The labyrinthine chaos of this place vanishes, reduced to nothing but the circle of her arms around my shoulders, the searing cut of her fangs, the way her body presses and moves with every swallow, so eager to take. The scent of her is everywhere—sun-warmed skin and old magic and the faint, sharp sweetness of her blood mixing with mine in the air.
My blood. My magic. Shared freely.
Gwen makes a sound—somewhere between a moan and a growl—deep in her throat, reverberating against my skin. The sound makes my whole body vibrate with need, with the urge to take her and ruin her and make her mine in every way left to me. The old instincts, bred into dragons over centuries, rise fast and hot:possess, mark, burn, destroy.
She is not the first who has tried to taste the fire in me, but none have ever drunk so deep, or with such abandon. None have ever looked at me like I was the prey.
I will not let that stand.
With my hands on her waist, I hoist her higher, forcing her to straddle me where I sit, so her mouth is perfectly aligned with my throat and her body is pressed tight against every inch of me. She shudders at the contact, fangs digging deeper, and her thighs clamp around my hips, trying to wring every last drop from me.
I have to remind her not to drain me dry, not like a little magic can’t replenish my needs. She doesn’t know the extent of my magical essence. No one does, really. Centuries of knowledge untapped for all these years to make it seem like I’m an old, knowledgeable scholar who isn’t as wise as he should be.
That knowledge will become useful, though, especially in this labyrinth.
When she releases me, she needs a moment to breathe; the tension leaves her body as if she’s been keeping all of it in her limbs all this time.
Reasonable with what we’ve gone through thus far.
I kiss her temple. Then her jaw.
I drag my lips along the sharp angle of her cheekbone and down to the hinge of her jaw, tasting the salt of her sweat, the faint tang of blood. My tongue flicks out, gathering what is mine, and I feel her shudder again, this time in anticipation rather than hunger.
“Dragons are territorial creatures,” I murmur against her skin. “We love to leave marks.”
She laughs, or tries to, but it comes out as a gasp, the sound high and thin.
I bite her—not enough to break skin, but enough to send a spike of pain that she clearly enjoys, because she grinds herself against me with even more desperation, fangs scraping, tongue lapping at the blood that wells up.
“Mine,” I say with intention, unable to tame this nagging need to ensure she knows what my intentions are.Not fake or implied for simply entertainment. Communication is important to me, and its something I don’t play with. “And now you know what that means.”
Every kiss I leave behind ignites, dragonfire-style, a quick flare of pain that gives way to tingling, nerve-deep pleasure. Her skin heals almost instantly, damn her vampire resilience, but the red imprint of my mouth lingers, small and round and perfect—like a constellation of stars scattered across her throat and collarbone and shoulders.
She rips open my shirt with a violence that surprises even me, sending buttons scattering across the book-strewn floor. Her hands are everywhere at once—shoulders, chest, back, nails scoring my skin with the same hunger as her teeth. I return the favor, dragging her shirt off her shoulders, leaving her in a lacy black bra that barely contains her, the swell of her breasts straining at the edge, beads of sweat—or is it blood?—glistening at the hollow between.
I bite her again, just above her pulse.
She moans so loud I half expect the walls of this impossible place to come crashing in, but the maze holds, suspended in its own logic. She is nothing but sensation now, liquid and gasping and clawing, as if feeding from me has set her on fire rather than satisfied her hunger.
My hands slip down, fingers hooking under the waistband of her pants—tight, slick, painted-on like the rest of her uniform—and I yank. She lifts her hips, obliging, and I strip them off, leaving her in nothing but black lace and the red handprints I’ve left all over her thighs.
She is trembling, but she’s not afraid.
If anything, she looks like a woman at the edge of transformation, on the verge of changing her own nature. She looks at me—really looks, eyes wide and glowing in the low, hellish light—and bares her fangs with a wicked, delighted grin.
“You’re supposed to be the teacher,” she says, voice thick and hoarse, and how dangerous it is to fall into the realms of her foreplay, making me hard just by the thought of us really being professor and student.Scholar and apprentice.“But all you’ve done is let me take.”
I lean in, so close our noses touch, and say, “That was just the lesson plan. The extra credit, darling, is mine.”
I lift her, spin her, and lay her out on the floating desk behind us. I’m beginning to realize the environment seems to be aiding in whatever this underlying fantasy is unraveling to be.
The force of her landing makes the whole construct shudder, but it does not give, suspended as it is by whatever warped physics this dimension obeys. Her hair spills around her head, silver and wild, her skin marked and glistening in the firelight.
I admire her for a long moment—naked except for bra and underwear, body mapped by my own mouth, her hands gripping the edges of the desk so hard her knuckles pale.
“You like to be bitten,” I say, letting my voice roughen, letting the dragon bleed through the scholar. “But you’ll like this more.”
I bend and press my lips to her hip, just above the edge of lace. I bite—not gentle now, but hard, claiming, leaving another mark among a thousand. She arches off the desk, the motion so violent it nearly buckles my arms.
