Dating A Dragon (The Mating Game Book 2)

by Georgette St. Clair

  They landed side by side, and curled up with each other, twining together on the ground like a yin and yang symbol as they got their breath back from their play-fight in the air. Male and female; fire and ice.

  Then their wings furled back into their bodies, their scales melted back into their skin, and they shifted back into human form, ending up in an intimate tangle of limbs.

  Orion wasted no time in kissing her. He wrapped his arms around her and rolled her over, kissing her hungrily and running his hands over her curves. Their tongues tangled as Cadence trailed her fingers over his bulging biceps to cling to his strong, broad shoulders.

  Orion rolled again so Cadence was on top of him, their bodies pressed closely together. She spread her legs to straddle him, and kissed him hard on the mouth, nipping and licking, fluttering kisses over his jaw and down to his throat, where his pulse throbbed against her lips.

  She slid down his muscled form, the firm flesh of his chest abrading her nipples, and planted kisses down the center line of his body. A graze of her teeth made his firm belly quiver and twitch.

  She followed the line of hair that ran from his navel down towards his thick, hard cock, then circled her hand around his shaft, steadying him. She swirled her tongue around the glistening purple head, tasting the salty savor of pre-cum. He groaned and stroked the back of her head, his fingers trembling slightly as he touched her.

  She ran her tongue over her lips to wet them, then wrapped them around his cock and slid down, taking him in, inch by inch. She moved slowly, deliberately, allowing the anticipation to build until Orion was panting and squirming beneath her.

  When she’d swallowed his full length, her lips pressed against the crisp curls of his pubic hair, she drew back again, deliberately torturing him with little flicks of her tongue as she went.

  She hollowed her cheeks to glide up and down his twitching length, moving faster and more forcefully as Orion’s breathing sped up and became harsher, his fingers tighter against her scalp. She rolled his balls gently in her palm as she bobbed her head, making him gasp and curse, and he reached down to haul her up against his body.

  She straddled him, squirming so she could feel him, hot and rigid, sliding against the slick lips of her pussy.

  He gazed up at her with a dazed expression, his hands going to her hips. “You’re magnificent,” he husked, his voice low and hoarse.

  Cadence bit her lip as she rose above him and positioned him at her entrance. He groaned with anticipation, and she held her breath as she slid slickly down his length, sighing when their bodies were pressed together, and moving her hips in teasing circles.

  Orion skin’s was burning. She could almost have sworn wisps of silvery smoke rose from her cool skin where his fingerprints grazed her hips. She felt that with the slightest movement, they might flash into fire.

  She kneeled up, never breaking eye contact with him, then plunged back down, driving him into her quivering center. He closed his eyes, his lips parting, and ran his hands up the sides of her body, over the dip of her waist and her rib cage. He took a breast in each large palm, squeezing the soft flesh then sliding his hands to the sides to he could tease her nipples. He grazed the rough pads of his thumbs over the tight, aching peaks, and sensation thrilled all the way down to her center, where it settled and pooled.

  He gripped her hips again and braced her, taking some of her weight so she could move more easily above him. With each downward motion she rolled her hips, and Orion thrust up to meet her so they came together and parted, came together and parted, lost in the wild electricity they were building between them.

  Excitement twisted and coiled in her belly and between her thighs, and when he arched his pelvis and slammed into her, bliss bolted through her, rebounding and echoing and building on itself until she felt like she was flying.

  Orion cried out – a wild, wordless shout as he came, trembling with the intensity of their shared climax.

  Cadence rolled to the side, gently disengaging from him. She felt sore and sticky and utterly satisfied. She snuggled up next to him, splaying her fingers on his chest and nuzzling his throat.

  He was so hot he felt like he was burning up. His skin was still beaded with sweat, even as he caught his breath and his heart rate returned to normal.

  She looked up into his eyes and put her cool, soothing hand on his hot brow. He smiled. She felt filled with warmth and sunshine.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “That was a beautiful ceremony,” Daisy sniffled, holding her son Jasper in her arms. He was human at the moment, rosy cheeked and curly haired, like a little angel. Looking at him made Cadence ache. Two more months. She couldn’t wait to cradle her dragonlings in her arms.

  Cadence, rustling in her white dress, leaned in and sniffed at his head. “Ah, that new baby smell,” she said. “He smells like heaven.”

  “He is the most precious thing ever,” Daisy agreed. Jasper looked up at her, smiled a toothless smile, and spit up onto his yellow bib.

  “Aww, look, even his barf is cute,” Daisy said, dabbing at his mouth with a cloth that she plucked from her diaper bag.

  “Good lord. Cute barf?” Cadence took a step back and looked askance at her friend. “Baby is cute. Barf is not. You’ve gone mad. Am I going to be that crazy?”

  “With four babies, you will be four times as crazy,” Daisy promised her. “But, so worth it.”

  They were standing in front of the stage where Cadence and Orion had just held their wedding – at the Fire and Ice Festival. It had turned out to be an enormous draw; the first such wedding in five hundred years. Friends, family and clan members took up all the seats close to the stage, but reporters and festival attendees were allowed to sit in the back.

  “I told you so,” Daisy added to Wynona. “I told you it was a great mating.”

  “Yes, you did,” Wynona agreed. “I believe that was the eleventh time?”

  “Only the tenth,” Ryker Harrison, Daisy’s husband, said cheerfully. Ryker, a burly wolf shifter, had his arm slung around his wife’s shoulders. They’d all flown from North Carolina for the wedding.

  “Ah, she’s being a model of restraint.” Wynona nodded.

  Cadence knew that Wynona had been skeptical about the whole mating in the first place, but she could see how happy Orion and Cadence were now. In fact, she and Daisy had served as bridesmaids, along with Maude and Aurelia.

  Jasper spit up some more. “That is some highly robust baby barf,” Orion observed with approval.

  “Isn’t it, though?” Ryker beamed down at his son. “That’s my little man!”

  “Is that normal?” Cadence wondered, raising a skeptical eyebrow at the baby. She was pretty sure he stuck his tongue out at her, on purpose. Spirited little punk. She liked him already.

  “Pretty normal,” Daisy said. “I mean, let’s be real here, he’s descended from Ryker and me. He could only ever be so normal.”

  “Ah, yes, very true. Well, normal’s over-rated. And boring. Your weirdness is definitely one of my favorite things about you.”

  “Hold that thought. I’m going to go change him,” Daisy said, and she and Ryker strolled off to find a changing table.

  “So, Humphrey never showed,” Maude observed. “I was afraid he might try to crash the wedding and ruin it for you.”

  Humphrey had tried to stop the marriage a week earlier; he had filed a formal protest with the Elders. They had rejected it. Overall, he seemed to be backing off to an extent. Had he realized that Cadence wasn’t the kind of woman who’d allow herself to be forced into a mating? She could only hope.

  Orion had sent word to Humphrey that whether the dragonlings were ice or fire, he was their father, and he would kill Humphrey rather than let them be taken from him.

  Everyone knew that of the two, Orion was the stronger dragon, and would easily kill Humphrey in a fight. And no dragon Dominus was allowed to turn down a sky challenge. Therefore, if Humphrey tried to claim the dragonlings in order to get Ca
dence, he’d die. Sure, his clan would legally be able to claim all of Orion’s riches, but Humphrey wouldn’t be alive to enjoy it, which had to make him rethink his plans. Humphrey wasn’t known as the self-sacrificing sort. He’d made his fortune by being monstrously selfish and unmerciful towards his enemies.

  Thousands of people were streaming from the field where the wedding had taken place now, heading back to the booths and stages. The festival had been a huge success.

  Cadence rubbed her arm and sighed. Her dress had lace sleeves to hide the marks on her arm where she’d been having blood drawn every day. Apparently maintaining a fresh coating over the eggs was vital to the process that would increase their chances of survival.

  Orion leaned in and whispered in her ear. “Should we skip the reception and go straight back to the castle for our own private celebration?”

  Cadence snorted. “I do like the way you think, but we can’t do that to our guests, I’m afraid.”

  “But we could just sneak behind the stage, strip out of our wedding clothes, fly off, and then come right back. We wouldn’t miss much.” His hot breath on her ear made her shudder with desire.

  “They’d notice,” she protested.

  “Do you think I care?”

  She glanced at the crowd, then shook her head. “Nope. And neither do I,” she declared, and they headed behind the stage.

  * * * * *

  Cadence struggled to quell her nerves as she and Orion walked into the clinic, accompanied by twenty of his clan members.

  The hatchlings were due to be removed in two days.

  For some reason, she’d been feeling overwhelmingly anxious for the last few days, though, until she’d finally told Orion that she couldn’t wait. They needed to go to the clinic now. She’d offered to go alone so that she wouldn’t have to pull him away from family business, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He’d gathered up the clan members and off they’d flown.

  The guards had looked startled when they’d walked up, and they’d called someone on their radios before allowing them all inside. That made sense, Cadence told herself. Even though they recognized the Garrisons, they still needed to maintain security.

  Something is wrong.

  She glanced at the guards. Half of them in the white uniforms of the ice dragons, the other half in red uniforms. Something felt off about them, but she couldn’t put her finger on what. She recognized most of them from the last time she’d been here, so what was the problem?

  She saw Orion follow her gaze, and he frowned slightly, too. Was he just picking up on her mood? Surely he’d tell her if something was wrong?

  She strode forward to stare directly up at the video camera by the front door.

  “Hello, this is Cadence Garrison, of the Garrison clan. I am here to see my dragonlings. I insist that you let me in at once!” she said loudly.

  “Just one moment,” the crackly voice over the speaker answered her. “I need to call Dr. Kowalski.”

  She glanced back and saw Orion and Nikolai murmuring to each other.

  Everything must be all right, she told herself.

  Orion had half a dozen men stationed in the incubator room, watching over her dragonlings at all times. She’d asked him not to call and tell them that they were on the way. She couldn’t say why she’d done that, but Orion had gone along with it. He had been perfectly patient and reasonable about all of her crazy requests.

  The receptionist frowned as they walked in. Dr. Kowalski was standing next to her by the reception desk, and Dr. Hamill strode through the door. There were several security guards in the room with them.

  “Mrs. Garrison,” Dr. Kowalski said. “How lovely to see you. We weren’t expecting you for two days yet, though. We run strictly on schedule here. We’re really not ready for you, I’m afraid.”

  “I need to see my dragonlings,” Cadence said firmly. “And I am going to stay here with them until they hatch.”

  Dr. Kowalski shook her head. “I’m sorry. You can certainly observe them on the video monitor all you like, but—”

  As Orion let out a low growl and Cadence sucked in an angry breath, Dr. Hamill held up his hands. “Now, doctor, these people are paying a lot of money for our services. It will be fine.” He beamed at Cadence. Then he glanced at Orion. “I’m afraid that we can only allow the mother back into the incubation room, but your men are there right now, so she’ll be in good hands.”

  “I need to walk back with her as far as the room, and then I need to see my men,” Orion said.

  A flicker of a frown crossed Dr. Hamill’s face. “Well, that will be all right, but I can’t have all these men come with you. I’m sorry, but we haven’t run a background check on them yet, and we have strict security protocols to adhere to.”

  “That will be fine,” Orion said

  “I don’t like it.” Nikolai scowled at him, shaking his head.

  “I’ll be right out, as soon as I talk to our men in the incubation room,” Orion assured him.

  The receptionist did something behind the desk, and then the big double doors opened, and Orion and Cadence followed Dr. Hamill and Dr. Kowalski down the hallway, along with one of the fire dragon security guards. The doors slammed shut behind them with a clang.

  They followed the doctors down a long hallway and reached a big metal door with a security pad next to it. Dr. Hamill stepped in front of the pad and it scanned his retina, and then the door slid open. Dr. Hamill, Cadence and Dr. Kowalski walked through. Suddenly, the security guard shoved Orion back, and the door slammed shut behind him. She heard one startled shout of rage from Orion right before the door shut, and then silence.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Cadence froze as fear and anger shot through her. She was in an enormous room filled with banks of machinery that she didn’t fully understand, but she knew which incubator held her dragonlings.

  To her confusion, she saw that the door to the incubator was already open, and there was a nest sitting on a cart…with dragonlings. Four beautiful little dragonlings. Two white, two red.

  Where were they trying to take them?

  She glanced around wildly. This room was too small for her to shift in, and she was outnumbered, but she could at least blast them with ice.

  But everyone who could help her was on the other side of a thick metal door.

  “He can’t blast through it in time,” Dr. Hamill said coolly. “My guards will have him subdued shortly anyway.”

  “Where are Orion’s men?” Cadence asked, struggling to keep her voice from shaking.

  “Detained. We thought that would help to ensure Orion’s cooperation.”

  “Then you don’t know Orion,” Cadence said, looking him in the eye. “But you’re going to.”

  Then she hurried towards the nest of her babies. Her heart plummeted to her shoes when she saw who was standing next to it. Humphrey was there, along with a bodyguard and a woman she didn’t recognize. The woman carried a briefcase and wore a tailored pantsuit. She looked like a very sexy accountant, and her eyes briefly went blue and reptilian when she looked at Cadence.

  Humphrey’s eyes lit up with a look of gloating triumph when he saw Cadence standing between the two doctors.

  “Excellent,” he said. “A little early, but that’s no problem. This is the woman who will be raising your dragonlings.”

  Like hell.

  The woman smirked at Cadence and flipped her shiny blonde hair with one slender finger.

  “She’s my mistress. She’s not at all fertile, so she’s basically useless, but she’ll do fine as a nanny,” Humphrey added dismissively. The woman’s smirk vanished and she scowled at the floor.

  “Why would you have her raise them?” Cadence needed to stall for time. Orion would save her. She knew it. She just needed time.

  Humphrey snorted at her stupidity. “You’ll be much easier to control if you’re only allowed to visit your dragonlings under guard,” he said. “You step out of line, and they’ll pay for it.”


  Cadence imagined him consumed in a giant ball of flame. He would suffer. He would die for this.

  “We should get them out of here quickly,” Dr. Kowalski said to Humphrey. “The Garrison clan may be calling in reinforcements.”

  “True, but Cadence has a document she needs to sign first,” Humphrey said, and then nodded at the woman. She opened up her briefcase and unrolled a scroll.

  Cadence raked Dr. Kowalski with a look of pure hatred. “You bitch. I will end you.”

  The doctor couldn’t meet her gaze; she hung her head. “They have my dragonlings,” she whispered. “They forced me.”

  “Oh, please, why bother dragging out the lie?” Humphrey sneered. He smiled at Cadence. “She doesn’t even like children; she sent hers off to be raised by the father’s clan the second they hatched. She only had them so she could test out her treatments. You want to know why her all of her clutches died? She was experimenting on them – illegal experiments, might I add – and her early experiments failed. That’s why she had to come here from Poland.”

  Dr. Kowalski shot him a sullen look of resentment but didn’t say anything. Dr. Hamill shrugged. “What can I say? She’s a lousy mother but a very good scientist,” he said to Cadence.

  “So why did you agree to betray me?” Cadence demanded.

  Humphrey answered for her. “I blackmailed her. I found out that the clinic had been using your blood as a very successful fertility treatment for female dragons. She took far more from you than was necessary, because it turned out that your blood has some kind of fertility magic, which will turn out to be very useful. You’re going to birth a lot of my dragonlings. I’m thinking thirty or forty at least. As soon as we remove one clutch, I’ll put another one in you.”

  Cadence slowly moved closer to her nest. The tiny dragons stirred. They seemed agitated, as if they sensed the tension in the air. One of them let out a tiny flame, no bigger than that from a lighter.

  Her heart clenched. She needed to hold them in her arms. She took another step forward, and the woman moved to block her. “Ah, ah, ah,” she chided, waving her finger in Cadence’s face. “Mine.”