Light Dragons 02 - The Unbearable Lightness of Dragons

are dominant even so far as intimate relations are concerned—that I felt comfortable again broaching the subject.
    “Baltic, stop sleeping. I want to talk to you,” I told him, prying myself up from where I had collapsed against his chest.
    He cracked one eye open and considered me with some annoyance. “I have just pleasured you within an inch of your life, or so you claim, and now you wish to talk? My Ysolde—”
    “Yes, I know, your precious old Ysolde would have never bothered you at such a time, but since I am not as perfect as she was, you’re just going to have to deal with it.”
    He surprised me with a chuckle as he pinched my behind and shifted me so that I was draped more comfortably across him. Idly, I stroked my hand across the heavy pectoral muscles over his heart, tracing out the sept symbol that he bore there.
    “You were hardly perfect, my love. You always wanted to talk after lovemaking then, as well, although usually you did not require much response from me.”
    “Probably I knew I wasn’t going to get one. I seem to recall you going right to sleep after such acts,” I said, kissing his collarbone.
    He grunted and closed his eyes.
    “I want to talk about Constantine and you,” I said, propping my chin on my folded hands.
    His eyes popped open to glare at me, and he probably would have come up with some outraged declaration or other if I hadn’t stopped him by continuing. “I want to know why Constantine was meeting with Antonia von Endres and, more important, why the First Dragon had you kicked out of your sept.”
    He went absolutely still under me, not even breathing for the count of ten. Then he blinked. “How do you know about Constantine and Antonia?”
    “You want to tackle that subject first? OK. I had a vision today. Not a vision like before, but one where I wasn’t even born when the action happened.” I gave him a quick outline of the events I had witnessed.
    His face adopted a shuttered expression. “Why did you have that vision? It does not make sense. Neither that bastard Constantine nor Antonia has anything to do with you.”
    “They do if the First Dragon wants me to perform some task related to one or both of them.”
    He was silent again, then finally said, “I did not know they had met, although I suspected it. Antonia was very ambitious, and she expected me to be the same.”
    “Ambitious how? Becoming the heir, you mean?”
    “No, I was already fighting for that,” he said, lazily stroking my back. “She wanted more for me than to just be the wyvern of the black dragons. She wished for me to control the entire weyr, so that we could join our power and rule the Otherworld.”
    “Good god. So she thought she could do that by offing the competition?”
    His shoulders twitched. “I told her it was folly, that I would challenge Constantine for the position of heir and win it rightfully, but she was not known for her patience.”
    “So what happened that you were booted out of the sept?”
    “A complicated circumstance that has no bearing on your vision” was his answer after a long pause.
    “I don’t want to pry into something you’d rather not talk about,” I said slowly, moving a little so I could trace the lovely thick muscles of his chest. “But knowing what happened might give me some insight into what exactly I’m supposed to do about Constantine.”
    “I assure you that the situation had nothing to do with the traitor.”
    I looked at the face that I loved so dearly, reading in the set of his jaw and the obstinate glint to his eye that I would not get further information. That didn’t stop me from asking one last question, however. “That’s how the First Dragon knew you, isn’t it? You did something he didn’t like and he asked your wyvern to boot you out. Why has no one ever mentioned that? At the sárkány two months ago, Drake and the others seemed surprised to find out that the First Dragon knew you.”
    “No one outside of Alexei, Constantine, and a few others knew of the circumstance,” he said reluctantly. “All but one are dead.”
    I pounced on a name I recognized. “I thought you said that whatever you did had no impact on Constantine.”
    “I said it was not his concern. That is not the same thing,” he said with usual dragon caginess.
    “Will you tell me someday what happened?” I asked as his body relaxed once again, his eyes closed, and his arm wrapped securely around me.
    He pinched my behind again; then one