“Damian,” she protested, misreading his intent until he reached his hands over to operate the latches on her seat as well, pushing it back and flat just as his seat had been. He finished pushing off his jeans, kicked off his shoes, and then joined her on her side of the car—his hands on either side of her seat, a knee between her legs. She was exposed to him—the perfection of her breasts, the marks he’d left upon them at her urging, the smooth slide of skin down her ribs and across her belly, where the slit in her skirt had rolled over to its most advantageous point and parted to reveal the fine triangle of hair above where they’d so recently been joined.
“You’re perfect,” he said, trying to memorize her now, to embed an image of her so deep inside that even Forgetting Fire, if it worked on him, wouldn’t be able to pull it free.
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” she teased, flushing. He could feel the heat of it rising and watched her squirm.
“Is that so?” he asked and moved to kiss her again.
She laced her arms around his neck as he slowly matched himself back to her, chest to chest, hips to hips, his thick cock nudging between her thighs for only a moment before she spread herself as wide as she could for him—given the door nearby—wrapping her legs around him as he slowly sank in. She gasped, and he moaned. How was it possible that being in a woman could feel this good?
Not just any woman, his dragon intoned.
Damian looked down at her, trying to tell if she felt this too, and found her jaw dropped and eyes closed as his cock filled her again. She made a soft sound of satisfaction.
“Okay, I lied – flattery will get you a lot of places, if you keep making me feel like that,” she said, reaching up to wind a hand in his hair, opening her eyes to look up at him, bright and wild and ready.
Did she somehow already know too?
He made a triangle of his arms around her, his elbows on the seat above her shoulders, him cradling her head inside his hands as he held her down and kissed her—and then began to thrust.
There was no part of her that did not feel good to him—her mouth, her skin, the way her breasts bobbed against him each time his cock landed—and inside, where her heat enveloped him, so swollen and wet and tight. Every time he pushed in her, he felt like he was breaking new ground, and every time he pulled out the loss of contact with her was too terrible to bear.
Because of this, a primal fear that each stroke might be his last—and because of how goddamned good it felt when she was wrapped around him—he couldn’t control himself. His hips started to pick up speed, and she went with him. Each time he landed in her, she made small moans, and each time he pulled out, she gasped until he plunged back inside again. He kissed her mouth fiercely and she met him just the same, her hands curled into his hair to keep his mouth to hers, like she was drinking from him—as his back arched and his hips thrust and her heels drummed against his hips each time he entered her and spread her wide and shoved himself in deep.
And then his vision changed. He wasn’t in the dim car anymore, hot over Andi, memorizing her perfection. No, he was flying—with another beast that he couldn’t quite see. A glimmer of gold racing off toward the sun. But he knew he longed for it; no, he lusted for it. And he knew it wanted him to chase it back—he wheeled in midair, and then he landed in himself, back with Andi, his body still, him panting wildly.
“Are you okay?” She pushed his hair out of his face, looking up at him with utter concern.
Damian was certain he’d just had a memory of something—only it had never happened to him before.
“Yes,” he lied, but it wasn’t a lie, really. He was still here, with her—his…mate. She still needed fucking, and he still needed to fuck her. The heat that he’d felt in him as a dragon for that moment still rode him, wracking him with urges meant for monsters instead of men, but his dragon was right. He wouldn’t hurt her; he could never hurt her. So, trusting in his dragon, he did as he liked. He moved up to kneeling, grabbed her legs and put one ankle against each shoulder, and then bent back down, plowing harder. He took his thumb and wet it with spit before planting it between her thighs to rub her clit, his other hand holding him up over her so that he didn’t crush her entirely, only just the perfect amount, feeling his cock slide into her again and again.
Her hands shot down to hold his wrist on her stomach. “Don’t stop…don’t stop…don’t stop,” she breathed.
“Never,” he promised, stroking her clit softly, in direct opposition to his rough thrusts.
Her legs tensed against him as if trying to push him back, but he knew it was only her body betraying her, that she was close. Her ankles kicked against him in little flutters, like a cat winding up to pounce. She was breathing hard, biting her lip, and one of her hands was pulling at the opposite breast’s nipple and he knew he had her, that he was going to make her fly.
“Oh…please, please.” She arced against him—her whole body tense—and then she shouted his name. “Oh my God, Damian! Yes!” as the first wave slammed her, making her shudder and ripple around him.
Yesssssssssss, his dragon purred. NOW.
His dragon overlapped him, and while he normally would’ve fought the intrusion, for one singeing-hot moment, it felt right. He thrust in time with the waves of her orgasm, feeling it pull at him like her body needed him to feel whole. He was beyond any point in stopping. Not coming the first time she’d enveloped him with pulses had taken superhuman effort, and neither he nor his dragon had that kind of control anymore.
She writhed again below him, shuddering, one hand curled in his hair against his scalp, whispering, “Please…please…” begging him for his load.
Damian closed his eyes and felt everything in him flood down to where they were joined, where his cock was buried inside her hot throbbing pussy, all of him aching, dying for release.
“Take what’s yours,” she breathed, just as he had earlier.
And he didn’t know if she meant his orgasm or her, but he willed it to be both as he shouted and shot himself inside her.
Damian’s hips beat against hers, his body doing what it had to as he came, fucking her hard, grunting, shouting, hissing, as violent pleasures flowed through him, impossibly long, her pussy sucking his hot silver out of him, taking everything he had to give until he was completely dry.
He shifted her legs gently and collapsed on top of her, totally spent, panting into her neck, surrounded by the scent of her skin and hair, his soul still soaring. He felt dizzy, like he was in two places at once—one of him here and the other half of him flying back in the Realms, where his dragon didn’t have to worry about being seen—where it could take the purest pleasure in the wind, feeling it thrill against his wings. And then somehow he landed alone back in his Earthly body again, with her wound around him, his softening cock still inside her.
That. That was what it was like to be mated.
What it was always supposed to be like.
Damian swallowed. He knew he needed to recover himself—to somehow go back to being the man he always was, to put all his armor back on—and to never breathe a word of this night again to anyone. He had too many enemies, both in the Realms and on Earth. Truly falling for a woman was tantamount to drawing a target on her back.
And yet, he’d risk it all to feel like that again with her.
Andi lay under him, wrecked for the second—or fourth! But who was counting?—time that night, breathing heavy, feeling the weight of him on top of her, the heat flowing off of him everywhere that they matched. The temptation to grab hold of him and not let go was so strong.
But she found it in her somewhere and squirmed beneath him instead. He took the hint, making an acquiescing noise before brushing her lips with a kiss, then moving back to his own seat, reaching down to pull his jeans on.
That—they—had been something else. Ever since they’d started fucking. Oh God, she’d known in the restaurant that it was good, but this time with him here, it was deeper somehow—like they were co
nnected, almost.
And it’d been so much less safe.
She knew she couldn’t love him yet, both because that was silly and she was abso-fucking-lutely not letting herself fall for someone so quickly. She was too smart for that, and she was not her mom. And besides, Andi never could just relax. She had plenty of other friends who could—who got to daydream about stupid things without feeling foolish—who could test their boundaries and entertain unsafe things. But Andi was always the watchdog—the natural golden retriever of any group—the girl who knew where all her girlfriends were at the club and how likely they were to puke on the way home and if they needed to be navigated away from any decisions they’d regret come morning.
How the hell had she let all that slide for him? It wasn’t the money, and it wasn’t the dragon. He just fit her. It was the only way she could explain it. It felt like she was supposed to be with him, and she’d been feeling like that ever since the other night—fighting it, even, if she were honest with herself.
Fast forward to tonight—in that final moment when he’d been inside her—when she’d felt everything so much more, and she knew he had too. She’d seen it in his eyes and felt it in his body; it radiated off of him the same as his heat had.
God, she was falling for him!
Andi bit her lips and swallowed. No, no, no. No! Absolutely not. Just because she wanted to let go and lose control, it didn’t mean she wanted to lose her heart.
But she’d never, ever, felt like that with Josh.
She watched him pull his jeans on—breathless and afraid. Andi Ngo did not catch feelings. Not like this. And she’d already opened herself up to him once tonight and been rebuffed. Nothing had changed! Not in their circumstances or in their surroundings! Every magically chiseled inch of his body glowed by the dashboard lights as if he aimed to prove her point. He was still a rich playboy who could become a dragon, and she—what was she? A passing fancy? A fuck buddy? Just some friend? No matter what he’d said earlier or how good the words made her feel, he had all the reasons in the world to leave her again.
And the gold coin his friend had given him swung in her peripheral vision, still rocking from their final round of thrusts. From the way Damian hadn’t wanted to talk about things earlier, she was certain his friend had been killed in action. And she knew in the pit of her stomach, sinking deeper all the time, that after everything she’d seen tonight—even if he didn’t want to leave her—eventually, he would. Death was death, right? For her own good, if nothing else. Just like he’d tried to in the restaurant.
Andi swallowed. She knew herself—her soul—couldn’t handle him flipping another switch, and there was no way she could live happily ever after waiting for a blow to land.
There was only one way to not get hurt. Get out in front of it. Acknowledge things and then close the book. No dog-ears, no bookmarks.
She arranged her coat around herself before she began because this was a conversation better not had naked. “Okay, so,” she said, steeling herself. “Thank you so much for an interesting evening.”
Damian looked over at her from where his hands were redoing his belt buckle, and he blinked. “Excuse me?”
Stay strong. You tell people bad news all the time at work. You’re used to people being disappointed in you.
“I said, thank you for an interesting evening, Mr. Blackwood.”
His whole body tensed across from her, and he spoke next like he wasn’t sure he’d heard her. “You’re joking, right, princess?”
The way he said it twisted a knife into her heart. If it hurt this much now, it was confirmation that it was better to get out now while she could.
“If you could please finish taking me home.” She fastened the bottom of her coat and zipped it up primly.
Damian stared at her, and she didn’t dare match his gaze. It was like there was a livewire between them and he was charging it while she kept trying to let go, but she couldn’t, not for as long as he kept electrifying her. “I wish things were different,” he said, his voice dark. Andi swallowed again, fighting not to sway.
She really didn’t owe him any other explanation, except for the look on his face that said she was breaking some deep part inside of him. “You said it yourself at the restaurant—and in here, just an hour ago. You’re a jerk, and you’re dangerous. And as good as I am at dating assholes, apparently, I’m not willing to go there again. Not even for you.” She found strength in her as the words kept tumbling out, knowing that if she was going to cut the cord between them, she was would have to be cruel.
He weighed her words, and she watched his jaw work as his teeth ground before saying, “I’m not like the others,” in a growl. Pre-dawn light poured through the windows and over his face and he looked so stricken then, this massive man brought low, and Andi realized she knew the exact right thing to say to end it—even if it killed her.
“Really?” she snorted softly. “Because I have a hundred-dollar bill that says otherwise.”
He took a big gulp of air as if he’d been gut punched and swallowed, but he didn’t say another word as he twisted back to the steering wheel to turn on the car.
Damian focused on the road ahead in silence. The ache in his chest was from the night’s exertions, he told himself, just a reminder that he needed to get back to training harder, rather than wasting his time with humans. She knew who he was, what he was, and he had gotten exactly what he wanted.
Her acknowledgement that together, they were a bad idea.
Even though he wanted her more than he’d wanted anything ever before in his life.
Lust raced through him like wildfire—he knew how good they’d been, and he needed it again—but instead of yanking the car over, he wrung the steering wheel until his knuckles were white, forcing himself to stay on the road.
Damian glanced over at her and saw her staring straight ahead, completely resigned. It was like a wall had come down between them.
Fly over it! his dragon suggested, intensely concerned.
He swallowed as his pride raged inside himself, not knowing what to do. He shouldn’t have to explain himself. He should just get what he wanted at all times; it was what he deserved—and that kind of thinking was why he’d left the Realms. If he’d really wanted to be an asshole, he could just go back there and be king.
He wheeled his car into the lot in front of her apartment, parked, and started talking before she could reach for the door handle. “My people are working on technology to predict when the gates will open, so we can get to them faster and close them in time.”
Andi looked at her hands in her lap instead of him. “I’m not sure I know what you’re trying to say.”
He searched desperately for any kindness in her tone. “That I won’t always have to be dangerous.”
She looked at him then, her brown eyes dark like wet stone and every bit as unforgiving. “No? So…just a jerk, then?”
“Andi,” he said, his voice low. “I was trying to keep you safe.”
Her smile was bright and brittle. “And you did. Congratulations. You were right. You are dangerous to people who might care,” she said.
And he knew she wasn’t talking about the monsters.
He had hurt her.
“Most people have to work themselves up to that caliber of…dangerousness. It takes a lot of practice, but no, you…Olympic level, right off the bat.”
The thought of anyone else hurting her—especially other men—made him murderous, no matter that he was among their number. He inhaled deeply so as not to yell, and the air still smelled like her—apples, saltwater, caramel.
“But…we…just…” he said slowly, spreading his hands wide, indicating the space in the car they’d occupied, their bodies entwined. Her hair was spread over her shoulders and the blue streak followed a line he’d kissed from her throat to her breast.
“Olympic level too, yeah,” Andi granted. “But, Damian, I’m telling you no.”
And it felt like the first time
he’d really heard it. Maybe in his entire life. Suddenly there wasn’t enough air for both of them inside the car, and inside of him, his dragon was roiling just like his stomach. “No?” he asked her louder than he’d meant.
“It’s not just my last name,” she said, shaking her head at him.
But he knew that that wasn’t really how one was supposed to say her name. She was telling him the family name given to clueless outsiders, the name given to those to who couldn’t be bothered to learn the difference.
She was telling him he wasn’t anything to her.
And it hurt.
He watched her try to hide herself with her coat beside him, divorced from emotion. He would feel it all later, in a rush, but if he let himself feel it now with her still so close…maybe she was right. Maybe he would always be dangerous.
But goddammit, he did not want it to end with her like this.
“Here,” he said, his voice guttural, handing his coat over. She took it from him and used it like a sarong, kicking out of the last of her dress.
“Thanks,” she said when she was done. “I’m going to go now.” He watched her inhale as she chose her next words carefully. “I don’t regret a thing.”
She swung her door open as he swung his, too, stepping out, even though he didn’t know what to say or do to change her mind. “This isn’t the end, Andi.”
He didn’t shout, but he projected his voice loud enough for her to hear. She didn’t turn around. She just kept walking—away from him.
Go to her! his dragon commanded. Now! It wrestled with him, fighting him for control in a blind rage, and he wanted with all his soul to let it win, but he choked it back.
We can’t! This…is for the best, he told his dragon, adding, for now, to calm it.
Because it was true. There was no way he was going through the rest of his life without her. Whatever he had to do to make her trust him again, to make her feel safe around him, he would get it done. He watched her ass sway as she started up the stairs to her apartment, and then saw her stop on the final one to look back at him.
Dragon Called: A Slow Burn Sexy Paranormal Romance Page 19