Chapter 4 #3
I did, finding him kneeling at the pool's edge again, cloth in hand but eyes fixed somewhere past my shoulder. "Your arms," he said.
He washed my shoulders first, the cloth sliding over skin with reverent care.
Every touch was deliberate but not lingering, medical rather than sensual.
But my body didn't understand the distinction.
Each pass of the cloth sent sparks through me, building heat that had nothing to do with the water's temperature.
When he moved to my arms, I saw how his hands trembled slightly.
Through the bond I felt him cataloguing every response—the way my breath hitched when he touched the sensitive skin of my inner wrist, how my nipples had hardened to peaks just below the water's surface, the flush spreading down from my face to my chest.
"You're fighting yourself," I observed, voice barely steady.
"If I don't fight, I'll take what you're offering." His eyes finally met mine, and the hunger there made my stomach flip. "You know that your body isn't ready for what the bond would do. What I would do."
His fingers brushed my collar where the mica marks pulsed with their own light, and I gasped, hips bucking involuntarily. The sensation was electric, like touching a live wire that somehow delivered pleasure instead of pain.
"Please," I whispered, not even sure what I was begging for. "I need—Daddy, please—"
The word slipped out like it had been waiting there all along, natural as breathing. His control almost broke—I saw it in the way his whole body went rigid, in the flare of his nostrils, in how those crystalline veins suddenly blazed with light.
"We can't," he said roughly, though his hand hadn't moved from my collar, thumb tracing one of the mica marks.
Each touch sent cascades of pleasure through me, building toward something that felt too big for my body to contain.
"It would tear you apart, literally. The bond would channel too much through your human body. "
"That's what I want," I breathed, barely recognizing my own voice. "To be torn apart and remade."
He pulled back then, eyes blazing with a mix of hunger and something that might have been fear. "Little brat," he growled, and heat flooded through me at the words—not anger but a kind of fond exasperation mixed with barely controlled desire.
"You don't know what you're asking for," he continued, standing abruptly.
Distance, he needed distance, I could feel it through the bond.
"The bond at full strength, channeled through physical union—it would remake you, yes.
But the process . . ." He shook his head.
"You could die. Your human body might not survive the transformation. "
"Then make me stronger first," I said, surprising myself with the steadiness of my voice. "That's what these three days are for, aren't they? To prepare me?"
He stared at me for a long moment, and through the bond I felt him warring with himself. The part that wanted to protect me from all harm, even from myself. And the part that wanted to give me everything I asked for, everything I could take, and then more.
"Get out of the pool," he said finally. "You're clean enough, and if you stay in there looking at me like that, making those sounds, calling me—" He cut himself off, jaw clenching. "Out. Now."
The command in his voice made my body obey before my mind could process, and I found myself standing on the warm stone, water streaming down my naked form. He wrapped a towel around me with careful hands that didn't linger, though I felt how much he wanted them to.
"Tomorrow," he said, voice rough with promise and restraint. "Tomorrow we'll explore more. Tonight, you rest. Let your body adjust to what's already changing."
Through the bond I felt the truth—I was changing. The mica marks weren't just decoration but transformation beginning, my human flesh slowly adapting to hold power it was never meant to contain. Three days might be enough. Or it might kill me trying.
That night, he sat on the floor beside my bed—not in the chair that waited empty in the corner but on stone, as if furniture was too soft for penance.
His back rested against the wall, long legs stretched out before him, and in the darkness his crystalline veins gave off the faintest light, like stars trapped beneath skin.
Pebble had curled at my feet, a warm weight that vibrated with each snoring breath.
The little drake had apparently decided I belonged here now, at least temporarily, and his acceptance carried more weight than it should.
Through half-closed eyes, I watched him shift in his sleep, wing twitching as he dreamed whatever ancient dragons dream.
"Are you awake?" Garruk's voice was different in the darkness—softer, less guarded. The night seemed to strip away centuries of control, leaving something rawer.
"Yes," I whispered, not trusting my voice at normal volume.
"Would you like to hear how the mountain was born?"
The question was so unexpected, so gentle, that my throat tightened. "Yes."
His voice rumbled through the darkness, finding that register that made my bones resonate. "First there was fire, before the earth had memory. The world's heart was molten then, all potential and no form. Liquid stone pushed up from the core, seeking sky it had never seen."
I closed my eyes, letting his voice paint pictures in the darkness.
He described how the mountain grew over millions of years, each eruption adding layers like pages in a book written by time itself.
His hands moved as he spoke, and I could just make out the gestures in the faint light from his veins—shaping air as if it were stone, showing me the slow dance of geological time.
"This stripe here," he said, and somehow I knew exactly which band of quartz he meant, though I couldn't see it.
"From an underground sea that dried before humans walked.
The pressure of all that water, compressed over eons, transformed into crystal.
And this band of obsidian—from a volcano that burned for a century, rivers of lava cooling into glass sharp enough to cut starlight. "
Tears slid silently down my face—not from sadness but from the overwhelming sensation of being cared for.
No one had ever told me a bedtime story.
My mother had died when I was four, taking her lullabies with her.
The warrens didn't have time for stories that didn't teach survival.
But here was this ancient being, speaking geology like poetry, his voice wrapping around me like the blanket I clutched.
Through the bond I felt his awareness of my tears, the way they changed my breathing.
His desperate need to comfort crashed into me like a wave—so strong it made me gasp.
He wanted to reach out, to brush them away, to hold me until the overwhelming feelings passed.
But he held himself still with effort I could feel in every fiber of our connection.
"Each layer tells a story," he continued, voice roughening slightly.
"Catastrophe and creation, destruction and rebirth.
The mountain remembers everything—every trauma that shaped it, every moment of cooling peace.
Like us, perhaps. Layers of experience, some sharp as obsidian, some precious as quartz. "
His hand lifted, hovered in the space between us, then clenched into a fist that dropped back to his lap. The struggle was visible even in the dimness—need warring with restraint, desire fighting against honor.
"You can touch me," I whispered. "Just holding. Please."
"I can't." The words came out strained, pulled from somewhere deep. Through the bond I felt the truth—he was terrified that if he started touching me, he wouldn't stop. That three days of control would shatter in an instant, and he'd take what we both wanted despite the danger.
"Then let me touch you," I said, already moving before the words finished. My hand slid across the space between us, finding his thigh first, then moving with instinct more than thought.
Under the soft fabric of his pants, I found him—the incredible heft of his cock, hard and warm and so much larger than anything I'd imagined. My fingers could barely span the width, and the length... gods, the length of him made my insides clench with want and intimidation in equal measure.
He jerked away like I'd burned him, the movement so sudden that Pebble startled awake with an indignant chirp.
But through the bond, I felt the truth of his reaction—not disgust or anger but want so intense it nearly brought him to his knees.
He wanted my touch, wanted to thrust into my grip, wanted to show me exactly how much my small hand affected him.
"Sleep," he commanded, and this time the word carried weight that pressed me back into the pillows. Not magic exactly, but authority that my body couldn't refuse.
He stood with visible effort, each movement deliberate and controlled.
Through the bond I felt what that control cost him—like holding back an avalanche with bare hands.
His cock strained against his pants, and I could see the outline of it in the faint light, could smell his arousal mixing with stone and storm.
"I'll be right outside," he said, moving toward the door with steps that seemed to require conscious thought. "If you need anything—"
"I need you," I said, the words escaping without permission.
He paused in the doorway, one hand gripping the frame hard enough that I heard stone creak. Through the bond came a wave of hunger so intense it made me arch off the bed, seeking contact that wasn't there.
"Three days," he said, more to himself than to me. "We agreed to three days."
Then he was gone, though I felt him just beyond the door.
Sitting on the floor again, back to the wall, fighting urges that had been dormant for centuries.
I could feel his hand moving to his cock through our connection, gripping himself through fabric, trying to ease the ache I'd caused.
But he stopped himself with a groan I felt more than heard, hands clenching into fists as he chose suffering over release.
I lay in the darkness, body thrumming with unsatisfied need, the phantom weight of him still in my palm. The mica marks on my collar pulsed with their own rhythm, synchronized with my heartbeat, with his heartbeat, with the mountain's ancient pulse.
Tomorrow was day two. We'd already nearly broken on day one.
Pebble settled back at my feet with a sound that might have been disapproval or amusement. His ancient eyes caught mine in the darkness, and I could have sworn he winked before tucking his head under his wing.
Sleep seemed impossible with every nerve ending alive and wanting. But eventually, exhaustion won. I drifted off to the sound of Garruk's breathing beyond the door, to the feeling of him standing guard not over territory but over something infinitely more precious and infinitely more fragile.
Three days to decide if I could survive becoming his.
Three days to discover if he could survive having me.