The Princess' Dragon Lord by Mandy Rosko Page B

stay with the fae. You need not
leave your people for me. I will stay.”
    “ Sakkra? ”
    Diana was jolted out of the memory by a
gentle shake of her shoulder.
    She turned her head. Azoth was watching her,
more of that worry she was becoming used to on his face.
    “Are you well?”
    She smiled at him, more of her memories
becoming clearer, fitting properly together, and the emotions that
she'd felt at the time coming with them.
    He'd been planning to stay for her. He was
going to leave his home so that she could keep hers. She hadn't
realized she'd been holding her wedding dress until she clutched it
tighter to her chest, hugging it, and the happy memory it came
with, closer.
    “I love you,” she said.
    Stunned pleasure washed over his face. He
smiled then and ran his fingers through her dark curls. “And I you.
What did you see?”
    “Us. You were telling me that you were going
to stay with the fae.”
    He nodded, holding her close. She came
easily, absorbing his warmth and letting it spread throughout her
body, lulling her.
    “Ah, yes. You should not offer me so much
gratitude for that. I had been shivering like a mouse under a cat's
claws as I contemplated making such a decision, and nearly
convinced myself not to do so many times before telling you my
final plans.”
    She put her arms around his back, wishing she
could just disappear within him. “I still appreciate it.”
    She pulled her hands back and inched them
between themselves, down low until she found the strings of his
breeches. His nostrils flared at her actions, his eyes becoming
bright like fire.
    “I do not think I can be gentle with you, Sakkra .”
    The last time he hadn't been gentle had been
amazing. “Good. Kiss me,” she said, dropping the wedding dress to
be forgotten between them.
    He did, swooping down hard and hungry,
consuming her mouth and opening her lips with his tongue.
    She was out of breath within seconds.
    His hands came around her back and gripped
her ass with such a hard pressure she knew he would leave behind
fingerprints on her flesh. It hurt, but the amusement of having his
hand prints on her butt prevented her from so much as uttering an
ouch.
    That, and the ache that built inside her for
him was too much to ignore, and she was forgetting all about being
gentle as well as her fingernails clawed at his back, pressing in
and pulling on flesh.
    Azoth groaned, lifted her, and put her on her
back. He was on top of her now, his body squishing her into the
smooth rock floor.
    Like their first time together, she realized
with a start, as more and more new memories came to her between
Azoth's biting kisses and intimate caresses.
    They came onto her quickly, and vividly, and
just like that, like the curtain had been pulled back, she could
tell exactly what had happened after falling in the water from the
twin falls.
    She'd banged her head on the rocks below, but
instead of passing out, or dying, as any other normal person would
have, a calm serenity overtook her. She managed to stay beneath the
water's surface as the dark skeletal creatures that were the bony
trees continued to hunt for her from above. As their feet, or what
passed for feet on a tree, stomped up and down along the hills and
rocks, they created such a racket that she even heard the muffled
pounding from inside the water.
    Their forms were twisted and blurred from
looking at them, making their branches appear thinner, and much
less powerful than what she knew was possible. But she knew their
dangers and knew which master they served. She could not be fooled
into presenting herself to them for another chase.
    Dagda, her beloved uncle and brother to her
mother, who, for all Diana knew, was now dead, had called upon
these monsters to attack her. She knew this as his spell from
memories of her childhood where, when he felt like amusing his
visiting nieces, he would bring the trees to life and have them
present their blossoms as gifts.
    They were not so magical now. That he