Chapter 22
ARDRUC
I woke from a dream of making love to Elena bathed in sweat and lost in a haze of heat and need.
We lay as we had fallen asleep after our shower and a quick evening meal: naked on my bed with me curled around my little mate with her back against my chest and my wing draped over us as a blanket.
My entire body thrummed with desire as it had in the throes of my mating frenzy, but this cresting wave of wildness had changed from the need to claim my mate to something else entirely.
My cock—already hard as stone and dripping with both lubrication and precum—ached in a way I had never felt before, not even since Elena had arrived on Hyderia and altered the workings of my hearts, body, and soul. The discomfort bordered on pain.
“Elena,” I rasped, my chest heaving and my ragged voice somewhere between pure predator and pure desperation. “Elena.”
She stirred in my arms. “Ardruc?” she asked sleepily. After a beat, she stilled. “What’s wrong?” She sounded much more awake now.
I was panting, the sound edged with a growl. “El…Elena.” I could not form a full sentence.
She turned to face me immediately, her eyes wide and straining to see me in the faint light in the bedroom. Gods, she was beautiful. Radiant. I shuddered hard.
“Oh, gods, Ardruc. Are you hurting?” She cupped my face and stared into my eyes. “Is it the mating frenzy?”
Her touch sent a bolt of need straight to my core. The ache in my cock grew, concentrated near its base, becoming a strain.
With a growl, I rolled her to her back and went to my hands and knees above her, smoke puffing from my nostrils as my wings stretched wide. “Mate,” I grated.
Her scent filled my lungs. I did not smell or see fear, but worry creased her brow and tightened her eyes.
Her gaze swept over me, scouring my face, my shoulders and chest, and moving down past my waist. She gasped. “Ardruc—”
Every fiber of my being demanded I take my mate, but her reaction and use of my name reached whatever shreds of reason I still had. I followed her wide-eyed gaze to my heavy, throbbing cock where it rested against her thigh.
“You have a knot,” she whispered.
In my muddled state, I could not process what I saw, or what she had said.
She grabbed my chin and raised my head so she could look into my eyes. “You’re all right, Ardruc.” Her tone was quiet now—not clinical like a scientist or physician, but soft and composed. I clung to the reassuring sound of her voice like an island of calm in the midst of a hurricane.
“You’ve claimed your mate, and now you’ve developed a knot,” she said, caressing my face. “Sometimes a male Fortusian develops a knot after reaching sexual maturity, and sometimes it happens once they find a true mate. It’s in the research I read.”
A knot. A knot.
Developing a knot in my adult life was technically possible, but I had never considered it likely to happen.
Male equatorial dragons did not have knots.
But Elena was right that it was common among Fortusians with external genitalia because of our genetic engineering.
My body had changed form and developed a new kind of want and need: not just to mate, but to breed.
Gods above, what would we do? What would Elena do?
A new terror chilled me to the bone. Would she reject me? We had not discussed the matter of procreation. I had no idea what her thoughts were on the subject, and my own were, to say the least, very complex.
Beneath me, her scent changed, becoming richer, sweeter, and even more intoxicating. My condition had caused some kind of emotional response—but thank all the gods above and below, I did not think it was the one I feared.
She cupped my face, her tender touch almost jarring against the need building to a crescendo inside me. I shoved the wave back with brute force and a puff of smoke. I must know what Elena wanted.
“I am not capable of conceiving right now,” she said, caressing my lower lip with her thumb. “To become pregnant, I would need to undergo the appropriate treatment to begin ovulating again. That is not something I’m ready to do now or anytime soon, but I am open to talking about the future.”
I was more grateful for her candid words than I could have said even if speech was within my capability.
I am open to talking about the future…
A future with Elena would be paradise, no matter what form it took.
She pulled me down until my torso rested on her abdomen and my head rested on her breast. Trembling and breathing raggedly, I let her hold me.
“My beautiful dragon.” She kissed the top of my head and smoothed my hair and feathers. I shivered at her gentle touches. “I want you to give me your knot. It will feel very good for both of us—or at least I think it will. I’ve never taken anyone’s knot before, but I’ve heard it’s quite good.”
“Elena.” I closed my eyes and breathed her in. The more her scent enveloped me, and the more she tenderly caressed me, the ferocity of my need became more manageable. “Thank you,” I rasped.
I slid my hand down her abdomen, past the little patch of silky hair at the apex of her thighs, and found she was already slick. When I circled her clit with my thumb and slipped two fingers inside her, she moaned and ground against my hand.
“Dragon,” she murmured, her lips pressed to my hair as her hips moved. “I think if you coo…it will be easier for me…to take you.”
I would coo, but she must come for me before I gave her my knot. Her pleasure and needs would always be more important to me than my own, regardless of circumstances.
I curled my fingers inside her and stroked over the soft place that made her shudder hard and gush.
Her arm around my neck pulled me tighter against her heaving chest. I sucked and laved her nipples in turn, biting lightly until her gasping cries rose in pitch in a way I had already learned to recognize.
Her cries turned into one long wail. The ache in my cock and balls became nearly all-consuming, and my growls blended with my mate’s cry.
She threw back her head and climaxed with a scream, her nails digging into the back of my neck and her pussy and thighs squeezing my hand as she flooded my fingers with her release. Beautiful. She was beautiful and perfect beyond belief.
I rolled her to her stomach and drew her hips up so she was on her knees, bent over with her cheek pressed to the bed. Whimpering and trembling, she spread her legs wide, ready and dripping for me.
I licked her sweet pussy to drink up her release, and then as she wailed, I stopped fighting the wave of need and let it take over.
My first thrust into her fluttering, tight pussy was so intensely pleasurable that my eyes nearly rolled up into my head.
She was wonderfully wet for me. I buried myself in my beautiful mate in three thrusts. Her screams of ecstasy grew in volume each time I rocked inside her. When my knot bumped against her, the pleasure made me bellow. Gods. Gods above.
There was nothing I wanted more than to bury myself completely inside her and feel her come on my cock while I pumped her full of my cum. Craving her screams and the way she fluttered around me, I rocked on my knees, working myself deeper.
Caught up in a frenzy of need and feeling almost drunk on my mate’s cries of ecstasy, my thoughts spun out of control and went utterly wild in a fantasy of a future I had never ventured to consider.
I wanted to breed her. I wanted to make love to her knowing she was fertile and she wanted our child.
I wanted to put a half-dragon, half-human child into my mate and see her belly become round.
I wanted to hold her and coo as she brought our child into the world, and cradle them both as she held our child to her breast. I saw the scene as clearly as I had seen anything else today.
In the midst of the need, my hearts filled with warmth and contentment. I would not be making a child with her today or anytime soon, but it was enough to be with her and think someday I might.
She was crying out now, her fists twisted in the bedding to hold on as I thrust into her. “Dragon,” she wailed, shuddering hard. “Dragon, give me your knot.”
Gods, I wanted to, but my knot was enormous and her sweet pussy was so small. It stretched to take just my cock.
Unbidden, my song rose in my chest. My body had known what to do even if Elena had not already instructed me.
I cooed for my beautiful mate. With a moan, she seemed to melt in my grip, her scent a heady blend of arousal, her own sweet cum, and that unique kind of contentment only I could create for her with my song.
I thrust until my knot pressed against her, and then in a series of careful thrusts I pushed it inside her lovely, dripping, welcoming pussy.
“Dragon,” Elena screamed.
All my senses faded to the echo of that word and a single sensation: a roaring rush that swept through all my limbs and built to a crescendo in my balls. My knot swelled inside my mate and I was helpless to hold back any longer.
Wracked with convulsions, groaning and calling Elena’s name, I emptied myself into my mate.
Again and again I released, filling her and filling her more, as she came for me one final time.
Her pussy squeezed and fluttered around my cock and my knot, and gods above I would feel that sensation in my dreams.
The wrenching power of this orgasm left me feeling both hollowed out and more complete and alive than at any moment of my thirty-four years.
The scent of my mate’s tears reached me even through my haze and dragged me back to my senses.
Shaking and spent, my cock still locked snugly inside her, I gathered her in my arms and lay us on our sides on the bed. I stroked her hair and held her tightly as she trembled.
“Sweet Elena,” I murmured in her ear. “Sweet, perfect Elena. My love. Beautiful little mate.”
My only answer was a quiet sob. Gods above, my Elena was crying. My body still sang of her and what we were sharing, but my hearts seemed to rend into pieces.