Chapter Thirteen #2
His reaction is immediate, the dragon showing in the flash of gold in his eyes, the slight tightening of his hands against my face and the sudden rush of heat from his skin.
“You will never have to worry about money.”
I almost smile. Of course that’s where he goes.
“Soren.”
“Whatever you need while you decide what comes next, I can provide it. You don’t have to rush into another job or worry about—”
I put my hand against his chest.
He stops.
“I love that your first instinct is to take care of me. I mean that.” I look up at him. “But I just walked away from a life I didn’t choose, and I need some time to work out what I actually want before I build another one.”
His expression shifts as he understands.
“I need to figure out what comes next for myself,” I say, curling my fingers into his shirt. “That doesn’t mean I want to do it without you.”
For a moment he says nothing.
“I don’t know what my next job looks like or what I’m going to want six months from now. I’ll probably make some terrible decisions while I work it out.” I smile a little. “You can tell me they’re terrible and I’ll reserve the right to ignore you.”
“I suspect you’ll exercise that right frequently.”
His hand slides from my cheek to the side of my neck, warm and steady.
Soren watches me for a moment, then nods. “All right, Angel.”
The relief that moves through me is almost embarrassing.
Smoke slips from his nose, and this time I know enough to understand that he’s losing the battle with whatever enormous emotion is happening behind those gold eyes.
“You have no idea what you’ve just handed me.”
I kiss him.
There’s no anger in it this time, no panic waiting underneath it. I came here because I love him, and when his arms close around me, I don’t have the slightest urge to run.
Soren makes a low sound against my mouth and lifts me, and I wrap my legs around his waist as he carries me to the bed. He lowers me onto it and follows, his weight settling carefully over mine while his mouth finds mine again.
His hands move over me slowly, giving me plenty of time to change my mind even though I think we both know I’m not going to. When he pulls back enough to look at me, his eyes are solid gold.
“Angel,” he murmurs, and there’s so much in that one word that my chest aches.
I reach for him, my hands sliding over the heat of his back until I feel the first bronze scales beginning to rise beneath my palms.
“I want you,” I tell him. “And I want this to be ours. Not something I book. Not something that ends when the time runs out. Just ours.”
Something in his expression breaks open.
He bends and presses his mouth to mine again. “It always was. I was just too much of a fool to say so.”
Soren takes his time undressing me, pulling my sweater over my head before his hands move to my jeans.
He works them down my legs along with my underwear, then reaches behind me to unfasten my bra.
By the time he straightens, I’m completely naked beneath him, and the look on his face sends heat rushing through me.
Then he strips off his clothes, and I get my first real look at all of him.
The last of his human glamour melts away under the force of his need.
Scales, deep bronze and old gold, creep down his torso and over the hard muscle of his thighs.
His nails are longer, thicker, curving into short, black talons.
The heat pouring off him isn’t just warmth anymore; it’s a furnace blast that smells of smoke and something ancient, like stone and spice.
And his cock… holy fuck.
It’s monstrous. Impossibly thick and flushed a deep, angry-looking purple, with a heavy, ridged head that looks like it was made to ruin me for anyone else.
A subtle pattern of scales shimmers along the shaft, and at the base, I can see a thick knot of dragon flesh, waiting.
It’s so hot I can feel the waves of heat from where I lie, and some terrified, thrilled part of my brain doesn’t just think oh.
It thinks, that’s not going to fucking fit.
He sees the shock, the fear, and the greedy want on my face, and his grin goes utterly wicked.
“We’ll go slow,” he says, his voice a lie.
He kisses down my body, past my ribs, past my navel, and settles his broad, scaled shoulders between my thighs, forcing them wider.
For a second, he just looks at my pussy, already wet for him, and a low growl rumbles in his chest. “Beautiful,” he rasps, like a dragon admiring its treasure.
Then his mouth is on me and my brain short-circuits.
He doesn’t just lick. He devours, lapping at my clit with a flat, rough tongue, sucking my folds into his hot mouth until I’m writhing.
When I try to twist away from the sheer intensity, one huge, warm hand splays across my belly, his talons pressing gently against my skin, pinning me right where he wants me.
I feel the rumble of his purr against my inner thigh before I hear it, that low, pleased sound that says eating me out is doing as much for him as it’s doing for me.
He lifts his head just enough to speak, mouth wet. “So wet for your dragon. That’s my good girl.” Then he’s back on me, his tongue flicking my clit before I can do anything with the way those words land, hotter than they have any business being.
“Fuck.” I fist a hand in the sheets. “Soren—I’m going to—”
“I’ve got you.” He moves his hand between my legs.
For a heart-stopping second, I see the dark, curved talon at the tip of his finger, and my breath catches.
He pauses, his gaze locking with mine, and I watch, mesmerized, as the black claw recedes and the scales smooth away, leaving a thick, blunt, human finger. I know he would never, ever hurt me.
He pushes that thick finger into my pussy and then another, stretching me wide. “That’s it,” he rasps, his voice thick with smoke and want. “Come on my tongue. Let me taste you. Greedy girl, let go for me.”
The command, combined with the filthy lapping of his tongue and the incredible fullness of his fingers inside me, pushes me over the edge.
My muscles coil tight, unbearably tight, for one second before they release in a shattering wave.
A hot gush of fluid floods from me, soaking his mouth and his hand as I come with a choked scream, my whole body convulsing.
He groans into my drenched pussy, a deep, satisfied sound, and doesn’t pull away. He drinks me in, swallowing every last drop, his tongue lapping me clean.
“There she is.” He kisses his way back up my body, the inside of my thigh, my hip, my stomach. “Perfect. You have no idea what you do to me.”
Then he moves up over me, a mountain of scaled muscle and heat, and lines that impossibly huge cock up with my entrance. He pushes in just the head.
The stretch is blinding. I feel myself ache, my breath snagging on a gasp that’s half pain, half pleasure. He stops instantly, barely an inch inside me, holding perfectly still with sweat at his temples and every muscle in his arms locked.
“Breathe, Angel,” he says, his voice strained. “You can take as much of me as you want.”
“I want all of it.” I glare up at him through a haze of lust, digging my heels into the backs of his scaled thighs. “Fuck, Soren. I want all of you. Give it to me.”
The sound he makes is barely human, a guttural roar torn from his throat.
He sinks home in one long, brutal push. The air is driven clean out of me.
I am split open, impaled, so stuffed full of him that I can feel the thick ridge of his knot pressed against my entrance, my pulse hammering where we’re joined.
“Margot.” He says my name against my ear, low and reverent. Then, rougher, truer, the word he’s only ever half let himself have: “Mate.”
“I’m yours,” I sob, meaning it all the way down to my bones. “Yours.”
He moves. Long, deep, punishing strokes that drag over every nerve I have. He’s fucking me, owning me with his body, and I rise to meet each slam of his hips.
“Feel that?” His mouth drops to my ear, his fangs grazing my lobe, every word timed to a thrust. “All of my cock, right where you wanted it. You feel that knot? You’re going to take it for me.
You’re mine now, Margot. Mine to fuck, mine to keep, mine to own.
” His hand fists gently in my hair, tilting my head back. “Say it.”
“Yours.” My nails drag uselessly down the scales on his back, the sound like scratching stone. “I’m all yours, Daddy.”
The roar that tears out of him rattles the window glass, and his purr and his growl collide into one impossible sound.
“That’s my good girl.”
His purr starts again, deep in his chest, a tectonic rumble that I feel more than hear, rolling through him and into me, vibrating right against my cervix until I’m making noises I’d die of embarrassment over if I had any shame left.
He works a hand between us, his calloused thumb finding my clit and circling in time with the deep pounding of his hips.
“My good girl.” He says it into my hair like an answer and a vow, and his rhythm shatters, the purr cracking into a rough roar. “Mine. Come for me. Let me feel you strangle my cock.”
And I believe it. Not because he said it. Because I chose to be here to hear it.
I come apart around him with his name on my lips, my pussy clenching hard enough that his whole body goes rigid with the effort of holding back.
He presses his face against my neck, a growl rough in his throat. “If I knot you, the mate bond seals, Angel. Permanently.” His grip tightens as another shudder runs through him.
I pull him closer. “Knot me, Daddy. Make me yours, forever.”
He roars, loud enough to rattle the windows, and drives into me one last time. I feel the knot at his base swell and lock us together as he follows me over, spilling heat into me.
And then I feel him.