Brannie growled and her fingers gripped his hair, pressing him to her breast. He continued to suck and tease even while he hammered into her.

With one hand still twisted in his hair, Brannie grabbed his shoulder with the other and dug her fingers into the skin. She had no real nails, always keeping them short for battle, but her grasp was brutal. Painful. Ruthless.

He loved it.

Especially when she came. Her entire body clenched and Aidan’s eyes crossed from the pain and pleasure. The way she clamped down on him, biting her lip to stop from crying out.

He watched her. Amazed at how beautiful she looked coming like that. So beautiful, he came right behind her, unable to control himself.

And it was all because of her. All because of Branwen the Awful.

* * *

When Branwen could see and hear again, when she was no longer lost in fucking Aidan the Divine, she collapsed against him, her head landing on his shoulder.

They held on to each other, both breathing hard, waiting for the tremors racking their bodies to stop.

And, when they did, she said, “Shut up.”

“Again, Branwen,” he laughed, “I didn’t say anything!”

* * *

Bram the Merciful closed his eyes and dropped back into the chair.

“Are you sure?” he asked the two sitting across from him.

Var raised an eyebrow. “Of course I’m sure,” he said with an arrogance Bram usually only heard from Var’s mother. “Do you think I’d bother telling you Brigida was rooting through our library of books if I wasn’t sure?”

“What could she be looking for?”

“An ancient book of dragon spells,” Frederick explained again.

“I don’t mean what did she take? What was she looking for within the book?”

“That we don’t know,” Frederick admitted. “I couldn’t read it—”

“—and I hadn’t gotten to it yet to fully know what’s inside,” Var finished.

“And now you know why I told you, Unnvar, to deal with the dragon books first.”

“They’re boring.”

“Not everything can be entertaining, and now we don’t know what Brigida the Most Foul is up to.”

“That’s hardly my fault.”

“You didn’t help.”

“So what do we do now?” Frederick asked, always one to stop a possible dispute with reason.

“I’ve already taken care of that,” Var said simply. Too simply.

It was the strangest thing. The boy had such intense arrogance. Not about his beauty—and, like his father, he was beautiful—nor about his intelligence. He just accepted them as part of who he was. But when it came to his certainty that he was making the best decisions for all involved . . . that’s where Var’s arrogance outshone his mother’s and father’s. He didn’t ask questions about his decisions, he simply announced that he’d made one and everyone else had best keep up.