Dragon Seeker, Part Three Read online

  Trix slapped his arm. “I mean it,” she told him out loud. “You make me smile even when I think the world’s about to explode. I don’t know quite how you do it.”

  This is what it’s supposed to feel like to find your true mate, she thought. The feeling that no matter what happens, there’s someone by your side at all times, watching out for you. Helping, guarding against fear, against danger. Against pain.

  Lyre leaned in, taking the hand that had slapped him and pulling it to his lips before turning it over slowly to lay a soft kiss on the inside of her wrist. “I love your smile more than almost anything in this world.” His words vibrated her insides like a purr as his lips caressed her skin. “It’s my goal to see to it that your face never reveals any other expression.” He pulled up to look her in the eye. “I don’t want you to be afraid, Beatrix. I told you: I’m with you every step of the way.”

  “Thank you, Lyre. Now, let’s change the bloody subject. I don’t want to be a negative twat. Come, you told me you’d teach me some more signs. Now might be a good time.”

  He nodded as a wide smile took over his features. For a moment he appeared deep in thought. But then he made a gesture, curving the fingertips on one hand towards his chest, then dragging them down vertically. He raised his eyebrows as he did so.

  “Um,” she said out loud, “am I supposed to guess what that means?”

  He nodded again.

  “So, we’re playing charades, then. All right. Is it open-heart surgery?”

  A shake of his dark hair and a chuckle.

  “Oh, I know. You want me to wax your chest,” she threw at him.

  Another shake.

  “Damn it. I can’t think. I’m too hungry.”

  Lyre put one finger to his nose, and with the other he pointed at her, nodding.

  “What? You’re telling me it means hungry?”

  He nodded again.

  “This is like playing bloody parlour games with my crazy drunk relatives. Okay, show me another.”

  Lyre pointed to himself, then placed his fists together, the first knuckle on each finger touching with his thumbs up, then pointed at her.

  “You…something…me?” she said. Surely he wasn’t saying he loved her. Or was he?

  Again, he made two fists and moved them towards one another.

  “Together?” she asked. “You’re together with me?”

  He nodded. Close enough.

  “You’re with me,” she said, the words sinking into her mind. “I’m with you, too. Every step of the way.”

  Something about the difficulty of learning sign language made her feel closer to him, and she was beginning to understand the isolation that hearing impairment brought with it. So few people knew his language; so few could listen when he wanted to express a thought, a need. He must have felt like he lived in a strange country where no one had a clue what he was trying to say.

  “How do you communicate if it’s dark?” she asked. “I mean too dark for even a Dragon shifter to see?”

  “Well,” he replied inside her, as the thought would have been too complex to answer with her limited knowledge of signs, “I can only hope there are Kindred around, who can hear me telepathically. Or you, of course. If not, I’m cut off from the world. I’m entirely on my own.”

  “That must feel so lonely,” she said, her heart hurting for the life that he’d lived for so long.

  “It used to,” he replied, reaching his hand to take hers again. “But I have you now, and your lovely, lyrical Scottish voice singing inside my noggin. Who could feel lonely when they have a Beatrix to listen to?”

  Her cheeks heated with the sweet words. “You charmer,” she shot him. “Aren’t you clever, getting me all flustered and gooey?”

  “I try my best.” He kissed her hand again.

  “Ah, the silent lovebirds,” said the innkeeper, who’d walked up with a very large plate containing two giant slabs of fried fish and enough chips to feed a small army. “So mad about one another.” Elsie laid down the plate, clasped her hands and said, “Anything else I can get ye?”

  Trix shook her head. “No, thanks. This looks perfect.”

  “Wonderful. Well, enjoy, my lovelies,” Elsie said before turning around and bounding off in the opposite direction.

  “A part of me envies her, you know,” Trix mouthed quietly. “While we’re off doing God knows what tomorrow, she’ll be here, watching guests wander about while she ponders their sex lives and daydreams about your naked body.”

  “Indeed,” Lyre replied, stretching his arms over his head. “Speaking of naked bodies, what say we get a takeaway container for this food and head up to our room? I’d like to take your mind off your worries for a little, if you know what I mean.”

  As he brought his massive arms back down, Trix noticed that he was crossing his fingers again. “So, you’d like to get your face between my legs, then?”

  “Yes,” Lyre nodded. “Somehow, battered fish isn’t enough to satisfy the sort of hunger I’m dealing with right now.”

  “I approve of your plan,” Trix said, rising to her feet and looking around for Elsie. “I’ll just make sure she charges the meal to our room.”

  She wandered towards the bar, where Elsie was busily chatting with a young bartender who looked as though he’d really appreciate if her lips would stop flapping. When she saw Trix come up, she smiled.

  “Something wrong with the food, dear?”

  “Oh, no. It looks great. We’re just realizing that we’re a little groggy. Could we package it up to bring upstairs?”

  “Of course. I’ll bring a box right over.”

  Trix hadn’t even sat back down by the time Elsie showed up with two paper boxes in hand. As she placed them on the table, she said, “I’ve got something else for you as well.”

  “Oh?” Trix said. “This is really quite enough…”

  Elsie reached into her pocket and extracted two small glass vials capped with tiny corks and handed them to Trix.

  “What are these?” the Hunter asked, baffled.

  The innkeeper leaned in as she had earlier and looked around before speaking. “It’s water from the Chalice Well,” she said, even as Trix and Lyre exchanged a quick glance. “Some say it’s cursed, but I know better. It has healing powers, and no mistake. Be sure to keep it with ye at all times; you may need it.”

  “Um…thank you?” Trix said, handing one to Lyre as she stashed the other in one of the pockets in her jeans.

  “Oh, I know that I must seem like a madwoman to ye,” their hostess replied. “But there’s some truth to the old legends. Just do as I say and you won’t regret it. And watch your backs. There’s more to the Tor than meets the eye, and that’s the truth. I don’t know exactly why you two came to Glastonbury, but you seem like good folk. Whatever you’re up to, stay safe.”

  “We will,” Trix said as Elsie took off again to head back towards the bar. So, maybe she wasn’t as oblivious as she seemed.

  “We should listen to her,” Lyre said, the words flowing through Trix’s mind like liquid gold. “She’s of the old blood.” With that, he took his mate’s hand and led her to the staircase at the front of the pub.

  * * *

  “What did you mean about Elsie being of the old blood?” Trix asked as she and Lyre hiked up the narrow staircase to the second floor.

  “You’re Scottish,” his internal voice told her. “You know what I mean; the sort of person who understand what’s mythology and what’s fact.”

  “You think she’s one of the superstitious folk,” she said. “That’s what we always called the people who believed in fairies and the like.”

  “And Dragons?”

  Trix let out a laugh. “And Dragons. Though I never quite believed in them until I first saw you. I didn’t believe you could be real. I’m still not sure you are.”

  “Well, the people who do believe are special, intuitive, whatever word you choose. They believe in our kind, and they understand that man
y of the old stories are based in truth.” He opened the door to their room and turned her way. “We have human allies, just as we have enemies. The Dragon shifters have relied on them for many centuries. Though we don’t have so many human friends as we used to.”

  Trix reached into her pocket, extracting the vial of well water. “I suppose you’re right,” she mouthed, examining it. The water was a slightly red-brown colour. “Doesn’t look like blood,” she said. “More like…”

  “Iron oxide,” Lyre told her. “Mineral deposits, really.”

  “Yes,” she replied. “I remember swimming in a pool this colour when I was a child, and my parents took me on a trip to Germany. It’s harmless, but people freak out because they think anything that’s not crystal clear will kill them.” Casually, she thrust the vial back into her pocket. “Well, it won’t kill us. But I don’t suppose it’ll heal anyone, either.”

  “You never know,” Lyre told her, his blue eyes looking her up and down. “But I know something that will definitely heal anything that ails you.”

  “What’s that, Lyre, my Dragon lover?”

  “Nudity.”

  “Hmm. Are you sure about that?”

  “Well, at the very least it’ll heal me.”

  What Doesn’t Kill You…

  After letting out a laugh and laying the food on a side table, Trix looked around at their room for the first time. It was charming, albeit small, and reminded her of Lyre’s family cottage in Dover. The bed, a double, was framed in dark wood. A solitary window hid behind thick curtains that provided welcome isolation from the outside world.

  “This is pleasant, isn’t it?” she asked, turning to face Lyre. But he wasn’t examining the room. His eyes, bright, animated, even a little wild, were fixed solely on her. She could all but feel the hunger in him, the erotic scent of a Dragon shifter engulfing her mind and body in its grasp. Offering himself up for her to take.

  “Pleasant is one word for it.” His voice transplanted itself in her mind as he took a step towards her, his body so close now that its heat radiated around her own.

  She didn’t tease him with coyness. Instead, she simply looked up into his eyes, savouring the sensation of his body pressing gently against hers. Holy hornytoads, she was about to die and go to Heaven. The scent of him alone was almost too much to take, but there was so much more as well. The strength of those taut muscles. The thick erection pressing against her pelvis through their clothing, aching to be inside her.

  Sensually, she slipped two fingers to the side of his neck, commanding him to let her kiss the skin where she’d just touched him. As her lips worked their way along his neck, her hands slipped under the bottom of his shirt to seek out his abdominal muscles, to remind herself how they felt under the pads of her fingers. God, every time she touched him felt like the first. Like she was discovering an entirely new sensation, her mind reeling with pleasure and excitement.

  She grasped the bottom of his shirt and pulled upwards, yanking it over his head with his silent blessing. He pressed his forehead to hers when she’d tossed the garment aside, a deep silence between their minds now as they gave themselves over to a pleasure that was purely tactile, purely erotic.

  Flattening her palms against his chest, Trix eased down to lay kisses on his pectoral muscles, her tongue tasting the salt flesh until her lips found his left nipple. She gave him a gentle suck, enjoying the sensation of his response under her touch. Then she pulled away and slipped to her knees, fingers trailing a path along his torso.

  “You’re so sexy,” she thought, allowing the words to make their way to him. “I can’t seem to get enough of you. I’ll never get enough.” It was a beautiful yet sad notion that one day life would end, and she’d never be sated. She couldn’t. Because every time they made love she walked away craving more of him. She was a delighted addict and he was her glorious drug.

  “Good. Don’t ever tell me you’ve had enough,” he responded, his fingers twining in her red hair, directing her kisses as they centred on his muscular stomach and made their way downwards.

  Trix’s fingers fumbled with the button on his jeans for only a second before they found success, inspiring a soft sigh from her lover. As she knelt down in front of him, she allowed herself the pleasure of remembering, if only for a minute, that this was her life now. Every night, every morning, she would be with him. For now she could forget any threat that stalked them. She would shut those thoughts away for another time.

  “What is it, beautiful Beatrix?” Lyre’s voice rang inside her mind. No doubt he could feel his perfect mate fighting off some internal enemy again, and even now his Dragon would be looking to protect her from it.

  She pulled her chin up to look into his eyes and shook her head. “Nothing,” she told him out loud. “Only that I’m impossibly happy. And impossible things tend not to last very long.”

  “I’ll fight all my life to ensure that your happiness lasts,” he told her, those lips of his curving into a comforting smile. “Every day I’ll work for it. Every single moment.”

  “I know you will.”

  For a moment she wrapped her arms around his waist, pressing her cheek to his stomach in a gesture of possession. But she pulled away again, needing to taste him, to claim him as she had many times now. To make him hers all over again.

  She peeled his jeans away from his hips and downwards, her eyes fixed on the defined V-shape that drew her gaze toward the low-sitting waistband of his boxer shorts. Even as she did so she could see his erection stirring, trying to make an escape from within the shackles of the thin fabric. Trix let out a soft, delighted giggle at the sight of his swollen head peeking out as though to greet her.

  Curling her fingers around the elastic, she pulled the boxers down gently, catching the head of his cock with her lips. Above her, Lyre let out a beautiful, prolonged exhale.

  The boxers fell softly to the ground and Trix grasped him gently with both hands, stunned as always at his size. His shaft was so thick that she marvelled that he’d ever been inside her. But the ache between her legs reminded her how much her body loved it. How much she needed it.

  “Careful, sweet Seeker,” he told her silently as she stroked him, her lips wrapped tight around his swollen length. “That feels a little too good already.”

  “Good. I’m just getting started.”

  “Then I’ll help you,” he responded, rocking forward to push himself deeper into her mouth.

  Both of her hands read his need expertly, stroking at times gently, at times firmly with strong fingers, according to his body’s response. Reading each delicious twitch of his swollen shaft, each moan that escaped his lips. She could make him come in thirty seconds flat. But that would be far, far too soon.

  He reached down to take her hands in his and beckoned her to come up to his level.

  “Enough for now. I need to be selfish and have a taste,” his lips told her, his voice a barely audible whisper.

  Trix relented, rising to a standing position as Lyre pivoted her, turning her back to face the bed. He slipped a hand under her loose t-shirt and pushed it upwards to graze her left breast. As her nipple peaked under his touch, Trix inhaled violently, her abdomen tightening. Between her legs the ache grew painful, exquisite. She was beyond ready for him.

  Lyre sniffed the air gently, his lips curling up in satisfaction. That scent of hers was devastating, and as if to confirm it, the Dragon inside him issued a low growl of approval.

  He pulled her shirt upwards, marvelling at the delicate white lace of the bra that she’d chosen for the day. Her nipples were just visible through its fabric, two tantalizing pebbles calling out for his lips to purse around them and draw them in. Pleasure centres made just for him.

  He knelt down and kissed his way up the beautiful line at the centre of her belly before nuzzling her right breast with his nose, his hands on her waist. He could feel her muscles tighten under his touch as his teeth teased her nipple through the bra. Torture, this was. Sweet, d
elicious torture for them both.

  Trix ran her fingers through his hair, drawing his face to her left breast now, which he offered the same exquisite treatment. Then his hands were behind her back, making quick work of the bra’s clasp.

  She let the straps slip down and away, tossing the garment across the room as she let out a brief giggle and squeezed her breasts together. She loved how much he adored pleasuring her. For all the times he’d told her, it was his actions that conveyed the extent of his own pleasure. She really believed that he would have spent a day and a half with his mouth between her legs before coming up for air. He never seemed happier than when he felt her writhing under that beautiful, generous tongue of his.

  He unbuttoned her jeans and pulled them down slowly, kissing his way down her skin towards the line of trimmed red hair, only partially covered by an impressively small lace thong. Grabbing its waistband as well as her jeans, he tore the garments down to the floor and sat back on his knees to look at the curves of her body as she stood over him.

  “Beautiful,” he signed, his eyes fixed on the place between her legs, gleaming with desire for his body.

  “Thank you.” Trix stepped out of the jeans and sat down on the edge of the bed, spreading her legs in confident invitation. He accepted, leaning in, his tongue streaking a line from her left knee up, ending at the top of her thigh.

  She wanted him to take his time, wanted to prolong this night, wanted to forget any danger that they might face in the morning. For now they were safe, alone behind the walls of this ancient building. No scent of the enemy had met her nose. Nothing existed but the two of them. So for these few hours, she would bask in the luxury that was his perfect, desirable body. The powerful muscles, the allure of his musk. The feeling of something beyond closeness as he moved into her. She wanted to be his shelter, his home, just as he was for her.

  With his index finger he found her opening and dipped inside her briefly, reminding her of the feeling, drawing it out again to massage her clit gently, slowly. A blissful exhale forced its way out of Trix as she threw her head back in response, fingers fisting around the bedspread, breath gasping as her body convulsed under his touch. He was inside her, body, mind and soul. He understood everything about her. He felt what she felt.