by Emma Alisyn
His eyes darkened. “Not like this, then.”
He was on her, hands around her waist flipping her over onto all fours. She gasped, startled, as his hands slid up her torso to cup her breasts, squeezing the globes and twisting her nipples into stiff peaks. Her ass bumped against him in silent pleading and the head of his cock nudged her opening.
“Get on with it,” she said through gritted teeth, and looked over her shoulder to glare at him.
He slammed into her, no preliminaries other than the already slick channel of her pussy. Jezamine cried out.
“I knew you’d be tight,” he said, pulling out, then slicking back in. He began with a slow, tortuous rhythm, balls slapping against her ass as he teased her, stretching her body with the girth of a dragon male. “God, this pussy is so good.”
Jezamine spread her thighs even farther, arching her back, so he could delve deeper, harder. “More. More, Donato.”
His hands left her breasts and settled around her waist. He fucked her, holding nothing back, cock hitting her spot until she was digging into the sheets, stuffing cloth in her mouth to avoid screaming. She came in a hard flood of cream, coating him in juice as her body shuddered through the orgasm. Jezamine collapsed on the bed, dazed.
Donato caressed the back of her head, fingers trailing through her hair. “Mine. Mine now.”
The words alarmed her. She lifted her head slightly, taking a second to clear her throat before she spoke. “Donato, this doesn’t mean we’re mated.”
“If you say so.”
She buried her head back in the sheets, then swore. “I mean it. We have to take this slowly.”
The fingers tangled in her hair moved to her back, rubbing soothing circles. “It’s fine, Jezamine. I wasn’t planning on rushing you into a mating.”
Jezamine relaxed, reassured by the calm, reasonable tone of voice, then sighed, settling deeper into the mattress.
Donato began to laugh. Her head jerked up and she glanced over her shoulder, annoyed. “Why are you cackling, you goon?”
“Because you’re so sweet. That was for you, Jezamine. I’m not finished.”
Just as quickly as he turned her on her stomach, she was now on her back, legs splayed open as he draped them over his shoulders, eyes burning. “I’m not finished.”
She learned that it took a long time for a dragon to ‘finish.’
She slept out of sheer physical exhaustion, but her mind woke her only a few hours later. It wasn’t a matebond, he’d said, but Jezamine knew their joining was much, much more than sex. No matter how soothingly he told her that it didn’t mean she surrendered everything to him. He’d said that because it was his duty to make her feel better. She knew how male shifters thought. And he was lying through his teeth.
Only . . . how much of the tenderness, the passion, the devotion was really him? How much was Aleka’s spell? She searched her mind, lying half entangled under his limbs, trying to come up with a reason why her great, great, great, great, grandmother would deliberately craft a spell to bring her descendent together with a Caruso drake. There wasn’t any one reason she could fathom. But still, would he feel the same way without the jewel?
He was asleep. Deeply asleep. It was a vulnerability of dragons, their tendency to fall into sleep, so only a foghorn would wake them.
So . . . Jezamine shifted her vision, shifting so her arms were free, and carefully wrapped her hand around the jewel. Satin to the touch, warm, like a cooled-off potato. She snorted. A cooled-off potato. What a housewifey thing to think.
Slowly, she sank into a trance, analyzing each strand of the enchantment, determining the composition of the spell and how to unweave it. She would break the spell, shatter the jewel. If Donato still wanted her afterwards, then maybe then she would consider giving him her heart.
A roar sounded in her ears, and she shoved it aside irritably, focusing on her task. Pain. Jezamine gasped, concentration broken. She blinked, the trance of the spell gone and stared into two glowing green eyes set in the drawn, enraged face of a drake.
“What are you doing, witch?” he hissed at her.
The pain was from her neck. “Did you bite me?”
“What were you doing, Jezamine?”
“Don’t yell at me.” She squirmed underneath him, trying to pull away. “Let me go.”
“You were trying to break the spell.” He was quiet now, but the quiet was the gentleness of ice-cold rage. “But you were destroying our bond.”
“What? That’s not possible. We aren’t even bonded. You said . . .,” she trailed off. “Did you lie to me?”
“No. The bond isn’t finished. That takes more than just sex. It takes trust.”
She stiffened, because now accusation was in his expression, edged with an awful kind of betrayal. “I don’t want you to want me because of a spell. I wasn’t trying to . . . hurt us.”
He stared at her a long moment, then his lashes fluttered down to cover his eyes. He waited for several more breaths and when he looked at her again, their color was normal. “Jezamine, if I didn’t want you for a mate, if I didn’t believe you suited me to my bones, no spell would compel me. Do you understand?”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s exactly what someone who is enspelled would say.”
“Very well.” His voice was pleasant, friendly even. Jezamine froze, every instinct on high alert as his body shifted, covering hers. He smiled at her. “If you try and break the spell again, I will find Dahl, and I will break every bone in his body, and then I will call a press conference, and explain to the Hearn coven exactly what happens to a warlock when he trespasses on private property.”
It was a clever threat. An effective one. She could never live with herself if another person was harmed because of her.
She swallowed. “I’m not responsible for your actions.”
His head lowered, nose nuzzling the tip of hers. “Do you really want to play that game with me, tesoro?”
He was a maniac. “No.” Because neither did she want her son’s father harmed, no matter how much she despised Dahl. And she certainly didn’t want Hearn business broadcast on national television. The dark side of Hearn business. “I won’t do it again.”
“Good.”
“You bit me.”
“A love nip. I’ll kiss it and make it better.”
He kissed it, did more than kiss her neck, and she allowed it, wondering the entire time if she was the one who was mad.
16
Joshua squinted his way through the casserole.
“If you’d print out the recipe rather than trying to read it on your cell, which is probably filthy, by the way,” she said, “you wouldn’t have to squint.”
“Go away, Mom. Bake your pie.”
Her eyes narrowed, but his tone was affable enough she couldn’t quite snap at him for being disrespectful. Still . . . .”Watch your mouth. And don’t forget the salt, Joshua. It will be bland.”
“Cheese has lots of salt.”
She gave up and turned her attention to her own dish. She’d just make it very, very clear that the casserole was all his fault, and she’d had nothing to do with it.
“I bet Kayla cooks and doesn’t talk back,” she muttered. They’d left that morning, the teenagers making exaggerated sounds and movements in order to prove they hadn’t disobeyed the separate bedroom rule. They probably thought they were funny.
Joshua snorted. “I’d win that bet all day. She’s a mouthy wench.”
“Don’t call your girlfriend a wench.”
“Why not? We’re dressing up as pirates this Hallows Eve.”
Jezamine paused, stared at her son. “And you two are about to be parents?”
“Don’t be jelly, Mom. You know you and Caruso would dress up and go trick or treating if you didn’t think you’d get arrested for socially unacceptable weirdness.”
She turned her back on him.
It had been an early release day for the teenagers, so they’d gotten an early start
on the dishes. So far, she’d felt none of the telltale flutters against her wards that indicated someone was attempting to feel a way in. Marcello was going to have to leave. Now that she knew he was there, she could feel his presence, cloaked or not. Dahl wouldn’t return until the drake left. He wasn’t stupid, and the coven didn’t want to bring any negative attention to itself with some kind of flashy showdown.
The air above them shimmered when they entered the car, pie pans and casserole dishes in hand. A sharp breeze ruffled her bushes, and Jezamine knew Marcello had taken off into the air to continue guard duty as they drove to the dragon enclave. She sighed. If he was going to post up outside all day and night, she’d have to take a meal and a thermos out to him. How was he eating if he never left?
Kayla came around from the back of the house as they pulled up. The car windows were rolled down so the waft of grilling meat immediately filled Jezamine’s nostrils. She didn’t grill, herself, it was always one of those things she’d said she might try one of these days. Besides, grilling was typically a warlock kind of activity. The witches cooked and baked, and the men usually would build giant roasting pits on community days and the scents of whole lamb, rabbits, and whatever wild game they’d hunted would permeate the air. She’d lived in one of the small, forest covens far away from the bustle of human towns and her coven owned a large stretch of hunting grounds, bordering a wolf pack they’d peacefully coexisted with for decades. It was a reason why Felicity Falls was so appealing. In some ways, it reminded her of home.
Home was so long ago, and so far away. Gazing at the teenagers as they chattered, Joshua's arm slung around Kayla’s shoulders as they disappeared around the house—and did he think mother was going to carry his casserole?—she took in the house, the grassy lawn and the roaming cattle, the forest beyond with the mountains in the distant view . . . and knew that if she wanted, she could make this a new home. Maybe it was time to integrate into the local coven. Time for a relationship, time to let people back into her life.
Time to live again.
Joshua returned, Donato with him. “I didn’t forget, Mom.”
She walked forward, and Donato took the stacked pies from her hands, inhaling. “Apples. I love apple deserts.”
“That may be why Kayla suggested it, then.”
He smiled, eyes intense on hers. “Come meet my brothers. They don’t bite. We stopped doing that centuries ago.”
She blushed under his scrutiny. “I wasn’t worried.”
His eyes lowered to her chest. Around her neck she wore a silver charm in the shape of a closed book, hanging on a delicate chain. “Pretty,” he said. “New?”
Jezamine shook her head. “I’ve had it forever.”
He inhaled a second time. “It smells different. Is that silver?”
She studied him. “It’s silver.” It was also something else. That he could smell it was another hint to the witch in his background. Interesting. “Let’s go eat.”
They walked around to the back, Donato’s arm brushing against hers. It would be a good evening.
She’d thought Marcello was rough around the edges, but Isaai . . . twice Jezamine caught herself beginning the cast of a little hex. Nothing violent. But something strong enough to make his scales itch.
Donato. Marcello. Leandros. Isaai. And another one, who slept. Donato’s head had turned towards the far away mountain range when he said that, and Jezamine knew that there was a dragon beneath one of those heaps of stone.
“He might grow on you,” Leandros said about Isaai.
Jezamine fixed a false smile on her face. It had begun when the male landed in a cluster of cows. Evidently, they didn’t like Isaai any better than any reasonable creature would. He hissed at them, flicking his tail contemptuously. His head swiveled, basilisk eye landing on Jezamine.
“This is the female?” the drake growled. “Did the jewel just raid the local PTA or did it think you needed a mate to manage the city council bake sales?”
Jezamine stiffened, tamping down on her temper. She didn’t like rude people at all, or bullies, but considering she was supposed to live her life quietly, not bring attention to herself . . . over the years she’d learned to just let things go that perhaps her younger self would have responded to with a tad more vehemence.
“I’m Jezamine Hearn,” she said, managing to keep her voice mild. “It’s nice to meet you . . . ?”
He turned away.
“Keep it up, Isaai,” Donato said, tone flat.
Isaai simply snorted. At that moment, the teenagers came onto the deck. They’d taken the casserole dishes inside because Kayla had no desire to eat the little flies that hovered around the food, though Marcello declared them mere seasoning.
“Hey, Unc,” the girl said. “Making friends already? Record. This is Joshua, the baby daddy.”
“We’re going to have to work on labels,” Joshua muttered. “Sir, it’s nice to meet you.”
Isaai hissed at him. “I don’t like warlocks, and I eat punks for afternoon snack. Her father didn’t see fit to flame you, but I expect no better since he’s mired himself in two-legger—”
“Now wait one blessed minute,” Jezamine said. She paused, took a breath, and began mending the frazzled strands of her temper. “We all agree this isn’t an ideal situation, and will need to be managed with maturity and compassion. Insults and threats aren’t necessary.” She paused, looked the drake in the eye, and snarled at him. “And I will respond to threats against my son the way every Hearn witch in history has responded. Do you really want a war with me?”
A sharp breeze cut the air between them, tinged with the acrid scent of her anger. Her arms tingled, energy flowing up her skin and into her hair. She ignored the blue lit, snapping strands, eyes fixed on the dragon.
“I haven’t had witch in decades, female. I’m overdue for a—”
Donato stepped in front of her. He’d grown six inches, the width of his shoulders expanding. Movement under the skin, restless scales waiting to burst free. “Do you want a war with me, Isaai? We will be civil to each other because whether you like it or not, we are all family now. Let me know now if that will be a problem for you.”
Marcello stepped forward as well, flanking her shoulder and Leandros sighed. “I’m with them, brother.”
"You're all so sensitive," the drake snapped, as his muscles began to flex and shrink. "I hope the dragonling doesn’t come out like that. If it will even be able to shift."
"That's mean, Uncle Isaai," Kayla said, then turned and went in the house.
Joshua froze, and gave Isaai a long look. "Mother. If he doesn’t apologize to Kayla when I bring her back out, there will be a fight."
Her son went back in the house, and she stared after him, astonished.
"Huh," Donato said. "I might be able to work with him."
“You should apologize,” Leandros said.
“Nah,” Marcello said. “Bloodsport before dinner works up an appetite. Let the boy test his mettle.”
“There will be no fighting,” Jezamine said. “If I need to step in and handle things myself, I will. And then we most certainly will not enjoy dinner, and that would be a shame because those burgers smell absolutely delicious.”
“I take back my comment regarding the PTA,” the now human Isaai said. “I think the jewel raided the Betty Crocker Tupperware Club.”
She decided to ignore him, mostly because his attempt at insult was laughingly bad. Betty Crocker Tupperware Club? Really? That was the best he could come up with? Jezamine turned her back on him and marched to the grills, examine the accoutrements set out. Though she had never grilled, she’d spent a few moments on the internet Googling the process, and it appeared Donato had everything well in hand.
“Well done for mine,” she said. “Well-cooked beef lowers the chance of catching any food borne illnesses.”
“I eat my meat bloody and bleating,” Donato said in her ear. “I hope you don’t mind.”
She sniffed.
“You’re a dragon. Why would I mind? Everyone knows dragons consider the use of fire for cooking blasphemy.”
There was small pause. “I feel like that was a subtle kind of insult.”
“Not at all.”
“There’s potato salad. Kayla made it. I know your blunt herbivore teeth are made for that kind of . . . food.”
He was warm at her back, the hardness of his chest reminding her of last night. “What are you muttering?” he asked, the paused. “Or thinking, I should say.”
Jezamine turned, and he didn’t budge an inch. “Shouldn’t you be grilling? And not hovering over me?”
He smiled. “Am I making you nervous, Jezamine?”
“No.” She looked away. “I’ll go see if Joshua and Kayla are ready to come out.”
“Leave them alone. They’ll come when they want to, they aren’t children anymore.”
“Just because they’re having a baby doesn’t mean they aren’t children.”
“You clearly don’t know anything about dracaena,” Leandros said from the other side of the deck. Jezamine peered over Donato’s shoulder. The laid-back brother lounged on a built in bench, a can of beer in his hand. “Once she has the dragonling, she’ll be adult enough. If you’ve never seen a female dragon defend her young, well, I don’t feel sorry for you. It’s psychotic. Our sister went a little crazy after the birth. Tried to murder everyone.”
“What?” Jezamine’s brow creased. “Is that normal?” She began to worry. How would a non-dragon midwife handle the birth, then? “Kayla’s father was human, though, right?”
“Doesn’t matter. Kayla is full dragon. She shifts and flies and can roast a sheep if she wanted to, with her own flame.”
“Oh. Dear. That might change things, then. I wouldn’t want to put a midwife in any danger during the delivery.”
“Why does she need a midwife?” Isaai snapped. “Two-leggers. When it’s her time, she’ll fly to the cave, shift, and have her baby. We’ll make sure there are deer nearby for her to hunt. When the bloodlust fades away, she’ll pick up the infant and fly home. It only takes a few hours.”