Page 33 of River Dragon’s Song

“Yes.”

“Then I don’t want to waste today.”

He took her down to the river. He didn’t know why, only that it felt right. He took her hand and led her out of the hollow and through the gardens, past the pools and the vines and the heavy dark fruit. He brought her to the place where the river ran out of the gardens and into the deep channels beyond. The water was wide and slow there, and warm from the gardens. It ran gently over a long shelf of smooth stone that sloped down into the shallows. The moss grew thick and soft along the edge. The light from the walls shimmered on the moving water in ripples of blue and green.

It was the place he loved most in all the river. Until now, it had been his alone. She looked around, and then at him, and he saw that she understood.

She undressed him first, although there was very little to take off. She untied the vine belt from around his hips and let it fall. Then she stepped back and unfastened her grey covering. She let it slide from her shoulders, and everything beneath it, until she stood in front of him in the soft green light with nothing between them.

He looked at her, and the want rose up inside him so fiercely that his vision blurred.

“Are you sure?” he asked, and his voice came out as a growl.

She smiled at him, slow and warm, and stepped close enough that her breasts brushed against his chest.

“I’m sure,” she said. “I was sure two nights ago, you stubborn, impossible dragon. I’ve been sure for days. I’m sure now.”

He didn’t know the last word she had called him. He didn’t care. He caught her face in his hands and kissed her. This time, he didn’t hold anything back.

He kissed her deeply until she was clinging to him, until her fingers were digging into his shoulders and her breath was coming in short, sharp gasps against his mouth. He lowered her onto the moss at the edge of the water and followed her down. He kissed her throat and her collarbone and the soft curve of her breast. He had learned her so well already. He knew where to touch her and how, and he used every bit of it. He made her gasp and arch and moan and whisper his name, over and over, in that soft broken voice that made his scales burn

When he slid his hand between her thighs she was already wet and hot and ready for him. She pulled him down to her with a desperate little sound.

“Please,” she whispered. “Korrak, please. I want you.”

He braced himself above her on his arms. His body was burning, and his cock had slid free of its sheath, heavy and aching, and he was shaking with need. But he made himself look down into her eyes and wait. She reached down between them and took hold of him firmly, and guided him to her, and he pushed slowly inside.

She was so hot and tight around him that he couldn’t breathe. He felt every ridge of him sink into her, one by one, and watched her face as each one made her gasp. Her eyes flew wide and her lips parted on a long, shuddering moan. She wrapped her legs around his hips and pulled him deeper, and deeper still, until he was buried inside her to the hilt, and the flared base of his cock was pressed tight against her.

For a moment neither of them moved. They lay there, joined, staring at each other. Her heart was pounding wildly against his chest, and his scales burned. What he felt was so enormous that he didn’t have a name for it in any language.

“Oh,” she breathed. Her eyes were wet. “Oh, Korrak.”

He began to move slowly, taking long, deep strokes, and she cried out every time his ridges dragged inside her. He watched her face, and he listened, the way he always did. He found the angle that made her nails dig into his back, and the rhythm that made her hips rise up to meet him. He learned how deep she wanted him and how hard, and he gave it to her. And when she begged him for more, breathless and wild beneath him, he gave her that too.

The low rumble was rolling helplessly out of his chest in a steady growl. His tail had curled around her thigh, holding her against him. Her cries echoed off the stone and out across the water, and the river carried them away into the dark.

He felt her tightening around him. He felt her body tense and tremble, and he drove into her deeper and harder, and she cried out his name and she came apart beneath him. Her body clenched around him in long, hard pulses that nearly took him with her. He held on desperately, with his teeth gritted and his arms shaking, and he watched her face as she shattered. He had never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

Then she opened her eyes, dazed and glowing, and she looked up at him and whispered, “Your turn.”

His control vanished. He drove into her hard and deep, trying to prolong the moment, but then the pleasure tore through him so fiercely that he threw back his head and roared. His release went on and on, wave after wave of it, pouring out of him and into her, until there was nothing left inside him but her. And as it took him, the word that had been waiting for so long spilled out at last.

“Mine,” he groaned against her throat. “Mine. Mine.”

Her arms tightened fiercely around him. She turned her head and pressed her lips to his ear.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yours.”

Afterwards, they lay in the warm shallows. He had carried her down into the water because she was too boneless to walk. He had settled them both on the smooth sloping stone where the river ran only a few fingers deep. The current flowed gently around them. She lay sprawled across his chest with her cheek on his shoulder and her legs tangled with his, and every so often she made a small, contented sound and pressed a lazy kiss to his skin.

Neither of them said anything about the drill. He could still feel it faintly. The slow, steady pulse came through the stone beneath his back, faint and patient. She couldn’t feel it, and he was glad. He didn’t want anything to reach her here. Not today, of all days.

He stroked her hair and watched the light ripple across the water, and after a while, without thinking about it, he began to sing. It was quiet at first, a low hum deep in his chest. He didn’t know where it came from. It wasn’t the lonely song he had sung into the dark for so many nights, and it wasn’t the song he had sung with her in the gardens. It was entirely new. It rose out of him slowly, a few notes, and then a few more. It was warm and deep and a little sad, and it seemed to reach for something. Then it faltered and stopped, as if it had come to a ledge and couldn’t find the way down.

He tried again, and the same notes came. They climbed and reached and stopped in the same place, unfinished. Around them, the water moved gently. Small rings spread across the shallows, trembling outwards from where they lay. They rippled out to the edge of the stone and faded, and then, as he sang the notes again, they came back.

She lifted her head drowsily. She looked at the rings on the water, and then at him, her eyes soft and curious in the green light.