Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
brIANNA
D eclan’s touch heats my body immediately, like his kiss cues my body to get ready for him. Like I’ve been conditioned to grow wet just being this close to him. As much as I want to give in, to just let go of everything that’s happened, everything I’ve just learned, I don’t know that I can. Not yet, at least. Too much is cluttering my mind.
“Declan, wait.” I hardly stop kissing him, letting his taste linger on my lips, even as I shift back, just enough that we’re not touching from waist to mouth anymore.
He pulls back too. Slowly, like he’s struggling to do as I ask, as if he, or his dragon, doesn’t have the control to wait.
“What is it?” His eyes are swirling with color, a sign that his dragon’s close to the surface, even if he can’t shift, and his chest seems to be rising and falling in quick breaths, like he’s just run a marathon. His tone, though, is all concern.
I cup his cheek, skimming my thumb over his lower lip once. “I want this. I really do. But I know once we start, we’re not likely to stop until we’re both completely exhausted.” I smile as his hand grips my ass, his fingers digging in. “I just feel like we need to talk about some stuff first.” My mind is still reeling with the idea that one of the Lees, or maybe all of them, could be vampires.
Declan shifts, gently moving me with him so that we’re laying down, his arm under my head like a pillow. The concrete slab is hardly comfortable, but it’s hard to care when he’s here.
“What do you want to talk about?”
I chew on my inner cheek lightly, not sure where to start. I feel like I want to know everything. Everything about him. Everything about supernatural creatures. Everything about what it means to be his mate.
“Let’s pick one topic at a time, princess.” He kisses the tip of my nose as his fingers trace over my spine. “We’re going to have centuries together. We don’t have to cover everything tonight.”
I could be mad at him for hearing my thoughts, for knowing what I’m thinking, what I’m struggling with, but it’s hard to be mad at him for anything. Not when he’s everything I didn’t even know I wanted in a partner. Not when I can feel how much he cares about me, how much he treasures me.
“When we were talking about one of the Lees being a vampire, you said that they’re probably working with Grey. Who is Grey?”
There’s something about the name Grey that is niggling at the back of my mind, like it’s important, but I can’t seem to pull up the reference or why I would even know anything about Grey. To my knowledge, this is the first time I’ve heard that name.
“Grey is a vampire on a power trip. He’s a lot like your father in some ways, but he despises humans and shifters alike. He doesn’t like anyone who isn’t a vampire. He wants humans to be slaves and food. He wants shifters to be wiped off the earth. I’m not sure how he feels about the fae or witches, but they’re not currently being hunted as far as we can tell.”
“Why?”
“If there is a ‘why’, we don’t know what it is. We’re working hard enough just trying to figure out a way to stop him. He’s been planning this for a very long time. He’s involved witches and other magical creatures just to get as far as he has. Not to mention, he’s using dead dragons to fuel some of the control he’s managed to gain. He’s powerful and has powerful friends or powerful people he’s managed to put under his control. He’s the reason why my brother exposed himself as a dragon on television.”
“That was your brother?”
“Levi. The guy is never going to live it down, and we live a long time. Grey put his mate in danger. He had to show himself or she’d be killed. Most of us get it and don’t really blame him. The Elders are pissed.”
“Elders?”
“Our hierarchy is run by the Elders at the top. They’re the kings of the clans for the most part. Currently, my clan, doesn’t have a representative with the Elders because our parents were murdered a few years ago. We’re pretty sure at this point, Grey probably has a foothold with the Elders, but we’re not sure how or who.”
“Why do you think that Grey would be working with the Lees?” I ask, trying to get to the heart of my issue.
I want to know everything, but hearing the little bit of politics, I can tell I’m going to need a full semester class to understand everything that’s going on in the dragon world.
“Because Grey has been two steps ahead of us every time we turn around. There are a lot of good vampires out there, but we’ve already been betrayed numerous times. I find it suspicious that weeks after you and I found each other, a vampire is showing up for dinner. I would be stupid to not be at least suspicious.” He cups my face and meets my eyes. “Please, please be careful around the Lees. If Grey has sent him here, it’s not for anything good.”
I nod and give him an encouraging smile. “I will. I promise.”
He kisses the tip of my nose again. “Thank you, my mate.”
“Let’s talk about that. You keep saying I’m your mate, and that fate chose you for me, but I don’t know what that means for me. I feel it—this connection between us—but is that all it is?”
He hesitates. The strong emotions wafting off him one moment, fade and draw out of me, and even his eyes betray the way he’s shutting down, shielding something from me.
“Declan.” I keep my voice tender but stern.
“You are my mate. I know it, as strongly as I know I need air to breathe. But we cannot act on the bond more than we have.” Declan sighs, closing his eyes as he presses his forehead to mine. “I cannot complete our bond. I can’t claim you. Not while I wear these cuffs. Not when I can’t guarantee we’ll be together.”
I frown at him, even though his eyes are still closed, and he can’t see my expression. I don’t have to ask why he’s concerned we won’t be together, but I don’t know how to tell him that I don’t care if he can’t promise forever. So, instead, I wait.
“Dragons—shifters in general—don’t enter into relationships cavalierly. When we mate, we mate for life. This isn’t just about some words spoken in a ceremony, and it’s not something that can be undone. If I claim you, if I mark you with my bite, if I tie us together, and then I die…” He trails off, his voice hitching.
“If you die, I die?”
He nods slightly, hardly noticeable except that our foreheads are still pressed together. “I won’t do that to you. I won’t claim you until I know that I won’t be forced to fight. I won’t claim you until I know that we can be together for longer than the next few hours at a time.” Declan pulls back again, rolling us so that I’m sprawled over his chest, so that he can look up at me. “It’s not guaranteed that a mate will die if their partner does, but even if you survived, it would be a life filled with an emptiness, or so I’ve been told. I hope never to find out. And with the way other human mates have been treated, with the way dragons are being treated in the human world, I cannot condemn you to death, or a fate even worse.”
“Not even if I ask for it?”
He shakes his head, his eyes filled with sorrow. “I ache to claim you. Every time we’re together, it gets worse. My dragon knows you’re ours. I hate that you’re not wearing my mark, that you’re not protected by my heartstone, that you’re not a fierce dragon in your own right.”
“A dragon in my own right?”
“That’s the other reason I won’t claim you. You’ll most likely turn into an obsidian dragon.”
“An obsidian dragon? Why wouldn’t I be a tourmaline like you?”
“Not really sure how all the magic works but human mates become obsidian dragons. The last thing I want is for you to be more of a prisoner to your father. If you changed and he found out…I would never forgive myself if you ended up cuffed and imprisoned down here with me. What if he made me fight you? No. I won’t do it. No matter how many times you ask.”
The stern and defiant feelings rushing through me as he speaks are overwhelming, but it makes a lot of sense, as much as I hate to say it.
“I know you’re my home, my heart, my everything, but if I claim you, if I give in to that urge, you’d be in so much more danger than you are, just knowing me. I would kill even the most vicious opponents to keep you safe, regardless of if I’ve claimed you, but I couldn’t risk losing you to even a chance of death.”
“Declan, we’re going to get you out of this. We’re going to find a way to free you of these cuffs, free you of this spell and the runes on your back, and we’re going to make a life that lets us both spread our wings.” I snuggle into him, holding him as tightly as I can.
“What does our future look like, princess?”
“If I can have anything, I’d probably pick a house somewhere that’s mostly windows. No thick, oppressive walls. We’d lounge for days in a big comfy bed and have food delivered until we have to go back to the real world. We’ll go on adventures and if I get to be a dragon then I want to fly everywhere we go. To be free like that…to be with you and be free like that would be everything.”
I can’t mention that the idea of losing him, of not ever getting to fully be his, hurts so much more than knowing that I could die too if he ended up losing one of these damned fights. I can’t tell him that I’d rather die than have to marry someone else. I can’t tell him that even though we’ve only known each other for such a short time, I can’t imagine a life without him in it.
“I like that you already think like a dragon. My brother, Ash, and his mate live in a three-story home right on the beach in Miami, with huge balconies and verandahs to take flight from. They take the concept of indoor-outdoor living to new heights.” He lets out a low rumble, and it takes me a second to realize the sound is a chuckle.
“Is that what you’d want? A house on the water somewhere?”
He cups my chin and pulls my gaze up to meet his. “I don’t care where we live. We could live in a cramped one-bedroom apartment in the middle of New York City, with neighbors closing in all around, and it would be home, because you would be here.” He gestures vaguely over my shoulder. “This cell feels like home, because your smile warms the cold concrete. I have the means to give you anything and everything we could need, but you, Brianna, are the only person who has made me feel like I can actually have a home among these humans.”
I scoot up to kiss him, softly, just a brush of my lips. “I feel very much the same. You’re the first person I feel like I can be completely myself with. Not who my father wants me to be.”
Declan gives me a heartbreakingly warm smile, and it makes me want to cry.
How in the hell could my father ever look at Declan, at any of these shifters, and think they deserve to die just for existing and not being human? Declan has more humanity than I’ve ever seen from my father.
“Brianna?” Declan’s tone is soft, almost a whisper, but his furrowed brow looks more like he’s trying to hold something back.
“Yes?” I sit up, pressing my palms to his chest as I straddle his lap.
“I know nothing happened between you and the vampire, but my dragon can still smell his scent on you.” He frowns. “And it’s making the beast irrational. I don’t want to force you into anything, and I don’t ever want you to think that the only reason I want you down here would be to have sex, but…”
I grin playfully at him. “But you want to fuck me now? Leave your scent all over me?” I lean down, gripping the hem of my tank top. “It’s hard to ignore your cock pressing into me, Declan. All you had to do was ask.”
Flinging my shirt off, I press myself to his chest again, letting go of my worries, my concerns over how I’m going to free him, my fears over what Peter Lee or someone else in his family might want from me. My lips seek out his, and a moan slips out as his tongue invades my mouth, sending a jolt of need straight to my core.
I can’t believe how fucking lucky I am to have a dragon, to have a man, as passionate, as skilled, as Declan.
His hand tangles in my hair, tugging roughly as he keeps teasing me with his tongue. I can’t stop my hips from rocking into his, grinding down on his hard, thick length.
“Fuck, if you keep this up, I might come in my pants, Brianna.” He groans out his words, even as he grinds up against me, as desperate for me as I am for him. “I need you.”
I get up, intent on stripping off my yoga pants, but he moves too, bending me over so that my hands are pressed flat on his bed and my ass is sticking up in the air.
With one deft tug, he has my yoga pants down over my hips, and then he’s kneeling behind me.
When his tongue slides over my wet pussy, I can’t hold back the moan that seems to echo on the cinder blocks. The yoga pants make it harder for me to widen my stance, to give him easier access, but it doesn’t seem to matter. His tongue plunges deep, pressing his face into me more.
My hips tilt up, trying to get more, trying to let him take his fill of my taste. I never thought sex could be like this. If anything, I figured I’d end up getting married, pregnant, and then surreptitiously buying vibrators and trying to find my own orgasms. But it’s like Declan has a secret mantra, an insistence to make sure that I climax at least twice, every time he has me naked.
Usually more.
I would’ve never thought I could find a guy who actually enjoys making me come, who actually puts my pleasure before his own.
Declan’s groan seems to make every part of my pussy quiver, like his voice is a fucking vibrator. His hand comes up between my legs, toying with my clit with his thumb before he slides two fingers into me, deep.
He knows just where to touch, just how to move, to make my knees shake. To make my muscles clench around him.
But I’m not expecting his tongue to slide a little higher, to my ass.
“Declan!” I groan, partly out of shock, and partly out of surprise.
He pulls back, just slightly, his fingers still moving within my core. “Yes, princess?”
I look over my shoulder at him. At the wetness coating his beard. At the smug look in his eyes. “You…”
“We don’t have to do anything more tonight. But someday, I’m likely going to want to fuck your ass.” He smirks at me. “I want to make you come with my cock buried deep in your ass. I want all of you, Brianna.”
I know my cheeks have to be a neon red. But I also know that just the idea of him claiming all of me is making me drip down his fingers. “You do?”
“You are my mate. Mine. Of course I want all of you. I want to learn everything that makes you this wet. I want to explore anything and everything I can to keep my mate good and truly satisfied.” He grins, leaning down to lap at my core around his fingers. “I want to keep you aching for me. Always.”
His fingers curl into me, pressing into my g-spot as he continues to toy with my clit, to lick up the arousal pouring freely from me now. My climax is close, and the longer he touches me, the more I feel like I’m turning into a complete puddle of need for him. “Please, Declan, make me come. And then fuck me like I know you want to.”
His tongue goes back to my ass, and I groan out a deep, guttural sound as my climax rips through me.
I am one damn lucky human.