Dragon Bewitched Read online

  He chuckled. “Never fear, Freya mine.” He pressed forward and slipped a little deeper.

  Finally she understood his game. They rocked backward and forward until he was filling her. It hurt. Not a lot, but some. She thought that was natural. And of course she thought he was bigger than most men. But what did she know? She had hidden while the dragons were stealing her sisters.

  Her dragon kissed her again. He was a wonderful kisser. Forceful and tender by turns. He tasted wonderful too. And every time he rocked against her, her cunt pulsed. She hoped they could do this for a long time. Of their own accord her legs twined around his lean hips and her heels pressed into the dimples above his rock-hard backside.

  “Freya.” He said her name as if it was a prayer. As if she were indeed the goddess for whom she was named. “Freya. Freya.” Almost she wished she knew his name.

  He was still chanting when he came inside her. She felt the hot gush at her womb. A tiny flame igniting a spark of life. Her dragon collapsed on top of her, crushing her for one moment before he rolled sideways and kissed her again. He pressed on the top of her cunt and ecstasy exploded there. Her whole body became one with his.

  “Wow,” he muttered.

  That was good, wasn’t it? She fell asleep with his strong young arms around her, still trying to work out what ‘wow’ meant.

  His lips on her breasts woke her. He was suckling at one while he milked the other with a big hand. “What are you doing?” she grumbled. She felt distinctly odd. And his suckling made her nipple ache as much as it tantalized.

  “Making love to you, Freya.” He resumed his suckling.

  “There’s no need,” she blurted.

  “There is every need,” he murmured against her breast. His hand caught hers and put it over his thing. It was thick and as hard as a sword of forged iron.

  She parted her legs. He ran a hand over one thigh and then onto her bottom. He squeezed gently. “Your skin is so soft,” he told her. “May I kiss you on your,” he hesitated, “Cunt?”

  “Kiss me?” She nearly swallowed her tongue. “Why?”

  “Because this is my dream.” He sounded a little indignant.

  “Well, if you want to.”

  “I want,” he growled. And then he was kissing his way down her body, pausing to swirl his tongue in the eye of her belly, before burying his whole face in her bush. He inhaled deeply and made approving noises.

  And then she wasn’t really thinking, because he had his open mouth on her cunt and his tongue and lips were doing things she had never dreamed of. He lapped and sucked and licked while she shrieked. She knew she had been shrieking because later her throat was scratchy and hoarse.

  The dragon kept up his guzzling and grazing until she was tangled in the sheets and those explosive sensations were bursting her apart. Then he thrust his thing back into her until he touched her womb again. She knew what to do this time. She grasped him with her thighs and dug her heels in.

  His tongue tasted of her. She was reasonably sure she wasn’t supposed to like that, but whore that she was, she did. He drew her tongue into his mouth and sucked it with the same rhythm with which he was fucking her. She wanted it to go on forever, but even her dragon had to finish sooner or later. Again she felt the gush of his seed. Again he swung her sideways and kissed her tenderly.

  He fell asleep once more. All right, she sent him to sleep. She had work to do. She stood up. She was as sore as if she had ridden to Valhalla and back on Odin’s eight-legged steed. Her thighs trembled and her cunt ached. A wave of her hand and she was bathed and dressed in her dull homespun. Another wave and her dragon’s golden skin was also washed and decently covered.

  She returned them to the fireside. And not a moment too soon. For home came Brand and Valdar, stamping snow off their great boots and shouting loudly enough to bring down the rafters.

  “They’re looking for your pet,” Brand cried.

  “Four boats with blue and white sails,” agreed Valdar. “Wake him up. We need to get that bastard down to the harbor.”

  Freya shook her head. Her loose hair swung wildly. She had forgotten to braid it and put it up. Her brothers’ eyes narrowed. She held up a hand. “It is time for him to go. But it is better if he remains asleep. We will put him in the small coracle and let the other dragons find him.”

  “As you command, sister.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Reiki, June

  Darius~

  “Tell me again,” Darius begged his cousin, “How you found me, and where?”

  For two months he had been uneasy, agitated and confused. If it had not been for the homespun clothes he had been wearing and the handmade boat the searchers had found him floating in, he could have thought he had hallucinated his entire experience on Balder. Dreamed Freya the long haired, and her wooden longhouse. Dreamed their passion.

  Oswain spread his palms to indicate his ignorance. “I’ve told you all I know, Darius. After you went missing, every day Lord Gunther sent a patrol out to search for you. That day we went out as usual, looked where we had often looked. That time, we found you unconscious and floating off of Balder in a sealskin coracle.”

  “I know that,” Darius said impatiently. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “That’s my point, coz, there’s nothing to tell! You woke up and told us a crazy story of being rescued by some old woman and her brothers. Not that we didn’t believe you, Darius, but face it, it was more like something out of one those Old Norse sagas than a real story. And Balder is unoccupied and considered a nature preserve. By Icelandic law, no one is allowed to live there.”

  Darius rubbed his forehead. His headache was back. His eyes hurt. He had mostly recovered his memories. But Freya and her brothers were still ghostly figures. Only in his dreams did he see them at all clearly. Altogether too clearly. “Maybe I’m going nuts. You know, the blow to my head.”

  Oswain’s face clouded, but he shook his head. “I don’t think so. You passed your medical. Balder has a weird reputation, you know? You notice that our lord did not probe too deeply into your story.

  “Besides, Darius, you were missing for three whole weeks, and turned up in handmade clothes. Weird and weirder. I think you were lucky to get free of your hostess and hosts, and recalling your adventure may be too much to ask for.”

  Lucky? He didn’t feel lucky. He felt bereft. Mateless. Lost. At night he longed for Freya with an intensity that frightened him. Perhaps his first woman had left him permanently dissatisfied? Or perhaps he was just the sort of fool who fell for the first woman he bedded? Unless it was all just a dream? Maybe his long bachelorhood had driven him mad?

  But what if it wasn’t a dream? What if he had left a woman carrying his child? It didn’t seem plausible that an old woman could have conceived after just a couple of rounds of sex, nor that she had been a virgin.

  On the other hand, a dragon who transformed a virgin, always fell in love with her. Always. Yet in his dreams he never saw any indication that he had turned Freya into a dragoness. But still he dreamed and woke aching for her. For his fated mate.

  He had told no one about his reckless gift to his hostess. Partly because it seemed private, partly because he was slightly ashamed of playing the gigolo, partly because he wasn’t sure he hadn’t imagined the entire episode. The more he thought about that rose-colored tent or whatever it was, the hazier it seemed. But if it had all been imagination, it had made more of an impact than a lot of real things ever had.

  April had turned into May, and May into June. Almost as soon as he had returned to Reiki, he had regained his memories of his life before Balder. He remembered his home in Sweden, his parents and brothers, his three years in the Swedish Royal Navy, his training with his cousins and brothers as sword bearers to the head of their House.

  Especially, he recalled with clarity his declaration of his Mate Hunt four years ago at the Chateau de la Ghilde in France. He had stood before the Council of the Guild of Dragons and aske
d them to help him find his fated mate. He also recalled that Lady Drake, matchmaker to all the dragon lords, had informed him that he was entirely unmatchable to any virgin she knew of.

  He remembered his bitter disappointment at that news, and the unspoken pity of his family. Lindorms married young and had as large families as they could. He was an uncle many times over, and he longed for children of his own.

  He knew why he was in service to Gunther Guntherson, the Lord of Reiki. Darius was a Lindorm, a member of one of the richest and most prolific Houses in Dragonry, subject both to his Uncle Thorvald the Thane of Lindorm and to Lord Lindorm’s distant cousin Gunther. Like many dragon Houses, Gunther’s had dwindled. He had an infant son, and another child on the way, but only one brother to act for him.

  Uncle Thorvald kept some of his many nephews and grandsons occupied by sending them to Reiki to serve Gunther. Being Gunther’s sword bearer was much like being in the Navy, except that you got to fly and hang with other dragons. The life had suited him, stuck as he was in seemingly eternal bachelorhood, but since his rescue he had been dissatisfied and uneasy.

  He was fit for service and had been flying regularly. His arm was perfectly healed. His scar had faded completely. Taking dragon should have healed whatever ailed him, both physical and mental. Instead his sense of loss, of unfinished business was increasing. What was he to do? For a start, he could lay his troubles before his lord.

  Being a sword bearer had duties associated with it. But it also placed a man under the protection of his lord. Gunther, Lord of Reiki, was a powerful dragon and almost as wise as his Uncle Thor. He left Oswain enjoying the brief Icelandic summer on the dock, and went to seek an audience with his lord.

  Gunther sent everyone else away and invited Darius to sit with him in his underground study. The heavy oak bookcases were filled floor to ceiling. That ancient black wood was as severe as the dark gray slate floors. Not even the thick, patterned, crimson rugs could warm up this windowless, subterranean room. But Darius was used to its austerity and respected it as a secure and soundproofed space.

  “I have been wondering when you would be ready to discuss your ordeal,” Gunther said.

  Now that he was here, Darius was not sure how to begin. “The trouble, sir, is that my memories are vague. It’s as though they are wrapped in fog. I clearly remember planning my ice climbing trip. I remember the earthquake. After that, everything has a dreamlike quality. For instance, I would have sworn that I did not spent as long as three weeks on Balder. And yet by the calendar it was that long.”

  Gunther didn’t look surprised. “Balder is almost a ghost island,” he said heavily. “This entire stretch of the North Atlantic is littered with volcanic islands.”

  Darius nodded. He knew. Iceland was volcanic and surrounded by archipelagos. Reiki and Balder were one of many islands in one of many chains.

  “Balder is volcanic,” continued Gunther. “I’ve been on it myself, seen the lava flows, swum in the hot springs. But sometimes it isn’t where it’s supposed to be. You follow the charts, but it just isn’t where the GPS says it should be.”

  Spooky. “Like a sandbar?” Darius suggested.

  “Volcanic island,” repeated Gunther. “They don’t shift or move. And they sure as hell don’t vanish and reappear. Besides, it’s a part of Iceland. A nature preserve. It exists all right.”

  “Maybe the island is bewitched. Freya acted like a witch,” admitted Darius.

  “And maybe she bewitched you?”

  Darius sighed. “It feels that way. And something is drawing me back there. It’s as if she is my fated bride.”

  “If you return to Balder, you may never leave again. They let you go once, but the second time.” Gunther shook his head. “You may not be so lucky a second time. Something on Balder does not love a dragon.”

  “I don’t feel lucky now, sir.”

  “Hmm.” Gunther rose from his armchair and began to pace, his boots sinking soundlessly into the deep carpets. “My father and my grandfather used to say the place was cursed. Or maybe that we had cursed it. I don’t remember. They said it was no place for dragons.”

  Cursed?

  “Long ago, before the Guild of Dragons was formed,” Gunther said, “During the Dragon Wars, terrible deeds were done. There were curses enough to last until the world ends, my boy. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

  “I know that dragons used to be rapacious pirates, pillaging and raiding all over Europe, sir. My uncle thinks they put the darkness in the Dark Ages.”

  “Your Uncle Thorvald is a wise man and a dragon notable for his learning and study of dragon history. You can believe his every word. Dragons wreaked havoc in Europe, fighting among themselves and plundering far and wide. All those stories mortals tell are perfectly true.”

  To the eternal shame of every dragon. “Yes, sir. But I find it hard to believe a curse from that time could still be effective.”

  “Do you?” Gunther asked dryly. “Have you heard that the Marshal* has had a daughter? And that Lady Drake has two granddaughters to go with her eleven grandsons? I myself am hopeful that Miranda and I may have a daughter this time – or in the future. It was your own cousin’s marriage that lifted the curse on our lineage.** If Theo had not married the Princess Alexandra, we still would be a race of males.”

  “It is like a miracle, sir.” Of course, an unmatchable fellow like him might live and die a childless bachelor. It was a gloomy thought. Unless he had impregnated the Lady Freya?

  Uncle Thorvald had sent him to serve Gunther to keep him too busy to bond with a woman who could not be transformed into a fertile dragoness. It wasn’t that dragons preferred virgins, it was that only virgins could be transformed into dragonesses, and only dragonesses could bear them children. Not that a slew of dragonesses-born would help him any. If he was to marry, he needed an adult dragoness, not some prattling infant.

  But Gunther was speaking. “One of my distant ancestors married a woman from Balder. Or at least had sons by her. I don’t remember the full story, but the story of how he and his brothers raided Balder and carried her off, is somewhere in our archives. Go look for it. Perhaps it will answer some of your questions.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  “Don’t thank me,” said Gunther grimly. “I have done you no favors.”

  *Roland, Lord Vireos Dragon’s Successor

  **Dragon’s Christmas Captive

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Balder Island, June

  Freya~

  “I don’t see why you are so pleased with yourself,” grumbled Brand as he helped Freya to her feet.

  She laid her hands on her rounding belly and steadied herself on the rough ground. Grass grew in tufts between the black rocks and the footing was uneven. “I’m going to have a baby,” she said joyfully. “Maybe two.”

  “Or three,” said Valdar sourly. “Given the size of you.”

  She laughed again for sheer happiness. She was indeed large. Much larger than she remembered women getting this soon. She was carrying twins, if not triplets. “I would think that after so many empty centuries, you would be glad that there are to be children again on Balder.”

  “I might be happy,” Valdar said. “If I thought that you had actually broken the curse. But getting pregnant has done no such thing. Look at you. As big as a hut, and no man by your side. And we three still bound to the island.”

  “Does Freya of Balder need a husband when she has brothers to stand by her?” she asked. She spread her arms wide to bless her island where the trees grew as green as moss and as thick as the hairs on a forest cat. No ax ever bit into her trees, but still the wind and the cold kept them short. Even in July the wind off the ocean was sharp.

  At her challenge, Brand squared his shoulders, but Valdar growled. “I wish I knew when that dragon got at you. I should have killed him when we found him.”

  “But I did not wish him to die, brother. Perhaps he will come back to me.” She hugged h
er arms at the happy thought. In her dreams, her handsome lover returned and vowed his eternal love. Being pregnant had made her hopeful, or addled her wits.

  “Come back to the poor old hag who nursed him?” Brand sneered. “What dragon would? They seek youth and beauty and riches.”

  If he loves me, he will come. But she only smiled at her brothers. “Even if he never thinks of me again, having a child feels like a burden lifted. Imagine, a child to gladden our hearts. A child to teach to hunt, and fish, and sing the old songs.”

  “I have no wish to teach a dragon,” Valdar said sullenly. “Let alone a trio of them. What do we know of teaching dragons?” His handsome face was worried as well as angry.

  “All will be well,” she said. She felt change coming, as if it was a freshening wind. Hope filled her heart as her babies filled her womb. For the first time in ten centuries, she looked forward to the future and the promise it held.

  “Let us bear you home, sister,” said Brand. “The ground is rocky, and you might fall.”

  She liked to walk. But it was true that these days she was sadly unbalanced. Every day she seemed to change shape. And her feet no longer knew where to step to keep her upright. “Thank you, brother.”

  Valdar and Brand clasped each other’s forearms and made a seat for her. They bent so she could sit on it. Freya caught her long red braid in one hand and wound it around her left wrist. With her right she grasped Brand’s strong bicep.

  As they moved in careful unison over the rocky ground, she felt the touch of butterfly wings in her womb. She pressed her left hand with its bright bracelet over the flutter. The babe kicked again. And again.

  Surely the dragon would come for his child if not for her?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Darius~

  The archives were as clean and dustless as everywhere else in the elaborate underground home of the Lord of Reiki. But they were uncatalogued. More of a hoard than a library. Handsome carved chests spangled with gems held records of land purchases, while genealogical charts were rolled up in open cardboard boxes. Unlabeled cardboard boxes.