Chapter Eight #2
I have to go slow. She's so fucking tight and hot, her pussy gripping every inch of me like she was carved out just to take it, and the drag of her undoes every scrap of my control in one long, perfect stroke. She whimpers when I bottom out, hips flush to hers, buried to the root inside her.
Her hand slides down between us and finds the thick ridge at my base, and her eyes go wide. "Is that your knot?"
"Don't worry, I won't knot you. Not tonight." I catch her wrist and press a kiss to her palm, holding on to my control with my teeth.
The sound she makes tells me she's already thinking about it.
"Fuck." It punches out of me. "Fuck, Angel, you feel like coming home. Like you were made for me."
Heat surges through me, sudden enough that I lose my grip on the parts of myself I usually keep hidden. I feel my pupils narrow first, my vision sharpening, and then bronze scales begin to surface along my forearms.
I notice them a second too late.
Six hundred years of control, and Margot is enough to make my body forget it's supposed to look human.
Her fingers close around my arm.
For one awful second, I expect her to pull away.
Instead, she runs her fingertips over the scales, slowly at first, exploring the ridges with open curiosity. Her hips roll against mine as she does it, drawing me deeper, and when I look at her face, there isn't a trace of fear there.
She's watching me.
Not the human shape I've spent centuries perfecting.
Me.
She isn't afraid. She's chasing more.
I start to move again, and whatever restraint I had left goes with the touch of her fingers over my scales.
The careful pace I'd been holding onto disappears, turning harder and more demanding.
I fist one hand in the sheets when I feel my claws threatening to surface, while the other stays beneath her thigh, holding her open as I drive into her.
She takes all of it. Every thrust, every filthy word I growl into her throat.
"That's it, take all of your dragon's cock. "
"You feel so fucking good wrapped around me." The room fills with the sound of it—the slap of our skin, our ragged breaths, her voice climbing higher and higher.
"Right there," she gasps. "Don't stop, please, please—"
"I've got you." Heat pours off my skin in a wave. "Come on my cock. Give me that pretty little orgasm, Angel. Let me feel you milk me."
"Please—" Her voice breaks open. "Please, Daddy—"
The word goes through me like a lance. Smoke pours past my nostrils, and my rhythm stutters for the first time in hundreds of years.
"Say that again."
"Daddy." Softer now, sure of it, her eyes on mine. "Please."
She comes around me a second time, her inner walls clenching so hard she nearly takes me with her, and I hold on by a thread, working her through it while everything I've wanted and never let myself keep pours into her.
When I follow her over, when it finally takes me apart, the word that leaves my mouth isn't a term of praise.
"Mine."
I roar the word as I empty myself into her, pumping my seed deep inside her, filling her to the brim as I grind my hips down, the word torn out of me before I can think. Not a Dom speaking to his sub.
A dragon over its hoard.
I stay in her after, braced on my forearms so I don't crush her, my forehead dropped to hers while both of us come down.
The scales along my arms gradually disappear, though my eyes take longer to return to normal.
Margot watches the change without comment, one hand still resting against my arm as though she's reluctant to lose the last of them.
I don't take it back. I meant it.
Neither of us mentions the word I let slip.
Mine.
I should correct it. There are a dozen ways I could soften what happened, turn it back into something that belongs safely inside a session.
But I don't, because I meant it.
When Margot starts to shiver, I run her a bath and carry her into it. By the time she comes back out, the robe has been warming on the rail and dinner is waiting at the table.
She notices the place settings immediately.
Her gaze moves from the plates to the cloth napkins, then to me. "This looks suspiciously like dinner."
"That's because it is dinner."
She's warm and loose-limbed after the bath, her damp hair falling around the shoulders of the robe while she eats. She tells me about her week without needing much prompting, and I find myself listening to details I have no professional reason to care about and every personal reason to remember.
"I bought a book," she tells me.
"A book?"
"A completely unnecessary, full-price hardback."
The pride in her voice makes me smile. "Reckless."
"I know. It gets worse. I ran myself a bath and read it there."
"Without being told?"
"Yep."
"Angel, you're out of control."
She laughs and reaches for her water. "I thought you'd be proud of me."
"I am."
The teasing leaves her face.
I watch the words land, the little softness that comes over her whenever she believes me, and something in my chest pulls tight.
"My clan would have hated you," I say.
Margot pauses with her glass halfway to her mouth, then looks pointedly at the plate in front of her. "Jeez, buy me dinner before you insult me."
A laugh catches me before I can stop it. "I did buy you dinner."
"You cooked me dinner. Which somehow makes the insult worse."
"I wasn't insulting you."
"That's reassuring, because I was starting to think the peonies were an elaborate setup."
I shake my head, still smiling. "They would have hated you because you're everything they believed a dragon shouldn't want."
The humor fades from her expression, replaced by curiosity. "What does that mean?"
I consider avoiding the question. Instead, I lean back in my chair.
"Dragons where I come from have very particular ideas about what makes one of us strong. What we accumulate. What we can defend. How much territory we control and how effectively we make everyone else understand it belongs to us."
"And you weren't very good at that?"
"I was excellent at it."
Her mouth twitches.
"I simply didn't enjoy it," I continue. "I never understood the point of possessing something only to spend the rest of my life guarding it from everyone else."
"What did you want instead?"
The answer comes too easily.
"To look after what was mine."
Something changes in her expression.
I look down at my glass. "That was not considered an admirable instinct."
"What was?"
"Taking. Winning. Being feared enough that nobody tried to take anything back." I shrug, though there's nothing casual about the memories. "I preferred books, blankets and a quiet house. You can imagine the disappointment."
Margot smiles faintly, but it doesn't last. "So you left."
"Eventually."
"Because they thought caring about things made you weak?"
"Among other reasons."
She looks down at her hands for a moment. "Someone once made me feel weak for wanting someone to care about me."
I know.
I've known since I read her intake, but hearing her say it aloud is different.
"They were wrong," I tell her.
Her eyes lift to mine.
"So was your clan," she says.
A laugh catches me by surprise. "Yes, I guess they were."
Margot looks at me for another moment, then pushes back her chair and comes around the table.
Before I can ask what she's doing, she settles into my lap and curls against me, tucking her head beneath my chin as though this is a perfectly ordinary place for her to be.
My arms close around her on instinct.
The purr starts almost immediately.
I feel her smile against my chest before her hand comes up to rest over the rumble, and that only makes it deepen. She doesn't tease me about it this time. She simply settles closer, warm and comfortable in my arms, while I hold her.
Eventually, dinner is finished, her hair dries, and the hour gets late enough that neither of us can pretend she isn't going home.
I help her into the green dress and walk downstairs with her.
Usually, I say goodbye at the door.
Tonight, I follow her outside.
Margot glances at me when she realizes I'm coming all the way to the car, but she doesn't comment. I open the door for her and she pauses before getting in, one hand resting on the frame.
"The peonies were my favorite part."
I look back toward the house. "Not dinner?"
"Close second."
"I cooked for you."
"And the peonies were beautiful."
"Ungrateful woman."
She laughs as she gets into the car. "Goodnight, Soren."
"Goodnight, Angel."
I close the door and step back.
Her engine starts. She pulls away, and I stand there longer than necessary, watching until her taillights disappear beyond the gates.
Every instinct I have wants me to go after her.