Chapter 19 Irena
IRENA
I don’t know what to do or say. Valen is staring at me—holding my gaze with his own as his big hand slides up and down his hard shaft.
I want to look away—I don’t want to be seeing this. But somehow my eyes linger on the sight of him slowly stroking his shaft, his fist sliding up and down the thick club of flesh.
He’s not quiet either—for some reason he keeps talking just like he was earlier.
“Fuck, baby—feels so fucking good,” he groans, looking into my eyes as he strokes. “Wish it was you touching me, though.”
“Stop that!” I say, but my voice comes out breathless. “Stop talking like that!”
“Like what—telling you how much I love the feel of your soft little hand on my cock?” he growls, raising his eyebrows. “Goddess, the only thing better would be your mouth…or your sweet little pussy.”
My mind is suddenly flooded with forbidden images, and I glare at him.
“Don’t…you can’t talk that way around me!” I protest.
“Why? Because you’re a pretty little Princess and your ears are too delicate?” he taunts me, smirking.
“I…I don’t have to listen to you,” I tell him. “I don’t have to watch you do…what you’re doing.”
“But I don’t see you looking away. Fuck!” he groans and then his whole body tenses and the huge shaft in his hand seems to swell even bigger. Then—to my surprise—it begins spurting something white and creamy all over his broad chest.
I watch, unable to look away, as spurt after spurt of cream paints his muscular body.
I have heard that when a man puts his male parts into a woman’s forbidden area, he deposits seed to make a baby grow, but I always imagined it would be the kind of seeds one plants in the garden.
What is this white stuff? And why is Valen making so much of it?
By the time he’s finished, he looks like he’s been splattered all over with white paint.
“Fuck…” he groans and collapses, head thrown back, against the back of the tub. Is he all right? He seems to be breathing hard. Did he reach that peak I was wondering about earlier? The one I’ve never quite been able to reach myself?
I try to push the thoughts away.
“If you’re quite finished, our breakfast is getting cold,” I say, using the frostiest tone I can manage.
Valen stirs and sits up in the tub.
“Right. Save me some,” he growls.
He washes the white stuff his shaft spurted off his chest and abdomen and then drains the water. Then he fills the tub again and uses the soap to wash his long, black hair.
“That’s fucking better,” he growls, when he finishes and is wringing the water out of his hair. “First time I’ve been completely clean in almost a year.”
He climbs out of the tub and goes over to stand in front of the fireplace, presumably to dry off. I try very hard not to stare at his firm, muscular buttocks and broad back.
Instead, I turn my attention to the food Maud brought us to eat.
There’s a large bowl of porridge studded with nuts and dried currents with a pot of honey and cream to sweeten it.
Also a large platter filled with fried sausages and rashers of bacon.
There’s crusty bread with fresh butter and fig jam to spread on it and a flagon of ale with two crudely carved wooden cups.
It’s plain, hearty fare and I know most of the Nobles in Court would turn up their noses at it. I, however, happen to like plain food. I’ve often wished we had more of it—especially during feasting days when the Head Chef tries to show off by cooking something exotic and awful.
I sit at the small table and help myself.
As soon as Valen finishes drying and pulls on the trousers Maud brought him, he joins me.
He hasn’t put on the shirt yet and there are beads of water on his broad, bare shoulders.
I think about telling him to dress before he sits at the table, but really—what are the odds he’d listen to me?
I have to choose my battles and besides, he’s not exactly hard to look at—though I hate to admit it.
He eats with the appetite of, well, a dragon. I’m glad I started first and got what I wanted because it’s clear he’s starving. I suppose changing into a dragon and then back to human again, not to mention flying all night over the Poison Desert, must work up an appetite.
Despite his obvious hunger, he has fairly good table manners.
He doesn’t slurp or chew with his mouth open and he uses the crude silverware the innkeeper has provided instead of eating with his fingers.
He also doesn’t belch—though he does sigh contentedly as he leans back in his chair after he finishes the meal.
“You want the last piece of bread?” he asks, nodding at the final piece, already slathered in butter and fig jam.
I shake my head. I’m quite full, though I’ve eaten less than a fourth as much as he has. Not surprising, I suppose, considering how big he is.
“Well,” he says, after polishing off the bread. “It looks like you’re going to have a harder time getting to the Sorceress than you thought, Princess.”
I stiffen in my chair.
“This wouldn’t be a problem if you’d flown me right to her stronghold, like you promised.”
“I did the best I fucking could—I barely got us past the fucking desert,” he growls, narrowing his eyes at me. “Your brother kept me half starved in that dungeon—you’re lucky I didn’t fall out of the fucking sky in mid-flight.”
His words make me uncomfortable, and I don’t dispute them. But I’m still not sure how I’m supposed to get to the Sorceress now.
“Anyway,” Valen continues, “It doesn’t seem to me that we’ll be able to find her from the air. It sounds like she’s got a spell on her stronghold—if Maud is right, we can only reach it by following the path.”
I try to suppress the relief I feel when I hear him say “we.”
“So…you’re coming with me?” I ask casually, taking a sip of ale to cover my anxiety.
He raises his eyebrows.
“Do I have a choice? You’re still wearing the ring, and I still have on this fucking collar. Besides, I swore I’d get you to the Sorceress and back again and we Drakes keep our word.”
“Then I guess we’re going on foot,” I say. “Taking the path through the forest.”
He shrugs, his broad shoulders rolling.
“Doesn’t seem to be any other way.”
“No, I guess not.” I look down at my empty plate, not sure what else to say.
I feel suddenly shy around him, though I don’t know why.
Maybe because of what I saw him doing in the bathtub and the way I had to touch him to wash him clean.
All of that was most improper and I hate him for it—or so I tell myself.
But still, I can’t get the picture of his huge shaft jerking and painting his bare, muscular chest with white cream out of my head.
Valen doesn’t seem to have the same worries I do, though. He gives a bone-cracking yawn and rises from the table.
“I’m beat, Princess. Time to bed down for the night. Or at least catch a few hours sleep.”
“It’s the middle of the morning,” I point out.
“The sun is too high—you’re right. Let’s draw the curtains.”
He gets up and does exactly that. Then he goes to the large four-poster bed and sits heavily on one side.
“What are you doing?” I protest. “It’s not proper for you to take the bed. You should sleep on the floor—it’s the only gentlemanly thing to do.”
“Good thing I’m not a fucking gentleman, then,” he growls. “Besides, we have to sleep in the same bed—it’s part of the rules of the ring and collar.”
“We do not!” I protest indignantly. But then I remember again the words of the old, ragged manuscript—“Be ye aware that the one who controls the beast must also clean him and rest with him nightly.”
A very unladylike curse rises to my lips. What am I going to do?
“Come on, Princess—if you don’t lie down beside me, neither of us will be able to sleep,” Valen growls crossly. “I’m fucking tired, get your luscious ass over here!”
“I…I cannot sleep in the same bed as a man I’m not married to,” I protest. “My reputation would be ruined if anyone found out!”
“Well, there’s no one from your precious Court here to see you,” he points out irritably. “Besides, I know you’re a virgin. I won’t touch you.”
I hang back.
“Do you promise?” I ask, my voice coming out small and uncertain.
I haven’t had to worry much about men trying to take advantage of me back home.
As I’ve said before, I’m considered much too tall and overly-curvy to be attractive.
But there was that one time with the Duke of Langerham.
He’d come from a neighboring kingdom to visit my father and when he got me alone, he tried to—
I push that memory to the back of my mind. I don’t want to dwell on the past—but I don’t want to repeat it either.
But Valen is clearly getting really impatient.
“I promise not to lay a single fucking finger on you,” he growls. “And even if I tried, you’re wearing the ring, and I have on the collar. You could order me off you or freeze me in my tracks like you did in the dungeon.”
Well, he has a point there. Though I’m not anxious to repeat the feeling of having a sharp stake driven into my eye, I’d take the pain over losing my virtue. I still remember my mother lecturing me about that.
“Remember, my darling,” she has often said to me. “Men can get away with almost anything, but a woman’s reputation is fragile—once your virtue is lost, it is lost forever and there is no bringing it back.”
But Valen is looking at me like a man who wants to do nothing more than just sleep after a long, arduous journey. And my full belly and a sleepless night are making me wish for the same thing.
I’m wearing the ring, I tell myself. I’m safe—it should be safe to lay beside him as long as I don’t touch him.
“Fine,” I say at last. “But I want the bolster between us.”
“Fine.” He takes the long, leather bolster from the head of the bed and lays it in the middle of the bed at once, creating a barrier between the sides. He does it so quickly it’s almost insulting. What about all those things he was saying earlier about my soft hands and mouth and…other areas?
Valen glares at me because I’m still hesitating.
“Now will you come to bed?” he demands.
“Yes,” I say primly. “But if you try anything, I’ll freeze you again.”
“The only thing I’m trying to do is regain my strength after being kept a prisoner for a year and flying over the fucking desert,” he growls.
At last, I relent and go to lie down beside him. I’m tense at first, but the moment I lay my head down, Valen turns on his side, away from me, and seems to relax completely.
He gives a deep sigh and—before I can even become anxious or worried—goes immediately to sleep.
I find that sleep is dragging at me as well. Should I give in to it?
Before I can answer the question, the darkness pulls me under and I know no more.