Chapter 36.5
Maxim
My hands are shaking.
My entire body is shaking.
In truth, I am shaking so badly—with anticipation—I can barely tear open the little packet and spill a puddle of lube into my palm. The tart scent of cherries fills the air.
I am so excited about finally having him. My Vasili. Yet so uncertain about whether I am truly what he wants, and so nervous about actually pleasing him, that I can barely breathe.
Of course, Vasili is composed and unreadable as a sphinx.
Zara is wrapped in Neo’s brawny arms, both of them sitting up, her back tucked snugly against our bookworm’s reliable front. She has drawn Vasili’s head into her lap so she can stroke his gilded hair.
Propped against the headboard, my Neo looms behind them, flushed and breathless, glasses steaming with excitement and lips parted with wonder.
In my own excitement, I spill lube all over the bed, which makes Vasili snicker. Now I am obliged to open a second packet.
Thankfully, there is no shortage. His blazer pockets are overflowing with an abundant supply.
Crouched between his bent knees, I glance up at him furtively. I want to project an appearance of knowing what I am doing.
I want to reassure him as an alpha should.
Of course, the maddening creature arches his Romanov eyebrow and smirks at my attempt.
“Nervous, are you?” he murmurs, in a tone that is poisonous with spite. By this clue, I know that he too is nervous. “Shall I show you how it’s done, Rasputin?”
“No.” I scowl at him. “Do not rush me. This is not a race. Uh, try to relax.”
I add this last suggestion because I know he is a virgin in this way, and I want to soothe his fears (if he has any).
“Oh, relax yourself.” He rolls his pretty eyes. “Sorry to burst your bubble, darling. But this isn’t my first reaming.”
“It isn’t?” I gape at him, absurdly crushed and disappointed, but striving mightily not to show it. “Oh. Did… you and Lucius…?”
I can scarcely imagine this, because Lucius—who is ferocious and very alpha at all other times—always submits to this snake in our bed. Theirs is a complex and powerful attraction that I secretly spend a great deal of time pondering.
Surely he cannot have permitted Lucius to do the… reaming.
But still less can I imagine Neo—
“Ronin did the honors ages ago.” Vasili gives my surprised face a suspicious look. “Does this breaking news strip the bloom from the rose for you, Rasputin? Because, if it does, we certainly needn’t—”
“We need,” I say firmly, dragging my thoughts away from the extremely distracting visual of my sexy mate Ronin reaming this infuriating Vasili, who lounges before me like a Roman Caesar, until they are both wrung dry. “Stop trying to distract me. And relax.”
He sneers horribly but says nothing, which is all the permission I can expect to get.
My gaze lowers from his hostile face to his elegant body, sinew coiling under sleek skin, those pink nipples I love to tongue, slender cock rearing between his bent legs in a way that belies all his attempts at deception.
He likes what I am doing to him.
He likes it.
I am pleasing him.
Below the flushed sac of his balls, his rosy pucker is glistening with my saliva and nicely softened by my efforts. He came to me freshly showered and, clearly, well prepared.
At least, he is well prepared physically.
In truth, I expected him to give me far more trouble.
I slide a finger down his perineum from his balls to his pucker. He trembles at my touch, but he will never admit it. When I trace his hole and start to tease him open, I am on familiar ground. Because Ronin has taught me all there is to teach about prepping a man to take my cock.
But with this one—my boyhood love, my secret crush, my terrible snake of a co-alpha—I am on uncharted terrain.
Especially when I am not certain he truly wants me.
Perhaps it is only my dragon he wants. He wants my dragon’s strength and my dragon’s guile at his command when he wages his war against the Unseelie King who shares Zara’s bed.
Well, I meant what I swore.
I will not claim Vasili unless he wants me . Body and heart and soul.
I long to consume him.
As he consumes me.
For that, I must ferret out his shifty secrets.
“It’s okay, big guy,” Zara says gently. She is sifting Vasili’s shaggy punk-rock hair through her gentle fingers. But she is speaking to me. “You’re so sexy like this. I love both of you—love all of you so much.”
Vasili pulls in an unsteady breath.
Comforted by her words, I nuzzle his inner thigh to ease his trembling. My mouth finds the punctures of Lucius’ mating bite. This is an erogenous zone, and my tongue on Vasili’s scars makes him moan.
Sternly I order my own fangs to retract, because he will never allow my bite while he is so wary.
With a careful finger, I breach his tight hole.
His breath hisses in a way that could mean pain or pleasure.
“No, he likes it, big guy,” Zara murmurs to me, low and languid. “Don’t let him fool you.”
Hearing his secret betrayed, Vasili gives a little huff of annoyance.
Still, he does not protest.
I work my way in deeper. His delicious passage flutters and clenches around me. Desperately I try to think of anything but the tight hot clutch of his hole around my finger and how he will feel strangling my cock.
By all the saints, I am losing my mind over him. This man is stealing my soul more fully with every inch of him I claim.
My dick is aching to fill him, my barbs already flaring wide in anticipation. If I allow myself to imagine how it will feel to fuck him, I am going to spill before I am even inside him.
Sweat breaks out against my brow.
He is breathing heavily, lips parted and fangs exposed, his lids half mast, pale eyes fixed on me with a glittering intensity that steals all my remaining breath.
I need to slip another finger and probably more inside him, because my barbed dragon cock is very thick, and he is so very tight. If indeed Ronin has ever had him, it was likely only once.
But Vasili is tensing against my intrusion.
I must entice him to relax and accept me.
I have never used my mouth to please my male lovers. Not as all the others in my bed use theirs.
Not… there.
I have been uncertain. I have feared I would feel unmanly and ashamed. The ugly slurs and hatreds of my upbringing have echoed in my ears.
For this reason, I have never… never… sucked another man’s cock.
Now, for the sake of this complicated and ravishing and terrifying creature I am wooing, this powerful warlock who is secretly so fragile, I overcome my desperate uncertainty.
I suck in a breath and dive in to swipe my tongue up his stiff curving length, from his balls to his tip.
Vasili snatches in a gasp. Neo blurts out an exclamation of surprise.
My sovereign hums her approval.
Vasili’s taste of salt and danger tingles on my tongue.
He smells faintly like ambergris, the rich dark spice that is Ronin’s scent.
I suffer a sudden violent craving for my Valyrian mate back at Icarus, my Ronin, from whom I have been too long apart.
Perhaps I am doing what Ronin too did to Vasili in the shower.
Ronin loves to suck dick, and there is nothing unmanly about Ronin. He is a savage warrior.
I part my lips and nuzzle the flushed and pretty head of Vasili’s perfect cock. A little spurt of precum hits my palate. Hesitant, ready to retreat if I am criticized, I tongue his slit.
Under my careful mouth, this temperamental love of mine gives a delicate shiver.
And then he melts.
His tight hole softens to let my two fingers ease deeper.
I enclose the head of his dick and envelop his entire manhood in my mouth. His smooth length fills me, hot and pulsing with need, until he nudges the back of my throat.
My palate tingles under the press of my fangs. I am on fire with the need to give him my mating bite.
But if I ask, he will never consent.
For that final claiming, I must wait for him to ask.
I am not yet ready to deep-throat him. So I back off all those inches with a slow sucking pull that wrings a whimper from his lungs. When I take him in deep again, I penetrate him fully with my fingers.
His hand lands on my head to caress my hair.
“Good boy,” he breathes, deep and husky.
I snort around his dick, but I am pleased.
Ferociously pleased.
I am pleasing him.
As I work him with my lips and tongue and ease a third slick digit into his greedy hole, I sneak an upward glance. Under my determined attentions, my love’s supple body coils and undulates like a serpent.
He is, very subtly, fucking himself on my fingers.
Zara and Neo are both watching me suck him off with no distaste at all. With nothing but love and approval shining in their eyes. Neo is kissing my sovereign’s shoulder and kneading her lush breast. He is obsessed with all of her, but with her breasts in particular.
Between his microheat and her receptivity to his advances, coupled with her claiming of him as his alpha, Neo will shortly be fucking her again.
The harder I suck, the deeper I take him, the more unguarded Vasili becomes. Now he is digging his heels into the mattress and fucking my fingers in earnest. I have opened his tight hole as well as I can. In truth, he is as ready for me as I can make him.
I am so ready for him I am barely able to restrain myself.
But I will not take him, I will not… unless…
“Vasili.” I lift my head, lick the musky taste of him from my lips, and skewer him with my fiercest glare. “Tell me the truth now, dushenka . If truth is even possible for you, tell it now. Do you want this with me because you want… me ?”
This question is as direct as I dare to make it, with Zara listening, and that secret bargain whose terms he is demanding still hovering in the air between us.
He thinks he must bargain for my loyalty.
But he, like my queen, has always had it.
Under my hands, his writhing body stills. His silver head lifts from Zara’s lap to find me.