Chapter 42
Forty-Two
Ella
He kissed my neck softly, a tiny thrill running down my spine as he ran his tongue lightly along my jaw before adding tiny kisses too. He inhaled slowly through his nose, and I knew he had to be smelling me.
But he didn’t bite me. Didn’t try to push me.
“D-do you not want to?” I asked nervously.
He took me by the chin and held me so our eyes could only see one another. “There is quite literally nothing I want more in the world than to claim you. Except, perhaps, to be claimed in return. But I need to know you’re ready … for that side of me.”
“That side?”
“Yes. If you’re going to let me claim you, it means you will need to submit to me.” He pressed a finger to my lips. “Here. In the bedroom. My dragon will accept nothing else when we claim our mate. Out there, in the world, we desire an equal. But in here … you must be ours.”
Submit? I bit my lip. “W-what would that entail?”
Dirk pulled me closer, his hand running up my far side to elicit dangerous desires.
“It means doing as you’re told. Being a good girl for me.”
“Are you going to hurt me?”
His eyes glowed. “Never. That’s not what I mean. Submitting means letting go. Not taking initiative. Doing as you’re told and enjoying knowing that by being a good girl, you’re going to be rewarded for it.”
I shivered at the lust in his voice. This wasn’t at all what I’d expected. “Rewarded?”
“Yes. If you’re good for me, you get pleasure.”
“What kinds of things will I have to do to get it?” I asked, not realizing I was already leaning down the slope.
Dirk leaned in and nipped at my earlobe, his breath on my skin incredibly sensual in the moment, so hot and intense. “For instance, I might take you by your hair like this, and order you to stand up.”
His fingers slid up the back of my neck, taking firm but not painful hold of my hair. I rose obediently, without thinking, though he gave me plenty of time to shake him off. I didn’t.
Dirk’s growl of delight filled my tiny room, and I could see his pants tighten.
“Now what?” I asked, standing still.
“Take your clothes off,” he rumbled, stepping back. “Slowly. While I watch.”
My mouth dried up. “You want me to strip for you?”
“Until you’re naked. I want to see every inch of your perfect body. To know where I’ll be kissing and licking and touching. You are perfection, and I intend to admire it.”
Hoping desperately that I was doing it right, I reached down and lifted the hem of my shirt.
“Slower,” he commanded, his eyes wide as I bared first my stomach and then my chest to him. “Good girl.”
I couldn’t suppress the thrill of it. I’d never imagined stripping for my mate, but as I removed each item of clothing, his eyes only grew brighter and the bulge in his pants thicker.
At one point, when I turned around after dropping my underwear to the floor, I found him stroking himself through his pants.
Touching himself to the sight of me.
“Get on your knees,” Dirk ordered, and I all but fell to the floor, knowing what he was going to say next.
He undid his pants and slid them down. Without being told, I reached for his cock.
“Good girl.”
There was no denying the heat growing between my legs. I wanted to please my mate and show him that I was his. Just like when we were in that little attic and I had taken control, now it was Dirk’s turn.
I was dripping with excitement, my thighs rubbing together as I settled on my knees in front of him.
I gripped the base of his cock and ran my tongue up his thick shaft, eagerly tasting a bead of precum on the tip.
That earned me another compliment and a stroke of my face that did things it shouldn’t have to my body.
I’d never let anyone have this sort of power over me before.
But I also haven’t asked anyone else to claim me before either.
Besides, although Dirk had ordered me to my knees, when I took his cock in my mouth and his eyes disappeared behind hooded lids, something occurred to me. Just who was in control? I was where he wanted, but I was in charge of his pleasure. In truth, I wasn’t really giving up control.
Not entirely.
“My turn,” he growled minutes later.
I yelped in surprise and excitement as he casually lifted me from the floor, spun me around, and pushed me against the wall. My legs hooked over his shoulders as his tongue pressed firmly to my clit.
“That feels so good,” I moaned, my hands spread wide against the wall to keep myself steady.
“I told you I would reward you for being a good girl,” Dirk reminded, and then he gently sucked on me.
It was incredible. I’d never felt anything like it, and I told him so even as I held on for dear life. He sucked my pussy until I came all over him. He just kept licking and growling delightedly as he did until I was shaking in his hands and growing unstable in the air.
Turning in a flash, Dirk pressed me down into the bed and climbed on top of me, holding my hands out wide, pressed into the bed. I couldn’t move. He had me.
“I’m going to take you now,” he promised, lowering his hips until I felt the tip of his cock against my wet opening. “And this time when you come for me, I’m going to claim you with my bite.”
His fangs nicked at my skin, sharp and already descended. I jerked and whimpered, but more in pleasure as the movement captured the very tip of his cock inside me.
“Is that what you want? Are you still ready to become mine forever?”
Nobody but me could have detected the uncertainty in his voice, the fear that I would say no and deny him.
I wrapped my legs around his waist.
“If you don’t take me soon,” I threatened, feeling a sudden pressure in my mouth as my fangs descended, “I’m going to claim you anyway. I am done being nervous about you, Dirk. I am done hesitating. I am done pushing you away. I am ready to be yours … as long as you don’t mind being mine.”
“That is all I want,” he snarled, his eyes bright silver, and he thrust into me deeply, every inch of his cock filling me with one swift move.
I screamed, arching upward, and immediately came hard, my walls clamping down around his cock.
Fangs flashed and I braced myself for the pain as his fangs pierced my skin.
If it was there, I didn’t notice it. I felt pressure, and then an explosion of warmth that melded together with the pleasure rushing out from between my legs to fill my body, pounding against my brain with wave after wave until I melted into a puddle beneath Dirk.
At some point he started kissing the area of my neck where he’d bitten me, licking and cleaning the wound as it swiftly healed.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his eyes more blue than silver as he searched my face for signs. “You were gone there for a moment. I know that had to have been a lot.”
“I …” I paused, thinking. All I felt was content. Well, that and his cock still inside me, a constant reminder that I wanted more of that. “I will be. Once you fuck me some more.”
“That is something I would be happy to do,” he said, towering above me.
He was so much bigger than me, but even with all that power, he treated me gently.
My hands were still pinned above my head.
Dirk needed only one hand to hold my crossed wrists in place.
The other he used to play with my breasts as he thrust against me, moving slowly and forcing me to feel every inch as he slid far deeper than I thought was possible.
The way he filled me was extreme in the best way.
Before long I was building to another climax.
Dirk slipped his hand from my breasts to my clit, rubbing it while fucking me, and that was it.
I was lost, sliding over the edge and into the beyond as I came once again, breathing hard and moaning gibberish while Dirk’s pleasurable assault on my body continued.
“Wait,” I gasped an unknown amount of time and several more orgasms later. “I’m … I don’t have much left.”
Dirk sat back on his heels, lifting my hips free of the bed so he didn’t slip out. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to claim you.” The words came easily.
“How?”
I smiled at him, the answer obvious to me now. “On top. Just like with me. I want to do it as you fill me with your cum.”
Dirk snaked a hand around my lower back, holding me tightly as he rolled over until I could place my knees on either side of him. It was a stretch—he was giant and I was tiny—but I sat back onto his cock, enjoying feeling it twitch inside me as I moaned.
Touching my neck where he’d bitten me, I started to rock against him. I was eager to complete the bond. Now that I’d committed to it, to him, I didn’t want to ever hold back.
Dirk stared at me the entire time, never looking away.
It would have been uncomfortable if his face didn’t scream that I was the most attractive thing he’d ever seen.
His eyes were wide, his mouth slack, and I knew in that moment, that he would never look at me another way. This wasn’t an act. It was how felt it.
The moment was there before I realized it. He groaned loudly, his cock swelling.
“I’m going to come for you,” he said.
Something about those last words, about knowing it was for me, made it all the more personal. Even as my own body followed him into that beautiful agony, I bent forward and plunged my teeth into the marked flesh of his pec.
Dirk roared and heat erupted inside me as he spilled his load, filling me with its liquid warmth.
I floated on that bliss, my teeth in his chest for an eternity, and then the next second tried to condense into a ball as his pleasure came barreling into my mind like an avalanche, cascading over me and ripping another orgasm from my body before I could react.
Dirk cried out my name, his cock stiffened inside me, and he came again right away. His arms wrapped around me like cables, squeezing tightly as we lost control together, neither of us prepared for the blossoming of our connection.
We lay flat, my head on his chest, gasping for air and sanity for minutes on end, neither one speaking at first.
“That was intense,” I whispered, staring at the tiny marks on his chest in a mixture of awe and confidence before tracing a finger down his arm, where the mate marks had become a full sleeve, no longer stopping at the elbow.
He was mine now. Fully. Completely. Forever.
A thunderous echo of that possession filled my head, and I lifted it from his chest to stare into his eyes.
Desire turned to wonder, and we smiled at the same time. Then we laughed as our shared humor at the synchronicity reached the other. That caused us to laugh some more. And more. Until we were in hysterics, fueled by the other person’s laughter and the vibrancy of the joy pounding into our heads.
Eventually, we calmed. I was still on top of him. We were still naked. His hand cupped my ass but did nothing more, content to simply grab and hold what was his.
“We’re linked now,” I said.
He nodded but didn’t speak. He didn’t need to for me to feel his immense satisfaction.
“Now you really will always know if I’m in danger,” I said, running my fingers over his chest and playing with the soft curls of hair in the center.
Amusement and something else trickled through our bond. Given the newness, I wasn’t sure what it was.
“That doesn’t mean I want you to be in danger. I won’t let it happen,” he said, holding me tighter.
I kissed his chest. “I’m not going to go out looking for trouble, Dirk, but you can’t keep me locked away in the citadel either.
Things are changing. We’ve been trying to figure out what it means, without any luck yet.
We need records from before the Unification Wars, we think.
But this—Anna and I finding mates, having our dragons awaken—means something, and if I can help others like me, I will.
I don’t need any of them ending up broken. ”
“You are not broken,” Dirk snarled. “You are perfect the way you are.”
“My insides would disagree,” I said.
“Don’t make light of it,” he admonished. “I can’t imagine how painful it was, physically and mentally. But nothing is wrong with you. I would not have you any other way, my mate.”
The tidal wave of desire and care slapped my defenses aside and threatened to drown me in his emotion. I gasped at the intensity of it. He’d expressed this before, but now that we were linked, I could feel the truth of it in my mind.
“My only regret is that I wish I could have prevented it. For your sake, so you did not have to suffer.”
His voice was heavy, but through our bond I sensed the regret, though it had a flavor I could not place. What was clear was that he was trying to hide it, to hold it back.
“Being a Hunter is dangerous,” I said, wanting to move to a new topic. “I’m sure he’s long dead. A feral, or one of those rage-Fae finally got their teeth into him. Heck, maybe Cerberus got that one-eyed asshole in the end. That would have been fitting.”
Dirk went incredibly still against me. “What did you say?” he asked in a quiet, cold tone.
Nothing came through our link. He was blocking his emotions, hiding them.
“Cerberus? You know, the legendary ‘Guardian of the Clippys.’ He was a thing for like ten years or more. Rumors everywhere that he would bring an end to the Hunters by killing them all. He was kind of a hero to us, doing the things we wanted but never could.”
“I know all about Cerberus,” Dirk said, still quiet. “That’s not what I was referring to.”
I frowned.
“What did you mean by ‘one-eyed prick.’”
“Exactly that?” I sat up. “What’s going on? The one who took me to the surface had one eye. Big scar down that side of his face, from here to here.”
I touched my forehead and my jaw.
“It was a long time ago, Dirk.”
He growled angrily. “Not long enough.”
Not wanting to talk about it more, I rolled on top of Dirk and kissed him, moving my hips back and forth until I could feel his cock begin to harden once more.
Then there were no words for some time.