Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
ZOE
Sometimes I wonder if I was born a thrill seeker.
As long as I’ve been alive, I’ve passed up the slow and steady for any opportunity for risk-taking.
Even when I was forcing myself to work at Regal, I was maintaining a side of nightlife, singing in clubs without any security, walking home or taking public transport at all hours of the night.
What is wrong with me?
I have another chance to wonder this about myself as Seb and I stand in the woods behind the cottage and he prepares to shift into his dragon self. I trust Seb and his dragon. I mean, technically, I’ve met the beast in the Gold Room. But the way Seb talks, I’m taking my life in my hands.
“Don’t be afraid,” he says. “He won’t hurt his mate, but he may want physical contact.”
“It’s okay. I can hold my own. It was fine in the Gold Room.”
“But he was smaller there, right? My dragon doesn’t fit indoors. It might be a different experience for you here.”
I look up at the moon and around the clearing we’re standing in. “Plenty of room here. Don’t worry about me, Seb. I asked for this. It’s time, don’t you think, that I know the other half of you?”
He nods and starts unbuttoning his shirt.
“I like this already.”
He snorts and toes off his shoes, then strips off his pants. When he’s completely naked, he runs both hands through his hair. “You’re sure about this?”
“Yes.” I don’t get a chance to say anything else.
What happens next is like a magician’s trick, like pulling a long handkerchief out of a fist. Wings erupt from his back, and scales shingle his arms and legs.
Talons sprout from his fists before spearing the dirt in front of him.
His paws grow until they’re wider across than my waist.
I blink and take a step back.
It’s over.
I am staring up at a dragon roughly the size of an Airbus.
“Holy shit,” I mumble. Seb’s dragon looks like he did in the Gold Room but much, much bigger.
His scales may be the same deep, mahogany brown, but where I perceived them as edged in gold before, right now their reflective quality picks up the silver light of the moon.
His eyes, though, are pure gold. Set in a head big enough to contain teeth as tall as me.
Two beachball-sized eyes with the most beautiful irises of a luxurious, deep yellow are focused wholly on me.
From the head, the body stretches behind, to a long, whip-like tail. Seb’s dragon isn’t built like a dinosaur but like a serpent with legs, long and lean and muscular. Powerful but graceful.
I scurry back, unable to hold my ground as the scaled nostrils of the beast lower to my level. I don’t stop until my back hits a tree. Two warm blasts of air blow back my hair. He sniffs me like a dog.
Unable to go anywhere, I raise a trembling hand and pat the side of his face. “Good dragon,” I say hopefully.
He snorts and falls onto his belly, his head between his paws.
I can’t help but laugh. Resting like this, Seb’s dragon looks like an enormous dog.
He hears me laugh and laughs too, the sound coming out of his chest like a series of rough barks and snickers, not unlike what I remember from Scooby-Doo reruns.
I can’t help being swept up in it. Still laughing, I walk around his paws and scratch his side and then his belly when he rolls to expose it to me.
“How much do you understand in this form, Seb?”
The great horned head bends around to nudge my shoulder and licks me up the side of the head.
“Eww!” I jerk away, half my face covered in a layer of saliva.
That Scooby-Doo laugh comes again.
“All right, Chuckles, no more belly scratches until I see you fly.”
He leaps onto his feet, a blast of air almost knocking me down as his wings expand. With a slight dip of his scaly knees, he shoots into the air and circles above me, then backflips and barrel rolls.
“Show off!” I mumble, loving every second of the show.
He’s nimble and graceful, his wings directing him through the air like he’s swimming in it.
And when he finally lands in the clearing in front of me, I think that it’s no wonder the Order learned to fear dragons.
It’s all I can do not to quake in my shoes.
The dragon walks toward me, his wings folding into his back, his scales disappearing.
One second, he’s a deadly dragon; the next, he’s just a man again.
A naked man. A naked man with an erection that would be frightening if I hadn’t already become familiar with it.
He stalks toward me with hunger in his eyes.
“Did I satisfy your curiosity?” he asks through a wicked grin.
“Uh, yes,” I say. My hands land on his bare chest as he sweeps into me.
“Good. Now I want to satisfy mine.” He spins me around and pulls me against him hard, so that my breath rushes out of me in an oof. With his front against my back, he reaches down to the hem of my skirt and starts working the fabric up my leg, until his fingers reach my inner thigh.
His breath skates over my neck and ear. “Do you know how beautiful you are when you come?” he whispers to me. “Do you know what it does to me to feel your hands on my scales in my dragon form?”
I lean against him, my lids sinking. “I’m beginning to.”
“I want to feel you from behind. I want to hear you cry out my name when you come.”
The arm banding my waist rises to my breasts, even as the one on my thigh finds my center.
He moans at the feel of me, no doubt because I’m soaked.
Having him touch me here, outside, under the moonlight—it’s so hot, I already ache for him.
He pinches one of my nipples as his fingers move my panties aside and dip inside me.
The way he cups me strokes all the right places, and I moan.
“Seb… Goddess, how can I want you again already? The wanting is endless.”
He draws his fingers out and moves his hand around the back of me. “I can think of worse things.”
A sharp tug and I hear my underwear tear off my body. He casts them onto the ground beside us. “Hey! Those were black lace. I would have taken them off if you’d asked.”
“I’ll buy you a new pair,” he says into my neck. “I’ll buy you twenty.”
My skirt is lifted to my waist, and in one slick move, he fills me. All I can do is moan as I’m stretched to my limit, the angle making it feel so much more intense. It’s a good thing he’s holding me up. My legs go wobbly. Besides, he’s taller than me, and when he thrusts, he lifts me to my toes.
The hand that’s not holding me up does a valiant job unbuttoning my shirt and drawing my bra cups under my breasts. The cool air hits my skin, and I give myself over to the pleasure of it, of the wildness. We’re in the woods, under the moon, moving together like two beasts lost to instinct.
He’s thrusting into me so hard, we fall forward.
I squeal, extending my hands to break my fall, but his arm takes the brunt of it.
Thankfully, he holds me to him, supporting his weight and mine, until he can gently set me on my hands and knees.
We both laugh, but the humor doesn’t last long.
His hands hook on my hips, and he unleashes himself, his hips slapping against my bottom.
One hand tangles in my hair while the thumb of the other presses against my most private entrance.
I inhale sharply at the invasion, and it pushes me over the edge.
The orgasm seizes me like a tight fist, and my inner muscles pulse around him.
I buck against him, wanton and wild, my fingers digging into the grass and dirt.
“Mmmm, I love that,” he whispers in my ear, bent over me.
One of his hands drifts between my legs, teasing my clit and drawing out the orgasm.
His trill is a loud buzz in the night around me, like a swarm of cicadas.
“Come for me, Zoe. Again,” he orders.
It feels like the stars above me explode. Another orgasm rides the first, this one hard and fast and as if it’s pulled from my toes.
He howls and thrusts until hot jets fill me, overflow me, and slick my thighs. The grass grows sticky with it. And goddess, the scent of him. It’s everywhere, like the best cologne.
“You’re filthy again, my mate.”
I look over my shoulder at him, and he rumbles appreciatively, deep in his throat, when our eyes meet. “You seem to make me that way.”
He lifts us from the ground and brushes off my knees. “Come, let’s get you cleaned up and me dressed. Patrick is understanding, but we’re in no shape for dinner.”