“Mmm…” She hummed around his shaft and purred deep in her throat.
Gods, Mahlia. His groan reverberated through her mind.
Come for me.
Moving with the lightning-fast reflexes of his tiger side, he flipped her over onto her back. “Come for you? Not just yet.”
She gasped, arching beneath him. His hot flesh burned her front as the cold marble floor seared her back. Shuddering at the exquisite contrast, she lifted her legs to wrap them tight around his hips. “I want you, Varad.”
“Say you love me. I want to hear it.” His fingers threaded through her hair, his eyes meeting hers straight on.
She swallowed, and her heart stilled as she met his gaze. Tears welled in her eyes, and her lips shook as she tried to smile at him. Her voice came out a soft whisper. “I love you, Varad.”
His breath hitched, and he closed his eyes as though savoring the sound of her words. She lifted her palm to stroke his strong jaw. I love you, Varad.
Tightening her muscles, she tucked her ankles under his ass. He dipped his head, his lips caressing hers in a slow, soft kiss. He licked his way into her mouth, tongue stroking hers. Her pussy spasmed, empty, aching, wanting. She moaned into his mouth, excitement simmering through her. Her heart raced, sweat beading on her skin. Suckling his tongue, she bit down lightly. He groaned, his fingers tugging on her hair, brushing over the back of her neck. She shivered at the contact as chills spread down her arms.
His cock probed at her damp pussy, entering just a little and then retreating. Teasing her. She slipped her fingers into his silken hair, loving the texture against her palms. His scent filled her nostrils. Varad. She immersed herself in him: the feel of his skin on hers, the taste of him in her mouth, the hot, masculine smell of his body. She craved it the way he craved her.
Look at me, Mahlia.
Her gaze met his, blue on gold. Her breath caught. The molten fire in his eyes was hot enough to burn. He entered her in one long, unhurried push. Her pussy stretched to accommodate his length. He pumped into her, slow and hard. The moment spun between them, passion rising higher and higher until her muscles screamed at the leisurely pace he set.
“Please, Varad. Faster, harder, something. Anything.”
“Anything?”
“I need—”
His dick slammed into her, and she arched to meet him thrust for thrust, their gazes still locked, still together as they rode the storm. Together, yes, perfect. Yes. Her orgasm gathered slowly, rising like a tide within her. Heat sizzled, burned, and then roared through her until she bucked against him. She was so close she shook with it, need exploding deep in her belly. Sliding her hands to cup his shoulders, her fingers clenched, nails biting into his flesh as her excitement expanded. He reached down, fondling her clitoris, flicking over the sensitive nub until she cried out. Tingles raced over her skin as she flashed over into orgasm, coming in a rush so hot she thought her body couldn’t contain it.
Varad.
“Mahlia.”
She watched his eyes lose focus, turn inward as he came, his hips jerking as he shuddered over her, in her. Her pussy clenched again in a small orgasm, and she flushed, moaning. She panted, her muscles relaxing one by one until she lay limp beneath him.
She sighed as he pulled away. Stretching catlike, she purred as her muscles bunched and flexed. His arms enveloped her, lifting her as he carried her to the bed. She drifted in a dreamlike state for a long while, feline satisfaction coiling through her.
She lay curled against his side, her cheek pressed to his chest. She could hear his heartbeat, steady and strong, just like him. His hand splayed over her lower belly, and she felt the familiar flutter of fear. Her eyes closed, but she confronted it. Yes, she was afraid. Yes, she didn’t know what would happen next. But Varad was here with her, and together they would face whatever might come.
She was strong enough for this.
And she would soon welcome a child into the world. A smile curved her lips, the first shimmer of joy spreading through her.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“For what?”
“For this. For not giving up on me.”
“Never.”
She opened her eyes and traced an idle finger over the stripes on his chest. “I’ll miss you when you leave.”
He lifted her hand to his lips. “It will be difficult to miss me when we’re closed up in a flying canister of metal. I suspect we might try to kill each other. Won’t that be fun?”
Jerking back, she sat up to stare down at him. Shock flickered through her. “Wha—”
His arms folded behind his head, a smug grin curving his mouth. “Taymullah is old enough to reign as regent while we’re gone. And fully capable of assuming command. I’ll speak to Lord Kesuk and try to convince him to trade with Taymullah in my stead next Turn. I think my brother would enjoy Bear Clan women. They are…buxom.”
“You had best not know anything about their sexual prowess from personal experience.”
“I was trading for several Turns before we met, my love.” He held up his hands, innocence wreathing his handsome face.
She hissed at him. Innocent, ha. Not her Varad.
He heaved a long-suffering sigh. “As I was saying…if anyone would understand the need to protect a mate and young, Kesuk would.”
“So would you.” She laid her palm on his cheek. “You don’t have to do this. I—I know why you have to leave, and I support you in this. I can stay.”
“But I want you with me. I want to see my child grow. I don’t want to miss any of it. Not one more moment with you or my heir.” His fingertip brushed over her stomach before trailing up to swirl around her nipple. Her breath caught as he tormented her, a tiny smile pulling at his sensuous lips.
She swallowed. “I love you.”
His serious amber eyes met hers, all teasing gone. “And I love you. If…if our genetics don’t mix, and we cannot have a healthy child together, then I will declare Taymullah our official heir.”
“Varad.” He would do that? Give up the possibility of any child, for her? Emotion banded tight around her chest, squeezing her throat closed.
“You are my heart and soul. I will have no other.”
She cupped his jaw. “Nor I.”
“Then come back down here.” He crooked a finger at her, the playful smile back in full force.
Wrinkling her nose at him, she grinned. “Lead on, my Amir.”
“Yours. I like the sound of that. Of course, that means you have me for the rest of your life.”
“I think I can handle that.”
“Yes, we are well matched, are we not?” He laughed, rolling her beneath him.
Her arms slid around his neck, sweet contentment wrapped around her heart. “So you keep telling me.”
“And, of course, I was right all along.”
“Show me how well we fit, Amir.” She mated her sex to his, lifting her hips to rub against him.
An arrogant, feline smile curled his lips. “My pleasure.”
“And mine.”
In Smoke
Wereplanets, Book 3
Chapter 1
So that’s Harena.
Katryn tried to dredge up some excitement. It was her first visit to her home world, after all. Even if she hadn’t been there since she was a small child, she should feel some connection to it, shouldn’t she? But no. She had no desire to be here. Now that her ambassador father was dead, her family intended to marry her off as a member of some man’s harim. Would that make her his third wife or his fifth? She had no idea. She only knew his name was Lord Nadir. The rest was a complete mystery. What she knew about her own kind could fit onto the tip of her smallest finger, with room left to spare. Weredragons weren’t known to give away the secrets of their society, and Katryn hadn’t grown up among them, so she felt the keen lack of knowledge more now than ever before.
Gods. She’d traveled for six standard months just to get to this sunburnt rock in the
back end of space. The thought didn’t please her. As low as her expectations were, the planet below was worse than she’d imagined. No blue of ocean broke the landscape of endless red sand. If it looked this bad from here, she wasn’t certain she wanted to get much closer. As if she had a choice now. She sighed and rested her head against the curved window of the observation lounge.
Katryn wrinkled her nose at her wavy reflection in the glass, noticing the thin layer of purple scaling that reached from the middle of her hands to her biceps. The barest touch against her scales could elicit an intense sexual reaction. Dragons were very proud of their markings, or so her father had once mentioned to her. It was one of the few things he’d ever told her about her race before he’d died. She only knew she was entirely different from the weretigers she’d grown up with on Vesperi.
She was concentrating on the window so hard she didn’t notice her best friend, Mahlia, walk up behind her until she spoke. “Look, Katryn! Isn’t it amazing?”
“Yes, Mahlia, that is exactly what I was thinking.” Katryn made a derisive noise in the back of her throat, but it erupted as a reptilian hiss. She’d spent too many Turns picking up the conversational habits of tigers.
Mahlia raised her eyebrows and lifted her baby, Crown Prince Razak, against her shoulder to pat his back. “Such enthusiasm. This is an important trade relationship to maintain between our planets…and in order to trade, we’re finally getting off this spaceship. Thank the Gods. Besides, it could be fun.”
“Says the happily mated woman with new twin cubs.” She smiled to take the bite out of her words. If anyone deserved the joy they’d found, it was Mahlia and Varad. The two weretiger monarchs had lost their first child to a rare genetic defect, and the agonizing loss had nearly dissolved their mating. Katryn longed for that kind of mating, a bond that could survive anything, no matter how tragic. But being raised among those unlike her, and returning to a planet where she knew nothing of the culture, she was unlikely to find that kind of acceptance, the sense of belonging she had always craved. Always apart. That was her fate. She sighed and leaned against the window.
“Now, now, Katryn, you just can’t judge a tiger by its stripes.” Katryn groaned as Mahlia fluffed her cream-and-bronze-striped hair. “And they are throwing us a welcoming party when we get to the landing site.”
“Yes, so the men can club us and drag us back to their sand pits.” Katryn arched an innocent brow.
“Well, I guess that makes us the cat’s meow.”
“Mah-lia, the cat jokes are so trite.”
“Here, kitty, kitty, kitty,” Mahlia singsonged.
Katryn laughed so hard she had to wrap her arms around her belly. Trust Mahlia to make this easier for her, to make her laugh about it. Her friend knew how upset she was about the arranged mating, about the lack of a single mate. Tigers might have many mates throughout their lives, but only one at a time. That she was now to be just another woman in a dragon’s harim made her stomach churn in disquiet. “Just wait until you see the dragon-skinned boys down there. Then we’ll see how funny it is.”
Mahlia straightened at the reference to ancient Earthans’ practice of gene-splicing humans with sea dragons to make shape-shifting dragons. Unlike the three other shape-shifting races—werebears, weretigers, and merpeople—weredragons were the only ones that had been created from a non-Earthan animal. The desert climate created by the binary suns of Harena called for a wereanimal that could withstand a harsh, drought-prone environment. When, for unknown reasons, gene-splicing with Earthan reptiles had failed to take, scientists had turned to the sea dragons found on the water world of Aquatilis, home planet of the merpeople. Mahlia tilted her head. “I’ve never been with a weredragon, only tigers. Are our hosts really scaled all over?”
“Not all over, but I’ll let you guess exactly which parts are.” Katryn leered, but she didn’t know the true answer. She’d never had sex with a dragon either. The only other weredragon on Vesperi had been her father. She shuddered. No, she’d definitely never been with another dragon.
Mahlia gasped, her eyes rounding with horrified fascination. The slitted cat’s pupils in her crystal-blue snow tiger eyes expanded. “Really? Down there?”
Katryn chortled, flicking imaginary dust specks off her purple scales. “You don’t want to play snake charmer, Amira?”
“It might be interesting to find out what that feels like. You shouldn’t limit yourself, Katryn.”
“Yes, and she’s the only one of you who might find that out.” A low growl sounded from the doorway. Varad padded in with his daughter cradled to his chest. He bent to press a gentle kiss on his mate’s lips. The twins reached for each other, patting their hands together and gurgling. The tiny girl, Princess Varana, had her father’s golden eyes and auburn-and-black-striped hair, whereas Razak had his mother’s paler snow tiger coloring. They were both the most beautiful babies Katryn had ever seen. She sighed, allowing herself a moment of pure, self-indulgent envy. She wished her future looked half as bright as Mahlia’s, but it did not. Her heart twisted. She’d never have love, never know the sweet, hot lust for a mate that she saw so often in her friend’s gaze. No, Katryn’s life would be the same one she’d always known, no matter which planet she lived on. She never belonged anywhere or to anyone.
Everything will change soon.
The telepathic voice of Nadir’s mate filled his head. A harsh, desperate edge colored Tarkesh’s tone. Nadir slipped his fingers over the band of silver scales that formed a rough crown on his mate’s forehead and then buried them in the other man’s long hair before he answered.
Then we must take advantage of the time we have now.
Tarkesh ran his hands down the wide, muscled planes of Nadir’s chest. His breath hissed out as Tarkesh’s fingers danced over the black scales that trailed down the centerline of his torso. His hips jerked forward at even the light contact. Nothing felt better than his mate’s hands on him.
“Don’t tease me, Tark. I’m in no mood for it.” His hand snapped out and caught the slimmer man around the waist to draw him forward. Their cocks stroked against each other, and they both groaned at the contact.
“Nor am I. I need…” Tarkesh chuckled at Nadir’s usual rough impatience, so Nadir scraped his nails down the silver scales on Tarkesh’s arm. A draconic shriek ripped from his throat. Goddess, but he loved that reaction in his mate.
“I know. Bend for me, my mate.”
A cheeky grin spread over Tarkesh’s sculpted features. Leaning sideways, he hooked a finger around a bottle of spiced oil from the bedside table. He handed it to Nadir. His dark eyes flashed with heat and anticipation. “I live to please you, my mate.”
“Now.” Nadir could tell his mate needed it rough and fast this night. No niceties, no subtlety, no playing. Just hard, deep fucking. The silver dragon wanted to forget the changes they faced as a mated pair. And he would give that to him. Gladly.
Nadir fisted his fingers in his mate’s long hair, jerking his head back to nip at his throat. He felt Tarkesh’s breath brush against his temple, felt his pulse pounding beneath his lips. Lust clenched in his gut. No more. He couldn’t wait. Using his free hand, he shoved Tarkesh backward onto the wide bed. Smooth, black saltwater silk sheets from Aquatilis felt slick under his knees as he climbed up. He flicked the cork from the blue glass bottle and poured oil into his palm.
“Open for me.” He didn’t wait and shoved his mate’s legs high and wide. Working his fingers against the tight hole of Tarkesh’s anus, he eased the oil into his mate’s ass. Tarkesh groaned, his hips arching off the bed. Ah, yes. This oil had spices designed to elevate passion, to burn. He wrapped his other hand around Tarkesh’s cock to slip up and down the long, hard shaft. Tarkesh swallowed audibly, his eyes pinching closed as he arched into Nadir’s stroking fingers. Nadir rubbed his thumb over the tiny opening at the crest, smearing the glistening drop of cum around the tip. He let a wicked smile curve his lips. You want this, don’t you, Tarkesh?
&
nbsp; Tarkesh’s dark eyes flashed open, clashed with Nadir’s. They blazed with anger and uncertainty. Yes, fuck me now.
I’ll fuck you hard. I know how you like it. Nadir knew Tarkesh needed to forget, to be pushed past the worry that consumed him. That he would enjoy the pushing was an additional boon. He did what he must to please his mate. A harsh laugh rumbled his chest. A man’s duty was never done. He smiled and firmed his hold on Tarkesh’s thick cock. After I’ve made you come, I’ll slide my cock inside your ass and ride you hard. You love that, don’t you?
“Yes. Nadir.”
He watched a muscle tick in Tarkesh’s jaw and his breath choke out. A hiss erupted from the silver dragon’s throat. His eyes glazed, unfocused. His cock slid faster and faster through the tight grip of Nadir’s fingers. Tarkesh’s hips jerked, slamming upward as Nadir’s hands worked downward. Nadir smiled as he watched his mate’s face flush with hot lust, watched as orgasm dragged him under. He froze, and his pelvis lifted. As he came, his juices erupted over Nadir and the bed. “Nadir.”
Leaning forward, Nadir braced his hands on either side of his mate’s shoulders. Tarkesh wrapped his fingers over the back of his neck, pulling him down for a kiss. Their lips fused, and he thrust his tongue into Tarkesh’s mouth. He shuddered as his mate’s hands ran over his scales. Lust clouded his mind, his control ripping loose. He thrust his cock between Tarkesh’s legs. He didn’t pause—he needed more and needed it now. Dragging his mate’s legs up to wrap around his waist, he slid into the oiled pucker of his anus. Tarkesh groaned, lifting his hips into the thrust. Nadir worked the full length of his cock inside the other man, his strokes building in speed and force. His breath hissed out at the hot, tight fit of his mate closing around his dick.
Orgasm fisted in his gut, building higher, pushing him past the edge of his endurance. His heart slammed in his chest, his head bent back, and he roared out. His cum jetted inside his mate. “Tarkesh.”
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