Hearts of Fire by Kira Brady Read Free Book Online

simply to avoid war?”
    Her laughter rang in the stillness of the forest. “I’m much too selfish. The thought crossed my mind, but this is my life. I won’t settle for that. This isn’t for them anymore. I want you for myself.” She speared him with her tawny eyes, and he felt his feet take root. He couldn’t move from this ground if his life depended on it. He was like the great tree Yggdrasil, and she was the center of his world. “Do you, Brand Haldor, take me as I am?” The question rang in the quiet forest. Only the rushing water down the falls marred the silence.
    The solemn tone seemed natural to this moment. He straightened his shoulders and gave his words the full weight of his vow. A dragon could not lie. “I do.” He was unfamiliar with Kivati ritual, but the words rolled off his tongue, almost as if he’d walked this moment in a previous life. “Do you, Alice of the Kivati, Owl Woman, daughter of the Raven, take me as I am?”
    “I do.” She seized his hands in that moment. A wave of sensation rolled up his skin from his fingertips to the nape of his neck. He pressed his lips to her welcoming mouth. Gods! He tasted sunlight and summer, and he wanted to curl round her bright burning soul and never leave. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her body to his. Skin to skin, her soft curves to his hard planes. Deepening the kiss, he lost himself. Her tongue danced with his, just like their winged dance only moments ago. First a dance of courtship across the cloud-strewn night. Now a dance of mating beneath the pine boughs and hanging moss.
    “Take me,” she whispered. Her demand thrilled the dragon. She wasn’t cowed by the beast. He would demand all from her. More than she could dream of. But he had the feeling she could sate his inhuman appetites. He’d come searching for freedom, and found it in a woman who would take every dark and twisted part of him. He kissed her again.
     
     
    Sensation rocked Alice’s heated body. The fine mist couldn’t cool her down. His skin abraded her sensitive nipples. His manhood thrust against the curve of her stomach. She sensed the loneliness inside him like a rent in the universe. Blacker than black. A great sucking emptiness that demanded to be filled. For a moment she was afraid.
    Brand broke the kiss, breathing hard. He ran his hands over her back, gentling her, soothing her. “I won’t hurt you.”
    Her laugh hid her nerves. “Do your worst. I am more than a match for you. The blood of the Great Goddess runs in my veins. I am more than a woman; I am Kivati. Two souls beat in my breast. The elements are my handmaidens.” She summoned the Aether to her and sent it whipping through the clearing to knock needles off the trees. The earth at her toes and the wind at her back lent their strength. The ancient trees and great Sky God watched over her. The spirits of her ancestors walked these shores and sent their love through the Aether. No soulless dragon could take all of her. Her love went on and on, eternal and everlasting, stronger than the blackness inside of him aching to be filled.
    “Alice,” he murmured against her lips. “I don’t deserve you.”
    “I know.” She tried to communicate that love in a way he would understand in the deep primitive part of him. She relaxed into his hold, let his large masterful hands learn her shape. She’d seen him explore the world with his fingertips, and now he used them to explore every inch of her body: the hollow in her throat, the delicate ridges of her spine, the curve of her waist, the dimples low in her back.
    He caressed her bottom and molded her to fit the shape of his desire. He pulled her up and against his shaft to let it tease the hot, wet pulse of her. Her feet no longer touched the mossy ground. Her legs wrapped around his body, and his thick muscled thighs supported both of them. His breathing, like her own, came heavy. He dropped to his knees with her still wrapped around him.
    Lady