“Who gave you the whipping?”
“She did. She kept me in the barn with the cows to take care of the mucking and the milking. She whipped me often to teach me not to grow up lazy.”
She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, as if she could still feel the bite of the whip. “I was a slight child. One day, carrying two heavy milk buckets, I spilled some of the milk. She whipped me until I fainted.”
“Did you run away?” She had a feisty heart. She’d been too young and too small to fight back, but Draknart could see her running as an act of defiance.
“I couldn’t run.” She huffed. “I couldn’t even move. But while I hid, my father stopped by to bring me a small round of herbed goat cheese as a gift. He found me lying in my own blood in the hayloft. He carried me down the ladder and carried me home. He refused to return me, no matter what the village elders said.”
Draknart began to absentmindedly sharpen his talons on the stone. “This farmer’s wife… Which one is she? The pigeon-toed hag?”
Einin wiggled to get down. “What difference does it make?”
The hag and her cows would make a nice meal.
Draknart knew the far field where the cows grazed. He nuzzled Einin and meant it as a comfort, but she took it the wrong way.
The vulnerability disappeared from her eyes in an instant, replaced by outrage. She swung her body, boxing the air inches from his snout. “You great conscienceless, murderous beast of the devil. Set me down!”
By the gods, the woman could screech. Yet all she did, Draknart found sweetly entertaining. She could amuse the gods themselves…
His great body went still at the thought, even his breathing cut off, as if time itself had ground to a halt. He didn’t move as much as a talon, not even an eyelid.
Mostly, he thought of the gods only when he thought of the curse Belisama had put on him. The goddess wasn’t likely to ever lift the curse—she was that much of a shrew—but…
Her husband, the god Belinus, could.
In exchange for a gift fit for a god.
For the first time ever, Draknart had just such a gift. His gaze fastened on the wee lassie hanging upside down in front of his face. Einin.
Belinus had a known weakness for beautiful maidens, and there had never been a maiden more beautiful, more fiery and brave, and more worthy of attention than the one Draknart was holding.
Mayhap it was most fortunate that he hadn’t breached her maidenhead in the night. Although, it hadn’t felt lucky at the time.
“Put me down. Now!” she demanded again with fury, flashing a bare thigh here and a bare buttock there as she wriggled.
Distracting, but after a few moments, Draknart managed to set her on the ground.
She pulled her spine straight, didn’t back away, not a step. She drew her lungs full, her fists coming up, ready to fight, her mesmerizing chest heaving under the rough fabric of her shirt.
He wanted her naked and writhing with pleasure under him as he plowed into her.
He shook off the sharp need. There was something he wanted even more than the bliss he’d find between her strong thighs, wanted desperately, with every beat of his black dragon heart. He wanted the curse lifted.
He wanted to be what he’d once been: dragon day and night.
Draknart steadied himself with a bellowing breath that sent a few harmless sparks around her and said in a tone as friendly as he was capable, “Get yourself ready, lass. We are going on a journey.”
Her soft mouth dropped open in surprise. “We? The two of us? Together?”
“Aye. Traveling companions.” His stone heart lifted, his mood lighter than it’d been in recent memory. If he were any happier, he’d be chasing his own tail around like a dragon pup.
He smiled at her.
She must have grown used to his fangs, because she barely paled.
Chapter Six
