The Dragon in the Stone (7 page)

“
Let
me be the judge of that, Drorgan.” She’d surprised him, she could tell, because
she looked into the eyes of the dragon when she looked at him, and the intense
yearning reflected back at her took her breath away. Drorgan blinked, and the
dragon disappeared to be replaced by the weary look of a man with the weight of
his world on his shoulders.

This time when he pulled back, Rhonda let him. Her
stomach chose that moment to rumble its hunger, and it broke the tension in the
room. A faint smile kicked up Drorgan’s full lips, and leaning back in his
chair he gestured to the feast in front of him.

“
You’re
right about one thing. Cook will have the scales off my back if we don’t eat
some of this, so we should do that.”

He smiled when she nodded.

“
Though,
surely she can’t expect us to eat all that?”

Drorgan just shrugged his massive shoulders, and
Rhonda soon realized why. Clearly it took an enormous amount of food to keep
him well fed, because by the time she pushed her plate away, Drorgan had
polished off several platefuls to her one. He washed everything down by
draining the goblet of wine, and Rhonda found the act of seeing him swallow
utterly fascinating. In truth anything he did just turned her on more. It was
really quite ridiculous the effect he had on her, and she shifted restlessly on
her chair to relieve some of that insistent throbbing in her pussy.

What would one of the heroines in the naughty
stories crowding her e-reader back home do in this situation, she wondered. Not
that whatever she could come up with would be enough to break through Drorgan’s
iron self-control, even if she was any good at this trying to seduce a man
lark. Sadly the few far from satisfying encounters Rhonda had had with the
opposite sex were of no help whatsoever now, so biting her lip, she glared at
her wine glass instead.

“
You
mentioned a foster mother earlier. Tell me about her.”

Drorgan’s deep voice shook her out her internal how
best to snare a dragon
musings—maybe there was a book about it somewhere
in this vast library—and she looked up at him.

Unmistakable amusement glimmered in his blue eyes
now. The damn man knew exactly what effect he had on her, and that was without
him even trying. Heaven only help her if he ever set out to seduce her. No
woman would stand a chance against him, which made it doubly infuriating that
he refused to take her up on her blatant offer.

Trying to rein in her libido with only limited
amount of success, Rhonda sighed, and Drorgan’s eyebrows together in a frown.

“
If
it’s too painful to talk about then—”

“
No,
it’s not that.” Rhonda interrupted him, and Drorgan leaned back in his chair
again. One leg crossed over the other, his long fingers caressed the goblet,
and a stab of jealousy at the inanimate object assaulted Rhonda out of nowhere.
What would those long digits feel like caressing her skin, stretching her as he
prepared her for his cock?

“
Little
dragon, stop that. We’re not going to have sex.” His voice dropped an octave
taking on the deep growl of his dragon, and Rhonda’s stomach flipped over in
delicious anticipation. She blew out a frustrated breath when he just sat there
studying her. Were it not for the way he was tenting his tunic, Rhonda would
have thought he was immune to her, but that huge bulge told her otherwise.

“
Does
being a stubborn buffoon come with being a dragon?” She flung the words at him,
and for a second she wondered whether she’d gone too far because he looked all
but ready to put her over his knee, but then he released a breath slowly and
smiled.

“
Nice
try, but it will not work.”

Chapter Seven

She was goading him on purpose, he knew that, and
she would never know how much it cost him to not take her up on the invitation
her body sent his way.

All through the meal the heavy, sweet musk of her
feminine dew had called him to bury his head between her thighs and slake his
hunger for this woman. However, he would not stop there. One taste of her would
mean he’d lose control, and he’d meant what he said to her. With his dragon
this volatile any coupling would be dangerous for her. She was human and
fragile. Not used to the mating ways of the dragon, the fierce need to mark her
as his. He couldn’t, wouldn’t do that. Not when his time here was so limited.
Providing she survived the mating, what would happen to her when he was forced
back into the stone?

What pulsed between them was nothing more than a
healthy dose of lust. It couldn’t be anything else, for surely if it was, if
she really was the one to break the spell, would it not have broken already?
She had seen him both as the dragon and as the man, seemingly accepted him, so
according to the chant he ought to be set free already.

That had been the stipulation, not a mating, not
love, for surely no one could ever love the beast, not even this delightful
young woman, who stared defiantly at him, daring him to take her up on her
words.

He’d sensed her inherent innocence from the first
touch of her skin. Any other woman as needy as his little dragon was would have
already thrown her entire arsenal of womanly wiles at him, but not his Rhonda.
It made his chest feel tighter and made him want to wrap her up in softness and
take her far away from him, this castle, and the harsh world they lived in.

“
So,
your foster mother?” he asked instead of acting on this newfound feelings
coursing through him. “Is she the reason you stopped coming to the stone?”

Rhonda seemed surprised by that question, and her
nose wrinkling up in confusion, she shook her head.

“
Not
really. That was my mother’s fault.” A shadow crossed her expressive face, and
his dragon growled a warning.

“
If
you’re trying to scare me with that noise, then I have to tell you it’s not
working. It’s sexy as fuck when you do that.” Heat stained her cheeks as though
she couldn’t quite believe she’d said that out loud, and despite the resulting
ache in his balls, Drorgan laughed. Rhonda gave a feminine growl in answer,
which made his cock so hard it hurt. He would have to shift soon to release
some of that tension, but he wanted to learn more about her first.

“
What
did your mother do?” he asked instead of commenting on her statement. Rhonda
sighed.

“
Nothing
much, she tried her best I guess, but she was very young when she had me, and
let’s just say she wouldn’t have won any mother of the year awards. That night
I got away and you found me was the last straw. She couldn’t cope with me
anymore, especially as she was convinced that I wasn’t normal. I mean, which
normal two year old does nothing but talk about dragons, and insists on running
off to see her
dragon stone.
” She mimed quotation marks around the two
words and swiped away a lonely tear that had escaped her eyes with an angry
gesture.

Drorgan fought the impulse to go to her and offer
comfort. Besides he didn’t trust himself to touch her as a man and not act on
the primitive need to fuck. So, instead he stayed where he was, balled his
hands into fists, and waited for her to continue.

“
To
cut a long story short, she gave me up for adoption. Only with my history of
hallucinations,
”
again with the mimed marks in the air, “well, with that, adoption was out of
the question. I was shoved from one foster
carer
to
the other, and by the time they moved me to London, and deemed me cured by the
latest shrink, I was too old for anyone to want me.”

She shrugged her shoulders at his frown.

“
Anyway,
it was the making of me in the end. I ended up living on one the roughest
estates in London, but Marie, my last foster mum, well she saw something in me
that no one else did. She was this big, no-nonsense, tough as two boots black
mama bear, who ruled us all with an iron fist. No one dared misbehave under
Mama Marie. She made sure I went to school and studied hard, and she helped me
get my first job in a library. I never looked back. Books never let you down,
see, which is why this…” She threw her arms out to encompass the long room with
its thousands of books, most of which had never been read as far as he knew.
“This is wonderful. I meant it when I said I want to organize it for you.
Please let me. It really is the least I can do. You saved my life, twice now,
and Mama Marie would turn over in her grave, if she thought I wasn’t showing my
gratitude somehow.”

When he continued to simply look at her she sighed.

“
Please,
let me. I promise I’ll stay out of your way. I know you spend a lot of time in
here.” When he raised his eyebrows at that she smiled. “Magda told me, but you
won’t even know I’m here. When I get engrossed in books, I forget everything
else, and Magda said the library is in constant flux, so, apart from anything
else, if we’re going to find a way to break the spell you’re under then I
reckon searching through the vast information held in this library is the place
to start, and undoubtedly where we find the answers. It’s what you have been
doing, isn’t it?”

Drorgan shook his head and groaned.

“
You
shouldn’t listen to rumors, girl.”

Rhonda pushed away from the table and turned her
back on him, while twisting her shiny mass of hair on top of her head, where
she secured it with the ribbon which had held it at her nape before. The action
exposed the delicate curve of her neck where it hit her spine and the rapidly
beating pulse point there, that called him to taste, to lick her fragrant skin,
until all thoughts of this hapless pursuit of breaking the spell had fled her
brain.

“
I’m
not, listening to rumors, that is.” Rhonda spun back round to face him,
effectively relieving him of having to make that decision. Of course now he
couldn’t tear his gaze away from the round softness of her bosom. Perfectly
showcased by the bodice that made up her gown, the globes quivered with her
breathing and made concentrating on what she was telling him impossible.

He stopped trying and shook his head instead.

“
Fine,
have it your way.”

Judging by the shocked expression on her face she
hadn’t expected him to agree to whatever he had just said yes to, and a cold
sweat broke out between his shoulder blades, especially when she took a step
toward him. Getting on tiptoes she brushed her lips against his, and his dragon
roared. Her scent enveloped him. The soft weight of her breasts crushed against
his chest, the nipples hard little nubs seemingly intent on leaving their mark
on his skin. The first tentative flick of her tongue against his lips meant the
end of what little control he had left. With a roar loud enough to rattle the
window he grabbed her ass and hauled her up against him, while taking full
advantage of her moan, he pressed his tongue past her lips, and took charge.

Curse it all to the four winds, if she didn’t go
pliant against him, as he took the kiss deeper, exploring every hidden facet of
her mouth with a desperate urgency that matched hers.

It was only when she brought her legs around his
waist and ground her cunt against his cock while kissing him back that he came
to his senses.

Drorgan broke the kiss, slid her down to the floor,
stalked over to the window, and wrenching it open flung himself out into the
afternoon sunshine. His dragon emerged, and taking a wide turn he swept past
the window again. What he saw made him feel the worst bastard ever, because
Rhonda had sunk to the floor, fingers held to her lips, and she was watching
him fly past with wide eyes. Even from the distance he could see the tears
shimmering in their depths. It was the quiet determination with which she
pulled her shoulders back, as she scrambled to her feet that made up his mind
for him. He would have to stay well away from her, because having tasted her
once, there was no way he would be able to stop his dragon from claiming her,
if he ever got that close to her again. And damn it, his little dragon was up
to something.

****

Of course, staying away from her proved nigh on
impossible, as the whole castle seemed to conspire at throwing them together at
every given opportunity over the course of the next week. It seemed his loyal
servants and the villagers alike had taken a shine to his little dragon, and
wherever he turned, there she was. It meant he spent most of his time in his
dragon form, observing from above, and damn
him
, if
that wasn’t more torture than having to be confined in that blasted stone was.

The more he watched her, the more enamored he
became until it was hard to remember why he was resisting this pull between
them in the first place. Far from looking out of place in his castle, Rhonda
made it her home, and that meant her alluring scent was everywhere. Add to that
the fact that she seemed to have taken little Geva under her wing … yes, it made
him have all sorts of happy-ever-after thoughts that he had no right to be
thinking.

The little girl lapped up Rhonda’s attention, and
guilt gnawed at his insides, whenever she curved her lips into that lopsided
imitation of a smile she was reduced to thanks to the scarring on her face.
Previously unable to communicate due to the injuries she had suffered, he
watched in stunned fascination as Rhonda taught her a basic system of sign
language—out of a book found in the library—which meant Geva’s fingers never
stopped flying. It was easy enough to pick up, and everyone who came in contact
with Rhonda and Geva soon managed to learn the basics. As for him, he’d spent
one night ensconced in the book to be able to understand their increasingly
animated conversations.

What he’d learned had made him want to seek out
Geva’s mother and kill the bitch on the spot. However, that would further
cement him as the monster Cheryladna painted him to her daughter, so he
resisted that impulse, and kept up his silent watch of the woman and child, who
continued to confound him.

Just like she’d promised Rhonda spruced up the
library, with Geva her ever-eager helper. It had to take Rhonda three times as
long to let Geva help, yet she never lost her patience, always finishing the
morning in the library by reading something to the little girl out of the
fairytales section. Their firm favorite seemed to be a tale called “Beauty and
the Beast”.

Drorgan was uncomfortably aware that a certain
similarity existed between what was happening here at the castle and the oft
repeated words Rhonda read to Geva.

That stuff and nonsense aside, he had to admit
they’d done a sterling job of setting the library to rights. Everything was now
catalogued and easy to find, and while new books and newspapers still magically
appeared overnight, come morning the seemingly unstoppable Rhonda/Geva team had
put them away. They marked the passage of time as surely as the clock on the
nearby church tower, and made his dragon more and more anxious and restless.

He’d been hovering outside the library windows when
he’d caught Rhonda reading the latest newspaper addition. Dated the day he’d
whisked her away, he knew better than anyone what that meant. His time at the
castle was up. It was somewhat of a miracle that he hadn’t felt the pull to
return to the stone yet. Normally, the minute that blasted newspaper turned up,
his dragon felt compelled to return.

Fighting that pull was out of the question, and
would only result in Drorgan doubling over in pain, until he couldn’t stand it
anymore, at which point he’d wake up cast in the stone for another miserable
twenty-five years, with the knowledge that his entire castle and surrounding
lands was also cast into suspended animation. While for them, at least, the
passage of time was not noticeable, he felt the weight of that responsibility
more than ever.

Raised voices made him swoop lower to investigate
what all the commotion was about, and his dragon released a stream of fire when
he saw Rhonda engaged in a heated discussion with none other Cheryladna. What
in all that was holy was the blasted woman up to now? She’d been banned from
castle grounds, not that she was on the grounds per se, and neither was Rhonda.
Damn her, didn’t she know how treacherous the cliffs could be, especially wet
as they were from the earlier rain they’d had?

Rhonda’s heated defense of him warmed his soul,
even as his dragon screeched his alarm when Cheryladna clenched her fists and
made a lunge for his girl. Rhonda sidestepped, and the other woman would have
fallen over the cliff, had Rhonda not grabbed hold of her. It placed her at a
precarious angle and slipping down the grassy side in increments.

Damn the foolish girl. She ought to just let
Cheryladna fall to her death, but then that wouldn’t be his little dragon’s
way. With another fiery exhale that burnt the last of the moisture off the
cliffs he swooped down claws extended to put an end to this nonsense. He just
prayed he wouldn’t hurt Rhonda in the process.

****

All the air left Rhonda’s lungs as she slid further
down the grassy incline in an effort to hold onto the woman who for all and
intents and purposes had tried to push her of the cliff. Had Rhonda not managed
to get out of the way, she would have killed her, yet she couldn’t let Geva’s mother
fall to her death. She would never forgive herself if she did so, and there had
been enough deaths on her conscience lately.