“I’m afraid that won’t be possible. He’d be more than willing to fight you, but he’s my captive.”
Your what?Aster mouthed, managing not to say it aloud. Shock and relief had him clutching the sides of the ladder for dear life as the world spun around him.
“Your what?” Fredmund asked blankly, blinking.
“He offered himself to me as tribute in exchange for my hospitality, which makes him my captive,” Corin said, and shrugged. Aster sagged down a little more, blowing out a long breath. He wouldn’t have to go. Not right now, anyway. He wouldn’t have to go. “I’m a dragon, after all, and this is my dread lair, and so on. Whatever, he’s staying until someone defeats me. So again, are we going to fight, or are you going to bugger off?”
Oh, fuck. Aster had to lean his head against the wall again to support himself and keep from falling off the ladder as he shook with silent laughter. Corin’s indifferent, sardonic tone made the whole affair ridiculous, and made Lord Fredmund ridiculous too—but no one could argue with a dragon conducting his draconic affairs in his own way on his own land, no matter how offensive that dragon might be. Not only was that part of the well-established agreements between dragons and human authorities, but you had to be a fucking idiot to try.
“I never,” Fredmund gasped. “You—sir, I think you mock me!”
“Not yet, but I’m willing. If you want to fight after all, I’d be happy to offer my honest opinions on your swordplay until I get bored and skewer you. That ought to take at least a minute, possibly two.”
Aster managed to get himself under control and peeked out again. Corin lifted his sword, waggling the tip suggestively, and Aster had to clap a hand over his mouth to suppress another giggle.
Fredmund had turned an alarming shade of red, and the hand holding his reins had clenched into a tight fist. His horse tossed his head and snorted, clearly sensing his master’s mood.
“You know,” Fredmund said loudly, “Lord Aster’s neither pretty nor amusing. I don’t understand how the Cezannes produced him, frankly, nor how you’re tolerating him. You know damn well I’d be doing them a favor by taking him on, though he obviously doesn’t have any family feeling. And perhaps you’re enjoying their discomfiture?” Aster winced. He hadn’t really thought of it that way, but Corin might indeed be getting some pleasure out of seeing the Cezannes humiliated. Fredmund added, “He’s not worth my time and trouble, though I may return and defeat you if I change my mind, of course.”
For a moment silence fell, broken only by the faint, distant cry of a raptor far up above the mountainside. Aster wished it’d swoop down and carry off Fredmund’s ugly hat, the son of a bitch.
And then Corin chuckled, low and mellow. Fredmund went from red to purple. “I can reasonably expect to live another three hundred years, possibly four,” Corin said. “Even so, I doubt I’ll live to see that day, Lord Fredmund. Enjoy your ride down the mountain.”
He lowered his sword, turned his back on the gasping, seething Fredmund in a pointed display of unconcern, and strolled back through the gate, shutting it firmly behind him.
ChapterSixteen
Aster stared as Corinlifted the bar and set it back into its cradle. He kept staring as Corin strode back down the corridor and around the corner, disappearing from Aster’s sight. He couldn’t seem to move, frozen there at the top of the ladder—with his cock rock hard.
Well. That motivated him to climb down, anyway, though it made the process a bit awkward. He put his feet on the floor right as Corin returned to the gate room, expression so tightly controlled Aster didn’t have any idea what he was thinking.
He had a thousand questions he wanted to ask, many of which he also needed the answers to in order to plan his next move, and possibly to plan the rest of his life.
But only one sprang urgently to his tongue.
“Have you washed up since yesterday?” Aster demanded.
Corin stared, blinked, and said, “Washed up?”
Good God, people could be so frustrating. “Washed. Soap and water. Bathed.” A horrible thought struck him. “Dragons do bathe, don’t you? I mean, it doesn’t douse your flames, or—”
“No, of course we bloody well bathe, what the fuck are you on about? We have to talk, and I need you to take this seriously!”
Corin’s rumbling growl and the way he crossed his arms and glared had always had this effect on him, he realized. Only he’d never connected the pounding of his heart and his knees going wobbly with a desperate desire for Corin’s cock.
“Did you bathe last night, though? Or this morning?” Aster asked again, doggedly insistent. It didn’t matter how annoyed Corin became, or how serious he wanted to be, Aster would get his answer.
Corin rolled his eyes. “Yes, when I came back from the village. Why the hell do you—oh, fuck, that’s why, fuck,” he said, as Aster dropped to his knees right then and there, his hands already reaching up to push Corin’s shirt out of the way and busy themselves with his buttons. “Aster, this isn’t the time, and you don’t have to.”
That last sounded incredibly, overwhelmingly unconvincing, and it was Aster’s turn to roll his eyes, even though he was practically panting with the need to have Corin fucking his throatnow.
“I thought I was your captive,” he said, struggling with the last button. “Your tribute. That I’d offered myself to you, and by the way, you made that sound absurdly suggestive, when Fredmund gets back and tells the story of what happened my reputation won’t be worth the paper that decree’s written on.”
“That’s the problem, we need to—oh fuck,” Corin said, in tandem with Aster’s, “Oh, yes, please,” as the trouser button yielded at last and Corin wrapped a big hand around the back of Aster’s head and pushed his face against Corin’s shaft. “Mmm.”
Corin groaned as Aster rubbed his cheek against his cock like a particularly slutty cat, started cursing as he nuzzled down and licked at the base, and then curled over Aster’s head and let out a gut-punched gasp as he mouthed all the way to the top and wrapped his lips around the head.
God, that was satisfying, the way Corin’s hand clenched in his hair, the growls he made as Aster flicked those two ridges with the tip of his tongue over and over again, the tension he could feel in that big body.
