I glanced around, blinking away the rain from my eyes. Water drops clung to the eyelashes of my left eye. The right one, the red eye of the dragon, had no eyelashes at all, only a thin, transparent membrane I could close like an eyelid. It slightly blurred the vision from that eye, but it also allowed me to see not just through the rain but through smoke and even fire if needed.
I tried to pull a side of the cloak over Elaine, to shield her from the rain, but she laughed, pushing it away.
“We should collect the rain water,” I said.
“Good idea. I’ll get the bucket.”
Elaine ran back into the shack and brought the bucket. With it raining so hard, she’d probably fill it with fresh water soon enough.
“Here.” She handed it to me. “Find the best place for it. Maybe in that corner over there? Looks like most of the water from the roof is running down to that spot.”
I bent my head, hiding my face from the rain. I took baths when I had a chance. But like most of my kind, I preferred slow underground streams or placid lakes inside caves to the chaotic nature of water rushing from the sky. The ever-changing nature of the ocean also disturbed me.
Despite my discomfort, however, I took the bucket from Elaine and steered my chair toward the spot she’d pointed out.
“Go back inside,” I told her.
“Inside? Are you crazy?” She laughed again, lifting her face to the rain.
Sun broke through the heavy rain clouds, creating that rare, barely natural blend of storm and sunlight. The air was warm, and this crazy woman clearly reveled in the water plummeting down on her.
“I’m taking a shower,” she declared with a wide smile, then promptly got out of her clothes.
I should’ve gone back inside after positioning the bucket under the stream. But I stayed, forgetting all about my aversion to the rain. I shouldn’t have looked, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her, following her hands as they peeled off her wet dress and undergarments, exposing her skin.
She quickly lathered her thick, brown hair with soap. Mesmerized, I watched as she ran her fingers through her long, wet tresses, rinsing the suds off.
She lathered her body next. Her hands moved quickly, as though she feared the rain wouldn’t last long and she needed to hurry. But to me, every movement of hers appeared in slow motion as I committed every detail to memory.
Rain ran down her naked body, the rivulets tracing her every curve. And I let my gaze trace it too, from her lovely face upturned toward the sky, down to her shoulders, her heavy breasts with dusty-pink nipples, to the gentle swell of her belly, and the steep curve of her hips…
The more I stared, the warmer my body grew. My muscles tightened. Tension gripped my shoulders. My fingers curled, ready to grab, the claws ready to sink into the gentle, pliable flesh. My cock swelled, throbbing with lust. Bloodrushed through my veins, pulsing in my brain with deafening thundering in my ears.
My gaze paused on the small patch of dark curves between Elaine’s thighs, and she made the grave mistake of glancing my way at that very moment.
Shock registered on her face, and her hands paused on her body. She hadn’t hesitated when getting undressed in front of me. She knew that shadow fae had no sexual desires. Normally, we had no sexual organs and treated nudity with indifference.
Except that I was no longer just a shadow fae.
The dragon poison had been taking over my body and my mind.Virutudragons didn’t need to wait for the mating fever to fuck. Their males had cocks, made of bone and flesh, just like the one I’d had for about three years now. They lusted after their females, the way I’d been lusting after my delectable Joy Vessel. And they fucked whenever they wished, which I hadn’t done.
Ever since the effects of the dragon’s poison became visible, people had shunned me, and I had stayed away from them. Elaine was the first person to share a living space with me, the first to enter my mind since Valeni, and the only one who’d been stoking my desire for the two weeks I’d known her.
“Timur?” Her voice was probing.
Squinting at me, she made no effort to cover up, exposed to the punishing rain and to my burning stare. Her chest heaved with a shaky breath. The droplets of rain clinging to her hardened nipples trembled.
She froze, obviously unsure of how to react to my hungry stare.
And then it was too late for her to do anything at all. I could no longer stay in place. Flicking my wrist, I moved my chair forward. I stopped only when her thighs were between my open knees. I whipped my arms around her. With a soft whimper, she swayed forward.
I caught the droplet from her nipple on my tongue, then I lapped the rain from her body, dragging my tongue between her breasts. Like a man dying from thirst that couldn’t be quenched, I drank the water flavored with her skin, and I couldn’t get enough.
“What are you doing?” she breathed out, the uncertainty in her voice undoing me.
I raked my claws and fingers over the skin of her back, pressing her closer. Her body arched into me, her thighs rubbing through my skirt against my cock. Lust rocked through me with a violent shudder.
“Timur?” She repeated my name.
