Dragon Cipher Read online

  I pushed his shirt up, tugging it free of his pants. The cotton was exceptionally fine, providing a strange and breathtaking contrast with his rugged body. I pulled back from him so that I could undo each button. I took my time so I could try to find air to fill my lungs, but also to have a moment to look at him.

  His broad chest was strong and firm, with fine hairs in the center. His belly was carved, with such tautness that he might have been made of stone. I knew that dragons healed quickly and well, so that their physical forms were always perfect, in both two-legged and dragon shapes.

  Yet Safyr’s shoulders, when I pulled his shirt back, were scarred and rough. He had not healed from what looked like many, many battles. What could have led to such destruction of a dragon shifter’s form?

  He noticed my concern, and he gathered my fingers to his lips. “It does not matter,” he said. “There are many things about me that are different from other dragons.”

  I giggled, unexpectedly. “I’m not like all the other girls, either.” Some wild impulse to laugh with him seized me.

  Safyr grinned widely at me. “No, my Laurel, you are not. You are a wonder of magic and perseverance and strength of spirit.” He shrugged his shirt back into place. “But you have lived too much in your mind.”

  “Is there any other way to do it?” I wondered.

  “Yes, there is. I can help you with that.” And with that, he picked me up. He seemed to feel no effort at all in lifting me. As I shook with laughter, he carried me down the hallway to a room I had not yet seen. His bedroom, of course.

  The room was large and high-ceilinged, with very little ornamentation in it. Like the rest of his apartment, the decor consisted of pricey basics, but nothing personal. There were no photos or tchotchkes. There was, I couldn’t help noticing, an enormous bed.

  As he laid me down, he pulled aside the white bedspread with a swift motion, placing me on the immaculate sheets. I wriggled a little, trying to gather the skirt of my dress. Before I could accomplish that, Safyr was there, lifting it away from me.

  “I can help you with that as well,” he murmured. He shucked off his shirt, then his pants, tossing them to the floor. With a motion that was almost reverent, he lifted my dress up and over my head. I made a movement to pull him to me for another kiss, but he shook his head.

  “Let me show you something.” And he lowered his head down my body, dropping hot kisses as he went. He glided his tongue over my nipples, teasing them, but then continuing his downward path. He breathed hot desire down the line of my belly, reminding me that he was a dragon. For the first time in my life, the notion of being anywhere near one of the merciless shifters did not send terror through me.

  Instead, it possessed me with an overwhelming desire. Was it possible that he was my dragon?

  Then I lost all ability to think, to reason, to remember. His mouth met the slickness that I had been hiding under that blue skirt since I met him. I knew that the tingling of my body was in response to his touch, but I had no way to prepare myself for what happened next.

  His head bent between my legs as he licked me, gently, giving me time to get used to it. I wanted to shout to him that I could never become accustomed to this, that it would always bring me to a cliff of pleasure, even in the initial moment. I felt as if I might topple over the brink with his first touch.

  Then his tongue flicked across the button at the top of my slit, and I began to lose all control. I twisted the edge of the sheet in my hand as I moaned. His hands gripped my hips as he feasted on my most secret places. His hand brushed against my clit this time, as his tongue pressed inside me. I could not hold still; I gave up trying. My body writhed in pleasure as he kept going.

  “Tell me what you want,” he murmured. “I love everything about the taste of you, the scent of you. You are driving me wild.” He looked up at me from his position at my hips and I saw truth shining from his blue eyes. That was the most truthful he had ever been with me, and it made some sort of wall within me collapse.

  “I want this. I want you, I do.” That was all I could mumble out as I lay there on his bed. The power of what was happening to every nerve ending in my body was overwhelming. The slickness between my legs was no longer only from my own desire. Now it was from his mouth, from the magic he was working on my flesh. Something about the idea of the wetness that I had made, that we had made together, came over me like a waterfall. I gasped, then downright shrieked, as I found my climax.

  As I lost my mind, Safyr continued to lap gently at my clit. When I fell over the edge, into the abyss of completion, he somehow knew just when to stop. He drew himself up to me and rested an elbow on the sheets.

  “You’re glowing,” he said gently.

  It took a moment for me to be able to answer. When I did, I merely brushed it off as an expression. It wasn’t until he repeated the words that I actually looked at myself. I was. There was a faint, golden light emanating from my skin, everywhere along my body.

  “I’m surprised I’m not on fire,” I answered. “Or levitating, perhaps.”

  Safyr laughed out loud, leaning down to kiss me. “We could do that next, you know.”

  I stretched, raising my arms above my head. I gave a wriggle of pleasure, beaming at him. “You sure know how to show a woman a good time.”

  “Not just any woman,” he said seriously. “You are the only one for me.”

  “Well, I don’t know if magic will come into it, but it might. What shall we try next?” I chortled with a freer sense of fun than I’d ever felt before.

  A gleam of daring lit his eyes as he moved his powerful body over mine. His arms held his torso easily over mine as he leaned down to kiss me.

  “Anything and everything, my love.”

  “We could just stay here all day, then all night,” I rejoined. “We don’t have to be anywhere, right? The club?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing to worry about. This is far more important.”

  “Then we have all the time in the world, right?”

  Safyr answered me with a kiss. Just as his lips touched mine, I saw a shadow cross his face. Then it vanished.

  Had I said the wrong thing?

  Did we not have all the time in the world?

  Chapter 12: Safyr

  The touch of Laurel’s skin and the scent of her body filled my mind until I thought I would burst. I felt as if I had been parched for thousands of years, and now I had reached water. Tasting her was like lifting a glass of the finest wine to my lips and drinking deeply. She was everything I needed. And everything I would ever want.

  As I held myself above her, covering her with nibbling kisses, I knew in a small corner of my mind that I was fooling myself. We were not flying straight and true toward our eternal happiness. On the contrary, we were headed for the blank, sheer wall of a cliff.

  And our speed in heading for that crash was only accelerating.

  Part of me wanted this tender moment to last forever. All of me, to be honest. Certainly, some portions of my body was crying out for it. My cock was throbbing with my need to bury myself to the hilt within her. It was all I could think of.

  And yet, there must have been something about the way I held her that tipped her off to the fact that I was having second thoughts.

  Beneath the circle of my arms, Laurel opened her eyes. She watched me curiously for a moment, as I stroked the fine hair at her temples. She saw the desolation in my eyes; I knew she did.

  With a long, gentle sigh, Laurel rolled away from me and leaned on one elbow. She did not recoil from me. I knew that she still wanted me. But we were going to have to talk about something first.

  “What is it?” she murmured. Her voice was low and husky. She was in a languorous mood from the pleasures I had already given her, and we were both eager for more.

  “I don’t want to stop. We can talk about this later.” I traced the edge of her delicate ear, making her shiver with pleasure. She licked her lips, clearly wondering if she could bear to l
et it go in favor of the urgency with which our bodies needed each other.

  She did not let it go.

  Laurel reached out and set her hand on mine. “I’m not asking you to share more than you feel you can. But I can tell that something is really weighing on you. If you distribute that heaviness between both of us, we may be able to make it feel lighter.”

  I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. How could I allow her to carry this burden with me?

  “Go on,” she urged. “This is something else, isn’t it? Not just that you’re worried about taking me to Elter. I already know you are thinking about that. This is something about us being together right now. I can tell.”

  “I wish I could say that you were able to guess that because of our mystical connection, but I have to admit, it is probably written all over my face,” I answered ruefully. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to regain my reputation as a cipher again.”

  She giggled. “Oh, you still are totally unreadable. At least, unless you get into these exact circumstances with somebody else.” I could see a new sense of security in our bond wash over her expression. She was finally beginning to believe that I wasn’t ever going to do that. When I said that my life, my future, was about her now, I truly meant it. And now she understood how real that was.

  I took a long breath. “Here’s the problem. I want so much to be with you right now. I want to pull you into my arms and give you every pleasure there is in the world.” I looked into her eyes, not shying away from the intensity of my intimate thoughts. “All I want right now is to spread your legs and fill you with my cock. I want to feel what it is like to be within your wetness, moving inside you, making you mine.” I paused, taking another steadying breath. My words alone were enough to make my body strain with the effort of holding back.

  She watched me, hypnotized by my words. As she allowed the image I’d suggested to fill her mind, her pulse came quicker. Her breathing shortened.

  “I want that too. So much right now.” She wrinkled her brow as a new thought occurred to her. “Are you worried because it’s my first time? I promise that I won’t change my mind. I’m ready...more than ready for you.” She ran her gaze to down my body, from my torso to my hips where they pressed against her. I knew she felt the hardness of my massive cock pressing against her.

  I was amazed that we were even able to form complete sentences at this point. Soon, I was either going to have to jump on her or pass out from the deprivation of waiting.

  I smiled at her, drawing from what felt like a lifetime’s account of unspent gentleness. “No, my love, I am not worried about it being your first time. I knew that. I swear that I will never be anything but careful with you. It is an honor for me to be able to be your first. I am your fated mate. I want to be your last lover, your only one.” I knew she could still see the sadness that lurked behind my words.

  I went on. “The difficulty has to do with me. If we take this any further, if we go this one step closer to becoming truly mated, then I will set the spell of the tablet into a new phase.

  “What will happen?”

  “Nothing right away. But, as I told you, the reason I cannot claim you as my mate right now, although I want to so desperately, is because the tablet is preventing me from being whole. Without completeness in my soul, I cannot be your mate.”

  “So, tell me. What is the next phase of the spell?” She urged me on. I could tell that she knew she would not like my answer, but she still asked for it.

  “It is nothing too terrible. It just means that the tablet will have a greater hold on me. I will need to be quicker in getting it back to Elter to unravel its mysteries.” I was playing with fire, but I chose not tell her what would happen if I did not complete the quest.

  “How quick will we need to be?”

  “Well, I’m not sure. A day, I believe.”

  She nodded. I could see that she thought that was no problem. Was it just our desire talking, making us crazy? “I already agreed to go. I know you think I’m scared, but I’m not. You think I’m terrified of dragons, but it’s more that I just hate them. Present company excluded, of course,” She tipped my head to me and I smirked in return. “I said I would go, and I will. We can leave right after we finish our business here in your bed. That is, if you don’t think that will take a whole day in itself.” To punctuate her words, she rubbed her thumb over my nipple. I gasped at the sharp tingle that her touch released.

  She was more than I had guessed, in every way.

  I took one last stab at being the rational one. The one who made cautious choices. “So you really believe that it would be prudent to make love right this minute? It may cause complications in the ancient magic that we are already at a loss to resolve. That makes more sense to you than the two of us getting up from this bed right now, without finishing what we started?” I was teasing her. But at the same time, I knew we had reached the same answer.

  It was an answer based not on rational thought, but on the heat that swirled around us. We had no choice now but to give ourselves to it.

  And it was going to be glorious.

  Laurel leaned back against the white sheets. Her long, brown hair fanned out behind her. Her golden glow was back, shimming across all her perfect, pale skin. Her full lips curved into a smile that made my heart skip.

  In response to her invitation, my cock swelled even further, until I knew I could do only one thing.

  I was going to take her. I was going to bring our bodies together, making us one. Our souls would follow.

  My tongue flicked out, tasting her lips, then slipping inside her willing mouth. I shifted my body so that my hips were squarely over hers. She smelled like heaven, like flowers and rain and eternal womanliness.

  “Right now, this moment. This is all we have, and all we need.” I heard my promise to her, knowing that it was true and false at the same time.

  We were reckless, and driven by our passion. Helpless to stop, we moved headlong into the future.

  Only I knew what the consequence would be if we did not unlock the golden tablet. But I wanted Laurel more than I cared about that. I wanted her too much to stop.

  Chapter 13: Laurel

  My heart was bursting. The sensations that filled every atom of my body were wholly unknown to me in any moment I had lived previously. How had I gone so long in my life without feeling any of this?

  Safyr’s kisses were firm, almost rough now. We had passed any point of return. More than that, we were racing, flying forward beyond that point. And we were both uninterested in looking back.

  This was what I had lived for.

  I twined my fingers into the soft hair at the back of his head and pulled him toward me. He could not have been pressed against me any more tightly, but I wished he could. Our legs were wrapped around each other as we gasped for breath. When I leaned my head back from him, he sucked on my neck, leaving hot kisses as if they were his mark on me.

  When we became mates, I knew he would leave his physical mark on me forever. I did not know all about it, but Kat had shared that much.

  It would not happen today, though. This moment was for the pleasure of loving each other, with no thought of the future.

  We both knew that we were being willfully irresponsible about the future. And for some reason, that was incredibly hot.

  I opened my legs to him. It was an invitation that I had been wanting to make from the moment I set eyes on him, I was honest with myself. I had wanted this man to pierce me even before I knew I loved him.

  My relationship with dragons was a little complicated, maybe.

  As I lifted my hips to his, I knew I was begging. I would have, if I could find the strength to speak again. I would have debased myself, asking plaintively if he would take me, if he would master me. I would have moaned for it.

  But I didn’t need to. In the strangely symmetrical transaction that was love and lust, he felt the same way. He had brought me into his life, into his bed. It was a cry, not
for help, for the intimacy that only I could give him.

  Safyr’s bright blue eyes met mine. His ancient sorrows swirled within his gaze, but our passion overlaid all that. He wanted me more than anything else in the world, in any time.

  And with that, as he looked right into my being, he pressed the tip of his thick cock against my slick pussy. He was slow, as he had promised he would be. I knew his cock was large, but I found that, against all odds, I trusted him. He eased his hard member slowly inside me, pressing with an inexorable forward movement.

  When he was just a little bit inside me, he stopped. I was breathing so lightly that I could hardly think. He was stretching the walls of my pussy in a way that I could never have dreamed of. It felt amazing. I knew that some women worried about this moment, their first time, but for me, there was no sense of concern or shyness.

  This was what we were made for. My body had waited for him.

  As he pressed further into me, my breathing grew even more ragged. There was a moment in which I knew he had breached my barriers. I was glad, eternally, sweetly glad. He was within me, and I welcomed him. Gods of sand, I needed him.

  Safyr’s eyes were still on me. He was a master of self-control, yet I knew even the fact that we were doing this right now belied that. We could not have held back. And he could not control himself indefinitely.

  I didn’t want him to. I wanted him to ravish me with all the power that was within him.

  With a low groan, Safyr pushed himself into me until he could go forward no more. His hard cock met my center, and pressed against me. I would have opened my legs even wider if I could have. All I wanted was to accommodate him. His massive girth filled me as he began to move rhythmically inside me. I knew my pussy walls were clutching at him as he pierced me where no man had been before.

  “Laurel, I love you,” he murmured into my ear.

  He drew himself up and slowly, excruciatingly slowly, pulled his cock from me. I yearned for it, wishing he was inside me again, giving me that sense of utter fullness that I needed so desperately. Then he plunged himself smoothly but firmly into my wetness again. His hips were tight against mine. He did it again, and again. Each time he withdrew from me, he was the only thing I wanted in the world. Each time he pushed himself into my tight, secret space, he imparted a heat, a satisfaction, that completed me. I could not understand how it was possible for my body to hold such a huge cock, but it became easy. His hard flesh belonged within mine.