“You have a difficult gift to give me,” she said, more exasperated. She took his chin in her free hand and gave it a tug. “I want it.”

  He grinned again, then sobered. She’d seen him intense and ready for battle. She’d seen him fight off Jawahar’s mental hold. She’d seen him given over to the abandon of sexual release. This was different. She relaxed as she learned that Hark of Sath could make a promise with the solemnity required of any man.

  Cradling the back of her wrist, he selected a spot halfway up the inside of her forearm. She had no scars there. Dragon Kings didn’t scar easily, but she had a few. It was a rare Cage warrior who could claim otherwise. So when he placed the tip of the crescent against her skin, she inhaled—for courage, not just in receiving the wound but in being able to follow through with all it represented.

  He met her gaze, his blue eyes stormy. “This thorn is the pain of the world,” he said softly. “When I cannot protect you from it, I will comfort your body and calm your thoughts. Until the grief of my passing, I vow this is the last time I will cause you pain.”

  Hark slid the tip beneath her skin.

  Silence gasped. The surprise of it. The closeness. She watched in fascination as he continued to curve the thorn into her flesh until only the round, ruby-tipped head remained. The rest of the thorn was perfectly placed, recognizable only in the way it lifted her skin in that distinctive shape. The wound would scar. The thorn would remain a part of her forever.

  He lifted her arm to his mouth and licked away the teardrop of blood that slid from where he’d penetrated her so intimately. His gaze was fire and fear and desire and … oh, so much deeper. He looked at her as if the entirety of his broken world had just been made whole.

  He looked at her as if he loved her.

  “Orla?”

  She blinked. “Yes?”

  “You have a difficult gift to give me.”

  With only a nod, she picked up the second thorn. Hark extended his arm so that it rested against her thigh. Her own arm stung, but she was proud to see that her hands didn’t tremble. Too much trembling was weakness, and in this case, she would’ve interpreted weakness as doubt.

  That time was past. If she wore his mark, he was definitely going to wear hers.

  The galena sparkled in the light, where flecks of silver shone in the shiny gray metal. The ruby caught a sunbeam. She traced a thumb over the swath of skin she chose. The tip looked so insignificant and unimposing after the weapons they wielded and challenged.

  Symbols could hold more meaning than any weapon.

  “This thorn is the pain of the world.” She leaned over and kissed one cheek, then the other. “When I cannot protect you from it, I will comfort your body and calm your thoughts. Until the grief of my passing, I vow this is the last time I will cause you pain.”

  She didn’t take as much time as Hark had. Perhaps he’d tried to be gentle. Silence wanted only efficiency and what would come after. The tip of the thorn curled into him as she pushed. He exhaled roughly, saying her real name like a man at prayer. When lodged all the way to its ruby head, his thorn matched hers, with raised crescents of skin to mark the path where they’d submitted to one another.

  After kissing him once more, on the mouth this time, she leaned over and licked the place where she’d laid claim. The inside of his forearm was warm and smooth, but the ridge beneath his skin was undeniable and permanent. Like a barb on a fishhook, to remove it now would be destructive. Every Sath—no, every Dragon King—would recognize when a Sath couple had separated.

  She tasted blood, traced her tongue over the ruby, and lifted her head to receive a fierce, rough kiss. Hark pushed her back on the bed. The blanket flew to the floor. He yanked the sheets back to reveal them both to the sunlight, like the gods their people had once been. That was millennia ago. Silence felt immortal. The man kneeling above her was virile and blazing with the heat of possession.

  “I want to be gentle,” he rasped.

  “We have all day for that. And all night.”

  “Your leg.”

  “Feels fine.”

  She wasn’t back to full strength, but that didn’t matter. She held out her arms and scratched blunt nails down the lines of muscle arrowing toward his thick erection. He tilted his face toward the ceiling. She wouldn’t see his throat like that again for a long time, so she soaked up the sight of his corded strength and supple length. His Adam’s apple lifted and lowered. At his sides, Hark had tightened his hands into fists. That tension made the muscles of his forearms bulge. The crescent stood out in relief, and another drop of blood seeped from the delicate wound. Silence swiped it away and sucked her finger.

  Hark made a savage noise. He levered over her and yanked the finger from her mouth. He sucked, moaning. Then he was inside her—one smooth thrust that stretched her wide, deep, completely vulnerable to his power. They kissed with abandon, even as his hips kept a measured, tense pace. Eyes, cheeks, lips, jaw, up and down one another’s torsos. She couldn’t get enough of his taste and all the new textures. Hers to explore.

  Hers.

  He lifted her hands above her head and pinned her wrists. Thrusting harder now, he brushed his lips over her thorn. They both groaned. It was too powerful. They’d purposefully hurt each other. They’d made vows older than recorded history. Now they were offering their bodies as sacrifices to another sort of eternity. Man and woman. Want. Need. Taking.

  She should’ve felt trapped by his muscled weight and the inescapable way he grasped her wrists. Instead, Silence surrendered to the release of being pleasured. No one else would ever do this for her. To no one else would she award this much trust and vulnerability. The thought was humbling.

  Then there were no thoughts. Hark tucked his mouth against her temple, lifted slightly on his elbows, and put all of his strength behind each thrust. The mattress told tales of wicked, straining bodies. So did their matched breathing. Gasping for air. Struggling toward release. Silence wrapped her legs around his lower back and urged him with thrusts of her own. They met halfway, until his body overwhelmed hers. Hips trapped hips. Thighs trapped thighs. His mouth crashed down over hers, plundering, sharing her groan. He penetrated her again, again, again.

  Light brighter than white closed over her vision as she came. Rockets and starships and the sun reflecting off endless miles of desert. She bit his shoulder as she cried out, grinding, wanting more sensation even as she helped him achieve his release. Hark grunted in time with the drive of his lean hips until he stiffened and shuddered.

  Their release was total, as was their collapse. Hark rolled slightly to one side, although they still clung to one another.

  He couldn’t even wait until his breathing returned to normal before talking again. Of course not. “See, that wasn’t so earth-shatteringly incredible and terrifying, was it?”

  Silence turned so that she could cross her arms over his chest. She licked the sweat between his pecs. “Yes, it was. I give you thirty minutes to start again.”

  “You think it’ll take that long? Dragon be, woman, you don’t know your husband very well.”

  “No,” she said with a sly smile. “Not yet. But I will.”

  Keep reading for the captivating introduction to THE DRAGON KINGS series by

  Lindsey Piper

  CAGED WARRIOR

  Coming July 2013 from Pocket Books

  1

  She wasn’t in the lab. That’s all she knew. The smells were different. Fewer sterilizing cleansers and less recycled air. More body odor. Piss and sweat. Dirt. Wet rocks.

  Audrey opened her eyes and blinked. She pushed up onto her hands and knees. Pain banged at her temples—the ache of still-healing blows to the skull and her own frantic pulse. Lifting her head was an effort like swimming through wet cement.

  Her fuzzy vision sharpened as she got used to the dim lighting. Just a pair of bare incandescent bulbs. A humid mist hung heavy in the cavelike room. Even when her eyes worked together, focusing, that mist ebbed away at details. She couldn’t tell where the algae-covered walls began and ended.

  The bars to her four-by-four cage were a prison. Solid iron. She lifted swollen hands and grasped the cold metal. Frustration ate at her insides. Rattling the cage bars, she shrieked.

  “Where is my son?”

  At least in the lab, she and Jack had shared a cell. No bars. Only walls painted black. Just as disorienting. But that confinement had almost felt safe. She’d held her boy, thankful the darkness had concealed the worst of their wounds.

  Now she had iron bars, algae, and a black pit where her heart had been.

  “Where is he? Aster! You son of a bitch!”

  Footsteps.

  The hair lifted on the backs of her forearms. As her heartbeat jacked, she noticed her dirty body. Her vulnerability. She wore a paper hospital gown—no underwear, no shoes. Had she been dragged straight from the lab? The last thing she remembered was being strapped to an operating table after having slipped the note to Reed. A mask had pumped anesthetic into her mouth and nose, but she’d been hopeful for the first time in months.

  Maybe that explained her grogginess. From surgery to a Dragon-damned cave.

  Now she wore a damping collar. But why? Her powers had never manifested. Giving birth to the first natural-born Dragon King in a generation was the only remarkable thing she’d ever done.

  She forced the distracting details away. Look for a way out. A way to survive. The iron bars were a lost cause, but the floor was pitted concrete.

  With a crack in the corner.

  Audrey picked where moisture had worn away a small crevice. Her fingertips bled. Aching knuckles stretched shadow puppets along the wall. She wiped sweat from her forehead. Her toes gripped for balance as she scraped harder, faster.

  The steps echoed more loudly. Heavy. Determined. Certainly male. His footfalls hit too heavily for a lean man. A bruiser. One of the Aster cartel’s bodyguards. She didn’t stand a chance, but she kept clawing. Her breath became hot steam in her lungs.

  A piece of concrete about the size of her fist gave way. One pointed end had promise. If she could strike just the right spot on the man’s temple …

  She edged away from the bars until her spine pinched against the rock wall. After twisting her long hair, she shoved it down the back of the hospital gown. She balanced on the balls of her feet, ready to spring.

  As a member of the Honorable Giva’s immediate family, she’d been instructed in martial training from an early age. She’d never wielded the powers of her kind, and she was seriously out of practice, but she was not helpless. The chunk of concrete rested in her palm. It was the difference between dying—and dying while fighting.

  A flashlight’s beam penetrated the recess of the cave. Audrey narrowed her eyes. She watched through her lashes. The man had so many advantages. That realization should’ve cowed her. Should’ve turned her backbone to mud and left her weeping. But after having been a victim for more than a year—drugged, bound, helpless—she felt mighty. No manacles. No hallucinogens. Just a rock in her hand and a blaze of pure rage.

  The man stepped into clear view.

  Easily more than six feet, he was built for breaking bones and ripping off limbs. Brawn. Solid muscle. Powerful biceps and shadow-black hair. Plate metal covered his heart and vital organs, leaving his arms free. Calf-high boots were made of toughened leather. Bare, muscular thighs flexed with the slightest movement. But he didn’t seem the kind of man to make slight movements. Everything about him was overwhelming.

  His jaw was fixed in an expression she’d learned to recognize: You will find no mercy here.

  Audrey gave her flight instinct a hard shove. She pushed far into the shadows. Futile, really, when he aimed the beam directly at her face. She squinted and kept her right hand out of sight as the cage unlocked.

  “Disgusting,” he muttered.

  “And you’re a traitor,” she spat in the language of the Dragon Kings. A language she hadn’t used for nearly a decade.

  Since meeting Caleb, she hadn’t given much thought to the old ways. Her happiness as a human wife had been too easy. Too good to last. But long ago, the ways of the Dragon Kings had been her entire life—the ritual and the covert power.

  No matter her ostracism from her clan.

  Years of rage came rushing back. The coiled ferocity in her legs exploded. She leaped. The cage door swung open on hinges that squealed a rusted protest.

  Not even the momentum of her leap shifted the man from his stance. He only grunted. Audrey’s quick instincts brought that chunk of concrete up, up, in a violent arc. Her aim was true. The jagged edge struck the side of his face. Another grunt.

  Then Audrey was thrown across the room.

  Her shoulder hit the ground, followed by her head. A cry ripped from her throat. She slid three feet. Agony stabbed down to her marrow, as if pain had always been a part of her body.

  He’d simply … hurled her.

  The big man needed only two strides to cross to where Audrey sprawled. He stripped the chuck of concrete from her hand and tossed it down the tunnel.

  “Can you hear me, lab filth?”

  The old language rattled in her brain. Words passed down from the blessed Dragon. Nothing quite worked. Her lungs wouldn’t take in air. Something ground painfully in her hip socket. She nodded out of pure reflex.

  “If you ever attempt to strike me again, I will snap your spine in two. Think you could recover from that? Our kind can endure a great deal—much more than humans. But we’re not immortal.”

  “Where is my son?” Only a rasp now.

  “He’s better off dead. Now get up.”

  He yanked her under both arms and thrust her against a wall. Shots of fire spiked her joints. She gasped as panic set in. She wanted to fight. Wanted to. Yet just as when Dr. Aster had drugged her, or when her brain had short-circuited because of his torture, she could not.

  That didn’t stop her from snarling and spitting.

  Because he spoke the language of the Dragon Kings, he belonged to one of the sacred Five Clans. But to actually work for that madman? He was the filth. Bile surged into her mouth.

  “You’ve still got some spirit.” His muscles were tense, holding her immobile, while his breathing remained calm. “I can see why Old Man Aster has plans for you. We’re going to have quite the time.”

  The flashlight had rolled across the ground until it illuminated her captor’s face. Blood streamed down from where she’d gouged a ragged hole in his cheek. He was smooth-shaven, and his black hair was shorn close to his head. Eyes the color of teak were fathomless, unreadable. Dark lashes cast shadows along his sharp cheekbones. A scar on his upper lip told stories of past battles. A damping collar encircled his thick, muscular throat.

  A tattoo of a serpent wrapped around the back of his head. The tongue hissed toward one temple and the tail flicked toward the other. The Aster family icon.

  Realization settled ice in her belly. He was far deadlier than a brute from the laboratory.

  Part boogeyman, part myth—he was a Cage warrior.

  “The Aster cartel owns you now, lab filth. But they’re done with experiments.” His scarred lip curled into a snarling smile. “You’re here to fight in the Cages.”

  Leto had not expected so much resistance from the woman. The prospect heated his blood. For too long he’d only found satisfaction in preparing for the annual Grievance—the ultimate prize for the most dedicated warriors.

  Warriors like Leto.

  Performing in monthly Cage matches was essential to keeping his skills sharp. Training Dragon Kings—called neophytes until they won their first fight—to fight in those matches was a drudgery. Most were volunteers who had debts to repay. They rarely possessed the true courage to deserve combat. Some were as weak and sniveling as humans.

  Yet … others went on to greatness. Leto had trained such victors.

  His cheek was bleeding profusely. This nasty castoff from Dr. Aster’s lab had surprising spark.

  “You’re insane,” she snarled. “I’m not going in there.”

  “Have you ever seen a Cage fight?”

  She shuddered. “Of course not! They’re for barbarians.”

  With a swift movement that had nothing to do with his Dragon-given gift, Leto spun her. “Now is the time you listen. You believe me a barbarian, then believe my threats aren’t idle. Your suffering won’t weigh on my conscience.”

  “Because you have none.” With her cheek pressed against the damp cave wall, her words were muffled.

  Leto loosened his grip. Any harder pull would dislocate her shoulder. The goal was not to impair his charges but to ready them. Instead, he added another incentive for her to obey. With his free hand he grasped between her legs.

  “No conscience,” he repeated coldly. “I will have my way.”

  She stiffened. She stilled. But Leto realized his heart was beating far too fast. Need had gathered in him for three weeks. Cage warriors were permitted female flesh only after a victory—unless they chose to violate their charges, as he threatened now. Some mentors indulged too often. Their neophytes became submissive, not resilient and strong. Leto had never needed to use such crude methods. He had other means, including stores of patience.

  And he never lost a match. The regular reward of satisfying his sexual needs was not something every Cage warrior could claim.

  She bucked against his hold. “If you think worse wasn’t done to me in the Asters’ lab, then you have no idea what goes on there.”

  “Doesn’t matter to me.” He gave her pussy a last, hard squeeze. At least this time she flinched and tried to pull away. Any reaction could be twisted to his advantage. “Maybe you’ll enjoy it. Pleasure can be another incentive.”

  She slammed her head backward. Her skull smacked the bridge of his nose. Pain rocketed through his brain. The woman scrambled from his arms and ran. Leto shook his head. Part of him was dazed that she’d gotten the jump on him. Mostly he was amused. Where did she think she could go?

  From down the short corridor that led to her cell’s gate came a female shriek. Pure frustration. She was certainly loud enough to use the sonic assaults that accompanied the berserker rages of Clan Pendray. They annoyed the fuck out of him. Shaking off a weeklong migraine was the price of victory against the Pendray—those Dragon-damned Reapers.

 

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