Immortal Dragons: The First Four: Prequel + Books 1-3 Page 16

  Nikhil would never agree to the type of ritual required to accept the magic of her and all five of her siblings, regardless of whether he viewed them all as gods. It required a level of physical intimacy she hadn’t had with any of her siblings in centuries, and would require Nikhil himself to be the focus of their energy.

  The more palatable option would take her much longer to achieve, however. There were only a handful of other individuals as powerful as she and her siblings, but whose magic required less physical contact than a dragon’s did. The other races owed her some favors, and she would be calling them in.

  His fingers between her thighs made her thoughts falter. His teeth on her nipple distracted her to the point of pushing his head back.

  Nikhil laughed. “You were thinking too hard. Time for talking, little beast,” he said, his fingers still toying with the scarab between her thighs.

  Belah groaned. “Fine, just stop touching me for five minutes so I can think?”

  With a grin, he raised his hands above his head, exaggerating his submission. Belah took advantage by climbing astride him again, gazing down into his dark eyes.

  “It will take time,” she said, hesitating to share the existence of her contemporaries. As far as her people knew, the dragons were their gods and their only gods. Telling him didn’t mean telling everyone, though.

  “There are others like me… races who are divinely blessed and powerful. Other… gods. You wanted all the gods in attendance, so they will be invited. And they will bring gifts. But delivering their invitations will be cumbersome and time consuming. Many are not easy to reach. It will mean an extended wait before the wedding can take place.”

  Nikhil frowned at that revelation. After a breath, he asked, “And their gifts will make me strong enough to take your magic without losing my mind?”

  “Their magic will prolong your life, among other things. You still need to accept my breath to keep your mind healthy. I’m afraid without my mark, that will never change.”

  “My sanity is waning already, little beast,” he said. “I need to be inside you now. Whatever plans you need to make for our wedding I agree to, as long as you stop teasing me.” He lowered his hands to grip her hips and raised her up just enough to reposition her so that the furrow between her thighs spread over the head of his cock.

  With a single, hard thrust of his hips, he buried himself inside her, then grabbed her hands and pulled them up above his head again. Belah looked down at him quizzically. Seeing the mischievous glint in his eyes, she twined her fingers through his and pressed his hands into the pillows above his head. As much as she preferred being overpowered by him, she still treasured the rare moments when he chose to have her remind him of her power. She leaned over him now, letting her bejeweled nipples brush against his cheeks while she pivoted her hips on his cock.

  Nikhil growled low in his chest, his gaze growing more fevered the more she moved. He latched onto one nipple with his teeth, biting hard into her flesh. The glorious pain shot straight to her core, fanning the growing heat and making her channel flood with fresh arousal around his pumping shaft. Even pinned down by her, he commanded her pleasure, and clearly knew that he still had control of her in spite of her physical display of strength.

  “Nikhil,” she whimpered. The intensity of pleasure he gave her with his cock and his mouth made her lose her will to keep holding him down.

  He took full control, flipping them and pushing one of Belah’s knees up as he skewered her again and again, each thrust carrying more urgency. With a moan of desperation, he lowered his head and bared his teeth, biting into her breasts as though he were starved and only her flesh could sate his hunger. All she could sense from him was the pent-up agony of the hours before she’d regained consciousness and his need for her to return to him. The emotion channeled into a near-helpless rage within him that spilled out into his aura so vividly it nearly brought Belah to tears.

  Forcing herself to push the pleasure his wildness gave her aside, she grabbed his head and pulled him to her mouth, focusing her energy on her breath. “Ease your mind, my love, but let your heart stay wild.” She expelled a breath past his open lips and followed it with her tongue, kissing deeply.

  After a moment, his movements became less erratic and more deliberate, his aura finally regaining the healthy red glow. He pulled away from her with a gasp for breath and stared down. His eyes had lost the desperation, and were now only filled with the intense hunger for her. He reached down and pushed her other knee to her chest, pulling back to gaze at the place where they were joined. Roughly, he gripped her ass and held her hips even higher so his cock rammed straight into her with ever-growing ferocity.

  His cock battered her insides, each bruising thrust pushing her higher and closer to her peak. She hovered at the edge for an eternity, her body betraying her desire to finish. Nikhil snarled in frustration, at the edge himself, but unwilling to cross over without her.

  Suddenly he pulled out of her and flipped her over, entering her from behind with a fresh push that hit home as though drawn in by the force of her need for him. Pushing her legs wider to span his thighs, he reached around her and drew her back against his chest. His hand went around her throat while his other found her clit and rubbed it mercilessly.

  With only the slightest squeeze against her airway, the euphoria crept in like a warm breeze. On that breeze she flew, higher and faster than before, her orgasm coursing through her body as though on wings. Nikhil rode out his own, keeping up his punishing thrusts through the hot pulsing of his seed into her.

  “That’s my little beast, you need my collar tight around your throat to find your pleasure, don’t you? Good girl.” He let his hand fall away and she grabbed it and put it back to her throat. The soft pressure of his palm against her windpipe kept the fluttering pulses of her climax going until she shuddered and fell limp in his arms. He pulled her back down to the bed with him, wrapping her in his arms.

  “I have no wish to kill you again,” he said. “Death has been my instrument too many times. I will gladly kill for you, ‘Iilahatan, but your death is something I could not bear.”

  Belah curled into him, relishing the way he cuddled her like a kitten in the aftermath of their lovemaking. He stroked her cheek so gently she let out a soft sigh. Still, his reluctance to test her limits disappointed her. He had never once hesitated before, why would he hesitate in this?

  Looking up into his eyes, she drew his hand back to her throat and held it there. “I can tell it pleases you to do it. It pleases me more than I can express when you do. I am immortal, Nikhil. Death is one experience I will never truly have, one I crave for all its remoteness from me. That you don’t fear to push me into that abyss is one of the reasons I love you, and I trust you to push me all the way to the edge and beyond. But trust me to tell you that I will always return to you.”

  His gaze clouded and he grimaced as though she’d hurt him. “Do you really wish for death? Is my love, my manner of loving you, not enough? You desired a true master, and I am that man for you, yet you would prefer the darkness of the realm your brother rules over the sensations I can give you?”

  She wanted to argue that in this scenario she and her brother were not the god and goddess siblings Nikhil had worshiped his entire life. Ked may embody darkness, but he had no significance where her fascination with death was concerned.

  “I can never truly reach that realm, Nikhil. The place you take me is not the darkness my brother rules. It is a darkness you rule, that is only created during our union. When you took me there last night—that was the first time I have ever experienced it with such depth. Today was only like opening the door and refusing to let me walk through. As my true master, I trust only you to send me there, and to give me the reason to return again.”

  Nikhil relaxed, letting out an audible exhalation. His hands resumed their soft petting of her skin. He had often co
mmented on the unusual texture and how he loved it. His fingers trailed down her stomach and began tracing patterns over her lower abdomen. The touch was enticing enough to arouse, but mostly it lulled her and she found herself dozing against him, her head nestled against his strong, scarred chest.

  His voice roused her some time later, and she woke to find his hand cupping her cheek and urging her gaze to meet his.

  In a decisive tone, he said, “I will fulfill this desire of yours to the extreme you wish, but only once more and according to my own plan. On our wedding night, I will give you the gift of that darkness one more time. Until then, and after that day, what we shared today is all I will give you. It’s all I can give you, ‘Iilahatan. You may ask me to kill a hundred thousand men in battle and I will enjoy every cut of my blade. I will come to your bed covered in the blood of your enemies and let your own cries of pain finally slake my bloodthirst. You may ask me to hurt you in any way you wish, because it makes you feel as alive as your cries make me feel alive. But after our wedding night, never again ask me to kill you. I cannot bear the silence of you in death, even knowing you will return.”

  Belah’s skin prickled with excitement at his promise. “How will you do it?” she asked.

  “Exactly the way you wish the most, my love,” he said. He pushed her down to the bed and hovered over her, tracing a single fingertip in small stripes over the most sensitive areas of her skin. “I’m as skilled with a blade as I am with my cock.”

  The hard cock in question grazed against her opening.

  “I can pierce you to the quick if I choose. Kill you quickly.” He shoved himself into her once, hard enough for her to cry out. “Or I can tease you until all your juices flow before you even realize I’ve opened the floodgates.” His fingertip made soft lines over different parts of her body, each touch making her shiver, while his cock teased around and around her swollen cunt, teasing at the opening.

  The agony of his restraint drove her mad. She lay panting and begging after only a few moments.

  “Do you wish for a quick death or a slow one, little beast? When I slaughter you, how bloody do you want it?”

  Belah’s mind was already gone from his teasing. Her thighs were flooded with her juices and growing wetter with every teasing swipe of his fingers, every promise of a blade cutting her. She could imagine him vividly with a blade, torturing a prisoner tied down to a stone slab. She’d seen him in his element many times and marveled at his precision and cold enjoyment of the process. The thought of herself tied down while he cut her with his blade made her muscles clench and ache for just that.

  His soft touches made her wet from her pussy crying out to be penetrated. Her entire body craved that promise of bloodletting, of having his blade cut her.

  “Make me bloody.”

  With a wicked glint in his eye, he shoved his cock into her again and fucked her even harder than before.

  “It would be my pleasure, ‘Iilahatan.”

  Sweet Mother, what had she become?

  Chapter Sixteen

  Belah lived in a dream for days on end, sometimes floating on the elation of her impending marriage, and other times in a dark cloud of loneliness. She fulfilled her responsibilities as empress. Nikhil returned to his duties as general of her armies. Threats to her borders were ever present and his expertise was sorely needed after his latest absence. Every night she ached for him to return to her bed, and spent too many evenings alone.

  She still visited her harem, but with less enthusiasm. When she did, she took her fill of her pets’ pleasure without taking her own, then gravitated to Nyla and Zeb and spent the hours talking to them and marveling over Nyla’s progressing pregnancy, wishing she could share the same experience with Nikhil.

  When the children were born several months later, their parents elected to stay in Belah’s temple because their home villages were in a contested area of her kingdom Nikhil was intent on taking back. Belah gave them private quarters, but still visited them and their children regularly. The twins, Neela and Naaz, were a delight to her, and helped distract her from her despair over Nikhil’s absence.

  Her Blessed children.

  Nikhil’s promise of one last gift of oblivion on their wedding night never left her mind, but it seemed less important with the weight of her empire on her shoulders. She continued planning the wedding, which became more elaborate every day she waited for word that the guests she’d invited would attend.

  Once the dragon messengers were sent with the formal invitations, she began her work with palace staff to plan the event itself, which would not take place for two more years, to allow time for all the attendees to arrive, and for her messengers to reach the most honored guests and return with them.

  Those guests were her oldest friends, and Belah had no doubt they would come. She’d been long without a mate, to begin with, and requesting her friends’ favors would be enough to signal the significance of this marriage. It was particularly significant because her own race traditionally never settled down with a single mate. Of course, Belah had her harem, but she didn’t breed with them. Her own kind were encouraged to take several mates—and by and large they did. She and her siblings were the exceptions, but their descendants frequently had many husbands or wives. Collected them like the most treasured spoils of war.

  Belah had no need to bear more children now, after the ones she’d already born. She had no wish to witness the death of them anymore, either. Unlike her, her offspring were mortal. They may be long-lived, but they eventually died after about a thousand years. She often wondered if that were the same for the first child. Would a son born from two immortals also be immortal? She didn’t know. He’d been taken away upon birth—before even suckling at her breast—and her mother and Fate hadn’t seen fit to tell her where they’d taken him. She’d spent thousands of years searching without any prospects and had all but given up hope she would find him. Reports of brother’s fruitless searches proved painful reminders of the loss. Even now, Ked still had a small network of Shadows covertly looking for any sign of where their child had been hidden.

  She spent too many days in Nikhil’s absence wondering about that loss and alternately wishing she could bear a child with Nikhil. One last child. But perhaps it wasn’t her place to bear a child out of true love. Besides her first, all the rest had been conceived by necessity, and while she loved them dearly as her blood, she had no lasting connection to them. Their fathers had been too weak to last with a dragon as powerful as she was.

  Nikhil might last, but only if she destroyed his will.

  Some nights she fell asleep fantasizing about marking him in the hope that he might miraculously withstand her magic. The subsequent dreams always twisted her wish into the worst outcome. Nikhil a drooling waste of a man begging at her feet and bound to her for eternity.

  She always retreated to her harem the day after those dreams. Her pets had become more accommodating to this new Belah, who simply needed company more often than sexual sustenance, and strove to entertain her in other ways. She learned they had many varied talents and grew to know and love them even more than she had before.

  Zeb and Nyla were doting parents, who never begrudged their mistress a chance to spoil their son and daughter.

  Idrin was a protective uncle to the children, believing somehow that he had some part in their conception.

  The truth was more complicated. During that one day when Nikhil had led the disguised Belah to her harem to be a toy for her pets, pieces of all of their essences had been transferred to the twins through Belah’s Blessing. They may never manifest—the dragon magic itself would always take precedence—but the children would always feel an innate kinship with the members of the harem, or any of their offspring.

  Belah ached to see the pair grow. They may not be the last children whose lives she had a direct influence in shaping, but it had been centuries since she’d been
a mother, and she was so far removed from her own line that new generations of dragons barely gave her a thought, aside from the understanding that she was one of the few who made the rules that governed her kind.

  Rules she herself was currently breaking.

  As far as her siblings knew, she intended to mark Nikhil on their wedding night. That would never happen.

  If everything went how Belah planned, something more amazing would come from the night, and she could prove to her siblings that they could have love with a mate without destroying their wills.

  She hoped she wasn’t wrong.

  Chapter Seventeen

  In the midst of the chaos of her wedding day, Belah realized that she’d never actually had a wedding before. Not a true wedding, at any rate. Most of her former mates had been prizes or religious sacrifices to her. No wonder they’d expected to die. The prospect of death had shrouded them from the start, and her power had done nothing to counteract their fears or preconceptions. She hadn’t endeared herself to them in any fashion—only marked them and used them.

  Their pleasure had been apparent. They wanted her the way a zealot wants to be blessed by their god or a martyr wants death for their cause. Their desires had been so all-consuming, and after losing their wills thanks to her mark, they succumbed to the power of her apparent divinity. In their eyes, she was a goddess, and the purest way to please a goddess was to die in her name.

  Nikhil had nearly done so himself, before even coming into direct contact with her. His touch on that first day they’d met was enough for her to know he was nothing like the others. He had made his sacrifice for her, no doubt, but he had his own craving for glory, too. He’d said as much when he believed he was near death—he wanted to be revered as the gods were.