by Tami Lund
He pushed away from the ground and soared to the roof, the flight over all too soon. When he bowed his head again, Ruby carefully climbed off his back and stood next to the chimney, her gaze darting to the ground, fourteen feet below. He quickly shifted back to human form and wrapped his arm around her shoulders.
“It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
Her responding smile was full of unquestioning trust.
I will never let this child down.
A group of dragons in human form stepped into the clearing then, joking and teasing, some with to-go coffee cups in their hands, all dressed in clothes similar to Ruby and Gabe. He stepped deeper into the shadows, taking his daughter with him.
“Why are we hiding?” she whispered.
“When I was your age, I used to do this all the time.”
“Why?”
“Because I loved to watch them fly.”
Her eyes widened and then magic shimmered in the air. Two men shifted into dragon form, soaring straight up through the treetops and circling and flying back toward the ground. They twisted and turned, clearly having fun, and as more and more people stepped into the clearing from the same path Gabe and Ruby had taken, more and more dragons filled the sky, until it looked like a synchronized swimming act—except flying. And dragons.
“Wow,” Ruby said, all but breathing the word. “They’re beautiful.”
“Yeah, it is pretty spectacular, isn’t it? Especially from here.” He glanced down and saw the excitement shining in her eyes. Narrowing his own, he said, “You are strictly forbidden from ever doing this on your own, do you understand me? I’ll bring you any time you want, but do not—I repeat—do not do this by yourself. Understand?”
“They do this a lot?” she asked instead of answering him.
“Three times a week. Warrior training. Well, our version of it, I suppose. There hasn’t been any sort of war since before I was born, so we’ve gotten lax on our regimen. But it’s still cool to watch.”
“Yeah,” Ruby said, her gaze on the sky, and then they sat down next to each other, backs against the brick, and watched the show.
***
On Wednesday morning, Gabe surfaced from sleep slowly. It was warm here in la-la land. Comfortable too. Although this bed didn’t feel like his own. It wasn’t quite as firm, and seemed smaller.
They’d ended up tumbling into Talia’s bed again last night instead of his own.
Without opening his eyes, he moved his hands over the soft, supple body sprawled across his chest.
Ah. Talia.
She was nestled between his legs with her head lying on his chest. His morning wood pressed into her stomach. Hooking his hands under her arms, he gently pulled her higher, the friction against his dick making him groan, until she snuggled her face into the crook of his shoulder. She shifted her hips, adjusting, probably trying to get comfortable, until she spread her legs, resting them on either side of his. He rolled his hips and his cock slid through her outer folds, still wet from not-quite-sex the night before. She made a little gasping noise but didn’t come fully awake.
Dropping his hands, he massaged her ass, gently kneading and lifting his hips at the same time. So, so good.
Even better if you penetrate, his dragon whispered slyly.
No! He ground his teeth but didn’t stop moving, didn’t push her away.
He could feel her heart kicking up speed and she began to breathe in short pants while her body found his rhythm. One hand clutched his shoulder while the other threaded in his hair. She was definitely awake now too.
Dry humping, that’s what this was, although there wasn’t anything dry about it. Her arousal coated both of them, and the faster they moved, it began making a wet, smacking sound. He didn’t stop, used his hands on her ass to slide her up and down along his length. A couple of times he nearly slid right into her; their bodies knew exactly what to do and very much wanted it to happen.
But they couldn’t. For one thing, no condom handy, and he doubted very much Talia was interested in becoming a mother any time soon. But most important: he didn’t want to seal the deal, make this whole fated mate thing a reality.
Even if his dragon really, really liked that idea.
Talia suddenly gripped his hair so tightly it stung, while her hips began pistoning until she cried out, her orgasm slamming into her. The reaction triggered his own, and he reached down between them, grabbed his member, and pumped urgently until creamy white streamers spurted onto his stomach.
Talia rolled onto her side next to him and fluttered her eyes open. He glanced at her and smiled.
“We really need to get some condoms,” she said.
He turned away, hoping she didn’t catch his faltering smile.
***
An hour later, they dropped Ruby off for her first day of school. She clung to his hand with a death grip, until one of the kids she’d met at the beach ran up and pulled her away to introduce her to the rest of her friends. Beside him, Talia slowly released her breath. Yeah, maybe it was nice to have a partner in this child-rearing business.
But it wasn’t enough for him to be willing to test the fates.
“I need to go take care of some business,” he said when they left the schoolhouse.
She nodded. “I need to prepare for your meeting with the Elders.”
“Great. I’ll see you back at the house.” He didn’t wait for her consent before striding toward the woods.
Although most dragons tended to live the majority of their existence in human form, their lifespans were more than twice the length of their human counterparts. A dragon didn’t qualify for the title “Elder” until he was at least a century old, and even then, he had to have enough life experience to be able to guide the rest of the colony in their day-to-day activities. Generally, one didn’t become an Elder until they’d experienced some sort of life- or-death trauma.
At least, that’s how it seemed to Gabe.
Adelbern was the oldest dragon in the Zilarra colony. He’d lived through one full-on dragon war, a dozen skirmishes, and most importantly, the curse.
“Tell me how this fated mate business works,” he said after Adelbern invited him into his tiny, two-room cabin in the woods. The older man claimed he’d spent plenty enough time in the company of dragons and preferred his solitude these days, except for when he was summoned to Elder and colony meetings, of course. He didn’t know it, but Gabe paid a young dragon to check up on the old man every day. Gabe didn’t want their wisest and oldest member to get hurt and, gods forbid, die alone just because he was too stubborn to live closer to civilization.
“I get that question pretty regularly, but I admit, I never thought you would ask.” Adelbern pulled a bottle of whiskey from a cupboard, then grabbed two glasses and motioned to Gabe. “Come, let’s sit outside. My knees are paining me more than usual today, which means bad weather is coming. Let’s enjoy the warmth while we can.”
It wasn’t exactly warm, considering Adelbern’s home was surrounded by hundred-foot tall trees, but it was pleasant enough out on the old man’s back porch. They sat in cushioned chairs with a small, round table between them, where Adelbern placed the bottle and glasses. Gabe poured them each a drink—the Elder liked his whiskey neat, and while Gabe preferred his over ice, he certainly wasn’t complaining. The man had excellent taste in adult beverages; ice wasn’t really needed.
“So tell me,” Adelbern said once they were seated with drinks in hand. “Why are you asking?”
“What are you, part fae? Can’t answer a question without asking one of your own?”
The old man chuckled and sipped his whiskey. “Maybe. Who knows? Most magical species have interbred with one another by this point in time. When we’re in human form, when we’re buck naked and high on endorphins, the fact that we aren’t usually alike hardly matters, does it?”
“True,” Gabe said. Hell, he and Talia barely got along for the past five years. They certainly hadn’t been attracted to eac
h other, at least not enough to actually do anything about it. He always thought she was a Goody-Two-Shoes; she never hid her dislike of his laissez-faire lifestyle.
Now they couldn’t keep their damn hands off each other. Or their mouths. And considering she now lived with him and he had no intention of ending their affair any time soon, she was bound to realize he had a stash of condoms in his bedside table. Or hell, in his wallet. If she didn’t just go out and buy a box herself, which was most definitely something she would do.
And then he’d have no excuse for not copulating with her. His only option would be to attempt to end the liaison. Which he doubted his dragon would let him do. Hell, he didn’t want to, so he didn’t even need his dragon to force him not to do it. Damn, he was really in a bind here.
“What, precisely, do you want to know about, er, as you call it, this fated mate business?” Adelbern asked.
Gabe leaned forward and rested his elbows on his thighs, holding the glass in both hands while staring into the amber-colored liquid. “Is it stoppable? Like, if you think you’ve found your fated mate, can you decide not to mate with them?”
“What a fascinating question, considering our colony has been under a curse for, what, thirty years or so? Not a single dragon has found his fated mate in all that time, and now you—someone who refuses to take a mate at all, let alone a fated one—are asking how to stop fate from happening.”
“Well, if we aren’t fated mates, what the hell is going on?” Gabe muttered, more to himself than to Adelbern, although, of course, the older dragon heard him.
“What makes you think you are fated to this—another dragon, I assume?”
He nodded. “Yes. We, uh, it’s…” Shit. He wasn’t used to talking to anyone other than Talia, and even then, it wasn’t about feelings.
“Fated mates generally are attracted to each other far more than they are to anyone else.” Adelbern had apparently decided to take mercy on him. “That isn’t to say they won’t find other dragons sexually attractive, just that this one in particular is going to stand out, like a single red tulip in a field of yellow ones. All are beautiful, but your eye is drawn to the red one every single time.”
Huh. You know, he could picture every outfit she’d ever worn, every hairstyle, every smile or frown, the way her eyes became lighter or darker depending on her mood.
He couldn’t recall such detail for any other person in his acquaintance. Especially not any of the nameless, faceless women he’d screwed over the years. But Talia, hell, he already had her body memorized, and it was only a few days ago that he’d gotten his hands on it for the first time.
“They also want to please each other, to be there for each other, no matter what the other may be doing. They tend to complement each other. If one is gruff, the other is cheerful. If one is outgoing, the other is often an introvert. Together, they are the perfect scenario, but separately, they do not feel complete.”
Gabe had never felt complete. The only times he ever felt remotely…comfortable were when Talia was around. And when they’d flown together, it had been damn near euphoric. Scratch that, not “damn near” at all.
Shit.
“And even with all of that, nowadays, with so many dragons acting like humans and trying to convince themselves they don’t need a mate to be happy, many don’t realize what’s right in front of their face, at least not until they fly together in dragon form. That’s usually when it smacks them upside the head. Our dragons are often far wiser than we are, especially when they are more in control, which is what happens when we shift.”
Gabe lifted a shaky hand and swallowed half the whiskey in his glass.
“Sometimes, though, fated mates skip that step and go straight to sex.” Adelbern waved his finger at Gabe. “When fated mates have sexual intercourse for the first time, it’s sort of an inadvertent bonding ritual. They seal their fates together, for all of eternity. It’s to do with the dragons. When our humanoid forms are at their most vulnerable, when we’re in that moment of ecstasy, it allows our dragons to connect and bind themselves together. And once that happens, you can never be apart, not entirely. It’s a similar feeling when they are flying together, although not quite as intense, since you are still fully in your mind even when you are in dragon form. But flying together is often viewed as foreplay for dragons, as well, so typically, when fated mates fly together for the first time, they often end up coupling shortly thereafter.” He chuckled. “And usually every time thereafter, as well.”
Gabe pinched the bridge of his nose while Adelbern sobered and added, “At least, that’s how it is in other colonies. We’re the only one affected by the curse, it would seem.”
“Can it be stopped?”
“The curse?”
“No. When you realize you’ve found your fated mate. Can you stop it?”
“I can’t imagine why you would want to.”
“Just answer the damn question.”
“First, I want to talk about the fact that you seem to believe you have found your fated mate. This should be impossible, given the curse.”
Gabe flung the hand that wasn’t holding his drink into the air. “Don’t ask me. I know even less about the curse than I do about fated mates.”
Adelbern took another sip of whiskey. “It happened roughly thirty years ago. You would have been a toddler, most likely. No one knows the origin, which is why it’s so damn frustrating. All we know is that one day, everyone who was already mated suddenly felt…different. Not quite as tied to the person they were with. Not that they’d fallen out of love, but that, say, extra bonus that was only felt by those who were meant to be together no longer existed. It was just love. Or lust or whatever. But it wasn’t…special anymore. And since that day, not a single dragon in this colony has found their fated mate.
“It took us years to work out what was going on. Couples who had been happy together for decades were suddenly arguing like hormonal teens and their parents. Some separated, one or the other leaving the colony. A lot of dragons in our colony became depressed. It’s hard to explain, but ever since that day, there’s been something missing. For all of us. We’ve learned to live with it, but I can tell you, if we could, we’d go back in time and figure out how it started and break it or make sure it never happened in the first place.”
“That’s a weird curse. Aren’t curses usually created in fits of passion? And typically isn’t someone around to witness, since people don’t normally get bent out of shape alone?”
“True.” Adelbern rested his elbows on the arms of his chair and steepled his fingers under his chin. “Perhaps we should look into the origins again. By the time we truly grasped what was going on, many years had passed. We had no idea where to start, what to do. And we still had lives to lead. The colony still had to be managed, the young still had to be taken care of. A few of us made a half-ass attempt to investigate the origins, but even back then it was frustrating as hell. Opening up this can of worms now…” He sighed gustily.
Gabe lifted his gaze and stared out into the trees.
“But if you think you’ve found yours, perhaps something has happened. Perhaps you are the key to figuring out and possibly lifting the curse.”
“Yeah, well, here’s the problem: I don’t want to find my fated mate. Or any mate.”
“This is problematic for the reeve of a dragon colony. In fact, it’s supposed to go with the territory. As we’d already made one mistake with our previous reeve, it’s a shame that we may have done it again.”
“Actually, I fixed that problem you’re referring to. I have an heir.”
Adelbern’s eyes widened while his white, bushy brows shot up his forehead.
“Her name’s Ruby. Cute kid. Apparently looks just like her mother, since she doesn’t look a thing like me. But she’s mine. And now she’s my heir. Without taking a mate.”
“This is…unusual. Who is the mother?”
“Don’t know. Well, I know her name, but I have no idea who she
is. Talia found her.” He paused, but when Adelbern didn’t say anything, he continued, “Ruby and her mom were living with the Rojo dragons. Her mom was addicted to that dragon’s blood shit. Talia put her mom in rehab and brought Ruby here.”
“And how do you know she’s yours?”
“Talia figured it out.”
“Well, I suppose if Talia says it’s so…”
“Exactly. So see? Problem solved. Without me taking a mate.”
“Well, not entirely, if you believe you’ve found your fated mate, yet do not wish to claim her as such.”
“Right. So tell me, is that possible?”
Adelbern didn’t answer for long, long minutes. Gabe clutched his glass, unsure of how he wanted the old man to answer. No, no, he knew exactly what he wanted. Or didn’t want. And that was a fated mate.
Because mates left and love hurt and after his parents abandoned him, Gabe swore he’d never put himself in that position again.
Finally, Adelbern slowly said, “Yes.”
Chapter 11
While Gabe read a bedtime story to Ruby, Talia slipped into her bedroom and pulled the box of condoms she’d bought earlier out of her purse and placed it on the bedside table. She didn’t understand why the man had become so forgetful of late, when, as far as she knew, he’d always been careful about protecting himself while he tomcatted around. Maybe his mind became fuzzy whenever she was around and he lost his train of thought?
That’s what kept happening to her. One minute she’d be diligently working away at putting together the agenda for the next colony meeting and then he’d walk into the room and she’d immediately forget what she was doing and focus instead on imagining stripping him naked so she could lick him from head to toe.
