A Bride for the Water God (Divine Dragons 1)

A comforting blanket of darkness clouded my mind. Swept away by exhaustion, I was adrift in the lazy seas of dreams. An inkling thought in the hidden crevices of my mind warned that I wasn’t in the right place. I should have been wet, hurting, drowning—dead.

Instead, I was dreaming. I had to be.

Warm, rough hands were smoothing over the delicate skin of my inner thighs. The tip of those long, powerful fingers might have sported claws, but they skimmed so carefully over my sensitized flesh I couldn’t tell. Those hands were oversized, almost frighteningly so. They tenderly massaged and assessed my bare legs, roaming higher under the edge of my dress.

A phantom in my dreams hovered between my legs. It was a hulking, massive frame that should have crushed me, but it was remarkably gentle. He pushed the silken skirts away from my legs, bunching them around my hips.

I thought I heard a low, pleased growl, but that was a terrifying thing to dream about. So, I decided I hadn’t heard it.

That touch was careful, disarmingly so. And it was reaching higher, exploring the inside of my legs. A heated puff of breath skimmed my inner thigh, provoking a shiver along my spine. The warmth of that breath coiled in the pit of my stomach, becoming a whirlpool of heat at the apex of my thighs.

My head rolled on a pillow, and my fingers hooked into the soft fabric beneath me. A quiet, wanton noise breached my lips with each touch on my inner thighs.

It reminded me of a boy who’d courted me back in my village. Growing up together, we always assumed that one day he and I would be married. He was my first everything—first friend, first kiss, and first lover.

But his touch had never felt so large or been so delicate. He was rough and quick to take his pleasure from me, leaving me wanting and second guessing what a life by his side would look like.

It was almost a relief when his parents arranged a marriage for him with a girl from another village. He moved far away, not looking back. And I moved ahead.

In the year since he went away, I was left wanting. At night I touched myself, wishing there was someone laying atop me and sliding inside of me. I didn’t mind it rough if they knew what they were doing, but I didn’t have the luxury.

Then the drought started, and pleasure went to the furthest, darkest corners of my mind.

Maybe that was why I dreamt of firm, strong hands holding my thighs. Some part of me was missing pleasure and my mind was filling in the blanks. Although I’d never imagined a mouth near my center before—not one with a breath so hot it felt like standing near an open fire.

Soft shudders rolled through my body, and my hips tipped forward, almost willing the nearby mouth to close over my center. To tear through the meager fabric of my underwear and taste the arousal pooling from my slit. When thumbs pressed into my inner thighs, my clit pulsed in an echo of my increasing heartbeat.

Then something pressed into my underwear, nudging over the damp material right over my throbbing clit. Something that felt like a nose, and something that felt very real.

Whoever he was inhaled heavily, grip increasing on my thighs as he did. An almost purring, satisfied groan vibrated through him. “Eager little rabbit, aren’t you?”

That voice was ethereal and smooth, like darkness and waves crashing together. My core quivered with need at the sound of it and coming from so close to where I ached for release.

But my eyes snapped open as I jolted harshly back to reality. As awareness flooded through me, I became conscious of the plush mattress under my backside, cradling me in the center of an oversized bed. Quickly I glanced over the domed ceiling, gleaming with an opalescent sheen like the inside of a shell, and the golden shafts of early morning light streaming through the pillars to the right that were open to the world—to the smell of the sea.

Everything came crashing down around me when I dropped my gaze to the man—the creature—hovering over my trembling center.

Blue. He was so fucking blue.

Blue, scale-like skin stretched over a wide, sculpted frame. Easily two, maybe three, times larger than the average man. He had full lips, curved into a wicked smirk that revealed straight white teeth joined by canines too long to be anything but fangs. His tongue darted out to swipe along his bottom lips like he was a starving beast staring down a meal—but even his tongue was blue. Long, split at the ends and… were those ridges?

My first traitorous thought was about how a tongue like that would feel inside of me—

A deep, crooning chuckle that vibrated in his throat pulled my attention back to his face. And a hot flush crept over my skin at the warm nearness of his oversized frame.

His eyes had a slit, narrow pupil surrounded by a sea of riveting blue. Like a snake with ocean eyes.

Three sets of horns spiraled up from his head. His ears were long and frilled like a fin. Beautiful waves of sea-green and black-blue hair spilled over his shoulders. It was half pulled back, away from his face, with a few errant curls hanging over his forehead.

And his face—oh, gods—he had the most handsome face I’d ever seen. Even if it was blue. His jaw was strong and sharp with cheekbones that could cut through glass.

An undignified noise clawed up from my throat when I noticed the shadows shifting behind him. Two wide wings splayed out—wings that I knew I’d seen before. And languidly curling behind him was a long serpentine tail with serrated frills along the length.

It hadn’t been a dream.

There was a monster between my legs, with his hungry mouth hovering all too close to my pussy. I was familiar enough with arousal to notice the lust in his eyes.

Panic snapped through my body, taking the reins of my bodily function. Seized by terror and spurned to act, my hand flung out, reaching for the nearest object. A scream flew free from me like a startled bird escaping into the air. My fingers latched onto something hard and solid on a marble bedside table.

Before I knew it, my hand arched back around, slamming my makeshift weapon into the smirking face of the beast. A blur of faded leather and old, yellowed pages exploded when it contacted his face and wiped his smug expression away.

I scrambled back onto the bed like a frightened mouse scurrying away from a shark. My scream of terror was still streaming past my lips as the scaled man reeled back onto his knees. I went silent when I ran out of breath and my lungs protested.

He rubbed a hand over his face, a hand bigger than my entire head. Just as I thought I’d felt, there were indeed long black claws at the tips. But also, a thin shimmering webbing between his digits.

The fish-snake man groaned, but the sound cut short. His eyes snapped up to me between his splayed fingers and a loud, barking laughter erupted from him. His shoulders shook and his wings trembled from the strength of his laughter.

“What were you doing to me?” I blurted.

“Well, at first I was inspecting your injuries.” His hand dropped, and his searing gaze went to the bare expanse of the brown skin of my legs. “Then you started to smell so damn appetizing, little rabbit. I almost went in for a bite.”

“Injuries?” I huffed, choosing to ignore the second half of his statement.

Indeed, when I peered closer, there were minor cuts and scratches marring my skin. Likely scratches from the boat and the rusalka trying to knock me over.

Those nightmarish memories flooded back into my head, threatening to drown me. I gasped, slapping a hand into my face.

“Oh, shit! The Water God was going to eat me. How did I get here? What happened to me?”

More of those appealing chuckles escaped the fish-snake beast at the edge of the bed. His head knocked back as he laughed at my expense, as if amused by me.

“And who are you?” My heart was threatening to claw its way up the back of my throat, and I didn’t have the energy to fight again.

His swimming blue eyes dropped to me, taking in every inch of me from my tattered white dress, now missing half its ornament to the tight coils of my black hair now splayed wildly about my face. Then his gaze lit up with roguish mischief.

“I wasn’t going to eat you, little rabbit. But perhaps I will if you ask nicely.” His dark brow arched, and the corner of his sensual lips kicked up, sending a coiling sensation through my stomach that was at odds with my fear.

“Who… who are you?” I repeated, swallowing over my dawning realization.

His head tipped to the side, and the sunlight highlighted every beautifully monstrous part of him. Horns, wings, tail, claws… a humanoid version of the sea serpent I’d seen before going under the waves. Humanoid, but still entirely a creature of the otherworld—a beast of the heavens.

“You don’t recognize me? After I saved your life,” he clicked his teeth before climbing off the bed. He moved with the fluid grace of a predator. “I’m just trying to help… wife.”

Wife.

That word gutted me, scooping out my heart and my intestines until they all spilled onto the pretty silk bedding.

That was right. I was a sacrifice for the Water God. But I thought that being his bride was only a title—the name of the one damned to die and nothing more. I never expected the position to be that of an actual bride.

I gasped, staring at the draconic male in front of me in all his divine splendor.

He was the Water God, standing before me in an alternate form.

And I was his new bride.