“Just give me a minute.”
Daiki lay frozen above me with his elbows on either side of my head to support his weight. When I gave him the all clear, he hesitated. Then he started thrusting and, oh good lord, it felt incredible. I twisted my hands into the sheets thrust back, letting out a low groan every time his pelvic bone brushed my clitoris. Everything was Daiki – his scent filled my head, his breath mingled with mine, and I felt every muscle in him tense and relax as he fell into a deep, steady rhythm.
There was an odd moment when the world seemed to catch in between heartbeats. Then pleasure flooded my senses and I gasped and keened, bucking beneath Daiki and almost throwing him off in my haste to chase whatever it was that was making me feel so good. Daiki’s eyes were glowing so brightly that I thought I would burn up just by looking at them. But I kept the eye contact. I couldn’t blink. I needed to keep seeing him.
Daiki surged forwards, driving himself into my body, faster and harder than before. He clutched my hips as his wings flattened around us, pulling us closer together until I couldn’t tell where he ended and I began. Electricity rippled through me, setting every nerve on fire. Daiki was chanting something in between breaths. It took me a moment to realize it was my name. I wanted to say his name too, but I was far beyond words at that point.
Daiki tensed all around me. Then his thrusting slowed. He kept going, his eyes never leaving mine as he rode out his climax, until finally he stuttered to a halt. He slumped down on top of me, his wings jerking before settling around us in a warm embrace.
There was a moment where we could do nothing but clutch at each other and try to get our breath back.
“Wow,” I said.
“I agree,” Daiki replied. He pulled his wings out from under me and let them collapse back into his shoulder blades. He rolled off of me and I felt the loss, so I rolled with him and curled up with my head on his chest. Daiki wrapped his arms around me, holding me close, and let out a contented sigh. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “Whatever happens, I’ll figure something out.”
I nodded against his chest. The heat from his core and the way his heart still pounded with the force of what we had just done made me want to stay there forever. I knew now that I couldn’t stop myself from falling for him. I was falling too fast for anyone to catch me. Whether he was run off by hunters, or whether he left me on his own somewhere along the line, nothing could change that fact. For me, loving Daiki Hamada was inevitable.
Epilogue
Daiki was there when I woke up the next morning. Our limbs were tangled together, as if we’d each decided that the other wasn’t close enough, and had taken steps throughout the night to make sure that we would never be parted. I had pushed off the blankets as well. Daiki’s body radiated enough heat to ruin me for blankets forever. I felt his morning erection poking me in the thigh.
I didn’t have any morning classes on Mondays. I felt a sharp pain in my chest when I remembered that I wouldn’t be seeing Terry that day – or ever again. Classes wouldn’t be the same without seeing her roll her eyes behind the professor’s back.
I kissed Daiki’s neck to distract myself and he groaned, pulling away slightly so that he could rub his eyes.
“Good morning,” I said, rubbing my hand down his stomach. “Need help with that?”
He grinned lopsidedly and nodded, taking my hand in his and pushing it further down to brush against the coarse hair above his pelvic bone. When he touched my wrist I felt a low purr from the link.
“Later, you and I are going on a real date,” I said trailing my fingers teasingly around his groin. “We’re going to talk about our feelings, like adults.” Because even after everything we’d been through, he was still my maybe-sort-of-boyfriend and not my actual boyfriend. “You’re going to tell me everything that you and your grandfather can do so that I’m not surprised when you start vomiting rainbows and turning into puppies.” He chuckled. “And you’re going to explain everything you know about this link nonsense, you hear?”
He nodded. “Later?” he clarified.
I hummed a little and let my hand drift down the final few inches. “Later,” I told him.
THE END
Dragon Romance
Blazing Passion
Book Three
Lucile Wild
Dragon Romance: Blazing Passion
Chapter One
I sank into my chair at the back of the lecture hall and stared around at the other students. They looked bored in their chic Manhattan clothes and pastel hair colors. Their many piercings glinted in the fluorescent lights like diamonds in a cave. I didn’t have any piercings, and my hair was long and dull brown, but I’d given up comparing myself to New Yorkers. Anyone looking at me could tell that I was a small town girl.
Pulling my sketch pad out of my purse, I chewed on the edge of my pencil and cast around for something to pass the time until the lecture started. Most of my sketch pad was covered in pencil renderings of Daiki, my maybe-sort-of-boyfriend. I had sketches of his back, chest, muscular thighs, and arms, burning with bright fire. His black leather wings were there as well; outstretched and flying, and curled up and calm. His most beautiful feature, his face, was not in my sketchbook. He’d made me promise not to draw it.
Daiki was a dragon. Well, technically he was a shapeshifter, but apparently humans had gotten the idea for dragons from people like him. He could throw fire and grow wings out of his back, and his grandfather, Ichiru, could heal small wounds. I hadn’t believed it at first, but after seeing them in action risking their lives to save mine, I knew that they were the real deal.
I rolled my shoulders and pressed my pencil to page, sketching a simple lecture hall like the one I sat in. The only difference was that I was alone. A solitary figure in a sea of empty chairs.
“Sorry I’m late,” the professor said, entering the hall with his notes and laptop tucked under his arms and an uneven beret on his head.
I glanced to my side out of habit, ready to roll my eyes at my friend Terry, but she wasn’t there. I felt a low stab of guilt at the memory of the police coming to my apartment to tell me that she’d been murdered. It was technically my fault that it had happened – the hunters had been after Daiki and I’d asked him to walk her home – but all I could feel was a numb sense of shock. Her death still hadn’t quite sunk in. I still expected her to walk into the lecture hall, toss her bag into the seat next to mine, and call the professor a ‘pretentious sack of overdone clichés’. But she wouldn’t be coming to class that day. Or ever again.
“You should be getting started on your mid-term assignments,” the professor said, startling me out of my reverie. “How about we go around the room and each person can tell us a bit about what they’re planning.”
I felt beads of sweat brimming out of the back of my neck as the professor pointed at each student in turn. I’d completely forgotten about the midterm.
Over the last week, I’d met and started dating a real-life dragon/shapeshifter, been kidnapped by monster hunters, and lost my best friend to those same hunters. I hadn’t had time to consider what product I’d like to sell in a silly mock ad campaign. After everything I’d seen – dragons, hunters, Ichiru’s healing powers – the idea of sitting down to work on a project I wouldn’t enjoy, for a teacher I didn’t like, for a course I didn’t feel like I belonged in, felt pointless.
I’d spent so many years dreaming of coming to New York to study art, and now I just felt… underwhelmed.
“Colgate toothbrushes,” a girl with purple hair and wild green eyes said when the professor pointed at her.
“Apple computers,” said a man with square glasses and a bandanna over his hair.
I cast around for an idea. When the professor finally pointed in my direction my mind went blank. Then my eyes fell on the pencil in my hand.
“Art supplies,” I said quickly, naming the brand of the pencil I was using and ignoring the snort of disdain from the professor. He didn’t think
much of artists who painted, sculpted, or did anything physical. He’d told us in our first lesson that art had moved on from primitive paintbrushes and pens.
His speeches had made me cry on that first day. Now, they just made me feel hollow. I ignored him and kept sketching.
He went on to talk about the software we should be using and the composition of the ads we would be making. I hadn’t come to New York to learn about marketing, but I took notes anyway, writing in tiny letters next to the sketches of Diaki’s forearms. My mind started to wonder. I was meeting Daiki for lunch after class. Our last lunch date had been postponed when hunters killed Terry and kidnapped me.
Daiki had attracted the monster hunters after several months of roaming the streets at night, wearing a mask and protecting people from muggers. He’d even saved me from a man who’d tried to take my wallet in the alley outside of my apartment. But monster hunters kept an eye out for strange injuries, and after several men had shown up in hospital with burn marks on their faces, the hunters came to New York to find the dragons responsible. They ended up torturing and killing Terry, and then taking me as bait for Daiki. They were dead now. Ichiru killed them.
I checked my phone to make sure that Daiki hadn’t texted to cancel on our date. We texted each other so much that I was worried that Mama and Daddy would kill me when they got the bill at the end of the month. When I saw that there were no new texts, I leaned back in my seat and let the droning from the pretentious professor wash over me as I counted the minutes until lunch.
Chapter Two
“How was class?” Daiki asked when he picked me up from the Institute. He was wearing his usual dark shirt over boot-cut jeans and looked good enough to eat.
I was wearing my usual long skirt and white blouse, and looked like I’d just finished milking some cows. “Okay,” I replied, kissing him on the cheek and feeling the familiar jolt of electricity go racing through my body.
There was a brief flash of something in his expression – some tiny, indecipherable sense of wrongness that I couldn’t quite place. Before I could figure it out, the expression had melted away and was replaced with something close to concern. He looked me in the eye and I felt a nudge against my brain, like something was trying to butt into my thoughts. Then Daiki’s voice spoke inside my head: Just okay?
I looked at him quizzically. He couldn’t actually project his thoughts into my head, could he? Daiki and I had an empathetic link, which had come in handy when I’d been kidnapped. I hadn’t realized that it could be used to pass messages – I’d thought it was a ‘Break Glass in Case of Emergency’ type of thing which was triggered when one of us was in danger.
I stared into his eyes and concentrated as hard as I could on the words: Your butt looks great in those jeans.
Daiki blushed and I blinked in surprise.
“Uh, thanks,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck and looking down at me fondly. “I didn’t think that would work.”
“I didn’t even think to try it,” I replied.
“Oji-san thought that it would take months for us to learn it,” Daiki said. Then he smiled. “I guess we proved him wrong.”
He kissed me then. Right there, in the middle of the street, as my classmates filtered out of the Institute and headed towards their regular lunch haunts. I felt the purr of electricity between us – a byproduct of the link. Then I heard his voice in my head.
Can you hear me?
Yes, I replied, turning my head to deepen the kiss and closing my eyes against the rush of sensation.
I came here to talk to you and you’re distracting me.
I’m sorry… I pressed my chest against his. I lied. I’m not sorry.
Daiki pulled away and licked his lips as if he could taste me on them. “Let’s go get lunch,” Daiki said, taking my hand and leading me away.
“We’re not going to Sakura no Yūshoku?” I asked. Sakura no Yūshoku was the name of his grandfather’s restaurant, where we’d first met.
He shook his head. “I kind of had a fight with Oji-san, it’s probably best if I give him some space.”
Maybe that was why he’d looked so grim, I thought. “What did you fight about?”
He squeezed my hand. You. Us. The hunters. Staying in New York.
His voice lingered in my head, as if he’d meant to say something else but had chosen not to. I felt a rushing wave of guilt at the thought of Daiki and Ichiru fighting over me. Ichiru had been nothing but kind to me – in fact, he was the first person to be kind to me since I’d moved to New York City. I didn’t like the idea that I could be driving a wedge between him and Daiki.
Daiki squeezed my hand again. “I can’t hear you thinking but I know you’re starting to feel guilty. There’s no need for that, honestly.”
“But –”
“Skye,” he said sternly. “Oji-san and I will work this out.”
I still felt a rumbling of guilt, but tried to quiet my mind so that Daiki wouldn’t catch any of it. He led me to an out-of-the-way café down the street from the Institute. Once we were inside he led me to a quiet corner where he pulled the chair out for me. I sat down and glanced at the menu. The food looked pretty cheap by New York standards.
“So,” he said, folding his arms on the table and staring across from me. “How do you want to do this?”
“How about I ask questions,” I said. “And you answer them?”
He nodded. We’d agreed after the kidnapping and Terry’s murder that I should know as much about Daiki’s world and powers as I wanted to. Daiki and his grandfather still weren’t sure whether they would leave town or not, but in the mean time I was still in the dark about what they were capable of. I didn’t like being in the dark.
We were silent as the waitress came to take our orders, and when she was gone I let out a deep breath. “What are we?” I asked.
“You’re a human,” he replied slowly, like I was brain damaged. “And I’m a shifter.”
“No – I mean, are we together?” I felt so childish asking, but I needed to be sure. He’d saved my life, we’d had amazing sex, but I still wasn’t entirely sure about whether to call him my boyfriend or not.
Daiki went pink and shook his fringe down so that it covered his dark almond eyes. I got distracted, briefly, remembering how they would glow gold when we were intimate, but his next words brought me back to the present: “I told Oji-san that you’re my girlfriend,” he said. “That’s how I’ve been thinking of you in my head.”
I concentrated really hard on the Hallelujah chorus and Diaki chuckled when he caught the message in his mind. “I’ve been thinking of you as my boyfriend,” I answered.
He reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “Good.”
We were silent for a while, enjoying each other’s company. Then I asked: “What does Ichiru think about you having a girlfriend? After last time…” I let the sentence trail off. Daiki had dated someone pretty seriously when he’d been living in Chicago, but it had ended badly when he’d told her the family secret. She’d plastered his secrets all over the internet and almost gotten him killed by hunters. Daiki had been wary of getting close to people ever since, so I was grateful that he was taking a chance on me. On us.
“There are a lot of differences,” Daiki said. “You took the dragon thing pretty well. You’re not afraid of me. You’re not the reason the hunters found us this time.” His eyes went dark. “I am. Oji-san won’t be letting me forget that anytime soon. There’s the link to consider, as well. I’ve never had… this –” He waved at the air between us. “– before. Neither has Oji-san, but he respects it.”
“You mentioned that before – is it really that big of a deal?”
It had felt strange at first, feeling that jolt of electricity whenever I touched Daiki. It made me feel safe. The link I shared with Daiki had kept me grounded ever since I’d arrive in Manhattan, fresh from small-town Texas with dreams of becoming a famous artist. Without the security of the link, I’d probably have ru
n back to Round Table with my tail between my legs.
Daiki nodded. “Shifters can search their whole lives and never find a link.” And I found mine by accident, he added. I turned my hand so that we were palm-to-palm and squeezed.
“Well I guess we’re pretty lucky then,” I replied.
He nodded again, smiling warmly. Our food arrived and I reluctantly let go of his hand. We hadn’t known each other very long, but it felt like I’d known him my whole life – we were already connected via telepathy, for crying out loud.
I felt myself falling in love with him and I was powerless to stop it.
“What exactly can you do?” I asked, taking a sip of my coke and looking at him from over the rim of the glass.
He sipped his own drink. “You’ve seen everything. The wings and the fire are the extent of my powers. That’s what I can do on my own, at least. I don’t know the extent of the link –” He waved between us again. “– or how much power we’ll both get from it.”
“I’ll get power?” I asked.
“You’ll be able to tap into mine,” he replied. He looked suddenly uncomfortable. “You know, the way that I…”
He trailed off and I felt a shiver creep through my veins. During the fight with the hunters, Daiki had been injured and had tapped into the link to control my body – using me to fight off one of his attackers. I’d been completely helpless against him. That was the one and only time that Daiki’s powers had frightened me, and I would have been more concerned if he hadn’t been completely sickened by what he’d done. Even now, he stared across the table at me with apology and guilt etched into every line of his face.
I sent a wave of affection and forgiveness through the link and said: “Break glass in case of emergency.”
He nodded. “Exactly.”
“And your grandfather can heal?” I asked, steering the conversation back to the original question. I’d seen Ichiru heal a small bullet wound in Daiki’s arm after the fight.
BILLIONAIRE ROMANCE: The Unforgettable Southern Billionaires: The Complete Collection Boxed Set (Young Adult Rich Alpha Male Billionaire Romance) Page 81