To Tame a Dragon - Tiffany Roberts Page 0,13
a growl. Those smells were wrong—his lair was redolent of sand and stone. There was no fresh water within, no vegetation. There were no females.
My female.
He squeezed his eyes shut tighter, as though the darkness behind his eyelids could swallow his thoughts just as it had his sight. It had all been a dream. The female, the encounter beside the river, the change—all nothing more than a dream, made more vivid and impactful by the Red Heat.
That Heat was wafting over him even now, pulsing against his scales and into the flesh beneath. The rhythm of those invasive waves matched the slow, steady beating of his heart—and his achingly hard cock throbbed in time with it, too.
The female’s scent, laced with the lingering hints of her arousal, seemed suddenly stronger—or perhaps his awareness of it had simply strengthened. Falthyris clenched his teeth and shifted, meaning to push up on all fours. That attempted movement was all he needed to confirm that none of it had been a dream.
This is not my body!
His eyelids snapped open, his muscles tensed, and his claws pricked his palms. He was lying on his side atop sand and grass. The sky was wide open above him, the Red Heat shimmered faintly all around him, and the blood red moon tinted everything with hints of crimson.
Growling, Falthyris sat up, using unfamiliar muscles to move his unfamiliar form. His hands struck his extruded shaft, creating a flare of torturous pleasure-pain that forced him to bare his teeth, hiss, and freeze for a moment.
He looked down. His arms were bound together at their wrists by a tightly-wound cord, his hands—his damned alien hands—overlapping one another. Beneath them were his new legs, awkward things with their odd ankles and stupid flat feet. How could any creature walk on such ungainly limbs? How had humans managed to survive for so long in such soft, weak, unbalanced bodies?
His tail swung in agitation, scraping over grass and sand.
“Are you thirsty?”
The sound of the female’s voice—his female’s voice—stiffened his spine and stoked his heartfire. Breath ragged, he slowly turned his head toward her. She stood a few paces away, her fingers curled around the shaft of a stone-headed spear, her thin, black brows low, and her eyes wary.
Framed by thick lashes, those eyes were as deep, dark, and unfathomable as the night sky. They were captivating. Her long, black mane hung around her shoulders, its strands curling above her chest mounds, which were each crowned with dark circles. There were intricate black markings on her hands, arms, stomach, and feet, their patterns more detailed and surprisingly symmetrical. Those markings somehow accentuated the innate grace of her soft little body.
His gaze trekked over that body, following the lines of her lithe limbs, her narrow waist, and flared hips, admiring the hints of muscle beneath her tan skin. A dangling scrap of cloth covered her sex, but when he flicked his tongue out, he could still taste her arousal on the air.
He squeezed his fists tighter; for an instant, he hated that bit of cloth almost as much as he hated this shape he’d been forced into. She was his, and he would not be denied any part of her.
Falthyris felt his bond with her. It was coiled in his chest, wrapped around his heartfire, tightening with each beat of his heart, urging him to go to her. The Red Heat flickering in the air brightened infinitesimally. Without meaning to, he clamped a hand over his shaft and slid his tongue out for another sample of her scent. His entire body shuddered, and his cock twitched, seeping seed.
“Do you need relief?” she asked.
He snarled and forced his hands away from his loins. “All I require is revenge, mortal.”
The crease between her brows deepened. “Revenge? For what?”
“You act as though you had no intention of trapping me,” he replied, pushing himself onto his feet. That he had to use both his tail and wings to find his balance on these poorly shaped legs only intensified his anger. “As though you have done me no wrong.”
She winced, her eyes dropping to the bindings around his wrist. “I tied your hands because of your anger, but I have not trapped you.”
Falthyris snarled and wrenched his arms apart. The rope around his wrists tore and fell to the ground, but not before he felt its slight bite against his scales. The female’s eyes flared, and she angled the head of her spear toward him.
“Do not play the fool with