The Passionate Queen (Dark Queens Book 2) (25 page)

Her nostrils flared prettily. If she’d been dragonborne, she’d have been the brightest jewel of us all.

“Lie back, you, Casanova.” She slapped at my shoulder.

“Fine. For you, I shall.” I plopped with arms outstretched and blew out a shaky breath; I was quickly coming to regret my decision to be honorable.

“I should just be a true dragon and eat you all up, save my sanity,” I rumbled with my mouth buried in the lavender-scented pillow.

Her laughter floated across my body like tiny little bells, breaking me out in a wash of desire. I groaned louder.

“Stop being so adorable, Lena. I do not think I can bear more of this torture.”

“Pft.”

Her oil-slicked fingers slid over the back of my bare thigh as she began to slowly torture me with need.

“I tell you truth, dragon, you’re the only male who’s ever considered me cute. I believe the phrase I hear most often is prickly bitch.”

Laughter rang through her words. I smiled, realizing she was enjoying this strange exchange as much as I was.

“Dragons don’t mind prickles, my love. In fact, the more difficult the treasure is to attain, the more valued it becomes.”

“Good gods, you’re all polished smoothness. Tell me, dragon boy, how many women have you seduced to your bed this way?”

I clenched my teeth when her hands lowered and she began to near the more painful part of my tissue.

Hissing, I shook my head. “I truly doubt you wish to know this.”

Silence filled the room for so long that all I heard was our even breathing and the gentle stir of winds outside her chamber windows.

“Truth is,” she finally whispered, “I do want to know. I want to know everything about you when we were apart. As I want you to know everything about me.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted her to know everything; there were parts of my past I was ashamed of. Things I wasn’t proud of. I wanted her to think well of me, not see me tinged by the bias of the misdeeds I’d committed while apart.

“Ragoth?” she asked as my silence deepened.

I squirmed when her fingers dug in gently to the most excruciating part of my calf. The flesh there had been mottled and looked as though it’d been sun scorched; it was painful even to walk at the moment.

“Hm?” was all I could grunt, as I tried in vain not to let on how much I ached.

Sensitive to me, as only Lena had ever been, she eased up on the strength of her massage, so that the pain was slightly more tolerable.

“I did not love him,” she whispered softly.

I almost told her I knew that, but I sensed there were more words trapped on her tongue, so I gave her the time she needed to formulate her thoughts.

“Every night for the first five years of my incarceration, I would take a midnight rendezvous. And do you know where I went?”

My brows dropped, and I thrust my jaw out, immediately suspecting that she meant to tell me about some lover who’d held her while she cried and made her feel alive again. I did not think I could bear to hear it, though I knew that in all fairness I’d done the very same. Though I’d never found anyone to make me feel alive the way she had, but I’d never stopped searching for one who could.

Her hands stopped moving as she seemed to travel back in her mind to some distant memory.

“I went to her. To see her. Zerelda.”

I frowned. I’d not expected to hear that.

“The hag?” I rolled onto my side, so that I could look her more easily in the face. “Why?”

It was hard to see Lena looking so small and childlike, see the hurt scrawling through her pretty eyes and see the blue glow so diminished with sadness.

She looked slowly at me. “Because she was all I had left. My last tether to who I’d been. I’d had you, and I lost you. She was it.”

“She was awful.”

Lena shrugged. “Aye. She was. But she was the only mum I ever knew. She was a constant in my life when everything else was running out of control.”

Sitting up, I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her tight to my side, running my fingers lazily through the tips of her petal-soft hair as I inhaled the sweet scent of her deep inside of me.

Lena had always reminded me of a new dawn—quiet, haunting, and yet enchanting.

“Did you talk with her?”

She sniffed, pulling back a little. It killed me to see the sheen of tears in her eyes. “No. I never got close enough. I’d just watch her through her window. It was really rather pathetic, I’ll grant you.”

Her laughter was self-effacing and infuriated me to hear it. Grabbing her shoulders, I gave her a gentle shake. “There is nothing pathetic about you, woman. You know how I felt about her, how I still feel about her.”

“I rather assume you’d like to eat her the way you did Hagar.” Her chuckle was wet with unshed tears.

“Lena.” I sighed, burying my face in her neck and doing nothing other than breathing her in.

She was so vital to me. Years we’d been apart, but here in the sanctity of this room it felt like time had never parted us. Like we were the youths we’d once been, like no time or space or distance had ever separated us.

Zelena clung to me as I clung to her, and we held each other for several long moments.

“I don’t know how to be a good queen,” she whispered slowly, hesitantly, as though she were afraid to give voice to her innermost thoughts.

I shook my head, framing her delicate face in my hands. This woman—this insignificant human, as my kind so often thought of them—had been crafted by the gods just for me. I knew this to be fact, and I would do everything in my power to never let her leave my side again.

“You wish them to love you, Lena? Admire and respect you? Then you show them that same respect first.”

She frowned, wrinkling her nose cutely, and I couldn’t help but grin to see it as I gently smoothed out the wrinkles with my thumb.

“But how do you do that?”

Leaning back on my hand, I drew up my knee and shrugged. I did not believe it possible that I could have ever had a passionate, beautiful woman in a bed—my Lena no less—and be capable of not tossing her down and ravishing every square inch of her body.

But what we did now, this talking, felt far more intimate than the feeling of having a woman’s mouth around my cock as she’d suck me off.

I was slowly coming to the realization that without the respect and admiration for a woman, she was just another nameless beauty (one of far too many) who meant nothing to me other than to help me temporarily slack the lust of my flesh.

“What do you do now?”

Blowing out a raspberry, she shrugged one shoulder. “I listen to their petitions.”

I waited, expecting her to say more, but when the silence ticked on for a long stretch, I realized that was all she’d done.

“Um. Well.” My forehead wrinkled as I tried to search for a polite way to tell her that was far from enough.

She beat me to the punch; tossing her arms up, she groaned. “See, I knew it. But you should know, prior to my becoming queen, Charles never listened personally to the petitions of those less than noble blood. I did make an effort to listen to the layman.”

I cringed. “Well, my dear, that is certainly a start.”

“Then tell me what you’d suggest,” she replied testily, and it was good to see the fire back in her eyes again.

“For one, simply listening and deciding who to ax and who to dismiss is far from enough. The people need to know you.”

Her look was serious as she asked, “I can’t possibly visit everyone in wonderland. There are far too many citizens.”

“Exactly, which is why you pick your battles.”

Curling her fingers, she picked at her thumbnail. “And tell me how exactly to do that; there was never a manual given to me, beast. I tried my best.”

I could tell she felt a little embarrassed, so I covered her hands with mine and squeezed until she looked back at me.

“Lena, the mere fact that you want to change and make good is astonishing. Royals rarely do what you are planning, and I believe most citizens generally tend to hate their nobility anyway.”

“Gods,” she groused, giving me a cross-eyed look, “you’ve not made me feel in the least bit better.”

I chuckled. “I’m simply saying, you’re not all that different from the countless others out there, so at least take some heart in that.”

“I take none, thank you very much,” she snapped waspishly.

Leaning forward, I forgot that we were still getting to know one another, I wanted very much to kiss her in that moment, and so I did. I took her lips and pressed a firm but tender kiss to them.

She instantly melted beneath my touch, and when I pulled back a dreamy smile laced the corners of her cheeks.

“My love,” I whispered, nuzzling the tip of her nose with mine for a quick second before sitting back down, “together we can turn this around, I vow it to you. Your reputation can still yet be saved.”

It was a little difficult for me to breathe; my head spun dizzily. Just that one simple taste of her only enflamed my growing hunger. But just as she wished to change, so did I. For Lena, I wanted to be noble and true. I would not make this harder on her than it already was. So I took a quick moment to gather my wits.

“How?”

“Who in wonderland is most revered and respected? The cat perhaps?” I suggested.

She laughed. “That charlatan, oh no. I should think he’s far more hated than I currently am.”

“Then who?”

She didn’t even stop to consider before she was saying, “The Hatter and his bride, Alice. They are very well liked.”

“Then we start there. Send a card to them, letting them know that in two days time you will drop by for a visit. I will join you.”

“For tea?” she frowned. “How could that possibly help my reputation?”

“Because others will listen to them, to what they have to say, and if they say that you’ve turned over a new leaf, you will find just how quickly news of that will spread.”

Nibbling on the corner of her lip, she looked lost in thought, and it was all I could do not to claim her again. I blew out an agitated breath and shifted, trying to will the blood currently flowing hot and heavy to the center of me to cool down.

It was a battle I was losing, however. If she glanced down, there’d be no denying how very much I craved her.

“Fine. I’ll trust you, beast. I’ll do as you say.”

Looking down at her feet for a time, she finally said, “You know I didn’t have the elephant killed for its skins.”

It took me a moment to figure she’d switched subjects on me. “The rug?”

She nodded. “His name was Opal, and I loved him. He was my friend. He died of a jabberwocky attack.”

That would explain the shredded condition to the part of the skin she kept hidden beneath her bed.

Tears shimmered in her eyes when she looked back at me.

“You wanted to keep a part of him with you forever, didn’t you?” I guessed.

Knuckling tears from her eyes, she gave a pitiful-sounding chuckle. “I know, I’m a fool.”

Taking her hands in mine, I squeezed them gently. “You feel, Lena. And that is a wondrous thing. I’m sure Opal would be happy to know that a part of him was still here with you.”

She lovingly dragged her foot along the soft fur of the beast’s skin. “Maybe.” 

We’d been in her room for over an hour, and I wanted nothing more than to shove the sheets down and sleep beside her for the rest of the night. But Lena meant to make a true change, and I would help her in any way I could. Which meant getting out of her room before we were discovered. As innocent as our time in here had been, very few would believe it so.

I winced when I stood to my feet, but the pain in my leg did feel significantly improved.

She pouted. “Must you go?”

I was being noble, but nothing said I had to stop touching her completely either. Taking up the curl resting heavily on her right breast, I tugged on it gently, until she stood.

Lena moved swiftly into my side, sliding her arms around my middle and running them up my back. I shivered, and she grinned.

One good thing about Zelena having been with other men was she’d had practice. Her touches were far more skilled than the youthful ones I remembered. Brushing my knuckles tenderly across the sharp ridge of her cheek, I smiled.

“I think I should,” I finally whispered.

“I’m sorry I ripped your trousers.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Okay.” She giggled. “I’m not. But I will send you a new pair in the morning.”

I made to move, but she grabbed my face and yanked me down, stealing a kiss and the very breath from my lungs.

It was a sweet kiss. Quick and short. But it made my body burn.

I growled. “You love to torture me, human.”

“Well”—she shrugged, stepping out of my arms—“it’s only fair after all the wenches you took to your bed.”

I snorted, grabbing my chest. “Moi? Why, I am a virtuous, unsoiled dragon.”

“My arse.” She giggled, and I couldn’t help but respond in kind. “Ragoth,” she said after a moment.

“Hm?”

“I love you too.”

Aphrodite

“O
hhhhhhhhhh.” Calypso smiled dreamily, wrapping her fingers together as she began twirling and dancing and filling her waters with laughter. “They are so cute!”

I smiled then glanced up when I heard the deep throaty voice of Hades step through the doorway.

“Hades!” The sea elemental cried, running to her lover and wrapping her arms tightly around his neck.

He lifted her high into the air, twirling her about as he kissed her senseless.

It was sometimes impossible to believe that after five hundred years the two could still be so ridiculously in love, but their love was no act.

I felt the beat of their passion stir through me heavily, making me miss my poor, sweet Hephy.

He hated when I parted from him for any amount of time. I suspected another week or so and Ragoth and Zelena would be right where they needed to be.

“Aphrodite.” Hades said my name in that deep, proper burr of his that never failed to elicit a shiver from me.

The man was darkly beautiful. I’d often entertained a dalliance with him but knew his heart was one that needed a permanent mate, and since my heart most definitely belonged to Hephy, I’d not wanted to mess with the fallout.