by Amanda Milo
His hot chest, actually. I’m not sure how he can be so warm when I’m suddenly so cold, but I cling to him, soaking in his heat.
Kalos groans.
And I freeze. Because while I’m seeking comfort, Kalos is experiencing something very different, if the rising hardness against my hip is anything to judge by.
“Ignore it,” Kalos says shakily, rubbing his hand briskly up and down my ribs and waist, trying to bring warmth into me. “Krevk’d, if I could fly, I would take us out of here in an instant. Get you somewhere you could be warm. I would…” He makes a sound that isn’t really a laugh, because there is no trace of humor in it. “I was going to say I’d start a great fire. Creator, I should be able to do at least that much as a man—and I don’t even know how.”
His forehead thuds against my shoulder, making me jump.
“Didn’t mean to scare you,” he mumbles. “Just… counting my failings as a mate and finding them too numerous to bear.”
Tentatively, I pat his chest. “I believe that you mean well, Kalos.”
At my use of his name, he shudders. Then his lips find my shoulder blade, and he leaves a light touch of them against my skin and says, “I vow to you that I do mean well. And if I can get us through tonight, I promise I will learn ways to do better. For you. For both of us.”
He looks at me then, straight at me, and I see determination, and steel... and a longing like I’ve never experienced before.
As a mermaid, I am a lover of men. Sailors, mostly, and whatever fisherman stumbles to our coastline—men who take one look at the nubile young women in the water and start counting their lucky stars. Those men see our faces and breasts and are filled with temporary lusts.
My dragon sees me as more entrancing than a shiny-winged insect (I smile when I think of our shark-and-dragonfly discussion), but I’m really not sure what he considers beautiful beyond that. He seems to see me, Adella, and not just a pretty face or pert breasts barely covered behind seashells. He doesn’t know me, but he’s made it more than clear that he desperately wants the chance to show me that he can be a good mate to me.
He hasn’t had the easiest day either. For him, I’m the biggest mistake of his life. I could leave him now and never look back. He will pine for me forever, if his claim of matehood to me is to be believed. Rather than curse his luck, he’s trying to make the best of this. He’s failing, and it’s upsetting him.
He could use comfort, as could I. “Kalos?” I ask.
His eyes have not wavered from gazing into mine. It’s a little intoxicating. “Hmm?”
I slip out of my seashells, pressing my breasts against his chest. I almost smile at his stunned expression as my nipples drag over his skin. He must be more sensitive now than he ever could be in his dragon form.
“Would you lie with me?”
Instead of leaping at my offer, Kalos blinks down at me like he’s trying to wake himself up from a dream, even a pleasant one. His gaze skips around us, lips slightly parted on account of his jaw falling slack, and he takes in our surroundings like he can’t quite believe we’re here, or that I’ve asked him if he’d like to spend this night in my arms.
He snorts in his apparent disbelief, and I have to grin as there’s the tiniest puff of dragonsmoke.
I reach up and take his face in my hands. “I’m asking you if you want to comfort me. I was thinking that you’d like a little succor yourself.”
Purpose and resolve chase over his face before his mouth sets in a solemn line. “I would like this very much.”
And the man who believes himself to be my mate dips his head and meets his mouth to mine.
CHAPTER 8
KALOS
My cock, even with my body in this form, does not quite belong to a human man, I don’t think. Mine is ridged, with oil-glands along the sides and two feathery extensions at the end for tickling my mate’s inner channel.
They’re waving towards her now, hungry. And skydrakes above, I want to sink into this female like I have never wanted anything else in all my lifespan.
I grab myself at the base and angle the tip for her opening, grasping her hip with my other hand and bending my knees to bring our bodies more in line.
Adella catches my wrist and pushes my hand away from my cock. “No, Kalos.”
My gaze locks to hers and I stare at her in mist-minded confusion. I’m completely at a loss for what she was asking for if not this. “No?” Lust makes my tongue thick.
“Not yet,” she replies, laughter lacing her words. And she takes my fingers and uses me to pet herself from her breasts all the way down her stomach.
“Oh,” I utter, my voice rougher than I intend. All along the length of her belly, she is silk.
She guides me lower still, and I find that there’s something softer than silk. The petals on the most exotic of flowers, maybe. I wouldn’t know; I’ve never touched a flower with digits sensitive enough. But I’m thanking all that is holy that I’m able to touch and sense the beauty of this one right here.
Adella’s eyes slide shut as we brush over a small knot of flesh that lies hidden between her legs. I think it’s the strangest thing, and I want a closer look at it, but I’m not sure if it’s polite at this point to ask for permission. For now, I follow her lead as she helps me tease her here, before she instructs me to sink my fingers inside her slit.
I’m surprised to find her slick. Dragon females—at least my kind’s females—are not. Lubrication comes from the male’s organ. I’m even more surprised that, when my other hand strokes her ribs, the channel inside of her floods with more moisture. Just from her outside-skin being affectionately brushed!
“You are amazing,” I breathe, looking deeply into her eyes.
Her smile for me is like the sun. “Thank you.”
She encourages me to find her knot of flesh again, and she shows me how to strum it with my slickened fingers.
And for the first time ever, I hear a mermaid’s song. My female is so pleased that she sings for me. I could bellow my pride from the highest cliffs.
Her song is more breathy moans than lyrics and words, but every sound she makes is literal music in my ears and I’m dedicated to learning how to make her sing like this for me all of the time. With her mermaid’s voice, her siren-like notes make me drunk as she receives more and more sensual gratification. She comes apart in my hands again and again, until I’m thrusting against her side, driven wild as she spills her excitement onto my pleasure-giving hands.
Suddenly, she drops to her knees and takes my aching cock into her mouth, lips opening over my crown and sucking.
I can’t stop myself from instinctively pitching my hips forward. You could threaten me with every punishment known to dragonkind, and I’d have sunk my hands in her glorious hair and used her even more glorious mouth.
Luckily, Adella isn’t shocked or offended. She even prepared for this contingency, it seems, because she’s wrapped a fist at my shaft’s base, and when I would crudely thrust at her with abandon, her hands’ grip on me prevented my shaft from shoving further than she can take.
She hums around my length, making my eyes roll back in my head. Her tongue grips and slides around my ridges and oil-glands, tasting, flicking, rubbing, licking, sucking.
She’s giving me pleasure like I’ve never had, sensation that I never could have imagined, and the stark shock of such an act—one I have never heard of a dragon partaking of in all my days—adds a titillating, sordid thrill that drags me right to the precipice.
“ADELLA!” I roar, deafening myself and likely her too as my voice echoes around the cave walls.
When I dazedly gaze down, it’s to find her gazing up at me, a smile on her stretched lips—and then she closes one eye, the lashes sweeping down attractively.
My siren just winked at me. Could she make me more sexually aroused?
She sucks my cock straight into her throat.
My. Entire. Cock.
I spray cum. I spray cum everywhere.
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Adella pulls back, laughing and sputtering—and then she begins lapping at my shaft like I’m spilling bespelled honey. “Next time...” she starts to say, before she trails off, staring at my cock as it grows even harder in the grip of her incredible hands, no longer able to so much as bend. The two feather extensions on the end stand straight up—and start to wiggle at her invitingly.
“You’re ready again already?” she asks in wonder.
Starved for her, I slide my hands under her arms and raise her up until she can wrap her legs around my hips. “I vow that there will never be a time I’m not wanting you, Adella—and right now, I want nothing more in all of the realms than to be inside of you. Please.”
She wraps her arms behind my neck and surprises me by kissing me on the strange length of my short human nose. “Well, if this is what you need… as you believe you are my mate,” she tests out, making my cock jump and slap her ass, which makes her giggle, “Then take me,” she finishes, her rainbow-colored eyes focused on mine.
I walk her to the cave’s wall but can’t find a smooth spot. Swallowing down a growl, I resolve to hold her just like this, embracing my mate while standing.
She reaches between us to position me, and when my cock nudges inside of her…
“Adella,” I groan, my forehead sliding against hers.
She separates her face from mine though, throwing her head back, gasping as all of me enters her swollen channel.
I take her by the hips, loving the way her fingers dig into my shoulders to hold on as I almost drag her off of me—then I slam her down, seating her fully on my greedy shaft.
“Kalos!” she cries.
I freeze. “Did I hurt you?” Frying satyrs, no…
Panting, Adella grabs me by my human ears and growls, “Do it again.”
Smiling with relief, I do as my mate orders. I draw her up and down my length, her wetness or mine—both, I suppose—making her glide smooth, and yet somehow, there’s a friction that is all but blowing my mind. I could do this forever.
I’m fucking her until she’s keening louder than she did when my fingers pleasured her. Unlike her angry sea maiden shrieks that tortured my eardrums, her cries of rapture caress their melodies into my ears. And if you can believe it, the beauty of her voice is nothing compared to what her core does while it has my cock in her most sensual grip. Her insides flutter and clamp down on me when she comes, and each kick of my cock sets her limbs to trembling.
I’m determined to make this last all night—and I slow my strokes to draw our second time together out for eternity.
She moans my name, rakes her claws up my back, making me hiss and buck into her hard enough to make her keen prettily. We make love, two strangers learning each other with the goal of mutual pleasure, again and again. She shows me creative ways that we can enjoy each other; front to front like this, with her hands hooked over my shoulders she can enthusiastically grind against me. When she convinces me to pull out and set her on her feet, she bends over, grasps her ankles and lets me take her from behind, and I almost lose my mind as I smooth my hands down her back to her small shoulders, jerk her upright, grab her tits, and pound into her.
When she braces her hands on the cave wall, I piston inside her and grip her hips with brutal need. We enjoy and explore and make love so much that my cum floods out of her and thoroughly splatters our thighs, dripping down from our joining point and onto the cave floor.
We’re caught in the fever all night.
My mate is as lusty as any dragon—which is incredible when I consider that she has no moon-fever to drive her. This is all her. She is perfection. I find a sandy spot on the cavern floor and drop to my back. Adella rides me, making, in turns, languid rocks of her pelvis against mine, stimulating that spot on herself that makes her whimper my name most beautifully, and furious bucks that steal her breath and make me growl.
When her climax hits, she collapses over me, her hair a breathtakingly lovely, wild, tangled blanket of colors covering my face and chest and arms.
I love it.
I love everything about my mate.
Feeling the silkiness of her hair is dangerous, though. I mean only to catch a tendril, but soon I’ve gathered an entire fistful off it.
Adella’s channel squeezes me mightily. She likes her hair caught in my fist.
“Kalos,” she pants, sounding delighted. She sits up on top of me. “I really, really like you.”
In one move, I flip her onto her back—
(It’s worth her shriek, her ear-damaging shriek.)
—and immediately, I’m behind her, positioning her on her hands and knees, arranging her so that she’s submitting to me like a pen dragon braces for her frenzied cob mate.
I wrap her hair around my fist, jerking her head back as I mount her, my shaft shoving between her swollen folds, the deep thrust forcing her to arch her back for me and raise up on her forefingers to support herself as I roughly keep control of her hair.
I plant a hand beside one of hers, falling over her, still clutching her mane like I intend to keep it.
She’s gasping and trembling but she doesn’t tell me to stop, and I can sense her excitement. It matches mine perfectly.
I bite her nape, bite her hard enough to leave a mark—and then I lave the sting away with my tongue as she shudders under me, her rump shimmying and dancing, cushioning my tensed lower stomach, enticing me to feed her thoroughly abused slit more of my cock.
Finally releasing her mane, I clamp my arm between her breasts, catching hold of her shoulder, and pound into her until she comes, screaming song notes.
When she oozes onto her front, her hips only in the air because I’ve got ahold of them and my thighs are trapping her knees, making her back half stay upright, I pet her sweat-slick spine, loving her smoothness. Loving her swells and curves and the way she jiggles when I pound her.
“Adella, my drhema,” I purr to her. “You are the best mate a male could ever have, and I am proud to call you mine.”
She flops her weight onto one shoulder, rolling herself as much as our joined bodies will allow, and lazily spits her hair out of her mouth. She eyes me with a sincere but hungry expression on her flushed and fetching face. “Kalos,” she pants. “I’m… glad to have you right now too.” Her words are measured, like she feels she should make a similar declaration, even if she can’t give hers the same weight. “Now fuck me.”
CHAPTER 9
ADELLA
Much to my surprise—and much, much, much to my pleasure, Kalos’s moon-induced heat doesn’t let up. It’s worse for him when the red sphere shows brightest in the night sky, burning down on him, but there is no part of the following sun-reigning daytimes when he isn’t desiring to chase me, enter me, his cock seeking relief.
And this, for me, is paradise.
Do you know the reason mermaids hunt ships? Because ships carry men who are starved for the sight of something softer, prettier than their fellow sailors whom they’ve been cooped up with for leagues. A ship that can satisfy a lagoon’s worth of mermaids gets led on a safe path back to the sea. Sailors who don’t satisfy us end up on the rocks.
There is a graveyard of shipwrecks along our rock-ridden coastline.
Which isn’t all bad, as far as we’re concerned. Wrecked ships mean treasure hunting for eternity. But it leaves us forever seeking that next crew of males, eternally hoping the next ship to sail into our waters can satiate us.
In Kalos, however, I have all the man that I need. It’s a heady discovery, and it thrills him when he finds that I’m just as excited to take him as he is to have me. I think at first that he mistakes me to be a shy maiden. In no time, I set him straight.
Water doesn’t return to the little cove, the tide drying up so thoroughly it’s a literal marvel. So we make the cave our nighttime home, and we drink and bathe in the freshwater it provides. I teach him to catch the blind cavefish with human hands, because this I know very well how to do, as I’ve had human han
ds all my life. And luckily, there is seemingly no end to the see-through fish because Kalos still requires an unbelievable amount of food.
Although perhaps this is partially due to his rigorous, constant workouts. We have so much sex. We have sex again and again, until it turns into something… more.
Soon, I’m not only racing after relief when he’s over me, under me, inside me. I’m forging… a connection.
Connection that only seems to grow stronger and stronger. We don’t only have sex; we’re doing more than merely the mechanics, as pleasurable as the mere mechanics are. Even when our bodies aren’t linked, we stay together, soft whispers and purrs and rumbles between us as we learn each other. During the day, we venture further and further from the cave, Kalos hunting, him allowing himself to be led ever further in the direction of my cove, until we’ve traveled so far that we set ourselves up in a new cave. It feels like a victory, one step closer to my home, although in reality I know it will take us an age to get there on foot. Especially with the rate we’re mating rather than traveling. When our lusts are temporarily slaked, we talk. Kalos asks me about my sisters, and I ask him what it was like to grow up as a dragon.
I have seven sisters: Katiana, Patrice, Nerissa, Pearl, Sirena, Ianthe, and Nixie. We steal each other’s shells and combs and any trinkets we think we can get away with and we screech at each other until the seagulls take flight out of self-preservation. But we’re also loyal to each other, we love one another like only a sister can, and nobody understands me like my sisters do.
Although… I think Kalos is quickly getting close.
Kalos was one of the few eggs his parents managed to hatch. Despite Crested Merlins laying clutches and clutches of eggs, it’s a myth that they hatch out masses of baby dragons in their well-protected lairs. Which makes sense, because the world would be overrun with a sky full of crested dragons otherwise. It can take a dozen moons for a single egg to hatch, or tens of dozens of moons. It’s all up to the egg in question, and when the hatchling is ready to break free of its calcium crystal-shelled cage.
