To Tame a Dragon - Tiffany Roberts Page 0,42
touch her everywhere all at once.
Like their mating at the river, this time had been different than all the others. The Red Star undoubtedly still held sway over him, instilling his every move throughout their joining with growing urgency, but there was a new tenderness in his touch and the way he’d looked at her—a reverence.
It was almost too good to be true.
Too sudden to be true.
It is the bond. It…it must be the bond.
And yet, Elliya couldn’t help savoring this moment, this closeness, this intimacy. Was this how things could’ve been if the world was different? Was this what being joined would have meant if the survival of humanity wasn’t dependent upon men taking many, many brides in order to conceive as many children as possible? This was a taste of what she’d always longed for at heart—to be someone’s only, to be loved and cherished. Not simply one breeder among many.
Falthyris’s tail undulated lazily against her calf.
Elliya smiled and smoothed her fingers over his chest scales, which were still warm and faintly glowing. His heartfire had flared during their mating, burning brighter than the pair of long torches she’d stood in the sand nearby. Of course, even his heartfire had not been enough to fully illuminate this huge inner chamber, the place that he called his lair—the place his body must have filled in his natural form.
They’d gathered soft grasses from around the river, and Elliya had woven them into mats to spread on the sand-covered cavern floor. She’d laid out her blanket atop those. Under normal circumstances, she would have avoided the sand entirely. There were too many dangers lurking beneath it out in the desert, things far larger and more dangerous than shorelurkers, but Falthyris had assured her there was naught but solid stone beneath this sand.
He'd called this little spot she’d arranged a nest, and something about that had seemed right to her—even more so now that he was showing her more kindness.
It is just the bond!
As much as she wanted this to be real, beneath the surface, she remained wary. This could end at any moment. He would remember what she’d stolen from him, remember why he should be angry at her, and unleash his rage once again. That quickly, this little taste of affection could become a flood of resentment and bitterness.
Elliya closed her eyes and turned her nose into his chest, breathing deep his smoky, spicy scent, relishing it, locking it away in memory. She released that breath in a wistful sigh.
Falthyris’s hands stilled, and his claws grazed her skin. “What is wrong, Elliya?” he asked in that rumbling voice.
She lay her cheek upon his chest. “What was it like being a dragon?”
His muscles tensed.
Elliya cringed, wondering what had possessed her to ask such a thing knowing it would only remind him of what she’d taken—which was the opposite of what she wanted, wasn’t it?
Falthyris released a sigh of his own, slow and soft. His body eased somewhat, and one of his hands slid up her back delicately. “It was like being myself. It was…me. Even now, some part of me still feels as though it is the world that has changed rather than my body. As though everything else is larger than it is meant to be. It was not I who was large, but everything else was small.
“I felt powerful, graceful, fast. I drew satisfaction from the way the earth would tremble beneath me, or the way my wings could disperse the air. My roar could make these mountains quake. I felt…above everything.”
Elliya had experienced that power briefly, had felt the ground shake with his roars, had felt the wave of terror he’d seemed to emit in that form. “What of your mother and sire?”
“What of them?” he replied with an almost venomous bitterness in his voice. His claws flexed, pricking her skin hard enough to make her wince. He hissed through his teeth and lifted his hands away abruptly. When he returned them to her skin, his touch was again gentle, and he soothed the spots he’d hurt.
His tone was more neutral as he continued talking. “I was hatched nearly two thousand years ago. My recollection of the time before the comet is…hazy. I recall my mother and my sire, but the memories are distant. He was the one who taught me dragons are akin to gods. That we are superior to all beings, that this world belongs to us. Lessons to which I took readily.”
Two thousand years? That