Chapter Five
Sequin
We circled around the downtown area of the GGB over and over talking about everything under the sun, moon, and stars. Well, almost everything. I avoided anything to do with Daliah like she had the plague. Most of my recent relationships weren’t relationships at all but one night or weekend stands with guys I met on Pheromone Swap. I tended to keep my business to myself with strangers I’d never see again but something about Xav made it impossible for me to shut up. For the first time in my life, I felt heard. Okay, that wasn’t fair. For the first time in my life since Mom died and Daliah lost her mind I felt heard, and it was a feeling I didn’t want to give up any time soon. I tried a few times to draw Xav out of his shell, but he wasn’t willing to give any more info on his family or where he came from than the bit he gave me earlier. I wondered if the world he came from was some big secret because some places – maybe even Earthside – would’ve loved to exploit powers like he and his family had. Maybe his family gobbled up outsiders or froze them to death.
When he spoke of the people he was closest to it was mostly about Selt and Liatris. A little bit of Teddy and various dragons he met from the Starscale flight. I sort of lowkey envied some of the dragons he knew from the purple district. Not only did they have a whole section of their town to find exactly what they needed but they also knew more about my mate than I did. Well, maybe. Some of them knew what he liked when the lights went out and what his skin tasted like just after he came.
“Did you ever knot any of those dragons?” I asked and hated how envious the words tasted on my tongue.
“No. I didn’t. It hadn’t even crossed my mind to be honest. By the way, you say that like there were dozens. I didn’t sleep with the whole flight. A few people here and there yes but don’t let whatever the magic is doing inflate that number, okay?”
I bit my lip. I wanted to ask another too personal question.
“Spit it out,” Xav laughed, reading the uncertainty on my face.
“If you didn’t knot them, how do you know you can knot?” I asked them.
“That’s really your thing, huh?” he smirked.
“It is,” I admitted. “We’re going to be together forever. There’s no use in hiding it.”
“Do you think fate would be so cruel as to give you a mate who couldn’t partake in the only kink you’ve felt bothered to mention since we’ve met?”
“I don’t trust the universe. It thinks Rosemary belongs with my sister,” I grumbled.
“Well, I think they belong together too because I was born so far away from you that we shouldn’t have met. Even meeting Liatris was probably the hand of fate. Then we met Selt, who came at the right time to be back up against fascists, and then we’re only here because those women are getting married.”
“Tell me about the knotting,” I said, eager to change the subject.
“You really want to know?” he arched a brow.
“Yes,” I laughed.
He took my hand and pulled me down another small alleyway. We were across town from the club but near a lot of the stores that were closed this time of the night. Or was it morning now? I wasn’t sure and didn’t want to pull my phone out and ruin everything. It was probably weighed down with texts and voicemails from my entire family calling me the scaley ass again.
“What? Are you gonna whip it out or something?” I teased.
“No,” he said, walking me backwards until my back touched the brick wall of one of the newer grocery stores.
Xav cupped my chin again, like he did when we first met, and his lips brushed against mine. I reached out for him, wrapping an arm around his neck to pull him closer. His warm, moist tongue snaked into my mouth heating me up from the inside out. He pressed against me, locking me between him and the wall as his free hand trailed up and down my side, giving me goosebumps.
“Right after everything was settled from my medical transition, I kept waking up all knotted up. It confused the doctors because dragons don’t knot. They knew about knotting of course. So they did all this genetic testing trying to find something they recognized as canine or canine related and they couldn’t. So believe me when I say I know I can knot. Apparently, dreaming bout sex was enough to make it happen.”
I swallowed hard wondering if Xav jacked off when he woke up all hot, bothered, and knotted up like that. I bet he did. The only question now was, would he let me watch? I shut the thought down before he picked it up over the Starscale link. Our relationship was too new for questions like that, right?
“I’m only picking up bits and pieces, but I like where it’s going,” Xav smirked and leaned in for another kiss.
This one was long and slow. He took his time pushing his nimble tongue between my parted lips. I pulled him in close, reveling in the strength of his body and the magic playing just under his skin. The more he leaned in, trapping me between the wall and him, the louder his magic hummed. He was hard against me as our tongues danced between our mouths. His scent overtook me and sent my head reeling with a million unanswered questions. Like where the hell did he learn to kiss like this and would I ever think in a straight line again? Did I even want to?
We kissed for a long time without some old fogie like Feral around to slide his hand between us. Xav’s hands found my hips and slid down to my ass. His fingers kneaded into my flesh, making it hum in time with his magic. No wonder he hadn’t told everyone how he shifted. I’d seen and felt it with my own eyes and still wasn’t sure how it worked. Xav was still a mystery to me, but some mysteries were meant to be kissed.
He lifted one hand and traced my jawline with it. I leaned into his warmth, longing for more of that hum. It vibrated through me mimicking how a dragon purred. Did magic purr? I never heard magic do that before but maybe that’s what this was – all the humming was just his way of purring. I kissed him harder, wanting more of him. He tasted like coffee and something sweet that I couldn’t put my finger on. Was it something in his cigarettes? Maybe I would try one after all. Daliah had.
He sighed into the kiss when her name crossed my mind. I shoved it away as she shoved me away as soon as she met Rosemary.
“I’m going to get you off and then we’re going to solve that problem,” he said, leaning back far enough to meet my gaze.
“Short of tossing her to another world I don’t think there is a solution,” I said, trying and failing to make him laugh.
“There is a solution, and I will find it. Call me possessive or say my ego is not as icy as the rest of me but when I’m kissing you, I don’t want you to think about your sister. She seems cool and all but I’m not that into women. I’m definitely not into your sister.”
“I’d hope not,” I frowned at him. “I didn’t think about her on purpose.”
“I know but if it can break through this,” he said pointing back and forth between us, “it’s bothering you.”
“Maybe I’m just high,” I shook my head. “I don’t want to talk about her anymore. I don’t want to do anything about her. It’s all in her court now. She was a giant scaley ass and she can solve the problem now.”
Xav rubbed over his third eye chakra briefly before turning to an icy breeze. For a moment, I thought he’d blow right away, instead he wrapped around me, chilling out my dragon enough for me to stop thinking about dropping both of them in a volcano. Frost, Juda, and all their little babies. I wasn’t even sure what we were fighting about anymore. The house. The pink. Mom liking her more? That last one never made sense to me. She didn’t and Nelum wasn’t mum. All those things were the exact reason we couldn’t resolve this fight.
The breeze shifted and I found myself walking along that alleyway until I reached a building on the far edge of it. There was a hotel owned by a rabbit there. I checked into a room and the breeze that was Xav ushered me upstairs and pushed me down onto the bed. I surrendered to how tired I was, but I wasn’t ready to sleep. The breeze, now slightly warmer than ice, shimmied into my shoes until they fell off one by one. Then under my shirt, tugging and pulling, until my torso was naked. Then, against the odds, the breeze unbuttoned and unzipped my pants too. He left them on as he materialized stretched out on his side next to me, his head propped up on his fist.
“Is that how you’re going to solve every disagreement we have?” I laughed.
“Probably not but you’re tired and I refuse to argue with you. Right now, everything’s hot headed. We’re in the midst of our true-mate response and it feels nice to be me sometimes. I haven’t had the chance to do that since I left home.”
“Why did you leave home?” I asked him.
“Because only guys are supposed to be ice and they didn’t believe their own gods’ magic, I guess. It doesn’t matter,” he shook his head. “I’m not going back. We can have our icy or fiery or scaley little babies right here or on Starscale number something. Really. I know a lot of people get homesick but leaving home felt like taking off a wet cloak that I had to carry around everywhere. Once I left, I could breathe easy for the first time in my life. Then with friends, magic, surgery, and medicine I found everything I thought I wanted with the Starscales.”
“Thought you wanted?” I arched a brow.
“You weren’t there,” he smirked and stole a kiss. “Now, I have it all.”
“Do you really?” I teased. “Because I don’t think a mate with so many family issues was on your wish list.”
“Makes me feel normal,” Xav teased right back. “It’s eerie if a whole family gets along all the time. It’s like they’re all playacting or something, mate. I don’t want that. I don’t want to be around fake people playing fake roles all day every day. I want real, even if real is a hot fucking mess.”
“My life used to be less messy,” I sighed and put my forearm over my eyes.
Xav traced around the edges of my silver star scale. I focused on his finger tracing around and around it. I was hard and slick and we hadn’t even talked about babies. I wanted babies, of course. I wanted a family. I’d played myself right out of the hookup culture while down in the tropics. A smile pulled at the corners of my mouth as I imagined Xav carrying around a little baby with my eyes and his dark hair. A fox/dragon who could turn into a whisp of something. Ice? Fire? Maybe smoke? Would they have a smaller wyrm form too? The questions circled my brain and eventually pulled me under into the dark abyss of sleep. Later, I’d face palm at how I fell asleep the first time I shared a bed with my alpha. Only Xav never brought it up that way. Later when he told the story it would be how we walked ourselves damn near to sleep because we couldn’t get enough of just talking to each other and how we barely made it into our tiny hotel room before we both passed out all curled up together after he stripped me half naked.