by Ophelia Bell
The three dragons exchanged looks, and I realized I’d done it again. Rolling my eyes at my lack of discipline shielding my thoughts, I said, “Please tell me where my thinking is wrong. I’m here to learn, oh wise ones.”
Stuart shook his head. “First, we’re not strangers to the creatures who are after you. We’re probably the only guardians on the planet with the skills and knowledge to protect you. I appreciate that you want to return the favor, and yes, your magic is strong enough to do more. The best way to do that is to get back into the studio and work on channeling that power into your pieces. The more you practice maintaining strict control over it, the easier it will be to channel into offensive magic.”
Tate rested his elbows on the table and nodded. “If what you want is to harness all that power to use in a fight, we can help you learn a few basic spells. Stuart’s right though, keep practicing basic control.”
“Sounds like I have some work to do,” I said. I stood and started to pick up the dirty dishes, but Tate rose quickly, taking the dishes out of my hands.
“We’ll take care of this. Save your energy for the studio.”
“In that case, I think I’ll go get started.”
It was pouring rain, but when I reached for my slicker on the peg by the back door, a big hand covered mine. Eddie smiled down at me as he held the raincoat open for me to slip my arms into, then opened the door for me.
“You got a minute?” His voice was a low rumble I almost couldn’t hear over the downpour, but despite being nearly drowned out by the weather, I still felt the vibration of the words like he’d caused a seismic shift beneath my feet.
I blinked, then nodded. He stepped out the door, closing it behind him, and took my hand, tilting his chin toward the studio. “Let’s get inside.”
“You don’t want a raincoat?” I asked, pointing at his drenched head and wet clothes from a mere moment standing out in the elements.
“A little water never hurt anyone.”
I shot him a dubious smile and shrugged, disarmed by his soft-spoken intensity. He led me down the hill and into the studio, then helped me out of my raincoat. I stood facing him as he dripped onto the concrete floor. He stared down at me, a small crease between his eyebrows, then swallowed and looked around the room.
“What did you want to talk about?” I asked.
He licked rainwater off his lips and raked his fingers through his thick, wet hair, then took a deep breath, huffing slightly and shook his head. I frowned, sensing that somehow it was difficult for him to say whatever was on his mind.
Finally, he speared me with a look so intense my heart stuttered, but I didn’t move for fear of startling him back into a state of uncertainty. I just waited, and a second later he finally spoke. “I don’t know what Gray told you about us, but we’re in this together. Tate, Chay, and me, I mean. If you can’t see your way to loving all three of us the way you seem to have latched onto them, you should cut us loose sooner rather than later.”
“What makes you think I won’t want all of you? Gray made it clear already that he thinks I need you all for some crazy reason. But as crazy as it sounds, last night proved his point. We work well as a team. Can that be enough for now?”
His jaw flexed and he dropped his gaze to the floor as though composing his answer, his lower lip gripped in his teeth. A tuft of bristled beard dewy with rainwater fanned out just below his lip and I had the strangest urge to lick him there.
With a jolt, I realized that what I’d just asked for would never be enough for me but it would sound hypocritical to backtrack now. Besides, as much as I craved all six of them, I also knew without a doubt that I needed to learn how to manage this crazy magic without them before I could surrender myself to them at all. The dragons had given me enough of a taste of what that surrender would look and feel like. It was far from an undesirable experience, but I’d lose myself so easily if I wasn’t careful. The fact that Eddie and the other two ursa had their own strict limitations was a good excuse to take a step back.
“If that’s what you really want,” he said, pinning me again with his blue-eyed stare. My heart pounded harder as he studied me, daring me to come clean as if he knew my secrets without me telling. Steam rose up of his wet body, and the plain white T-shirt he wore was soaked through to the skin, leaving nothing to the imagination. He lifted a hand and brushed a damp curl from my cheek. My pulse quickened to the point I could barely breathe.
“Eddie …”
His fingertips grazed my jaw and my resolve snapped. With a soft curse I reached for him, leaning up to press my mouth to his. He had his arms around me before I could think twice about what I was doing, but god, did he feel good. His lush lips were at odds with the solid bulk of his muscular body, and his beard was twice as soft as I’d imagined.
I moaned into his mouth, gripping the wet fabric of his shirt and twisting it in my fists, not sure whether I wanted to pull him closer or push him away. When the twinge of magical need pulsed almost painfully in my core, I forced myself to pull back.
“Shit.” I pressed my forehead to his chest, breathing hard.
“Sorry,” he gruffed.
I laughed. “Dude. Not your fault. But to answer your question, no, it’s decidedly not what I want. But it’s what I need for right now, okay? I need to manage this magic myself before I can let go with all six of you. I need to know I have control. Does that make sense?”
He took a slow, deep breath and tightened his arms around me, tucking me in against him, heedless of the fact that his wet clothes were seeping into mine. I didn’t really care though, because his arms around me felt amazing.
“Makes perfect sense. We’ll be ready when you are.”
“Thanks,” I said, tilting my head back to smile up at him. I reluctantly pushed away, but it didn’t take more than a moment for the thrill of the project to replace that need with a different desire.
I turned toward the furnaces and took a deep breath. The warmth and scent of the studio gave me such a rush of pure joy it felt like coming home, even though I hadn’t had a real home since Dad and I moved away from the estate. When the rest of the guys joined us one by one a little later, the feeling intensified to the point my lower abdomen spasmed with another pang of need so acute I gasped out loud. I’d been in the middle of shaping a gather of glass at the end of the pipe and faltered, causing the glass to sag a little.
Gray was there, his comforting hand on my shoulder. “Breathe and focus. Picture your piece in your mind’s eye as if it’s a seed you’re nurturing to grow, and push some of that energy into it.”
I took a deep breath and did as he said. Murdoc moved into position at the end of the pipe, crouching down to blow when I needed. Then the world seemed to fall away as my attention fixated on the piece. Nothing existed but me and the glass and the six men who surrounded me.
“Blow,” I said, preparing to shape the glass as Murdoc pushed air through the pipe into the growing bubble. As he did, my magic flowed into the glass with a sensation so similar to exhaling, I felt like the two of us were connected.
When the pressure inside me eased, I shot a victorious look at Murdoc, who grinned back.
“You’ve got it. Nice work!”
Gray and Stuart took over another bench, and I sensed them in my periphery, their actions nearly symmetrical to mine and Murdoc’s. Across the studio, the racket of blacksmith hammers echoed as Eddie got to work with Tate and Chayton.
All six men exuded creative energy, but it was a challenge to focus on the work when the heat and exertion compelled them to strip to the waist. I may have indulged one too many times in covert glances across the studio.
Tate wielded a hammer that he swung at a metal rod to shape it against the anvil. Each time he moved, all his muscles flexed and glistened, the sight warming my insides and tugging at my core of power. Chayton’s longer hair flew wild around his head when it was his turn, sweat glistening across the dark hair that peppered his broad chest and the wh
orls of tribal tattoos covering his biceps and shoulders. Eddie turned into a gilded god, evoking an image akin to Thor that made it easy to imagine thunderbolts flying from his hammer on each swing.
“I thought we were on a schedule,” Gray said, nudging me gently with an elbow. Murdoc and Stuart stepped into my field of vision, and I had to tilt my head to keep a clear view of Eddie at work.
“What?” I asked.
The dragons all laughed, which caught Eddie’s attention, and I could’ve sworn he flexed a little harder now that he knew I was watching.
“Hm, never mind,” Gray said. “I’m just fine watching them work if that’s what we’re doing. But if you need more than eye candy, you know you can ask.”
Focus, I told myself, letting out a huff of indignation and glaring at Gray, who only laughed louder.
“We’re not going there. I want to figure out how to control this power. Then I’ll entertain other outlets.”
“Fair enough, but for the record, you really don’t know what you’re missing.”
I definitely didn’t miss the loss of control over my body, and over the next few days of working side by side with them, I learned to tell the difference between the estrous surges and my own libido. One was easier to ignore than the other, but channeling that excess energy through my work became easier each day.
Tamping down my natural libido grew more difficult, though it wasn’t just sex I craved after more than a week of working on the project. The frame of the tree was mostly finished after the first week, and with each new section completed, I felt closer to the guys than ever.
Aside from the occasional bickering between the three ursa when they got tired, we were all completely in sync, and the bickering even became somewhat endearing. They always settled down the second I entered the fray. I learned that Eddie was the trigger point of the trio’s collective temper, and when I sensed their moods shifting, all I had to do was slip in close to him and distract him with a question or suggestion. Getting him to focus on me cooled the irritation, but I had a feeling if I wanted to rile them up in other ways, he’d be the man to start with.
We spent all our waking hours together, either working, cooking, eating, or lounging in the library around the fireplace. The house didn’t have a TV, but I didn’t miss it with all the stories the guys had to tell.
Gray wove tales of dragons that sounded like they were plucked from the pages of a fantasy novel, but he assured me they were all real. Their six immortal leaders had been viewed as gods once upon a time and spent their time away from the human world locked inside a magical realm called the Glade that was made almost entirely of endless sky, with floating islands and cliffs where they could land.
Chayton told stories of the ursa’s home, the Sanctuary, where the spirits of each of the four seasons inhabited the bodies of four ursa women, who took turns ruling over and protecting the ursa race.
They told of the other two races too. The nymphaea who were water creatures, and the most devious shifter race—also the most sex-focused. The man who had delivered the injured Stuart and the ursa to the estate had been one of them—a satyr who had spent thousands of years imprisoned by the Ultiori before being released, then chosen as one of Deva Rainsong’s five mates.
And then there were the turul, who were a race blessed by the Winds with voices like angels, who could control the weather and read a lie on a breath even if you didn’t speak it out loud. The pop singer they’d worked for had mated three of the leaders of the turul race, who were also three of the four Winds.
I shared what little I remembered about my mother and grandmother and Adele, which wasn’t much. Most of my stories were about my adventures with my dad after we’d left the estate. But despite my stories being focused on him, spending time in the library of this huge house made me feel even closer to my mother than I’d ever been. No one else could have been responsible for the collection of artifacts from my past, or for a studio so well equipped as if it had been built with my exact needs in mind.
By the end of the second week, I felt like I was one of them. Even though I hadn’t spent another night together in the same bed with any of them, a deep connection had grown through our shared efforts completing my sculpture.
Our momentum had increased day by day, our bond growing stronger as each piece of the project came together. For the entire day in the studio near the end of the third week, it had grown so strong I could sense them around me as if we were already connected by something deeper than our relatively short acquaintance would suggest.
The enormous copper and steel tree of life was undergoing final touches in the open work area just inside the big rolling barn door. Tate, Eddie, and Chayton were creating the plan for disassembly and reassembly to get it to the gallery while the dragons and I crafted a handful of backup globes in case of breakage en route. My exploration of my burgeoning ursa power had allowed me to plant a variety of small flowering plants in each globe that would only require small surges of magic to make them bloom.
I placed the last piece in the annealer and took a breather watching the guys busy with their own final tasks. Observing the six of them working as a perfectly coordinated team, it hit me that we were almost finished, but I wasn’t ready for the project to be over. I wanted more and this desire hadn’t originated from that hungry core of magic inside me.
I couldn’t wait any longer. Not just because I was attracted to them all, or because they were equally dedicated to my project, not to mention some of the most skilled artists I’d ever known, but because I desperately wanted to find out if we could extend our partnership indefinitely, and how much better our collective creations could be if we were connected on an even deeper level.
Not just connected—mated.
“April.”
It was Gray’s deep, husky voice that pulled me back to reality, and I realized I’d been lost in the glowing red abyss of the glory hole, as if the fire itself spoke to me. It told me the only way I could burn as brightly as I wished was to add fuel to my own inner blaze.
I turned to Gray and grabbed the back of his neck, yanking him down into a kiss. He didn’t seem surprised by it at all, his arms slipping around me instantly and one hand rising up to cup the back of my head as he devoured my mouth.
It took work, but I managed to find enough presence of mind to communicate my desire to him and the other dragons. “I want you all. I choose you all. That’s what I need to say, isn’t it?”
Murdoc and Stuart closed in around me. Somewhere on the other side of the studio, the clanging of metal ceased.
“You need to tell them out loud,” Stuart said from just behind me, his mouth at my ear. He tilted his head, and I turned to follow his gaze to the three ursa. The three of them had easily picked up on the sudden shift in the atmosphere on our side of the studio but watched from a cautious distance.
Right. I wasn’t allowed to just throw myself at them. I had to speak my desires out loud. Except for some reason these particular desires weighed me down more than any other decision I’d ever made. I knew once I spoke them, there would be no turning back.
“All or nothing, I guess.” I gave Stuart a hesitant smile, then turned and strode across the concrete floor. Tate stood in front of the anvil, with Eddie and Chayton just behind to either side. Their gazes tracked my movements, but they remained still, their sweat from the hours of work shining on their shirtless bodies.
“April,” Tate said when I stopped in front of him, close enough to taste the tangy scent of male sweat and iron clinging to his big, solid body. He was breathing heavy, which could have been from the strenuous work, but I had a feeling was for another reason entirely. I was breathing heavy too.
I took a deep breath, willing myself to be calm despite my rapid heartbeat. But my pulse had nothing to do with fear, I realized. It had everything to do with the certainty that this moment marked the beginning of the rest of my life.
“Tate. Chayton. Eddie.” I said each name and pause
d to be sure they knew this was meant for all of them. They seemed to lean ever so slightly toward me as if ready to leap to action the moment I gave them leave to do so.
I swallowed, took a breath, and bared my soul.
“I want you all. Not halfway. Not because I need you to serve a purpose. But to be mine. Completely.”
24
Tate
I couldn’t believe my ears. Despite every instinct telling me to hold my ground and wait for April to take the lead, I reached for her. Behind me, Chayton let out a hiss of warning, but it was too late. I closed the distance, cupped the back of her head, and took her mouth like I was diving off a cliff into an abyss.
Exhilaration rushed through me, even stronger than the surge of adrenaline from taking my favorite high dive into one of the many lakes in the ursa Sanctuary. My cock hardened so quickly my head spun, and I almost resorted to my usual mental tricks to stave off that arousal. I knew how to remain in control with a woman, but with April, I wanted to lose myself. I probably already had.
With a reluctant groan, I forced myself to end the kiss, if only just to catch my breath. But I held on, both hands cupping her jaw, my fingers tangled in the damp curls that had escaped her braid and clung to her nape. I rested my forehead against hers, simply breathing for a few heartbeats before pulling back enough to look into her eyes.
“Are you sure? This isn’t just your estrous talking? I don’t think we would survive if you changed your mind.”
She held my gaze steadily, without even blinking. “This is all me, big guy. Take it or leave it.”
With a hungry growl, I hauled her up against my chest fast enough to make her cry out. She grabbed my shoulders for balance, her face hovering over mine as I walked us across the studio and set her on the shining steel surface of the marver table, where not thirty minutes ago she’d been shaping molten glass. Stuart, Murdoc, and Gray took a step back, making room for us, and Eddie and Chayton crowded in on either side. Neither were willing to cross the line the way I’d done by kissing her without permission, but April didn’t miss a beat. She reached up to Chayton first, stroking his dark goatee. He swallowed audibly, his body tense and poised for action.
