Dragon Betrayed (Immortal Dragons Book 0) (15 page)

Chapter Fifteen

W
hen Belah awoke the next morning, it was to the familiar tingling of Nikhil’s aura when he was fully aroused, yet she didn’t feel his physical contact otherwise. She slowly turned to face his side of the bed and found him lying naked with his head propped on one hand, the other slowly sliding up and down along his thick, engorged cock.

“Mmm, my plan worked,” he rumbled.

“Plan?” Belah inquired, quirking her lips at him.

“You have this uncanny ability to sense when I’m at the edge. As if your instincts require that you never miss an ounce of my pleasure when I come for you.”

“Hmm, looks to me like you were coming for yourself just now. It’s a good thing I woke up.”

She stretched a hand out to him and brushed the back of a finger along the underside of his cock, gathering the droplet of his juices that trickled down the smooth, hot skin. The musky scent of him intoxicated her and her own arousal grew when she delicately licked his essence off her finger. The salty-sweet tang hit her tongue with an explosion of essence and she closed her eyes to savor his flavor.

He let out a harsh growl when she slid her finger into her mouth. His aura brightened, as she expected it would, but the quality of its power shifted on the spectrum, a dark sheen surrounding it.

Nikhil’s eyes flashed with the wildness she had come to love in him, but the accompanying shift in his aura troubled her. Leaning close, she pressed her lips against his and prepared to send a breath of her magic into his lungs, but abruptly found herself thrown back and pinned to the bed, Nikhil hovering over her with an angry look.

“What is that, little beast? When you breathe into me. Whatever you do leaves my mind numb. If we are to be married, you must not keep secrets.”

Belah knew her confession from the night before would only go so far to satisfy his curiosity about her and her race. With just as sudden a movement, she wrested herself from his grip and flipped him off her as easily as if he weighed no more than her pillow. Straddling his hips, she let her talons and horns manifest while she held him down.

“Remember this secret, my love? There are aspects of being that are … complicated. Remember what I told you last night about my former mates?”

Nikhil glared up at her, but didn’t fight her powerful hold on him. In fact, he grew distinctly more aroused in spite of his very obvious irritation at being overpowered. “I remember,” he growled. “You are sparing my free will, which honors me.”

“There is more than that. You have always been a particularly blessed man. No doubt your mother has spun the tales of your conception with you. You are a legend among the armies of the delta and your reputation extends beyond into the far kingdoms, even outside my own rule.” She studied him, waiting to gauge his response to her statement.

His brows drew together in confusion. “My mother’s stories were just fantasy—encouraging for a fatherless young man like me, but I stopped believing I had any kind of divine status the first time I took an injury in battle. You see my scars—if my mother’s tales that I was begotten of a god were true, would I have such things? Before you came to me, death hovered over me, itching to snatch me into the underworld. I hoped that her stories at least meant I would be honored after my death and allowed to sit by the side of Osiris. If I owe any deity for my life, it is you,
‘Iilahatan
.” His gaze softened and grew heated with lust again as he tilted his hips up, his shaft sliding against her naked flesh between them.

Nikhil’s warmth and hardness distracted her, but she owed him this truth as much as he’d deserved to understand her reasons for not marking him.

“She was partly right,” she said, pressing her hips down harder onto his to halt his movements. “You are not the son of a god. Your father was the commander who was wed to your mother. You were conceived mere days before your father died. To honor his memory, one of my kind graced your mother with his presence in the night and gave you the Blessing you bear to this day, since before you were even born. Your mother simply believed that the dragon who made love to her that night was who put you in her belly, but you weren’t his get. He only blessed you with his magic. The blessing itself is an infusion of the dragon’s essence that ensures you are protected by my kind. It means you were always intended as a dragon’s mate. My mate.” She closed her eyes, tamping down the guilt over not revealing that the dragon in question had been her own brother, and steeling herself for the additional bad news she had to deliver.

“This is a good thing, is it not?” He had relaxed beneath her and she released her grip on his wrists.

“It is, normally. But our magic requires balance. A Blessing must be offset by a mark. Any dragon magic, in enough concentration needs a mark to balance it eventually.”

“Or… what?”

The question she hated most to answer. “Or you lose your mind. This is why I rarely share my Nirvana with my pets. I have no intention of ever marking them.”

Nikhil stared at her placidly for a moment before his eyes narrowed. In a completely reasonable tone, he said, “So, to be with you, my choices are either losing my free will or losing my mind entirely. Did you ever consider asking me to choose?”

Belah’s stomach chilled at the distance present in his question.

“Nikhil, you not being marked by me is one of the worst offenses of a dragon. You know what I am. You know all my secrets. Our marks are the way we tie our mates to us. I am trusting you by not marking you. You could still tell all my secrets to an enemy.”

His fingers twitched distractedly against her thighs and she noticed that his cock had softened.

He pushed her off and rolled away, coming to rest on his side, facing her. “I’ve always been loyal to you, why do you think I would betray you, even if my mind failed somehow?”

Belah closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. She hated his question because she hated her answer to it.

“It isn’t about loyalty. It’s about caution. You see us as gods. That is accidental, by the way, but we seek to maintain order through whatever means we can. You are not like the others. Not even my pets.” She reached out and brushed at his overgrown scruff. He’d already seen her through death and still needed rest.

“I won’t betray you,” he said, and her heart broke at the plea in his tone.

“I know. My breath is the only way I have to keep that threat at bay. My power affects your mind. I could use it to control you if I chose to, but I only use it in its most benign state—to try to lend some balance to the inundation of magic you get from my body when we make love, and the magic you already carry from your Blessing.”

“Is there no other way?” he asked, looking agitated.

“There is nothing more I can do, my love,” she said, stroking his cheek. “I would gladly marry you today, but…”

But the wedding of someone as important as an empress required far too much planning and preparation. The public declaration—in front of the gods and her people—was the thing Nikhil wanted most. So she needed to make sure both the gods and the people were in attendance.

“You are a goddess. I want the entire world and all the gods to see how much I love you.”

Belah gave him a rueful smile. His priority was making their love public. Hers was so much more. Belah needed to do everything she could to ensure he lived as long as possible, sane and happy by her side. Her breath may well keep him sane for the rest of his natural life, and so prolonging his life even more should be her focus. Unless she marked him, her own life-giving magic would be transient—what she gave him each day faded, the energy of their lovemaking losing effectiveness over the erosion of time.

“There is more at stake with this, Nikhil,” she said, trying to ignore the light nips of his teeth on her skin—his renewed attention distracted her from the truth she needed to share.

“I’m not a fool, Belah,” he said. “You’re hiding something.” He gave the side of her breast a hard bite that made her gasp and her juices flow hotly between her thighs. Sweet Mother, he knew how to get her going.

“I have an idea,” she said, trying to decide how much of her idea she should share. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t spent wakeful nights considering every possibility.

She’d considered making a request of her siblings to combine their energy and bestow him with a gift of their power. It would be akin to the blessing he was given inside his mother’s womb, only more powerful, yet would not carry the shackling magic of a mark that would irrevocably bind him to her like a slave. Again, she wished she were not immortal—that her mark didn’t carry that curse with it. Any dragon but she and her siblings could mark him without that risk to his free will. And when the time came to die, they would have been able to leave this life together.

Nikhil would never agree to the type of ritual required to accept the magic of her and all five of her siblings, regardless of whether he viewed them all as gods. It required a level of physical intimacy she hadn’t had with any of her siblings in centuries, and would require Nikhil himself to be the focus of their energy.

The more palatable option would take her much longer to achieve, however. There were only a handful of other individuals as powerful as she and her siblings, but whose magic required less physical contact than a dragon’s did. The other races owed her some favors, and she would be calling them in.

His fingers between her thighs made her thoughts falter. His teeth on her nipple distracted her to the point of pushing his head back.

Nikhil laughed. “You were thinking too hard. Time for talking, little beast,” he said, his fingers still toying with the scarab between her thighs.

Belah groaned. “Fine, just stop touching me for five minutes so I can think?”

With a grin, he raised his hands above his head, exaggerating his submission. Belah took advantage by climbing astride him again, gazing down into his dark eyes.

“It will take time,” she said, hesitating to share the existence of her contemporaries. As far as her people knew, the dragons were their gods and their only gods. Telling him didn’t mean telling everyone, though.

“There are others like me… races who are divinely blessed and powerful. Other… gods. You wanted all the gods in attendance, so they will be invited. And they will bring gifts. But delivering their invitations will be cumbersome and time consuming. Many are not easy to reach. It will mean an extended wait before the wedding can take place.”

Nikhil frowned at that revelation. After a breath, he asked, “And their gifts will make me strong enough to take your magic without losing my mind?”

“Their magic will prolong your life, among other things. You still need to accept my breath to keep your mind healthy. I’m afraid without my mark, that will never change.”

“My sanity is waning already, little beast,” he said. “I need to be inside you now. Whatever plans you need to make for our wedding I agree to, as long as you stop teasing me.” He lowered his hands to grip her hips and raised her up just enough to reposition her so that the furrow between her thighs spread over the head of his cock.

With a single, hard thrust of his hips, he buried himself inside her, then grabbed her hands and pulled them up above his head again. Belah looked down at him quizzically. Seeing the mischievous glint in his eyes, she twined her fingers through his and pressed his hands into the pillows above his head. As much as she preferred being overpowered by him, she still treasured the rare moments when he chose to have her remind him of her power. She leaned over him now, letting her bejeweled nipples brush against his cheeks while she pivoted her hips on his cock.

Nikhil growled low in his chest, his gaze growing more fevered the more she moved. He latched onto one nipple with his teeth, biting hard into her flesh. The glorious pain shot straight to her core, fanning the growing heat and making her channel flood with fresh arousal around his pumping shaft. Even pinned down by her, he commanded her pleasure, and clearly knew that he still had control of her in spite of her physical display of strength.

“Nikhil,” she whimpered. The intensity of pleasure he gave her with his cock and his mouth made her lose her will to keep holding him down.

He took full control, flipping them and pushing one of Belah’s knees up as he skewered her again and again, each thrust carrying more urgency. With a moan of desperation, he lowered his head and bared his teeth, biting into her breasts as though he were starved and only her flesh could sate his hunger. All she could sense from him was the pent-up agony of the hours before she’d regained consciousness and his need for her to return to him. The emotion channeled into a near-helpless rage within him that spilled out into his aura so vividly it nearly brought Belah to tears.

Forcing herself to push the pleasure his wildness gave her aside, she grabbed his head and pulled him to her mouth, focusing her energy on her breath.
“Ease your mind, my love, but let your heart stay wild.”
She expelled a breath past his open lips and followed it with her tongue, kissing deeply.

After a moment, his movements became less erratic and more deliberate, his aura finally regaining the healthy red glow. He pulled away from her with a gasp for breath and stared down. His eyes had lost the desperation, and were now only filled with the intense hunger for her. He reached down and pushed her other knee to her chest, pulling back to gaze at the place where they were joined. Roughly, he gripped her ass and held her hips even higher so his cock rammed straight into her with ever-growing ferocity.

His cock battered her insides, each bruising thrust pushing her higher and closer to her peak. She hovered at the edge for an eternity, her body betraying her desire to finish. Nikhil snarled in frustration, at the edge himself, but unwilling to cross over without her.

Suddenly he pulled out of her and flipped her over, entering her from behind with a fresh push that hit home as though drawn in by the force of her need for him. Pushing her legs wider to span his thighs, he reached around her and drew her back against his chest. His hand went around her throat while his other found her clit and rubbed it mercilessly.