As soon as she’d cut the tape, Darsce threw the knife across her room where she couldn’t reach it and with quick, desperate movements wrapped the sticky stuff around her wrist several times, then around the leg of her bed, plastered it backing to backing and again around her wrist while she’d sat cross-legged on the floor. Breathless now, she’d thought,
There! That will take hours to undo. Enough time for the flight to be over and then some.
The flight had begun as she’d made her way into the meadow to catch her ride to Ierne for the day’s work. Her departure was interrupted by the gold who had called to the dragon awaiting to transport her, calling him to taste of blood and the skies with her, thus the young queen’s lure had claimed him. Following halfway to the feeding grounds, pleading with his rider had proved futile; rider and dragon were deaf to both reason and bribery.
The wingbeats of bronzes and browns rising after Luraoth had thundered in her veins, and with it, a predatory hunger pierced her stomach nearly bringing her to her knees.
Jethaniel!
Her feet moved seemingly of their own accord back through the caverns, to the still-dark administration hall where she’d rattled the locked knob to the steward’s office while tiny beads of moisture rose to her forehead.
“Jeth-”
No!!
She’d choked the cry back into her throat.
Not this way!
It had taken all of her will to turn and stumble-run to her room, grabbing the metallic industrial tape one of the techcrafters had left on a table in the main lounge as she went by – a last minute inspiration borne of… something other than her own selfish desires presently being fueled by dragonlust.
After securing herself, she’d flopped backwards onto the floor, stared at the ceiling as a flood of desire hit her anew. It washed over her in heated waves and she’d moaned, eyes sliding shut over the hazy expression in her iceblue eyes and let the flight take her where it willed. No harm could come of it now…
She wanted Jethaniel so much it ached, wanted to go to him, to taste his mouth, feel his arms around her, to feel his heart beat against hers, to both take and surrender. It was too much, this longing and she’d pushed herself up on her elbows, fingernails tearing at the tape, trying to peel it off in a frenzy that only grew as the flight climaxed unseen through the stone encasing her, but acutely felt high in the skies above. Her breaths had shortened to gasped panting as she’d struggled, stopped to strain for the knife, but it lay, tantalizingly beyond her grasp. Every one of her polished nails cracked and broke in her efforts, but the tape held as silent tears of frustration and longing rolled down her cheeks.
Exhaustion finally surpassed desire and she’d slowly sunk to her side on the carpet, her ragged breathing had slowed until she’d drifted into a deep sleep with her wrist, still tethered to the leg of her bed by the tape.
But held there by respect.