This has to be done, he assured himself. Until it is, they will keep coming for her. Arach was dead, that was temporary. The Nomad would be reborn. He won’t stop until Eva is his queen.
Unless you make her yours first.
On the bed, Eva bent one long leg, moaning softly. Calidum’s entire body went hard, and his fists clenched. With a thought, his armor was gone, freeing him from any further barriers between them. Without taking his eyes off his prize, he raised his right arm to his mouth, bared his teeth, and bit down hard. At once, his blood began to pour, crimson rivulets of power that he wasted no time in using.
He knelt with one knee beside Evangeline, and gently cupped her face in his other hand. “Eva,” he said softly, using his magic to curl into her mind and force obedience. She was just weak enough that it worked, and he had to smile at her inherent will.
Her long, thick lashes fluttered. She opened her eyes and looked up at him. They were the lightest purple, the softest hue of lavender coloring irises that glowed in unnatural beauty. His heart stopped. It literally stopped for several beats – then started up again hard and fast, painfully urging him on. Easy… He bore down on himself, reining in his need; it was already nearly too much to bear.
“Drink.” He placed his wrist to her lips and willed them to open and let him in. She blinked – and then she obeyed, and his cock throbbed at the sight as she parted her lips and placed them to his arm. His blood stained her crimson as she swallowed, and when she did, her lilac eyes flashed with renewed power. It was instantaneous, infusing her at her core, where it mattered most.
Sustenance was essential to any living being, but dragons burned through theirs with incredible speed, much faster than humans. In turn, they were able to absorb that lost energy just as fast and from more sources than humans. Sugar was their favorite source of strength… most of the time. There was another one they turned to with anticipation and delight, in times when two needs came together as one.
Blood. Dragon blood. It was infused with elements of all three hearts, and hence pumped everything a dragon required. It was quickly absorbed and struck home at once, transferring from heart to heart in a literal sense. It was also extremely – exquisitely – pleasurable to exchange blood for a dragon. It could not get more personal. You could not give anything more meaningful to another.
Calidum was the Great Gray, a Legendary, and he was the Dragon King. There was no blood more powerful than his in the Dragon Kingdom. Dragons dreamed of it, but very, very few had ever tasted the blood of a king, much less a Legendary. Those recipients were the rare chosen, the precious, held as beloved by the most powerful dragons in creation.
Evangeline slowly took his very essence into herself, and she made soft sounds, helpless sounds, as his blood no doubt infused her system with building pleasure, bringing her to life in a way she could not have imagined.
He watched her, and his eyes ignited painfully, lighting a bonfire fueled by a mounting hunger of his own. She moaned against his forearm, and most likely overwhelmed by sensation, she attempted to pull away. But he held her there, his hand on the back of her head to keep her mouth to his wound. “No, Eva” he commanded softly, leaning in to place his lips to her ear. “Keep drinking.” You’re going to need it.
She began to move beside him, and his eyes roamed down the length of her long, lithe body. Her legs slowly bent and unbent, her torso flexed, her back arched, and she writhed.
Holy fuck.
When the bucking began, he moved his body over hers to straddle her, and his head nearly exploded with the sensation of being skin on skin with her. His cock brushed her abdomen. He was so hard, the contact was nothing but blissfully agonizing. Eva was now flushed with heat, her heart was hammering, and tiny rivulets of fresh blood began to form at the wounds Arach had given her.
Now is the time.
Calidum removed his wrist from Eva’s lips, and her head tossed to the side. He could hear her thoughts, knew what she needed. His blood had made her crazy inside. Her right hand ran down the length of her own body, aimed for the sweet spot between her legs. She was desperate to see to her own needs. But he was about to fix that.
As gently as he could considering her renewed strength and fresh agitation, Cal grasped Eva’s wrists and held them to the bed on either side of her. “Eva,” he said, attempting to draw her attention once more. But she looked away, her eyes shut, her teeth biting into her bottom lip with cruel abandon.
Calidum’s rippling, pain-wracked body urged him on, bringing him to once more send forceful magic into her mind. Look at me.
She thrashed against him now, willful anger joining her carnal hunger.
Now! he commanded, nearly out of patience completely. Eva, do as I say.
Gradually, as if coming awake from a dream, Evangeline opened her eyes. Her movements slowed beneath him, and Cal had never seen a sexier creature in any realm. He growled low, his own teeth bared, his eyes burning right through his skull as Eva turned her head and met his gaze at last.
He had to do this now. There would never be another time – he wouldn’t live that long, would not survive the night, he was sure, if he did not make her his then and there.
“Eva, I need you to say it,” he said, his voice shaking, his body aching because his muscles were flexed so hard. I need you to tell me, he thought, his eyes pleading. Tell me you don’t blame me. Tell me that you forgive me. Tell me you will grow to love me… the way I love you.
Evangeline stared steadily up at him as her chest rose and fell, and her perfect breasts glistened from her exertion. He expected a play of emotion, another struggle perhaps, even tears – maybe. What he didn’t expect was that she would simply say, “There’s nothing to forgive you for, Calidum.”
Her voice was so beautiful, so melodic as it filled the space of his master chamber, sweet and pure. Her words rode through him like a blessing. But they shocked him.
“Please erase him from me,” she said next, and he knew she was referring to everything Arach had done, the way he’d bitten her, the things he’d taken from her. She knew what Cal planned to do. Either she was instinctively reading his intent, or she was just that smart. Or both.
Claim me.
Calidum, the Dragon King was shocked for approximately a second and a half longer. And then he recovered fully.
Chapter Thirty-six
When she’d first met Calidum in that mall, Evangeline had been overrun with emotion. When she chose to be honest with herself, she realized that most of the pain she’d felt was the pain of duplicity. Because she’d been attracted to him – fiercely so – when she shouldn’t be.
But everything she’d once held to be true was false, and things were not always as they seemed. She was on fire right now. The blood moving through her veins and pumping through her heart was hellishly strong, burning her up in a way that could not be ignored. He straddled her, holding her down in her descent into madness, grounding her in the magic he had given her. He was so tall, larger than life, his revealed body the very essence of male domination. In another lifetime, he was the monster in her mind. And he looked every bit the part right now.
A beautiful, alarming monster.
All was not as it seemed. And the truth was, the strong, sculpted, dark angel of a man above her was terrifying and magnificent – and she was utterly lost to him.
She always had been.
She had never mated with a dragon. Not in all her many years. But she’d been around long enough to know how it was done. Arach’s marks still pulsed sorely at her throat; Calidum had left them alone, allowed them to continue to hurt, and even to bleed. But she knew why.
They ached for a new set of teeth; they were a slightly cruel reminder that she could either keep the holes that throbbed there, or allow another pair of fangs to claim them as their own. In the end, he’d known what she would choose. He had her.
Again, he always had.
Claim me. It was a simple thought, two short words. They wer
e breathed through her mind, a surrender of absolute submission, and they were a plea. For his blood ran through her veins, and the longer it did – the closer she came to a kind of oblivion. That, too, he had planned. She had needed sustenance, true. She’d desperately needed to replenish the strength her battle and Arach’s torture had taken from her.
But the Dragon King had thoroughly detailed her demise when he’d chosen to give her that much needed sustenance in the form of his blood. From the moment he’d laid her atop his sheets and opened up his vein, he’d executed his ultimate plot with a single-minded and calculated ruthlessness. Like a Legendary would.
Eva knew he’d heard her two simple words, her basic surrender, when he went completely still above her and she felt his power swell around him so strong and so thick, it was nearly physical where it brushed along her damp skin. She shuddered.
And then he was releasing her wrists to run his hands down along the lengths of her arms and finally place his hands on either side of her face. He held her lovingly, leaned in like the angel descending, and Eva held her breath. Her heart raced painfully.
“Are you certain, little one?” he asked across her lips, a mere hair’s breadth away. His voice rolled over her, sexy as hell, deep and rumbling, and fanned the flames his blood had ignited within her. It was hopeless, and he knew it, and he was only rubbing it in. His control over her was like a blissful delirium Eva could not, and would not, fight.
She parted her lips to answer, but he touched them with his thumbs, ever so softly, just a brush of his fingers, controlling and promising. And when he moved, his cock grazed her inner thigh, so hot and so hard, it felt like an iron brand. Eva’s only response to his question was a helpless moan.
Calidum moved in and swallowed that sound with his kiss. He parted her lips impatiently, opening her up once more for him, and delved deep. Eva couldn’t help but arch against him, wanting to be nearer as his tongue laid waste to her own and claimed her mouth as his. It was hard and deep and driven by so much passion, her head swam. He kissed her like he was hungry, like he planned to eat her, as if there was simply not enough of her to satisfy the need riding him hard.
And when she was beginning to feel light headed from the lack of air, he drove into her, his thick, firebrand of a cock piercing the tight, slick core of her like a battering ram.
Eva screamed against his lips and felt him once more take hold of her wrists to secure them to the bed. He was immense, and she was so tight. She broke their kiss, tossing her head to the side, her hair flying, teeth clenched in wanton suffering. Once he’d breached her defenses, he slowly pressed into her, relentlessly claiming her inch by tight, hard inch, until the world threatened to explode behind Eva’s eyes.
Oh gods! It hurt so much – and it felt like heaven, like candy from the devil. He was a terrible, wonderful dream that could rip the last shreds of your humanity from someone with mind-blowing ease and leave them quivering, stripped down and empty and only wanting more.
He was splitting her apart, she was sure of it. What felt like an eternity later, he lay within her to the hilt, and she felt him there, like solid fire lodged in her core. She could feel his pulse, every slight throb adding to her own ache and making her crave more despite the insanity.
Eva’s teeth released her lip, and her breathing, though ragged, began to even out. Calidum held her tight beneath him, waiting. Tenderly, he kissed her earlobe. Then the side of her face, then her chin. He moved over her ever so slightly, eliciting a gasp from her as he lowered his head to her throat and placed a kiss there too.
Eva knew what was coming. It was a dark blessing.
She had only a moment or two, precious and fleeting, to catch her breath. If she’d wanted to, she could have told him then and there to stop. He was giving her this, this final respite. She could hear Calidum breathing, feel the heat of his breath at her neck, teasing the four pinpricks of pain already left there. She closed her eyes and let out a ragged sigh.
And then Cal’s grip on her wrists tightened. It was the warning that came just before, the promise that she would be struggling, and that there was now no escape. She’d had her chance.
He rose above her, regal and perfect, each muscle rippling like a sculptor’s dream, each movement so strong, so graceful, she was transfixed. He caught her gaze for a moment, heated and hungry, and then he bent again, and Eva cried out once more as his wondrous mouth closed over her right nipple.
He sucked, his teeth pricking deliciously, as his cock pulled out of her inch by breathlessly slow inch, sending Eva spiraling toward some unknown and forbidden destination. When it seemed he’d been doing this forever, he stopped, and she had no time to brace herself, could not even think to do so – her mind was fevered, her thoughts lost in yearning. She never could have imagined such bliss.
Calidum bit down on her tender bud, not quite breaking the skin. Delicious pain raced along her nerves throughout her body, fracturing Eva’s concentration, and as she ached for him to do it again, Calidum drove his hardness back into her with decisive fury, plunging every last hot, hard inch of himself into her tight core.
Another scream ripped from Eva’s throat, and Cal released her wrist to cover her mouth with his hand, silencing the outcry even as he once more began to retreat. Eva sobbed into his hand, a sound of absolute defeat and absolute longing, for everything he did was exactly right – even this. His hand against her mouth felt comforting somehow. It would have been impossible to explain, and she didn’t care. She only knew that the man taking her was in control, and she couldn’t have been happier that it was him.
Cal released her tortured breast and kissed his way to the other, blazing a trail of promise with each scorching touch of his lips. He pulled out of her below as he did this, and those stars were back in Eva’s vision. When he closed in on her nipple and pulled hard on the rose colored nub, she inhaled sharply, and he moved his hand, allowing her to do so. He grazed the tender flesh with his teeth, threatening the taut, hardening skin with penetration – and once more, just as Eva was losing sight of all her lover was doing to her, the Dragon King drove his rock hard bulk all the way into her.
This time her cry was laced less with pain than mounting need. She ached where Calidum drove into her, but she ached worse when he began to pull back out once more. The blood that raced through her veins was like a second lover, adding to her need, meeting Calidum’s every move and pushing Eva inexorably closer to something unknown. Something that was hers alone.
Mine.
It was a thought planted in her mind, and one that brought Eva’s now free hand to Calidum’s hair. She ran her fingers through the thick black locks, suddenly only wanting to see his eyes.
Cal released her breast from his ministrations and lifted his head, meeting her gaze. He was a movie star, a model, a man unlike any other, and right now he was a beautiful monster, hair darkened with sweat, his eyes burning, his teeth bared beautifully. There, in that moment, trapped in his ravenous gaze, held down by his driven body, tortured and pleasured by his every move, Evangeline understood what it meant to be claimed. To belong to someone like this.
To be a queen.
As if he’d read her mind, Calidum the Great Gray slowly smiled. His long, sharp fangs flashed in the dim light.
They weren’t finished yet. Far from it.
Chapter Thirty-seven
She was beginning to accept him, her body adjusting to accommodate his size, flooding her with the wetness of desire, bringing her to a near panicked writhing beneath him. Calidum’s entire world consisted of the feel of her – so tight, so fucking tight – he was losing his mind. She gripped him like nothing he’d ever imagined as he moved within her, withdrawing with careful slowness so that he could drive back into her.
Mine.
He hadn’t meant to think it, really, it was just there. She was his, and he was proving it.
His teeth played at her nipple; he had never wanted to sink them into something so badly in all hi
s long, long life. He used the pleasure he gave her as a diversion and prepared to thrust into her again. He almost shook with the need to do so.
And then her hand was in his hair. He’d forgotten he’d freed one of them, releasing her wrist to cover her mouth.
The touch of her fingers was like magic; it sent pixie-dust sensations through his skin, re-focusing his mind. He heard her thoughts. She wanted to see his eyes.
Calidum released the nipple he so badly wanted to pierce and looked up, catching her gaze. There in the incredible beauty of those violet eyes, he saw his salvation. He saw this woman, this Legendary, this Nomad, this pillar of strength who had battled the Traitor over and over, who had become the most stunning dragon Calidum had ever beheld, and who could have rejected him, left him unforgiven as the outcast he’d been for thousands of years – and she was taking him in. She was surrendering to him. To him.
She wanted him to claim her. She was becoming his queen.
Mine, he thought again. And he smiled.
It was not a kind smile. He’d waited long enough.
With the full force of his fury, he shoved his hardness into her, eliciting another cry from her throat. But he let it sound out and used his hand on her body instead, sliding it across her taut, toned stomach to the curls between her legs. He parted them, pressing inward until he found the hard, telltale nub of her pleasure.
She bucked beneath him, and he laughed. His other hand released her wrist as well, and moved to her hair, grasping it firmly at the back of her head. Gently, he tugged, forcing her to arch her neck. The dual bites Arach had left taunted him. They waited, no doubt sore, and small drops of Eva’s fevered blood had escaped them to trail across her pale flesh.
He held her tight, knowing she would instinctively draw away. She wouldn’t be able to help it. He lowered his lips to her throat, closed his eyes, and inhaled. The scent of her blood tightened his grip on her, and his fingers at her core pressed harder. Eva moaned, bucking again, thrashing as if to get away. The pleasure was too intense; he could hear her scattered thoughts like shooting stars, burning themselves away as they crossed the night.