Bethany had a great idea. She suspected that it was actually a very bad idea because it seemed like such a great idea, but she didn’t care.
She stepped forward, her feet on either side of Math’s crossed ankles, but not touching him. She leaned forward, allowing her breasts just a little closer to his chest while he took deep breaths through his nose, and asked, “Why? Do you have a better idea?”
He moved so quickly that his arms seemed to flash around her, and she was spinning.
In a blink, the countertop pressed into her back.
His fingers were already at the back of her neck and reaching up into her hair, dragging her head back. He grabbed her hip with his other hand, bunching the terrycloth in his fist. He hovered with his lips just a fraction of an inch from hers, almost brushing, entirely tantalizing. “Do you want this?”
“Yes,” she whispered, trying to move forward and close that tiny space between their mouths, but he held her back with her hair, pulling.
The gold glitter in his eyes nearly glowed. “Do you want me?”
She could barely breathe, but she said, “Yes.”
He ducked his head and traced her jawline with the tip of his nose, sending delicious shivers down her neck and over her shoulder. “You already put on perfume.”
She hadn’t. “Not yet.”
“You smell amazing.”
“Must be my shampoo.”
He moved her head, stretching her neck, and brushed his lips over the top of her shoulder. “I don’t think so.”
Bethany ran her hands up his shirt, feeling the many hard lumps and crevices of his abdominals and chest that she had seen yesterday through the crisp fabric. A warm scent like cinnamon and citrus lingered on his skin, though she could still smell his natural musk and smokiness. The delectable scent seemed to light a fire in her. “You’re wearing cologne.”
Math growled, “You can tell me to stop, and I will. You can tell me if you don’t like something. You can tell me if you want something. I’ll try to be careful, but dragons are strong. It’s in our nature to be a little ruthless, a little rough. But if you don’t tell me, I won’t know, and I might go too far. Once my dragon wakes up, things can get very rough, very fast. If I hurt you, if you don’t like it, tell me, and I’ll hold back.”
Maybe she hadn’t thought this entirely through. “Do you usually hurt women?”
“No, but my dragon could. I always have to hold back. I try to be gentle. But you have to tell me if my dragon gets too rough.”
A very bad image filled Bethany’s head. “You are not going to turn into that enormous dragon anytime soon, are you? If we—”
Jeez, if that dragon’s dick was proportional, she might actually explode.
His chuckle vibrated against her skin. “No, but the dragon soul merges with mine when things get intense.”
Another scary thought occurred to her. “What if your dragon doesn’t like me?”
“He likes you. He likes you a lot.” His lips caressed the side of her neck and her jaw when he spoke. “The dragon soul slumbers inside a shifter most of the time. Sometimes, it sleeps for days on end. Most of the time, my dragon only awakens when I shift or if I’m angry, but he wakes up every time you walk into the room. Every time I see you, my dragon wants to get closer to you.” His hand slid from her hip to her waist, caressing her. “He wants to touch you, feel your skin, breathe your scent. My dragon soul is absolutely fascinated with you. He’s never laid his head down and allowed a human, natural or supernatural, to touch him before, and he liked it. He wants you to touch him again.”
Her head spun. Warmth from his body washed over her skin. “What else does your dragon want to do?”
“Kiss you,” he whispered against her lips.
Bethany touched his neck, sliding her hands upward. The dark, silky strands of his hair slipped through her fingers as his mouth covered hers. When she opened her lips, his tongue stroked hers.
A sound hummed in Math’s body, and he released her hair and waist to lift her up to the countertop. Once she was sitting up there, she was closer to his height, her lips about the level of his collarbone instead of the middle of his sternum. She pressed her mouth to his chest and neck, sucking on his skin, as he shoved her knees apart and pressed his body against her, wrapping one arm around her waist and burying his fingers in her hair again.
Sitting on the kitchen counter with her thighs straddling Math’s hips like that, he could unzip and thrust into her.
Bethany scooted her butt forward on the counter just in case he did.
His arm tightened around her waist, and his hand moved down to her butt, pressing, as he mouthed her shoulder.
She whispered, “What else does your dragon want?”
“You,” he whispered, his voice rougher. “He wants you. All of you. In my arms and gasping my name. I’ve been starving for you and couldn’t touch you.”
He nipped her neck, scraping her skin with his teeth.
It hurt, too rough, and she gasped to tell him to stop.
His kiss soothed her skin just like when he’d kissed away the sea monster’s jellyfish sting. The quick contrast between the bite and the rush of pleasure afterward spun her around harder.
Her fingers tightened on his shoulders, digging in, and she let her head drop back.
Math moved, his body rubbing against her.
Her towel snagged on his clothes and loosened. She could have grabbed it, but she let it fall onto the countertop behind her.
He backed up for a second, taking a long, scorching look at her body, and he bit his lower lip with the slightest of grins before grabbing her again.
His hands roamed her body, stroking and caressing her until she was pulling at his clothes. He kissed her until her lips felt swollen and she was panting into his mouth. When he pulled off his shirt and flung it on her kitchen tile, she leaned back to take a look at the ripples and crevices of his lean abdominals and pecs, and then she explored the velvet of his skin and the long, vibrant dragon tattoo on his ribs on his right side. She couldn’t feel ridges from the tattoo in his skin, but the tattooed area felt warmer under her fingers than his cool skin surrounding it.
He grabbed her again, kissing her and stroking her skin and breasts. He was rough, a little, but not too rough.
Just rough enough to make her crave more.
As Math sucked his way down Bethany’s neck, she leaned back, balancing on the edge of the counter.
Warmer air trickled up her neck, like a tendril of warmth from a heating vent.
When Math glanced up at her from where he was tonguing her breast, the sparks in his eyes had turned to rushing fire.
The sight bumped her out for a minute, and she flinched away from him.
His mouth on her gentled. “Did I hurt you?”
“No. You’re fine. You’re great. Are you sure you’re not going to transform?”
“Positive. It’s never happened. I have complete control over my dragon soul, in that way.”
“When do you not have control over him?”
“You sound scared.”
“I’ve never been with a dragon shifter. I’ve never even met a dragon shifter before.”
Math’s deep voice slipped over her skin. “You don’t have to be afraid of my dragon. He won’t hurt anyone, especially you.”
He pressed her farther back on the kitchen counter and lifted her knees over his shoulders, the warm wetness of his tongue slipping over her belly and between her folds.
Bethany let her head fall back, and she let herself feel what he was doing to her. Nothing about him scared her anymore, not as long as he kept doing that. Firm, wet strokes worked her body, deeper, then inside her.
The deep, strong orgasm fanned through her body, long waves of ecstasy that drove all thoughts and fear and worry from her mind.
When the bliss ebbed, Math was standing between her thighs again, his arms wrapped around her. She was clinging to him, still gasping.
�
��Ready?” he asked.
Somehow, impossibly, Bethany was hungry for more of him. She nodded, still shuddering from aftershocks, but her body wanted to take him inside her.
He held a packet in two fingers. “Dragons are immune to most human diseases. We can’t carry any STDs. I can’t get a woman pregnant unless we’re mated. Do you want this?”
He was talking too much. His low voice made no sense in her ears, and she craved his touch and his skin. She fumbled with his belt and fly, her fingers almost numb and definitely not the part of her that needed to be filled. “No condom. Please. Now. Please.”
Math shoved his trousers around his hips and held himself, bracing his other hand on her hip.
Damn.
Math was around six-six, and unsurprisingly, he had an enormous—dragon.
He fit himself inside her, pressing slowly, while Bethany clung to him and pressed her cheek against his cool shoulder.
Under her arm, she could feel his heart beating behind his ribs.
His small growls feathered her ear and washed down her back.
Finally, after the ache of stretching and fullness, his hips nestled into her body, and he held her in his arms.
She wanted him to move. She needed him to move in her. “Math,” she whispered. “Please. Please.”
He pulsed his hips into her at first, slowly, rhythmically, letting her get used to him moving, too. Every press of his body drove a whimper from her throat, first from the fullness, then from the desire for more, harder.
His body moved sinuously, athletically, between her legs and against her stomach.
She scooted to the edge of the counter. Math wrapped his arms around her more tightly, one arm lifting under her as he pressed more deeply inside her body.
Bethany vined around him, her limbs squeezing his hard flesh as he surged inside her. Her desire for more, always more, matched his urgent thrusts, and her body spiraled as he bucked against her, both driving each other toward release.
Math grabbed her ass, picked her up with his powerful arms locked around her, and slammed her against the wall.
Bethany’s skull bounced off the plaster, and she clutched him as she fell onto him and he drove up into her, grinding her against the wall, both of them sweating and heated and moving hard together.
When he leaned back, Bethany peeked at him through her eyelashes. A line had formed between his eyes, and he was breathing through parted lips.
With every breath, fire leaked from Math’s mouth and then withdrew between his lips.
At last, the crushing tension contracted to a hard knot and blasted apart, taking her mind and consciousness with it. Her scream scrubbed her throat raw.
Math thrust into her, his body beyond control as he held her in his arms and plunged into her. Bethany’s back scraped the wall, and the throbs of his release slammed through her again.
Math shuddered in her arms, his breath hot on her shoulder.
He held her until their bodies slipped apart, and then he lay down on the living room carpet with her lying on his chest.
He was still breathing hard, and the fire slowly left his golden eyes as he stared at the ceiling.
Bethany lay limply on his chest, panting. His heart raced under her ear.
After a moment, his arms wrapped around her again, and his abdominals turned to hard ridges as he curled up to kiss the top of her head. “That was amazing,” he said, his voice hoarse. “You’re amazing.”
“Yeah,” she said, still stunned by the intensity of it. “Amazing.”
Every damn word they whispered about dragon shifters was absolutely true.
Bethany worried she might never be able to think straight again.
Or walk normally.
The Facts of Dragon Life
THE next morning, Math had untangled himself from Bethany’s long, silky limbs and left her asleep in her bed, snagging a piece of cold pizza from one of the boxes on the coffee table as he let himself out. He puffed a wisp of dragonfire at the bottom of the slice to freshen it up and ate it on his way to his car.
The bubbling cheese seared the roof of his mouth, but he stuffed it in. He was starving for some reason, far more than usual, and was going to need the calories.
After parking his car on the roof of the casino’s structure, Math texted Bethany from it that he’d be back that night and to clear her schedule for the evening.
Then he ordered another two dozen roses to be delivered to her place right away, rush order.
Flowers weren’t enough.
He called a bakery in another of his company’s casinos, the Silver Horseshoe, and ordered a chocolate cake for delivery to Bethany’s place.
That seemed better.
Probably.
He tucked his cell phone into a special backpack with extra-long straps from the trunk of his car, packed with a change of clothes and a stick of deodorant. After a furtive glance around to make sure no one else was parking their car up there, he shucked his clothes from the night before—he hadn’t minded the walk of shame at all—and tossed them into his back seat before he locked the doors and dropped his car keys into the backpack.
The early morning sunlight warmed his dragon marking on his right side and ribs. The warmth felt good, like he could sun himself on a rock if he’d had time. Most dragons liked to bask, whether in human or dragon form, at least occasionally. That’s why Math had a bit of an all-over tan.
He looped the backpack around his bare arm and leaped for the sky. His golden dragon snapped into being, flying in the light of the morning sun. The backpack band fit snugly around his foreleg, and he stroked his wings in the air and flew.
He sailed for an hour or so to the hills above Los Angeles and alighted on the roof of an enormous house. A changing room held robes for dragons who hadn’t figured out the backpack trick yet. Math changed into his business suit from the backpack, which was a little wrinkled, and carried his laptop into the King and Queen’s abode for his scheduled meeting.
He paused on the way to call the Tiffany store in the Silver Horseshoe, ordering a platinum bracelet for Bethany. He stopped there only because he didn’t want her to have to tell him he was being creepy.
But he wanted to see something shiny on her.
His dragon rumbled, approving of shiny things on Bethany’s soft skin, before it coiled and slept again.
And now, on to the business meeting.
Forensic accounting had been one of Math’s specialties during his MBA. Other people hadn’t liked combing through spreadsheets and data to see how the thieving had happened, but Math walked the straight and narrow road for the businesses he managed.
He demanded that the dragon clan pay their contractors, vendors, and small businesspeople on time and in full. Those people had worked hard and fulfilled their ends of the deal. They deserved their money. Most of them were mom-and-pop outfits with just a couple or a dozen employees who also depended on those paychecks being cut on time and couldn’t wait a few more days for their money because the client hadn’t bothered to pay up yet.
That morning, he got to tell King Llywelyn that someone had been stealing from the dragon clan, which was why he’d flown back to the Californian dragon enclave to discuss the problem.
Bad news should be delivered in person.
They sat in King Llywelyn’s private office in the residence, a splendid space with sumptuous velvet curtains framing the wide wall of windows. The royal residence was built on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and waves crashed on the boulders far below.
Math held his computer on his lap and told the old king, “Evidently, the Dragon’s Den Casino is in arrears with its vendors and contractors. They’re threatening to sue, and they would have an excellent case. Someone on the inside has been delaying payments to them, a tell-tale sign of malfeasance and unethical practices, and investing the capital that had been earmarked for those invoices. The invoices were paid months late, and the interest from the millions invested is simply
missing.”
“That’s horrendous,” the king said, shaking his head and glaring at the paper in his large, weathered hands.
“I can’t believe it, either,” Math said. “I can’t believe we didn’t catch them sooner.”
“It’s insane.”
“We need to institute fail-safes to keep this kind of theft from happening again.”
“Mathonwy, look at me,” King Llywelyn said.
Math looked up, startled. “What?”
The king scrutinized Math’s face, even leaning across his desk to get a better view of him. “You’re falling into mating fever.”
“No, I’m not.” He returned to pondering his spreadsheet. “I’m too young.”
“Your eyes are turning gold.”
“Yeah, I’m getting a few gray hairs, too, though those are premature, like my father.”
“The eye change is not a factor of age, Mathonwy. It’s a sign of mating.”
“But I’m not mated.”
The king looked him over. “Not yet, but soon. Is your dragon growing?”
“It’s going to get bigger?”
“They always do, with mating. Just the dragon, though. Surely you’ve reached your mature height.” The king nodded at a tray of food Math had decimated during the meeting. “You’re eating like you’re growing.”
Math shook his head. This whole conversation was ridiculous. “I flew here. Flying requires calories. I would certainly know if I was on the cusp of mating with a woman.”
“But you’re seeing a girl?”
“Yeah.”
“And do you like this girl?”
“Her name is Bethany, Bethany Aura. She’s a witch.”
“A witch, interesting. So, do you like this ‘Bethany’ girl?”
“Yeah, I like her. She’s great.”
He leaned forward with his elbows on the wide, mahogany desk. “Tell me how great.”
“I don’t know. She’s great, just great. And she’s cute. And she’s helping me out with the casino. I needed someone to step up, and she has. She’s the only thing that’s working out in that damned casino. And she’s so sweet with her little birds and hamsters and other apparitions that clean the construction debris out of the casino. And she’s nice to people, you know?”
Dragons and Magic Page 9
