Alien Dragon's Spawn (Dragons of Arcturus Book 1) Page 9

  Skal moved forward. The click of his talons on the stone floor transitioned to the soft pad of bare soles as he morphed into his new man-like form, keeping his horns, wings, and long tail dragging behind.

  “Could she be hiding from me?”

  With his scaly, clawed hands, human Skal tossed the pillows left and right. The very thought of finding the smooth little female buried inside like a tiny treasure sent the blood rushing to his mating appendage. But after a moment, the bright grin dropped from his face. He dug through all of the pillows to the solid floor beneath, but there was no mate to be found.

  A sudden panic stabbed at him like a needle jabbed into his heart.

  His first thought was that she had been kidnapped. That Mordragg had invaded his fortress while he was gone and stolen Katrine away.

  But a quick snuffling of the air disproved this theory. If Mordragg had been here, his stink would be thick in the air. It was not, however. The only odors were the pleasantly warm aroma of the burning blackwood, the mineral smell of warm stone and iron ore, and one other scent.

  The scent of his mate. That raw, enticing perfume that tingled his scales with lust.

  Her smell was on everything. It clung to the silken pillows and hung in the air like invisible clouds. But it was faint. She had gone somewhere else, some other part of the fortress.

  Skal felt a scorch of irritation behind his sternum.

  She was trying to run away.

  Still keeping his humanoid form, Skal dropped to all fours and began snuffling the floor until he found the place where her scent was strongest. He followed her trail, leading to the southern door. Through the lightless tunnels he followed it.

  As he moved down the lightless tunnels that he knew by heart, Skal grew increasingly enraged at his atma’s defiance, and his body unconsciously shifted into dragon mode. His fevered mind churned with thoughts of how he would discipline the female.

  He charged through his hoard room, following her scent trail.

  Through an archway, torchlight flickered. She was close.

  Skal stormed through the archway, ready to let her have it, but his anger vanished, replaced with pure surprise at what stood before him.

  Skal’s first thought was that it was a cave troll. But that was absurd. Even the stupidest of cave trolls would never trespass in a dragon’s caverns. Besides, this ugly little creature was far too small to be a cave troll. A youngling, perhaps, but they were not endowed with breasts like these and…

  He caught a whiff of the scent. It was obscured beneath the stench of the mud, but it was there just the same.

  “Kat?”

  CHAPTER 15

  This was it. The moment of truth. This would be when Katrine found out whether her plan would work or not.

  She struggled to keep her legs from trembling beneath the grass skirt that was plastered to her thighs with sticky mud. Behind her, the warm gray goo was still bubbling lazily, sending up its pungent aroma into the air. In front of her stood the dragon, his wide yellow eyes sending back the glare of Katrine’s torch.

  Mercifully, he shifted into his humanoid form. Katrine doubted if she’d be able to handle the full-on dragon right now.

  For what felt like an eternity, Skal merely stood there, square jaw hanging slightly ajar as he ran his reptilian gaze from Katrine’s head down to her toes and back up again. Before his eyes could start a second lap, Katrine blurted, “What do you think?”

  “What do I think?” Skal muttered.

  Kat nodded, studying the dragon man’s reaction.

  His dark eyebrows came together, creasing his forehead. His perfectly sculpted nose wrinkled as if he had just smelled a fart. His soft lips peeled back from his insanely white teeth in a grimace of disgust.

  Katrine’s tummy fluttered with excitement.

  Her plan was working.

  Doubting her chances of escape, she had decided to take a different approach—she would make herself as repulsive as possible.

  Earlier, she had noticed Skal’s attention to her hair, the way he had toyed with it and breathed in its scent. So obviously, that had to be the first thing to go. Using the razor sharp dagger that she found in the dragon’s treasure hoard, Katrine had given herself a haircut. She had sliced her honey-golden curls quite short, leaving only an ugly blond rat’s nest atop her head.

  And that had just been the beginning.

  Her real secret weapon was the mud. She smeared the warm, gray goo all over her body. She had daubed her face, slathered her arms and legs, and even worked the nasty stuff into what was left of her hair, shaping it into crazy spikes.

  She couldn’t see herself, but she was sure that she looked a fright.

  The plan was to make herself so repulsive that Skal would change his mind about taking her as his mate. Then Katrine would be free to find her friends again. She was determined to do that, with or without the dragon’s help.

  The look of disgust twisting Skal’s features suggested that her plan was working.

  “What do I think?” Skal repeated. “I think you look awful.”

  Good. The plan really was working.

  “I think we need to clean you up.”

  Gulp.

  Not good. Not good at all.

  Before Katrine even had a chance to react, Skal lunged for her, grabbed her around the waist, and tossed her over his scaly, heavily muscled shoulder like she was a sack of grain.

  The torched dropped from her hands and tumbled to the floor in a shower of orange sparks.

  “Skal!” Kat yelped. “What are you doing?”

  The dragon man grunted in annoyance.

  “As I already told you, I’m going to clean your dirty little body.”

  Skal marched down the corridor with Kat slung over his shoulder. Her head was lost in the folds of his wings. The light from the torch faded behind them, and soon they were enveloped in darkness.

  “The torch,” Katrine shouted, trying to think of anything that might get the dragon man to set her down.

  “Don’t need it,” Skal growled. “I’ve wandered these mountain halls for centuries. I know every twist and turn and rocky…FUCK!

  There was a sudden jolt, and Skal came to a halt.

  “Rocky fuck?”

  “Shut up,” he snarled.

  Suddenly there was a whoosh of flame, and the corridor filled with golden-orange light. Heat radiated over Katrin’s bent backside. She twisted frantically and looked over her shoulder to discover that the tunnel was filled with flames, and those flames were blasting from Skal’s open mouth.

  He was breathing fire to illuminate their way.

  She also saw what Skal must have bumped into—a stalactite hanging down from the ceiling. It was much too high to have caused Katrine any problems earlier, but it was just the right height for Skal to have banged his head.

  They went on like that, with Skal occasionally breathing flames to light the way, until they made it back to the massive treasure room.

  “Skal, please,” Katrine begged, wriggling on his shoulder. “Please, put me down. We can talk this out. I—“

  Katrine’s words got cut off in a yelp as Skal’s broad, flat palm came crashing down on her bottom. The smack of the impact was all the louder because of the wet mud coating her rump, and the grass skirt did little to protect her from the hot sting of the spanking.

  “Ow, what the fuck?” she shouted.

  Once more, the angry dragon man’s snake-skin palm smacked her butt, jiggling her flesh with the impact.

  “Be quiet, atma, or I will be forced to discipline you more severely,” Skal growled.

  “Discipline me?” Katrine cried. “You can’t fucking spank me you—“

  SMACK!

  That one was the hardest so far, and it left a warm tingling feeling on her cheek in the shape of Skal’s massive palm and fingers.

  “I can spank you, and I will spank you, atma.” Skal rumbled. He paused briefly to breathe fire, then added, “You have behaved l
ike an impudent child; therefore I will punish you like one.”

  Punish? Katrine didn’t like the sound of that. A dragon could surely mete out worse punishment than a simple spanking.

  Katrine decided to keep quiet.

  But it was a struggle not to cry out when she felt Skal’s other hand firmly squeezing her tingling, barely covered bum. His clawed fingers were dangerously close to all of her most sensitive places.

  She wanted to ask where he was taking her. She wanted to know exactly how he intended to clean her. She wanted to ask him a hundred different things, but she feared more spankings would follow if she opened her mouth again, so she kept it shut.

  Her ears caught the sound of splashing water up ahead. The sound reverberated through the stone tunnels, growing louder as they approached.

  Soon there was light as well, a soft silvery glow like starlight.

  “Now, my dirty little atma, it is time for your cleansing.”

  Before Katrine had a chance to take in their new surroundings, her stomach seemed to leap up and punch the bottom of her throat. She was roughly tossed from Skal’s shoulder and found herself soaring through empty space.

  For a split second, she thought that her plan to make herself ugly had worked too well, and the dragon man had decided to chuck her off a subterranean cliff.

  She had just enough time to let out a squeal and flail her arms and legs like an idiot before her bottom, still tingling from Skal’s spanking, smacked the surface of the water. Then she went under, her squeal cut short, and the sound of falling water was hushed by the water filling her ears.

  CHAPTER 16

  A sense of panic shocked through Katrine. She kicked wildly. There was a muffled splash as something big entered the water nearby.

  Massive arms, hard-muscled and smooth-scaled, wrapped around her waist, and she was pulled to the surface, gulping for air.

  “Don’t you know how to swim, atma?”

  Katrine was still so shocked by the surprise of being tossed into the water that she couldn’t speak. She found her hands clinging to Skal’s slabs of muscles, even though he was the very guy who had put her in this situation.

  Skal’s laughter rumbled from his chest and vibrated into Katrine’s body, which was pressed rather tightly against his.

  “I should have known, cats don’t like the water.”

  Kat shook the water from her mangled hair and glared at him.

  “I told you, I’m not a cat. And I do know how to swim; I just don’t like being tossed around like a beach ball.”

  “Beach ball?”

  “Forget about it,” Katrine muttered.

  For the first time since surfacing, Katrine swiveled her head around, taking in their new surroundings. This chamber was not like the others she had seen so far. It had not been carved by claw but rather was a natural formation. Clusters of crystals protruded from the natural rock, and these seemed to be the source of light in this place, glowing with a faint white-blue light. They were even beneath the surface of the water too, lighting it from below like a swimming pool.

  The water itself was warm, incredibly warm. Faint tendrils of steam lit by the crystal glow swirled lazily from the gently rippling surface. The long narrow waterfall that was spilling from the wall must have been connected to an underground spring. Perhaps it was the same heat source as the mud pits she had found. But this water was pure and clear as the glowing crystals studding the cave.

  The warmth of the spring water penetrated Katrine’s body, loosening her muscles. It felt amazing.

  She caught herself unconsciously relaxing into Skal’s strong embrace.

  The dragon man’s arms had closed more firmly around her back now, squeezing her almost naked body against his completely naked one. His chest and abdomen were both hard and soft at the same time, like a hard bronze statue that had been sheathed in a thin layer of supple leather. Katrine’s breasts flattened against that wall of muscle and meat.

  His smell enveloped her too. It was a deep, masculine aroma, like the smell that clung to clothes after a campfire, mixed with something warm and earthy, the odor of sunbaked stones touched by rain.

  Her nipples pebbled with shameful excitement.

  She patted her hands against the expanse of Skal’s chest.

  “Um, do you think I could have a little…space?”

  Part of her didn’t want to be released. Part of her wanted to stay coiled in those protective and possessive arms. But it wasn’t right. For one thing, there was the fact that this guy was not even the same species as her. For another, and far more important, Katrine’s friends were still out there somewhere in this alien world. She needed to be looking for them, not dallying with an alien dragon.

  A big, hot, and increasingly aroused alien dragon.

  To her surprise, however, Skal did release her. She treaded water for a moment, swishing her arms back and forth through the steamy water, and looked around some more.

  While three sides of the crystal cave were enclosed, the fourth—the side opposite the waterfall—was open. She swam in that direction until she reached the rim of the pool and looked over. The sight took her breath away.

  The water spilled over the brim of stone and made its way downward in a series of terraced pools lit by those strange crystals, eventually disappearing into a dim haze of steam.

  “Careful, little one.”

  Katrine let out a faint yelp. It wasn’t because Skal’s deep voice purring at her ear had startled her. It wasn’t even the way his furnace-like breath warmed and tickled the shell of her ear or the way his soft lips brushed her there.

  No, it was something else.

  Something long and hard pressing against her butt.

  A few seconds ago, Skal had been mildly aroused. Now, however, there was nothing mild about that erection that throbbed with the pulse of his rushing dragon blood.

  Skal certainly wasn’t bashful. He wasn’t the least bit ashamed of his arousal, nor did he have any reason to be. His cock was enormous, far larger than any that Katrine had experienced before, and it was clearly in perfect working order.

  Katrine knew she should pull away from that inappropriate touch. In addition to the reasons she had already listed off in her mind, she added others, the foremost being the fact that she barely knew this man at all. While Katrine was hardly a prude, she had never let things move this quickly with a man before.

  It felt dirty. Forbidden. Completely inappropriate.

  So why did that just serve to excite her even more? Why did her butt seem to be taking on a life of its own, pressing back against that girthy pillar, grinding against it lightly? Why did her wet skin flare with goosebumps when the dragon man’s dangerously hard teeth nibbled at her ear?

  Katrine immediately pulled herself together.

  She moved her hips forward, away from that hard arousal, at least as far as the rim of stone would allow. But Skal just pressed closer, pinning her in.

  Katrine truly was between a rock and a hard…

  “Skal, what is this place?” she stammered hurriedly in the hopes of distracting him.

  It seemed to work, at least slightly. The pressure against her barely covered bottom lessened. She sensed Skal straighten behind her as he gazed around the crystal chamber with its terraces of falling water.

  “Do you like it?” He purred. “I discovered it a few decades after I first arrived on this planet. It is my second favorite chamber in my fortress.”

  So he was not originally from this planet?

  Katrine took advantage of the momentary distraction to duck beneath Skal’s arm and swim a few strokes away from him. Skal followed unhurriedly, the faintest of smirks tugging at the corner of his mouth.

  Cocky bastard.

  “So if this is your second favorite room, then what is your favorite?” Katrine asked.

  She backstroked away while Skal pursued, patient as a stalking panther. He thought for a moment. His smirk deepened, setting off a flurry of sensations in Ka
trine’s lower abdomen.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I was going to say my favorite room was my treasure room,” Skal purred. He was submerged to his chin, with only his face and the tops of his wings breaking the surface. “But my atma’s beauty surpasses that of any trinket in my treasure hoard…”

  Shit. It sounded like Katrine’s little plan with the mud and the haircut had not succeeded.

  “My favorite room is whichever one you are in,” Skal added.

  Heat flushed into Katrine’s cheeks and pulsed at her core. She had a strange feeling in her belly, like somebody was tickling her from inside. She needed to stop it right now.

  “So I guess that means this is actually your favorite room then?” she half-whispered.

  Why was she doing this? Why the hell was she flirting with a dragon?

  With surprise speed, Skal lunged at her through the water and trapped her in his arms again. Once more, Katrine found herself pressed against the hard muscles of his front. She gasped as she realized that another hard part of his anatomy had slipped through the fronds of her skirt and was now wedged between her upper thighs.

  She tried to squirm away from him, but that only had the unintended effect of sliding her parting against that shaft. She was grateful that the water disguised the wet arousal that was oozing from her.

  “Be still, naughty mate,” Skal grunted. “I need to clean you.”

  With a splash, Katrine was hoisted up and over Skal’s shoulder again. It was the dragon man’s new favorite game, apparently.

  “Are you planning to lug me around everywhere you go?” Katrine asked.

  “Only as long as you continue to defy me.”

  “Well, I’ve never been big on the whole obedience thing.”

  “Fine by me.”

  Katrine yipped in surprise as water splashed onto her still sensitive rear. Skal had carried her to the waterfall where the hot spring emerged from the wall. The sensation was shocking and unexpected, but Katrine’s cry soon transitioned to a soft moan of pleasure as the falling water moved up her back.

  “Does that feel good, little mate?” Skal asked.