Dragon Blood Page 2

  ———

  Marlee knew that shock had enveloped her to protect her from the horror. She welcomed it and the same time tried to fight it since she was still peripherally aware that her chances of survival dwindled every moment she was completely at the mercy of the bear and unable to gather her wits. Unfortunately, even the shock didn’t shield her completely from the pain and that added to the shock made it all the more difficult to try to focus her mind on some possibility of saving herself.

  Through a funnel of darkness much like peering through a telescope, she caught a blur of movement, a glimpse of flesh. Almost instantly the pressure of the bear’s jaws vanished. Hope surged through her for a handful of seconds and then confusion and then fear. It couldn’t be the rescue she’d thought, she realized, dismayed. Whatever it was that had attacked the bear was fighting the bear and that made it far more likely that the three animals were fighting over ‘dinner’ than any possibility of rescue.

  Unfortunately, even that realization didn’t lend her the strength to try to crawl away. She was still struggling with it when she sensed a presence and discovered a man had knelt beside her. Confusion filled her again. She didn’t hear the bear anymore and then she found that two men were bending near her, studying her. Their expressions were eloquent.

  She was fucked!

  Before she could dwell on the hopelessness that twisted inside her, the two began arguing and threw her deeper into confusion. Dragons? Where had that come from? It was two men, bare chested, wearing jeans. Men!

  It sounded as if they meant to abandon her, though. Don’t let me die! I don’t want to die!

  Despite the pain of being picked up, relief flooded her when she felt arms surrounding her, lifting her, when she settled against a broad chest. It soothed her. His warmth began to chase the cold that had been gaining ground within her until she’d begun to think she was going to freeze solid.

  She fell into the pit that had been yawning before her when he began to move, sending jarring pain through her. When she clawed her way out of the pit again, she discovered she couldn’t open her eyes. It felt as if lead weights were attached to her eyelids, and yet she was alert enough to feel the tugs as her clothing was removed and the hard, cold surface beneath her.

  Hospital, her mind supplied, relief filling her. She was going to make it.

  Shouldn’t she be aware of light against her eyelids, though?

  They started bathing her. At first, she was so distressed because of the pain she didn’t analyze the circumstance, but as the pain began to recede it occurred to her that her injuries should have had top priority.

  Wouldn’t they stabilize her before they considered bathing her? Or was it because it was an animal bite that they’d decided the wounds should be cleansed and sterilized?

  She didn’t know, but she stopped worrying about it when she realized just how good it felt. The water was just the right temperature to soothe and even the faintly rough texture of whatever they were using to bathe her felt good. The cold vanished and warmth began to take its place. Amazingly, the pain disappeared, as well.

  That circumstance worried her for a little while but the warmth continued to grow the longer they bathed her. She began to feel more than soothed and comforted by the bathing. She began to feel pleasurable tingles and heat that was almost … erotic.

  She tried to ignore the inappropriate heat she could feel growing in her belly when they began bathing her genital area, but her mind conjured the image that it wasn’t just an indifferent nurse or orderly stroking the warm, faintly rough cleansing pad along her cleft. The escalating heat conjured the dreamy sensation of having a man’s tongue stroking her with intent.

  She was almost sorry when it stopped and they turned her over and she was almost as glad because she thought she might have come and that would’ve been embarrassing.

  She drifted when they’d finished bathing her almost in a drug-like state, although she couldn’t recall feeling any sort of injection that would account for it. It struck her as odd and even stranger than that, they seemed intent on nothing else when she was certain she must have wounds that needed stitches.

  She didn’t hurt anymore, though, and thought whatever drug they’d given her was like nothing she’d ever had.

  The tingling of her skin didn’t dissipate. It began to grow more and more pronounced.

  She tried to ignore it, to will it away, but it refused to be subdued. She couldn’t imagine why she would feel aroused after what she’d been through. She could understand relief from the absence of pain. She could even understand pleasure arising from the sense of comfort and safety, but what she felt was sexually aroused and it continued to rise in her blood until she began to feel almost feverish.

  She tried to convince herself, at first, that that was what it was—fever, but it wasn’t akin to the sort of fever that followed accident or illness. This fever made the blood pool in her pulse points and begin to pound for relief and it grew stronger and stronger until she couldn’t be still.

  Within a very short space of time, she felt as if her loins had caught fire. The muscles along her channel fluttered, forcing moisture into it. Her clit swelled and ached. Her breasts and nipples felt as swollen as if they’d been stimulated until she was unbearably aroused.

  She was unbearably aroused! She hurt with the need. She tried to fight against it, but it almost seemed to grow more marked, more painful until she discovered she simply couldn’t be still. She needed relief. She needed … a dick pounding into her.

  She sensed that whoever had bathed her was still close by, and yet despite that, she discovered she couldn’t resist the urge to try to sooth herself by massaging her breasts and her genitals to try to take the ache away.

  ———

  The woman stirred, bringing Eli’s focus from his thoughts to her once more. He had no idea how much time had passed while he stood watch over her, wondering if she was truly healed as she appeared to be or if they’d managed nothing more than to close her wounds and she would die anyway. He saw her struggle for a moment to lift her eyelids and give up. She began to move restlessly and he wondered if a fever had come upon her. He realized very shortly that one had, though it wasn’t in the nature of an infection—at least not from her wounds.

  Her skin flushed from light pink to a darker pink as she moved more and more restlessly.

  She began to pant slightly. Her little pink nipples grew erect and rosy as they tightened.

  His groin tightened in response, but he couldn’t seem to drag his gaze from the tight little points. She curled into a ball, moaning slightly.

  He flicked a glance at John and discovered his eyes had grown glassy. As if feeling his gaze, John lifted his head and stared at him, swallowing convulsively.

  I smell her arousal.

  Until John had voiced it, Eli hadn’t realized that it was her scent as much as her movements that had brought the same heat to his groin that he’d felt when he was bathing her wounds. He transferred his attention to her once more, struggling to clear his mind of the fog that was rapidly consuming him again. Unable to resist, he grasped her knees, prying her thighs apart. She resisted for a moment and then relaxed abruptly, allowing him to push them wide.

  He stared down at her cleft, at the swollen lips, the gleaming moisture and swallowed convulsively several times. Following the intoxicating scent, he moved closer and finally grasped her buttocks in both hands, lifting her hips from the floor and bringing that tantalizing scent closer.

  A red haze filled his mind. Opening his mouth, he covered the moist, swollen lips and began to suck and lick at them hungrily. She groaned, bucked against his mouth, but he was too focused on the pleasure pouring through him to think beyond filling his senses with her. He lathed at her sweet juices with his tongue and sucked them greedily until she began to shake and jerk all over, gasping for breath and finally crying out. It was the high pitched cries that finally penetrated the heated fog.

  He lifted
his head to stare at her blankly and discovered that John was tugging as greedily at her breasts as he had her cunt. His eyes narrowed. “I’m first,” he growled, settling her buttocks on the floor as he began tearing a little frantically at the closure of his jeans. Ripping them finally when he discovered he couldn’t master the intricacies of zipper and snap, he shoved the jeans from his narrow hips. Grasping her legs, he dragged her toward him, impaling the head of his cock into her opening. She arched her back off the floor, driving him deeper.

  He shoved at John even as his brother straightened away from her. Falling over her, he caught himself with one hand and slipped the other beneath her hips to hold her for his next thrust. She arched again as he plunged a little deeper. She was so hot and wet it made him nearly mindless to conquer her depths completely. He curled tightly around her, trying to close his mind to the velvety soft walls closing tightly around his cock and thwarting his efforts as he pumped his hips frantically. He nearly blacked out when he slid home and felt her all along his length. He groaned raggedly, trying to hold on, but it was a losing battle.

  Next time, he promised himself, unable to still the jerky movement of his hips for more than a handful of seconds. The promise was enough to rip the last shreds of his control from his grasp. He began to thrust into her frantically as he felt his body building toward an explosive release. His belly tightened abruptly, ejecting his scalding seed. He caught his breath with an effort, grinding against her in a desperate effort to drive his seed as deeply as he could. For a handful of seconds when his body finally stopped convulsing, relief filled him, but it was woefully brief. His cock had already begun to rise again when John punched him on the shoulder, pitching him off of her.

  Anger instantly replaced the satisfaction of only moments before, but the release had left him weak enough that John had already mounted her and was pounding into her frantically before he managed to gather his wits about him enough to get up. He paused, debating whether or not he could tear her from John’s grasp without harming her and finally decided that was unlikely. Grinding his teeth in impotent fury, he watched John through narrowed eyes, reminding himself that he’d planted his seed deep. His would have the first chance at the egg and, that being the case, he could count it as his.

  Reason should have reasserted itself, particularly with that reflection. It didn’t. As soon as John ground himself against her, uttering a deep throated growl of triumph and finally ceased jerking with his climax, he shoved his brother off of his woman and mounted her again. She was well seeded and there was nothing more potent, they knew, than the seed of a drake, and yet he could still smell the unclaimed egg. No amount of trying to reason with himself that his seed simply hadn’t had time to claim it served to cool the heat that seemed to be consuming him from the inside out or his ardor.

  It seemed likely the fever was the only thing that prevented bloodshed. He resented John’s determination to claim the egg he was working hard to claim for himself and if he hadn’t been so intent on that he might have yielded to the desire to stop long enough to beat John unconscious. Eli had already expended himself over and over, however, and it was beginning to wear on his stamina by the time he heard the shout that finally distracted him.

  “Gods! What in the bloody, fucking hell is going on here?”

  He recognized Gabriel’s voice. Instead of deterring him in any way, however, he renewed his efforts to sow whatever seed he could summon before Gabriel could stop him. He managed to eject it before a blow to the side of his head sent him spiraling close to black out.

  Shaking his head, he turned to give the attacker a deadly look and slowly rose from his woman.

  “She’s ours!” he snarled.

  Gabriel gaped at him a split second before he slammed his fist into his face again. That time, it sent him flying backwards. He was stunned enough when he hit the back of the cave wall and slid down it that it took him a few moments to collect his scattered wits. Gabriel and Luke each grabbed one of his arms, hefted him to his feet and slammed him against the wall again before he could launch a counter attack.

  “Eli!” Gabriel bellowed, almost nose to nose with him. “Have you lost your fucking mind? That’s a human woman, you idiot! And the woods are crawling with men searching for her like a stirred ant hill! There’s a fucking army of law men out there!”

  Eli struggled against their hold on him, a mixture of fear and fury churning through him.

  “They can’t have her! She’s mine! I’ve claimed her egg!”

  “It’s mine!” John bellowed. “I mated with her!”

  Gabriel and Luke exchanged a perplexed look. Shaking his head, Gabriel drew back his fist and aimed it at the point of Eli’s chin. His head bounced off the stone wall behind him at the blow. His knees gave out as his head rebounded and Gabriel and Luke lowered him to the floor of the cave.

  After staring down at his unconscious brother for a moment, Gabriel glanced at Aaron, Joshua, and John. John was unconscious by that time, as well, however, crumpled on the stone floor as Eli was.

  The lair wreaked of sex. The mingling scents acted upon Gabriel as if he’d been shot up with an aphrodisiac. Heat washed through him. His pulse began to pound as a backlash and blood engorged his cock. “It’s the woman,” he said hoarsely, staring at her hungrily, struggling to hang on to reason when desire was chipping away at it faster than he could remind himself of the consequences of yielding to it.

  Joshua dragged in a deep breath. “She’s in heat,” he growled.

  The comment was enough to jar all four men. They exchanged challenging glances.

  “We have to get her out of here,” Gabriel said abruptly. “Gods! Get a grip or we’ll all go down for this one!”

  Luke stared at him dizzily, wondering if he was trying to redirect their minds or his own.

  He swallowed with an effort. “She’s in heat,” he echoed Joshua’s comment.

  “Gods!” Gabriel growled. “She’s in our lair! The humans will be at our door before we can spit!”

  “So … we move her!” Aaron said tightly.

  “We remove her!” Gabriel retorted harshly. “They aren’t going to give up until they find her.”

  “But she’s here now! I need to fuck her. I’m going to explode!”

  “Eli and John have damned near fucked her to death already!” Joshua ground out. “They will have claimed the egg!”

  “Gods!” Gabriel snapped, grabbing Luke’s arm as he surged toward the woman and slugging him so abruptly and without warning that Luke staggered from the blow. Striding swiftly toward the woman, he scooped her up, grabbed the rags beside her, and strode from the lair with her. The others trailed him.

  He halted and turned to glare at them. “Get back into the lair and keep an eye on those two morons!” he bellowed.

  The three stiffened, glaring at him, but they didn’t move to follow him when he began jogging rapidly down the side of the mountain with the woman. The urge to protect what little remained of his clan—his nest mates—rattled through Gabriel’s mind, colliding with his own urge to find a place to rut her in peace and plant his seed as Eli and John had. He managed to focus on what seemed of lesser importance to him at the moment, though, carrying the woman far enough from their lair, he thought, to insure that they wouldn’t be forced to slaughter the humans to protect themselves.

  Even so, he discovered his reluctance to release her was akin to pain. It was only the threatening scent and sound of the searchers that finally convinced him to leave her and do what he could to ensure they couldn’t track him back to their lair.

  It would be war if they did. Not one of them had spawned and they had no intention of being the last of their kind.

  Chapter Two

  “Oh my god! I found her! Over here!”

  The voice penetrated the deep fog that seemed to envelope Marlee and she struggled to lift her eyelids to see who was yelling and what they were yelling about. She managed to pry her eyelids high enough to get a glim
pse of the man, but she didn’t recognize him or the uniform he was wearing. It seemed only a matter of moments later that she was surrounded.

  Discomfort wafted through her when someone dropped something over her—a jacket, she thought—making it clear she’d been as naked as the day she was born before. The sights and sounds escalated. She groaned as she was lifted and her discomfort escalated to pain and then felt her back settle against a flat surface that was marginally more comfortable than the ground she’d been lying on.

  Confusion and disorientation followed as she felt herself moving. The thing she was strapped to felt dangerously unstable as it bumped and pitched in first one direction and then another, making it clear that she would’ve hit the ground over and over if she hadn’t been strapped down. Finally, the sound of a helicopter drowned out the excited voices around her, though, and for a handful of moments, she was settled on a flat surface that didn’t move. Her stomach went weightless as the helicopter went airborne, dipping and swaying with the movements until she thought she was going to puke.

  She focused on not throwing up for a while and then felt her stomach dip and knew the helicopter had settled. The confusion that followed told her she’d arrived at a hospital. She endured bumping along a corridor on a moving gurney, being poked and prodded, scanned, and eventually was plunked on a bed that didn’t move and sank into blessed, peaceful oblivion.

  Erotic dreams chased terrifying nightmares for a while and eventually she rose toward awareness and opened her eyes to discover she was, indeed, in a hospital. She lay for a while trying to figure out how she’d gotten there and why, but she discovered to her dismay that her memories were nothing but spotty images mixed with the nightmares and the erotic dreams.

  A hard faced man and woman appeared beside her bed.