Chapter Thirteen
Xav
Sequin dozed off but all my cells felt too alive to sleep. He was warm to the touch. So every few minutes I iced up my hands and ran them up and down his back. He muttered something about bottling me up to sell me in his sleep. I chuckled and tried not to think too hard about what I’d tell anyone if they wandered into the cave while we were still naked and sticky. The truth was probably my best bet. Newly met true-mates seldom followed the rules of convention anywhere. Back home, if we were both elemental, we’d probably still be off in the woods blending our mists together.
I stroked Sequin’s back as he napped and thought about what our lives might look like together after our matingmoon was over. A year from now, we had the wedding. His family would be everywhere back on the Starscale worlds but Teddy and I were already friends. Liatris would probably stop shipping us now – thankfully. My friend and mentor only wanted me to be happy but Teddy would’ve never been that guy for me. That was Sequin. Somehow, I was happy even though I was solid (and being solid was never as pleasurable as being ice) and laying on thin blanket on a stone floor, I was happy. Sequin made me happy. I thought about what our kids might look like and how building a nest would be different for us. How would he react if our babies turned into ice, fire, or some other element like I did? I wasn’t sure how much of me would pass onto our kids because as far as I knew I was the first from my birth group to mate with someone from the outside.
The sun set before Sequin woke up and he woke up blinking and ready for a snack.
“Stomach growls,” he muttered as if his dragon spoke through him.
“There’s food back there. I know you said it was supposed to be for storm emergencies but this might be a different sort of emergency.”
He blinked and squinted at me.
“How are you not starving?” he grumbled.
“I’m hungry but not starving yet. I’m not a dragon, sweetheart.”
“I should eat you,” he pressed himself upright and wandered over to the shelves full of nonperishables.
“I want a pizza,” he grumbled. “Do you think they’ll deliver it to the cave?”
“Maybe and I think maybe my pants are clean enough to put back on.”
“I don’t want to shift into my dragon right now,” he said, leaning his head against the shelving. “If I shift, he’s going to go straight to hunting and that’s definitely not allowed on the island.”
“Hang on,” I yawned, pushing myself upright. “At least drink some water, while I peek outside and see what’s going on. Maybe we can sneak you back to the Scale B&B without you having to shift.”
“Fucking people,” he muttered.
“You are hangry, mate.”
The world was deserted outside of the cave. Except for one bag that I almost tripped over. It wasn’t a pizza but it was almost just as good when I picked it up and took a look inside. Liatris had thought ahead and brought us each a change of clothes. A scribbled note on the top of the bag told us to take our time and that he and Selt would watch the house while we were gone.
Inside the cave, running water startled me.
“Shower. Back here,” Sequin grunted. “Is the world still out there?”
“Beach looks surprisingly empty for this time of the evening.”
“This part always is.”
“But Liatris brought us clothes,” I told him.
“Come here. Shower with me.”
“Do you think that’s safe? You’re still in heat,” I said, trying not to breathe in too deeply. One of us had to keep our wits about us and while Sequin was in heat that someone had to be me.
“I miss you,” he whined. “Come stand in the doorway or something. Besides, you have to bring me my clothes and grab me a towel from the shelf.”
I smiled to myself. This was so not going to be innocent. I grabbed him a towel, but also picked up a fist full of energy bars and a couple bottles of water from the food supply. He was going to have to eat whether he liked it or not.
“You can feed me in here but jack me off,” he whimpered.
“My poor baby,” I said, setting everything aside and opening one of the energy bars before stepping into the shower with him. The whole space was a few feet wide and smelled like him. His tangy arousal had sunk into every water molecule clinging to the air and it didn’t take long until I was as hard as him. I held out one of the energy bars, and he took a tentative bite.
“Oatmeal raisin. Who buys that?” he made a face but ate it anyway.
“Whoever owns the island?” I chuckled, taking him in my other hand.
He leaned back against the shower wall but there still wasn’t a lot of space for us to maneuver. I stroked him, watching his mouth and throat as he chewed and swallowed. The last thing he needed while in heat was to choke while I gave him a handjob.
“Bite,” I said, pausing mid stroke.
“That’s not fair,” he half-whimpered, half-laughed.
“Bite!” I growled and gave his dick a hard squeeze. “Eat or no strokies.”
“Strokies?” he arched a brow.
“Eat or no orgasms,” I said, upping the odds.
Sequin took another bite, and I resumed stroking him. His dick was long with a slight upward curve that gave me a nice path to follow as I played with him. Bite by bite and stroke by stroke, I satisfied both of his appetites. Once the energy bar was gone, he tilted his head back as if the answer to all his questions were carved into the stone ceiling. His heart thrummed hard and fast and sweat dripped down his nose. My poor mate was in danger of overheating. I slid my free hand over his hip, giving him a taste of the ice I truly was. He shivered as a chill shimmied up his spine and then leaned his forehead against mine, seeking out my ice. I was tempted to dissolve right there – to be all ice and surround him until he couldn’t see, feel, or think about anything else.
Sequin’s breath hitched as I squeezed him hard, and the sound brought me back to the present moment. Everything smelled like him. It was as if without being elemental, he’d become something all-consuming of my thoughts and desires. Putting a cooling hand on his stomach, I dropped down to my knees. My feet hung out of the tiny shower as I placed a hard kiss on the bulbous, mushroom-shaped head of his dick.
“Xav,” my name rolled off his tongue, sounding more delicious than it ever had and that was saying a lot as I picked it out myself. “Xav.” He cooed my name as I slid my mouth down over the head of his dick. I pressed my tongue hard against the underside of his shaft, reveling in the shape of him sliding into my mouth and the salty taste of his precum teasing me. Sequin leaned back against the wall, breathing hard. His pleasure poured down onto me as he neared orgasm. I worked him harder with my mouth and cupped his balls in my free hand. He breathed out hard at my cold touch, but it didn’t slow things down. He was too heated up from the inside to shrink away now.
“Xav!” he gasped my name as his dick trembled in my mouth before pouring all its pleasure down my throat. A smile pulled at the corner of my lips as I drank it down and he tugged at my arms to pull me up for a long, hard kiss.
Without saying anything, we washed each other with the little bars of soap all wrapped up in their little paper labels. They were made to survive until the end of the world in little disaster shelters like these. We scrubbed each other clean and managed to make it out of the shower and into the outfits Liatris dropped off before his heat struck again.
Outside the cave, the night was cool and the sand under our feet pleasant. Still, my mate was warm to the touch. We walked back hand-in-hand without saying a lot. Despite his nap, Sequin still looked exhausted. If it were morning, I’d say he needed coffee. He definitely needed to eat something more substantial than an energy bar before whatever his heat decided was next. Part of me wondered what there was to hunt on the island. It wasn’t exactly allowed but trying to prove I froze his dinner to death after he ate it wouldn’t be easy.
“Don’t do that,” Sequin shook his head. “I like this Scale B&B. I want to be able to come back here. There’s food at the house. You don’t have to go all cave-alpha on me.”
“Maybe I want to,” I teased him.
“Then save it for the bedroom,” he laughed. “Did you hunt a lot growing up?”
“Uh… We didn’t exactly eat as much as you guys do. I didn’t eat anywhere near how much I do now. We didn’t hunt. We had fruit sometimes. Most of the time we absorbed our energy from stuff. Sorta like plants do but less work. Hunting would’ve been flying up to the coldest parts of the sky and hanging out there with the other ices,” I explained.
“That would be convenient right now,” Sequin smiled at me. “I’m hungry enough to eat a kraken.”
“And that isn’t against the rules? If you want one, point me in the direction of the pod, and I’ll freeze it right up for you.”
“I bet they’d make bad eating. Rubbery, probably,” he said as we neared the house.