Naked Dragon Read online

  “My hope does not always overcome my fear, Kenna. Killian wants me to fail you, Andra, and my brothers.”

  McKenna held her chest. “You’re giving me heart palpitations.”

  Bastian cupped her face in his hands. “Our time together is not guaranteed, I am sorry to say.”

  “Then let’s make the most of it,” she whispered as she met his lips with hers.

  As he stepped away from her, an aura of sexuality poured from him, an imperative to beat time at its own game. “I know what is happening with your body,” he said. “I feel you opening for me, as my lance readies itself to fill you.” He turned away from her and stepped from his jeans.

  “Black boxers,” she said, still worried, but she fell back against her pillows, because this was their time, and the provocative light in his eyes a minute before had nearly undone her. “I might need reviving.”

  “You might when you see me. Are you ready?”

  She supposed she had to be, but she didn’t think she could take another shock.

  She sat on the edge of the bed for a better view. The rest of Bastian’s body was such a temple of perfection, despite his scars. It could have been sculpted in bronze by Rodin. How bad could his flaw be? “Ready,” she said.

  Naked, Bastian turned to face her.

  She saw but did not believe.

  Her heart raced. Pinpricks attacked her limbs.

  The floor rushed up to meet her.

  FORTY-SIX

  Bastian’sheartstopped as he lifted McKenna off the floor and placed her on the bed.

  She opened her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  “You scared me.”

  “Funny,” she said. “I was thinking the same thing.”

  He stepped away from her. He knew now that this would not work. He picked up his jeans.

  She sat up and tried to get a better look at his erect flaw.

  Despite her fear, he caught the change in her musk, the scent of her sex in his nostrils. She might have been shocked senseless by the sight of him, but arousal marched beside interest.

  Damn. His inner dragon rose in thrumming cadence to his ready lance.

  He caught McKenna’s changing expressions, her glance, wary, exhilarated . . . unsure.

  He knelt beside the bed. “I apologize for frightening you.”

  “I won’t kid you. It’s not what I expected. For one thing, it isn’t shaped like any penis I’ve ever seen, pictures included. It’s like a pulsing, living sex toy.” She raised herself to a kneeling position, then sat on her legs, and pointed behind her hand to his flaw, like she didn’t want to hurt his lance’s feelings. “I think the average woman would pay big bucks for that, or a copy of it,” she whispered.

  Did she fear waking it up? News flash. It was awake and roaring to go. Still, he could say nothing, do nothing, except beg her silently to accept him, flaw and all.

  He tried to cover the embarrassing erection with his hands, but it had a mind of its own.

  As she examined it, McKenna caught her breath. Her breasts appeared to rise toward him, her nipples to pebble. She lowered her lashes, to hide her eagerness? And she shifted her hips, which aroused him the more.

  She mirrored his unease in the face of his blatant arousal, but if she moved her hips that way again, he might explode. He could not look away and touched a lock of her hair, red as the paprika sun. He loved the way it curled in waves and tumbled from her shoulders to her breasts. He had seen in the water, when they shed their clothes, that her woman’s center was the same red—the color of passion.

  He could not conceal his body’s reaction, his hunger and yearning. “Forgive me, but you are like sweet cherry wine and honey from the hive, combined. I yearn for you. I want to taste you.”

  She shook her head. “You sound like you mean that.”

  “What can I say to convince you?” Perhaps he had not mastered the English language after all.

  She leaned toward his lance and it surged to meet her.

  “Beneath its skin, my lance has scales, I believe,” he said, “which other men’s do not, and the appendage itself, especially in this erect state, resembles a dragon tail, you may have noticed.”

  McKenna ran her stroking gaze up its length.

  “Touch me,” he rasped.

  “Come,” she said, “sit beside me.”

  At her invitation, he placed a knee on the bed, expecting her to change her mind. Expecting and dreading.

  McKenna lay back, her clothes in disarray, blouse open, mostly covering her, except for the peach silk excellence of her skin and the inviting red bra beneath her blouse.

  When she reached for him but hesitated, he caught his breath, his heart pounding from his chest, echoing in his head, making him dizzy.

  Finally, she closed her hand around him, and he hissed and bucked while she tested his lance, moved it, played it, a torment of the most exquisite nature.

  He rode the high and tried to control himself, despite an eternity of celibacy, but he needed a distraction and she needed to say something. “I believe this could be pleasurable for us both, in its current adaptation,” he said. Foolish statement.

  “Yes. Sorry. I’m . . . speechless.”

  “A rare occurrence.”

  “If the women who follow you knew what you kept beneath your zipper,” she said, “you could die of pleasure.”

  “Will you be telling them?”

  “I think not.”

  She liked it? Odd way of showing it. “I could only die of pleasure if you were the woman slaying me,” he admitted.

  “Bastian?”

  “Yes?”

  “Your penis has curled itself around my hand.”

  “It has been pining for you, and now I guess it is greedy for your attention.”

  “I guess it is freaking prehensile.”

  “I told you in the lake. Did you not listen?” Bastian removed himself from her hand with difficulty and sat a distance away. “I apologize,” he said as he began to zip his lance back into his jeans, except that there was not as much room in them now.

  He settled for pulling a corner of the blanket over himself.

  “No, no, no.” She tugged it away to reveal the flaw trying to make its way back to her. “You know, you might be the only man alive who does have a brain beneath your zipper.”

  “It’s never been so out of control.”

  “Bastian, you’re embarrassed.”

  “What was your first clue?”

  “You’re getting good at snark.”

  “Snark, yes, that is my great concern at this moment.”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  McKenna’s amusement eased the anxiety binding his chest tight.

  “Bastian, I’m fascinated by it, not repelled, and I’m not blacking out anymore. It’s amazing, actually, something every woman would want if she knew it existed. You’d be a gazillionnaire if you made one of plastic and added batteries.”

  He stopped trying to keep the hungry thing in check and looked down at himself in some surprise. “This is good, then?”

  “It’s extraordinary, and it’s mine. Well, yours,” she countered, “but you’re willing to share, which I appreciate, and we get to play with it together, right? How does it work?”

  “You tell me.”

  He caught her arousal as she leaned kissing-close to it, a woman made of earth and stars, an elemental goddess without pretense. “Does this puppy have—I mean, are these really scales beneath the skin? Whatever they are, they seem flexible, and . . . Oh, I like this—they fan back and forth, or up and down, depending on your perspective, or where your lance might be, like inside me. That must feel nice.”

  Her whole body shivered, from anticipation, he hoped, since he felt like a volcano near to erupting.

  She closed her hand around him, firm finally, no hesitation, her only goal pleasure, sending white-hot lightning through him, the good kind, fast pumping his heart.

  Her brows arched as her interest piqued. With her
top buttons open, her blouse off one shoulder, he imagined her nipples, ruddy, hard, and ready for his touch, or his lips. He had suckled her in the lake, but this first real time for them was different. Planned. Desired.

  Mutual desire. Finally. A near thing.

  He cupped her head, pulled her toward him, and as they kissed, fell together to the bed, their hands seeking, hers and his. Mouths, too. In quest of pleasure, silk skin, new territory, uncharted, every inch.

  Her lips tasted better than honey. Sweeter, more inspiring, addicting. A driving obsession overtook him, as surely as his inner dragon woke. He wanted to kiss her more deeply, know her more intimately.

  She slipped a leg between them, against his need, and his lance jumped to attention, drawing a moan from his lips. She raised her hips in invitation and spoke his name.

  His hands trembling with lust and love, he began unbuttoning her clothes and caught his breath. The red bra, he remembered from that first day. Her top came off over her head. He pointed to the center of the bra between her breasts and it fell open.

  Her head came up.

  “Magick.” He wiggled his brows.

  “So you could have done that anytime?”

  “Anytime you were ready.” The matching panties might have put him over the edge, if she hadn’t pulled them down and away so fast.

  He explored her skin, every surface. Luscious curves. Sweet hidden places. Layers and layers of secrets to explore.

  She slipped beneath him, or he rose over her, difficult to say, but before he made the next move, she stopped him.

  Alphas, he told himself, did not cry.

  “I bought these for us,” she said, reaching into her nightstand. “Yes, I have had the hots for you for some time. Get over it. Gloating is not permitted.”

  Her words made no sense. “What is this you are holding?” He took the box from her hand to examine the contents. “Candy?”

  “Better than candy.”

  “Are you are as eager for this mating as I am?” he asked. “Say yes.”

  “Jiminy, I didn’t have to confess my lust, did I?”

  “Confession is good for the soul. I read that somewhere. I like that you are breathless. It feeds my hunger for you.”

  She took a packet from the box and tore it open. “Berries,” he said at the scent, as he examined the contents. “What is it?”

  “You took sex lessons at Vivica’s, yet you learned nothing about birth control or protecting your partner?”

  “I fast-forwarded to the good part. Did I miss something?”

  “I’ll say. We slip this on over your dragon lance.”

  “Are you sure we need this?”

  “Just like a man.”

  “A man who is shrinking as you speak.”

  “Listen, buddy, I don’t want to wake up one morning to discover that I’m about to lay a dragon’s egg, all right?”

  “I am human, again, I tell you, but go ahead, put it on me.”

  She tried. “I should have bought python supremes.” She attempted to slide it on him, a pleasure all its own, he discovered, but the sheath stretched only halfway. “I suppose it’ll cover you where it counts,” McKenna said.

  He looked down at himself. “Looks fine to me. Are we done playing now?”

  “Oh, baby,” she said, wrapping her legs around him. “We’ve just begun.”

  His lance rose to the occasion.

  She taught him new variations on foreplay.

  He taught her staying power. And together they learned that a dragon-tail penis could handle foreplay on its own. His arrowed tip worked her clit until she wept and cried out and begged him to come inside her. He granted her wish and together they sought heaven.

  “Bastian!” she shouted as he filled her.

  “Scales,” she purred.

  “Magick,” she gasped as she approached one of many orgasmic peaks.

  He felt each orgasm, as if it were his own, which made him pump more energetically, his love for McKenna growing by the beat. Again, they sparked their own stars, pale blue and fluorescent dancing in the air around them. Manifestations of sex and satisfaction. Love.

  She raised her hips, grew taut, milked him from the inside, once again, pulling him deeper and deeper inside her. And when she called his name loud enough to wake her ancestors, he was lost, and Bastian followed her to that place beyond suns.

  They collapsed together, trying to catch their breaths.

  “I never,” McKenna said, “never imagined.”

  After a short nap, she rode the dragon, to quote her, then he rode her, and they switched, again, with the same delightful outcome, though the force of each orgasm grew bolder, brighter, and more life affirming.

  “Impossible,” she said, catching her breath. “Men can’t have multiple orgasms.”

  “This man can,” he said. “I feel what you feel. You hurt, I hurt.”

  “I come, you come?”

  He grinned, reached into the nightstand, pulled out that box, and turned it upside down. “Oh, no!”

  McKenna could barely raise her head. “What?”

  “We are out of condoms.”

  “I didn’t expect you to be so greedy.”

  “It’s been centuries, woman. We have to buy more. Are the stores open now?”

  “No. They’re not. But tomorrow, we’ll buy a pack of super giant deluxe.”

  “Good, because I kept overflowing these.”

  “You what!”

  FORTY-EIGHT

  When the cock crowed, the one in the yard, McKenna snuggled up to the one who’d made her come all night, and she was sore, everywhere, especially between her legs, where his big, giant dragon pecker had been.

  Not a dragon. A man. He said he had blood tests to prove it. Human. His penis was an anomaly. A defect. He would take her to the doctor who told him so, if she wanted.

  Hell yes, she wanted. He’d overflowed a dozen damned condoms and didn’t say so until they’d used the whole blasted box.

  Oh, hell, if she didn’t get dressed before he woke up, he’d actually see her fully naked in daylight, not just bits here and there, and the jig would be up.

  She’d barely turned on the shower when she heard a familiar growl. “Good morning, Kenna.”

  “I guess that wasn’t a one-night stand, then,” she said, trying to cover herself with the shower curtain, but Bastian pulled it from her hands and stepped in to join her.

  “I tasted every inch of you. I love every inch. Let me see you.”

  “Why would you want to?”

  “I worship you, McKenna Greylock, not only your heart, but your amazing body. You inspire my dragon lance to rise, yes, but your body is the grail that holds your heart.”

  She went limp against him. “Do you really think that skinny girls need feeding?”

  “They’re a disgrace to earth.”

  This man could make her laugh at her own insecurities.

  “Besides, you like my flaw. You enjoy it, too. Want to give it a morning jog?”

  She winced. “I’m sore. Aren’t you?”

  He tipped his head. “Tender, maybe.” He cupped her between her legs and she stiffened.

  “Kenna, I’m healing you.”

  “You’re like mister freaking perfect, aren’t you, except for being directionally challenged.”

  “Perfect? Except for my flaw and the dragon inside me roaring to be free. I cannot let it out, you understand, under penalty of death, and not necessarily my own.”

  “But your death as a dragon is a possibility?” She stopped lathering his chest. “You really could turn back?”

  “I will not let it happen. Too much depends on my being strong. If I succeed in my quest, Andra gets her magick back, and my brother dragons will be transformed and come here, one at a time. I hope you do not mind.”

  She shrugged. If they were coming to him here, that meant he was staying. “Where else but to the Dragon’s Lair would they come?”

  “Good point.”
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  “Cedrig will probably be transformed next. Or Jaydun. They are both strong. If all goes well, you will meet them.”

  “What would happen to you, if you turned back into a dragon?”

  “On this plane, I would not survive. But that is not what worries me.”

  “It worries me,” she said.

  He kissed her nose. “Thank you. As for transforming, I worry more about my brothers.”

  “You mentioned a quest. Can I help?”

  “I love your heart.” He gave her breasts a one-handed wash. “My quest is to make your quest my own.”

  “I don’t see how that’ll help your brothers.”

  “It’s all part of some master plan. Fate. Destiny. Kismet. I was expected here. You saw Ciarra’s cave drawings.”

  “You’ve graduated to the Oxford English Dictionary, haven’t you? Kismet, indeed.” She gave him a quick kiss. “I feel better now, down there, but don’t stop.”

  She heard his inner chuckle and wondered, if she listened closely, could she hear the roar of his inner beast?

  As they dried each other off, she threw a towel around his shoulders and rubbed her nose against the mat of hair on his chest.

  “Itchy nose means you’re coming into money,” he said, his lips against her brow.

  She stretched like a cat with one purpose in mind, to harden his lance, and she proudly accomplished her goal in record time.

  “That towel keeps my back warm. Come closer and warm my . . . front.”

  FORTY-NINE

  A week later, after Vivica blessed both houses, charging them with health and prosperity, love and bright blessings, they started moving Steve, Lizzie, and the kids into the addition. McKenna appreciated the distraction, because she had the raging hots for Bastian—and he for her—and if it wasn’t for the Framingham family, they’d never get any work done in the house.

  She should be running, McKenna supposed, from the emotional dartboard she’d made of her heart, which she put out there for dragon target practice, but she liked having Bastian in her life. She liked it so much, she couldn’t stop grinning, which Lizzie noticed, especially when McKenna bought that pack of python supremes at the drugstore.