The Dragon God's Bride Asked for a Divorce novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Draft Two
Her second request lists grounds; he sets a rule of one request and one evening a day, and in the hot spring his tail and hands give her her first pleasure. Kohaku shows her two kept bridal rooms with empty comb cases.
"What happened to the last one?" Shizuku asked.
He didn't answer.
He towed her back down through the water with his arm across her ribs, past the banners and the pearl lamps.
He set her on her feet in the hall as gently.
Then he went back to his throne and sat, and his tail flowed up the steps after him.
"Kohaku will show you to your room," he said. "Sleep. Write me another one in the morning."
"You want me to write another divorce request?"
"I have a great deal of time on my hands, Shizuku Hanamura."
That was the first time he said her name.
She hated how it sounded.
She wrote the second request at dawn, on her knees at a low table.
Her room held a bed the size of a rice barge.
The request ran to two pages and had numbered grounds.
Ground one was the same as before.
Ground two was that the bed was too big, and she had slept on the very edge of it.
The god read it standing, with his long hair falling over one shoulder and his tail twitching.
When he reached ground two, the tip of the tail stopped.
"The bed is too big," he said.
"Yes. And I want a divorce, and a ride home."
"Denied."
"You didn't read the rest."
"I read the rest. It is very well argued." He folded the pages in half and put them inside his sleeve. "You will bring me another tomorrow. One request a day, Shizuku. And in return I ask one evening a day of your company."
"That's not a trade. That's a kidnapping with a timetable."
"You may have the evening in the spring pool or the evening on the dais."
"I choose the one where I can leave."
"Then it is the spring pool," he said, perfectly serious, "because it has a door."
The spring pool was a cave at the back of the palace, where a crack in the lake floor poured up hot water.
Steam hung under the rock roof, and the water in the basin was pale green and warm as soup.
Shizuku was shaking when she came in, and not only from the cold she'd carried in her bones since the lake.
Kohaku had dressed her in a thin white robe tied at the waist.
She had winked at Shizuku with both eyes while she did it.
The dragon god was already in the water.
He sat against the far wall with his arms spread along the rock and his tail lying loose in the shallows.
He was naked to the waist and probably below it.
His chest was long and pale and sleek, and an old, thin scar ran across it.
"You said an evening," Shizuku said. "I'm here. I will sit on the edge and not speak."
"You are cold."
"I'm fine."
"You are shaking so hard the water has rings."
She sat down on the rim with her feet in the water.
It felt so good she nearly groaned out loud.
His tail slid through the pool toward her, bright green and wet, and curled lightly round her right ankle.
"Stop that," she said.
It didn't move.
"Do you want me to?"
She opened her mouth to say yes.
What came out was, "I haven't decided."
He smiled.
It was a small, slow smile, and it did something to the muscles at the backs of her knees.
"Then I will wait," he said.
The tail began to move up her calf in a long warm stroke, and it stopped at the back of her knee.
"Tell me something true," he said.
"My uncle tied my sash. He said my father would be proud."
"Is that true?"
"My father's dead," Shizuku said. "He'd have been proud of a better thing."
Something shifted behind those gold eyes.
"Come here, Shizuku."
"No."
"Come here and say no again."
She slid into the water.
It came up to her ribs, and the robe floated up around her.
He took her wrist and drew her through the water until her knees were on either side of his thighs.
Her face was level with his throat.
"I've never done this," she said. "Any of it."
"Then it is a good thing you are not alone."
She kissed him.
She did it to shut him up, she would like it noted, and also because his mouth was right there.
When his mouth opened under hers, his hand slid into her wet hair and held her head, and the whole spring pool tilted.
He kissed like a man who had been starving politely for a hundred years.
She made a noise against his lips.
His other hand went under the robe, flat and hot on her back, and pulled her in against him.
She felt him then, hard and thick against her belly, and she gasped into his mouth.
"Yes," she heard herself say. "Do that again."
He did.
His tail wound up her thigh and laid itself between her legs.
It was smooth and warm and strong, and it pressed upward against the wet place that nobody had ever touched.
"Oh," Shizuku said.
"Hold on to my shoulders."
She held on.
His fingers slid in beside the tail, parting her.
He found the small hard bead of her with a certainty she did not enjoy at all, and then enjoyed very much.
She was ashamed of how fast she got there.
"Look at me," he said, low. "There. Good girl. Let me see it."
The tail rocked, and his thumb circled, and two fingers pushed inside her and curled forward.
The pleasure went up her spine.
"Ryugen," she said.
She had not known his name until it came out of her mouth.
It was written all over the palace, on the banners and cut into the dais in letters a foot high.
His whole body jerked under hers.
"Again," he said hoarsely. "Say it again."
"Ryugen, please, I'm going to"
"Do it. Come for me."
She came with her teeth in his shoulder, shaking so hard that the water slopped over the rim.
He held her through every wave of it, his fingers working her slowly, his tail coiled snug and warm around her hips.
When she could think again, her forehead was pressed against his collarbone.
His cock was a hot, heavy weight against her thigh, and he had not once pushed it at her.
"That was not part of the request," Shizuku said into his skin.
"No," he said. He was breathing hard. "It was not."
"I still want the divorce."
"I know. Tomorrow."
He lifted her out of the water and set her down on a warm flat stone.
Kohaku was standing at the cave mouth with a towel and a face like a very pleased cat.
"My lady," she said brightly. "Would you like to see the east wing?"
Shizuku would have said no.
But the way Ryugen's tail went suddenly, perfectly still behind him made her say yes.
Kohaku led her down a corridor she hadn't seen, lined with carved doors.
She opened two of them.
Each held a bridal chamber with silk bedding, fresh flowers and not a speck of dust.
On each table lay a small black case with a hollow inside shaped like a comb.
Both hollows were empty.
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