The Passionate Queen (Dark Queens Book 2) by Jovee Winters Read Free Book Online Page A

asked again, not unkindly, but with a note of impatience.
    I sighed, tossing up my hands. “It is...of a delicate nature.”
    He glowered. “If you mean to imply that it involves the mating of a male to a female, I’m well versed.”
    I snapped to, suddenly feeling a horrible, leeching emotion slink and slither through my marrow. “You have lain with another?”
    The accusation came out much sharper than I’d intended.
    His brows pulled down tight, and then those sea-glass-blue eyes of his sparkled with laughter. “Are you jealous, my Lena?”
    I slapped his chest, turning my face to the side. Far more jealous than I had any right to be. He was a child.
    But he wasn’t really, was he?
    “You are a devil, and I think I should hate you.”
    I could practically hear his smolder.
    “Should. But you don’t.”
    He grabbed my hand, lifted a finger to his nose, and sniffed me. He always did that. Never pressed his lips to mine, just sniffed me.
    I rather feared it might be the most erotic thing to ever have happened to me in my young life.
    “I...I do.” My tremble belied my words.
    His fingers were gentle, his claws so cautious on my tender flesh as he turned my face to his. “Coupling is common in my realm. We do not hide our body’s needs from one another. It seems pointless to pretend that we do not feel what we feel.”
    I arched a brow. I really should drop the matter, but it suddenly took on great importance to me. “Have you slept with another, Ragoth?”
    Lips curling into a smile that had my pulse racing, he whispered, “No. I claimed you. You shall be my first, my one, and my only. We dragons bond for life. My eye could never be turned to another.”
    Dear gods, the things he said to me.
    “And you, Lena, have you lain with another?”
    I gave a feeble laugh at that, glanced down at my quite unattractive body, and snorted. “Who would have me?”
    A heavy rumble tore through the night, piercing through me like an arrow let loose.
    “Dragonborne only take the best. The most beautiful and desirable of all things.” His knuckles traced my cheek.
    Suddenly I couldn’t seem to catch a proper breath. My lips parted just slightly. I could never kiss him. Could never allow him any privileges; should I do it, I knew my heart would be lost to him forever.
    “Skin as soft as petals. Hair the color of Apollo’s sun, and eyes that see straight through me. You glow like Freyr’s elves. How could all men not desire you?”
    He always talked of my glow. A glow I’d never seen, but I liked that he did.
    I patted his hand, needing to break this contact now. The words he whispered to me, they were too dangerous, too...wonderful. All my life I’d wanted to know what it meant to be wanted, cherished. Never in my dreams could I have imagined I’d find that with a dragonborne.
    Moving my jaw away from his touch, I shook my head. “If anyone were to learn of my true nature, then and only then am I valuable. But men aplenty have seen me, and none of them look at me as you do.”
    “Then they are fools.” He hiked up a knee and leaned back on one hand. Reclining almost like he would while in dragon form.
    I couldn’t help but smile. The boy was probably the most dangerous creature in all of Kingdom, and yet I knew that he would never harm me.
    There was comfort in knowing that.
    “What is so terribly valuable about being a morphling anyway?”
    For so long I’d kept this part of my life hidden from him. It’d felt too personal and humiliating to share, but I was starting to feel our time together coming at an end. And if memories were all I’d ever have, then I had no wish to regret any of them.
    “You say you know of coupling; fine then, a morphling is a rare chance of fate. There is no breed of morphlings, per se. We are born, all females, and blessed with the mark of a bloodred heart branded upon our left breast.”
    I touched my chest, and his fingers briefly flitted over mine. “What does it