Read Online Dragon and the Princess by Jo Beverley - Free Book Online

drool makes women happy.
    “Don’t you mean men?”
    Men happy means women happy.
    “You’re smirking.” But the thought of that sort of happiness made him groan. He pushed to his feet, sodden. “She has to be a virgin.” In case the princess was checking, he pretended to wash the dragon. He’d swear Seesee chuckled.
    How can you find humor in this? It’s life and death. Her death.
    She’s a nice princess.
    Had that been
nice
or
tasty?
Dragon speech was often ambiguous.
    I like her
, he tried.
She’s brave.
    I like her, too.
    But again,
like
was open to a number of nuances. Rouar leaned against Seesee, for once not finding the dragon comfort he’d known all his life. Could he and the other guardians have misunderstood the dragons? Was this not going to work?
    Princess not happy.
    Rouar needed to stay far away from the drooled princess, but dragons seemed driven by a need for happiness in all. It had made today difficult for Seesee, and she didn’t need more stress. And he should try to ease the princess’s last days.
    He sloshed out of the stream to his boots. They were dry, but they were the only thing that was. He walked in hose-feet to the fire, stripping off his jerkin. He felt the power of the drool from yards away.
    “I turned the skewers,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s right. I’ve never cooked on an open fire before.”
    She glanced up at him, then away, and then shot him another wide-eyed glance. At his crotch, then away again.
    Parts of him were swelling and his jerkin was no longer covering down there. He dropped his jerkin and grabbed his pack. “I need to change.”
    He hurried back into the wood, thinking,
I’m Guardian of the Queen, third maj of the second council, seyer of the Dragon’s Womb and engaged in a mission to save my world. What am I doing lusting like a raw youth after the one woman in the world I must never touch?
    Seesee stood. Shallow. Lake better.
    “There aren’t any lakes around here.”
    It was as close as he’d ever come to snarling at a dragon. He stripped naked, dried himself, and dressed in looser hose and a tunic pulling his mind into order at the same time. He simply had to keep his distance.
    He returned to the fire to find his bride picking glue out of her hair. It was plain brown hair, but thick and shiny. In fact, the firelight dancing on it made it quite beautiful. Like a glossy nut in sunshine. Rippling from her fingers, fluid as it would run over his skin, drowning him . . .
    Drool!
    He wanted to run back to the stream, but he sat—as far from the tormenting woman as he could while still being able to reach the meat. He struggled to think only of food, but his mouth watered at the thought of the taste of her, of her lips, her mouth, her skin, her sweat.
    When he used one of the padded cloths to turn a skewer, his hand trembled so much he almost dropped the meat in the glowing wood.
    Queen drool. Dragon drool was an enjoyable stimulus to sex, but queen drool was a whole other thing. Treasured but carefully guarded. He was only twenty-five. Fifteen years ago, when the last dragon had returned to Dorn a queen, he’d been too young to even think about such things.
    His mind sharpened. Did the power of the drool mean Seesee was growing eggs already?
    No. It had been clear that large amounts of princess blood would be necessary for that. Only a little blood for a ripe young dragon ready to queen, but for an older one who had queened once already, the entire blood of a princess.
    Need blood, she’d thought at him. Lots, lots, lots, always with an image of a young woman chained to the rock that was drenched with the blood from her fatal wounds.
    Obviously, something had started, however, and the effect would only get worse with darkness. That was when drool had the most power. He felt it growing, creeping over him like fingers on his skin, beneath his skin, like love songs in his mind.
    “Is it supposed to singe?” his tormenting princess