Clove was so preoccupied, he did not notice the stirring of movement in the shadows opposite his side of the pool, and did not realize he was not alone until a rich chuckle rippled out over the water.
Immediately he yanked back his fingers and froze, staring into the dark.
“Oh, don’t stop on my account,” said a low, deep voice with a smile in it.Not a virtuous smile.“I was enjoying the show.”
“Who is that?”snapped Clove.His face was searing hot at being witnessed—not just glimpsednaked, but observed while he whimpered and moaned and fingered himself with the wantonness of some vulgar concubine.
His sense of humiliation was quickly tempered by apprehension as a figure emerged from the deepest shadows and squatted at the edge of the water, his long, dark robes pooling about him and his hair hanging like curtains before it.
The light from the bedroom caught like twin stars in his eyes, but as dim as the room was, Clove could see nothing more.
“The beast will kill you for looking at me,” Clove snapped, doing his best to project arrogance while fear continued to mount in his stomach.He swam until his back hit stone, putting as much distance between him and the figure as he could, but it was no use.The figure shed his robe and dropped into the water, snaking through it with such crocodilian speed and efficiency that Clove had no opportunity to clamber up the ledge and escape—before he could do more than put his hand on the ledge, the figure wasthere, surfacing and dripping water and seizing him by his lifted wrist.
“If the beast will kill me for looking at you, I wonder what will happen if I touch you?”
The voice was rich, mocking.
The owner was grinning.
It was a man—a man whose long dark hair now clung to his shoulders and fanned out around him on the surface of the water like an ornamental fish with its fins spread.He was handsome, tautly muscular, with a delicately pointed chin and elegant, aristocratic features.Features that were slightly crooked due to a strange blend of youthful playfulness and cold, cunning severity that felt very old.
He did not appear quite human.
Even before the obvious, he was just a little too pointed in the chin, the nose, and the ears.Clove would have thought him elvish, but that wasn’t quite right, either.From a distance it would be easy to mistake him as such, but not from up close like they were—so close that Clove could read the true emotion behind the man’s friendly bright eyes.
They looked upon him with hunger.
Clove’s initial relief—that the man was only a man, and not some shadow-birthed monster—was immediately replaced with the indignant fury of before.
“Release me,” he snarled.He did not try to yank his hand away.He could already feel that the man’s strength was much greater than his, and any physical struggle would be fruitless—and more than that, probably enjoyable for his assailant.“Release me or he’ll castrate you slowly, just to start, and then boil or skin you alive.If he’s in a good mood, maybe he’ll let you pick which ball you want severed first!”
The man’s smile only grew wider.
“Is he often in a good mood?”he asked.“Your beast, the dragon Sobell?”
As he spoke, he raised a hand to caress Clove’s damp hair back from his cheek, and the gesture was so intimately familiar that Clove knew him at once.
“You!”he exclaimed.
The dragon Sobell, now in the form of a man, paused; his slick grin slackened, his expression suddenly betraying surprise and seriousness.
The seriousness lasted only a single odd, poignant breath before the playfulness returned.
“You know your love well,” said Sobell.He raised Clove’s hand to his lips and kissed his palm.The gesture was overly sweet—mocking.The gleam in Sobell’s eyes made it clear that his intentions wentfarbeyond sweetness.
There was no magic on Clove now, and the guise of a man repelled him automatically.
“You’re not my love,” he sneered.
Sobell cocked his head to the side.“Is that so?”
Abruptly, the dragon-man’s hand moved with that great speed again.It scooped between Clove’s thighs and cupped Clove’s mound in its palm, driving two fingers inward and plunging unerringly into the slick, hot mouth.
Clove seized Sobell’s wrist with a gasp.
He shuddered.
He tried not to moan.
