“And the things I am going to do to you,” he promised, in a tone that made her shiver.
“I don’t know if I should look forward to that or run away.”
He chuckled low. “I would like you running away, consensually, of course, to catch you very much. It’s a predator and prey thing.”
Andi swallowed, suddenly realizing just what she’d willingly signed on for and feeling ridiculously small.
“Don’t tell me you’re scared now, princess,” Damian teased, holding himself higher over her to give her more space. “Unless you truly are, and then I want to know.”
She shook her head. “Not scared. It’s just…this is real now. I don’t think I’ve ever had anything real before. Oddly, you are far less frightening than the thought of being happy for the rest of my life.”
Damian tilted his head and licked his lips thoughtfully before speaking. “Reality isn’t perfect, Andi. No matter my good intentions, I can’t promise infinitely happy tomorrows. You know that.”
Andi nodded. His curse. “I do. But…you want to try, Damian. And I’ve never had anyone want to try with me before.”
He gave her a soft look. “I’m not sure if that’s due to fate, princess, or that every other man in your entire life you’ve ever met has been a fool. But either way, yes, I do want to try.”
She reached up to touch his face. “Because you’re my mate,” she whispered, and she felt him gently nod.
“I am. And you are mine.”
She moved beneath him then in a way that she knew he’d take to mean he should keep going, and he did, slowly pulling out of her only to slowly push back in, and she made the soft sounds she couldn’t help but make and that she knew he loved to hear. He held himself carefully over her, kissing her between each thrust, taking his time, as she kissed him too and ran her hands up and down the strong muscles of his back. It was like they were kindling a slow fire between them, the kind that would go out if either of them blew too hard, but if they moved just right, timing things perfectly, they both knew that it would eventually catch flame.
“Princess,” he growled in her ear after kissing just below her earlobe, as she wound a hand into his hair. “Andi,” he named her next stroke, starting to move faster as she moaned. “My love,” he said not long after that, as Andi felt her hips begin to wind and her pussy grab him tight, as he ground his hips against hers. She heard him rumble and he mounted her deeply, so hard and arrow-straight inside. “My mate.” He claimed her, and she was on the brink, moaning beneath him, so close to coming, she just needed one more stroke to rub her right, inside and out. “My mate,” he purred again and ground his hips up, as if knowing what she needed.
“Damian,” she warned him. She wanted him to come too, she needed it inside her.
“Yes,” he promised, as she came for him with a shout of release. His hips followed hers through her spasms with strong strokes and then pressed in, keeping their seal tight as he grunted, and then his hips shuddered as he pumped himself inside her still grasping pussy, making hot groans of satisfaction in her ear. Their bodies moved as one, rocking against each other, perfectly matched, perfectly mated, just like he’d told her.
They both lay there afterward, breathless and mirrored, until he nuzzled her neck, breathing her deep. “My mate,” he said reverently, then prepared to push up.
Andi wound her arms around him in an instant, holding him to her tightly. She wasn’t ready to be through. “My mate,” she whispered in his ear, and felt him shudder in response, at being claimed.
She was his, and he was hers.
For as long as they had.
He kissed her neck and slowly pushed himself up. She let him go, until she could see his eyes again. Damian often looked open after sex, but now, his expression was boundless. Pleased, satisfied…and hopeful.
It made her hopeful, too.
She bit her lips to stop from smiling. “I don’t know if we’re going to make it, Damian,” she told him in a serious tone.
He blinked, focusing immediately. “How so?”
“If we keep making love instead of fucking, there’s no way there’s going to be time for three more orgasms before we get back to your place,” Andi said and giggled as she blushed.
Damian laughed aloud. “That’s rich, princess, but you assume I didn’t think of that.” He jerked his chin over his shoulder. “I’m paying this man an ungodly amount of money to circle downtown until I tell him not to.”
“Cheater!” Andi gasped.
“Please, princess,” Damian said, sounding affronted before laughing again, and beaming down. “You know when it comes to you, I’ll never play fair.”
Epilogue
Damian was at the end of an exceptionally long hallway where all the doors looked the same and were evenly spaced, and Damian knew he’d never seen a single one of them before. “It’s no fair if you collude with the cat,” he shouted, loud enough for her to hear.
Grim appeared out of nowhere to sit beside his feet. “Why not? I like this game.”
I do too, his dragon told him.
“Both of you shush,” Damian said aloud. Grim sniffed and disappeared again—likely to do more of Andi’s bidding.
She’d moved in not that long ago, and while there were some adjustments to be made, things were going well so far, he thought. She seemed happy and the others liked her and she liked all of them too.
Even Grim liked her.
Which was why they got to play this game, which had been a lot more fun for him in the original lay out of the house, until she’d convinced Grim to help her cheat. Hide-and-go-seek that wound up in her running away, with squeals of fear and delight, followed by sex in unexpected places. But now with the cat helping her to hide…well, there had been the time Grim had also created an entire treehouse for her, behind one of the doors, and Damian had gotten to eat her out as she sat on a railing with what seemed like a hundred-foot drop into a forest below. Or the time she’d been hiding inside a scarf factory of some sort and he’d gotten to use reams of silk to tie her up, stringing her from the ceiling, raising and lowering her entire restrained body by a rope to suck on his cock.
All in all, Andi had a rather active imagination. He just wished she wasn’t so good at hiding. This hall had at least ten doorways, and Grim had made all the walls thick enough to block his heat vision, and by now, she’d lived here long enough that everywhere had something of her scent—or Grim erased it for her.
Utter cheating.
You should try being more patient, his dragon told him.
You try being patient with a three-carat ring in your pocket.
I don’t have pockets, it said, and broke into the dragon version of laughter.
Damian thought back, Fuck you, and then groused. It was stupid to be nervous. They were already mated, and he’d already given her his necklace. What was just a ring?
Then he laughed at himself. His mate was in here somewhere, waiting for him to pounce, and no matter what surprises she had in store, he was sure his was slightly better.
“Ready or not, here I come,” he shouted, as was apparently traditional on Earth. He stormed into the first room and found it empty except for Andi, dressed simply in jeans and a T-shirt, and sitting cross legged on the ground behind a candle.
“There’s not a trapdoor between you and me, is there?” he asked from the doorway.
She laughed. “No, but you really shouldn’t give me any ideas.”
“I take it back then,” he said, walking over to her and sitting down on the candle’s far side. “Wax play?” he guessed, with a smile.
“No…well…maybe? But not right now.” She shifted and pulled a piece of paper out of her back pocket, before he could pull anything out of his. “You know what this is, right?” she asked, showing it to him.
He recognized it, of course. Her mother’s letter from that troubling night. “I do.”
“You haven’t mentioned it again,” she said, holding it in her lap.
“Because it’s not mine to mention.”
She unfolded the paper, without looking down. “You know I told Danny I’d burned it.”
He nodded. “And I had a feeling that was a lie, but again, I wasn’t going to press.”
Her gaze caught his and he saw the worry in her eyes. “What does your dragon think of this?”
“That’s easy to answer. He wants you to be safe, and has told me so repeatedly.”
“You’re safe now,” she said, like that was an answer.
“For now,” he corrected her. “But we both know that can change. Which is one of the reasons we play so roughly, I think,” he said, looking around the room Grim had created for her, remembering all the other ones they’d shared. “How do you feel about that, princess?” he asked, gesturing to what she held.
“I think I like who I am, just the way I am now,” she told him. “I just hope that that’s not disappointing.”
Knowing what he’d picked tonight here to do, to propose to her, wholeheartedly…. “No, princess. There is no possible way you could ever disappoint me.” He gave her a mystified look. “Has this been worrying you this whole time?” He offered her his arms and lap, and she crawled around the candle to take them, nestling against him like a cat, wrapping her arms around his body.
“On and off,” she said and squeezed. “I just don’t want you to be hoping I’ll turn into something more.”
“I don’t think I could handle any more of you, honestly,” he said, rubbing his face in her hair. Getting to scent her all the time was maybe the best part of her living with him now, apart from all the sex.
“So, you’re okay if I burn it?”
“Of course.”
She looked up at him. “And your dragon won’t be mad?”
“Princess,” he began softly. “He will be understandably disappointed. But he knows the world we live in, as well as I. And he can always show you how much he loves you, through me.”
She swallowed and nodded, and reached over with her hand. The paper she held caught fire in an instant and poofed into acrid smoke as the flame ate it and it disappeared.
“There,” he told her, regathering her arm to hold all of her near. “Do you feel better now?”
“No. I feel the same. But that’s what I wanted, Damian.” She looked up and gave him an ever-so-earnest smile. “I love you, and I love being here, and I even kind of sort of love work now, mostly because then I get to come home to you afterward,” she said and laughed.
“Good, although you going to work is the least favorite part of my week, but I suppose we all have to make accommodations.” He leaned down to kiss her shoulder, and then looked up at her out of the corner of his eye. “Let me show you how I feel, princess,” he murmured, lips hovering just above her skin, and felt her shiver in response.
“Okay,” she whispered.
He sat up straight and held her closer, thinking on everything they’d put one another through and all that they had done. “Put your hand out for me?”
She stretched her right hand out first, and he quickly thought of earthly etiquette. “No, please, the other one.”
Andi laughed warmly at his game, whatever it was. He felt the pleasant tremble of it in his arms, and it only made him want to hold onto her more tightly.
“Andi Ngo,” he said, reaching behind himself to pull the velvet box out. “Who has decided to not be a dragon, and yet remains the most mysterious and alluring and intelligent woman in the world and all the Realms to me…can we get married?”
Damian opened the box, revealing the oval diamond ring, and he heard her gasp. “Damian, oh my God, you shouldn’t have.”
He tensed. “Why not?”
She took the ring and held it in both her hands, eyes wide. “Because there’s no way this will ever fit underneath my gloves at work!”
“Does that mean we can’t get married?” he asked her, genuinely.
“No,” she protested. “I mean…yes. Of course…yes!” she said, twirling in his arms to face him.
“Put it on,” he urged because he wanted to see her wear it. The necklace that she wore was one thing, a part of him, a private secret. But the ring on her finger was an announcement to the world that Andi Ngo was taken.
And she was. She so was. By decree of both him and his dragon. Neither one of them would ever let anything separate them from her, not ever again. He watched her slide it onto her finger and hold her hand out to the candle, where the facets on the stone reflected and refracted the light into a hundred different beams, just like the brightness from her soul. His fierce and courageous princess, the woman who’d warmed his ice and tamed his dragon, who’d fought her destiny and won his heart.
Andi, his inevitable and irrevocable, mate.
“Yes,” she repeated, beaming at him.
He kissed her, and then took her to the ground.
***
We hope you enjoyed this journey to Andi and Damian’s happy ending!
Interested in finding out more about the Prince of the Otherworlds (and forthcoming books - I mean you do want to find out how Austin and Ryana get together don’t you)?
Sign up for Kara Lockharte’s and Cassie Alexander’s newsletters and BEWITCHED, a sweet little short story about Mills and Jamison http://links.karalockharte.com/BewitchedINC
Here’s a little excerpt:
Mills stood outside Jamison Steil’s apartment for the third time in as many months, preparing herself mentally to knock on the door. She knew he’d be inside, she’d checked the complex’s security cameras herself on her laptop on the way over – and she knew the effect seeing him had on her.
Completely discombobulating.
Not just because she was here to erase his mind – for very good reasons! – but because he was so good looking. And – the way he’d looked at her, the prior two times she’d done this, she knew he didn’t mind her visits, at least.
Too bad he couldn’t remember them.
Too bad she wasn’t allowed to forget him.
It would’ve made the intervening nights easier on her.
Especially on lonely nights.
The short story of how Mills and Jamison get together!
Please note that this is a bonus story for newsletter subscribers. We ONLY have plans to make it available via newsletter signup and not offered at any retailer. http://links.karalockharte.com/BewitchedINC
Afterword
What you’re still here reading?
Well we gotta reward you for flipping through all the way here!
Here’s an exclusive unedited rough draft bonus snippet from the currently untitled Austin & Ryana book! Coming soon hopefully!
“Everything’s better out here, isn’t it,” she whispered from beside him. He blinked and looked over at her, as if resurfacing, whipping his wet hair from his face.
“It is,” he said, seeing her. She was in the alcove of her wings, the raindrops that landed on them beading down their dark green leather. She was partially hidden, but he could still see her much lighter green eyes, and it was like she was a literal force of nature, like everything that was grew and was good was captured in them.
“What’re you thinking?” she asked him, staring back.
“You probably don’t want to know.”
She pouted, only barely shadowed by her wings. “Green,” she demanded.
“So it’s like that, is it?” he asked with a head shake. He wanted to be honest, but he also didn’t want to scare her off. “Fine. I’m thinking I’d like to kiss you, wings. But I don’t have to. I’m entirely okay just standing over here.” He held her coat and his water bottle in one hand, and made a gesture towards the ground with the other.
When she didn’t respond, he was still for a long moment, wondering if he should try to take the words back.
“Do you think that all the time?” she asked him, right before he wanted to die.
If the rain hadn’t washed him clean he might have lied, but he
found he didn’t want to dirty his soul back up. “More often than not,” he admitted. She swung her wings back behind herself and stepped closer to him, finally looking up at the sky. The rain hit her face for the first time and she closed her eyes, which made him feel free to gawk.
Her face was a perfect oval, and it was like her features were carved out of his dreams. Her cheekbones were high, her nose was pert and button-like, and her lips were full although her mouth was narrow, which made him feel like she was always holding words away from him inside. Raindrops met and traced down her skin and were trapped in her long light brown eyelashes, the same color as her hair
She was so beautiful it hurt.
And he was him.
A dented werewolf, who knew so much better, even as he couldn’t stop himself from taking this one chance. “May I kiss you, Ryana?”
Her eyes flashed open, and he watched her lips intently then, to see if they’d say red or green – but instead they just came closer as she rose up on her toes, and brushed his.
Her lips were just as soft as he remembered from the night outside the strip club, and he had to fight not to devour her. They were in the woods that he roamed as a wolf, he was used to being hungry here, and wild. Fierce instinct and long habit wanted to grab her and press in, to make her mouth open for his, to claim her with his tongue. But somehow he managed not to, and just trailed his closed lips across hers, then run his oft broken nose down her straight one, before pressing his lips to hers again. If hers had opened, even for a moment, his will might have broken and he would’ve tried for more, but they didn’t, as she rocked back.
She put one hand to her own lips and her other to his, and while he wanted to catch her wrist and keep it there, he forced himself to stay absolutely still.
See, wings?
I don’t bite.
I may think all the fucking time about biting…but I can control myself.
You can trust me.
Then she swallowed and pulled her wings in as she pulled in her hands away. “It’s stopped raining.”
Dragon Mated: Sexy Urban Fantasy Romance (Prince of the Other Worlds Book 4) Page 27