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  He was so amazed by the easy way she appeared to accept pleasure, the way she so willingly let it roll over her body, that he didn’t expect the abrupt shift she made that started to bring him inside her. Kane’s hands reached up to curl tightly around the steel links that held him imprisoned, suddenly needing the vicious grip as she slowly worked to impale herself on him.

  At ninety-eight years of age, Kane was two years from being an adult in the eyes of his peers, but right then he had never felt more like a novice at life. The sensation of his perfect mate welcoming him with such exquisite perfection brought him to his proverbial knees. He shook his head, trying to stave off the dampness in his eyes, but with little success. He hated that he couldn’t touch her, and yet there was something about her proud domination over him that made it all worthwhile.

  Corrine closed her eyes, dropping her head back with a lusty groan that echoed high in the stone room. Kane was so hot that she felt as if she was impaling herself on pure burning steel. She worked herself down onto him, gasping at the ferocity of his heat and feeling wave after wave of his profound emotional response. Oh, how compelling it was to know he was feeling this way because of her! When he finally sank home inside her, she had to lean with flat palms against his chest, drawing hard for breath because of how intense the sensation was. Her entire body shimmered with delight and the ready edge of pleasure. She lifted herself and shifted back onto her heels, crying out as he met her with a defiant thrust of his hips. Her whole frame shivered with the impact and she almost fell over him. Instead she ended up braced against him and staring down into his brilliant blue eyes and their undeniable devotion.

  She raised herself again, taking advantage of the moment to kiss his mouth as she drew forward over him. After a moment of swimming in the gaze of his eyes, she whispered to him. “You love me,” she said softly.

  “Yes.” He punctuated the confession with another powerful thrust to meet her descending stroke. She lifted again almost instantly, breathing a moan of pleasure against his lips.

  “Kane . . . Kane, you know I don’t—”

  He cut her off with a deep return into her slight body, rocking her forward so that their mouths met in a wild, soul-searching kiss. He let her settle back on her own this time, breathing hard against her damp, well-used lips. “You will.”

  Corrine felt the utter conviction pouring from him and a chill of delight shivered down her spine. He was once again telling her the absolute truth. His truth. A truth, she realized, she wouldn’t at all mind living.

  Sitting up straight and proud on her very personal stallion, Corrine took charge of her ride. Kane continued to match her tit for tat, sweat gleaming on his dark skin as he worked her body as fiercely as he could under the circumstances. He loved the way her entire body jounced, her breasts with their dark coral tips shimmering with impact every time she met with him. It was all so far beyond his expectations that his body reacted uncontrollably to her. At first he used the increasing bite of the wrist cuffs to help draw him away from the rampant urge to rush into orgasm, the warm wetness of his own blood a small price to pay if he could just keep control long enough for what she needed. But soon even that couldn’t help him.

  “Sweet, blessed Destiny, Corrine! You’re perfect! You’re—”

  Kane gasped in a hard, sucking breath as sudden fire broiled through the bottom of his gut, sinking with an acidic burn into the seat of his pelvis. His whole body crashed against a tempest of pleasure he couldn’t contain or control. His back arced off the bed, the power of his muscular body lifting her up with him.

  Corrine felt the impulse of pleasure rushing through his body and mind, and once it slammed into him, it slammed into her as well. Chained together as they were by the power of Kane’s mind, she was snared in the vortex of his explosive release, convulsive and bordering on painful. They both curled toward one another, their heads touching at their temples as they cried out against each other’s ears. Kane’s jolting release felt as if it would never end, and the greedy clutch of her body only perpetuated the situation. Then, gasping madly, they suddenly dropped onto the bed, their bodies nothing more than an exhausted pile of arms and legs.

  Even before he finished catching his breath, Kane let out an irritated growl. Corrine looked at him in surprise when he uttered quite savagely, “Perfect bloody timing, Noah.”

  Then there was a sharp jolt seconds before Corrine hit the mattress face first, Kane having completely disappeared from beneath her. The startled redhead pushed up into a thick cloud of smoke and the heavy odor of sulfur. Then there was another snap in the air and suddenly Kane was on her back, his now-free hands sliding hungrily beneath her to seek out the delicious softness of her breasts.

  “Kane!” she gasped, trying to turn under him so she could look into his face. His remarkable disappearing act had stunned her, but it was quickly overshadowed by the more remarkable feel of his hands on her body at long last.

  “At long last?” He echoed her thoughts fiercely against her ear. “Let’s see you suffer over a week of getting fully aroused every single time the slightest memory of your mate drifts into your mind. Then you can complain about the length of your denied hunger.”

  “Oh, I see,” she breathed, “it’s a contest, is it?”

  “No contest,” he argued hotly. “You’ll never know what I went through.”

  “So you say,” she shot back.

  “No. So I know. You will never know the kind of denial I went through, Corrine. You’ll never know it because I will never let you know it.” As he made the promise, his hands went in different directions, traveling intimately over her slender body. “I can promise you this with all of my heart, sweetness.”

  Corrine sighed and smiled into the bed sheets. It was a promise she knew she could believe.

  Epilogue

  Kane rubbed at his nearly healed wrists, tugging his shirtsleeves down over faint bruises. True, he could have had a Body Demon heal them for him, but there was something poignant about the sight, about touching them, about remembering what he had gone through that Samhain night. He wished he hadn’t healed so fast. He wanted the reminders to last just a little while longer.

  He looked up when he heard a door close softly. She appeared like a vision in a dream, wearing something that flowed like soft, shimmering silk around her. The color was a pale aqua, as though clean tropical water clung to her. The dress was unlike anything he’d ever seen her wear before, other than the gown he had chosen for her in an alternate reality. But he had known it was within her, the desire to wear such lush, beautiful things. And she wore it as though she had been born to it. As she walked down the stairs it was like watching an elegant queen.

  “Hey, Sis!”

  The moment was broken as a raven-haired speedball bolted between Kane and Corrine, throwing herself into her sister’s arms. The sisters hugged fiercely, their opposite colored hair mixing together in an astounding clash of red on black.

  “You’d think they hadn’t seen each other in years,” Jacob remarked wryly as he came to Kane’s side and stood there in his usual stoic pose, his arms folded over his chest. But there was softness in his eyes and a slight smile on his lips as he watched his mate. To outsiders the change in him might seem small, but to Kane the alteration in his older brother was profound. It made Kane smile and put off his irritation at being thwarted from having his mate in his arms. Over these past two days he had come to know Bella much better, had learned how dynamic she was. There was much of her sister in her, but there was a wisdom and reserve in Corrine that made her somehow more special to Kane.

  “She looks well,” Jacob remarked.

  “She’s better,” Kane agreed. “But we don’t have what you and Bella have. I mean, her ability to read my thoughts is limited to times when we are very close and speaking of highly emotional things. And I cannot speak with her from any distance. I don’t like it. I feel that I am missing a key piece of armor when it comes to protecting her. Knowing ther
e are magic users out there and others who might try to harm her to get to me . . .”

  “The odds of that are very low,” Jacob said as he tried to reassure him. “Has she shown any signs of special ability?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “It may take time,” Jacob mused. “We are grateful she is even alive. I am grateful.” Jacob looked at his brother. “It would have crushed me to know I was the instrument that robbed you of the woman who would love you best.”

  Kane felt the power of his brother’s guilt as well as his love for him, all in that single statement. It didn’t even matter to him that Corrine had yet to declare her love for him.

  She would.

  In time, with his love and care coaxing her heart to his, she would.

  Corrine looked up at him, over her diminutive sister’s shoulder, and smiled at him.

  He read her thoughts and his smile grew.

  Dragon On Top

  G. A. AIKEN

  Chapter 1

  Ghleanna the Decimator took another gulp from her battered ale cup and wallowed, quite magnificently, if she did say so herself, in her misery. It was ridiculous, she knew, to still be as devastated by all this as she had been. It would be going on six months and yet she could not move past it. Instead, she sat and she drank and she wallowed and she tried to forget. And this had been the way of things for a long time now. Too long, her kin would say.

  This was all her own fault, though. She’d trusted where she shouldn’t have, believed lies when she damn well knew better, and most importantly, forgot the one thing that no one else ever forgot—that her father was Ailean the Wicked. Also known as Ailean the Slag, well-known whore of the dragon and human world.

  And, with a single stroke of idiocy, Ghleanna the Decimator had become Ghleanna the Idiot.

  Ghleanna the Fool.

  Ghleanna the Failure.

  Yet perhaps “failure” was too harsh a word. She’d never thought of herself as a failure before. After years on the battlefield, she’d proved herself again and again. But a failure was how she felt now. Like a failure and a fool with no one to blame, but herself. So, in morbid shame and self-pity and with no wars or battles interesting enough to occupy her mind or sword arm, Ghleanna had returned to the safety of her cave home’s ancient walls to be miserable and—if she were to be honest—hide. Venturing out only for food and ale.

  Although these last few days she’d mostly just gone out for more ale.

  She had no idea what her long-term plans were, but then again, should failures have long-term plans? Since Ghleanna wasn’t sure, she drank more ale until sweet blackness took her and she didn’t have to think about her inherent stupidity and the misery it had caused her anymore.

  Ghleanna had no idea how long she’d been passed out, but as much as she might want to, she couldn’t ignore the beating her head was currently taking. She forced her eyes open and watched the blunt end of a steel spear come down to crack her forehead again. She rolled away but the end of another spear hit her on the side of the jaw.

  “Wake up, ya lazy sow. Wake up!”

  “Leave me be, you mad bitches!”

  “Is that any way to talk to your dear, sweet aunts?”

  “You’re not my aunts,” she lashed back.

  “Close enough. It’s better than Great Cousins, isn’t it? Makes us sound old, don’t it, Kennis?”

  “That it does, Kyna. Now get up before we strip the scales from ya bones.”

  Pissed that her kin didn’t have the decency to leave her alone to wallow in her ale and drool, Ghleanna sat up and snarled, “What is it, you old hags? What is it you want from me?”

  “Well, first, you can stop feeling sorry for yourself. Isn’t that right, Kyna?”

  “That’s right, Kennis. Nothing worse than a mighty dragoness sittin’ around in a dark, dank cave, boo-hooing over some bloody mistake of a dragon.”

  “I am doing no such thing,” she lied.

  “Look at her lying to us, Kennis!”

  “I see it, Kyna. Lying to us and thinking we won’t know. It’s a shame.” Kennis shrugged. “I say we hit her again. On principle.”

  “I agree.”

  Ghleanna quickly raised her claws to protect her head. “Go away! Leave me be!”

  “So you can sit here and continue to feel sorry for yourself ? Over him? I’d rather put you down here and now, ain’t that right, Kyna?”

  “Aye. Like a poor, wounded horse.”

  “I hate all of you.” Ghleanna let out a big sigh, dragging her claws through her too-long black hair. She hadn’t cut it in months and it showed. She knew she must look like cold shit, but she’d not give her kin the satisfaction of acknowledging it.

  “Hate us? Even though we’re all worried about your worthless hide?” Kyna asked.

  “All them brothers and sisters of yours whinin’ about you. Och! The sound of it makes us mad. We had to do something, didn’t we, Kyna?”

  “Aye, Kennis. That we did. Or kill them all just to make them stop. But that didn’t seem right, did it, Kennis?”

  “No. Not at all.”

  “So you come here to do . . . what? Exactly?” Ghleanna demanded. “Besides annoy the bloody fuck out of me?”

  “You’re lucky it was us come to fetch you, brat. Not sure your wake up would have been so kind if it had been your mother who’d come here instead. Isn’t that right, Kyna?”

  “Och! Beaten your scales to a different color, she would have. She’s been sick to death with worry over you, only to find out you’re sitting in this cave, drinking your sorrows away on some cheap ale.”

  “Well, if I’d really wanted to end it all, I would have just used your ale,” Ghleanna sniped.

  The spear butt came at her again but this time Ghleanna caught and held it. “Stop hitting me with that bloody thing.”

  “At least her reflexes are still good. Now we just need to sober her up—”

  “And bathe her. She reeks!”

  “—and we can get her to our queen’s court while it’s still morning.”

  “Queen’s court? Why do I need to go to Rhiannon’s court?”

  “Ohhh. Hear that, Kennis?”

  “Aye, Kyna. Rhiannon she calls her. Like they’re old friends.”

  “Best of chums!”

  The twin She-dragons cackled and Ghleanna felt the need to start destroying things.

  “She’s gettin’ pissy, Kyna.”

  “That she is, Kennis.”

  “So we better get her up and ready so we can get a move on.”

  Fed up, Ghleanna nearly roared, “I don’t want to see Rhiannon! So get the fuck out of my cave!”

  Kyna crouched down low so she could look Ghleanna in the eyes, one side of her snout pulling back to show row after row of deadly fangs, many having shown up as she’d aged.

  “Now listen up, little girl. You can talk to your father and brothers like that if you want—but you’ll not talk to us that way. And when the queen gives you an order—”

  “—you get off your ass and you follow it. Or by the gods—”

  “—we’ll make you wish you had.”

  Ghleanna understood now why the Cadwaladr Twins had been sent to fetch her. Although many of her siblings would put up a good fight, only her brothers Bercelak and Addolgar really had a chance at taking her, but neither would because she was their sister. The same with her father. And her mother was a peacekeeper, not a fighter. So her kin had sent the most feared Dragonwarriors in the land, the Cadwaladr Twins. Old She-dragons they might be, but that only made them more dangerous—and unstable.

  “You coming, girl?”

  “Yes,” Ghleanna hissed, using her front claws to push herself all the way up. It took a moment for the cavern to stop spinning and another moment for the nausea to pass. But once they did, she was ready to at least get into the lake outside and bathe.

  “What does Rhiannon want with me anyway?” she asked, heading outside with the twins right behind her, debating on
whether to make a run for it.

  “Unlike you, brat, we don’t ask a bunch of questions.”

  “Our queen asks us to do something, we do it. That’s our job.”

  “That’s your job,” Kennis insisted.

  “Did we not train her well enough?”

  “I hope that’s not the case, Kyna. Hate to put her back through training.”

  Ghleanna winced, hearing the threat in those words loud and clear. “Won’t be necessary,” she muttered.

  “Good. You were always one of our favorites, Ghleanna. We’d hate to have to beat you within an inch of your life because you’ve forgotten where you come from.”

  Kyna caught Ghleanna’s forearm, made her look at her. “And there’s no shame, girl. No shame in who you are, who your kin are, or who you want to be.”

  “And don’t let anybody convince you different,” Kennis finished. “You are special, Ghleanna. And some blokes—they can never handle that. While others . . .”

  “While others what?”

  “While others were born to be the sheathe to your sword—you just need to find that one, lass. Like we did.”

  “Like your Da did. But she can’t do that if she stinks of ale and misery, Kennis.”

  “Not unless she wants a miserable bastard like herself, Kyna. And gods! Who’d want that?”

  And Ghleanna, realizing the truth of that, headed toward the lake and prepared to meet with her queen.

  Please don’t hug me. Please don’t hug me.

  But she did. She did hug him. Right there in front of her entire court and, more importantly, in front of her consort. The most unpleasant of dragons, Bercelak the Great himself.

  And Bram the Merciful, royal emissary for Queen Rhiannon of the House of Gwalchmai fab Gwyar, knew his queen did it on purpose. He knew she did it because she enjoyed torturing her mate, but she often failed to realize that she also, in the process, tortured poor Bram. Or perhaps she realized it but simply didn’t care.