Keeping his hand over her breast possessively, he ran his tongue down her spine, pausing at her mid-back to lap at her skin with slow, deliberate strokes. Her sex clenched around his cock again. He grinded against her, sending another ripple of pleasure through her.
This was different than their previous mating. This was…tender. Almost loving.
Elliya opened her eyes, turning her head to look at her dragon over her shoulder. Her lips twitched into a smile. “Are you calm now, dragon?”
His bright blue eyes shifted to meet hers, their pupils dilated. Half his face was shrouded in shadow, the other half lit by the morning sunlight spilling into the cave, his scales golden and gleaming.
He bared his pointed teeth and growled, but his voice was surprisingly low and small when he said, “Yes.”
His reply was so begrudging that Elliya chuckled, her body shaking gently with the sound.
The dragon’s eyes shut as a shudder coursed through him. His hands tightened on her hip and breast just a little more, and his claws pricked her skin teasingly. He made a sound somewhere between a grunt and a groan, somewhere between pleasure and discomfort, and raised his torso so he was standing straight, sliding his hand away from her breast to settle it back at her hip.
The fire in his chest was roiling and intense, casting its glow upon her and making him look more like some sort of spirit than a physical being in the tunnel’s uneven light.
“You have no right to make me feel this way, female,” he said.
“What do I make you feel?”
Besides hatred.
“Hunger,” he replied, his deep voice reverberating in the tunnel.
Oh.
Elliya turned back toward the wall, smile fading, unable to ignore the pang of disappointment in her heart. “That is no fault of mine. It is the Heat.”
“It is entirely your fault.” He shifted his hips forward, pressing into her a little more firmly, making her gasp, and slid a hand to her back. He smoothed his palm up along her spine and then dragged it back down, grazing his claws over her skin in a way that made her shiver. “You have taken pleasure in our mating, have you not?”
“If I say that I have, do you intend to punish me for it?”
“No punishment I might enact upon you would leave me unscathed. I want only your truth.”
“Then yes.”
Another satisfied rumble rolled in his chest. His hand moved again, around her side to her belly, and he trailed it up between the valley of her breasts to curl around her throat. He forced her upright, pressing her back against his hot, hard chest, and leaned his head down to settle his chin atop her hair. Elliya barely contained a moan as his cock shifted inside her.
“You have your dragon now,” he said as he covered her sex with his other hand, applying sweet pressure to her most sensitive flesh. “Are you satisfied, human?”
“Elliya.”
“I do not understand that word.”
Her pulse raced beneath his palm—not in fear, but in desire. “My name. It is Elliya.”
The dragon stilled. The heat radiating from him intensified. His forefinger bent, the tip of its claw trailing lightly along her jawline. “Elliya.”
His cock swelled slightly as he spoke her name—though speaking was not quite what he’d done. From his lips, her name was a chant, a prayer, an ancient spell, thrumming with power that made her bond with him strengthen impossibly further and sear itself upon her soul.
That power reverberated in her core, stealing her breath and making her knees weak, thrusting her to the edge of another climax. Hearing him say her name…it was an acknowledgement she’d not realized she had craved. It was yet another taste of how things could’ve been between them, a taste of what those ancestral legends had described.
He released a slow breath, his hold on her throat tightening infinitesimally. “You are mine, Elliya. Mine to mate as I please. Mine to breed as I please. That is what you have won for yourself.”
Elliya swallowed, and her breath quickened. She should have been furious at his words, at their implication—that she was but a possession to be used at his whim—yet lust burned in her veins. She wanted nothing more than for him to move his hips, than to feel the slide of his ridged shaft inside her. She wanted his ferocity. She wanted his passion.
His body tensed, and for a few moments, she was sure he would give in to her unspoken desire, was sure he would succumb to