Chapter Eighteen
MINA
I tipped my head back, suppressing a howl when Marius pushed in. He huffed into my neck, straining for control, then pulled back and hammered in again.
I clamped my legs around him, hungry — no, starving — for more.
He stopped suddenly, and my gut clenched.
“Fuck.”
Yes, please.
But, darn. That wasn’t what he meant.
I moved my hands from his perfect, muscled ass to his shoulders, waiting.
“No condom. Problem?” he asked, barely stringing the syllables together.
Flustered dragon made for a cute — and rare — look, and I barely hid a smile.
“No problem,” I assured him in equally simple caveman talk. Let his mind focus on what mattered — like picking up where he’d left off.
I was on the pill and blessed with a shifter’s hardy immune system — a huge perk, despite missing out on so many other abilities my ancestors had enjoyed.
He didn’t actually say, Whew, but his body practically screamed it.
I smoothed my hands over the lumps of his shoulders, then gulped. I wasn’t just in bed with any man. I was in bed with a dragon shifter. He could roast me, tear me to pieces, or kill me with his bare hands — the very hands gliding over my body right now.
A ripple of anticipation went through me, and I nudged his ass.
“Definitely no problem. Now, where were we?”
He grinned, making my breath catch. “Bossy, aren’t we?”
“You love it,” I muttered, grinding my hips against his.
His smile turned into a needy hiss, and a moment later, I was moaning again.
Only seconds in, and this was already the best sex of my life, exceeding the previous high point — the flaming orgasm he’d given me a minute earlier.
And if I looked further back in time… well, the performance of other men seemed laughably amateur in comparison.
“No…second…thoughts?” he teased, punctuating each word with a deep, hard thrust.
No thoughts at all, actually. My mind was blissfully blank, except for yowling for more.
I must have mumbled something along those lines, because he laughed — so hard, it rippled through every corner of his body. Yes, even that corner, cueing me into another deep, long moan.
He grew serious again. Focusing. Thrusting harder and deeper.
I closed my eyes, then opened them, desperate not to miss a single sensation.
But I might as well have been trying to catch every raindrop in a summer storm, because impressions cascaded aplenty, and I could only capture so many.
The shooting stars in his midnight eyes.
The sweat glistening over his skin. The searing grind inside.
“Oh…” I gasped, losing the battle to hide my delight.
A battle Marius was fighting too, judging by the way he kept his jaw clenched.
Up to then, I’d kept a tight grip of his shoulders, hips, or ass, trying to maintain a shred a control. But now, I was consumed by the burning urge to let go. One last scrap held on, though, stubbornly asking questions.
Could I trust him?
Yes — with my life, I sensed.
Would he hurt me?
My heart, maybe, if — when? — this all came to a crashing end. But I would have to share the guilt for that.
And as for hurting my body… Waves of ecstasy pulsed through my veins, crossing that question off the list.
I released his shoulders and stretched my arms over my head. I even closed my eyes, trusting myself to him and to fate.
“Yes…” I whispered as our bodies rocked together.
The bed creaked, and the sheets tangled around my feet.
Blood pounded in my ears. Lust swirled through my veins. Cries dammed my throat. Then Marius hammered in one last time, and that dam shattered.
My vision blurred, and my whole body sang. And sang and sang, because the high lasted a long time — long enough for me to circle the chateau a couple of times in dragon form, if I were capable of such a thing.
At that moment, I really believed I could fly like a dragon. I believed I could roar and soar with my mate. I believed all kinds of crazy things, and they didn’t seem at all crazy.
Just as I was about to sag, Marius exploded inside me, and I shuddered with another orgasm.
Marius gasped and went perfectly still, a statue chiseled with muscles, veins, and an expression between victorious warrior and shaken to the core.
Then he sucked in a ragged breath and slumped, pressing me into the mattress.
I locked my arms around his back. I locked my lips, too, trapping off-limits words a guy like Marius would not want to hear. Four-letter L-words that had no business popping into my mind, even at a time like this.
We lay tangled together for a long time, too lazy — or too wrecked — to move. Eventually, Marius wiped us both off with the sheet, prompting me to make a mental note about moving up laundry day at the chateau. Then he snuggled in, absent-mindedly tracing circles on my shoulder.
I should have said something or cracked a joke to lighten the mood. Instead, I buried my face in the warm curve of his neck, inhaled, and clung to him.
At some point, nature called, and the only thing that scared me more than marching to and from the bed naked was the thought that Marius might not be there when I returned.
But his eyes followed me both ways like a hawk — or a dragon. A dragon standing guard over a priceless treasure. I gulped at the thought — and at the way he tucked me right back beside him. He pressed a kiss to my temple so gently, I thought I imagined it.
My chest squeezed.
Dangerous. So damn dangerous. Not just the man, but the direction of my thoughts.
If it had been night, we might have drifted off to sleep and dealt with the aftermath…well, after. But sunlight streamed through the windows, laying bare the truth of what we’d just done. Laying bare lots of things, in fact. Big things. My eyes kept drifting down, and I kept yanking them back up.
Finally, I rolled to my side to face him. His eyes — more mysterious lake than stormy seas for a change — met mine, then dipped to my chest and slowly, casually soaked in the view.
An uninhibited dragon. Why was I not surprised?
Fair was fair, so I decided to peek too. Down his broad chest, across his abs, all the way to his—
I ripped my gaze away just in time to catch him stifle a grin.
“I don’t know about you, but sex in broad daylight is kind of like…like stealing in broad daylight,” I said. “I feel like I ought to feel doubly guilty.”
He snorted. “Why feel guilty at all?”
I opened my mouth, but no words came. Why feel guilty, indeed?
I finally settled on, “Let’s just say it’s new to me.”
He traced another tiny circle into my shoulder. “Good new, I hope.”
I nodded, then caved in and corrected the understatement of the year. “Very good new.”
“Good enough to try again sometime?”
“I would say definitely, but I think it depends might be a safer bet.”
His brow furrowed. “Depends on what?”
“Neither of us ruining this with whatever we say next.”
His chuckle was a little dry. “Well, then I probably shouldn’t bring up—”
I cut him off with a vehement shake of my head. My decision to help with the heist in Mallorca? “You definitely shouldn’t bring that up. Not if you want to get laid again.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Do you want to get laid again?”
Hell yes. But it was only — I glanced over, then gaped at the clock — er, already ten in the morning, and we had a long day ahead of us. Maybe even a flight to Mallorca.
My hand went from the neutral territory of his shoulder to the riskier terrain of his hip. “Well, yes. I’m only human, you know.”
Are you, though? his eyes asked, though he didn’t actually speak.
Good, because that was a long story, and frankly, our time was better invested in sex.
I did, however, cave in enough to give him the short version.
“My father’s side of the family — the American side — is a mix of fox and bear shifters.”
Marius considered that. “That doesn’t explain how you evaded Henrik that night he stalked you from the attic.”
Ah, the shadow-walking. Hard to explain — especially since I hadn’t completely mastered it.
“Old family secret,” I said. “Not mine to share, sorry.”
He pursed his lips but didn’t press me on it.
“That comes from your mother’s side of the family, I take it?” he asked.
I nodded. “A mix of shifters and witches from here in Burgundy. But so mixed, and so far back, that we don’t have any truly special abilities.”
He snorted. “You mean, except for evading vampires?”
I flashed a thin smile. “Occasionally.”
We lay quietly for a while, thinking, touching, nuzzling.
“My turn for a question,” I eventually whispered.
“Uh-oh,” he murmured, only half joking.
I traced a line of muscle in his forearm, working up the courage to ask.
“That charge of attempted murder. Any regrets?” I quietly asked.
“Only that I didn’t succeed in killing him.”
So, points for honesty, if not lawfulness. But if that man was as bad as Bene said, well… Could I blame Marius?
I digested that for a while, then decided to try my luck with another question.
“What will you do when you finish working for Gordon?”
His eyes wandered over the ceiling, then the walls.
“Not sure,” he said.
I nodded, uncertain what I wanted his answer to be, let alone how I might reply.
Stay, a voice in the back of my mind pleaded. Forever.
A minute ticked by, far more comfortably than I expected.
“Did you paint those?” Marius murmured sometime later, indicating the row of framed art on the wall.
I shook my head. “Only that one.” I pointed to an oil painting of the garden fountain in better days.
“There are dozens more in storage. As a kid, I came here every summer and spent most of my time sketching and painting.” Then I cleared my throat.
“That one, that one, and that one are my father’s.
” I pointed to watercolors of the local landscape.
“He loved it here. My grandmother used to joke that he was more her child than my mother was.”
A mourning dove sang in the distance, almost in tribute, and a lump formed in my throat.