Where Sleeping Dragons Lie (Skeleton Key) (8 page)

Whatever he told them,
she hoped he hadn’t mentioned the skeleton key. The last thing she needed was
curious or bored soldiers wanting to test it out.

Not that there are
any doors out here
, she thought wryly as she allowed Taron to tug her by
the hand after three of the soldiers while the others moved to resume their
posts.

She had a feeling that
she wouldn’t be seeing any doors for a long time. She was surprised to find
that she really wasn’t all that upset about the fact.

At least spending time
with Taron was guaranteed to never be dull. The memory of the feeling of his
lips pressing firmly against her own rose, unbidden, in her mind, and she felt
her cheeks flush with something other than embarrassment.

No, not dull at all.

When Briana returned from
the stream the spy camp used for bathing, she was surprised to find Taron
sitting alone next to the cot where his brother lay still fast asleep. When she
had left with a female soldier named Ylda whom Taron said had volunteered to
show her the stream, the dragon prince had been surrounded by soldiers. She had
assumed that they would be bringing Taron up to speed and planning for Dagon’s
eventual awakening all night, so she had been planning to slip into the tent as
quietly and unobtrusively as possible and head towards the separated partition
in the very back that was meant for her.

She was currently wearing
the dark brown shirt and an extra pair of breeches that her Ylda had given her.
As the dragon-woman had been much taller, Briana was practically swimming in
them, but they were dry, clean, and comfortable, and that’s all she cared
about.

In her right hand, she
tightly clutched the skeleton key. Although it still gave her the heebies to
touch it, she hadn’t wanted to leave it in the pocket of her jeans while she
had bathed, and she knew that Taron didn’t think it was a good idea to let it
out of her sight. That’s why, against her better judgment, after Ylda had left
her alone, she had taken it into the stream with her while she had bathed. A
good thing, too, as she had found her dirty clothes replaced with the ones she
was currently wearing when she had emerged from the water.

Taron appeared to have
bathed as well, his black hair shiny and slightly damp. He was wearing a
uniform identical to the soldiers’. She wondered if someone had filled a tub
with water for him while she was gone. You can’t expect a prince to bath in a
stream like a common soldier, after all. The thought of him bathing alongside
her in the stream made her suddenly tingle in places best forgotten if she
wanted to have a conversation with him without blushing.

“I thought you would
still be talking with everyone,” Briana said as she moved to stand beside the
stool Taron was sitting on.

“It seems things have
been at a stalemate longer than I had supposed,” Taron replied with a sigh. “There
wasn’t much more they could tell me that Captain Rizall hadn’t already relayed.
The blockade is ten thousand stone dragons strong, and we have about the same
amount on the other side defending the palace. It will not be easy to smuggle
Dagon into the palace past that living stone wall.”

His eyes then focused on
her, roving up and down her form with keen interest before the ends of his lips
quirked up. “You look like a little girl playing dress-up in your mother’s
pajamas.”

Briana crossed her arms over
her chest and shrugged. “Better than the grimy clothes I was wearing. Someone’s
probably burning them now as we speak.”

He laughed. “Or studying
them. It’s not every day that someone from a different realm steps into this
world. I daresay I shall never see my own sweater again.”

She looked down at
Dagon’s face. “Has he stirred at all while I was off taking a bath?”

“His eyelids fluttered
once, but you shouldn’t be too concerned. It will likely be hours, yet.”

Taron’s eyes abruptly
sharpened as he noticed the skeleton key in her hand. “There is nothing in this
camp that even resembles a door, much less a lock.”

Briana blinked at him in
surprise. “Oh, I know. I only have it out because these clothes don’t have any
pockets. I suppose if I can find a small chain or at least a piece of twine,
then I could loop it around my neck—”

She gasped as Taron
suddenly pulled her down by the waist until she was sitting a bit awkwardly on
his lap. His sunset eyes brighter than usual, he raised a hand to her cheek and
lightly ghosted his fingertips down her sensitive skin, making her shiver.

“It may be months, even
years, before we make it back to the palace,” he murmured, his eyes fixed on
the movement of his fingers while she sat frozen, hardly daring to breathe,
“before we find a way to end this civil war, but at the same time, this war may
end tomorrow or the next day. While a life on the run full of war and fear is
not the type of life I would wish for you, if all of that were to end soon, what
would you say if I asked you not to use the key, to lock it away deep within
the palace vaults and never think about it again?”

Taron leaned forward and
brushed a soft kiss onto her slightly-parted lips. “To stay here, with me?”

Stay…

Completely blindsided,
Briana could only stare back mutely with wide eyes, her mind stuck somewhere
between the thought of staying in another world for the rest of her life and
the rush of arousal that his kiss had awakened within her.

After a long moment of
stunned silence on her part, Taron suddenly shook his head and pressed his
forehead against hers. “You don’t have to answer me right now. Or even tomorrow
or the next day.”

Then before she could
blink, Taron’s lips crashed down onto hers, swallowing her gasp. She felt his
fingers thread through her hair as he gripped both sides of her head and pulled
her more firmly against him. That hot tongue that had delighted her earlier
slipped within, and she shuddered as it aggressively slid against her own,
coaxing her to respond with a tentative, wet caress.

Briana melted against
him as she closed her eyes and utterly surrendered herself to his aggressive
kiss, her fingers gripping his shoulders so tightly that they were starting to
ache. She decided to accept this moment for what it was and not worry about
what it could be.

She felt him smile
briefly against her mouth before he released her head and slowly ran his hands
down her back and over her ass. He gave both firm globes a playful squeeze
before his hands gripped them tightly and he proceeded to stand up. Briana
hastily wrapped her legs around his waist as she sensed him walk towards the
back of the tent where her bedroll lay, all while continuing to devour her
lips.

Her entire body felt
hot, as though it had been ignited with his dragon flames by his lips and touch
alone. She broke their kiss with a half-gasp, half-laugh when he tumbled them
onto the thin roll, his hips easily parting and sliding between her legs with a
single, aggressive thrust against her pelvis that had the moist center of her
throbbing, aching for more of that delicious stimulation.

Between one blink and
the next, Briana’s top was sliding over her head, her arms automatically
lifting as Taron removed it. After tossing it to the side, he then bent down
and licked once across both lips with a gentle, teasingly flick before moving
to lick slowly and more insistently along her chin and down across the center
of her neck, his hair tickling her over-sensitized skin as his tongue continued
its wet, sensual exploration southward.

Taron slowed his
caresses as he licked closer to the top of her right breast. Briana squirmed in
anticipation, already feeling her nipples begin to peak and throb even before
she felt that first teasing swipe of the tip of Taron’s tongue across her
nipple.

Briana sucked in a sharp
breath when she felt his mouth suddenly latch onto that same nipple, and she
threw her head back and arched up into the sensation, her fingers sliding into
his hair and tugging him closer in encouragement. Her thighs squeezed against
the sides of his chest, and she bucked her hips in reaction as Taron continued
to lathe attention on that sensitive little pebble, causing her clit to rub
briefly against the rough material of her breeches. She bucked again with a sigh,
chasing after more of that sensation.

Her dragon prince
chuckled before giving her nipple one final nip and lifting himself off her
body with the strength of his arms until he was no longer touching her.

“Taron!” Briana moaned,
arching her back up and reaching her hands up to him, suddenly desperate to
feel his warmth across the length of her, to experience that teasing friction
again.

“Is this what you want?”
he asked, his voice deepened with rising lust as he reached a hand down beneath
the waistband of her breeches to her naked sex and began to lightly rub over
that little button of nerves in slow circles with the roughened tips of his
fingers.

She cried out and bucked
her hips. “Yes! Your mouth—please—!”

Taron removed his hand
and made short work of removing the last of her clothing. He spread her thighs
wider with his hands, and she gasped as she watched him lower his head between
her legs. The feeling of his hotter-than-a-human’s exhales on her moist center
was indescribably erotic, making her throb more painfully with arousal until
she almost couldn’t stand it.

A cry was wrenched from
her throat at the first lap of a skillful tongue, and Briana clutched at both
his hair and the blankets of the bedroll as Taron teased wave after wave of
pleasure from her sensitive bud until she was jerking her head wildly from side
to side and screaming with it. When her orgasm came, her entire body seized
with the release as pleasure like she had never experienced before flooded her
entire body and made something in her mind stutter and stop. It seemed the
intense spasms would go on forever as Taron continued to skillfully massage her
clit with his tongue.

“No more, no more!”
Briana begged, tugging at his hair as she writhed mindlessly and tried to buck
her hips against the hand Taron had pressed firmly onto her lower abdomen to
keep her from doing just that.

Either he took pity on
her, or the sound of her begging shattered the last of his control because
suddenly that hot, hot mouth was devouring her lips as though he was determined
to suck the life out of her and his equally hot, silky-hard member was pressing
insistently against her still-trembling passage.

One hard thrust and his
cock entered her all the way to the root. Her cry of pleasure/pain was
swallowed greedily as her thighs gripped his hips tightly. Damn, but she nearly
felt split in two! Even when he had stood naked before her after shifting
outside his castle, she hadn’t given his member more than that initial glance
as she had been too busy being bashful about his sudden nudity. She was
suddenly grateful that she hadn’t snuck more than an accidental peek or else
she would have probably been too frightened to take the whole of him.

Taron kissed the tears
beginning to leak from the corners of her eyes as instead of pounding her into
the ground as she had expected, his initial thrusts were slow and shallow,
allowing her to get used to his sizeable girth. Only when she was able to
finally relax and take him more easily did he begin to thrust powerfully and
deeply, stroking nerves deep within her that no other had ever touched until
her body was once again throbbing with building pleasure.

Briana relaxed her
vise-like grip on his shoulders and slipped her fingers into his hair at the
nape of his neck. She shivered when she realized that he was looking down at
her with dragon eyes, his pupils thin and vertical along with irises the color
of flames. It was somehow both sexy as hell and frightening at the same time.

“Taron,” she breathed
his name again, loving the way his eyes seemed to flash with an inner light
whenever something she said or did elicited a strong emotion in him.

His hips sped up, his
thrusts becoming more jarring and erratic as he alternated between soft, sweet
kisses that were no more than a caress of lips and a sharing of air and sucking
aggressively while tangling tongues, tittering on the brink of ecstasy. Briana
was close to the edge, too, her passage squeezing his cock more tightly as her
body stiffened that one second before everything within her exploded for the
second time with one final, heavy thrust that nearly made her black out.

Then liquid fire
abruptly flooded her passage, and Taron was biting at her neck with a groan and
thrusting hard and deep once again as he climaxed. Briana clutched tightly at
his shoulders and hung on for dear life.

When Taron’s hips had
finally stilled and Briana’s body had stopped shaking so badly, he let out a
sigh that was equal parts satisfaction and exhaustion and rolled them until she
rested heavily onto his chest. As her face pressed up against his heated skin
that still smelled strongly of fresh ashes, she noticed that he was not
sweating at all, the bastard.

She had never felt this
emotionally and physically wrecked after sex, and she wasn’t sure how to feel
about that fact. No doubt this dragon-shifter had just ruined her for other
men. Maybe that had been his intention all along, starting with that incredible
kiss he had given her in the tower. Maybe he had hoped she would choose to stay
with him even then. Not that she could blame her current dilemma entirely on
him. After all, it did take two to tango.

Briana closed her eyes
and buried her face into his chest with a frustrated sigh. “You don’t play
fair,” she muttered just a bit resentfully.

What the hell was she
supposed to do now?

Taron planted a kiss on
the top of her head.

“No, I play for keeps.”