Elesian Dragon Mates: Dragon Shifter Reverse Harem Complete Series

by Sammie Joyce

Rose choked on a bite of muffin. “Probably not. I’m just wearing normal underwear. I wasn’t thinking—maybe we should just do it another time.”

  “No way! You can’t just leave me hanging. Give me the strip show!”

  Rose smiled hesitantly. “Alright. I just hope you’re not disappointed. I’ve never done this before.”

  “Neither had Gavin, and he did okay.”

  Jagger lay back as Rose stood facing him, so that she was framed by the sparkling blue lake. It was a perfect picture.

  She started pulling her pants down, wriggling her hips in the most deliciously suggestive fashion. Her top came off next. Rose pulled it over her head agonizingly slowly, twirling it around in one hand before tossing it away.

  Jagger swallowed as his gaze flitted down her body. Her plain brown underwear couldn’t have been sexier.

  Rose twirled around. Though she’d lacked confidence at first, Jagger could tell she was now enjoying herself. She gazed pointedly at his lap, where his cock was making a tent in his pants.

  She unclipped her bra and threw it away. Her breasts bounced free. That was it for Jagger’s self-control. He lunged for her, pulling her into his lap.

  Rose squealed and wrapped her arms around his neck. “You’re supposed to wait until I’m naked!”

  “Waiting is overrated.” Jagger claimed her lips in a kiss. Rose made a noise that could have been an attempt at speech, but she quickly gave up on it as Jagger’s tongue prodded at her lips. She allowed him entrance, arching her mostly naked body against him.

  Jagger kissed her senseless, loving how her chest heaved under his touch. He brought his hands to her breasts without breaking the kiss. Her nipples were hard, and they peaked further as Jagger rubbed them, slowly at first, but then faster in response to Rose’s increasingly urgent moans.

  His cock was a bar of fire in his pants, but Jagger saw no way to get the pants off without taking Rose off his lap, and there was no way he was going to do that.

  Rose broke away from the kiss, muttering something unintelligible.

  Her panties vanished, as well as all of Jagger’s clothes. He gaped at her.

  “Rose?”

  “I’ve been practicing that. You like it?”

  So it hadn’t been gibberish. It had been a spell. “‘Like’ is a bit of an understatement.”

  Jagger had some questions for later, but those weren’t as important as getting himself inside Rose right now.

  He reached a finger down, testing to see if she was wet enough. Her pussy was soaked, and she squirmed against his finger. He’d just meant to brush the outside of her entrance, but she quickly maneuvered herself onto his digit.

  “You sneaky thing,” Jagger murmured, sucking on her neck. Rose ground down on him unapologetically. Jagger wriggled his finger, which made her lose her composure entirely, bouncing herself up and down frantically.

  “Jagger—”

  “I know.” He swallowed her please with another kiss. They were of one mind. He pulled his finger out of her, quickly replacing it with his cock. It was easy to lift Rose until she was sitting on him. Jagger threw his head back, clutching her tightly to him.

  Jagger thrust up into her pussy. Rose pushed down, and the two of them quickly got into a rhythm. Jagger gritted his teeth, fighting for control. He wanted to see Rose come before he did. Watching her come on his cock was one of his greatest pleasures in life.

  If only he could figure out how to make love to her while licking her clit, but it seemed impossible. He could, however, rub her clit, which was exactly what he did. Rose jerked into the touch, her nails digging into Jagger’s back as she held on for dear life.

  She came with a shrill cry, sending birds on the other side of the lake fluttering away in alarm. Jagger finally let go, his seed going into her pussy in hot bursts.

  He flopped onto his back, with Rose resting on his chest. She rolled to the side, a hand on her stomach. Jagger saw a small bump there, and immediately put his hand on it. He was glad her pregnancy was proceeding at an accelerated dragon pace; he would get to meet his son or daughter that much sooner.

  Rose sighed, smiling vaguely. She looked more at peace than she had since Jagger had woken up. He knew that it wouldn’t last for long, not unless he did something.

  “Rose?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Tell me what’s bothering you.”

  Her dreamy expression vanished. Jagger hated that closed-off look on her face. “Nothing is wrong. Everything is fine.”

  “You know none of us believe that,” Jagger told her gently. “Please, Rose, I can see that you’re hurting. You don’t have to go through this alone.”

  She stared at him, tears welling in her eyes. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I’d rather be hurt than know you are alone in your pain.”

  “I…”

  Jagger waited, hoping with all of his being that she decided to confide in him.

  “I made a deal with Hellith.”

  He already knew this much from Asher, but Jagger nodded for her to continue anyway.

  “I lied to the others. Only Annabelle and I know. We couldn’t get away with the potion without signing the contract. I signed it, and now Hellith has it.”

  Jagger felt like his lungs were suddenly filled with ice. He drew a breath with great difficulty. “What does this contract say, exactly?”

  Rose broke his gaze, staring out over the lake. “I need to go to hell and release Hellith in six months. If I don’t, I will die.”

  The only thing that kept Jagger conscious was the knowledge that passing out wouldn’t help anything. He needed to get all the information he could now, before she clammed up again. He needed to know everything if he was to salvage the situation.

  “How are you supposed to get to hell to free her?”

  “I have a potion. If I drink it, it will send me to hell.”

  “If?”

  “Jagger… you know I can’t release Hellith.”

  Of course she couldn’t. Rose planned to let the contract kill her rather than follow through. She’d sacrificed her life for his.

  Right now, Jagger wished more than anything that he had died in that hospital, so he wouldn’t have to feel the horror and helplessness he was feeling now.

  Tears spilled over Rose’s eyelids, falling silently down her cheeks. “Please don’t be mad. I couldn’t just let you die.”

  Jagger pushed his emotions down, walling them off to deal with at a later time. “I’m not mad. I understand what you did. I would have done the same.”

  He would still do the same. Jagger would find a way to save Rose, even if it meant he received a death sentence in return.

  “No, Jagger, please—don’t. There’s no way out of the contract. Don’t you think I’ve thought of that? Ever since that night, I’ve been trying to figure out a way around it, but there isn’t one. I don’t want our last months together to be spent fighting the inevitable. Please, I just want to enjoy the time I have.”

  This was something he couldn’t give her. Jagger would never stop fighting for Rose’s life. Until her last breath, he would fight. He shielded these thoughts from her. He was hardly an expert, and Rose could probably tell that he was hiding some thoughts. She had no way of knowing what thoughts, though. Hopefully she would assume he was simply shielding her from his anguish.

  “Let’s talk about something else.” He needed to distract both of them. Once he was away from Rose, then he would truly get to work on the problem.

  “Don’t tell Asher and the others.”

  “I won’t.” Jagger hated how easily the lie came to him. He hated himself even more when he could see that Rose believed him. The relief on her face was heartbreaking.

  But he would not let her die, no matter what that meant for him. He would find a way to save her. He kept his thoughts carefully tucked away from her. Jagger wasn’t sure if he was doing a good job of it, but it wouldn’t need to be for long.

  He wasn�
��t going to let this wait six months. He and his brothers would find a way to save Rose now.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Rose stretched as she woke up. Though she hadn’t intended to say anything, she was now relieved that she’d let Jagger in on the secret. It didn’t weigh her down as much now that one of her dragons could help her bear the weight.

  Asher, Jagger, and Gavin must have been up already, because only Mace was in bed with her. Rose rolled over and pulled him into a lazy kiss.

  He kissed her back, but he seemed tense. Rose pulled away so that she could see his expression. “What’s wrong?”

  She’d kill Jagger if he’d broken his word about telling the others. It was bad enough that Jagger would be grieving over the next six months alongside her; there was no need to spread the misery.

  “We need to talk, Rose.”

  Fuck. He spilled, didn’t he? Rose was going to murder him! “How much did he tell you?”

  “Everything.”

  Rose’s feet thumped down on the floor. She didn’t bother getting dressed. Jagger’s blood would only stain her clothes when she was done.

  “JAGGER! Where are you? You can’t hide from me forever!”

  “He’s not here, Rose.”

  She switched to mental speech, using an open channel that all of her dragons could hear. You’re going to have to come back to the hotel at some point, Jagger, and when you do, your ass is mine!

  There was no response. Coward.

  “Rose… he’s not going to answer you.”

  “Not right now, but when he finally can’t avoid me anymore, I’m—”

  “He’s not here, Rose.”

  Something about Mace’s tone had her anger faltering. He should be chuckling over Jagger’s fate, not looking like he feared he was about to get the same.

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s in hell.”

  Rose took two deep breaths. “I’m sorry, Mace, I must have misheard you. For a tiny moment there I thought I heard you say my mate is in hell.”

  “Not just him. Gavin and Asher too.”

  Rose’s knees were suddenly weak, and she quickly sat down before they decided to give out. “What?”

  Mace held out his hands in a placating gesture. “Jagger told us everything last night after you went to bed. We all knew that we had to find a way to save you, and as soon as possible. Waiting until the contract runs out will only give us less time. We didn’t want to leave you unprotected, so we draw straws to see who would stay. That’s why I’m still here.”

  “Mace, are you all insane?” Rose hissed. “You can’t free Hellith! You won’t be saving me, you’ll be killing us all, including me, including our child.”

  “No, no, that’s not what we’re going to do.” Mace put his hands on her shoulders, but Rose shrugged them off, glaring at him.

  “What, exactly, are you planning on doing, then?”

  “We’re going to get that contract from Hellith and tear it up.”

  Rose felt like her head might explode. She had so many objections, she didn’t know which one to voice first. “Do you really think she’s just going to hand it over? That contract is her only way out of hell! Besides, how do you even know that the contract’s physical form is what’s needed to force me to keep my word?”

  “We know she won’t just hand it over,” Mace said steadily. “We’re going to have to fight her for it, but remember, she’s in a cage. As for the contract’s physical form being necessary, I don’t think she would have made such an effort to get it away from you the moment you signed if that wasn’t the case.”

  “Fine, so they go into hell—then what? Do they know how big hell is, or where Hellith’s cage is? Will they be able to talk to her through it? If they can, they ask for the contract and she says no. Then what? They can’t open the cage to force it from her.”

  “It’ll probably come down to torture.”

  “Fire won’t hurt her, Mace!”

  “Claws and teeth will, though.”

  “That’s only if the cage bars are wide enough to allow claws and teeth through, and if it’s too small for Hellith to stand in the middle and still be out of reach.”

  Mace didn’t seem to have an answer to this. Jagger had told him, Gavin, and Asher about the contract, and they’d completely lost their heads. They had rushed off on some half-baked plan that would almost certainly get them killed.

  “What else is in hell, apart from Hellith? I highly doubt it’s just her down there. How do you think whatever creatures it houses will react to an incursion from the living? You’ve sent your brothers to their deaths, Mace!”

  Mace looked like he might cry. “I’m sorry. I guess we didn’t think it through properly. But you have to know that there’s no way we’d ever just sit back and let you die. We had to try.”

  “But instead of talking to me about it, you let them sneak off in the night with next to no planning.”

  “Do you really expect me to believe that you would have had a rational discussion about this with us? If we’d told you that we wanted to find a way to release you from your contract without freeing Hellith, what would you have said?”

  He had her there. “I would have told you that going to hell is insane, and that I made a choice when I signed that contract. I don’t regret it.”

  “Which is exactly why we didn’t discuss this with you beforehand. You never would have entertained any option of us saving you. But when it’s one of our lives on the line, you’re perfectly okay with going off script and sacrificing yourself for Jagger, even though you know he’d never forgive himself for that.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to be saved, Mace! You think I want to die? The idea terrifies me. I just don’t want one of you to lose your lives in the process. The whole thing would have been for nothing, then.”

  “You would never give up on one of us if it was our names on that contract. Don’t expect us to give up on you.”

  Rose sighed, pressing her hands over her eyes. There was no point in arguing over this. It was already done. Gavin, Asher, and Jagger were already in hell. She had to figure out a way to move forward.

  “Alright, what’s done is done. Now we need to work out how to go get them. I assume they used all of the potion Hellith gave me?”

  “They did, and even if they didn’t, we wouldn’t be going after them. That’s the other reason one of us had to stay. Not just to protect you from any external threats, but to protect you from yourself. You can’t go after them. I won’t let you.”

  The idea that Mace could stop her was laughable. With her necklace, Rose’s power was equal to that of her four dragons. One alone would have no chance. But that didn’t help her much. She needed Mace on her side with this. Going down to hell alone without any backup would be just as stupid as rushing off in the middle of the night without a proper plan.

  “They need our help, Mace. If we don’t go down there, they’d dead.”

  “They’ll be fine, Rose.”

  “No, they won’t! Think, Mace. Hell is eternal and endless. How are they going to find Hellith’s cage without a witch to do a locator spell? They’ll probably die of old age before ever finding that contract. And even if that’s not the case, how do you think they’re going to get out? That potion was to get them in. Hellith never gave me one to get out, and I didn’t ask because I never intended to go there in the first place. If we’re to have any chance of getting them out, they’ll need magical support. I have to be there, and I’d like you there too. The more firepower we have, the better.”

  It seemed she’d finally gotten through to him. “We never thought of getting out. I guess we just assumed… I don’t know. We didn’t think that far.”

  Rose bit back another reprimand. That wouldn’t help the situation. “We need to get down there. Where is the potion bottle? There are likely still traces of the potion left. With Annabelle’s help, I can probably recreate the potion, but that still doesn’t answer how we’re going to g
et back out.”

  “I’ll get it.” Mace hurried away, and Rose sent a quick text to Annabelle, asking her and Dane to come to their suite.

  By the time they were knocking on the door, Mace had found the potion bottle. Rose didn’t know how long it had taken her dragons to search through her things and find it, but it couldn’t have been that difficult. If she’d known what they were planning, she’d have gone to considerably more effort to hide it.

  “Annabelle, Dane, come in, sit down.”

  Rose explained the situation as quickly and succinctly as possible. “I need your help recreating the potion, Annabelle.”

  “Of course. It should be simple enough to make a dose for three, and Dane can be our anchor.”

  “What? For three?”

  Annabelle looked at her as though she was being a bit dim. “You, Mace and me.”

  “You’re not coming down there with me!”

  “Oh yes, I am! I’m not letting my best friend go into hell without my support.”

  Rose looked to Mace for backup, but he simply nodded to Annabelle. If something happened to Annabelle, Rose would never forgive herself, but it didn’t seem like she was being given much of a choice. She glanced at Dane, hoping he’d forbid Annabelle from going, but unfortunately, Dane had more sense than that.

  “I’ll be waiting to pull you back.” He and Annabelle shared a soppy look that Rose understood all too well. What she didn’t understand was what he meant by his words.

  “Pull us back?”

  “Ever since Asher came to tell us he was leaving, I’ve been doing research on how to get them back out of hell.”

  “Asher told you?” Anger flared up anew in Rose. “And you didn’t think to wake me?”

  “You swore me to secrecy, Rose, but you know I was never happy about it. I wasn’t going to pass up a chance to save your life, so no, I didn’t stop Asher, or wake you so that you could stop him. Now, as to getting out of hell, it seems we need a link. We need to perform a linking ritual on two people before they go into hell. It has to be two people who love each other deeply enough for the link to draw them back together.”

  “That could be me and Mace. You don’t have to come to hell.”