“You are tight, sweet, and perfect, my dear. So no, I am no longer all right.”
Lucy let her arms slip from his neck, but her legs were still wrapped around him, and his groin, hot and hard, was pressed tight against her. “What should I do?” she whispered.
“Have a screaming orgasm, Lady Lucy.”
He circled his hips as he said it, stroking his long shaft within her. Her private place throbbed with need, her body ached with yearning. Amazing she could feel so much. She could feel the stroke of the head, the slide of his rod against incredible, sensitive places. He planted one sweet, sensual kiss after another on her lips, which kept her gaze locked with his.
Lucy watched a smile touch Greystone’s full, handsome mouth. Then groans deepened the lines framing his lips. His eyes glowed as if they were on fire, and his deep, throaty moans ... she adored them.
Heavens, she was moving with him. Rising to meet his thrusts. Lifting to bang her pubis to his and take him deep inside. Each slick stroke rubbed the taut head along the sensitive places inside her. And he angled his hips, so each collision of their hips left her little nub tingling.
She was weak with pleasure, yet driven to rock with him. She clung to him, arching her hips, panting. Her nipples had hardened, and each thrust brushed them against his chest. Her lips tingled from kisses, her nipples throbbed from swift brushes, her quim pulsed ... and fire raged in her, hotter than any she’d ever breathed as a dragon.
Oh God. The flames burst in her, and she heard wild moaning, and she shouted, “Oh Your Grace! Your Grace!”
Her cries blended with a harsh masculine groan. She opened her eyes to see his wide with astonishment. His hips banged hard against hers and he shuddered against her.
Oh. Oh, why hadn’t she thought of this? This was what happened when men found release. She felt hot and wet inside, very wet, but too weak to move. Too weak from pleasure to say anything. She was clinging to him, and her body still rippled and throbbed around him.
His seed had gone inside her. She might ... she might become pregnant. Why had she not thought of this? The ramifications of what she had done might haunt her forever—
“My dear Lady Lucy, I’ve never lost control so quickly before.” He kissed her forehead. “I’d intended a much longer bout.”
She was shaky, now, and her fingers gripped his strong biceps. She stared down, letting his chest fill her vision, for she couldn’t face his eyes right now. Sweat glistened on his straight, wide shoulders and on his smooth chest. His skin was pale, and with his powerful, well-defined muscles, he looked as though he had been carved from marble.
Still staring below his face, she managed to ask, “Does that mean ... are you pleased?” Pleased enough to rip up vowels? For what she had given up, what she had risked, surely she would achieve her goal.
“It is an auspicious beginning.” He took a deep breath. “Our fortnight may exhaust me.”
The duke was still speaking about her staying for fourteen days. Frustration and a sense of failure choked her.
“But first ...” he murmured huskily.
He suddenly moved down her body, kissing a trail down her stomach. His lips brushed across her dark nether curls. Then his tongue delved in between her curls to touch her nether lips, to touch her most private place, wet and sticky with her juices and his.
She squirmed on the bed. He was a rake and he knew the most scandalous things. But his tongue ... the plunges of his hot tongue were different from the thrusts of his shaft and teased her in a different way. She moaned helplessly. The tension built again, swirling inside her... .
She came again, her fingers stretching wide on the sheets, her legs weak. She sobbed with it. Then a fire seemed to explode inside her and wrap around her heart. Her skin tingled and felt as though it was moving. Changing.
Goodness, Lucy knew what was happening. She felt this way when she was going to shift into dragon form. When her bones moved and her muscles changed and her skin transformed to iridescent scales.
It couldn’t happen now. The duke had no idea what she really was. No one in London did. Her family had kept their secret for generations.
But how did she stop the shift? When that kiss, that one she’d been given years ago, had made her shift, she had run away. She hadn’t been able to stop the change. At least she had found refuge deep in the massive gardens of their hosts’ estate. Her change had happened in a wooded area, where no one could see.
Heavens, what was she going to do here and now?
Hades, she was shifting. Sinjin knew it—he had seen people shift from their human shape to dragon form before. Her body was rippling beneath him and her skin felt hot enough to burst into flame.
“You must let me go,” Lady Lucy cried softly. “I—I don’t feel well. I need to—to use the necessary.” She tried to push out from under him.
She was trying to hide what she was. She thought he didn’t know she was a dragon.
It suited him to let her think she had succeeded. He swiftly moved off the bed, then whisked her to her feet. “Behind the screen,” he said.
“Oh.” Perspiration beaded on her forehead. She had gone white. “I need privacy, Your Grace.”
“Of course.” He bowed, despite being naked. “Summon the maid when you are ready to dress. This will be enough for tonight. After you are ready, you will return home in an unmarked carriage, then gather your things to return for two weeks.”
“I—” Her muscles jerked. Sitting up, she hugged her bare chest tightly, as though she was trying to keep her body from flying apart. He read the strain in the face, in the way her muscles shuddered and jerked beneath her hands. Valiantly, she was trying to fight the shift, but it was obvious she couldn’t.
Sinjin’s nostrils flared as he scented the change in her smell. His entire body tensed, and his brain was hammering one message at him: Do your duty and destroy her when she becomes a dragon. You cannot suffer a dragon to live.
His hands clenched against his will, yearning to be wrapped around the hilt of a sword. He had vowed to slay dragons—it was not a vow he could walk away from... .
But he couldn’t hurt Lady Lucy Drake tonight. He had to let her go and wait for her to come back. Once she returned, and had agreed to spend a fortnight under his control, then he would start questioning her about his nephew.
“I will give you some privacy,” he said casually. He turned his back on her deliberately, for he saw how she was perspiring, and how her jaw was twitching and her muscles were popping under her smooth, satiny skin. He put his back to her as much for himself as for her.
He left and closed the secret door in the wall paneling. Using his preternatural hearing, he detected a smothered scream. It signaled that her body had changed—when the body transformed from mortal shape into the larger form of a dragon, it caused a great deal of physical pain.
Right now, he had a dragon in his house. By the code of his clan, he was obligated to slay her. But that would condemn his nephew to death.
Sinjin
