“Do you think,” I said, rather than broach such a sensitive topic, “that a dragon could bond with a human? Do only the males become dragon riders?” Her laugh was bright as bells, and drew the eyes of all those around us. It also made Levant lift his head from where he was bickering with two Naga males kitted out in weapons and armor.
“It has never been done,” Alshara said, “but there’s a first time for everything. Talk to Arakash.” I would, but not tonight, because Levant was heading my way, and the expression on his face was… Well, my panties were instantly wet, and I wasn’t wearing any, so that was a bit of a problem. It was very obvious he had only one thing on his mind, and people were getting out of his way to let him through. When he reached me, he offered Alshara a polite greeting, then reached for me and threw me over his shoulder.
There were laughs and hoots, some kind of clapping that had to be their version of catcalls, and then we were between the tents. “Levant!” I said, but I was laughing so it sounded anything but stern. “What will your people think?” I asked, and then laughed again, which was probably the drink. I knew exactly what they were thinking, and I didn’t have it in me to care nearly enough.
“They’ll think I desired my mate so badly I could not wait to haul her off to my nest,” he declared. Another giggle, but this one was mostly because I felt so full of happiness that I couldn’t contain it. This man, this male. He was too good to be true, but perhaps I’d dreamed of exploring space and meeting aliens all my life because I’d had to go so far, crossing time and distance, to find him. Fate, true mates, who was I to run away from that? I didn’t want to. I’d told him I wanted to stay with him when we had sex; the bond between us was so powerful then that there was no denying it. Time to stop denying it entirely. Time to make a new home here.
The tent was cold and dark, but that didn’t matter. We found the furs in a tangle of limbs and tail. His body was atop mine, and his mouth found mine in the dark as easily as if it were daylight. I had a very brief moment of clarity in all that mountain passion. “Auby?” I asked, the word muffled against his lips and half turned into a moan when he found my breast and squeezed.
“With Merish, don’t worry,” he growled. That was all the time the little Revenant got in my brain—sorry, Auby—Levant’s mouth on mine eclipsed all else. He licked the roof of my mouth, teased my tongue with the split tip of his own until I saw stars, and at the same time his hand wandered. He squeezed my breast, tugged on my nipple, then freed me from my clothes with only one goal in mind: to get me naked as quickly as possible.
He wore nothing, so that was easy: just the necklace around his neck and a few leather ties around his waist. Decorations that did not stop me from finding the entrance to his pouch with questing fingers. He hadn’t extruded yet, but the moment I touched him there, his cock shot out. He growled, and wetness coated my fingers. It smelled good, sweet and salty, and it mademy mouth water, tempting me. He’d warned me not to taste, quite sternly the first time we were intimate, and then more gently later, but he had not explained why.
“Is it taboo? You know humans find it very normal to give blowjobs, or did your research on us not include that information?” He rolled to my side and curled his fist around his cock, the tip splitting and writhing, glistening with wetness in the glow of his lit sigils. It really was tempting to lean in and take him in my mouth. I’d always enjoyed the act, and I wanted to give him pleasure the way he always took care of me.
“It’s not taboo,” he husked out, “but Naga seed appears to be extremely heat-inducing when ingested by a human. Do you want to go into heat and mate for hours on end, my sweet mate?” His eyes glowed. “Do you want me to seed you over and over until you conceive my youngling?” It made me twist with need against the furs, and he flicked out his tongue and tasted my desire in the air. His cock twitched, and I wanted him so badly that I spread my legs.
“I think I need you to seed me right now, Levant. We’ll do the tasting later.” Later, when we had all the time in the world. It sounded too good to be true—and a little scary at the same time. Perhaps I should do some research on humans of my own before I did something that crazy, especially in a tent that wasn’t really ours, with the future still undecided. Only one question remained: was his exile lifted or not?
“Later,” he agreed, and he managed to make it sound like it was a sage decision. His expression was serious as he nodded at me; then his eyes danced, and the gold turned molten. “Seeding first, as you wish. I aim to please.” He pulled me close, hooked my legover his hip, and surged into me with a thrust. His cock was sleek and wet, my core ready for him. He stretched me, but he’d paved the way a dozen times before now; we both knew he’d fit.
Sinking deep, his tail coiled around me, winding close until we were entwined. He set the rhythm with his hips—steady, slow—a tease that would draw out our pleasure. His mouth was on my neck, teasing my skin with his fang and his tongue. I was covered in goosebumps, but I wasn’t cold. Every touch, every moment, every mingled sigh felt perfect. He was perfect, and he gave too much of himself; I needed to make sure I gave enough in return, because he deserved nothing less.
His tail caressed the undersides of my breasts and squeezed me tightly so I felt cocooned in heat and strength. He pistoned into me with his cock, the tip curling and stroking inside me with each pass, teasing my G-spot until I saw stars. I came apart with a shout that morphed into a sigh so deep it made my ribs ache. His cock sank deep, his body all around me, and his mouth drew pleasure from each inch of sensitive skin he found.
“Levant,” I groaned. “I love you, Levant.” It slipped out just like that, but I did not even try to hold it back. It wasn’t the fervent desire to stay with him this time, the inner wish of my body I could not keep myself from expressing. No, this was more, and it was better. Levant lifted his head, cupped my face with one hand, and then kissed me. He didn’t say it back, but he didn’t need to, because I already knew he loved me in every act, every caress he’d given.
Rising and falling together, our bodies continued on the path we’d set. His pleasure came fast on the heels of mine, his cock growing thicker, his thrusts rougher and deeper. It didn’t matterthat I’d just come myself; his pleasure—the heat of him as he came to his own conclusion—sent me over the edge again. I felt myself squeeze him tight, and I felt each blast of seed as it jetted from his tip. As always, there was so much of it; I could feel it press against my walls, the air filling with the delicious scent.
“I love you too, Felicia. I’ll love you no matter what,” he said, and I knew then that he was willing to go wherever I said we’d go. No, poor guy. I had to put him out of his misery, because I knew he didn’t want to leave. I had to tell him about the choice I’d made tonight. There was no better moment than the present, so I sat up, bracing myself against his chest, and opened my mouth.
A bright light flashed, and the tent walls seemed to glow. As if night had turned to day, I found myself blinking spots from my vision and looking around in confusion. “What just happened?” The light wasn’t fading; it stayed bright, as if someone truly had managed to turn the sun back on. I shared a shocked, confused look with Levant, and then both of us scrambled from the furs and rushed to clean up and get dressed.
Chapter 21
Levant
Everything happened so fast that we didn’t have time to linger in the afterglow of sex. I didn’t get to think about what Felicia had said, and how close I’d felt to her in that moment. It was just a mad scramble to figure out our course of action. We’d both leaped to the same conclusion right away, and it meant it couldn’t be good. The Burrower had left, perhaps because it had sensed what we couldn’t yet, and if it reached Felicia’s ship before we could, it might destroy it.
“You can take my flyer,” Kaylass said. He came out from between two tents and looked surprisingly disheveled. Smelling like Abseal, that made sense, but I’d never heard of Kaylass unwinding for anything. He was also far more amicable than his reputation and our earlier interactions implied he was capable of. He clasped my shoulder to halt us and nodded very seriously in the direction of his tent. “You need to head back to the Pole right away, I assume? My flyer will be faster than a dragon, and its wings won’t ice over.”
The flyer Kaylass had arrived in when he’d been assigned to Serqethos in my place was hidden in the dunes, in the same spot where I usually kept mine. Kaylass was not a hoarder like I was, though, and his vessel was small, barely capable of carrying two travelers. It would be a tight fit, but he was right: itwasthe fastest way back to my camp and Felicia’s ship. We had to get there, because so much light in the sky that it appeared to be day couldn’t be good.
“Thank you, yes, we need to get back as soon as possible,” I said. My head twisted to look around, already running lists of what we’d quickly need for the journey. A flyer was better than asking Arakash to take us on his dragon, Salais. That could still take two to three days; the flyer would take us there in a couple of hours, perhaps half a day. Behind me, Felicia had bent her head closer to the older Shaman to answer his questions about what the light could be, but I was making lists.
It was Zsandex who arrived to help. He must have returned with more dragons and warriors while my mate and I had been occupied. “What do you need? We’ll bring it,” he said simply. Since his fall from grace last year, he’d adopted a new attitude and slowly begun working his way back into Alshara’s good graces. He’d lost the bitter edge, the burning anger that had sustained him through the tough years right after the outcast raid twenty years ago. He was almost pleasant these days.
I rattled off my list as quickly as possible, and he had already sent two runners to fetch the first half before I’d finished talking. They met us at the edge of camp with the warm clothes needed for the icy temperatures at the pole, a tent, a heater, and rations. It was going to be the bare minimum we needed to be safe in the extreme conditions there, but I hoped we wouldn’t need to stay long. Better yet, if my camp was intact, everything we needed and more would be there.
Merish also greeted us, her expression worried and grim, and Auby subdued. She handed the small Revenant to my mate. “He was a gem. Best party buddy ever. Good luck, come back in one piece, all of you.” Auby was quiet as he cuddled up with Felicia and we said our goodbyes, neither confirming nor denying whatMerish had said. He still looked ragged and worn, and now I worried that I hadn’t managed to fix him entirely.
Kaylass led us into the desert, the others knowing without being told that this was not a journey they could accompany us on. I called the Shaman Council as we covered the distance from the Serqethos oasis to the place where the flyer was hidden. This was also where I normally had my tent set up, so it was a path I was familiar with. I was struck by a pang of longing to go home, fetch my tent, and set it up here, where it belonged.
The Shaman Council was too far away to experience the light turning the night into day, but they confirmed they saw a glow on the horizon. “The EM field is in terrible flux, more powerful than I’ve ever seen it,” Chen warned me. “Fly low, Levant. Very low. I am also getting reports of quakes in the northern hemisphere, dozens of them, along with volcanic activity in the Acheray range.” That was bad, because those volcanoes were supposed to be dormant. If they erupted, their ash cloud would be devastating as it blanketed the world.
Felicia could only sit in my lap inside Kaylass’s flyer, and he had hauled several satchels and crates from the vehicle to make it lighter. It was obvious Kaylass had not even bothered to unpack, but he was careless about tossing his belongings into the sand now. “Go,” he said simply, and he pressed the control to close the transparent canopy over our heads. I did not wait, but aimed the flyer’s nose for the North Pole, and raised it just enough to skim over the next sanddune.
“This is a Stinger model 735,” Auby said from inside the safety of Felicia’s arms. He lifted his pink nose just enough for me to see it wrinkle in distaste. “This model is not suited to flyingin icy conditions for long, Levant. Are you certain about this? We would be more comfortable in a Stinger model 965.” He uncurled enough to peer at the dashboard of the vehicle and huffed when he discovered the altimeter had a red mark at six hundred feet and a glaring warning label next to it.
