by Lily Cahill
Felicity snorted, even as she tipped back her head to give Damien better access. “The understatement of the century.” He nibbled lightly, and she bit back a groan. “I caught most of your interview. I can’t ever thank you enough. I know it must have been terrifying to—”
Damien took a step back, putting real space between them. His mouth was a firm line as he stared down at her. “You don’t have to thank me for this. I did it because I love you, not because I want you to thank me. My brothers and I don’t need to hide, now that we understand the prophecy. Your sister needed me in the spotlight, and they agreed to be dragged along because they know how important you are to me.”
The words made Felicity flush. She’d never had a man speak so sweetly to her—at least not without an ulterior motive.
“Can I ask you something?” she hedged, biting her lip. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
He pushed a stray lock of hand behind her ear, his hands warm against her skin. His touch made her heart beat faster. “You can ask me anything.”
“Why did you ask me out?” When she noted his surprise, she glanced away, embarrassed. It was such a petty thing to wonder about. It wasn’t that she doubted his love—she didn’t, not for a minute—but that didn’t mean she understood its origins. She thought of how she’d looked the first time they saw each other: disheveled and in an unflattering polo.
“I’m just curious, you know. In the past, it was always because of who I was. Felicity Valdez, sure she’s chubby but she’s also going to come into a lot of power and money, so ….”
Damien captured her in a kiss, pressing tightly against her, the feel of his body hard against her own. When he pulled back, she felt faintly dazed.
“Wow,” she managed.
“There’s an old story,” Damien said, his voice low. “Sort of a fairy tale, for dragon children, about how there is only one true love for each dragon, how he or she can only have one true mate. I never paid much attention to it before because I wasn’t sure I’d live long enough to find real love. I’ve only ever had flings, no one I really cared for. I couldn’t trust emotional attachments. But I saw you, and both the man and dragon in me wanted you. It felt … destined. So I made up my mind to have you.”
The blush that had been starting to fade flared up again, twice as strong. She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting him to say, but that hadn’t been it. She swallowed around the lump in her throat.
“Oh,” she said, trying to wrap her mind around it. Destiny, fate—she’d never much cared for those concepts before. They’d felt foreign and false, like the stuff little girls dreamed about. But she had felt it, too, the strange attraction, like there was a tether between them.
“I love you,” Damien declared. He picked up her hand, kissed her open palm, and then started to make his way up her arm. “I love every part of you. Let me worship you like you deserve.”
The words made all of the blood rush out of her head, stirring arousal deep inside of her.
“But—but Joy and the nurse ….”
He pretended to glare at her. “Are you a witch or aren’t you?”
“Oh,” she said. During normal circumstances, she would have felt embarrassed, but these weren’t normal circumstances. These were get-naked-with-the-man-she-loved circumstances, and there was no time to feel self-conscious.
She grabbed his hand and tugged him toward her room. As soon as they were both inside, she turned to face him, her back to the door. She shut and locked it without looking away from his eyes, and then murmured, “Silentium.”
Damien’s face inched closer and closer to her own. “You’re sure they can’t hear us?”
“We could be a million miles away, for all they’d be able to tell,” she whispered back. Going up on her toes, Felicity closed the space between them. She threw her arms around his neck and dragged him closer.
HIs hands dipped beneath her thighs, and he lifted her up, taking a few, sure strides to the bed. They tumbled together in a pile of limbs, and it felt like his mouth was everywhere: at the sensitive spot below her ear, at the juncture of her neck and shoulder, tracing her collarbone, lapping at her nipple over her shirt.
Every touch and sensation lit her up from the inside out. Desire pooled in Felicity, making her curl her toes as Damien continued his journey down her body.
Felicity caught him by the shoulder of his shirt and dragged him back up. She couldn’t wait for slow, didn’t want to hold back for another minute. Damien found her mouth with his, and while he was preoccupied, she ran her hand down his flat, hard abs, feeling the ridges of the muscle beneath her palm.
She reached his belt buckle and thought the word apertus. The buckle unlatched, the button of his jeans and his zipper flew down. It was more than she’d intended, but apparently even her magic was eager to get its hands on him.
Felicity sneaked her fingers down to front of his boxers, feeling him hot and hard in her hand. Damien growled in her ear and moved just out of her reach, flipping her onto her back and pinning her hands above her head.
It was like she could barely breathe, barely think. No one had ever done that to her before, held any part of her down. To her surprise, she felt the hot curl of desire unfurling at the base of her spine. She squirmed in his hold, her center aching for more of his touch, his hands, anything.
Damien hovered above her, his pupils blown wide with desire. It made his eyes look fathomless; she could stare into them but never see their true depths.
“Do you like that?” he asked, his voice hoarse as he nodded toward her hands.
Felicity moaned in reply. Words weren’t coming to her, let alone coherent answers to questions. She liked it, and she knew he knew it. More than anything she wanted to spread her legs wide, welcome him between them, but the way he was positioned above her kept her in place.
She wiggled beneath him, hoping to entice him. The curves of her breasts brushed along his front, and he groaned.
“I take it back,” he said, letting go of her wrists. “You had to the right idea. Magic the clothes away at will.”
She didn’t know a spell for that, but she felt the need for it within her, and she tapped into her magic core, and let her will works its way. When she came back to the world, they were both naked and pressed gloriously close, his skin burning hot to the touch.
His fingers dipped between them and entered her, pumping in and out as he thumbed over her clit. Felicity felt her muscles seize around him, and threw her head back as wave after wave of pleasure crashed over her. She’d had no idea she was close, the orgasm sneaking up on her. Before it was even over, he was inside of her, his hips snapping against her own with each driving thrust.
He was hot and hard inside of her, and the stretch of it was so good. Felicity let her head fall back as she cried out. Her body was already tensing again, already going taut like a wire about to break. Her fingers walked toward her sex but Damien intersected her, one hand on one of her ankles, the other rubbing over her nub relentlessly.
“Don’t,” he told her, when her hand started sneaking back that direction again. “I want all your pleasure to belong … to … me.”
He punctuated each word with a deep thrust, his thick cock buried deep.
The words, the motions, his hands on her—Felicity couldn’t help it. Her pleasure belonged to him, she belonged to him. And he belonged to her.
The orgasms hit her again and she screamed her pleasure to the world, distantly glad for silencing spells. The clench of her muscles around him tipped him over the edge, and he followed her a moment later, his body falling on top of hers, covering her.
His breath was in her ear, the salt of his sweat on her tongue as she kissed his shoulder, his neck, and drew him closer. Things had changed so much, so quickly. There was no going back now.
“I have to go back to New York to take care of my duties to my family,” Felicity murmured, holding him tightly. “Will you come with me?”
; She felt him smile against her skin. “Do you even have to ask?”
He pushed up to one elbow, looking down at her. He was beautiful in the fading light of the day, bronze skin and dark hair, his serious, sensual mouth. And somehow, he looked at her like she suspected she looked at him.
“What’ll you do with The Witch’s Brew? I know how much you love it.”
She sighed, frowned. “I’d hate to sell it. That’s sentimental, but I can’t help it. Maybe Joy will want to run it, when she’s better. I’ll talk to her about it.”
“I’m sure she’ll like that.”
“We’ll rule together,” she said decidedly. Staring into his eyes, she felt like it was possible—more than possible, fated.
“We mended the bonds. We forgave old sins.” He settled next to her, his body curling around hers. “Our part of the prophecy is complete, and now we get to write the future.”
Felicity smiled. That sounded perfect to her.
Chapter One
Blayze
“AND THEN DAMIEN SAID THAT the police mentioned they were aware of the drugs in Augustus and were working on finding their source,” Arryn concluded, lifting his beer to his mouth to take a drink. “Damien and Felicity are pissed. Felicity’s apparently convinced that it really was a planned attack on Joy, not just a random drug thing.”
Blayze sighed. “Uh huh.”
“They’re talking about coming back here for a while once Joy is out of rehab, making sure she has a support system. It’ll be nice to have him back in Augustus. Do you think you’ll come back with him?”
Blayze sighed again. “I don’t know.”
Arryn shoved at him and Blayze shrugged off his brother’s hand.
“Why are you being such a dick, man? It’s my birthday.”
Blayze wanted to sigh but managed to hold it back. When he and his brothers had shown up in Augustus, he’d known it was not the place for him. He didn’t fit in here. He wanted a real nightlife, real excitement. Something louder, crazier. Something fun.
And Augustus—well, sure, it had its charms. It was cute, he guessed, with its wide sidewalks and host of locally owned shops. And the cohesion between the magical and Other societies was nice. But he didn’t want cute. It had worked when they were undercover, of course, but they didn’t have to be undercover anymore. Not when their brother was practically ruling the magical world.
Or, at least, he would be, once he and Felicity got married. Which could happen at any moment, as far as Blazye was concerned. Those two were so gone on each other it was actually kind of disgusting. Blayze liked Felicity, once he’d gotten to know her better—she was nice, smart, and pretty. Had he seen her in a club, he would have been all up on her.
But she and his brother and settled into domestic bliss like a pair of retirees. They were always talking about serious things, like Joy’s continued recovery, and, like, how to responsibly move away from power so that the supposed democracy the magical world was enjoying became actual democracy.
And when they weren’t being serious, they were being lovey-dovey and annoying and—ugh. He was glad Damien was happy, but couldn’t his happiness be a little less gross to witness?
Arryn and Vincent didn’t understand. They were all for Felicity and Damien, once they’d gotten to know the Valdez girl a bit better. But they couldn’t see Blayze’s point, which was that they were all too young and now, suddenly, too famous to tie themselves down.
They were in the spotlight, all four of them, because Damien had saved Joy Valdez’s life. And the spotlight? It loved them.
Blayze loved it right back.
He loved leaving a club in New York City and having paparazzi with cameras outside screaming his name, fans begging for his picture or his autograph. He was one of the last four dragons, a prince, and the tabloids could not get enough. He couldn’t walk outside without being mobbed by people. Jobs had never been Blayze’s specialty—he was always getting fired from one or another. Being famous, though … he was pretty good at that.
The Dragomir brothers had gone from being the subject of a tragic story—four young lives lost in a grab for power that went too far—to triumphant heroes who had escaped death. Their survival was miraculous, their sudden reappearance unendingly interesting.
Damien tolerated the spotlight, glad to pay any price necessary to be with Felicity. Arryn and Vincent both hated it—Vincent because it meant it was harder to spend time as a dragon without piquing other peoples’ interest, and Arryn because people now wanted to see him shift all the time.
But Blayze loved it. He couldn’t get enough. What was better than a life where all eyes were on him, where everyone girl wanted him and every guy wanted to be him?
And here he was, stuck for an entire weekend in Augustus as he celebrated Arryn’s birthday. Not that he minded making a trip for his baby brother, but he wished he could have convinced the guy to come out to NYC instead. Arryn had been vehemently opposed—too many people, too much attention. As far as Blayze was concerned, those things were the main draw to the city, but it wasn’t his birthday, so he conceded.
Arryn was on his fourth beer, and it seemed like he was having a nice time. He and Vin were laughing at something as Blazye slouched back into the vinyl seating of their booth. The bar was crowded, since it was a Saturday night. Everyone pressed in close, leaning up against high top tables, laughing with their friends. He casually looked around to see if there was anyone who might be worth picking up for a night or two of fun. If he was going to be stuck in boring old Augustus for the weekend, he might as well find something—or, more accurately, someone—to do.
No one struck his fancy. A skinny bottle blonde gave him eyes from her stool at the bar, but he looked past her. Maybe if he was desperate later, but he liked his girls were a little more meat on them. Soft curves, luscious, round breasts—he liked a woman who looked like she could handle him.
The lights dimmed and Vin stood up, nodding toward Blayze’s near-empty bottle. “Another round?”
Blayze nodded. “Sure.”
“You got it, Basilton.”
That name. His mother, God rest her soul, had named him to honor some great uncle she’d been fond of as a small girl. His brothers thought it was hilarious, which was unfair. They’d all been given completely normal names.
That was the good thing about the aliases. He had been able to be whoever he wanted. His childhood nickname—given to him by his father after he’d accidentally set a room ablaze during a temper tantrum—had seemed as good as any.
Also, he just kind of liked it. It suited him. Way more than Basilton, that was for sure.
“I’m only letting you get away with that because you’re buying,” Blayze told him, making Vincent laugh as he walked toward the bar. His voice sounded strangely loud, and he suddenly realized that the bar had gone quiet, a hush settling over the crowd.
Arryn leaned over, dropped his voice to a whisper. “This is why I wanted to come here tonight. You won’t believe this.”
He pointed to the corner of the room, where a small stage was set up. A few people bustled around, one tuning an acoustic guitar, the other sitting down at the drum kit. Blayze fought back a sigh. He had nothing against live music, but it was a weekend night. He didn’t want to sit around in some small club and listen to someone warble out some tunes they occasionally practiced with friends in their basement. He wanted something with a beat, something he could move to. Something that women could move to.
He put on his best happy face and nodded, feigning interest for Arryn’s sake. He could do the low key thing for just one night. Tomorrow he could high tail it back to the city, to real life.
The drum kicked a few times, getting everyone’s attention, and the guitar picked out a few notes. The lights dimmed in the bar and went up on the stage. A woman climbed up the steps, moving in shadow until she hit the microphone, where she was suddenly cast in light.
Blayze felt his mouth drop open.
Next to h
im, Arryn snickered. “Told you.”
She was exquisite. Dark skin, and the biggest, most beautiful brown eyes he had ever seen. She had a perfectly-shaped mouth, the dip in her upper lip making it look like a heart. Her cheekbones were high and sharp, cutting the light that felt across her face.
And her body.
She was shaped like an hour glass, full chest and hips with gorgeous curves connecting them. She was in a dress with a fitted bodice, just a hint of cleavage. The skirt flared down, shorter in the front and longer in the back, nearly trailing to the floor. It was a bright sky blue, and it stood out bold against her beautiful, dark skin. She looked amazing in it, but Blayze had a feeling she would look even more amazing if it was lying on his bedroom floor.
He shifted in his seat. Just looking at this girl was making his cock react.
A beer suddenly appeared in front of him, Vincent sitting down a moment later. He and Arryn exchanged knowing looks.
“So,” Vin said, a bit of a laugh in his voice. “It seems Blayze likes the band.”
Blayze realized they were trying to tease him, but he wasn’t embarrassed. There was nothing embarrassing about being attracted to this gorgeous woman. He didn’t even know her name, but he wanted her in his bed. Needed her there.
“They haven’t even started playing,” Blayze pointed out. It didn’t actually matter, of course. He fully intended to take this girl to bed, even if she was the worst singer on the planet.
“Thought you might get bored in Augustus for my birthday, so I preemptively found a way to stop you from whining.”
Blayze let his retort die on his lips as the woman leaned over the mic and said in a smooth, sultry voice, “Is everyone having a nice time tonight?”
There were cheers everywhere—quite a few more from gentlemen than from ladies. Apparently, Blayze was not the only one to notice this exceptional beauty. He wasn’t worried. How many among his competition could claim to be one of the lost Dragomir princes? It was his ace in the hole, what made him stand out. Ever since the TV interview a few weeks back, he hadn’t had to work to get laid. Girls approached him.
