we forgot the desperation of our circumstances, and expressed our love like the king and queen that we would someday be.





Theon





It took me several minutes to remember exactly what was going on when I woke up the following morning. The only thing of which I was immediately aware was my own bare flesh pressed firmly to Penelope O’Hara’s—and then, still floating in the afterglow even hours later, I realized that her name was now Penelope O’Hara Aena. My queen, no matter how small the kingdom. My queen… even if only the queen of this simple little suite in an abandoned inn at the entrance of the city walls. At first, in those precious moments of ignorant bliss, I was only aware of the soft bedding, and the fireplace crackling with embers, and Penelope O’Hara Aena cupped lovingly against my chest.

But then I opened my eyes.

The window she had insisted on leaving unshuttered still peered out into the world beyond, and the snow that had been falling gently, which she so clearly found endearing, had mounted the windowsill in a drift. My arms tightened around Nell, and she snuggled against me, still sleeping and oblivious.

I would take back this kingdom.

I would not relent until The Hearthlands were green and bright with sunlight again. I would see the Aena crown on my beloved’s head, and she would bear the heir which would ensure the continuation of the dynasty. There was no alternative. Gods be damned.

I climbed from the bed and dressed in the meager warmth of the fire, ice stealing into my bones. Nell, still oblivious, curled deeper into the blankets and smiled in her sleep.

I wished that I could leave her as innocent as she was, but now that she had become my queen, she would need to be as vicious as an ice dragon in order to best them.