“Dragons,” he said. “Fire.”
“She really likes babies,” Luke said, patting Ty’s shoulder in consolation.
“Babies are great,” Ty agreed. But—” He stabbed a finger at the crackling logs. “—fucking dragons, dude. Dragons.”
20
~ Devin ~
The house was quiet when I got home from work, and I headed straight to the kitchen. Sarah’s car hadn’t been in the driveway, so I was startled to find her sitting at the table. Her eyes were closed and her hands rested on her rounded belly.
“I thought everyone was gone,” I said, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “You okay?”
“Very. Luke and Maks took Holly out to the beach at Burfoot Park,” she said, smiling up at me. “He’s kicking. Want to feel?”
I grinned, laying my hand on her stomach. I couldn’t believe it was June already… she was due in August, and she already looked big enough to pop.
Even though my own pregnancy was progressing faster than a standard one, it wasn’t nearly as far along as hers. As near as we could figure it out, I was somewhere around the end of the first trimester, while she was almost done with the second. I couldn’t wait until I felt my little one move, too.
“I wish you could stay,” she said with a sigh. “What did you tell them at work?”
“I just said ‘personal reasons.’ Too bad I couldn’t have taken paternity leave, though.”
I’d thought about taking a leave of absence, but had ended up giving my notice instead. This had been my last day, and as much as I enjoyed my job, it was going to be a relief not to have to work. Even with Maks’s fire supporting me, this pregnancy was exhausting me. I felt bloated and cranky and tired, and of course I couldn’t tell anyone at my office why I was so out of sorts.
I knew I wouldn’t have trouble coming back after the baby was born if I changed my mind, or finding work elsewhere if we stayed in Wisconsin, but Maks had told me that he was over two hundred years old—crazy—and that had been plenty of time to set himself up financially. There was really no need for me to work if I didn’t want to, and I was looking forward to being a stay-at-home dad, at least in the beginning. I couldn’t wait to meet the little one growing inside me.
“Want me to get you some peas, honey?” Sarah asked, standing up and heading to the stove.
I nodded, my mouth watering as I remembered why I’d come into the kitchen in the first place. I’d been craving green peas with cinnamon all day. I’d been obsessed with the combination for weeks. No one else in the house could stand it, which just left more for me.
“Are you and Maks really leaving tomorrow?” Sarah asked, putting the bowl down in front of me.
I nodded, my mouth too full to speak. Oh, my God. Heaven.
“He’s so good with Holly, we’ll miss you both. Are you sure you’re okay with Luke and I staying at the house?”
“Of course, Sare. Don’t be silly. If you left, it would just sit here empty. It’s your home, too.”
“You should at least let us pay rent, honey. The settlement Maks got Luke from the fishing company was more than generous.”
“Sarah, stop. You’re not paying rent. I don’t need it, and you’ll have plenty of things you can put that money to good use for with Holly and the baby.”
“Okay,” she said, giving in. “You’re such a good friend to us, Dev.”
She hugged me, her eyes tearing up, then straightened and wiped at them as happy voices and stomping feet shattered the quiet of the house. A moment later, little Holly came careening into the kitchen, covered in sand and mud and trailed by two equally dirty men.
“Dev! Clams!” She held up a wet bucket for me to admire, then started babbling to Sarah about her day at the beach.
“How was your last day of work, love?” Maks asked, leaning down to kiss the back of my neck and making me shiver.
He smelled like sun and sand and summer and Maks, and now that he was back I lost all interest in the peas and cinnamon. What had he just asked me? He was so… distracting. He gave a sexy laugh, hearing my thoughts through our bond.
“I need to take a shower, baby,” he said. “Want to join me?”
Did he even have to ask?
* * *
I followed Maks into the bathroom, his dragon’s heat moving through our bond and filling me up as I watched him undress. He could feel everything I wanted, and as soon as we got in the shower he pushed me down to my knees and let me take his cock in my mouth.
God, I loved the taste of him. Loved when he wasn’t quite hard yet, so I could fit more of him in my mouth, massage him with my tongue, feel his length growing and swelling as I sucked him harder, deeper, swallowing the salty-sweetness that started to leak out of him.
His breath started to quicken, and his hands tightened on my head. Everything about him excited me, but when I reached for my own cock, he pulled out of my mouth.
“Stop, baby,” he said, ignoring my whimper of protest. “I need to fuck you.” He pulled me up to my feet, sliding his hands down my wet skin and cupping my ass, then slipping a finger between my cheeks to tease my hole. “I need to be inside you,” he whispered, pushing into me easily.
“More,” I panted, wrapping myself around him.
My throbbing erection slid against his—heaven—and then he lifted me as if I weighed nothing. I wrapped my legs around his waist so that his cock could slip underneath me, rubbing deliciously through my crease as he reached down and slicked his precum over his shaft as lubrication, lining himself up and teasing me with it until I begged.
“Maks, God, I haven’t seen you all day, please, don’t make me wait.”
He laughed indulgently, finally pushing inside me. I loved it when he did it this way, standing and holding me in his arms, fucking me deep and slow so that every stroke hit that sweet spot inside me that made my eyes roll back in my head. His heat flowed into me as his cock filled me, and when he held me like this I couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but let it happen. I had no choice but to let the burning tension coil inside me as he kept up his relentlessly slow rhythm. I already knew it wouldn’t make any difference if I begged him to go faster. No matter what I said, he knew I liked it when he took control.
Sometimes it was hard to believe I’d gone my whole life without this, but I knew it wasn’t just sex that I’d become addicted to. It was him. My whole world reduced to the feel of him inside me, stirring up this fiery need with every stroke, until it was an inferno blazing inside me, threatening to burst and consume all my senses.
“Maks… please…” I panted.
His fingers dug into my ass, but he didn’t change his pace—and he wasn’t going to. He was going to force me to ride his cock, slow and steady, until I came apart. I could see what he intended through our bond. He was going to hold back until he made me shout his name. He wanted to swallow the sound of it, tasting my need for him as I came. He wanted to feel me tighten around him, and then go limp in his arms, dazed and sated and stretched open.
Ready to be used even harder.
Seeing it in his mind pushed me over the edge, and I gave him everything he wanted. I couldn’t do anything else. His name burst out of me and I shot over his chest, my vision whiting out as my ass clenched around him. He held me until I’d emptied myself, then pulled out, still hard, and carried me to the bed.
“On your hands and knees, Devin.”
As soon as I obeyed he pushed his cock into me again. This time, he was done with slow and steady, and I trembled around him, almost crying at the too-intense pleasure as he thrust in hard and hit my prostate. He leaned over my back, pinning my shoulders to the mattress and holding me down as he fucked me hard and fast, the way he knew I liked best.
I was going to scream, but I couldn’t. Not here. I fisted the bed covers in my hand, yanking them toward my face and biting down to muffle the sounds he pounded out of me.
“I want to hear you,” he whispered. “When we’re back home in Wisconsin,
no more holding back. I want to hear you shout.”
Oh, God, Oh, God. I reached for my cock, slick and leaking and already so hard that it almost hurt. The musky scent of sex flooded my senses and I jerked on it in desperation as he slammed into me from behind. He was going to make me come again, and it was going to wreck me. It was too big, too hot, too—
“Now, Dev,” he ordered. I could feel him straining to hold himself back until I did. “Come for me.”
I had to, my release crashing through me in an unstoppable wave. I exploded in warm, wet spurts over my hand, and as soon as I let myself go he drove in deep, locking his hips against my ass as he gave a muffled shout and filled me with his seed.
My thighs were shaking, and I started to collapse on the bed, but Maks was there. He slid a hand around my waist to cup the new roundness of my stomach and smoothly rolled us onto our sides as we hit the mattress. He spooned himself around me, nuzzling my neck as he enveloped me in his arms.
“I love you,” he whispered, and I could feel his lips curve into a smile against my damp skin.
But he’d worn me out, and before I could answer, I was already asleep.
21
~ Maksim ~
I’d brought Devin to an island I owned off the coast of Nova Scotia at the beginning of the summer. It was a small, rocky bit of land that I’d claimed when Dane and I had first crossed the Atlantic two hundred years ago. In time, I’d legally purchased it, and I loved the salt air and crashing waves.
When we’d first arrived, Devin had still been suffering from morning sickness, and he’d taken to spending time out on the balcony off our second-story bedroom, claiming that the smell of the sea helped settle his stomach.
“I can never get enough of this view,” he said, standing out there now and watching the sun rise over the sea.
I agreed. I’d always been drawn to the power here of the sea and stone and waves. It reminded me of where I’d grown up. I didn’t realize I’d said it out loud until Devin turned to me.
“Where was that?” he asked.
“France. A long time ago.”
“Why did you leave, Maks?”
I winced, thinking of what I’d left behind. “I had a disagreement with my sire,” I told him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Is your ‘sire’ your dragon father, or your human one? And is he still back there? In France?”
“His territory is farther east, in what was Russia,” I answered, frowning as memories came back to me. “And my sire is a dragon. I never knew my human father. He… died… when I was born.”
Devin blanched, his hands covering the roundness that had changed his slim form so much over the last few months as he swallowed nervously. “Is that… um, does that happen often? That the human father dies?”
“No! That’s not something you have to worry about, baby. Not with my fire in you.” I pulled him to me, angry at myself for scaring him. I knew his emotions were already close to the surface thanks to the pregnancy. I should have thought before opening my mouth. “The dragons back in Europe do things very differently. Your life is tied to mine, you know that, love. You’ll be fine.”
“Wes told me what to expect,” he said, relaxing a bit in my arms. “But… I’m not sure if it’s exactly the same for me as it was for him. I feel more tired than he says he was, even though I can feel your heat in me, strengthening me. And I’m huge… look at me, Maks. I really think I’m much bigger than I should be. Especially if I still have more than a month to go. Sarah wasn’t—”
“You can’t compare yours to a human pregnancy, love,” I reminded him, laughing as I cut him off.
Sarah had just given birth to a baby boy, and Devin had Skyped with her daily throughout her pregnancy. Even though the pregnancy progressed slightly differently in his male body, many of the symptoms were the same, and I knew it had been fun for him to compare symptoms and cravings with one of his oldest friends.
I hated to see him worried, now, and the truth was that we didn’t really know what “normal” was for him. Wes had told us everything he could about his pregnancy the year before, but even that wasn’t the greatest comparison since Dane hadn’t understood what his dragon intended at the time and had withheld his fire for longer than he should have. Anik’s mate, Mikkel, had also shared his experience, but Mikkel’s pregnancy had been hundreds of years ago—and in the end, two stories just weren’t enough of a baseline for comparison.
My otherself stirred within me in response to my mate’s distress, but only with the desire to comfort him. My dragon wasn’t worried, and it was the thing that gave me the most confidence that Devin’s symptoms were normal, even when they differed from what the other two men had gone through. He really did seem abnormally large for as far along as he should be, but my otherself reassured me that our mate was okay.
Still, I wanted to make him feel better.
“Do you want me to go get some pistachio ice cream, baby?” I asked, rubbing his back with one hand and resting my other on the swell of our child.
His food cravings were adorable, and it made me wish my island wasn’t quite so remote. I hated being away from him. I knew that there was nothing here that could hurt him, but I missed him when we weren’t together. I know he didn’t like it when I left, either, but the pregnancy had made him a slave to his hormones.
“You’ll be gone half the day,” he complained, reading my thoughts. I could already tell he was going to say yes, though, and right on cue he said, “But we do have a lifetime together, and ice cream… well, that’s something I really, really could use today, now that you mention it.” He bit his lip, looking sheepish, then added, “With cinnamon, if you don’t mind. Um, we’re out. Again.”
The sun had barely cleared the horizon, and I knew I could easily make it to the mainland and back before noon. Missing the morning with him was a sacrifice I was willing to make to keep him happy.
“I don’t mind,” I said, rubbing his belly as I leaned down to kiss him goodbye. “But when I get back—”
“Oh, my God! Maks, did you feel that?” Devin interrupted excitedly, the ice cream temporarily forgotten.
I had. A gentle bump against my palm. He was beaming, and I realized I was holding my breath as we both waited to see if it would come again. Then… the lightest flutter, but definite motion. Our child.
My otherself rumbled in approval, and when I finally left, the miracle of feeling our child move within Devin’s body kept me smiling all the way to the mainland.
22
~ Devin ~
I felt guilty asking Maks to leave the island on such a silly errand, but at the same time, I had to have it. Had to. Pregnancy was the weirdest, most wonderful thing.
I puttered around the house for a while and then Skyped Sarah to tell her about the baby moving. She had been my best friend forever, and comparing pregnancy symptoms isn’t something I ever imagined I’d get to do with her, but I was loving it.
Before we’d left Washington, Wes and Dane had thrown us a baby shower. They’d gotten us everything we needed, and then some, and had it all shipped to Nova Scotia so Maks could ferry it out to the island once we arrived. After I ended the call with Sarah, I headed to the nursery to continue one of my favorite pastimes—getting it ready for the baby. I was hoping it would keep me distracted enough that the time without Maks would pass quickly, but before he returned I got hungry and had to take a break. I was always getting hungry.
I made a quick lunch and took it out to the bedroom balcony—my favorite place—and ate it while I stared at the empty horizon. The Atlantic stretched before me, smooth and flat today, uninterrupted from here until it hit the coast of France, where Maks had grown up.
Two hundred years. I couldn’t fathom it. He didn’t look that much older than me, and he’d told me that since we were bonded, my own aging would slow to match his. It was mind-boggling, and I couldn’t wait to hear more about the things he’d seen and done in his long life.
As if
I’d conjured him, my eyes picked out a dark speck on the horizon in the now-familiar shape of dragon wings. He didn’t often fly during the day, but the island was so remote that being seen wasn’t much of a concern here. My heart leapt as it always did when I got to be with him, and I gathered up my dishes and took them to the kitchen, then headed out to the beach to greet him.
Except… my steps faltered. There was no sign of him. The mainland was to the west, and I’d seen him approaching from the balcony that faced the opposite direction. I walked around the house to the other side, and sure enough, a dragon was approaching the island from the east. The sun glinted off the silvery wings, but these weren’t the white-silver of my mate, this dragon was a silver-blue, almost gray, the color of gunmetal. Dane’s dragon was black, and I thought Maks had mentioned that Anik and Ben to the north were both shades of red. I didn’t know who this was.
My stomach clenched with nerves, and I instinctively reached for my mate through our bond.
He was already on his way back, and the knowledge made me relax. I held back from actively “talking” to him, trusting that he would be here soon enough. I could sense the ocean under him, the salt air cooling his ever-present heat as he winged toward me from the west. He’d told me that there weren’t that many dragons in the world, and it seemed unlikely that another of his kind would just happen to find this remote island unless they were looking for my mate. No doubt Maks would know our visitor.
The huge creature landed on the rocky shore in front of me, his wings flaring out to slow him as he touched down. He was a gorgeous creature, and I still got a little thrill at the sight of something that shouldn’t have existed. The dark dragon shifted seamlessly into human form, scooping up a bag he’d brought and slipping into a pair of loose pants before approaching me.
Scorch: M/M Gay Shifter Mpreg Romance (Dragon's Destiny: Fated Mates Book 2) Page 12
