by Riley Storm
Victor groaned. He owed it to her to try to resist one last time. “Cheryl,” he started to say, but her eyes lit up before he could do more than say her name.
“I’m not some child, Victor. Nor am I drunk. I know what I’m doing. I know what I want. I know what you want,” she added, glancing pointedly at the rock-solid erection between his legs that was pointing right at her. “Why do you want to deny this? Do you…do you not want me?”
They both knew that was a lie. The physical evidence proved that. But Cheryl needed more than just that, he knew. She wanted to hear him say it in his own voice.
“I do,” he growled. “There’s little more I would love to do than to climb on top of you, to let you feel my weight press you down, to hold you tight to me. I want it so very much, as you can see. But you’re not thinking straight right now. You’ve just had your mind filled with stunning new knowledge. Absorb that first, then we can talk,” he said, in disbelief of the words coming from his mouth.
“Thank you,” she told him, biting her lower lip. “I appreciate your chivalry. But trust me when I say my mind is clear, and aware of the decisions I’m making. If you want me,” she breathed softly. “I’m right here. Take me.”
Victor groaned softly, swaying toward the bed.
Her free hand trailed up her side, fingers gently scraping over one of her breasts, teasing him with the thought of what lay beneath. Even as he watched her, his cock strained at attention, desperately reaching out toward Cheryl. It throbbed, aching for release, a release only her delicate touch could provide.
“Cheryl,” he whispered as she grabbed her breast through her shirt, back arching ever so slightly.
He was working on finding his resistance, on strengthening it, when she pushed her free hand across her ribs and between her legs.
The soft moan that filled the roam swept over him like a tsunami, eradicating all his resistance.
Victor climbed onto the bed and lowered his mouth to hers.
Cheryl rose to meet him.
24
Victor might have been a water dragon, but everywhere his hands touched her, he spread a fire that wouldn’t go out. Cheryl’s skin burned at every caress, scrape, scratch and under his grip.
The heat washed over her body, igniting her need to be naked. She writhed and wiggled under his body, the two of them working in unison to fulfill her need. Shirt went one direction, pants somewhere else entirely. Victor was growing more frantic and needy with every passing second he spent on top of her, and she nearly didn’t get her bra off before he ripped it.
The underwear was a lost cause. It simply ceased to exist as he casually tore it from her body. Sitting back, he stared down at her.
Cheryl was breathing hard, her body preparing for what was to come as his gaze roamed over her naked flesh. The large, and very hard cock between his legs seemed to stiffen even more, a surefire sign of his arousal that was unmistakable. Biting her lip, she started to envision what it would feel like when he was inside of her.
Her mouth opened to tell him she wanted him, but Victor had other ideas. His mouth covered hers again, with a brief fierceness that left her panting and thrusting her hips up at him, desperate to capture even just a little of his cock between her walls. But he denied her that pleasure, his fingers closing around her wrists, pressing them down into the bed as she clawed at his hips in protest.
“In time,” he rumbled before his mouth found her neck.
She hissed at the fire his kiss spread down her neck, and then across her breasts as he kissed her entire body—or so it felt like—the entire time her wrists held immobile, pinned to the bed. She could do little more than make noise and writhe at the pleasure he inflicted upon her.
Once his mouth slipped between her legs, however, she could control it no longer and nearly wrenched her wrists free. The big man was stronger, though, and he kept her like that, his eyes on her face even as his tongue brushed against her swollen lips and then slid warmly along her clit.
Cheryl felt like she couldn’t breathe, the pleasure was nearly too much. It was suffocating, robbing her of the ability to control her body, and yet she heard her voice begging for more, pleading with Victor not to stop, to keep going.
Whatever she was saying must have worked, because the dragon shifter never let up. He kept at it, until she was trembling on the precipice of explosion, her entire body locking up, refusing to obey any commands except the ones dictated by the ecstasy Victor was about to inflict upon her.
“Victor,” she cried out, back arching high involuntarily. “Fuck. You’re going to make me—”
Any more words she might have been about to utter were lost as he finally sent her over the edge. Nothing but a loud, wordless cry filled the room for several moments, and then suddenly she lost control.
Violent spasms of pleasure wracked her body over and over again. Victor’s name slipped from her mouth any number of times as she lost all sense of her belonging, giving herself freely to the orgasm his tongue had given and was now prolonging.
He wasn’t stopping, she realized somewhere in the back corner of her mind. Long, warm strokes, faster now, and a little lighter, but never stopping. She shuddered and tried to protest, but he had full control over her now. She would do whatever he wanted, whatever he asked, as long as he kept playing with her clit like that.
“I can’t,” she tried to say, but her body was abruptly shifting into a different mode. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God, Victor. Holy fuck, that’s so good. How are you—” She twisted her wrists in his grasp, grabbing up fistfuls of sheets, white light erupting in her eyes as another climax rushed over her like a river suddenly entering rapids.
Cheryl couldn’t recall much of whatever happened, only the blissful pleasure that filled her body from head to toe, a warmth that refused to go away.
Only then did Victor’s grip on her wrists relax. He wiped at his mouth and then came back up to her. She grabbed at his head with a frantic need, pulling him down to her.
“That was amazing,” she whispered. “I can barely feel my body now.”
He chuckled, lightly kissing her neck, one hand reaching between their bodies. “So, you can’t feel this?” he teased as the tip of something hard and fleshy pressed against her soaking opening.
“Um.” It was a brilliant response, and coincidentally the only one she was capable of making as he slipped inside her.
Victor grinned and kissed her again. This time, he slid his arms under her and back to grab her head, their bodies coming together as one while he gently pushed deeper and deeper inside of her.
They simply rocked back and forth, neither one trying to force anything. She needed the time to adjust. Her eyes were clearly bigger than other parts of her, and they were making it known.
“Fuck, you’re big,” she moaned as she took more of him inside her again.
“The best words a guy will ever hear,” he chuckled, but she could see him biting his lip.
He was fighting to keep his composure too, which made her feel better.
Then, all at once, resistance ceased and he slid in, filling her completely and then some. By far the biggest she’d ever had, Cheryl was surprised she could take all of him. Surprised, and also blissfully ecstatic as they started to move against one another with more urgency.
“No, give it back,” she moaned as his hips pulled away from her. “Please,” she added, enjoying the way his eyes flashed as she showed him how much she wanted him.
Pleasure was a two-way street, and Cheryl intended to give him as much as she could.
Of course, she thought to herself as Victor pushed back in with a little more vigor, I’m not going to turn down any that he wants to give me either. She let her head fall back, making sure he knew just how good it felt by the noises coming from her mouth.
Propping himself up on his fists, Victor started thrusting with more intensity. Cheryl alternated between losing herself in the feeling of his cock sliding deep inside her, and the imm
aculate vision of his perfectly-toned body held above her, every muscle visible as it flexed and moved.
At one point, her hand slid over her stomach and found her clit. She was ready to climax again, and Victor simply grinned, biting his lower lip a moment later as she started to touch herself.
Cheryl hadn’t known it was possible, but he grew harder inside her, as if the sight of Cheryl bringing herself to orgasm had given him new powers. She felt him grow, and that extra pressure was more than she could take. Between that and her fingers against her clit, she lost control.
“Oh, my God, fuck me hard,” she begged through it, wanting to feel him slam into her.
Victor’s deep growl was the only response she got, but he showed he’d heard her. His hips crashed down into her hard, shaking her entire body. Cheryl cried out, and then again as he repeated it.
“Fuck, you’re so tight,” he all but snarled, leaning back so he could hold himself upright without his hands in the bed.
She started to reply, but he grabbed her legs and hoisted her hips into the air. The sudden change in angle hit something in her she’d never known was there before, and the next thing Cheryl knew, she was cumming all over his cock a second time, her mind slowly turning to mush as he fucked her harder and harder.
“I can’t hold it,” he groaned an indeterminate amount of time later. It could have been thirty seconds or ten minutes. Cheryl didn’t know, she didn’t care.
“On me,” she gasped, barely able to get the words out. “I want you…”
He nodded, thrusting several more times before dropping her hips and withdrawing. Cheryl gasped as a thick line of his cum erupted from the tip, splashing down across her neck and one of her breasts. A second hit the other side, and then a torrent seemed to cover her stomach as Victor groaned over and over again.
The hot liquid nearly had Cheryl touching herself again, but she was so drained, the energy to move her arm simply didn’t exist anymore.
A moment later, Victor rolled off to the side and collapsed onto the bed next to her. He too, was spent.
They spent the next while in silence, neither talking as they tried to recover their breath.
Well that was fun, she thought to herself, a smile twitching at the corners of her lips. Very fun.
Cheryl had never expected to end up in bed with Victor, but she was rather glad she had. It was certainly fun, and he was good. Very good.
But where did that leave her in regard to work? And the job they were supposed to work on together? How was she going to explain this to her team? That she was sleeping with the guy that had been the enemy? Was the enemy? She didn’t know what his stance on everything now was.
All at once, Cheryl’s certainty faded, replaced by doubt as one question echoed in her mind.
Where do we go from here?
25
Closing the door behind him quietly, Victor stole out into the hallway, leaving Cheryl to continue sleeping peacefully.
There was no point in disturbing her. He couldn’t sleep, and he couldn’t talk to her about it either, because in a way, it was her fault.
Stealing through the hallways with the careful, silenced tread of any shifter, he made his way toward one of the cafeteria-style kitchens that serviced Drakon Keep. When at full capacity, with the dragons awake, they would often be staffed by wards of the Draconis family.
For now, they were empty, and he relished that peace while brewing up a pot of coffee, letting his mind wander to the events of the past few days.
Few days? Just the past twenty-four hours had seen his world get flipped upside down. The amount of change that had gone on was remarkable, but it was also somewhat overwhelming. That was how Victor was feeling just then; overwhelmed.
“Everything okay?”
He looked up as Aaric entered the cafeteria. At first, Victor didn’t reply, watching as Aaric grabbed himself a dragon-shifter-sized bowl of cereal, drizzling milk over the top.
“How can you eat that stuff?”
The fire dragon chuckled. “It’s good. Olivia got me hooked on it.”
“Right,” Victor muttered.
Aaric wasn’t who he wanted to talk to about everything, or anything, but the other options were either the ever-sarcastic Francis, steward of Drakon keep and notoriously uncaring about the problems of others or having a conversation with himself.
“What’s on your mind, Victor?” Aaric pressed between spoonfuls.
The coffee maker began to spit out its contents into the pot, buying Victor precious seconds as he pretended to stare at it. Unfortunately, try as he might, there was no way to not answer until the entire pot was done. Not without being rude.
“I don’t know what to do.” He closed his eyes as he said it, hating the uncertainty he was showing. The weakness. It wasn’t the dragon shifter way.
“About what?”
He sagged, leaning farther over the counter, coffee all but forgotten. “Everything.”
Aaric was about to say something more, but Victor held up a hand.
“Yesterday morning, I knew what I was going to do. The plans would get signed, the money would begin to flow. In a week, a month at most, I would have enough to leave Plymouth Falls and Drakon Keep and go somewhere else. Somewhere near the water, as clichéd as that sounds.”
The fire dragon nodded as he ate, remaining respectfully silent, though all his attention was clearly focused on the younger man.
“I hated Cheryl. I hated you. I hated this place. I knew that. In the very core of my being. I was done, through with being thought of as a joke, laughed at behind my back.”
“Victor, nobody was laughing at you behind your back. Not now, not then,” Aaric said, speaking up. “We all felt bad for you.”
“Maybe,” he conceded. “But it certainly didn’t seem that way. There was a lot of laughter at first.”
Aaric mulled that over. “Maybe. But we were all there ready to help you get back on your feet. But you didn’t want our help. Any time we reached out to you, you lashed out.”
“My heart was broken, and I was beyond embarrassed,” he said. “I don’t remember anyone offering, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I…I wasn’t in a good place. She took more than just my money.”
Nodding, Aaric remained silent, much to Victor’s appreciation. There was no need to talk about that more. The past wasn’t where he’d intended the conversation to focus anyway, but perhaps that was just more denial on his part.
“I’m sorry for fucking around with your plans for the Outreach Center,” he said, looking up, meeting the amber eyes of the fire dragon. “I had no right. It was wrong.”
“It was,” Aaric conceded. “But thank you for apologizing. Even more though, I’m proud of you for realizing it. For not trying to blame anyone else for something you did. This can’t be easy for you, but from an outside perspective, this is a huge sign, Victor. This is a big deal.”
“Thanks…I think,” he said wryly, but then sobered almost immediately.
“How do I fix this? Where do I go from here with…with…” He couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Well,” Aaric said, pausing to lift the empty bowl to his mouth and drink up the extra milk.
“Ew.”
“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,” Aaric said, wiping his mouth. “Ahh, delicious.”
Victor rolled his eyes. “Look, if you don’t want to talk, it’s fine. I don’t deserve your advice anyway.”
“Shut up,” Aaric rumbled. “You do too. This is a crossroads for you, Victor. Your choices here will have lasting effects on your life. You know it. I know it. I’m not about to deny you a listening ear and some advice just because you were a dick and tried to scam me out of tens of millions of dollars.”
Victor flinched, cheeks heating in embarrassment as his crimes were laid out before him in plain speech. “Yeah. Um.”
The other shifter waved him off. “The Outreach Center is the easy part. You just pull up the original p
lans and go with that. Done. Everyone wins. Cheryl though…that’s a different story. How are things there? How did you end up handling that? By the time I got home yesterday, you were already locked away in your quarters.”
Frowning, Victor searched Aaric’s face for any sign of deceit or trickery. Was he making light of all this? Did he not know?
“You’re serious,” he said slowly. “You don’t know?”
Aaric shook his head. “Know what?”
“Um. I sort of told her the truth. About us.”
There was silence. Aaric regarded him tightly. “I see,” he said at last. “And how did she handle that?”
“Surprisingly well,” Victor said brightly. “Though when I started to mention mages and magic, she got a bit overwhelmed. I had to carry her inside. Uh. To my quarters. Um. Where she, you know. Spent the night.”
Aaric’s eyebrows flew up and he straightened in shock. “Well that’s a turnaround I didn’t expect you to make.”
Now it was Victor’s turn to be confused. “What? You aren’t surprised that it happened?”
“I’m surprised you let it happen. That you were able to overcome all the animosity between you two.”
Victor flinched. “I don’t know if we have,” he said slowly, then flung his hands in the air. “I don’t know anything anymore, Aaric. She looks just like Elizabeth, but…but she isn’t. She’s different. And I thought I hated her, but the more I talk to her about anything, the more I…”
Smiling, Aaric came around the giant island counter and grabbed two mugs from next to the coffee maker, pouring them both cups. Neither spoke as they added sugar and cream to their own tastes.
“The more you realize there isn’t much you dislike about her,” Aaric said at last.
“How did you know?”
The fire dragon laughed into his coffee. “A very similar thing happened with Olivia and me, actually. Very similar.”
Victor listened as Aaric told him about the early times in his relationship with Olivia, before they knew they were mates.
“Wow. You guys did not like one another.”
