Oh Vulkar help me, this is the big one. It’s the one last hurrah before all hell breaks loose. It’s the emotional payoff two characters have been working toward for 80K words, and all the associated heaven and agony. I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to get through this scene. Iyeh, nagging is involved. Again. Sigh. Violent nagging, even. (Thanks to Soleil for coining that one.) I have to make sure I don’t take the easy way out. This relationship is messy, complicated, and a really bad idea for lots of reasons.
Snippet: this comes shortly after yesterday’s, so I’m actually quite a ways from this scene already, but it’s a good piece and it’s fairly clean. Okay, mostly, at least compared to today’s pages.
“That oil is a weapon,” she accused.
“Indeed?” Mykal arched his brow. “I intended it to be a gift, nothing more.”
“A gift that burned my skin, that made me tear at my mate and wrestle, roll, fight…” Her face burned and she averted her gaze. Lady above, she’d been inflamed with lust, completely out of control, and Rhaekhar had not fared much better.
“Iyeh,” Mykal drawled. “My oil makes you burn like a dragon in rut.”
“Then I want nothing of it.”
“You don’t wish to taste my blood and wallow upon my dragon as you promised when I agreed to come with you? I assure you, he’s more than eager to Dance the Blades with your claws and teeth. You won’t need your Reds to pin me with their knives in order to do as you wish.”
Lady help her, she could envision it only too clearly. Dragons hissing and clawing at one another, necks twining, teeth raking, wings and tails thrashing each other into submission. Swallowing hard, she forced that image away. “That is your idea of a bath? How do any of your people survive, then?”
He laughed softly. “Not all are affected by the oil so strongly, brightheart. You are White. I am Black. We’re naturally drawn to each other. We fight, and if we don’t kill each other, we mate each other into a stupor. Even then, if one isn’t wrestled into submission, they might both end up dead. In the wilds of Keldar, it’s not unusual to follow signs of dragons in rut only to find their carcasses roasting in the sun. Dragons mate with violence and blood and Fire, and we Black and White pairs feel it all the more.”
“You said you have no Fire.”
“Oh, I burn, brightheart, but not with flame to destroy my enemies. I burn for you.” He let his lids hang heavy and sultry over his eyes and flickered his gaze at her Blood. He dropped his hands to his trousers and loosened them so the black material slid down his thighs to puddle on the tile. “Red is much safer for you than Black.”
A vicious rumble rolled out of Dharman’s chest and he stood, eyes blazing, muscles bunched. She touched his arm lightly and he quivered but didn’t break eye contact with the other man.
Mykal stood silent, his gaze daring her to examine him and find him lacking. Lean and deceptively slender, he wasn’t as tall as Dharman. The least of her Blood likely outweighed him by half a stone or more. Yet there was an aura of coiled power in his stance and the still controlled way he stood. In a flash, he would strike, as deadly as his tribe’s namesake. His skin was darker than Gregar’s creamy caffe skin, like rich, oiled mahogany. Sweeping down his back to his calves, his ink black hair was longer than Sal’s.
Her Caffe Blood huffed beneath his breath and thought very hard about shaving the Keldari’s head with an extremely dull rahke.
“May I have my oil?” Mykal lowered his head. Not to be submissive, oh, no. To ensure his hair slipped forward over his shoulder, drawing her eye down his body again. Not an ounce of fat softened him. He might as well have been carved from dusky marble. “It will cauterize my wounds and cleanse me. I would not lie with you as a sweaty, dirty savage, Your Majesty.”
“You won’t lie with her at all,” Dharman retorted.
Mykal inclined his head even further, bending slightly at the waist. “I believe she has already made her choice, my friend.”
Lady help her, she had. From the first moment the Black Dragon invited her to join him on the ridge above the salty lake beneath a full moon, she’d been intrigued.
:Entrapped, more likely.: Dharman glared at the man but grudgingly sat back on the bench beside her. :Have a care, na’lanna. This dragon’s bite is as poisonous as his fire.:
She sighed. “Give him his bag.”
