Fantasyland 01 Wildest Dreams (5 page)

In other words, hijack a sleigh and get the
fuck out of Dodge.

I stood silent as the robed guy kept talking
to statues then finally moved back to stand in front of us then he
said a bunch more stuff and at long last, he smiled, put a hand on
my shoulder, another one he reached high to put on The Dragon’s
shoulder and he nodded up at The Dragon happily.

He dropped his hands and I wondered if that
was it or if we would exchange rings or vows and I hoped I didn’t
have anything I was supposed to know to say but I didn’t wonder
long.

This was because The Dragon turned his fist,
it opened and his long fingers engulfed my hand and I realized his
big body was turning to me.

I turned to him, tipped my head back to look
up and then I felt my stomach drop.

He was smiling, even, beautiful white teeth
against tan skin. And his eyes were shining with a light that
looked a bizarre and terrifying mixture of wolfish, amused, lethal
and heated.

Then he let my hand go and before I knew
what was happening, his long, strong arms were wrapped around me,
one tight at my waist lifting my feet clean off the floor, hauling
me up his body, the fingers of the other driving into my hair to
cup the back of my head.

I let out a surprised cry as my hands
automatically went to his shoulders to hold on, I vaguely heard a
few excited whoops from the church but then he was forcing my head
down, his was slanting and… oh God… oh
God!
– he was going to kiss me!

Nope, he wasn’t going to. He did.

And no sooner had he crashed my mouth down
to his when his mouth opened, his tongue forced my lips open and
he
kissed
me.

Deep, rough, hard, wet and oh so very
hungry.

And last, but definitely not least,
skillful
.

I didn’t know this guy and he scared the
living daylights out of me but that did not take one
iota
away from the fact that the man
could freaking
kiss.

It was the best kiss I’d ever had. By
far.

Wow.

His head jerked back, tearing his mouth from
mine and I stared down at him dazed.

I was wrong. He wasn’t scary. He was
totally, freaking
hot.

I heard but yet didn’t hear the calls,
shouts, clapping and whoops as the daze of his kiss slid away from
me and I saw I had wrapped my arms around his neck and he was
looking up at me, again scary-pissed but now also
guarded-pissed.

What?

Then he dropped me so heavily on my feet, I
instantly had to brace so my knees wouldn’t buckle. I barely got my
legs under control when his hand gripped mine and he was dragging
me down the aisle.

Yes,
dragging me.

Uh-oh.

I had to run to keep up with his long
strides as I heard my father shout from behind me, “Drakkar! What
are you doing? Where are you going? The celebration!”

The Dragon didn’t slow, not even a little
bit as my father called and people stopped cheering and clapping
and started buzzing with surprise but I had to keep up with him or
he’d be dragging my prone body behind him rather than my sprinting
one.

We made it to the vestibule and he yanked my
cloak out of a waiting girl’s hands, another one rushed to me,
shoving my gloves at me. I took them reflexively and we were out in
the cold.

Then I was up, thrown bodily, yes
bodily
, into the
back of a sleigh. My cloak was tossed at me, landing against my
chest and lap.

I blinked at my new husband in shock, my
heart hammering, he gathered a bunch of leather straps, thrust them
in my hands and I automatically gripped them. Then, as people
poured out of the church, he wasted not a second mounting a glossy,
huge steed, twirling it around then he leaned to the side, slapping
the rump of one of the four horses fixed to my sleigh and shouting,
“
Yah!
”

All four horses burst forward and the straps
in my hands started slipping so I gripped them tight and with my
new husband at my side, me in a sleigh, we rushed through the snow
of the town or city type place and right the fuck out of it and
into a forest.

Oh.

Shit.

Home Sweet Home

Needless to say, since I’d never driven one,
I didn’t know how to steer a sleigh.

And also needless to say, my new husband
frowned on this.

So after we cleared town on a fast gallop
and kept on going like the devil himself was at our heels and my
sleigh kinda went awry a couple of times, necessitating my new
husband on his mighty beast circling it closely to right its
course, after which, each time, he aimed a ferocious scowl at me
that made my heart skip and
not
in
a good way, I learned quick.

Eventually, we slowed to a fast trot and as
I got the hang of things, I had a look around the sleigh. First,
there were some hooks in the panel in front of me so I secured the
reins to them and quickly donned my cloak and pulled on my gloves
mostly because it was bitter cold and I was freezing my ass off. My
dress was awesome and it was velvet but I’d never experienced a
cold that cold and I never thought I’d say it or even think it but
I needed fur.

I sat down and saw a big fur blanket on the
floor of the sleigh in front of me and also a furry, white hat had
fallen there. I exchanged the crown for the hat and pulled the
blanket on top of me, shoving it under my ass to tuck it secure as
high as I could get it around my body. Then I secured the crown as
best I could in the open sleigh.

Better.

Then I grabbed the reins again and took
stock.

I had four, beautiful dapple gray horses
pulling me and behind me in the sleigh there was a shiny, black
piece of fabric with what appeared in the forest-muted moonlight a
gold and red crest stitched into it stretched over a bunch of bulky
stuff and held down with gleaming, gold, what looked like silk
ropes.

My luggage, apparently.

Okay. Well, there you go.

Off I was on my honeymoon.

Ho boy.

It was at this point when I thought I
really,
really
should
have listened to Claudia.

We kept riding, and, well, sleighing through
the snow and The Dragon didn’t engage me in conversation as we did.
I didn’t try either. I concentrated on not steering my horses into
any trees. Then I concentrated on my cheeks not freezing off.

We trotted ever onward in newlywed silence
that was more than a little disconcerting but I hung with it not
sure I wanted the alternative. Early experience indicated my
husband wasn’t a skilled conversationalist and considering he gave
the impression he didn’t like me much, I wasn’t sure I wanted to
hear what he might have to say.

After some time, we cleared the forest and
moved into a vast, snow covered plain that was absolutely gorgeous
considering the snow sparkled and the entire vista was blanketed by
the twinkling moonlit sky that was filled with what seemed like
three times as many stars as any night sky I ever beheld. Then,
after some time, we went through a small village that I wished we’d
slowed even a little bit as we went through so I could take in more
because it seemed mega cool, but we didn’t.

Not even a little bit.

The Dragon led us ever onward through more
plain then forest then I started to get concerned about the state
of my horses, and his, but he drove us on.

And on.

We went through another town, this one
larger, but still no slowing.

That was when I realized I was getting
hungry and my hands hurt from holding onto the reins. My body was
ensconced in fur so I was actually toasty warm, it was just my
cheeks that were cold. So cold, they hurt.

I decided it would probably not be smart to
share this as my husband wasn’t talkative and he clearly didn’t
like me so I figured he wouldn’t want to listen to me bitch (even
with justification) so I didn’t share. I just tried to ignore it
and didn’t quite succeed but didn’t outright fail either.

He led us through more forest and we kept
right on going. We had long since left the mountain town or city
type place behind, and with it my parents, which I did not think
was good. Nor did I like it.

So, I pulled up the courage then pulled in a
breath and started to say loudly, “Uh –”

“Quiet!” he barked without even looking at
me.

Shit.

I was right. Not a big
conversationalist.

Okay, I’ll deal with the next
second. Then the next. And the next. And the next. And so on. Focus
on the now. On just the now,
I told myself.

So I focused on the now and in so doing I
noticed I was right, a sleigh ride was fun. Maybe not one that
lasted hours through a dark, cold night but I decided not to focus
on that and instead focus on the fun part.

And I discovered that commanding the sleigh
was even more fun. I tried things out, found that the horses were
obviously highly trained, they adjusted to even the most minimal
change of their reins and that was super cool.

I did this for awhile and then got over it.
It was fun but we’d been going for hours and nothing was fun for
that long and certainly not driving a sleigh.

We cleared the massive forest and were on
another plain, this one by a sparkling river lit with moonlight
which was pretty cool.

Then we went through another town which was
also cool but we didn’t slow so I didn’t see much of it.

This lasted a long, long, long,
long
time and I was definitely
hungry, definitely worried about the state of my horses because
they’d been going at a good clip for what was now hours and I was
closing in on pissed when the sun started kissing the sky and we
entered another forest.

It wasn’t lost on me that the air was even
more frigid wherever we were now compared to the arctic clime we
left (in other words, it was now
fucking
cold rather than just
freaking
cold and suffice it to say I had thought it
was
fucking
cold
before but now I knew the true meaning of that
) and I lost my pique when I saw the
trunks of the trees, all the way up, were dusted with snow, heavier
on one side where the wind drifted it up or lifted it to powder the
higher bark.

It was fantastically gorgeous.

What was more gorgeous was when we hit a
sleepy, marshmallow-snow roofed, icicle-dripping,
chimney-smoke-drifting village in a somewhat cleared area. That
was, trees scattered the level area and the hillside the village
decorated but they were not as thick as the forest. There was a
wide-ish glistening creek running through the village with several
streams meeting it criss-crossing across the forest floor and
running down the hill to join the river (in fact, my horses and
sleigh glided over two such streams). And there were two large
streams of steaming water that clearly came from hot springs that
glided down the hill and poured into the creek. There were even not
one, but two wooden water wheels.

Definitely cool!

I really wanted to take that village in
because it was way cooler than all the rest and all the rest were
already cool but we went straight through it then kept going
through the forest for what I estimated was five minutes before The
Dragon turned his steed, I turned my horses with him and then I had
to concentrate because this was not a road. We were going through
the forest proper and I had to focus on steering my horses through
as well as not getting hit by a big, low hanging branch (of which
there were a lot) or whipped by smaller ones (of which there were a
lot more).

Then I saw it, up on a rise surrounded by
trees, a building with some outbuildings. It looked cockeyed
because one side was one story, the other side with what looked
like a half a story on top.

The Dragon slowed and so did I. I was pretty
pleased how I brought the sleigh around to the front executing a
tight curve in the small area allowed (truth be told, the horses
pretty much knew what they were doing and obviously did all the
work but I thought we all managed it with great aplomb) and then we
came to a halt.

By the time I did this, The Dragon was
already off his horse and opening the front door to the dwelling.
What he was not doing was smiling proudly at me and calling, “Well
done, my new wife in her gorgeous princess wedding finery!”

Hmm.

It appeared this was either home sweet home
or where we were stopping for some rest.

And it appeared that The Dragon was no
gentleman and was not going to assist his new bride from her
awesome sleigh.

And it also appeared that the next few
minutes were going to be crucial. I had to be alert, be smart and
handle them right. I had no idea what was going on and I had no
idea how to handle that frightening man but somehow I was going to
have to find out the first and do the second.

My body ached, my hands hurt, my cheeks were
numb from the cold, I could eat my way through an entire buffet and
then I could sleep for a week but I still got up, found the latch,
opened the door to my sleigh, stepped down into the snow and
followed my groom into the house.

He was standing in the middle of it, hands
on hips, feet planted wide, staring at me looking fierce and
impatient like I’d made him wait for an hour while I tried on a
variety of shoes to see which matched my outfit rather than made
him wait what was likely around two minutes, if that.