Chapter 23
Kirion
Ican’t lie. I was sad when Tane’s knot receded and his cock slid out. I was empty. Still wanting. Which was ridiculous because I’d already come three times and I’d lost count of how many times Tane came.
A comforting glow helped fill that space. Like a warmth deep inside. A spark.
Even though he withdrew and turned us onto our sides, I wanted connection. I wrapped my legs around him, making him chuckle.
“Why are you laughing at me?”
“Not at you, sweetheart. Never. I’m laughing because you feel so good. Because you seem to know what I need.”
“I do?”
“The way you’re holding me right now. And how politely you were saying please when you asked me for my knot. So, I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing because I’m happy.”
My eyebrows narrowed. “You haven’t been happy?”
He shook his head. “Malin and our problems aside, I’ve been content, maybe. Even more content when a business deal goes well or I’m working in my garden. But happiness is another thing on another level. Hard to maintain or even achieve. I haven’t felt it in so long.”
I reached out and stroked my hand down his face. “Me, too.”
He smiled.
“I’m glad,” I whispered.
My heart broke with his explanation, then was put back together by his admission that he laughed because he was happy. In this moment I felt so close to him it was almost as if his feelings were mine.
“Kirion.”
Whenever he said my name in that tone, my insides jumped to attention. My body warmed.
With my hand still on his cheek, he bent his head to kiss me.
I wanted to jump up and dance. It was that good of a kiss. And I was thrilled Tane finally told me some things that had me understand him better. Trust was being built. And more.
We spent much of the afternoon in bed kissing, talking, napping, while rain pattered the windows.
Finally, we got up, showered, and went to find food.
We feasted at an early dinner, both of us behaving like starving orphans.
For an omega, taking a knot burned even more calories than just casual sex.
Apparently, for an alpha, having a knot was the same, burning up reserves, exhausting them, despite the fact that during an omega’s heat alphas were able to go hours without rest and make dinner for their omegas afterward. Truly a feat of strength.
After dinner the house felt cold. The storm continued. We sat by the den fire, arm in arm, and watched a movie. After it was over, Tane turned to me.
“I have something else I want to discuss.”
I held my breath in worried anticipation. I thought things were somewhat resolved between us. “Okay.”
His smile crinkled at his eyes. “You look so worried.”
“I guess I’m jumpy. You know. From being told since I learned I was a set that I was worthless.”
His arm tightened across my shoulders. “Worthless? I paid a fortune for you.”
I frowned.
“I’m so sorry. That just came out of me and I didn’t mean to say that.”
“But it’s true. You did.”
“I meant that you are very special, Kirion. I should have said just that.”
Inside, my heart bloomed. I wanted more. “Then do you think it was worth it to pay so much for me?”
“What?” He watched me for any sign of hurt or anger, then when he seemed to conclude I was all right, he chuckled. “Definitely.”
“I’m glad it was you.”
“I am, too.” He ruffled my hair.
“Is Tanekan glad?”
“Very much.”
“Good.”
But there was something else. My anxiety creeped back as I waited for Tane to return to our original topic, whatever that was.
“I felt something today,” he said.
“Something?”
“What we did… what happened between us… is a very intimate thing.”
Curious as to what he was getting at, I interrupted. “You mean knotting? Is that why you hesitated? I’m sorry if I shouldn’t have asked for that.” But I’d wanted it so bad.
“It’s not that. Don’t be sorry. I’m not. But the fact that we did it when we were so involved made us, I think, even closer. It’s that way for alphas at least.”
I nodded. “Omegas, too.”
“I think we’re very compatible.”
I nodded again.
“Chemistry-wise as well as emotionally.”
I wanted to get up and dance again. A smile stretched wide across my face to hear him say such things.
“Knotting came naturally to me. But not before I already felt such a strong connection. Like a flame growing inside me.”
“Hey, I felt that, too.” What was he getting at?
“I think something connected between us on a deeper level at that time. And knotting you, being inside you for twenty minutes, made it stronger.”
“I agree. I could almost feel how it felt for you deep inside. Like we were sharing our thoughts.” I stopped and put a hand over my mouth. “Oops, oh. Um. Wow. Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“I think a bond is starting to form between us. If you aren’t ready, there are things we can do to put it off….”
“Don’t you dare suggest that we should be apart” I leaned into him, hugging him with my head against his shoulder, my legs swinging over his lap.
“Or say we shouldn’t have another moment like we just did.
I want it. I want it all the time. There.
I said it. You made me greedy. For you. Don’t you dare back away now. ”
From one second to the next, I found myself clawing at him, pressing my face hard to his chest hoping to hear the answer from his heart itself.
“I guess that means your answer is that you’re ready,” he said, his mouth warm by my ear.
Slowly, I looked up to him. “You want to be bonded to me?”
Please say yes. Please say yes.
“Kirion. I do. But I want you to be ready. I’m still dealing with you having limited choices.”
“Not with you. You’ve given me so many choices.
More than I ever had even at home. You’ve made very sure I’m not being coerced.
And I’m not. I love it here. I want to be here.
It’s still new, everything is, but I want it.
I want you. I—I—” Love you. I couldn’t finish my sentence.
Not yet. It was too frightening just in case he might change his mind again.
I searched my own mind. I knew what he was talking about. That little flame of warmth. A golden spark. I closed my eyes and set all my heart energy toward it. To my surprise, it flared up.
“I sense it. I feel it. I think I can even see it,” I said softly.
“I felt that. Whatever you did,” Tane replied, stroking the back of my head.
“I want to be bonded. I know it with every cell of my being. I want and need to be with you.”
“All right, then.”
Try again, I commanded myself. “I—I love you.” I spoke directly to the center of his chest. Could he hear me? Could his body listen and respond?
The answer came in the form of a statement.
“I love you, Kirion. I have for weeks now.”
I took a shaky breath and realized this was our moment.
Like a vow. Like an exchange of rings. Only deeper.
Not a show, but reality. We didn’t have roles anymore.
We had each other. Who we were behind closed doors was not mentioned in paperwork that labeled me a slave with no rights and Tane my owner.
And it didn’t have to. All that mattered was our truth.
Who we were for each other together. As bonded mates.
Right after our bonding talk where we both agreed to the commitment, we got to work making our life together. I moved into Tane’s huge bedroom. I got my own bank account which he filled to the brim. He did everything to make sure I was secure. And safe. Both physically and in my heart.
When December arrived with snow and sleighbells, I went into heat.
We had discussed things thoroughly by then. We talked endlessly almost as much as we made love. We couldn’t get enough of each other on all levels.
I had been taking my birth control daily. As my heat date approached, I reached for a pill on the counter next to a glass of water. Tane’s hand closed gently over my wrist.
“Are you sure? Maybe we could try.”
At first I was a little slow to understand. Then it dawned on me. “You would have another child?”
“With you. If you wish. You’re the one who will carry the egg. Or maybe even give a live birth. With cross matings it could be either.”
I thought of Malin and Tane’s heartbreak. “But do you even want another kid? I’m okay if you say no.”
“If you say yes, I do. I want it. But if you aren’t ready—or ever ready—I’m also fine with that because I want you to be happy.”
“I want the same for you. But I thought you might not want more kids.”
Tane gulped. “Malin is gone. I can’t do anything about that. But this is a new life. For both of us.”
He hadn’t heard from Malin after he stormed out. Not once. I felt sorry for him about that but this was about us now, not him, not anyone else.
“I want to try. I want us to try,” I said cautiously.
He swung me up into his arms. The pill was ignored as he took me, in the budding flush of my pre-heat, back to bed.
A few days later, my heat burned like a giant fire. I was insatiable. All I wanted were knots.
I was shameless. “Breed me, Tane. Breed me.” I stuck my ass in the air holding my cheeks open for him as he pounded into my slick open hole.
For two days we ate, slept and drank breeding. My hole was full more than I was empty.
Tane fucked me senseless, then sucked me dry hour after hour. I lay in bed in a constant state of ecstatic rapture.
His cock never softened. He plunged it into me and when my hole needed a rest he plunged it into my mouth because he said for dragons that drinking semen was showing respect to the fertility gods.
It was believed the chemicals in a dragon shifter’s ropes of cum opened the doorways inside an omega to have the breeding quicken and take and grow a healthy egg.
I was babied and powdered and spoiled, stroked and massaged in every orifice. My world was pleasure and orgasms one after the other. I barely slept and when I did I dreamed of fucking.
I learned the best ways to suck Tane off while squeezing his ample balls. I learned to swallow everything he had to give and if he knotted while outside me, I learned to massage that swollen gland, kiss and suck the hard swell until he shot over and over into the air.
It was a house of erotic pleasure, a world of cocks, balls, holes, nipples, mouths feeding each other until at the end of my heat we both collapsed and slept for twelve hours straight.
A day later, Tane told me technology existed in dragon country where I could find out if I was pregnant right away. I took the test, a simple pee stick.
We waited the allotted time, which was really only about a minute but seemed like eternity, to see the stick form a plus sign.
We yelled and clasped hands and jumped about the bathroom.
It was done. I was pregnant at age twenty-three. I was going to have the baby of the alpha I loved most in all the world. Tane. My bondmate.
How did we celebrate?
He took me to bed and had his way with me. Three times that night.
We weren’t done with each other even after my youthful, energetic heat.
I knew it like I knew the sun rose and set every day. We would never be done.