The Second Weyr

Strong talons gripped her shoulder joints, a powerful neck twined with hers, and wrenching herself about to meet her attacker, only too late did Alaranth realize she had done exactly as the bronze had hoped and she was well and truly caught. As he made sure of his conquest of her, wing to wing, necks twined, talons locked, Alaranth realized that only one had ever been in contention for her, and she abandoned all restraint.

“Now! Torene, now!”

Torene was no longer aloft with Alaranth in the throes of the dragons’ mating passion; she was naked in the arms of the bronze’s rider-naked, and her body demanding the same glorious orgasm that her dragon had just experienced.

“Damn it, Torene,” that rider was saying as he attempted to penetrate her body, “did you have to wait until now?”

She gripped him to her, her nails digging into the muscular flesh of his back. The hurt was a mere moment’s discomfort, immediately forgotten in the powerful surging of lust that rose from some unexpected, limitless depth within her.

“Toreeeeeeeene!”

The cry of her name produced mild astonishment in her: the tone held more than triumph, more than surprise, more than intense pleasure. So she opened her eyes to see whose dragon had flown hers so skillfully, which rider had take her.

His face was still buried in her neck; his body, limp with repletion, leaned heavily against hers. He smelled of sweat, as she did. Even his hair was damp. They were both dripping, but as she wrapped slippery arms about his slippery back, she knew him, and knew him more intimately now than she had known any other man.

“Polite”? “Considerate”? Her errant mind went through the comments of the other queen riders about this man. “Deft”? Well, he had certainly been that, both with his bronze’s tactics and with herself. “Controlled”? Oh, no, not a bit controlled. Not polite, and more angry with her virginity than considerate. But then, had she been all that wise, leaving her first experience until her queen’s first flight? Well, it had been her option, and she was glad she had. That way she had been sure that it was her dragon who would choose, not some silly preference of hers.

“Mihall?” She spoke his name softly. His breathing had slowed, and she didn’t know if he had fallen asleep where he lay on her. He wasn’t that heavy, and she’d better get accustomed to it anyway, since he was now indisputably the Weyrleader-and her weyrmate.

He gathered himself to move away, and she held him fast. She liked his body. Indeed, she liked it very much for the way it had made her feel, the way it had completed her.

“You made for the thermal current right off?” she asked, having figured out just how he had managed to achieve his goal.

“Hmmm.” He moved his head to emphasize the agreement.

Vividly blue eyes regarded her with solemn appraisal. His short hair was dark red with sweat, but it curled as much as hers did. She expected that they’d have curly, red-headed children and smiled to be thinking that far ahead right now.

“Only way,” he murmured. Then, almost as if he expected her to resist, he ran a wondering finger down her cheek.

“Alaranth hadn’t a chance against that technique,” she said.

“I didn’t intend that she should, ‘Rene,” he said with a slow smile, and stroked her cheek again. It was the warm smile she liked so much. “I couldn’t let any other rider have you.”

She looked up at him quizzically: not “dragon,” but “rider” and “you.” He meant her, not just what she brought to this union, her dragon and the Weyrleadership.

“Rider?”

He raised himself on his elbows, looking down at her face as if he had to memorize every detail. “You are exceptionally beautiful, you know, and those eyelashes are totally unfair!” That marvelous smile of his again curved his firm mouth.

“But you said you were going to be Weyrleader.”

“Oh, I’d’ve been that one way or another, sooner or later,” he said in a blithe tone. He gave her very tender kisses on the edges of her lips.

“Polite”? “Restrained”? She couldn’t help smiling up at him, thinking of how very wrong the other women had been and how very glad she was that they were.

“It was always you I ached to have,” he said, still memorizing the planes of her face, kissing her cheekbones. “From the moment I saw you Impress Alaranth. But my father had warned me off the queen riders. I had to shadow Admiral Benden in order to get anywhere near you then without having my backside flayed.”

“That long ago?” Who had been avoiding whom since? She raised her eyelashes then and swept them teasingly across his forehead. His arms tightened, and there was nothing polite or considerate about his response: a response that had nothing to do with his dragon.

We both have what we wanted, said a dragon in a sleepy satisfied tone.

Try though she would in all the years she and M’hall were the Weyrleaders of Benden, Torene was never sure which dragon had spoken. Or to whom.