The judge’s eyes glittered with recognition of Magnus’s double meaning. He gave the human woman one last withering look before striding to Magnus and dropping the ring in his outstretched palm. “You would do well to simply kill her, Magnus,” he said. “But she was once yours and is not dragonkind. We will sentence according to your wishes in this case.”
Magnus bowed. “I request a private moment with her.”
“As you wish.” Gersel motioned to the other judges. “We will wait in the main hall.” As they gathered together, he inclined his head. “Summon us when you’re ready.”
They filed out of the chamber on silent feet, dragon light casting their true shadows on the polished walls, revealing great hulking forms and clawed feet instead of human figures.
Magnus’s own steps seemed loud in the tense silence as he approached Leida. She stiffened as he drew closer but kept her head lowered. He circled her slowly, noting her threadbare clothing, the simple leather tie holding the long black hair at her nape. He seized her hands, ignoring her surprised gasp as he turned her palms up and ran his thumbs across them. They were rough, marred by calluses and scrapes, signs of hard labor. The iron bonds cut into her small wrists, and he felt their effect on his own magic, a slow leaching of potency. They rendered her powerless, a safeguard against whatever talent she was born with or skills she had acquired as a spellcaster.
“I have lived for more than three hundred years,” he said, watching with satisfaction as tiny chills raced up her arms in reaction to his voice, “and I still do not understand the way of the human mind, especially that of the human female.”
She remained stubbornly silent, though he sensed her curiosity. He dropped her hands and plucked briefly at her skirt. “You left a life of luxury and riches. I was a generous master. You had your own servants, and I draped you in jewels. All I asked in return was your company and your music.” He ran a finger over her arm, scowling when she jerked away from his touch. “What thing so tempting lured you away so that you not only stole from me but are content to live in poverty and endless toil?”
His patience deserted him when she continued to stare at the floor and said nothing. A faint whimper escaped her mouth when he gripped her chin and forced up her head. Her gray eyes darkened with a dull misery as she finally met his gaze. “Answer me, Leida,” he snapped.
“I was a possession,” she whispered. “A thing to be owned, like your treasures, and cast aside when I no longer gleamed so brightly.”
Magnus worked to control the anger seething and bubbling in his veins. “You were the favorite. My favorite. I held you above all others in my service.”
A single hot tear dripped onto his knuckle, sliding between his fingers. Leida’s sorrowing expression transformed for a moment, becoming resentful. “Oh, yes. I was your favorite, but for how long? How long before you set me aside for another with a siren’s voice and the face of an elfin queen?” Her upper lip curled into a sneer even as more tears tracked down her cheeks. “Dragons are capricious creatures.”
His anger, held in check by a slim thread of control, swamped him in the face of her hypocrisy. He released her jaw to wrap both arms around her back and pull her hard against him. Her arms pressed close from chest to belly, her bound hands curled into fists at his navel. The iron manacles pulsed with a parasitic life of their own, their proximity a diseased sensation that made his abdominal muscles shrink away in instinctive reaction.
Leida closed her eyes as he bent his head and breathed gently against her lips. “And yet it is you who deserted me, offered no reason, gave no warning. You waited for the opportune moment and made your escape, lured by something I couldn’t give. And you took that which meant most to me.” His arms tightened against her back. “I’m sure we both recognize the irony of your statement regarding capricious creatures.”
Her features, already wan, went bloodless, and she sagged against him. Magnus took advantage of the moment, drawn to the long-remembered feel of her in his embrace. There were differences now. Her hips seemed wider, the soft breasts fuller, the long, curving waist a little thicker. But it only made her more appealing, a new lushness that fit against the planes and angles of his own form as if she’d been made specifically for him.
He took her mouth in a hard kiss, offering no gentleness or forgiveness as he forced her lips open and slid his tongue inside. She tasted the same, felt the same—slick, wet heat and a tongue that met his in a mating dance to send his acute senses spiraling into madness.
There was no protest, no resistance from her as Magnus ran his hands across her back and shoulders, sliding lower to cup her buttocks in his hands and lift her so that her pelvis rested hard against his. He had expected something from her, a struggle to put some distance between them, but Leida sank into his embrace, opening her mouth for a deeper penetration of his tongue.
It was as it had always been between them, and four years of separation faded to dust as Magnus held her, lost to the heat they generated. His cock was so hard, it almost pained him. He would take her, here on the rock floor of the judgment chamber, with her skirts shoved to her waist and her long legs draped over his shoulders. The wisdom of centuries faded beneath the onslaught of his desire as Leida wiggled her arms partially free to raise them and rest her palms against his neck in a light caress.
Chapter Two
The feelof cold iron resting just above his heart was a dash of ice water on his ardor, and Magnus halted with one hand inching up her skirts while the other teased her small nipple to a hard point. He broke the kiss, ignoring her faint moan of protest.
She was as beautiful now as she was four years ago, especially now with a yearning that burned clear and bright in her eyes. His anger returned full force, fed by the memory of his humiliation at discovering his favorite had not only left him, but stolen from him as well.
Magnus watched her expression change, sadden and turn guarded as he continued to stare at her. He knew what she saw, the scorn in his eyes, the mockery hovering at his mouth. He slid a hand into her loosely bound hair, and this time she did squirm to avoid his touch, grappling with him in a futile attempt to break free until he tightened his grip on her hair hard enough to bring tears to her eyes.
“You play the part of a fond lover so well, Leida. One might think you’d only been away on an extended jaunt, returning to me with a full heart and a body eager for mine.” He clenched his teeth to rein in his fury and reached down to force a hand between her thighs. He cupped her hard enough so that the heat of her body flowed through her skirts and over his palm. “At least there’s some truth to the second.”
He shoved her from him, offering no help as she stumbled back, nearly losing her balance. She recovered quickly enough and faced him with the same haunted, terrified expression she’d worn before the dragon tribunal. He went rigid as that terror settled deep, turned to a resolve which hardened her gray eyes to pewter.
“I do not ask your forgiveness, Magnus.”
“You dare to address me so familiarly now?” He snarled in a voice filled with threat, feeling a gut-level satisfaction as that resolve wavered.
His eyes widened for a moment as Leida abruptly dropped to her knees before him. It threw him off guard. Leida was human and unencumbered by the overweening pride that sometimes plagued his kind. Still, while she had first taken to the role of pampered servant, she had never been a supplicant. He stared at her bowed head as she knelt before him in the position of a desperate beggar.
“Please, my lord,” she implored, and Magnus scowled at the broken tones in her voice. “I am guilty of the crime of thievery. But I beg your mercy. Do not sentence me to death.”
Magnus stared down at her for long moments, quelling the urge to yank her to her feet and admonish her for her groveling. She owed him this, this cowering obeisance. In the throes of his rage and despair, when even moonlit flights in the cold thin air did nothing to calm his emotions, he’d imagined just this scenario. Only now that it played out, he was sickened by it.
“Get up,” he said.
Leida rose slowly to her feet, straightening and lifting her chin. The color ran high in her face, a testament to her humiliation at her actions. Still, Magnus could see it in her eyes. She’d do it again, and more, if necessary. Leida of the Far Lands wanted desperately to live and would do anything to win clemency and save her own skin.
