He smiled in return, traced a meandering line down her throat with a gentle finger. “And you’re a woman well-loved.”
The smile faded, and his eyes darkened. “I put all my faith in your silence, Beth. You must tell no one ofthis.”
Tell no one of what? Elsbeth blinked, confused. She’d assumed he wanted this place kept secret and had no intention of remarking on it when she returned to Byderside. Angus had often accused her being more close-mouthed than a hermit monk under a vow of silence. He didn’texaggerate.
She touched Alaric’s arm. “I would never betrayyou.”
He nodded, took her hand and led her across the cavern’s rocky floor to a splinter of darkness wedged between two walls of sharp rock. From one angle, it looked like nothing more than a long shadow cast by the play of illumination on the cavern walls, but when Alaric brought her around to the second wall, she discovered a tunnel large enough to accommodate several people withease.
She peered into its gloom. Alaric sent more of the pale mage-light into the tunnel, and Elsbeth gasped at what itrevealed.
“An egg!” She didn’t wait for his permission to enter, but stepped onto the raised ledge and hoisted herself inside for a closer look at Alaric’s newestsecret.
The egg was massive, nearly twice the height of Alaric in his human form. Save for its size, it looked like any bird’s egg, with a pale blue shell mottled with brown spots. It lay in a nesting of black rocks and flushed a lavender shade at intermittent moments, as if keeping time with a silent heartbeat. The nest was hot. Where Elsbeth had shivered in the cavern’s main space, she now broke out in asweat.
She glanced at Alaric, eyes wide. “Isthis…?”
He wore a guarded expression, as if he was unsure of her reaction to his revelation. “Wyverns mate every other spring. The females bear a single egg, and it is the males who hatch them. A female’s fire isn’t hot enough to keep the egg warm. When she hatches, I’ll return her to herdam.”
“She?”
Seeing that Elsbeth was more fascinated than put off, he climbed into the tunnel with her. His hand stroked the air just above the egg’s surface. “See the color of the shell? The blue cast marks it as female. Were it browner, it would be amale.”
He waved a hand to the main cavern. “This place offers not only protection, but space. When she hatches, she will have the room to practice her flight in preparation for her journey to her dam’sterritory.”
Elsbeth walked slowly around the egg, admiring the miracle of a life in the making before her. Alaric’s child. Offspring through the mating with a female wyvern. She smiled to herself. Somehow, she could find no jealousy within her. It was hard to see a creature a thousand times larger than her and possessed of scales and wings as competition. “What will you nameher?”
He followed her as she continued her exploration of the egg. His face was soft, approval and admiration for her shining in his eyes. “I won’t. Wyvern council will. The matriarchs always name the offspring. Only then are they recognized as members of the wyverntribe.”
Hearing Alaric’s explanation of wyvern culture made her pause. She stared at him, seeing a tall, broad-shouldered man, finely made with a sublime face any human female would admire. Yet it was only an illusion—one that went deep to blood and bone, but still an illusion worked by powerful magic. Yet the heart and the spirit were the same, and it was these with whom she fell inlove.
“Did the matriarchs name you as well?” sheasked.
He gave her a formal bow, as if she were royalty. “I am Alaric, out of Goetia, byCaratacus.”
Elsbeth laughed and curtsied in return. “And your name meanskingly.”
“Yes.”
“How very fitting.” She reached out, gliding her hand just over the egg as he’d done, noting the heat pulsing off its surface. “May I touchher?”
He pulled her hand away. “It’s too hot. You’ll burn yourself. And it will get even hotter in a few moments. Would you like to see me warm theegg?”
“Yes, I would,” she said, delighted and curious as to how he would doit.
Alaric hesitated. “I will be wyvern again, Beth.” There was something poignant about his uncertainty, as if he still found it hard to believe she accepted his shape-shifting soeasily.
She shrugged. “You never stopped being wyvern, Alaric.” She eyed him with a scowl. “You have little faith in me. How is it that you, a wyvern, can love a human woman and yet doubt this same woman can love the wyvern inreturn?”
His arms encircled her, pulling her close. Elsbeth rested her hands on his shoulders and tilted her head back. “I prefer this form because I can embrace you, love you, and make love with you,” she said. “However, if I could turn wyvern myself for you I would. But I have no magic. So you only get this punyhuman.”
She pulled him down to her then, opening his mouth with her lips and sliding her tongue inside for a brief caress. He groaned at her touch, fingers massaging the muscles in herback.
“It is all I want,” he said against her lips. “You are all Iwant.”
They kissed again, and he filled her mouth with his tongue, stroking, sucking, imitating with leisurely thrusts what he would do to her when they returned to his lair. Elsbeth opened to him, wrapped her legs around his waist when he cupped her bottom and hoisted her higher against him. She rubbed against his cock, swollen and straining against his trousers. She wanted him again, craved the feel of him inside her, inside her mouth, the hot slide of his seed trickling down her thighs or pulsing against her throat in a saltystream.
“Mine,” he murmured against her throat and gently suckled the skinthere.
