Alaric sucked in a breath before lying back on the flat rock, a portrait of shadowed planes and moonlit angles. “Ride me, Beth,” he ordered in a guttural voice. “Hard.”
She did as he bid and sank down on him, her palms braced against his chest as he filled her. They groaned in unison. Alaric gripped her hips in hard hands, guiding her until they set a quick rhythm. There were few words exchanged, only the occasional gasp, and the slippery sound of skin sliding along skin as she rode him.
Alaric coaxed her head down for a kiss, mimicking the thrusts of his cock with his tongue in her mouth. His hands roamed her body, stroking her breasts, her shoulders the curve of her waist. “Gods, Beth,” he said between short breaths. “Two days. I need more than two days. I need that lifetime.” With that, he rolled them both until it was she on her back and he above her, still inside her.
Elsbeth whimpered and clutched him closer when she felt him withdraw. “No, don’t.”
He reassured her with a hard thrust that he was going nowhere. She eased her legs over his shoulders, the position tilting her hips to bring him deeper. They gasped in unison.
He slowed his pace and turned his head to kiss each of her knees. One hand drifted down her leg to map the contours of her midriff—the hollow of her belly and tracery of her ribs, the undercurve of her breasts and the dip of muscle leading to her navel. His eyes blazed silver. “You are beautiful, Elsbeth. Soul and flesh. All of you.” His fingers dipped lower, teased and tantalized, stroking her most sensitive spots until she writhed in his arms.
She arched her back, heels digging into his shoulder blades when he suddenly quickened his rhythm and deepened his thrusts. His features drew tight, eyes rolling back as his lips flattened against his teeth. Sweat sheened his body, and her own skin glistened in the fey moonlight.
The heat pulsing throughout her centered low, burning hotter as she neared her climax. “Now,” she whispered.
Low sounds erupted from his throat. He thrust twice more, his grip on her hips sure to leave bruises the next day. Elsbeth tightened her legs and held on as he moaned out her name and came hard inside her.
His fingers continued to play her like a harp until she heaved against him, twisting and crying out as her breath burned in her throat and nostrils. Her legs slid off his shoulders, and she lay on the rock, a boneless heap of quivering muscle. When Alaric lowered himself on her, she made only a token protest. He adjusted his position so as not to crush her. He stared down her, face wreathed in a satiated smile, eyed dark as slate.
Elsbeth smiled and tucked back a strand of hair away from his cheek. “You look like a cat who’s found the crock of cream.” She caressed his back with lazy strokes.
“I believe I just put cream in the crock.” He clutched her hips when her laughter threatened to push him out of her. “Careful, lass,” he warned. “It’s a touch of paradise in there. I’m not ready to leave it just yet.”
He sobered and stroked her face with gentle fingers. “Two days, Beth,” he said softly. “I hope you have nothing else to do because it’ll be me occupying your time. Take care of Angus, weave your rugs, but I’ll have you to myself every spare moment.” He glided a hand down her side and hip. “I’ll have my cock in you in every way, too.” His kiss was hard, possessive. “A claiming. I for you, you for me. I need the memory to carry with me.”
Elsbeth shivered in his arms. She wanted him the same way, needed a memory as much as he did. She caressed his hair, never tiring of its silkiness against her palm. “Then why are we talking? You’re wasting precious time, storyteller. Give me that lifetime you promised.”
She played until her arms ached, and her jaw throbbed from pressing so long on the fiddle’s chin rest. Perspiration dampened the hair at her temples and made her neck itch. When the tune ended, she lowered the instrument and took a deep breath. Tears streamed down her cheeks, dripping onto her dusty boots. She wiped them away with a grimy hand.
“I will offer you the wealth of kingdoms if you but play one more time,” a resonant voice said from the infinite dark.
Elsbeth screamed and dropped the fiddle and bow. The voice surrounded her from all directions, thrumming through the soles of her boots to dance up her calves and rifling the stray hairs that had escaped her braid. She dove for her crossbow and shield, sliding over bits of gravel and tangling vine.
Dragon. Dragon. Oh gods, the dragon. It was here.
The plan, so calmly discussed, so neatly laid out in the safety of a solar and again in the council hall, burned to ash in the fire of her terror. Pure, screaming instinct shrieked in her head to RUN! RUN NOW!
Her leg muscles automatically flexed, and she went up on her toes, ready to sprint away. Only her reason, nearly drowned out by her panic, stopped her from rushing headlong over a cliff edge or straight into the gaping maw of whatever monstrosity lurked invisible in the shadow.
Run where, Elsbeth?
She labored to inhale more than a half breath and pointed the loaded crossbow in a slow sweep around her while she crouched behind the shield. It was a futile exercise. There was no true target for her to aim at, no solid shape emerging from the night’s treacle shadows. Even with the moon illuminating miles of farmland, she saw nothing beyond the periphery of her campfire. That gloom carried a distinct scent, sharp like the morning after the first frost and tinged with the acrid bitterness of charred wood. For some odd reason, the first smell reminded her of Alaric.
“You’ve not much respect for so fine an instrument when you drop it on the ground in favor of that sad toy. What are you hoping to kill? A vole?”
The question reverberated off the rocks and made her teeth rattle. A blacker shape in the darkness moved with a sibilant hiss, like sand sliding against sand.
It still sounded as if the creature surrounded her from all sides as well as above and below her, but Elsbeth swung the crossbow in the direction where the voice seemed loudest. “Who are you?” She cringed at how she warbled the question. “What do you want?”
Growling laughter made the ground beneath her shiver. “I might ask you the same.” The sand-slipping grew louder. “What is a solitary woman doing on the cursed cliffs of Maldoza in the middle of the night, dressed in armor and playing a fiddle?”
A gust of smoke-scented wind barreled across her campsite, blasting the meager flames of her campfire into a bonfire. Elsbeth leapt back, cowering behind both rock and shield. The greater illumination revealed a sinuous length of black-scaled hide, twice the circumference of the old oak tree in Byderside’s square. The scales, shaped like teardrops, overlapped each other and made her own dragon scale shield look no bigger than the saucer for a teacup.
A scream bubbled up her throat to hum behind her clenched teeth as a monstrous reptilian head partially emerged from the nebulous dark to loom above her and regard her with eyes the size of serving platters.
“Dragon,” she whimpered.
The great head swung to and fro in the smoky murk, its elliptical pupils dilated, reflecting back the pale moon. Elsbeth was certain she careened toward fear-induced madness when a bony ridge of metallic scales running the length of its snout wrinkled in what she thought looked absurdly like a human frown.
“Hardly,” it said in that sonorous voice and snorted its disdain of the term in a puff of blue smoke belched from its nostrils. “I am a wyvern.”
“What’s the difference?” She clapped a hand over her mouth, mortified. Aye, she’d gone completely daft.
The smoke cleared and the bonfire blazed, light catching on black scales. The parts of the creature’s body revealed suddenly coiled upward into a towering spiral. Once more the air around her blew in gusts, bending the flames until they sheared across the rock she cowered behind for safety. The coil loosened, collapsing toward earth, and Elsbeth’s shrill scream bounced off the cliff walls as a visage from a demon’s nightmares hurtled toward her.
The colossal head with a feathered cockscomb of elongated scales loomed above, blotting out t
he stars. The wyvern, in all its majesty—or all its horror—watched her with a reptilian gaze behind a haze of smoke curling from its wide, armor-plated nostrils.
Like her grandfather’s description of the dragon he’d slain, it sported a pair of enormous bat-like wings tucked tight against its body. Teeth longer than her arm and sharper than sabers gleamed ivory, caging a tongue that flickered out as if to taste the air. Scales rippled as clawed feet gouged furrows into the hard ground, sending bits and pieces of rock shrapnel flying into the air. Whatever her visitor wanted to call itself, it certainly looked like a dragon to her.
Unlike Angus’s description of his trophy kill, this beast possessed only two legs—powerful back shanks she had no doubt would lever it into the air with one spring or shred a horse into bloody hair ribbons with a single swipe of a clawed foot. The legs in the front had merged with the wings, just like a bat’s, and its body was that of a viper, sinuous and serpentine.
The wyvern coiled itself around the entire campsite with Elsbeth and her fire in its center. The great head still hung above her, nostrils flaring and contracting as it breathed. Those silver eyes scrutinized her and narrowed.
Elsbeth cringed behind her puny shield as the wyvern’s head swung closer. Its breath, smelling of peat fires and burnt wood, heated a path down one side of her body. Had she not been wearing the armor, it might have blistered her skin. A high-pitched ringing in her ears warned she was on the verge of fainting.
A long sniff, and the wyvern reared back as if surprised. “It cannot be,” it declared, and lunged forward to catch her scent once more.
Behind the shield, Elsbeth sobbed. “Please don’t eat me.”
Some small part of her still able to think coherently raged at her situation. Irena and her I-know-a-little-about-dragons nonsense! What was she thinking to even consider this outrageous idea! Now instead of facing off with Malcolm Miller and his pack of toadies, she had a dragon—wyvern—sniffing at her like she’d make a nice first course before the main meal of Byderside sheep or cow.
The same growling laugh, this time laced with annoyance, vibrated the ground. “It’s well known amongst our kind that humans taste foul. I might kill you, but rest assured, I won’t eat you, even if you do offer the worst insult by calling me a dragon.” It sniffed her a third time. “Dragon armor and a fiddle. Strange combination, but so familiar.”
It didn’t give her time to ponder such an odd remark. She yelped, dropped the shield and crossbow and scampered halfway up the outcropping when the beast suddenly smashed a clawed foot onto her fire, smothering the flames. The sudden blackness camouflaged it completely, except for its eyes. Only its silver eyes and the moon above offered illumination.
Why had it killed her fire? Even the bonfire it had become offered no threat to a creature that could surely something even more spectacular with a simple sneeze.
As if it read her mind, the wyvern spoke. “All things are clearer when revealed in the dark.”
A cool wind spun off the fields below, bringing with it the howls of the mythical haints bound to the cliffs for centuries. Elsbeth climbed off the outcropping when the wyvern did nothing more than watch her. Despite her self-castigation at even considering Irena’s advice, she was too committed to their plan to cast it aside now, especially when she had no idea what else to do. And while this creature might deny dragon heritage, it liked music just like dragons did. Just like Irena said. She reached for her abandoned fiddle and bow with shaking hands.
“Shall I play for you?” Her voice was a mouse’s squeak, her stomach knotted so badly her ribs hurt.
The wyvern continued to watch her, light eyes growing darker with each passing moment. The serpentine body tightened its coils, muscles twitching in agitation. A swift slide of scales hissed across rock and gravel. Though terrified, Elsbeth was also mesmerized at the sight of so much power and grace.
“I knew a woman once,” it said, the great voice softer now. “Who played such an instrument as if the gods danced along the bow hairs.” The silver eyes were almost completely black and reflected a strange intensity not present earlier. “Tell me your name, fiddler, and why you are here.”
The council house, packed tight with villagers, erupted into pandemonium with Elsbeth at its center. She sat next to Irena, exhausted from worry and a sleepless night entertaining a wyvern. The long trek back from Maldoza had just about finished her off. Her fatigue kept her from lashing out and swatting one of the villagers shouting his protests at the council.
She’d risked her life traveling to the cliffs with nothing more than a damn fiddle and sat through the night in hot dragon armor negotiating with an enigmatic monster for her grandfather and the rest of the villagers. They had reached an accord, odd though it was in some respects. Now the villagers fought with each other over who would have to give up a portion of their livestock for the agreed-upon tribute to the wyvern.
Next to her, Irena put her fingers to her mouth and blasted a whistle that set Elsbeth’s ears to ringing. “Enough!” she shouted. “Enough!”
The hall’s occupants fell silent. All eyes settled on the small elder. She stood on the council dais, hands fisted at her hips. “What are you doing?” she demanded. “What more do you want?” The crowd shuffled and rumbled its discontent, but no one interrupted.
Irena paced the dais. “The beast is here for another month, maybe less. We can give up a dozen cattle or sheep if it means our village is left in peace.”
One of the villagers spoke up. “But who, Elder? There are some among us who can’t afford to give up a single chicken much less a ewe. And what of those who don’t own herds? What do they sacrifice?” His gaze slid to Elsbeth, accusing.
A red haze passed over her vision. She forgot the courtesy afforded the elders and jumped in front of Irena. “How dare you, Manny Howe!” The villager dropped his gaze. “My grandfather is dying. Instead of spending the next three weeks tending him, I get to entertain a wyvern. I’d give over three herds of cattle if I could make such an exchange and stay home with Angus.”
Her eyes watered with frustrated tears. She didn’t want to argue; she just wanted the bargain she risked her life for fulfilled. If the village rejected the wyvern’s demands, Elsbeth would pack her grandfather and their necessaries and be gone from Byderside by first light. Angus might not survive the trip, but she’d be damned if she’d sit idly by and watch the world around her reduced to cinder heaps because a few greedy farmers refused to give up a cow or two.
No one countered Elsbeth’s remarks. With the confirmation that Angus’s armor was not the root of their problems, many were ashamed of their behavior toward him and Elsbeth.
“What about a lottery?”
As one, the crowd turned. Donal Grayson stood in the back of the council hall near the door and puffed on his pipe. He spoke around the stem. “Those families with livestock enter their names. If you can only afford one sheep or one cow, put your name in once. If you can afford more, put your name in twice or more.” His eyes narrowed, and he took the pipe out of his mouth and pointed the stem at the crowd. “And don’t think we don’t all have a measure of each other’s worth.”
“What of those who don’t have more than a sow or a few hens?”
Elsbeth answered that one. “We buy one from a neighbor who does—for a fair price—and give it over. If you haven’t the coin for that, then barter a good or even your labor. Everyone can use an extra pair of hands to help, whether it be child-minding or working the fields.”
A mumbling grew among the villagers, this time less combative, and many nodded their heads in agreement with her and Donal’s suggestions. Elsbeth clutched her skirts, praying they’d consent to the lottery.
Irena patted her arm, her gaze warm with approval. She and the other council members conferred for a moment before facing the villagers once more. As always, she acted as spokeswoman.
“Thank you, Donal and Elsbeth. Those are fine ideas.” She addressed the crowd then. “Wha
t say you? A lottery tonight? Council will visit each of you and assess your holdings. For those who are chosen and have no livestock to give, you may parlay with a neighbor who does and decide between you a price. If you deem it necessary, council will mediate and oversee the exchange.” More nods among the villagers, and Elsbeth held her breath. “What say you?” Irena repeated.
The chorus of “ayes” was loud and sure, if not altogether enthusiastic. Side discussions followed the agreement until one of the elders closed the meeting and urged the villagers outside. A few stopped to embrace Elsbeth or shake her hand and wish her luck.
One, the village healer and midwife, took her hand and squeezed. “You did a fine thing, Elsbeth. For us, yes, but mostly for your grandfather. I’m not so sure my grandchildren would brave a fire-breathing beast in its lair for me.”
Elsbeth smiled. While the telling of it sounded grand, her epic adventure had been nothing more than a long, sweaty walk up the cliff paths and a strange evening talking to a creature more articulate and shrewd than any aristo politician or counting house administrator. She pictured the villagers’ collective astonishment if she told them that once she conquered her terror of the wyvern, it had made her laugh a few times with its dry wit and acute observations of human nature.
Her humor faded. Were it not for her grandfather’s failing health, she might look forward to the three weeks spent in the wyvern’s learned company. It had not asked much from her personally. Twenty days as a “guest” to play her fiddle and keep it company. But those were twenty days away from Angus, and in that time she would fret and wonder if he would be alive when she returned to fetch him from Irena’s house.
She sighed and turned to the other woman. “I’m off to see Angus. I want to spend as much time with him as possible before I return to Maldoza. Will it be all right if I don’t attend the lottery tonight?”
Irena patted her hand. “Do you have to ask? No one will begrudge you this time, Elsbeth. And if they do, I’ll box their ears to set them straight.”