With the fingers from one hand, he parted the plump, pink petals of delicate flesh that surrounded her opening. Her earthy, rich scent filled his nostrils, and the sight of her was so exciting, his aching cock pulsed again.
Married. Twice mated.
Those human-inspired words were important, and immensely satisfying. They hinted at, but didn’t touch the deepest essence of the truth between them.
But one word did. Finally, he put his mouth on her and growled against her most intimate flesh, “Mine.”
* * *
Dragos’s growl vibrated through her lower body, and she started to shake in reaction. He was ferocity itself cloaked lightly in the guise of human flesh, but he had never once knowingly hurt her, and she knew he never would.
The sight of his dark head between her legs never failed to arouse her. Unerringly, his tongue found her clitoris, and he began to work her. The rhythm of his mouth pulsed throughout her body. It took over the beating of her heart and thudded in her veins.
Pleasure was a spiral, growing higher and tighter as he suckled her. When he worked two of his long, clever fingers into her tight passage, it blew through her like a supernova. He knew when the climax shook through her, and massaged her gently through it.
“My very first pow of the day,” she whispered, stroking his hair.
His quick, gold gaze flashed to her. Not your last one. The sexy growl had taken over his mental voice. Not by a long shot.
Pure, languorous delight had her stretching in a luxurious, undulating roll. Thank the gods for a thorough, detail-oriented husband who was competitive even with himself.
All coherent thought blew out of her mind, as he suckled harder at her hypersensitive little nubbin of flesh. Having already peaked once, the pleasure came back stronger in a fierce wave of sensation. It cascaded along her nerve endings until the intensity became almost unbearable.
She couldn’t keep her hips still. They rose up to meet his wise, relentless mouth. She tried to grab him by the hair, but he kept it too short, and the silken straight strands slipped through her fingers. The built-up tension was going to kill her if it didn’t break soon. Her heart pounded like she was running, always running.
Always running toward him.
Her second climax slammed her back into the mattress. Flinging out her arms, she grabbed handfuls of the bedspread so that she could have something to hold on to in the maelstrom and coughed out a hoarse, breathless scream.
“Okay, okay,” she panted, when she could formulate words. “Ease up now—Dragos, please . . .”
Not on your life, Mephistopheles purred in her head.
This time the peak of pleasure was immediate and savage, as if the dragon had taken her in his teeth and bodily shaken her.
Her legs clenched along his back, and another hoarse scream broke from her shaking lips. She swore at him, and her wicked lover laughed at her. Oh gods, everything inside of her was lit with fire, and he just wasn’t . . . going . . . to . . . stop.
She tried to laugh too, but she had no breath. In desperation, she reached above her head for one of the pillows. She hit him over the head with it. “This isn’t going to get me pregnant!”
At that, he rose up on his hands and knees and crawled up her body, at once so massive and liquid with power and grace, she lost what little breath she had.
From that angle, his chest looked immense, and his erection hung heavy and thick above his tight, round testicles. His gold eyes blazed with light and heat, and his expression had lost what little humanity it had.
“Oh, I’ll get you pregnant,” said the dragon in her face. “I’ll fuck you until you can’t walk.”
“Promises,” she tried to sneer. It came out more like a wheezing giggle. She hit him with the pillow again.
With a lightning fast move, he snatched it from her. Hooking an arm around her waist, he slid the pillow underneath her hips. She wiggled into place, tilting her pelvis up for him even as she reached for his cock with both greedy hands.
Together they positioned the broad, thick tip of his erection at her opening, and with one brutally efficient move, he thrust into her. He had lost his gentleness, and neither of them missed it. She was so slick and swollen, so sensitized, she came again as he ground himself against her. This time, she was past making any sound. She shook all over, and tears spilled out the corners of her eyes.
He destroyed her, completely. He tore away every barrier she had against the world, until he had conquered her at the core. Stripped and vulnerable, she did the only thing she could—she wound her arms around his neck and clung to him with everything she had.
He fucked her savagely, in short hard jabs, staring into her face with feral eyes. She was surrounded and filled with heat and pressure. He came in complete silence, thrust flush against her, his powerful body hard like iron. Her heavy eyelids drooped down as she felt him pulse inside of her.
As the pulsing slowed, she managed to unglue one of her shaking arms so that she could stroke his face, his hair. Gods, the love she felt for him was so intense sometimes it took her outside her own body.
Closing his incandescent eyes, he turned that feral, inhuman face into her caress and pressed his lips to her palm.
“How many thrusts was that?” His voice had gone guttural.
It took a moment for the meaning of his words to sink in. As wrecked she was, she burst out laughing weakly. “See? It’s like I told you—I get so busy with my own pows, I don’t pay any attention to what you’re doing.”
Breathing hard, he pulled out. Before she had a chance to make a disappointed face at his abrupt departure, he took her in a strong, unbreakable grip and flipped her so that she lay on her stomach, with the pillow still underneath her hips.
“Then don’t mind me,” he growled. “I’ll carry on without you. Because I’m not done yet.”
Not done yet.
The words ran down her spine in a liquid sizzle.
He had reached for the mating frenzy. Oh gods. It sent her muscles to shaking again, a deep, uncontrollable reaction.
Strength and energy flooded back into her limbs. She came up on her elbows. Tucking her knees in, she raised herself to him. It was one of the most primitive and enjoyable positions, and it satisfied something animalistic deep inside her.
Looking over her shoulder, she whispered, “I’m ready when you are, big guy. Let’s go.”
Like darkness eclipsing the moon, he came over her. It felt so right, so good as he penetrated her. It felt necessary. Closing her eyes, still shaking, she opened herself up and let her own mating frenzy come.
At one point, someone knocked on their door. When Dragos roared for them to go away, they did so, laughing. It was Eva.
Pia managed to pull herself together enough to say telepathically to the other woman, Please feed Liam supper, and tell him Mommy and Daddy are very tired and will see him in the morning.
Sure, I’ll tell him, Eva said. But you know he knows better, right?
It’s called polite fiction, Pia snapped. That’s what families tell each other, right?
From down the hall, Eva laughed harder.
Pia was tempted to snap at her again, but just then Dragos did something to her to make her eyes roll back in her head, and the rest of the world faded away.
The rest of the evening and the night passed in a heated blaze, until finally exhaustion lay an inexorable claim on her and she fell asleep, draped bonelessly across Dragos’s chest with his fists clenched in her hair.
Sometime later, much later, awareness brought her out of a deep sleep.
The first thing she noticed was that she was alone in bed, and every muscle ached. It was a good, deep ache that came from utter satiation.
Warm sunlight lay across one arm and shoulder.
Sunlight?
She managed to get one eye unglued. It revealed another bright, sunny day outside the nearby open balcony windows.
Sunlight never poured through those windows until
late morning and early afternoon. They were so, so, so late, and she hadn’t even packed yet.
“Oh, no,” she muttered. It came out more like a croak.
“I’ve got to tell you, lover. That’s not the most rousing thing you’ve ever said after a full night of lovemaking.”
Dragos’s voice came from across the room. With an immense effort, she turned her head and let it plop back down on the pillow.
Dragos lounged on a nearby chaise. He had showered although he hadn’t shaved, and he had dressed in jeans while remaining shirtless and barefoot. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that he had the bedroom TV turned to a news channel with the volume muted. He had his laptop on his lap, but as she watched, he set it aside.
“It’s so late, and I haven’t finished packing,” she said. “What am I saying? I haven’t even managed to sit upright yet.”
One side of the bed dipped as he knelt on it to reach over to her. Pressing his mouth to her shoulder blade, he said against her skin, “I packed.”
At the touch of his lips on her sensitive skin, heat coiled low in her body. She pushed it away, eyeing Dragos warily. “What do you mean, you packed?”
“I mean, I packed. Everything. My stuff, and your stuff.” Running a flattened hand down her back, he nodded to the doorway.
She rose up on her elbows to look. All the suitcases were stacked by the door. “Makeup?”
“You had everything set on the counter.”
She could hardly believe it. Dragos was the least domesticated person she knew. Scanning the floor, she found that it was bare of all the clothes he had tossed the previous night. “Toiletries?”
“Yes, your toiletries too. Don’t look so skeptical. I watch what you do every day. I know what you use.” His voice had deepened again as he kept stroking her back.
He loved to touch her, but late as it was, they couldn’t afford to get lost in the mating frenzy again, or they would be two days late getting to D.C. and miss the White House thing altogether.
She reached for his hand, meaning to push him away, but somehow her fingers got tangled up with his instead.
Pulling his hand to her, she rested her cheek on it and mumbled, “Jewelry.”
Even as she said it, she knew it was the most stupid of all her questions. Knowing him, he had probably packed the jewelry first, and only after he had gone through the case thoroughly in order to admire the jewels inside.
“You had your travel jewelry case out and ready to go,” he said. “What do you think?”
The wide back of his strong hand had a sprinkle of black hair across the veins. She pressed a kiss to it. “I believe you.”
“Everything is taken care of. All you need to do is shower and eat some breakfast, and then we can leave,” he told her.
The thought of eating made her feel unexpectedly queasy. She pushed it aside as she sat up. “I’m not hungry, but I’d like a cup of coffee.”
He nodded over to the chaise. When she looked in that direction again, she saw the tray sitting on the side table.
“You thought of everything.” She smiled at him.
He didn’t smile back. His gaze had dropped to her bare breasts, and his expression had turned sharp and predatory. Cupping a breast, he stroked his thumb along a darkened suck bruise.
He said in a low voice, “You know, we can always change our minds and go a day later.”
The heat that shimmered between them felt volcanic and beat underneath her skin with a tribal tempo. Reaching hard for self-control, she covered his hand with hers. “And miss the kick off event for the summit at the White House tonight? Much as I would like to, you know we can’t.”
His black brows lowered. “We can.”
The thing about the mating frenzy was, it had no sense. She smiled at him sidelong. “Or we can make love again on the plane.”
His returning smile was quick and gleamed with anticipation. “Yes. Hurry up.”
Chapter Three
Pia showered quickly, and after wrapping the towel around her torso, she went into her closet to choose casual clothes for traveling—a comfortable pair of jeans, sandals, and a fitted, button-down shirt.
When she took the outfit to the bedroom, she found Dragos and their luggage already gone. While she had been in the shower, he had taken the news channel off mute and indulged in one of his bad habits by leaving the TV on.
It drove her crazy when he did that. She was congenitally incapable of leaving the room without turning off the TV first. As she shimmied into her jeans, she looked around the bedroom for the remote.
The news segment changed.
“Following on the heels of the terrible massacre in the Northern California Nightkind demesne this spring, Washingon DC is stepping up security for a week-long summit between the Elder Races demesne leaders and the human leaders of the U.S. government,” the news caster said with a bright smile. “The recent upsurge in Elder Races violence over the last few years has made more than one human official pause, but the mass murder of ninety seven people—most of them human—by one of the Nightkind demesne’s senior member of government has created a crisis for the Elder Races leaders that just won’t go away. Federal lawmakers at the highest levels are calling for accountability for their actions, and all the Elder Races have responded . . .”
Which wasn’t quite true.
Pia paused to glare at the image of the oblivious newscaster.
The truth was, federal lawmakers had called on the Nightkind demesne for an accounting of the multiple homicides, and the Nightkind regent Xavier del Torro had responded by suggesting the summit.
While the slaughter of so many people was quite horrible, over the last few months, her horror over what happened had turned to worried exasperation for how so many of the news channels insisted on making such a terrible crime sound like the Elder Races were murdering humans instead of reporting the more accurate story.
Which was that a dangerous, powerful, psychopathic Vampyre named Justine had killed all her attendants rather than risk letting any of them talk to her enemy, the Nightkind King Julian Regillus, and possibly leak valuable information about her whereabouts and activities. Or that Julian had personally seen that justice was done by hunting Justine down and killed both her and her co-conspirators.
But once the news had gotten skewed that way, other stories were highlighted—the damages in Chicago, when Dark Fae assassins attempted to kill Niniane, damages to various properties in San Francisco when Carling was a fugitive, and even the property damage in New York, caused by Dragos’s roar when she had stolen his penny, were discussed over and over.
Skewed or not, they had a point.
They had a serious point.
And after watching the shit-storm that had hit the media in the aftermath of the Nightkind massacre, all the Elder Races leaders had agreed to the summit.
“But why does every newscast have to be an ‘us against them’ mentality?” she muttered. “Isn’t it time to start talking about solutions instead of endlessly going over the problems?”
Finally locating the remote in the tousled bed covers, she clicked the off button forcefully, and peaceful silence flooded the room.
Yanking a hairbrush through her damp hair, she did a quick tour of the bathroom and their closets, but Dragos had been as good as his word and had packed everything.
In her closet, she paused at her jewelry cabinet. Then, after a few moment’s thought, she opened it up.
What were the chances they might get pregnant? For the Elder Races in general, the chances were slim, and while they had been joking about Dragos’s mighty sperm, the truth was both his nature and hers were so uniquely magical that there was no way to know how that might skew the general statistics.
Last time, she had gotten violently sick after they had been together only a few days. After all the brouhaha of finding out that she was indeed pregnant, and then her getting kidnapped, chased and almost killed, Dragos had given her a diamond pendant, infused wit
h an anti-nausea spell, that had become her lifeline through the rest of her pregnancy. Predator and herbivore genes don’t play together nicely in the womb.
And what if they were extraordinarily lucky and it did happen again?
After a few moments of hesitation, she pulled out the necklace, tucked it in its own velvet box, and thrust it into her purse. Better safe than sorry, because oh my lord, that nausea would make her one sorry Wyr, and if there was any week she couldn’t afford to be sick, it was this one.
Satisfied with her decision, she went downstairs where Dragos was waiting.
They had given Liam options—he could either go to D.C. with them, or he could remain home to stay in school. Excited at joining the football team, he had elected to remain at home, although Dragos had kept him out of school that morning so they could say good-bye to him.
“No unexpected growth spurts,” she told him, as she finger-combed his dark blond hair and straightened his collar. “And no sleepovers, so don’t even bother asking. I want to Skype with you every day, so you can tell me how your day went.”
“Yeah, okay.” Grinning, he ducked away from her ministrations. “Come on, Mom, quit it. I’m all straightened up.”
“Fine, I’m stopping. I love you.” She grabbed his shoulders and hauled him close for a hug. Despite his complaints, his arms closed around her readily.
“Love you too,” he muttered against her shoulder.
Public or open displays of affection had begun to embarrass him, which she thought was so darn adorable, because he still wanted to be hugged, but he had started to act sneaky about seeking out the hugs. She squeezed him tighter before she let him go.
“We’re going to talk about a surprise for you when we get back,” Dragos told him.
The puppy. She grinned. With everything that had happened, she had forgotten about that.
Liam perked up. “Oh yeah? What is it?”
“If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it?” Smiling, Dragos hooked a long arm around the boy and hauled him in for another hug. “Be good. And be careful out on the field.”
At that, Liam sobered somewhat. He promised, “I will.”