Dragon's Mate [Cairgorm Dragons 1] (Siren Publishing Classic) (3 page)

“Eilidh.”
He savoured the name. His, all his! She’d never been touched by a man. Her innocence, her maidenhead, had been his to take.
He suckled her pearl, and she fell apart in his arms. It was spectacular to watch. Her back arched, her eyes rolled up in her head, and finally she screamed.

“Braemuir!” His cock would wait no longer. He slid into her, flexing his hips. He thrust deeply inside her. The force of his thrust moved her whole body. Then he could wait no more. He began to fuck her hard and fast. She wrapped her legs around him, resting her feet on his buttocks, and clung like a limpet as he pumped in and out.

“Yes, just there, oh please, more, don’t stop. Yes, fuck me, harder, faster.” She moaned and sobbed as his huge cock rubbed against her special spot. Then his release was upon him. He took her with him, as his seed released deep inside her. He let his senses roam. He could read her body and, with his keen sense of smell, the changes in her scent were apparent to him even at this very early stage. He knew that, this time, he
had
impregnated her. He was triumphant. His son was safely inside his mother’s womb. The next Braemuir of Braemuir was safe.

He withdrew from her body, but their minds remained linked. He showed her how to monitor their son. She could listen to his hearbeat and his vital signs. She would defend him now that she knew he was inside her. She would know at once if he was in distress and could take steps to alleviate it. Braemuir was elated. He’d done it, he’d found his mate! Now he had to keep her safe until the summer solstice, when he would present her to the clan. Then they would mate in dragon-form, before all, as was the custom. The Dragons of the Clan would all be able to sense the new Braemuir heir, and Oidhche wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

Braemuir returned with her to the edge of the settlement, and then he left her. It would be safer for her if it no one knew that he had taken her. Before he left her, he said,
“You will never be totally alone again. I’m inside your head. I’m with you always. Call and I will come to you. You can be your dragon-self whenever you wish, but remember to do it in secret. Any who see your colour will know exactly who you are. There are those who would harm you. Oidhche, the black dragon is to be avoided at all costs!”

“Who is Oidhche? Did I say that right?”

“Not quite, it’s ‘oykyeh.’ He’s a black dragon. I don’t yet know his man name. He wants my place, and now I have you and my son, he will be doubly dangerous. Be on your guard!”

* * * *

She went back to her mother’s house and continued with her daily tasks. The powerful mind-shield, that he had helped her to develop further, stood her in good stead. No one suspected a thing.

The next day Eilidh was sent to the stream to wash the family’s dirty clothes. When she got there, the usual gossiping girls were already there, beating the clothes on the stones in the fast-flowing stream, to cleanse them. They were all aflutter, as Ciarda was recounting her tale. 

“Braemuir is head over heels in love with me. I shall be the next heir’s mother. He’s only awaiting the summer solstice to announce it.”

Some of the girls scoffed. Braemuir had taken his pleasure with many women. He’d never taken a mate. Ciarda told of the number of times he had fucked her. It was true that Braemuir usually only fucked a woman once, and then he moved on to the next. 

“Maybe I’m already with child, the next Braemuir of Braemuir,” Ciarda said.

Head down, her hands doing their task of their own volition, Eilidh listened to Ciarda. Eilidh was so heavy of heart she couldn’t look at the other women, or they would have seen her sorrow. He’d lied to her. He’d deceived her. He’d told her
she
was the next heir’s mother. The other women continued to chatter and laugh. Eilidh was heartbroken. She shielded her mind, as he’d taught her. He didn’t need to know what she intended to do next. She took her mother’s washing home and arranged it over the broom bushes to dry. The perfume of the yellow broom flowers would make the linen pleasant to wear. Such a mundane task and thought, when she was in such turmoil.

Then she picked up a hunk of bread and went off. Leaving the settlement, she climbed up the hill. When she realised she was heading for her usual cave, she stopped and retraced her steps. Useless to go there now! There were too many memories. He’d deceived her, and she’d let him take her maidenhead. How he would laugh as he told his real mate about the deception he had practised on a foolish girl. Where could she go? What could she do? She was with child. He had shown her how to recognise that. No man would have her now. No man would want another’s leavings when there were many maidens still unwed. She and the unborn child would be outcasts. She’d seen women shunned and escorted to the edge of the settlement and whipped away if they tried to return. She didn’t want that fate to befall her and her babe. It would be better to end it now. Men took their pleasure, if girls were foolish enough to let them. The men didn’t get cast out. They’d no visible signs of their foolishness. No man wanted a wanton for a wife or another man’s babe to rear. Times could be hard, in spite of Braemuir’s assistance. It was bad enough feeding your own get. Then there was the stigma. A man would have to be lost in love indeed, to put up with the whispers and the pointing fingers. She’d no man so lost in love with her. Her mother had always told her to be careful.

“Some men will woo with honeyed words. When they’ve taken their pleasure, you’re left with the consequences.”
How right she’d been, and how easily I fell in spite of her warnings.
On leaden feet she walked back down the hill and toward the house on the edge of the wood. Old Mairi lived there. She was wise in herbs and healing lore. She could help, an’ she would.

Braemuir was frantic. She’d shielded her mind from him, but not before he had caught a whisp of thought, full of despair. He strode into the settlement and to the stream where she had been. He sensed her presence and that of one other he’d no wish to see again. Two women remained, doing their washing. He asked who else had been there. He saw them look askance at him. What would the Braemuir want to know about women and washing? Then one remembered what Ciarda had said. The Braemuir caught that thought and he looked thunderstruck. He could read in their minds that the women misinterpreted his look as confirmation of Ciarda’s claim. He could see they weren’t happy about that. Ciarda wasn’t a pleasant person, and trouble would come to all were she to be the Braemuir’s mate. He hadn’t the time to correct the misunderstanding now. They told him all who’d been there, and when he asked after Eilidh, they told him she’d said nothing, but had returned home.

He strode to her house, but she wasn’t there. Her mother was clearly disturbed that Braemuir was seeking her daughter. He let his dragon senses roam and picked up her scent on the hillside. When he reached the cave, she was no longer there. His dragon senses picked up her scent going back down the hill. When he realised just where she was going, he was afraid. That wasn’t a feeling he experienced often. He shifted, became his dragon, leaped into the air, and, roaring with fury, winged to Mairi’s cottage. He landed. He skidded to a halt.
Such a clumsy landing.
He hadn’t landed like that since he was a boy learning to fly.
He roared and changed to his man. Thumping on the door, he shouted to Mairi to open it at once! She emerged, none too willingly, but you didn’t refuse Braemuir, especially in such a mood.

“Where is
she
?” Icy calm had replaced his ire. He needed information.

“She’s gone,” Mairi replied.

“If you value your life, you
will
tell me all! Now,” he roared.

“You men! She took a potion from me and went to the shore to take it. The sea will wash away the effects.”

“What potion would that be?” he asked, dangerously calm.

“She is with child, and would be rid of it and her own life.”

The look he cast her made Mairi shrink. She scuttled back into the cottage and closed the door.

A dragon again, he leaped into the air as high as he could go. His eyes searched the shore until he saw her. She sat on the sand, her arm limp beside her. The bottle Mairi had given her lay near to her hand. His heart fit to burst, he dropped out if the sky in front of her and became a man. 

“Have you taken it?” he asked, in a desperate voice.

“No, I couldn’t, the babe is blameless. If we
are
to be cast out, so be it. I
will not
take his life.”

The relief made him fall to his knees. He held out his arms but she wouldn’t go to him.

“I won’t be made a fool of again,” she said out loud. She wouldn’t let him into her head.

“Tell me!”

The command in his voice brooked no resistance, so she told him all.

“Open your mind to me.”

She couldn’t maintain her opposition to his will, so she let him in. Gently, he probed and saw what had troubled her. Then he let down all his shields and allowed her into the most intimate recesses of his mind. There he allowed her to read the truth. As the enormity of what she’d considered doing hit her, he felt it, too.

“I have never allowed anyone into my mind like this. You see what she did, and how she did it? I can conceal nothing from you. You are my mate. I will never love another. I told you that.”

She bowed her head in shame and contrition. 

“Why didn’t you believe me? Why didn’t you trust me?” 

“I don’t know. I didn’t think you would want me when you could have her. She’s so much more beautiful than I am. She’s clever, too,”
she whispered.

“Do you believe me now? Will you trust me, whatever anyone else says?”
he demanded.

“Yes, my lord. I do, I will.”

She went into his arms and he held her close. Then he bent and picked up the bottle with the potion in it. He hurled it against a rock, where the bottle shattered into a thousand pieces. The potion sank into the sand. He placed his hand on her belly and said, “Our son is safe now.”

He led her to a rock, and he sat down upon it, turned her over his knee, and spanked her plump, little bottom soundly. She squirmed and wriggled and cursed, to no avail. He spanked her until his hand hurt, and her bottom was red and glowing. Her cream ran down her legs, and she wriggled her pussy against his leg. He read her contrition in her thoughts, and he was content. He let her up and cuddled her close.

“If ever you make me so afraid again, you won’t sit comfortably for a se’nnight.”

He turned her, and he rubbed her bottom. He bent to kiss each plump cheek in turn. Then he cuddled her close again and buried his face in her hair.

“My love, I thought I’d lost you and our child. Don’t allow another to so influence you again. If you have doubts, come to me. You may read, in my mind, what the truth of the matter is.”

“I promise, my lord,” she said.

He turned her again and instructed her to bend over the rock and hold on tight.

“This will be hard and fast,” he promised her.

He entered her from behind, clutching her hips and pounding into her hot, wet, willing cunt. She ground her bottom into his groin, in spite of her sore cheeks. He read in her mind that the bite of pain added to her arousal and her enjoyment. He reached around and rubbed her between the swollen puffy lips of her pussy. Her cream ran down her thighs. His strong fingers rubbed, pinched, and flicked her little pearl. She came in a rush, moaning and sobbing in her pleasure. Her pussy muscles convulsed around his cock, squeezing and milking him as he thrust his rigid length into her as far as it would go, and then he drew it out and did it over and over until he came with a roar. His hot seed filled her. He collapsed on top of her. When his heart had slowed, he lifted off her and withdrew his softening cock. He stripped her and walked down to the sea. He walked into the sea with her then tossed her into the waves. She came up spluttering and laughing. They swam and frolicked in the waves until, tired, they came out and he dried her with his plaid. He walked back to her parents’ house with her. He decided to speak to her parents and clarify her situation. They were delighted that she was to be the mate of Braemuir. They promised secrecy, for her safety’s sake.

Braemuir was furious. What had almost happened could have cost him his life as well as that of his mate and his child. The Clan would have been left to the tender mercies of Oidhche. How many more women had been so desperate they’d taken their lives and those of their unborn children because they’d been abandoned by some deceiver? It was not to be borne. It wasn’t going to continue if he had his way. He was Braemuir of Braemuir and
would
have his way.

The interview with Mairi wasn’t a pleasant one. Braemuir was hostile. She was defensive.

“How many of those potions have you dispensed in the past?”

“About a dozen, over the years,” she said, defensively.

“You
will
give all you have to me now. You will never, ever make another one of those.”

“What of the women who need those potions, on account of the men who abandon them?” she asked belligerently. “It’s easy for you to say ‘no more potions.’ What of them?”