by Rose Haven
“Who is it?” I called.
“It’s me.”
Daiki. I opened the door and ushered him inside. “How did it go?” I asked.
“Alright,” he said. He smelt a little of smoke and ash. There was no trace of the bullet wound on his arm. “There’s nothing left of that warehouse, though.”
I led him into the kitchen and offered him a glass of water. “How’s Ichiru?” I asked.
Daiki sipped slowly and frowned. “Alright,” he said. “I think. It’s not the first time he’s… well,” He paused and looked at me carefully. “Sometimes it’s kill or be killed, you know? Those three weren’t the first. I think it does affect him on some level. I just can’t say for sure,”
“Have you ever killed anyone?”
He shook his head. “Not yet,” he said. He tore his eyes away from me and stared into his glass. “You must think we’re monsters,”
“You never hurt anybody who didn’t try to hurt you first,” I said.
He still wouldn’t look at me. I set my glass down, took his glass away, and held his hands in both of mine. The sharp spark of electricity filled me with a familiar warmth as I tilted my head to catch his eye. I smiled when he finally looked at me, but he didn’t return it.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
“For leading them to Terry,” he replied softly. “Leading them to you. I never – ever – thought hunters would target humans. I should never have gotten so careless… I’ve never seen Oji-san so angry,”
I pressed my forehead against his and he didn’t pull away. “It’ll be alright.”
“He wants to leave,” Daiki said. “I told him about what I’ve been doing at night and how you figured out what we are. About the link. He was furious.”
“He said the link was useful,” I said.
“It is,” Daiki replied. “That’s the one thing Oji-san isn’t blowing his top over. No shifter would ever regret a link. But still, he wants us to run away before more hunters come.”
I kept my voice neutral as I replied: “And what do you want?”
“You,” Daiki said. I’d never realized how much pleasure a single word could bring. “I just want you. I know we haven’t known each other long, but –”
“I feel it too,” I told him. “It’s the link, isn’t it?” He nodded and I paused. I didn’t want to ruin the mood, but I had to bring ask: “Before, at the warehouse – you were controlling me, weren’t you?” He nodded again and I took a deep breath. “I’m not okay with that.”
“I’m not okay with it either,” Daiki said quickly, pulling away so that I could see the sincerity in his eyes. “It felt so wrong. I didn’t even – it was the lesser of two evils, and I swear if I could have thought of a different way –”
“I believe you,” I said.
He still looked unsure. “Are we okay?” he asked. “After this morning?”
I squeezed his hands and held his gaze. “Yes,” I said. “We’re okay.”
“Because you could still be in danger –”
“I’ll manage.”
“And Oji-san really does want to leave –”
“We’ll figure something out.”
“And you have every right to be upset about Terry, and the link, and what I did –”
“Daiki,” I said, squeezing his hands again. “We’re okay.”
His eyes flickered between mine, as if he were trying to catch a lie, then he let out a sigh of relief. “Good,” he said. “That’s good,”
“So the link only works when we’re in danger?” I asked.
Daiki frowned. “I’m not sure. Oji-san used to tell me stories about shifters who had empathetic links with humans, but it’s really rare and personal – most don’t talk about it, so the stories don’t get passed on.”
“So we’re special, then?” I asked.
His lips quirked at the corners and a light shone from his eyes. “I think we are,” he said.
I seized the front of his shirt and pulled him into a kiss. Daiki gasped and grabbed at my waist, grinding our hips together and licking and sucking at my lips until I could only whimper desperately. He pulled away, and it gave me the chance to brush my lips against his neck and bite down hard enough to drag a cry from his throat.
“Bedroom,” I muttered.
He didn’t answer, but he picked me up and carried me there. I kept kissing and nibbling at his neck as I felt the blazing heat from his body melt into me.
Chapter Six
Daiki paused at the bed. He kicked off his shoes before tossing me onto it. I laughed as I bounced on the mattress. Daiki grinned at me and unzipped his jeans without ceremony, sliding them down along with his boxers. He let his erection spring free. I knelt up on the bed and took the hem of his shirt, tugging at it until he pulled it up over his head. When he was completely naked, I pulled back and admired him at my leisure.
“Do I pass?” he asked, chuckling when I nodded emphatically and reached down for the hem of my own shirt. He stopped me, moved forward so that he was kneeling on the edge of the mattress and asked: “Can I undress you?”
It was a simple request, but I would have given him anything he’d asked for at that point. He pulled the shirt over my head, throwing it into a messy heap with his own clothes. He reached around and made short work of my bra. My breasts fell free and he paused for a moment to admire them.
“Do I pass?” I asked, pushing some bravado into my voice to hide how vulnerable I was, kneeling there half-naked in front of a work of art.
“You broke the curve,” he replied.
I leaned down so that my backside was in the air and my lips brushed against the head of his penis. I’d never enjoying oral sex before, but with Daiki I found the idea more thrilling than anything. I glanced up to see him licking his lips, watching me with anticipation. I rubbed the head with my thumb.
The gesture earned me a sharp gasp. I leaned forward, keeping my eyes locked on his, and swirled my tongue around the head. I lapped at the slit before running my tongue down to the base. Then back up again. Then back to the base. Daiki reached around and buried his hand in my hair. Not to hold me down or guide my actions, it seemed. He just held me gently, as if to remind me that he was there. I decided that I would keep my hair long after all, if it meant he would keep doing this. He didn’t even pull when I finally took his whole member into my mouth.
The noise he made sent heat directly to my groin. The link sparked between us as Daiki gasped out: “Skye.” The desperation in his voice only made me more eager. I wrapped a hand around the base of Daiki’s penis, using it to reach the parts I couldn’t get with my mouth, and sucked harder as I felt Daiki’s leg muscles contract.
Then Daiki’s hand tugged at my hair and he pulled me away. I looked up to see his eyes blazing gold. He reached down my back, under my rear, to the backs of my knees. He pulled sharply and I landed hard on my back with my legs spread. He nestled himself between them.
“May I?” he asked, his hot breath sending a shiver up my spine. I wasn’t sure what he wanted, but I nodded all the same.
He crawled down my body, kissing each of my breasts and working quickly to unzip my jeans and slowly slide them down my legs. My underwear was white cotton – if I’d known what was going to happen tonight, I’d have worn something sexier. It didn’t seem to matter either way. It would all end up on the floor. Daiki pulled my underwear down my legs and flung it away. Then he got to work.
I wasn’t afraid to direct him. I’d always believed that the best way to make sure men did the job properly was to give constant feedback. Luckily for me, Daiki was a good student. My fingers tangled in his hair as I whispered ‘to the left’ and ‘harder’ and ‘don’t stop’. Once he found his rhythm, he could carry on without my guidance. It wasn’t long before I rested on the edge of climax. Daiki’s wings had expanded out of his back, filling the air above us and cocooning us in a sense. Then Daiki curved his tongue and I toppled over the ed
ge.
My legs shook. My stomach muscles contracted as my back arched. I must have pulled his hair but he didn’t seem to mind. He held me down at the hips and kept working until my body was jerking and my whimpers bordered on painful. Then he kissed his way back up my body.
He captured my lips in a surprisingly gentle kiss. My head spun. I reached up and ran my hand over one of Daiki’s wings, feeling a tremor run through it at my touch. Daiki didn’t break the kiss, but a wing tip travelled down and brushed across my breast, sending little jolts of electricity through me. I whimpered again and cupped Daiki’s neck, coaxing him down until our bodies were pressed together.
I felt the warm leather sweep around me as Daiki’s wings gathered me up. They curved around under my back, over my thighs, until we were both wrapped up within them. I felt safe, and warm, and unbelievably turned on.
“Wow,” Daiki said, in a rough, husky voice. He pulled back to press his forehead to mine and gasping for a moment. “This is…”
“I know,”
He ran a hand over my hair and down my throat. “I have a condom,” he said. “May I?”
“You’d better.”
He chuckled at that. I thought he would pull away, but he just leant back a little to gaze over his shoulder at the pile of clothes he’d left on the floor. One of his wings reached back. I felt bereft at the loss of its heat, but I watched breathless as the tip of it dug around in Daiki’s discarded jeans. Eventually, Daiki grunted in triumph and the wing returned with a silver packet, dropping it into his outstretched hand.
“Oh, I’m keeping you,” I said.
He laughed again. He pulled open the condom packet with shaking hands and, still keeping as close to me as possible, pulled back to slide it on. The wing came around to wrap me back up again. I felt both wings trailing up my spine, rubbing across my shoulders and down to my thighs.
I felt Daiki’s penis brush against my entrance and I thrust into him, desperately seeking friction. Daiki’s eyes flashed gold again as he lined himself up and pushed in one quick movement. He buried himself inside of me and let out a long groan.
It hurt a little bit. It had been a while since I’d done this. Daiki noticed my wince and went to pull out immediately, but I wrapped my legs around his hips and held him down.
“Just give me a minute.”
Daiki lay frozen above me with his elbows on either side of my head to support his weight. When I gave him the all clear, he hesitated. Then he started thrusting and, oh good lord, it felt incredible. I twisted my hands into the sheets thrust back, letting out a low groan every time his pelvic bone brushed my clitoris. Everything was Daiki – his scent filled my head, his breath mingled with mine, and I felt every muscle in him tense and relax as he fell into a deep, steady rhythm.
There was an odd moment when the world seemed to catch in between heartbeats. Then pleasure flooded my senses and I gasped and keened, bucking beneath Daiki and almost throwing him off in my haste to chase whatever it was that was making me feel so good. Daiki’s eyes were glowing so brightly that I thought I would burn up just by looking at them. But I kept the eye contact. I couldn’t blink. I needed to keep seeing him.
Daiki surged forwards, driving himself into my body, faster and harder than before. He clutched my hips as his wings flattened around us, pulling us closer together until I couldn’t tell where he ended and I began. Electricity rippled through me, setting every nerve on fire. Daiki was chanting something in between breaths. It took me a moment to realize it was my name. I wanted to say his name too, but I was far beyond words at that point.
Daiki tensed all around me. Then his thrusting slowed. He kept going, his eyes never leaving mine as he rode out his climax, until finally he stuttered to a halt. He slumped down on top of me, his wings jerking before settling around us in a warm embrace.
There was a moment where we could do nothing but clutch at each other and try to get our breath back.
“Wow,” I said.
“I agree,” Daiki replied. He pulled his wings out from under me and let them collapse back into his shoulder blades. He rolled off of me and I felt the loss, so I rolled with him and curled up with my head on his chest. Daiki wrapped his arms around me, holding me close, and let out a contented sigh. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “Whatever happens, I’ll figure something out.”
I nodded against his chest. The heat from his core and the way his heart still pounded with the force of what we had just done made me want to stay there forever. I knew now that I couldn’t stop myself from falling for him. I was falling too fast for anyone to catch me. Whether he was run off by hunters, or whether he left me on his own somewhere along the line, nothing could change that fact. For me, loving Daiki Hamada was inevitable.
Epilogue
Daiki was there when I woke up the next morning. Our limbs were tangled together, as if we’d each decided that the other wasn’t close enough, and had taken steps throughout the night to make sure that we would never be parted. I had pushed off the blankets as well. Daiki’s body radiated enough heat to ruin me for blankets forever. I felt his morning erection poking me in the thigh.
I didn’t have any morning classes on Mondays. I felt a sharp pain in my chest when I remembered that I wouldn’t be seeing Terry that day – or ever again. Classes wouldn’t be the same without seeing her roll her eyes behind the professor’s back.
I kissed Daiki’s neck to distract myself and he groaned, pulling away slightly so that he could rub his eyes.
“Good morning,” I said, rubbing my hand down his stomach. “Need help with that?”
He grinned lopsidedly and nodded, taking my hand in his and pushing it further down to brush against the coarse hair above his pelvic bone. When he touched my wrist I felt a low purr from the link.
“Later, you and I are going on a real date,” I said trailing my fingers teasingly around his groin. “We’re going to talk about our feelings, like adults.” Because even after everything we’d been through, he was still my maybe-sort-of-boyfriend and not my actual boyfriend. “You’re going to tell me everything that you and your grandfather can do so that I’m not surprised when you start vomiting rainbows and turning into puppies.” He chuckled. “And you’re going to explain everything you know about this link nonsense, you hear?”
He nodded. “Later?” he clarified.
I hummed a little and let my hand drift down the final few inches. “Later,” I told him.
THE END
Dragon Romance
Blazing Passion
Book Three
Lucile Wild
Dragon Romance: Blazing Passion
Chapter One
I sank into my chair at the back of the lecture hall and stared around at the other students. They looked bored in their chic Manhattan clothes and pastel hair colors. Their many piercings glinted in the fluorescent lights like diamonds in a cave. I didn’t have any piercings, and my hair was long and dull brown, but I’d given up comparing myself to New Yorkers. Anyone looking at me could tell that I was a small town girl.
Pulling my sketch pad out of my purse, I chewed on the edge of my pencil and cast around for something to pass the time until the lecture started. Most of my sketch pad was covered in pencil renderings of Daiki, my maybe-sort-of-boyfriend. I had sketches of his back, chest, muscular thighs, and arms, burning with bright fire. His black leather wings were there as well; outstretched and flying, and curled up and calm. His most beautiful feature, his face, was not in my sketchbook. He’d made me promise not to draw it.
Daiki was a dragon. Well, technically he was a shapeshifter, but apparently humans had gotten the idea for dragons from people like him. He could throw fire and grow wings out of his back, and his grandfather, Ichiru, could heal small wounds. I hadn’t believed it at first, but after seeing them in action risking their lives to save mine, I knew that they were the real deal.
I rolled my shoulders and pressed my pencil to page, sketching a simple lecture hal
l like the one I sat in. The only difference was that I was alone. A solitary figure in a sea of empty chairs.
“Sorry I’m late,” the professor said, entering the hall with his notes and laptop tucked under his arms and an uneven beret on his head.
I glanced to my side out of habit, ready to roll my eyes at my friend Terry, but she wasn’t there. I felt a low stab of guilt at the memory of the police coming to my apartment to tell me that she’d been murdered. It was technically my fault that it had happened – the hunters had been after Daiki and I’d asked him to walk her home – but all I could feel was a numb sense of shock. Her death still hadn’t quite sunk in. I still expected her to walk into the lecture hall, toss her bag into the seat next to mine, and call the professor a ‘pretentious sack of overdone clichés’. But she wouldn’t be coming to class that day. Or ever again.
“You should be getting started on your mid-term assignments,” the professor said, startling me out of my reverie. “How about we go around the room and each person can tell us a bit about what they’re planning.”
I felt beads of sweat brimming out of the back of my neck as the professor pointed at each student in turn. I’d completely forgotten about the midterm.
Over the last week, I’d met and started dating a real-life dragon/shapeshifter, been kidnapped by monster hunters, and lost my best friend to those same hunters. I hadn’t had time to consider what product I’d like to sell in a silly mock ad campaign. After everything I’d seen – dragons, hunters, Ichiru’s healing powers – the idea of sitting down to work on a project I wouldn’t enjoy, for a teacher I didn’t like, for a course I didn’t feel like I belonged in, felt pointless.
I’d spent so many years dreaming of coming to New York to study art, and now I just felt… underwhelmed.
“Colgate toothbrushes,” a girl with purple hair and wild green eyes said when the professor pointed at her.
