by Selena Scott
And he was about to try and fly on those poor injured things?
Hell, no.
Mel sprinted around her lover, in dragon form, hopping deftly over his tail and skidding to a stop in front of him.
“O! Stop!” She threw her arms out to either side, unintentionally mimicking his spread wings.
The dragon’s head drifted to the side in a look of curious confusion.
“You’re injured,” she barreled on. “You’re gonna hurt yourself if you fly on that. Don’t do it.”
O turned his great head back and studied his own injuries with a deceptively lighthearted playfulness. “Well, would you look at that?” he murmured.
Mel put her hands on her hips. “You’re not gonna joke your way out of this one. I’m sly to your games at this point, O. I know exactly how easily you can break the tension in a situation to lessen the severity of any given moment. And you’re not about to get away with that crap right now. Not when you’re seconds away from injuring yourself even further.” She slapped her sternest mom expression on her face and raised her eyebrows.
“Oh, boy,” Ike muttered, covering his eyes with one hand for a brief second. “You better do what she says, O. She always wins when she has that look on her face. Trust me.”
O’s great head, glittering turquoise in the bright sun, tracked from the mother back to the son.
“And she’s right,” Ike continued. “I don’t wanna see you fly if you’re gonna hurt yourself. Show me another time.”
At that, O deftly, if not carefully, folded his wings neatly onto his back. Although now Mel could see that the left one didn’t fold in quite as small as the right. A beat passed where no one said anything. And then another. And another.
“Well, this is awkward,” O’s deep dragon voice rolled out over them.
Mel and Ike looked at each other, couldn’t bite back the laugh that bubbled out of both their throats.
“Ike, I think O has sufficiently proved that he’s a dragon. Can we go home now?” Mel asked her son.
“Sure,” Ike responded. “I’m hungry anyways. Can we stop at an Arby’s when we get back to the human realm?”
“Duh.”
“What’s Arby’s?” O asked as he started his transformation back into his human form. Mel crossed back over to stand beside Ike and they both watched breathlessly as O shrank and smoothed, the turquoise of his scales seeming to dissolve into thin air.
Mel slapped a hand over Ike’s eyes as the transformation completed and O stood in the bright sunlight in his birthday suit.
“Arby’s is god’s gift to his underlings,” Mel responded. Her voice was casual, but her eyes searched out the scars that laced over the skin on O’s left side. She understood now how painful they must really be. But she didn’t let her eyes linger there. Now wasn’t the time. “It’s roast beef and jamocha shake heaven. You won’t even know what hit you. It’s the closest thing mortals have to ambrosia.”
“Yeah,” Ike agreed, his mother’s hand still clamped over his eyes. “You’ll fly high for about 20 minutes after eating the most delicious food on earth. And then you get diarrhea.”
“Sounds perfect,” O chuckled, dragging his pants and shirt back on. “Let’s blow this pop stand and get back to the human realm. Diarrhea waits for no man.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Mel laughed, grabbing O’s hand on one side and Ike’s on the other.
CHAPTER TEN
O didn’t think he’d ever get enough of this. His face buried in her hair. Her smooth skin slipping and sliding over his. Her nipple clenched firmly between his teeth.
“Oh, god,” Mel moaned, naked and straddled across his lap as he slipped a finger inside her wet channel.
They were sweaty and feverish in the back seat of her car. They were parked in the abandoned parking lot outside the hotel where a few floors up Ike slept soundly through a movie that turned the room a flickering blue behind the drawn shades.
“Everyone should get busy in the back seat of a car at least once in their lifetime,” Mel had insisted as she’d quietly tugged him off the extra cot they’d gotten for him. O had quickly scanned the immediate future, seen that Ike was gonna sleep through this, none the wiser. Gleefully, he’d followed this beautiful woman down the stairs and out to the parking lot.
“I’ve wanted you so bad all day,” he whispered into her neck as he nipped his way up toward her mouth. “Your ass in those shorts. Kill me. Just kill me. Your hair just smells so fucking good. Driving me insane.”
O stroked her wet channel from the inside and a feral smile ripped out of him when she bit her lip and screamed. Mel’s hands dragged up her own body as she started to ride his hand. Lost in sensation, she rolled her nipples between her fingers and let her head fall back.
“Good goddamn,” O growled at the sight of her, pressing his fingers even deeper. It was too much. It was all too much. The soft copper of her hair, tumbling everywhere, her scent filling the car. He couldn’t stand it.
Suddenly, he withdrew his hand from her. Ignoring her squeak of protest he flipped onto his back on the seat and dragged her around so that she sat on his face. The second his mouth found her, Mel fell forward, her breasts crushing against his lower stomach.
“Good goddamn,” she echoed him as her pussy began to ripple around his tongue. Her thighs quivered on either side of his face. She was close, he realized with a savage pleasure. She was close to coming all over his mouth. He was gonna make her do that. Just him. No one else.
Usually a very carefree, easy-going kind of man, the thoughts that rose up in him vaguely shocked O. He had never felt possessive of a woman. Never before. He tongued her clit and opened his mouth wider over her.
Her muffled moan was the only warning he got before the warm, wet heaven of her mouth closed over his cock. With no preamble, she sucked him down her throat as far as he could go.
O’s hands bit into her ass as his hips lifted off the seat. Unable to help himself, he thrust into her mouth. Mel moaned around his cock and took him even deeper. One of her hands joined and pumped all the parts of him that her mouth couldn’t reach.
His eyes crossed but he yanked himself back on a leash. Ladies first. O redoubled his efforts. Thrusting one thumb deep into her channel, O suckled her clit ruthlessly. When she screamed against him, her hips rising and falling to the beat of her passion, O lifted his other hand, landed a sharp smack against her ass cheek and sent her soaring.
Mel’s back arched, her body went tight as a high wire as she threw her head back and exploded. Her pleasure flowed out of her and into O at every point that they touched. He wasn’t just witnessing her ecstasy, he was experiencing it. She gripped him as tight as ivy as she rode her orgasm out. He never let up, gripping and stroking and suckling her until she fell onto him, weak as a cup of chamomile tea.
He untangled and rearranged them so that she lay over his chest, her face tucked into his neck. Her legs opened over his lower stomach so that he could feel the heat of her pussy against him, calling to him. His unsatisfied cock twitched against her leg. He would get to that. But first he had to get a few other things out of the way.
“You feel that?” he asked her, pushing his energy out toward her. She had to feel it. The pulse of feeling for her, rolling out from him like wind over the ocean.
“Yes,” she whispered into his damp skin.
O felt an answering pulse of energy from her. Their feelings mixed in the air, tangling, just like their bodies were doing.
“There’s no undoing that,” he said, his voice strong and sure even though his heart raced. Reaching over to the center console, O grabbed the condom he’d put there earlier and tore it open. Sheathing himself behind her open legs, he kept talking. “This kind of thing doesn’t get unravelled.”
Bracing his hands where her thighs met her ass, he spread her open even further. “We don’t go back from this, Mel.”
She moaned as he slid the tip of his cock through her wetness. “This
is changing you. It’s changing me.” He slid through her again, this time pressing himself a tantalizing inch inside of her before pulling back and doing it all again.
She whimpered as her hips started to move against him in the rhythm he was setting.
“You’re marking me,” he said. “Bruising me, tattooing me.” His hand tangled tightly in her hair, gripping her head and pulling it back so he could look her in the face. He braced one arm over her hips and pushed her down onto his cock as he thrust up and into her. “You’re gonna feel me here forever.”
Mel’s mouth came open in a look of absolute pleasure, her pussy immediately clenching and welcoming his intrusion into her. He thrust again, his hips coming completely off the seat as he slammed her down onto him.
“You’re gonna feel this in the morning,” he growled as he plunged sharply upward. “You’re gonna feel this for the rest of your life.”
With that, he rolled them so that her back was on the seat of the car. He braced one foot on the floor and one hand against the roof and really gave it to her.
“Yes,” Mel moaned, her eyes blind with ecstasy. “O. Make me come. Make me feel you everywhere.”
O rode her, pumping into her like a man who’d lost his right mind. And maybe he had. She made him crazy. Images of her flashed through his mind. Her hands on the steering wheel on the highway, competent and lovely. Her lips closing over her straw. Her chest in that tight T she'd been wearing all day. The crescent moon of skin above her shorts when she'd reached up to close the hatch on the trunk of the car. Her mismatched face. Pouty lips. Her lips. God, those fucking lips. The images came faster now as he pumped into her.
"I can see," she moaned, her eyes glassy. "You're showing me." And with that her hands raked across his back as she came apart under him, clutching him like he was the only thing keeping her inside her body.
Images twirled in his head and they mixed with the reality of her, spread and panting, her hips rising to meet him, taking him deeper with each stroke. And then one last image. The memory of her standing in front of him, curvy and so fragile, her arms outflung, staring down a dragon to keep him from hurting himself.
No one ever cared if he was hurt. No one before her.
O's pleasure tore out of him, almost painfully. He was so full of her in every way that his orgasm had to nearly rip him in two to explode into the world. But explode it did. And took his whole heart with it.
Ten minutes later, still breathing hard but stretched out in the back seat, O gazed down at Mel, a silly smile on his relaxed face.
"It's like wearing polka dots with stripes," he murmured and rolled a knuckle down the line of her nose. "Or a beer with a chocolate bar."
"What?"
"Your face. It shouldn't work. But somehow it does," he said.
"Um. Thanks?" she had to laugh at his audacity. "Pretty sure you just called me ugly."
"This nose of yours drives me nuts," he said, ignoring her. "Mismatched and off-center, it makes you so beautiful. No. Gorgeous. No. Even better, it makes you unique, interesting. A constant question."
"Wanna know how it got that way?" she asked.
O closed his eyes and held one finger in the air as if he were testing the direction of the wind. “Tell me, oh cosmic spirits, the answer to this question. I can see the answer written in the stars. You got trampled by a herd of house cats when you were a wee lass. No, wait. The picture is getting clearer now. You didn't get trampled, but you're so allergic that you sneezed it out of alignment. No. WAIT. Ah, yes. The powerful oracle sees all. You actually ARE a cat. And you broke it when you were learning how to shift as a kid. I can't believe you didn't tell me you were a shifter! You scamp! You audacious little-"
The rest of his words were muffled as Mel reached up and squeezed his lips closed. "Do you think anybody gets as much of a kick out of you as you do?"
O grinned behind her hand. "Hard to say. Love is difficult to measure. There's not really a metric for it."
He started to say more but found his words once again muffled by the force of her hand.
"If you really want to know how my nose got crooked, you have to shut the hell up."
O raised his finger and mimed locking his lips through her hand.
"Okay. I'll tell you. I was born that way."
O studied the off-center feature. "Impossible. You must have broken it."
She shook her head. "I swear. My great Aunt Trudy has the same exact nose. Must be a recessive gene or something. But even in my baby pictures I have it."
Lunging toward the front seat, she grabbed her phone out of the console. She scrolled through her photo album for a second before she found what she was looking for. Baby pictures of herself. "See?"
And sure enough, that same exact nose, in miniature form, poked out of the face of a rather funny-looking 3-month-old. An absolutely delighted laugh burst out of O as he clutched the phone just inches away from his face.
"Oh. My. God. In. Heaven. And. Hell. And. Earth. Good. Lord. Of. All. Sweet. Things. I. Thank. You. For-"
Mel snatched the phone out of O’s hand.
"Alright. That's enough."
He sobered a little, but kept the goofy grin on his face. "I'm just trying to say that I've never met anybody like you, Mel. You're special. And good for me. You're healing me."
Mel looked up. "Healing you? How?"
O stroked a hand down her bare back. "I know my wing looked bad to you today. But you can't imagine what it looked like after Dalyer attacked me. It was almost completely gone.”
Mel froze. She didn't even breathe.
"I never thought I could recover from that, Mel," O went on. "But after I shifted today I realized how much better I've gotten in just the last few days. Somehow being with you is healing me."
Mel said nothing as she sat up. Traced her hand over the intricate patchwork of puckered, lacing scars over his side. "Dalyer did this to you?"
Her voice was quiet. And more serious than he'd ever heard it before. She sounded... fierce. "The evil king that you're trying to stop?"
O nodded. "And this is nothing compared to what he's done to some. He's a destroyer. Plain and simple."
"You hate him," Mel said, pressing her hand to his face. He knew that she could feel what he was feeling, so he calmed himself. Let his softer feelings, the ones he had for her, wash through him.
"We have to keep going on your mission, O. We have to find the man from your visions. We have to stop Dalyer." Her eyes burned with intensity. "And when we find him, I'm gonna feed him his own teeth for what he did to you. To your beautiful body.”
“You’re cute when you’re feisty,” O said, planting a kiss on her plump lips.
Mel swatted him aside. “I’m not being cute. I’m being scary. And intimidating. Dalyer better pray he never meets me face to face. Because if he does, he’s getting a knuckle sandwich.”
O kissed those knuckles.
Mel sighed as she surveyed him in the orange glow of the lighted parking lot. “I guess we should go up and get some sleep so we have energy to hunt for Vision Man tomorrow.”
O nodded and reached for his pants that had somehow ended up draped across the steering wheel. “I’m gonna take you to meet some people tomorrow. People who can help us find the man.”
“Are they shifters or humans?” Mel asked, tugging her shirt over her head.
“One of each,” O replied. “And three little ones in between.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
O bounded up the stairs of the small one-story house. Mel and Ike followed behind. She fingered the two friendship bracelets that she now wore on her wrist. Both O and Ike had insisted they’d made them for her. It was silly, but they calmed her. She wasn't sure what to expect of O's friends. But she was reassured by the little tricycle tipped in the front yard, the sidewalk chalk strewn around the concrete steps, the laundry hanging on the line.
It reminded her of her home with Ike back in Vegas. She watched a tiny T-shirt flap in the b
reeze, pinned by clothespins, and she suddenly got a bone-deep ache. She missed having a baby. And Ikey had been so dang cute. She had never been sad or ashamed to be a single mother. Her only regret was that some days, occasionally, she'd wanted to share his loveliness with someone else. She had just wanted to know that somebody else was seeing what she was seeing.
Mel sighed again. Those days were behind her. She watched O knock in a jaunty rhythm on the front door. Her stomach did a curious little flip as he turned around and winked at her. Everything about him was just so relaxed, his posture, his smile, even his wavy blonde hair peeking out from the pink baseball cap he wore again today.
Ike leaned into her a little and Mel's hand found its way to his shoulders as they heard heavy footsteps come to answer the door. Neither knew what to expect. She was sure that O wouldn't lead them into danger. But still, she found herself holding her breath.
The door swung open and a giant of a man filled the entire frame. This guy's muscles had muscles. His short brown hair was the same amber-ish color as his eyes and his mouth instantly turned into a frown when he saw who had knocked on his door.
"Great," the man said. "Just what I fucking needed today. A visit from Bozo the Psychic."
His comment immediately got Mel’s back up. She bristled at his tone, but O just leaned on the doorjamb, rolled his head to the side. "Psychics are amateurs compared to what I can do. You should know that by now, Amos."
Amos' eyes raised to the heavens but before he could say anything else, a tiny body pushed his way through the middle of Amos' legs.
"Uncle O! Uncle O!" A little dark-haired boy absolutely flung himself out the front door and into O's waiting arms.
Mel took a deep breath and mentally yanked her lady parts to heel as she watched the man she loved rip the shirt up from the kid’s back and blow a loud wet raspberry on his bare skin.
