Learning to Love [A Dragon's Growl 9] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove)

by Marcy Jacks

  Micah reached for a small plate and began piling on his food.

  Marxus found a seat for himself. It made sense that everyone would want to be seated next to their mates, and maybe it was because of that, that there was one final chair left open, right next to Marxus.

  Zane hadn’t found a spot yet. They looked at each other. Marxus raised a brow at the man. Zane clenched his fists, but neither of them said anything as Zane came around to the other side of the table and took a seat.

  No one seemed to notice the tense air surrounding either Marxus or Zane, but Marxus sure as hell noticed it. He noticed the increase in heat to his right as Zane sat down, he noticed the very obvious way Zane did not look at him, and he noticed the man’s scent. He felt all of it deep in his bones, and it was driving him absolutely up the wall that he couldn’t reach out and touch.

  He wanted to glare at the man, to jump to his feet and start shouting down at him, to demand to know what the hell his problem was because this was driving Marxus absolutely up the wall, and why in the holy name of fuck wasn’t Zane going through this, too?

  Why wasn’t he showing any signs of discomfort? Marxus could smell a hint of lust from the man, but it was barely anything, considering Zane should be twitchy and sweaty and struggling to keep himself together.

  “All right,” Seth said quickly, clapping his hands together, grabbing everyone’s attention even as they all reached out for the little sandwiches and cheese platters that had been set out for them. “Stefan and I called you all here for a reason. We always do.”

  Marxus didn’t reach out for any of the food. He stayed perfectly seated right where he was. Zane didn’t reach out for any food either, but that could just be because he wasn’t all that hungry. It could have nothing at all to do with the fact that he might really be trying to hold himself together.

  Why was he so hard to read?

  “So what’s going on, boss?” Andrei asked. His mate whispered something in Andrei’s ear, and Andrei reached out and grabbed the pitcher of ice water for him, passing it to Jesse so he could pour himself a drink.

  “Another vampire attack planned?” James asked.

  The half-dragon, half-wolf hybrid was new to the group, and Marxus still wasn’t entirely sure about him, but he did like the growl to the man’s voice when he said the word vampire, as well as the threatening way he picked at his fingernails with a deadly looking knife.

  Taylor, his mate, smiled as he reached out and took the weapon from him, shaking his head when James looked at him, as though trying to tell him that such a weapon wasn’t needed at the table.

  It was funny to see James huff and pout for not getting his way.

  “No, this might actually be good,” Seth said. “Stefan and I were out the last three days in a row, and at first we thought we were getting a vampire trail or, at least, the trail of someone working for them.”

  Marxus noted the twitch in Zane’s eye and the open way Josh flinched.

  They were living proof, along with James, who had no reaction at all, that vampires were perfectly willing to go along with their lives either hiring or using anyone they could as part of their twisted plots. They enslaved some and employed others. It meant they were very difficult to get at.

  “Anyway,” Stefan said, picking up on the conversation, “the tracks we got were human only some of the time. Other times they weren’t wolves, not even in boots like we would have expected from a group of men hired to scope us out.”

  This had Marxus’s curiosities growing. He had to admit that. “What kind of tracks were they?”

  “Dragon,” Seth said. “Another clan might be checking us out.”

  Chapter Five

  Zane heard that, and he nearly had a small heart attack. Then he remembered clearly that he was sitting amongst a group of dragons. They weren’t the enemy anymore, and another clan of dragons might not be such a bad thing.

  In fact, Seth had said he was fairly hopeful this would turn out to be a good thing.

  Zane listened carefully, absorbing all the information he could as it was laid out and the questions were asked. He was both shocked and pleased to see that Miles, as well as the other mates, were allowed to speak at the table. They weren’t being held back by anything.

  Not the way the vampires would have held back those at a lower social standing from themselves.

  He tried not to look at Marxus the entire time. He tried not to think about what it could possibly be like to live with the other man and have a real relationship with him.

  He tried especially not to think about what it had felt like when Marxus had been thrusting inside him, powerfully, hard, fast, kissing him and making Zane wonder what in the hell he’d been doing all his life that he’d never known a pleasure like that before.

  Okay, head out of the gutter. Stop it. No more thinking like that when the man was literally sitting right next to him.

  He was going to get himself into shit. Dragons could smell lust. He knew that much, and if one of the things he definitely didn’t want was for Marxus to be able to catch a whiff of Zane’s dick twitching and his balls tightening, then the very last thing he wanted was for everyone around the table to smell that, too.

  Especially while they were eating.

  He looked at the ice water pitcher closest to him on the table. He could reach out and take it right now. God, he wanted so badly to grab it and dump it all over his head and his crotch to make this damned heat go away.

  The air conditioner couldn’t get fixed fast enough that was for damned sure.

  He blew out a heavy breath.

  “Everything okay, Zane?” Seth asked.

  Zane tensed. Fuck. He hadn’t heard the last several sentences Seth had just said. “Sorry?”

  “Do you want to add to this?”

  He sounded perfectly serious, not at all as if he was laying down a trap for Zane.

  Zane swallowed. “It’s just…kind of fucked up. No offense. I never knew there could be so many dragons in the world, and now that there might be another clan of them watching us, it’s just…weird.”

  He always had been the best actor. It was how he’d landed all of the jobs he’d had when he was a kid and how he and Josh had managed to stay alive while working inside of a vampire mansion.

  It was definitely helping him in that moment while he was stuck sitting beside Marxus, pretending as if he hadn’t had to jerk himself off three times before coming down to this meeting in order to be even close to normal right now.

  Fuck, now he was thinking of Marxus again.

  Stop it! He had to stop that!

  Seth seemed to buy what Zane had been selling, and he nodded, going back to giving out all the details of this possible new clan that he and Stefan had been able to collect.

  So far they only had a guess on the numbers and why the clan might be here, but it was something. At least a dozen or so men, no telling how many alphas, or if they were friendly.

  All still very important information that Zane was having an incredibly hard time keeping in his head.

  He was going to have to ask Josh for the Cliff Notes version of this later. There was no way in hell he was going to be able to retain all of this info.

  The meeting couldn’t have ended fast enough, and when it finally did, Zane muttered something about needing to use the bathroom as he got up from his seat and left the room.

  The other dragons would still be talking amongst themselves, getting more details, sharing ideas about what they thought might or might not be happening to the clan and in the house.

  Zane prayed to God that Marxus stayed behind.

  He thought he was home free when he made it to the washroom and locked the door behind him.

  Only then was he able to sigh and actually breathe.

  Fuck that had been intense. So intense, and his heart pounded as though he just finished a spar.

  He went to the sink, turning the water on, which was still cold, thankfully. He splashed his fac
e a couple of times to clear his head.

  Josh had suggested on more than one occasion that he should seriously consider a swim in the pool. Josh had been shy around this house for the longest time, and it seemed he still was in certain respects, but his mate, Dimitri, had been slowly easing him out of that shell.

  Enough that Josh felt comfortable enough to use the pool room with his mate and the other omegas.

  Zane stayed away from the pool room. He couldn’t handle the thought of going in there when he could still feel what it had been like to be entered, thrust into, taken, and dominated in the best possible way in that exact pool.

  It was so embarrassing to think about. He definitely didn’t want to go back, knowing some of the omegas in the house had to know what he and Marxus had done there. How could they not know when Marxus had said he would help them to clean the pool out?

  Whatever. He had to get out of here. He flushed the toilet to pretend he’d actually been doing something and then unlocked the door to let himself out.

  Only to see Marxus standing right there, blocking the way, his face perfectly serious before his hand came to the back of Zane’s head, pulling him closer, crushing their mouths together as he pushed Zane back into the bathroom and slammed the door shut behind him.

  Zane couldn’t move. The shock of having that mouth on his after just thinking about the heat of those lips…oh God, he couldn’t even think of a way to finish that inner thought. He was melting. The heat from the lack of air conditioning and from Marxus’s body was boiling him alive inside his own skin.

  Marxus pushed him up against the far wall. It was a half bathroom so there was no shower or tub in here. Those were upstairs. There was still a rack for a set of small hand towels, and it dug painfully hard into Zane’s back.

  Painful, but for the love of everything holy, Zane had never had this kind of pleasure before just from kissing someone.

  He’d had it the last time they’d kissed. The problem was just that Zane had nearly forgotten about how good this had felt. He’d wanted it, he’d touched himself to the memory of it, but the real thing was nothing like a memory.

  He could actually feel this.

  Then it was gone, and he and Marxus panted for breath while their noses still touched.

  “Fuck, I’ve been wanting to do that to you for two days.”

  “Uh-huh?” Zane was lucky the syllables that left his throat sounded remotely normal. Normal enough. He at least wouldn’t look like a complete idiot as he tried to keep himself from flying apart in Marxus’s arms.

  “Why didn’t you come to me?”

  “Why?” He still couldn’t seem to get his brain and his mouth to work together.

  Marxus shook him a little. “Yes, why? Fuck, I was trying to wait you out. Then you come in here to be alone and…”

  Marxus trailed off, and Zane didn’t understand why. Not at first, but then the man started to sniff at the air. “You didn’t jerk off in here, did you?”

  Zane shook his head. “No.”

  At least he could handle one-word answers.

  Then Marxus reached his hand down, his palm cupping the bulge that had formed between Zane’s legs, and what little brainpower Zane had flew right out the damned window.

  Zane hissed, his knees trembling, and he damn near went down. He would have if Marxus’s powerful body wasn’t keeping him propped up.

  God, this man was strong. Zane wasn’t exactly the size of one of the omegas walking around here, and he could handle himself for the most part, but this…Marxus’s strength was a turn-on. More so than any of the other guys that Zane had let take him in the past.

  Marxus made him feel alive.

  “You’re hard,” Marxus said.

  Zane glared at the man. “No shit.”

  “And you still swear too much.”

  Zane was going to murder him. He swore to it. He was going to murder this man because he did nothing but drive Zane up the damned wall.

  “I’m gonna kill you.”

  Marxus briefly stopped the sweet, sensual motion of his hand. He looked at Zane with a lifted brow for about two seconds before he grinned, his hand resuming the up-and-down, forward-and-back motion that made Zane shiver with pleasure.

  “Gonna kill me, are you?”

  Zane let his head bang hard back against the wall. “Yeah.”

  “Before or after I put my cock in your ass and get you off?”

  Zane opened his mouth to answer, paused, and then glared harder at him. “After, you pervert!”

  Marxus burst out laughing. “I was wondering if you would catch that.”

  Zane growled. Part of him wanted to keep threatening the other man, to let him know he still wasn’t planning on letting anything come of this, but the more Marxus touched him, the more his hand rubbed against Zane’s cock through his pants, and the more those heated lips seared against the side of Zane’s throat, the less he cared about keeping a distance.

  Keeping a distance was the last thing he wanted when Marxus was able to touch him like this, when the man could make his body light up with fire and then bring him back down so fast it was nearly a high just to get there.

  “If you want me, you’d better hurry up and do something about it before I change my mind.” Zane had a mind to walk out of here right now just to show this cocky alpha that he really was the one who was still in control here. That he didn’t have to rely on Marxus for anything.

  Of course, the damned alpha wasn’t going to make anything easy for him when he smirked at Zane like that and then kissed him again, crushing their bodies together.

  Zane moaned against Marxus’s mouth, hating himself and hating this alpha, because he knew what giving in to the man meant, what it symbolized.

  And Marxus knew it, too.

  Zane did need him. This went beyond wanting. Zane had tried desperately to hold off, but he couldn’t. He’d touched himself three times already today, and yet here he was, his body aching and thrumming as though he hadn’t had sex in years.

  Marxus might have been shocked that Zane hadn’t masturbated when he’d come into this bathroom, but it wasn’t like that mattered anyway.

  If Marxus hadn’t come along, Zane would have just gone up to his room and done it in there, where he would have had some privacy and there would have been less of a chance of being caught.

  Despite what he was doing now, despite how exciting it was when Marxus spun him around, turning his body so Zane was up against the sink, facing the mirror, and how they’d fucked in the pool, Zane honestly wasn’t the sort of man who tended to like fucking in public.

  Now he was begging Marxus to do it, even as the man hurried to pull Zane’s pants down around his hips.

  Zane begged for it.

  Chapter Six

  Skin. That was what Marxus wanted the most of. He peeled Zane’s clothes off, revealing more and more of the man’s flesh, flesh for his mouth to kiss, to taste, and to touch.

  Salty. Sweet. Firm. Everything he remembered it being, but this was more powerful because they were finally here. Finally easing the ache that had been building between them.

  If his mate wasn’t such a stubborn little shit, they could have been doing this for literally two days straight. Now Marxus felt as if he had a ton of catching up to do.

  Not necessarily pleasant. That was for damned sure, but at least there was the potential for this to be big.

  “Oh God,” Zane moaned, the sound of his breathy words driving Marxus even crazier. “Don’t stop.”

  “Not gonna,” he said, briefly pressing his mouth once more back down onto the man’s shoulder, his tongue darting out to taste once more. “I’m gonna fuck you right here, and you’re gonna watch it through the mirror.”

  Zane actually shivered, as if that was something he hadn’t expected Marxus to say.

  The man had claimed to not be a virgin, and Marxus believed him, but there was still a certain innocence about him that Marxus enjoyed.

  He liked k
nowing that Zane trusted him with it and that they were going to get through it together.

  “Get your pants off,” Marxus growled, even as his hands pulled at the man’s button, belt, and fly, pulling the jeans down as if they were a second skin.

  “Are you nervous? You keep sweating.” Marxus said it, even though he knew the man wasn’t nervous so much as he was horny.

  “I am not nervous,” Zane said, glaring down at him when Marxus briefly got to his knees to help him step out of his pants.

  Marxus couldn’t help but smile up at him, his fingers trailing up the length of skin, some smooth, some hairy, as he stood tall behind the man.

  “Sure you’re not.” Marxus reached around, his hand palming Zane’s cock. “You’re hard enough to cut glass, I think.”

  The clench of Zane’s hands against the edge of the sink was clear, as was the pleasurable shiver he released. He wasn’t going to be able to hold out for long. There was no way in hell, and Marxus liked it. He liked it so much that it was driving him crazy to not be inside him yet.

  “What about you?” Zane reached back, completely catching Marxus off guard when his hand found Marxus’s dick.

  Marxus’s mouth parted very briefly in a soft sigh. His eyes widened as he stared at the man, and somehow, even though Marxus literally held the man’s cock in his hand and Zane’s cheeks flushed with desire, the man still managed to smile cockily up at him.

  Marxus growled, unable to stop himself from thrusting against Zane’s hand. “It’ll feel better when you’re clenching around it.”

  The smile melted from Zane’s mouth, and his gaze flicked to Marxus’s lips.

  Marxus took the invitation, leaning in, capturing Zane’s mouth in a greedy kiss.

  His mouth was wonderful, rough in all the right places and softer in others. It was something of a small surprise when Zane parted his lips, inviting Marxus inside. Marxus didn’t think the man would ever willingly let Marxus do that. The last time they’d fucked, when Marxus had been licking inside the man’s mouth, tasting, claiming, he’d been under the impression Zane had only allowed such a thing because he’d been so high on the pleasure of being fucked in the pool.