Chapter 4
We race across the eerie expanse of bleached white landscape.
My arms are locked tightly around Donovan’s broad torso, and I have my cheek pressed against his back.
The heat of his body radiates into my flesh as he gallops so fast that the land is just a blur.
“Don’t let go,” he calls, voice carrying clearly despite the wind. “Promise me you’ll never let go, Rose.”
His laugh rumbles through his barrel chest, and my mind flashes back to us goofing around in the Validus Vale lake, acting out Titanic.
“I promise, Jack. I’ll never let go!” I shout back.
We’re laughing—but I mean it. The words are a vow, a promise to myself and to him, my Donovan. I’ll never let him go again.
“Fuck, I love you,” Donovan says as he comes to a complete stop. “Doing OK back there?”
“Nowhere I’d rather be,” I tell him. Pressing my head against his hard back, I hear his mind. It hums loud and clear.
—My Tee-Tee, my baby-girl, she’s here—Fuck—Gotta get her back to Earth—Keep her safe—Shit, I can feel the heat of her pussy—
He turns in a circle, then glances over his shoulder, flashing me that perfect crooked grin. “Sooo,” he drawls. “Looks like I’ve got you on my own.” His grin is filled with mischief.
I loosen my death grip on his torso. “Do you think Alexis and Ludo are going to be safe with Cosmo? Maybe you should go get them too?”
Donovan shrugs. “They’ll be fine. I may have exaggerated the danger a little to get you on your own.”
Wah? I slap his arm. “So you don’t think Cosmo will go feral?”
“I doubt it. I was comfortably in control when I shifted. Don’t be mad with me, I just needed to have you to myself.”
Hmm, I guess I can’t be angry. My poor love has been alone for so long. In this moment, the others don’t matter. All that matters is my lovely Donovan.
The centaur kneels on the rocky surface, allowing me to slide down. “Nice dismount, babe. I’m going to change back now. Don’t freak out.”
I raise an eyebrow. “We are way past freaking-out time, Donovan Hart. You could even say that the horse has already bolted from the stable.”
He swats me on the butt, then moves his four legs away from me.
The air shimmers and shifts around him, like he’s dissolving into a cloud of a million fireflies.
There’s a wet, snapping sound, and within seconds, the hind and fore limbs disappear, and then— Donovan Hart stands before me, battered, bruised, and dressed in rags.
“How come you didn’t Hulk out of your clothes?”
“Fuck knows?” he shrugs, walking forward and taking my hand. “But I’m glad I haven’t spent the last four years naked, let me tell you. Also,” he digs a hand in his back pocket, “still got my wallet, though the photo of you is extremely, er, shall we say ‘used’ by now,” he smirks.
Gripping my hand tightly, he leads me towards a low ridge of boulders, maybe eight feet high. “Come on, I'll show you where I’ve made my crib—though it’s not exactly a dream home.”
Looking beyond it, all my laughter dries up. Hundreds, maybe thousands of stone-stacks stretch into the distance. Like the cairns people build with flat river rocks. Had that been his only entertainment?
Has he really been here for years?
The thought of my sweet Donovan enduring this all by himself is too awful, just too awful.
“Welcome.” He gestures to an area of pure white sand.
“How did you not give up?” I ask quietly, my heart breaking for him.
Donovan is silent for a long moment, looking out towards the horizon, then turns to face me.
“Wes is lost somewhere out here. I’d never leave him.
” His eyes soften as he draws me into his arms. “And then there was you. You were always my guiding light. Fuck baby, I dreamed of you over and over until I could imagine you were really here with me. You saved me.”
My breath catches in my throat for a moment before I let out a long sigh. “I wish I could have truly saved you.”
He holds me even tighter as his voice cracks. “You did. I’d have died without you.” Donovan looks so exhausted, and I can understand why. This place is draining.
“Kiss me, Donovan,” I say, pulling his face closer. “Kiss the real me.”
—Gods, I want her—need her—fill her pussy—
His thoughts release a gush that soaks my panties. “I want you too,” I pant. “Need you too.”
Donovan’s eyes narrow in laughter. “Little witch, it’s like you read my mind,” he smirks, cupping each of my butt cheeks.
I’ve zero intention of hiding my telepathy from Donovan. “There’s something I need to tell you, well, the truth is, I can hear other people's thoughts—I’m telepathic.”
His mouth parts in amazement, then a wicked smile curves on his lips.—So you can hear me when I say I want you to sit on my face until I drown in your pussy? I want to fuck you so hard—
Is it possible to die of desire?
“Yes I can hear you,” I growl at him. “Now kiss me.”
The moment his lips crash against mine, the world narrows down to this single point of contact, making my blood roar. The impossible, airless atmosphere pulses with magic, pushing me to a frantic, primitive urgency.
Claim him. Now.
Every atom in my body is being pulled to Donovan. I need his weight. I need his heat. I need him inside me so deep that we become one.
Our kiss continues; Donovan is greedy, needy, and demanding.
It makes me melt, the power of his need.
My need. I can’t stop stroking his bruised, bronze skin.
Donovan has always had that buff, fateball-player build, but his body is different now.
Thin and wiry, with muscles carved like stone on his chest and abdomen.
Heat builds in my core as Donovan’s length hardens against my stomach. “Baby, is this alright?”
I shrug off my sleeveless hoodie and throw it on the sand. “More than alright, it’s necessary. I need you to convince me that we’re together.” I’m panting as I stand to wriggle out of my orange cycle shorts. “Prove to me you’re alive. Please, Donovan. Make me feel it all.”
As Donovan’s hands circle my waist, I can feel them shaking. “Gods, it’s really you,” he whispers, sounding awestruck. “Your skin is so warm.” Another long groan leaves his throat and he pulls me back down to the sand. “Less talking, Tee, I’ve work to do.”
I groan as he slips a finger inside my panties. “Oh, Gods, baby,” he croaks, then circling his other hand around the small of my back, he hoists me straight onto his mouth.
His tongue makes just one single pass, and I think I might explode.
“Dono!”
My head spins and I can’t hold on, I don’t want to. “PLEASE!!” I disintegrate into a million atoms.
—Fucking heaven—Gods, I’ve got to fill her—
Still shuddering, I push back, sliding my hand down his torso and beneath his threadbare waistband. Precum leaks from his iron-hard cock.
“In. Me. Now,” I demand.
He grabs me and rolls us over. “I’ve dreamed of having you here, pressed down into this sand, a thousand times,” he murmurs, as goosebumps prickle on my skin, my pussy still pulsing with aftershocks. “So beautiful, baby-girl.”
I’m crushed beneath his weight and relish the feeling. Donovan’s cock hovers at my entrance, and I wriggle my hips. “Don’t wait,” I moan, “I want you in me now. Right now.” My legs hook around his body, and I feel his hard length against my apex.
His pupils blow as the space between us disappears. I don’t know myself, I’m an animal in the deepest, most desperate heat of my life. I want him buried inside me. I want to milk him for every drop of cum.
I have to.
Thankfully, Donovan slams himself into my pussy, at the same time sucking my nipple hard into his mouth. My hands scrape at his back. “MORE!”
Again and again, he thrusts full force inside me. I’m so full, and getting so fucked it makes my head spin, and my core convulse.
He moves his mouth to my neck, sucking and biting. “Fuckkk, baby, what are you doing to me, fuckkk, I can’t…”
His cock is swelling even larger, and I know his release is any second.
A feeling even more intense starts building in my body, a new sensation.
Indescribable. “Yes…” I hiss. “Yes…”
A strange magic swirls in my belly, down over my clit, then into the very point Donovan is pounding. It’s so much, so bright, so ecstatic.
The build crescendos, and an orgasm like I’ve never known racks my body.
My very existence.
“FUCCKKK,” Donovan yells, arching, shuddering, and groaning. “AHHHH!” Magic fizzes around, in us, exploding from every cell in my body.
“AHHHH!” I join him in screaming as I shatter into a million pieces.
Finally, the aftershocks wear off, and a profound peace falls over us both.
Donovan’s arms tighten around me. “I feel fucking amazing right now.”
I look up at the white expanse of the sky and grin like an idiot. “Me too.”
“More kisses, please,’ he says, turning me towards him.
“Wait…what the?” I sit up, then motion for Donovan to do the same. The dark shadows and haggard angles of his face have lessened. I can see my Donovan now.
Moving my gaze down, I see the bruises and scrapes on his body are healing.
Donovan looks down at himself, then runs a hand through his hair. “Shit, baby-girl. You, you fixed me.”
“Who me?” I reply, laughing but also a tiny bit freaked out.
“Yeah, you, baby. You’ve got some fucking power inside that magic pussy of yours.”
I laugh again, but something about his words rings true. I did feel a sensation inside me that was more than just amazing orgasms.
Donovan looks serious. “Tee, baby.”
“Yes?”
“I don’t know the right words, but like, you’re totally amazing. And the rest of my life is going to be by your side. We can’t be parted—not ever again. This is til death, no fuck that, this is for infinity.”
He looks at me so earnestly, like a knight pledging allegiance to his queen, and tiny hairs on my arms stand on end.
Donovan cups my cheek. “And you’ll be able to heal Wes if he needs it,” he says.
The thought of Wes, lost and hurt, snaps my thoughts back to worry mode. “Was he healthy when he…disappeared?”
“In full fighting shape. Wes and Max were fitter than fiddles,” Donovan tries to assure me, his thumb stroking my cheek. “This place hadn’t started wearing them down yet.”
“How exactly does this place wear you down?” I ask, a shiver crawling up my spine. “I mean,” I gesture to his chest, “you had all those injuries. What caused them?”
“Gods, Theo,” he sighs, his breath warm against my temple.
“I wish I could explain. There is nothing here. Nothing! But sometimes it feels like this land is crowded with a million other invisible souls. I’ll be minding my own business, and then wham, I’ll stumble.
Like I’ve tripped over someone. Or something. ”
He sighs, and I see the years of loneliness in his eyes. “I think we’re very close to another world, or reality, or something, and the veil between the realms is so thin, sometimes it hurts.”
“Oh, my love.” Had those dreams been my subconscious hearing his cries? When I slept in my basement room, was he there, but just through this weird veil?
“I spent several months just clawing at this non-existent atmosphere,” he tells me.
“Trying to puncture a hole in whatever was keeping me here.” Donovan’s lips twist into a wry smile, shrugging off the melancholy.
“But that’s all over. Now you’re here, we’ll go find the guys, then split to sweeter pastures. ”
“Yes. Yes, we will. We’ll do just that.” I have a burning certainty that we will find Wes, that we will find Maximus.
That we’ll all be safe.
Donovan tucks me firmly under his arm, and he lets out a massive sigh. “Tell me everything, baby. Seems like Cosmo is still being an asshole—but don’t worry, I’ll kick him in the dick.”
I’m enjoying that mental image when a sudden, earth-shattering roar echoes through the landscape. “What the? What now?”
My heart is almost pounding out of my chest.
I grab at my clothes and hurriedly start dressing as another sound reaches us, a low, rhythmic beating that vibrates the air.
“There!” Donovan bursts into uncontainable laughter. “Will you look at that!” he wheezes, pointing to the horizon. I follow his gaze, my breath catching in my throat. Swooping across the stark white plain is a creature of breathtaking, stunning, terrifying beauty.
A dragon.
“That, babe, if I’m not mistaken, is Cosmo fucking Drakeward.”
Cosmo? A golden dragon?
Of course he is.