93. Aurelia
Chapter 93
Aurelia
“ Y ou don’t get alone time with her,” Lyle snarls, shoving Xander flat on his back and punching him in the nose. There’s a sickening crunch. “You haven’t earned the right.” Lyle punches him again on the same spot.
Naked and bloody, Xander does nothing. I stand on the wall and cry, “Stop!”
Xander raises a hand as if to stop me. “It’s past time, Aurelia,” he says in a nasally voice. “Let them have at it.”
My three mates set upon him.
I’ve seen brutal fights in my time. Awful, bloody matches where participants edge near the threshold of death.
But this? This is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It’s not only brutal and bloody, it’s as if I’m watching three rabid monsters let go of all inhibitions and tear into a piece of meat. They pummel Xander like they hate him. Like they want to follow him into hell and destroy his soul. It makes my heart bleed; it makes me see stars, but I don’t look away.
Even when Lyle breaks Xander’s right thigh bone, right in the middle.
Even when Scythe wrenches both arms out of their sockets.
Even when Savage sinks his teeth into Xander’s gut and shakes him like a ragdoll.
Xander’s face and body resembles something closer to an open jar of jam. There is blind rage in their eyes and they don’t look like they’re going to stop.
Xander is no longer responding with grunts and groans. He is silent. His breath nothing but a wet and raspy wheeze.
“Enough,” I say.
They don’t, or can’t, hear me. They continue as if I’d said nothing. The regina in me flares in anger, and I pull off my chemise and shift into an eagle, coming to land just behind them before shifting back.
There’s power behind my voice as I scream, “Enough!”
My three mates pause, Lyle’s clenched fist is raised and trembling as he stares daggers at Xander’s body, no part of him left unmaimed. Savage and Scythe heave with breath, but vibrate with rage.
They’re trying to fight the regina command. Not on my fucking watch.
I shoulder past Savage and Scythe and cover Xander’s body with mine. I look up at my three mates, their faces contorted with violence so profound it makes me shiver to be under it.
It’s truly terrifying to be on the receiving end of those expressions of utter primal fury, but I know it’s not directed at me, but past me to the beast who’d wronged them so badly.
“Enough,” I urge.
Xander coughs beneath me, a drowning, heaving sound. I turn to him and send healing through to his shattered nose and throat. His eyes flutter open and I realise he’s still completely conscious. He says something, but through his broken jaw and damaged vocal cords, I can’t make it out.
“You ask for mercy, regina,” Scythe says, his shark in full control. “But when did this beast ever show you any?”
There’s only one language my mates will understand right now. Gentle Aurelia is of no use here. I get to my feet, hopping up to protect my leg. I hobble up to Scythe and grab a fistful of his shirt, pulling his face down towards my snarling one. Nose to nose, I hiss. “He gave me mercy when I needed it most, Scythe Kharkorous, and that’s what counts. Stand. Down.”
I let him go, and he straightens, studying me. “Scythe Boneweaver,” his shark says.
“What?” I snap.
“I have claimed you, regina, I am Scythe Boneweaver.”
It’s not easy to glare at someone when you’re craning your neck to look at them, but I manage it. “We’re not married.”
“Not yet.”
Annoyed, I whirl around and hobble up to Lyle, shoving him in the chest. “Enough, lion.”
He lowers his hand, albeit begrudgingly. “As you wish, regina.” Savage is next, frowning deeply at Xander and refusing to look at me. I force his face to turn, but his eyes stubbornly strain away from me. I kiss him on his snarling mouth. “Stop, my love.”
His whole body seems to relax and his shoulders sag when he sighs, “Yes, regina.”
I turn to Xander and carefully kneel again, recommencing my healing, one body part at a time.
It’s well past sunrise by the time I finish, but I’m not tired. My mates won’t leave my side but can’t watch as I work. Once the last students stream into the dining hall for breakfast, I levitate Xander to waist height and head back to our dorm. There’s no one else to see us climb up to the top floor, and even my mates stay outside as I drop Xander onto his bed. Henry wakes up from where he’s sleeping cuddled against Eugene and he chirps in greeting as I go to the sink and get a bowl of water and washcloths. I get the two of them their own bowl, setting it on the shower floor where Henry happily plonks himself in and shoots water out of his beak.
Xander’s eyes are closed as I dip the washcloth into the water and begin cleaning the crusty blood off his face. His brow is furrowed, but I smooth those lines away and find that his face is, luckily, back to its normal handsome, if arrogant, state.
His eyes remain closed as I work my way down his body and still when I change the crimson water twice over. It’s not until I get to his lower stomach that I hesitate. His cock is thankfully the only part of him not covered in blood, and there’s no damage to it. But I can’t help but glance at the golden cock ring he wears at the base.
“Pretty sure Savage thought about ripping that off a few times,” Xander muses. I turn to see him watching me staring at his now semi-hard dick. “I’ve seen him do it before.”
My cheeks flush.“Luckily, he didn’t. You, unfortunately, can’t shift into a starfish and grow one back.”
Xander is silent at that, simply gazing at me.
I can’t read his gaze, so I settle on avoiding it and washing his legs. “I think you did this better than me,” I say quietly.
“I was…thorough.”
He shifts and his cock lengthens. “Did you see what it says?”
“What?”
“My cock ring.”
I raise my brows at him. “What does it say?”
“Take a look,” he says gently.
Swallowing the lump in my throat, I shuffle up the bed and peer at the base of Xander’s cock where ink dark curls are cropped close to his skin.
He may have listened when I told him to remove the slave collar from his neck, but he’s only put it on a place no one else could see. The collar sits at the base of his dick now, the same words, PROPERTY OF AURELIA BONEWEAVER, etched along its golden surface, just in miniature.
I’m struggling to breathe.
“I won’t touch you unless you tell me to, Aurelia,” Xander says. “ But I want you to know that it’s yours. I want you to claim it.”
I can only stare at him, my body heating with each passing second. His voice, his offer, eliciting something new in my core.
Xander drops his voice. “The power you have over me is something I crave.” He licks his lips. “I…miss you, when you’re not near me.”
The taut expanse of his body, his masculine perfection, offered to me, almost in the same way he used to offer me food in his dragon’s lair. I suck in a breath. “Are you still in pain?”
In one smooth movement, Xander sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed. I step backward to give him room, but he shakes his head and reaches for me—before his hand drops. “Touch me, Aurelia.” His voice is haggard, a beast at the end of his patience. Yet he holds on…for me. “Please.”
And because I do want to, because that urge in his voice triggers some long-lost instinct in me, I raise a hand and, stepping between his legs, I let my fingers brush along the dark stubble of his jaw. It’s deliciously rough against my fingertips, and his massive chest expands with stuttered breath.
Xander closes his eyes. I lean into his face, experimenting with the feeling of being so close to him.
“You can give me one kiss,” I murmur. His eyes snap open, but I warn, “Just one, and that’s it.”
His hands clench on his knees. “Just one.”
I can smell the soap on his skin. Xander closes the distance between us and brushes his lips along mine. “You’ll grant me just the one?” he murmurs against me.
“Yes,” I whisper across his mouth.
Steam exhales from his nose, fluttering around me like a smoky cloud. “You really know how to test a beast,” he growls before crushing his mouth against my own, forcing my lips open, devouring me whole. I make a startled sound but don’t back away, gripping on his face and meeting his energy with my own.
I raise my left knee and place it around his hip and onto the bed, intending to straddle him, but when I raise my right, it’s stiff and sore. I pull away, reaching down for it—until I see Xander’s trembling clenched fist still on his knee.
He really won’t touch me until I tell him to. In the back of my mind I understand what he’s doing. That he’s giving me complete power. Showing me what it’s like to…command a dragon.
I straighten and meet his gaze. “Help me lift my leg, Xander.”
His eyes flash with pleasure and he reaches around my knee and gently positions me. Pressed against him, I see it when he remembers I’m not wearing any underwear. His hand clenches around my thigh.
“Touch me here.” I brush my neck with my finger, trailing down between my breasts.
Xander seems to stop breathing as he brushes my neck with his own fingertips, his soft touch trailing down and leaving shivers in its wake.
“Lie down,” I instruct.
He lifts me a little with his telekinesis, swings his legs up onto the bed and lies down. I watch his hard abs tense as he adjusts himself, his unbound hair splayed out around him like a halo of black.
“You can hold me here.” I indicate to my hips, lifting my chemise a little.
He grabs me so fast that I have to steady myself for a second, his hands hot against the bare skin of my hips.
But then I hesitate.
“I want to be inside of you, Aurelia,” he whispers. “I’ve needed it for ages now, and it’s been killing me to watch them have you and not… I’ve been hiding my hard cock all week.”
And I’ve been purposely making it worse.
I lean forward, lifting my ass up and reaching behind me to grab the base of his cock. My hand hits metal, reminding me of the ring. I have to lean forward more than I usually have to, but when his wet head hits my soaked entrance, Xander lets out a feral sort of sound. His entire body tenses but doesn’t move.
Looking down at him, I rub his head against my entrance. “Do you like it when I do that?”
“Yes. Oh Goddess, yes,” Xander grits out.
“Do you want more?” I ask, fascinated, squeezing the base of him.
“Please. Yes.” His hands are clenching my hips, supporting me but telling me he’s struggling.
I nudge his head into me.
“Fuck, are you wet for me?” he pants. “You’re soaking.”
“No,” I say ever so slowly, easing him in a little further.
“Ah gods, don’t fucking lie to me, Aurelia. Not now.” His voice cracks and I take mercy on him, sitting back on his cock, easing it into me and breathing hard as I accustom myself to his girth.
I can finally say that old wives tale about dragons is true.
Xander’s head tilts back, and he lets out a cry, his entire body vibrating as I allow him inside of me.
“Don’t come,” I warn. “Until I say so.”
He breathes hard and I enjoy watching him fight the pleasure, eventually looking back at me. Slowly, I reach for the hem of my chemise, watching his eyes widen as I pull it up and over my head.
“You’re going to kill me,” he breathes, rubbing circles on my hips with his thumbs. “I’m going to die today, Aurelia.”
I run my hands up his body, working my way up, watching him tremble, then vibrate as I lean over him, pressing myself against his chest. I lick up his neck. “So dramatic,” I murmur against his skin.
“Aurelia,” he moans. “Please.”
“Please, what?” I whisper over his mouth. I raise my ass, almost groaning at the feel of extracting him from me. “What if I told you that was it?” I unsheathe him further, his head now the only part of him inside me. I tease it a little, fucking it just enough to elicit a moan from him.
“Don’t,” he growls, eyes flashing the deepest gold I’ve seen yet. “Please don’t take it out.”
My confidence grows. “Such good manners.”
His throat rumbles. “I want another kiss. Please.”
I ease his cock back into me, slowly, because he’s far too big for a hard fucking. “I said it was just the one, remember?”
“You’re going to kill me,” he moans. “I might already be dead. I don’t think you healed me, I think you sent me?—”
I suck on his lower lip to shut him up and he reciprocates immediately, his tongue slipping into my mouth, demanding to taste, to explore. Pulling back, I say, “Run your hands up my back.” He does so and I let him feel me as I grind my clit against him, then gently fuck his massive girth.
It’s difficult work, given my sore leg and his size. Eventually I straighten, placing my palms on his chest, riding him. My thighs burn as I look down at him. His jaw is clenching and unclenching, his hands supporting my hips.
“Fuck me,” I say.
“Come here,” he groans, pulling me down on top of him. He rolls us onto an angle so he’s not quite on his side and I’m wrapped around him, my right leg supported on his hip.
It’s then that one of his earphones falls out. It lands between us and I pick it up. He’s staring at it like he hates the thing.
“Take the other one out,” I say.
He takes a deep breath and does so. There’s a moment of silence then, when he’s inside of me and there’s no music in his ears except the sound of the both of us panting.
Then Xander wraps his arms around me, buries his nose in my neck and thrusts into me like it’s the last time he’ll do so.
I cry out, folding my arms around him and brushing his hair away from his neck. The side where the mating mark used to be.
Xander whimpers as he sheathes himself fully in me and stops there, his entire body vibrating.
“It’s alright,” I whisper. He pulls his face out of the crook of my shoulder and looks down at me, something shining in his golden orbs. Regret, shame, guilt…and something else too.
Even unable to hear his thoughts, I know what he’s thinking. I give him a small smile and brush a finger over the side of his neck, sketching the mark we once shared. “See? I drew it back on.”
He falls over me again, this time pressing his lips to my neck, for once, unable to find the words as he fucks me, slowly, with long, languid strokes, my clit grinding against him with each thrust, his lips fluttering over my sensitive neck. He fills my body so completely, I gasp in wonder at the stretch, at the way my body adapts to his size and the way I soak him so completely it’s not long before every thrust makes a satisfying sound.
“I want to come inside of you, Aurelia,” he groans against my skin. “I want to fill your womb with so much of my cum that you’ll be full of it for days, so that there won’t be space for anyone else. I want to keep you in my lair and feed you and heal you and fuck you for days. It wasn’t enough time, Aurelia.” His voice lowers into his guttural dragon form as he continues that deep languid thrust. “I want you soaking in my cum at all times. I want your pussy to be dripping me every second of the day, and I want to taste every part of your skin while you’re covered in the jewels I brought you, on a bed of gold that I made. I want that for eternity and whatever comes after that.”
My body spasms as I explode into a bunch of multicoloured sparkles the colour of Xander’s eyes. I’m nothing but fractals of myself, floating above our bodies; pleasure and pressure make me scream around him.
Xander thrusts into me deeply and comes right against my cervix like he wanted, holding me tight and emptying himself with stuttering, short thrusts.
The dragon eases back. Tucking my hair behind my ear as he searches my gaze. “We should stay like this forever,” he breathes.
It’s at that point that Savage, Lyle, and Scythe find us when they burst into our room.