22. Aurelia
Chapter 22
Aurelia
“ S hut it off, you stupid girl.” Xander’s voice is a dragon’s rumble.
“When this is so fun?” I reply in turn.
In truth, the sultry coils of lust slide through my body like sexy dancers. I haven’t had all that many heats, and I’m still getting used to the sensation. That cold, calculating great white shark in me recognises that this feeling is heightened both because of the drugs and that I’ve been deprived of any sensation for so long.
Everything is hitting all at once, and the only thing keeping my own self at bay is the shark currently holding me?—
“Cold,” Solomon says after taking my tympanic temperature with a handheld device. “She is far too cold.” He feels my forehead with the back of his hand.
Xander looks up from his phone. I think he’s trying to distract himself from my scent. “Aren’t serpents supposed to be cold-blooded?”
“This is no serpentine magic.”
Xander stares at me and I level him a stare back. He looks warm. The blood under his skin thrums with delicious heat. With great purpose, I allow the shark to recede, allowing seductive warmth to fill my body once again.
My head tilts back, my back arching as I close my eyes, feeling the full power of my desire speed through my limbs like bullet trains.
“If she’s in heat now,” Solomon says, wiping the sweat off his own forehead. “The king will want the event in her next cycle, which makes it three weeks. No more, so that she is ovulating for the first attempt.”
“Right,” Xander says tightly. But instead of his voice drawing away, like I’d imagined, the cursed dragon’s voice strays closer.
“And she will require extra security due to these extra pheromones,” Solomon says. “It would be wise to lock her up again.”
A chair scrapes, and all that hot blood sits next to me. “My room is the most secure lodging after these dungeons. She cannot return to solitary.”
Cold fluid begins to travel into my hand, where they have begun the drip. I breathe deeply, the flood of lust overcoming my thoughts. My left hand slides down my stomach and towards the apex of my thighs, where I might gain some relief?—
“None of that.” Xander snatches up my wrist and pins it down to the side of the bed, his skin hot. “Didn’t anyone teach you any manners?”
“I’m sure you will,” I purr, my eyes still closed against the too-bright lights as I register the feeling of his skin against mine.
That broken part of me wails in agony. There is no bond here as there should be. No mate to be found here as there once was. My anima screams for the other pieces of our soul.
Quite suddenly, the cotton wool that had filled my mind in sustained isolation clears like clouds parting for the sun.
“You’ve gotten hard for me once,” I say. “Once that I know of, anyway.” I’d felt it that time Damien Agnis had locked our class in a cage filled with water and we’d asked Xander to break us out. I’d picked the lock of the obsidian shackles Xander was wearing, but in order to do that in the cramped cage, I’d had to straddle his thigh.
I’d loved and hated every part of that moment. It had been the validation I’d needed. Xander didn’t find me disgusting at all. It was quite the opposite.
Every heat I’d had, he’d made himself scarce, and now…he had no choice but to experience it.
“Does it affect your cursed, blackened soul?” I pant. The rest of the room quietens. “Or are you too far gone down the path to hell?”
“You’re lucky I didn’t kill you, Snake Spawn ,” comes the deep drawl. “Just lucky that you’re more useful to everyone alive.”
I hate that I desire him even now. Hate that his voice makes my stomach flutter, that it makes me want to run my fingers along his bare skin and lower still.
“They’d never let you live that down,” I whisper. “They’d make your life a nightmare.”
“They can try,” he scoffs with flaming arrogance. “They’d never succeed.”
I laugh then. A hacking rasp that could be taken for sexy. “Your dragon powers know when other people are lying, but do they know when you’re lying to yourself?”
“Tape her mouth shut.”
My eyes fly open and I immediately regret it. Cringing against the pain of the light, I choke. “What?”
“We need to feed her first,” Solomon says carefully.
“This was supposed to break her, serpent .” Xander is standing now, his voice rising. “You fools with your bloated educations and useless serpent magic have no fucking idea what you’re doing.”
I smile where I lie. There’s a little glucose in this drip; I can tell by the new energy in my veins and it feels rather nice.
“I have half a mind to fire you and instate a new team,” Xander continues angrily.
“But my lord—” Solomon starts.
“Be quiet, reptile,” Xander snarls. “Your incompetence is astounding. These so-called experiments are a farce. I’ll be speaking to my father about this.”
The scientists blubber their protestations and explanations, but I can tell Xander is at his tether’s end when he plucks the IV bag off the pole and all but snatches me off the bed. “I’ve had enough of this,” he says loudly. “She’ll be in her cage in my room, and when I am ready, I will bring her back.”
There is no kindness in his touch, and I feel like nothing more than a bundle of clothes in his large arms as he hauls me back to his room. I take the opportunity to indulge in his fireball scent. Oh so angry. Oh so riled up.
Up many stairs, passing through many corridors, I hear the mutterings of the estate’s staff. Eugene follows us at a quick pace, no doubt causing some of the stir. Xander appears to be ignoring him.
When we get back into his room, Xander kicks the door shut behind him and I giggle.
“I’m a new bride,” I say breathily, sweeping my arms around me. “Brought home by her husband for their first night. Ready to be ravaged!”
Xander swears under his breath before he sends me tumbling into my cage, locking it shut with a definitive clang and hanging my IV bag off the top of the cage. Eugene speeds into the bathroom and closes the door with his beak.
But I am not deterred.
“Hot,” I mumble, tugging at my dress. “So hot.” I pull the annoying material off in one movement, sighing in relief as the room’s cool air strokes my bare breasts and stomach. I flop onto my back.
I let my head swing to the right where Olly the butler is suddenly standing open-mouthed. I flash him a lazy-grin.
“Out!” Xander commands. “Get out! Do not return!”
Olly sprints out of the room.
“Why’d you send him away?” I say lazily, bending one knee and rubbing up my thigh. “The servants are nice to me.”
“They don’t understand these things,” Xander snarls, pacing his room. “And I can’t have you seducing my butler.”
I sit up with interest. Excitement. “You think I could do that? Seduce him?”
Xander runs a hand through his hair and mutters to himself, “You could seduce a fucking tree.”
Well, that’s news to me. My brows shoot up, and when the big nasty dragon realises I heard him, he scowls and points a finger. “Don’t get any ideas. I might have to shut down the estate because of you. I have a fucking wedding in a week’s time.” He begins pacing again.
“A wedding?” I frown. “Whose?”
He freezes before pinching the bridge of his nose. “I need to fucking fly.”
“Yeah,” I sigh, stroking my arms as if I see the feathers under my skin. So soft. So smooth. “That does sound nice.”
“Shut up, Spawn.”
“It’s not my fault your voice turns me on.”
He whirls around to stare at me, his face twisted in fury.
“Don’t let anyone see you like this,” I say sagely. “It’ll ruin your reputation completely.”
Xander’s entire face darkens. “How many days left?”
I shrug, cupping a breast as I do, rolling my nipple under my palm. “There were no days in that place, so I don’t know. I can’t even tell when it started.”
“Shit.”
“Wait,” I say, gripping one of the bars of my cage. “Is your new wife going to sleep in here with us?”
Xander’s claw clenches over and over again as his gaze shifts to the bed.
“You should just breed me instead—” I clap my hand over my own cursed mouth. “Sorry, that’s the heat speaking,” I say, voice muffled. Dramatically, I flop back down onto my blankets, rolling until I’m face down so that I might try to smother myself. But I don’t even realise that I’m arching my back and presenting my pussy to him until I’m waving my ass in the air.
I gasp and flip over and find Xander staring in pure and utter shock. He’d seen everything, no doubt, pink, dripping pussy and all.
“I can’t deal with this,” I choke, pulling a blanket to cover myself before throwing it back off. “This is fucked. You rejected me. You’re keeping me in a cage.”