The Cursed King by Abigail Owen

Chapter Seventeen

“Holy smokes!” Angelika yelped as everything about her flared in an inferno of fire.

Her vision immediately took on a reddish-gold haze. She lifted her arms, staring at the way the hypnotizing flames danced and glided over her skin. Over her clothes. Over everything. She wasn’t burning, but she was covered in it, the warmth penetrating, seeping into her blood only to spark there.

An answering lance of desire shot through her with each pound of her heart, sending all the best parts of her tingling and pulsing with each rush.

Like Kasia.

She jerked her gaze to Airk’s. Is it finally happening? Am I getting my powers?

Only…the fire wasn’t going away. It was getting hotter.

“Um…Airk?” She shook a hand, only to have the flames leap higher as though she’d added oxygen to the mix and made it worse. The heat at the tips of her fingers and her ears started to singe. “Airk?” Definitely panic in her voice now.

Kasia’s flare-ups had calmed with Brand giving her a great big orgasm every time, apparently. If Airk wasn’t currently a massive dragon, Angelika might not have had a problem with that.

The dragon before her was staring at her with his head turned, one giant eye filled with what appeared to be concern.

“I need him,” she told the creature.

The dragon snorted once, which told her he understood what she was asking for. In the same instant, the heat stepped up a degree or a hundred. Holding in a wince, she lifted her hand again to find the flames turning blue. At a small whimper from her throat, the dragon snorted again, this time sounding almost afraid. Then, with a flap of his wings, scooped her up and flew away.

“Don’t follow us.” That was Airk’s voice but not. Rougher, angrier. Directed to the dragons on the ground.

Only several looked as though they weren’t okay with that. Angelika stayed them with a hand. She’d have to trust Airk in this, even as a dragon. If he wanted to hurt her, he would have already.

She buttoned her lips around more whimpers and almost expected her fingertips to start blistering with the intensity of the heat by now. She even tried rubbing her hands against her clothes to snuff out the flames, but that did nothing.

Luckily, Airk didn’t go far. Only enough away that the other dragons were around the side of the mountain. Then he landed, setting her on a rock, where her flames couldn’t set the surrounding trees ablaze quite so easily.

With a suddenness that astounded her, the shimmering lines—like watching a mirage—that indicated a shift encased him. Only the dragon didn’t change. Not immediately.

The concentration of her own fire, forgotten for a mere moment, made itself felt, the pain receptors in her nerves making her believe it was crawling up her hands to her wrists now. “Airk, hurry.”

The dragon tipped his head back and roared even as his size decreased. Even as his scales turned to human skin and clothes, as his bones realigned so he was standing on two feet instead of all fours. Even as the sound of his roar turned human, Airk battled his way back to control.

The shimmers stopped, and he pitched forward, hands on his knees, breathing hard. But he didn’t stay that way. He jerked up and ran at her. “What can I do?”

What was she supposed to say to that? I need a big O right now? She wasn’t even sure this was the same as it had been for Kasia. Her sister’s fire had also come with migraines and visions, neither of which was happening.

Airk reached for her, circling her wrist with his hand, and suddenly—as fast as she went up like a Roman candle—the flames doused.

All she could do was squeak her shock before raising her hands in front of her face. The tips of her fingers were pink, like a sunburn, but that was the worst of it. Much better than what her imagination was painting.

“Are you hurt?” he demanded.

She jerked her gaze to his, only to stumble into a different kind of shock. The kind that left her mind reeling and her body, still tingling from the effect of her flames, lit up.

Because he was looking at her… Gods, the way he was looking at her.

“Phoenix?” he asked, the word abrupt, sharp.

Angelika swallowed down a sudden surge of sadness and shook her head. Because she…knew.

She just knew.

Disappointment on more than one level threatened to sink her. But she refused to drown. The fire might not mean phoenix, but it meant something else. Something more helpful to her than human. “Dragon sign.”

His eyes flared, then settled. “Because of me.”

Then his mouth was on hers, demanding and untamed, like the creature he’d just subdued.

Angelika didn’t hesitate, throwing herself into the kiss, reveling in it. He wasn’t holding himself back anymore…and holy hells, he had been before. There was more than a reluctant sort of desire in his touch. Now there was purpose, claiming.

Those last three words of his were enough for her.

That her sign had shown itself because of him—she knew what that meant. His voice hadn’t held blame or bitterness or concern, like she might have expected. Because many dragons believed that dragon sign—small clues like the scent of smoke, going up in flames, or shifting smaller parts of the body, all of which a human woman destined to mate a dragon shifter could show—was more easily triggered by the man fated to be her mate.

Those three words of his had been supremely satisfied and harshly possessive at the same time.

His lips on hers now, his hands sweeping the contours of her body with both abandonment and possessive relish, told her she was right, and her heart told her she wanted this, wanted him, like she’d never wanted anything in her life.

“Tell me no now if you want me to stop,” he ground out against her lips, like he wasn’t even able to lift his head to speak the words.

“Don’t stop.” She wrapped a hand around his neck as if to hold him to her.

“Thank the gods.”

Then his hands were at the three silk-covered buttons holding the top of her suit together. Except they were tiny, and it took less than a blink of fumbling with his larger fingers for him to growl with frustration, then rip it open with a pop-pop-pop.

Angelika would’ve chuckled at his haste if his face hadn’t suddenly gone all intense as he gazed at her bared skin. “I wondered if you had anything on under this.”

She didn’t. But he had? “You hardly looked at me.”

“I looked enough.” His expression spasmed, almost with pain. “I am always looking at you,” he said, quieter. Reverent.

He traced a finger down the valley between her breasts, then groaned. Banding an arm behind her waist, he bent her backward and set his lips to her breast, sucking so hard her clit throbbed in immediate reaction, beating to the pulse of his mouth on her.

Angelika speared her hands through his shorn hair, holding on, her gaze glued to the sight of his skin against hers, his mouth on her body. She might combust all over again right here.

“Gods,” he rumbled against her. “You taste of ambrosia. There were times when I was not sure if you were temptation or torture.”

She couldn’t help the smile curving her lips, because her dragon was not a talker, so those words meant more than he knew. “I seem to remember you liked the taste of other parts of me, too.”

The man did a full-body shudder against her. Without her feeling more than a whoosh of a breeze, her skirt and undies were gone and she was laid down on top of her clothes and his torn shirt. Before she could gasp at the speed with which that happened, he was on his knees, her legs up on his shoulders, mouth set to the vibrating, slick core of her.

He licked right through her folds. Not experimentally, like before. Not hesitant, either. This was a claiming. And when she tossed her head back and arched into the touch, he did it again. Then again. He didn’t let up until she was a whimpering, hot mess. Not until her breathing started to hitch did he slow.

She took a deep breath, relaxing into the way he was lapping at her. “You’re a…fast study,” she panted.

She felt Airk’s smile against her flesh before he speared that questing tongue inside her. His groan of pleasure might as well have been a vibrator, hitting her just the right way.

With zero warning, her body tipped right over the edge. Her legs clamped around his head, and a shout of pleasure punched out of her, hands clawing at his hair as she came hard, riding his mouth and tongue.

He didn’t give her a chance to float down lightly, though, playing with her through every shuddering wave of pleasure. In a single, aggressive, hot as fuck move, he slid two thick fingers inside her.

“This feels like a dream,” he said. And Angelika could hear in his voice even more than the words that this time he was letting himself feel beyond the physical. His next words gutted her. “I do not want to wake up in my cell, alone, without you.”

“You will never be alone again,” she promised. And meant it.

With another groan, he set his mouth to her swollen clit, sucking and sucking and sucking as he moved his fingers inside her.

As though he were a man driven.

Or a dragon shifter finally letting himself be what and who he was. Because this moment went beyond desire. This was…feral, primal, and yet went deeper than that. Gods, she was into it.

At first, she could hardly stand the sensitivity, her hands kneading into his scalp and tiny cries pouring from her throat, but at the same time she didn’t want it to end.

But then…

“Airk.” His name tripped off her lips as the tension of desire gripped her again, building in her already languid muscles, building in her womb, building in the lines of her body.

He lifted his head, his lips covered in her juices, white-blue eyes so like hers aflame. “Say that again.”

Angelika tipped her head, through the haze of her own need seeing a deeper one inside of him.

She smiled and traced the lines of his lips. “Airk Azdajah.”

He shuddered. “I never thought to love the sound of my name. So many years, it was a tool of my enemies.”

Angelika cupped his face, lightly tugging at him so that he crawled up her body until she could press her lips to his and taste herself on him. “Airk,” she whispered. Then another kiss. “Airk.” Another. “Airk.” Then pulled back, looking him seriously in the eyes. “My Airk,” she said, the words a deliberate choice.

His eyes flared with that same soul-deep satisfaction from earlier, and he buried his face in the crook of her neck. At the same time, his hands left her to frantically divest himself of his pants. Only he was too impatient, just getting them to his knees. He suddenly reared back, up on his knees between her legs. His hand went to his cock, squeezing and stroking, the swollen head turning more purple with each stroke.

Needing to be part of this, Angelika batted his hand away and replaced it with her own, watching in fascination as her smaller fingers worked him. Silky hot skin over a steel rod, jutting from his body. Precum leaked out of the tip, and, curious, she brushed her thumb through it. He jerked in her grasp.

“I need to make you mine, Angelika Amon.”

“Yes.”

That was all they both needed. Airk laid her back down, laying between her splayed legs and positioning himself at her eager entrance. Then, in one strong yet beautifully gentle stroke, he entered her body.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

He shuddered above her, breathing harshly as though trying to hold himself back. “This is right,” she whispered.

Then, like before when he finally let go, he was pounding into her as though a dam had broken, and he was flooding her with everything he’d wanted. But this time, his gaze on her held a thousand emotions. And she reveled in every out-of-control thrust, his fervor only feeding her own. Her body slid into a hazy space where she was all feeling, all senses, all pleasure, and nothing else was important except the man in her arms.

Airk growled. “I want all of you.”

Yes.

Angelika tipped her head back and watched him, watched his face as he took her, as he built the pleasure they were reaching for together. All those angles were harsh and striking, his gaze on her almost adoring.

“You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” she whispered.

His face spasmed with something that might have been tenderness. “Gods, more,” Airk growled again.

The slap of his driven thrusts blended with the sounds of their harsh breathing. Pressure at the other entrance back there had Angelika gasping and looking over her shoulder.

Airk flicked her a glance full of questions, and she nodded, wanting more, too. More of him. She wanted him to claim every single part of her body and had every intention of doing the same to him in a thousand different mind-blowing, pleasurable ways.

Expression a cruel study of sensual need, he pressed a finger inside that un-breached place, pushing past the natural barrier as she breathed out and in. He gave her a second to adjust, then started pumping his hand in time to his hips. Angelika couldn’t stop the loud moan that stuttered from her. Full. She felt so full of him.

As though he was in every part of her.

Airk smiled, his chest rising and falling, and she could have stared at that for the rest of her life happily.

An emotion rippled over his features too fast to catch. “I am going to put my fire in you, and I want to watch your eyes when I do.”

She nodded frantically, undulating her hips. “Make me your mate,” she demanded.

Then kissed him. A kiss that he couldn’t doubt was her claiming him for hers. He’d held her off until now. She’d almost given up, despite knowing that they were right together. It hadn’t been one look. Not instant. It had been more like…gravity that kept reaching for her when she neared his orbit until she got tangled up.

Seeing what he’d gone through and the way he still struggled. Wanting to help him through that, even though he wouldn’t let anyone help him. The few times they’d talked had only made her want to know more. Know him.

Now here she was.

Airk grinned against her kiss but didn’t break it as he lifted her by the hips and slid into her body until she was once again gloriously full of everything he was. He guided her but let her set the pace, forehead to hers as though the connection of their souls was even more important than what they were doing with their bodies now.

When they were both breathing heavy and the sparkling, tingling hint of an oncoming orgasm rippled through her, he inhaled long and hard, a sound coming from his chest that sounded like a forge bellows, stoking his fire.

Then Airk stilled, every damn part of him.

Long enough that Angelika drew back, searching his face with a frown. Then her lips parted on a silent gasp as his skin rippled with white scales.

Suddenly, with his hands at her hips, he yanked her right off him, setting her on her ass on the forest floor. Then he jerked to standing, stumbling back a few steps as though she’d suddenly grown horns and a tail. And she whimpered as his face crumpled, then hardened.

“Don’t—”

She reached a hand toward him, but she was too late. The shift overtook him too fast. In seconds a massive, brilliant white dragon stood over her. Airk’s chest heaved and he shook his head once. Twice.

Then he spread his wings, though they trembled as though he was fighting himself. With a blast of wind from the downdraft, he leaped into the air, swiftly disappearing over the trees.

Leaving her alone. Unclaimed and unmated.