Highland Dragon Master Read online

  He did close his eyes, intending only to rest them for a short time, while the noises of the men casting off went on around him. They fell into a rhythm, irregular but there and soothing after its own fashion. It was pleasant to hear work when his was complete for the time being.

  The splashing of the boat in the water and the snap of the sail came next, then an unexpected groan from many throats. Distant, but audible to one in dragon’s form, he heard Toinette’s voice: “Wind’s shifted. Bad luck, but we’ve had worse. Shift sail, and we’ll tack into it.”

  Odd, Erik thought, muddled though his mind was by both sleep and form. He hadn’t felt any change in the wind. The sea could be strange like that.

  A shout went up from the ship: despair, not triumph. Erik opened his eyes, afraid that the mast had snapped—though he thought he’d have heard that—or that the wood covering the holes had come off. What he saw instead was the Hawk sitting only a few yards out to sea, its sail pinned back against the mast by a wind going precisely the wrong direction. Men stood with their heads turned upward, staring at the sail and babbling, until Toinette raised her hands and yelled for quiet.

  This time, the wind carried off many of her words, but Erik could see her gesture. The men went to work accordingly, hauling on ropes and turning wheels. The Hawk shifted in the water, the sail angled to catch the wind, and she began making headway toward the open sea—

  And then, abruptly, the wind reversed itself, pushing the ship back toward the island.

  Erik heard oaths in many languages. Some were angry. Most were scared. He caught a glimpse of Marcus facing down one of the other men, and of Toinette shaking her head, shoulders stiff. “…God-cursed breeze keep us here,” he heard her say, and then she raised her voice to call him.

  Even if she hadn’t, he’d have known what she was about when she jumped over the rail and transformed.

  After the restful warmth of the beach, the cold water was an unpleasant shock back to wakefulness. Erik hissed his displeasure, sending steam curling up above the waves, much to the apparent alarm of Raoul and John. The sooner you do this, the sooner you can be back ashore, he told himself, and swam out to the Hawk, taking a position on the opposite side from Toinette.

  The men furled the sail, that the wind might not be a hindrance to the dragons’ efforts, and then Toinette and Erik began to push.

  By rights, the undertaking should have been far easier than it had been on the night of the storm. For one thing, the tide was with them. For another, they were both in much better condition. Erik, for all he’d been doing that morning, hadn’t been struggling to rope down cargo in the midst of a storm, nor holding the ship steady through a gale. They’d had many nights of rest and many meals at least as good as they’d managed on shipboard. It shouldn’t have taken them much time at all to find a good angle for the wind, nor to push the Hawk out far enough to find a fair current.

  Yet the island pulled.

  Erik thought the feeling began as soon as he started pushing the Hawk, but thinking back, it might have happened earlier. Had the water honestly been that cold and unwelcoming, his muscles so resistant? Or had he explained the weighty feeling in his limbs using the first tools that came to hand? He couldn’t be certain.

  Whichever the case was, the true situation quickly became clear. Force like a team of oxen, slow but stubborn, tugged Erik backward toward the island, growing greater the harder he struggled with legs, wings, and tail. That alone he might have broken through, but the island drew the ship backward as well, and the weight of it took him along. Panting, he raised his head to look around and found that they were no farther from land than they’d ever been.

  Around him, the tide kept running carelessly out to sea. Neither the Hawk nor his body seemed to recognize that—nor, when he met her gaze around the ship’s hull, did Toinette’s frame. She was panting as much as him, her eyes glassy from the struggle.

  The alarm on deck when the wind changed was nothing to the hubbub now. One of the men was screaming. One was simply uttering steady denials. Others were shouting suggestions, or perhaps only shouting. Erik couldn’t make out many words.

  Eventually Marcus’s voice rose above the din. “Enough!” He strode to the railing and shouted over. “Take us back. No use in keeping on right now.”

  Seventeen

  “What is out there?” Marcus flung a hand out toward the waves. They rolled in as calmly as ever, giving no sign of the disruption of Nature itself not far beyond the line where they broke. “You’re the uncanny one, you and my lord. You tell me, Captain.”

  Toinette had barely managed to resume her human form before finding Marcus in front of her, demanding answers. If disembarking from the Hawk hadn’t taken time, she likely wouldn’t have managed that much. She’d seen wrath in his face before, but never directed at her.

  The sarcasm that laced both syllables of my lord and the glance he bent on Erik were fully acidic, but it was the uninflected phrase beforehand that truly stung. You’re the uncanny one. Marcus likely hadn’t even been trying to insult her.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s magic. It must be, but…” She whispered the words of invocation, but as in the storm, her vision didn’t shift at all. “But I can’t see it. The spirits of vision don’t answer me here. I couldn’t tell you why or how this works.”

  At the end, she felt her voice cracking alarmingly, and cleared her throat. Losing control of herself wouldn’t help anything. She looked at the man who’d been her closest companion for ten years, watched him regard her as he might a horse trader of dubious honesty, and waited.

  “Nor could I,” said Erik. His thick burr, stronger than usual, fell into the empty gulf between Toinette and Marcus. “I’d guess it’s verra powerful indeed. Salt water washes away magic, as a rule. That’s likely why the waves are no’ drawn to the island all the time, but keep their normal tides. For the spell to work on us, and on the Hawk, it’d be a mighty thing.”

  “Did you know about this when you hired us? Any of it?” Marcus asked. His eyes lashed over Erik, then snapped back across Toinette’s face. “Did you?”

  “No,” she snarled back. It was so easy to fall into anger, even when she knew she aimed at the wrong target entirely. “I’d never have come if I did. And I surely wouldn’t have brought anyone else.”

  “I’d no notion,” Erik said, and clasped one hand over his heart. “I swear it. By God, and Mary, and by any of the saints you choose.”

  The crew were largely off the Hawk now, and heading toward the three of them. “…doomed, I tell you,” Franz was muttering in a broken voice, and many of the men were quiet, listening to him. Sence didn’t look to be, but his face was stony, even more so as he looked at Toinette.

  She couldn’t let herself flinch. That, she knew, would have begun the end of things between her and her crew, if there was anything left to save there.

  Marcus looked over his shoulder, then shook his head. “You’d both best go,” he said to Toinette and Erik. “Find a safe place and stay away for a few hours. I think I’ll have calmed them down by sunset, but it’ll be far easier if you’re not here.”

  Once again, he likely didn’t mean anything by what he said.

  * * *

  Erik and Toinette went warily up the path from the beach, weapons close at hand. Nothing accosted them, and that was truly no surprise—no creature they’d seen on the island was large enough to harm a man, let alone inclined to do so. Keeping watch gave them a mission, though, and an excuse for walking a while in silence.

  Mostly silence. Toinette stomped along as though she were twice her weight. For his part, Erik took a certain delight in the feeling of sticks breaking under his feet—the joy of destruction, yes, but also the chance to hurt the island, if only a minor and dead part of it. Had an animal come out of the underbrush, he knew it wouldn’t have fared well at all.

 
At the top of the cliffs, by the spring, they finally stopped, Toinette first. Still without speaking, she knelt and dipped her face in the water, then lifted her head and drank deeply. Erik imitated her, to his satisfaction. He’d done thirsty work that day, and fear had a way of drying a man’s mouth.

  He was afraid, and in his own mind he could say as much. He’d fought and killed men and beasts; he’d heard of and could imagine doing the same with wizards or demons, though it was a more daunting prospect; but the magic of the island was different. “If we only knew where it came from…” he muttered, and only realized he’d spoken aloud when Toinette gave him a long look.

  “Yes,” she said eventually, but her voice was flat. There was an absence in her eyes as well, and Erik would have much preferred the fury.

  That gave him an idea—not one that would get them free of the island, but one that might at least salve their minds. “Come on, then,” he said, getting to his feet and stretching.

  Toinette blinked. “Hmm? Come on and what?”

  “Like the old days,” he said. “Two falls out of three wins. Or whoever cries off first.” He saw realization dawn and smiled for the first time that day: a predator’s grin, as he pushed his argument forward. “You’ve been wanting to do this for days, and you know it.”

  With the years separating them from their youth, Erik had thought he might have a little more persuading to do. Toinette had become a woman, and women’s society frowned on brawling. She’d captained a ship and learned to control her temper. For a moment he faced her in the shadow-dappled clearing, birds singing around them, and tried to come up with further arguments.

  Then she kicked him in the knee.

  * * *

  Oh yes.

  It had been decades since Toinette had fought with another dragon-blooded. She’d forgotten how appealing it was: as heady and easy to lose herself as in any life-or-death battle, but without the risk of death for her men, and with no need at all to hold back. When Erik staggered from her kick to the knee, she grinned.

  Toinette didn’t stop when he recovered himself and used his angle to land an excellent upward punch to her stomach. Though the blow knocked the breath out of her, there was a satisfaction in the impact—even in the pain. This was real. This was solid. She could feel it, with nothing ephemeral or confusing, and she could hit back.

  She did. A fist to the jaw left Erik shaking his head. Toinette tried to follow up by sweeping a foot at his ankles, but he pivoted away, stepping nimbly over a fallen branch, and then used the momentum to come back at her with a boot to the thigh.

  Ow. Damn.

  That one might bruise. She almost laughed aloud. Then she darted back into the fray, throwing an uppercut that landed on Erik’s shoulder.

  Before she could pull back, though, he grabbed her wrist, then turned his body with a fluid strength that Toinette admired even as it pulled her weight off-center. Mortal bones might have broken; hers held, but she went flying over Erik’s head to land in a patch of grass, tucking her head just in time to miss a tree trunk.

  Erik followed up swiftly. Before Toinette could get to her feet, he was kneeling above her, one broad hand holding down each of her shoulders. He was smiling too. One lip was bloody from her fist, but that only made him look wilder—and more handsome. “One fall for you,” he growled. “Surrender?”

  “Piss off,” said Toinette, and whipped her head upward toward his nose.

  Erik dodged just in time, but the effort of doing so shifted his weight. Toinette shoved him off and backward; twigs snapped beneath his body. She rolled up to her feet, shifted to fighting stance, and waited.

  As she’d thought he might, Erik charged her, shoulder first. If he’d taken Toinette square on, he might have won then—he weighed more, in human form, and was at least somewhat stronger—but she sidestepped neatly, grabbed the hair at the back of his head, and yanked. At the same time, she slammed her lower leg into the backs of his knees. The combination took him over backward.

  It was her turn to pin him, and she didn’t bugger about with hands on shoulders. She dropped to her knees on Erik’s chest, sending the air out of him for a change. “Second,” she hissed, “goes to me.”

  “Pulling hair,” he said, gasping to get his breath back. “Typical woman. Scratch my face next?”

  “If I was truly being womanly, you’d have had a knee in your stones by now.”

  “Aye,” he said, and smiled again. “You’ve aged past that, have you not?”

  “No,” said Toinette. Looking down into his eyes, feeling the muscles in his chest straining under her palms, smelling his clean masculine sweat, she knew why she hadn’t gone near his groin. It would have been her second target in any other fight—second only because men were quick to defend that location, unless she distracted them with pain elsewhere first—but she’d wanted Erik uninjured in that regard.

  She lunged forward. He raised his head at the same moment, and their mouths met with heat and force. All the vital energy of their fight changed in an instant, finding different channels, but the transformation was incomplete. Still they struggled against each other, warring for control with lips and tongues.

  Toinette stretched herself out atop the hard length of Erik’s tall body. Her breasts flattened against his chest with exquisite friction. The pressure bordered on pain; she welcomed the bright heat of that edge, the clarity of the sensation. A knee on either side of Erik’s hips held her stable and let her feel his cock hardening between them, tenting the cloth of his hose and pushing against her mound.

  Clothing was a very stupid idea.

  She would have done something about it, but that would have meant releasing Erik, and she didn’t trust him not to take advantage of that. As she’d shifted position, he’d snaked a hand up and around her neck, his fingers long, forceful, and nearer her jugular than Toinette would have permitted from anyone else, particularly anyone whose nails could become claws with a thought.

  With Erik, the contact sent tendrils of humming desire down through her body, hardening her nipples and spiraling inward to her sex. She made no move to shake his hand away. When he pressed her head down, crushing her mouth against his, the hint of pain only went well with the pleasure, a sharp wine with a rich meal.

  Yet she had no wish to surrender. The fight was half the fun.

  Toinette dug her fingers into Erik’s shoulders, hard enough for him to feel the nails even through his shirt. At the same time, she pulled back: not enough to stop kissing him—she didn’t want to do that—but far enough to bite his lower lip. She did no damage, but she wasn’t entirely gentle either.

  The sound he made was as close to a growl as human lungs could manage. Erik’s hips flexed upward, hard and sudden and involuntary, driving his erection between his stomach and Toinette’s. As the heat in her own sex spread outward, she wondered if she could drive him over the edge still clothed. The thought made her pulse with arousal—and, at the same time, chuckle low in her throat.

  Erik was the one to pull back this time. “Oh no, lass,” he said hoarsely. Sweat was beginning to glisten at his temples, darkening his golden hair, and his eyes were almost all pupil, but he had enough confidence to smile up at her again. “You’re not winning this one.”

  Then, with a quick twist of his arms, he rolled them both over.

  Eighteen

  At last Toinette was where Erik had wanted her for weeks. She writhed beneath him, full breasts heaving as she panted, hips twisting with a power that belied their slim outlines, but he had her. Unnatural strength was one thing, but strength and size still weighed in the balance, particularly in human form—and just then, neither of them wanted to be anything else.

  She was no easy prey, though. Almost as soon as her back hit the ground, she was whipping a hand up toward Erik’s head. Whether she meant to claw his face, gain leverage to reverse their positions again, or ju
st pull him down for another kiss, it didn’t matter in the end. He caught her wrist in one hand, grabbed the other, and pulled her arms up over her head.

  That the new position tilted her long neck back and thrust her breasts forward hadn’t been his prime objective, but it was a very gratifying development, and one that made him even happier with the difference in their sizes. That difference let him hold Toinette’s wrists firmly captive while he palmed her breasts with his free hand, pinching the stiff nipples through the fabric of her gown as she called him obscene names in a breathless voice that only made his cock harder.

  Careful not to loosen his hold, he bent his head and took one rigid peak into his mouth, lashing it with his tongue and then biting lightly. Toinette’s hoarse moan filled his ears as he moved to the other breast. Her arms went limp; if Erik had been less wary, he might have let go then, but one hand was enough to thrust beneath the ruins of her skirt.

  “Best idea you’ve ever had,” he said, punctuating the words with more rough kisses to her breasts, roaming up to where her neckline bared skin. “Never wear long skirts again.”

  Toinette opened her dark eyes to glare at him. “I’ll wear what I like, devil take you.” Both words and glare lacked some of the force they might have had, since her face was flushed with desire and her hands on his shoulders urged him back to his attentions.

  He didn’t comply. “You’ve the taking right, pretty girl. But you’re wrong about who’ll do it to whom.” Beneath her skirt, her thighs were sleek and strong—and she squeezed them together at the first intrusion of his hand, as proper as any novice. “Stubborn, are ye no’?”

  Toinette laughed, eyes gleaming and hair spread out on the ground like a glorious cloud. “If that’s a surprise, you’re duller than I thought.”

  Erik bit her neck for that—not to her displeasure, judging by the way she hissed and arched—and lunged forward, prying her legs apart with knees and hand alike. With a mortal woman, he would never have dared, would have stopped at the first sign of anything that might be taken as reluctance, but this was Toinette, fighting him only because the fight itself was worth something.