Hour of the Dragon - Heather Killough-Walden Page 0,142

his draconic hearts. And the first had to be his dragon heart because that was what he was, and that was what she would become.

The dragon was the one in charge, the one holding the leash of this transformative spell, and his dragon heart was what made Ares a monster. It was neither kind nor forgiving, it gave no quarter. It was still angry that Ares had locked it away the one night Annaleia had given herself to him – because she had then escaped him. And if he’d been the dragon at the time, she would not have gotten far.

The second and third bites could be different. He could be gentle. His other hearts would be calling the shots.

But right now, Ares’ dragon had five decades of pain to work off. It was a horrible, brutal pain, an unforgivable kind of pain. He could barely control it now, frankly. He felt slightly delirious, drunk on his victorious domination of the woman he loved, his best friend, the one he’d wanted to bite and claim and fuck the moment she’d rounded that corner in corset lace boots and no bra.

Of course the dragon knew what to do even while Ares was lost in her, and after his draconic nosedive from the skies of the dragon realm, Ares found himself with Annaleia back inside the cave, standing in the doorway of his master bedroom. He may have transported there; he could do so without speaking in the dragon realm. He honestly didn’t know.

He had braced his arms against the wall on either side of Annaleia, his teeth still firmly buried in her throat. Through it all, he’d been careful not to tear her flesh at all, his teeth held deep, but they were smooth, and other than the small holes they’d made in their claiming bite, her skin was unmarred. His teeth just weren’t going anywhere yet.

Ares held her up against the wall with his body pressed against hers and his knee braced between her legs while he continued to drink, knowing he could literally drink from her all night. The spell would replenish what he took from her, maintaining her health for as long as he needed it to. There was something so deliciously gluttonous about that knowledge. Maybe it was because he knew he was doing things to her as he took what he wanted – delicious, naughty, somewhat cruel things.

You taste so good, little one, he told her. That was putting it mildly. And really, that was a strange way to describe the way blood made a blood-drinker feel. It wasn’t so much a taste as a spreading, all-encompassing sensation that began with the teeth, continued on the tongue, and then moved throughout the body like a potent alcohol laced with sensual pleasure. It spread and built, moving to center on the drinker’s core until it felt like one long sexual climax that rolled through them over and over again. It was an effect that the taste of the blood had on its taker, so “taste” was how they’d come to describe it.

Every donor tasted differently. Some tasted like sufficiency. They were meals, nothing more. Some tasted bad, something they’d done, some supernatural aspect to their existence having soured the blood.

And then there were the walking orgasms.

Anna half-heartedly tried to turn her head, tried to move against him, tried to do anything at all that would change the position in which she found herself – in utter and complete submission to his teeth. Not that he let her. But he knew why she tried.

She was normally so full of fire, so fast to rise to a challenge and so slow to back down, being dominated in any capacity was not something she was accustomed to.

This, here, was hard for her. He didn’t have to read her mind to know that much. He simply knew his best friend. She was experiencing vast amounts of pleasure while being forced to succumb to the iron-handed will of another, and not just any other, but a man. She had grown up in a society lacking some of the most basic equal rights that people today took for granted. This made her feel helpless.

A part of him wanted to apologize for what he was doing, despite the pleasure she was getting from it. But it was some small, insignificant part of him that wasn’t in charge at the moment. So he kept his apologies to himself and remained silent but for the occasional