“Okay,” she accepted dully, closing her eyes as she leaned back and allowed the hot water to lap soothingly over her tormented body. She already knew instinctively that watching Bryn leave the bathroom would bring the mating fever back sooner than if she didn’t see him go.
God, she was already so needy. Wanted Bryn so badly. To be with him. To feel his hands—and anything else—on or in her.
She really needed to speak to Chloe. To find out from her friend what she needed do about the desire that was eating her up inside, piece by agonizing piece—
Tegan already knew what she had to do.
Only having Bryn bring her to climax with his mouth or fingers, or with his cock buried deep inside her, would satisfy this burning desire. Even then, it would only be briefly, before Tegan would need him to take her again.
Unless Bryn claimed her and they mated fully and forever. As the Pendragon brothers were immortal, that forever could be a very long time indeed.
And Bryn had already stated he didn’t want a mate.
At all.
Chapter 8
Bryn finished his phone calls before moving to stand in front of the picture window in the sitting room of the suite. He was still staring out at the New York skyline but not really seeing it when he heard Tegan leave the bathroom and join him.
Not that he’d needed to hear or see her. His heightened dragon senses had been able to track his mate’s every movement since Tegan stepped out of the bath. He knew she was now wearing one of the hotel’s complimentary bathrobes over a body that was once again burning up with the desire to be filled and taken by its dragon mate.
The almost half an hour of being apart from Tegan had done nothing to dampen his own desire for her. Or the quickly escalating need he felt to bite and claim her.
He slowly turned to face her. The tips of his talons pierced his palms as he forced himself to remain where he was rather than cross the room to sweep Tegan up into his arms and carry her off to the bedroom.
The slenderness of Tegan’s body was once again swamped by the over-large one-size bathrobe, giving her the appearance of a little girl playing dress-up. Except there was nothing girlish about the body beneath that robe. Or the aroused blush on Tegan’s cheeks. Or the fevered hunger burning in the depths of her blue eyes as her gaze devoured him.
It was becoming more and more difficult for Bryn to resist that hunger when his own desire for her was quickly spiraling out of his own and his dragon’s control.
He used every effort of his will to force himself to keep his distance. “How are you feeling now?”
She grimaced. “Uncomfortable.”
Bryn exhaled shakily, knowing from her appearance that was an understatement. “I’ve spoken to Dylan. Now that Chloe has had the baby, he’s free to fly over here and deliver some of the antidote to keep the mating frenzy under control.”
“You seem to be able to control it without the antidote,” Tegan accused resentfully.
Bryn wasn’t in the least in control. The only reason he appeared outwardly so was through years, centuries, of controlling his dragon’s more basic urges.
Maim.
Kill.
Take.
Claim.
Yes, precisely those sorts of urges.
Tegan’s eyes widened as she obviously realized what he’d said. “You told Dylan about us?”
His mouth tightened at the dismay he could hear in her voice. “Yes.” Bryn had weighed up the pluses and minuses and knew he had no choice but to talk to his brother, after all.
She winced. “Does that mean Chloe knows too?”
Bryn shook his head. “Only Dylan.” His brother had promised to keep the mating to himself. For now.
“He won’t inform your brothers?”
“Not unless I say he can, no.”
Tegan sighed her relief. “When will he get here?”
“Not until the morning.”
She swallowed. “What do we do until then?”
“You edited Chloe’s books.”
Yes, of course Tegan had edited Chloe’s books—in fact, she’d devoured them, they were so good—and if they were to be believed, which Tegan now had every reason to believe they were, then there was only one way to abate, for a time at least, the mating fever now consuming her.
She’d just been hoping there was another way other than having Bryn’s hands and mouth on her as he gave her climax after climax until she passed out.
Something he couldn’t want either.
Because he didn’t want her.
She drew in a shaky breath. “You said we needed to talk.”
He gave a humorless smile. “Is talking really your main priority right now?”
“Yes.” Her gritted teeth and tightly coiled body gave instant lie to that claim.
Bryn nodded. “Very well.” He indicated she should sit down on the couch, before moving to sit in one of the armchairs facing her across the room. “Your mating fever has intensified.”
A nerve pulsed in Tegan’s tightly clenched jaw. “Yes.”
“Do you recall the reason why it has?”
Tegan was immediately hit with a vague memory of having Bryn’s cock in her mouth. Of licking that thick and throbbing silken flesh, sucking on it hungrily, and in doing so, ingesting more of that mating aphrodisiac.
But that couldn’t really have happened.
Could it?
Bryn sighed as he guessed the reason for the dismay in Tegan’s expression. “I did try to stop you.”
Her eyes widened. “I…really did that?”
“Yes.”
She glared. “Then obviously, you didn’t try hard enough.”
“Tegan—”
She surged to her feet. “You’re the one with all the strength here.” Her voice broke. “Emotionally as well as physically.”
Bryn’s senses were awash with her female pheromones as Tegan began to restlessly prowl the room. “Not when it comes to my mate.”
Her eyes flashed deeply blue. “A mate you don’t want!”
“I didn’t say I don’t want you.”
“Not specifically.”
He breathed out steadily, knowing one of them had to remain in control. “It’s true I did not intend to take a mate. But now that I’ve found you…”
“Yes?”
“You are a mate for any dragon shifter to be proud of. Fierce. Loyal. Protective of those you care about.”
She snorted her disgust. “A pet dog has those same attributes!”
He gave her a reproving look. “I was going to add, you are also beautiful and very desirable.”
A blush colored her cheeks. “I’m sure a high-class whore is those things too.”
Bryn surged to his feet to look down the long length of his nose at her. “You will not talk about my mate and a whore in the same conversation.”
Tegan’s chin jutted forward in challenge. “As I’m the mate in question, I’ll say what I damn well please! I’m not a virgin,” she added evenly.
“Neither am I,” Bryn answered calmly.
“I wouldn’t think so, when you’ve been alive for sixteen hundred years!” she scorned.
“Does the age difference bother you?”
Did the age difference bother Tegan? Bryn had been alive for centuries more than her, not a decade or two. Did that bother her? Not particularly. But it did mean Bryn would have had dozens, possibly hundreds more lovers than she had. In that context, yes, the age difference bothered her.
She had no doubts Bryn would be an expert lover; he was the type of man who would excel at whatever he did. But what if he found her lacking? She’d had sex with precisely three men in the past seven years. What if Bryn became bored with that lack of experience? Once she was his mate, he would be stuck with her, would never again have the option or freedom of being with another woman.
“No other women in the world exist now as far as either I or my dragon are concerned,” Bryn stated evenly.
Tegan
eyed him warily. “You are reading my thoughts.”
He shrugged. “Your emotions are clearer to me now, nothing more. The rest, a melding of our thoughts and emotions, will come with time.”
“If we mate.”
“Yes.”
A frowned creased her brow. “I want you to know, when I said I wasn’t a virgin, I didn’t mean I’ve had dozens of lovers.”
“I didn’t think that you had.”
“No?”
“No.”
Tegan looked at him searchingly, looking for some sign, anything, that indicated Bryn wanted her as his mate. “How are you able to be so much in control when I—” She chewed on her bottom lip, embarrassment warming her cheeks at having almost admitted to feeling as if she was being eaten up inside by her need for Bryn to claim her. To bite her.
He held up his hands, revealing four deep and bloodied gashes in both of his palms. “I’m not.”
She blinked. “Your talons?”
“Yes,” he bit out tersely. “It’s how I stopped myself earlier from giving in to my need to claim you.”
The tension eased a little in Tegan’s chest. “Why?”
“I don’t want you to hate me because I’ve taken the choice away from you.”
Instead, he’d chosen self-mutilation. Painful self-mutilation. Admittedly Bryn’s dragon would ensure those wounds in his palms healed much more quickly than they would on a human, but it must have hurt like hell when Bryn pierced his own flesh with his talons.
“The choice to live or die.”
Bryn nodded. “Yes.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Do you have a preference?”
Once again, Bryn had the unusual experience of hearing himself chuckle. Something he’d done several times now in Tegan’s company. “I forgot to add that you have a sense of humor which apparently appeals to my own,” he acknowledged dryly.
She grimaced. “Being able to make you laugh isn’t exactly an attribute.”
“Oh, but it is,” he assured her seriously. “I doubt my brothers have seen or heard me laugh in centuries.”
She eyed him curiously “Really?”
“Really,” Bryn drawled.
“That’s sad.”
“It is,” he acknowledged, along with the realization becoming feral until one day he remained in his dragon form wasn’t something that happened overnight, but over centuries.
That he’d slowly been losing his ability to laugh or smile.
That his love for his brothers had become something he remembered feeling rather than true affection.
Tegan’s advent into his life, knowing she was his mate, was already changing all that. He’d regained the ability to laugh and smile. He now felt the love in his heart for his brothers.
As for how he felt about Tegan…
Mine.
Yes, Bryn had never doubted Tegan was the mate of his dragon.
But he knew now she was also his, Bryn’s, mate. That she’d also given the man his ability to love and laugh. To feel.
Mine.
This time the claim came from Bryn rather than his dragon.
Tegan was his.
As Bryn was Tegan’s.
“My preference is to be your mate,” he answered her purposefully.
Her chin rose. “Prove it.”
Mine, mine, mine.
Bryn’s connection to his dragon was intrinsic; they were one and the same being. But at this moment, he wanted only to be Bryn. To make love to the woman he knew and recognized was his fated mate, not have his dragon lay claim to her too. There would be a time and place for that, but this wasn’t it.
Would Tegan know the difference?
As long as Bryn did, perhaps it didn’t matter.
He quirked dark eyebrows. “Here or in the bedroom?”
Tegan was more than a little shocked she’d made the challenge in the first place, let alone hearing Bryn accept it. It simply wasn’t how she would normally have behaved. But then, nothing about this was normal, and the mating fever continued to grow inside her, becoming more and more intense by the second.
“I don’t want to mate with you.” She needed that to be crystal clear before—well, before. “Not yet.”
Bryn nodded. “Here or in the bedroom?”
If Tegan didn’t know better, she would have said the fire of desire glowing in his eyes was all Bryn rather than his dragon. But as far as she knew, the two were inseparable, so she had to be imaging it.
She swallowed before speaking. “The bedroom.”
Tegan didn’t look at him again as she went through to the adjoining room, taking off her robe before crawling naked between the clean white sheets on the bed. After getting out of the bath, she hadn’t been able to bear the touch of anything else but the robe against her oversensitive flesh. Even so, there was something a little too…cold and clinical, about this whole situation—
Her breath caught in her throat and her mouth went completely dry as she looked up in time to watch Bryn pull off his shirt to reveal the wide expanse of his muscular chest and shoulders. The heat of his gaze held hers as he stepped out of his shoes, then unfastened his trousers and pushed them and his boxers down his thighs and muscular legs. He stepped out of them and straightened.
Had Tegan really thought, even briefly, that this situation was clinical?
There was nothing in the least clinical or cold in looking at and enjoying Bryn’s nakedness. Or mistaking the length and thickness of his upwardly jutting cock for anything other than the intense arousal it was.
That arousal bobbed temptingly as he moved toward the bed with all the grace of the predator inside him, before sliding under the sheets beside her.
He turned on his side and leaned on his elbow to look at her. “I can just hold you, if you would prefer that?” He gave a pointed glance to where she was gripping the sheet covering her so tightly her knuckles were showing white. “It won’t ease the fever completely, but perhaps enough to allow you to sleep?”
Sleep? Tegan doubted any woman would prefer to go to sleep when they had a man like Bryn in bed with them. “Thanks for asking but I…I’m good with this.”
He bared his teeth in a smile. “And I was hoping you would be very bad.”
It was Tegan’s turn to chuckle. “Well, what do you know. You really are developing a sense of humor!”
“It wasn’t said to amuse,” he assured her dryly. “It’s been a while since I… Well, it’s been a while.” He grimaced.
“How long is a while?” Tegan eyed him curiously.
“Centuries.”
“Cen— No!” She gaped at him. “Really?”
Bryn chuckled at her obvious shock. “If you compare a dragon’s immortality to a human lifespan, then a couple of centuries is probably equivalent to four or five human years.”
“I suppose,” she acknowledged slowly, although that still seemed a long time for a healthy and obviously virile man not to have had sex. “So I really will be the first for quite some time, then.”
He nodded. “The first, and also the last.”
All of which helped to assuage some of Tegan’s earlier lack of confidence. After all these years, Bryn probably didn’t even remember the last woman he’d gone to bed with, let alone whether or not he’d enjoyed it. The fact that it hadn’t happened again since would seem to imply it had been nothing special.
If they were going to do this, and the wild clamoring of Tegan’s body merely at Bryn’s proximity said they were, then Tegan wanted it to at least be memorable.
For both of them.
Chapter 9
“I want us to explore and learn what pleases each other,” Bryn said gruffly. “Are you okay with that?”
Am I okay with…
“Yes, of course… Well.” Tegan gave a self-conscious wince. “Maybe not the first time?” The arousal was so intense now, she felt as if she might self-combust if she didn’t find release soon.
“Not the first time.” He gently smoothed back
the hair from the dampness of her forehead. “There’s no reason for you to feel self-conscious about the way you’re feeling, Tegan,” he soothed as she fidgeted from the intensity of her need. “The fierceness of your arousal is perfectly normal.”
“I need… God, I so need you to—” She broke off, her whole body now shaking from the need for release.
“Yes.” The intensity of his gaze held hers briefly before he slid down the bed to press hot lips against the column of her throat, across the tops of her breasts, and then—finally—taking one of her aching nipples fully into the heat of his mouth.
“Yes!” Tegan’s hands moved to the back of Bryn’s head, her fingers threading through the silky thickness of his dark hair as she arched up into the rhythm and the pleasure of that suckling mouth. “Oh God, yes,” she groaned as one of Bryn’s large hands cupped her other breast and rolled the nipple between finger and thumb. The hot juices gushed between her swollen nether lips, and Tegan knew herself to be on the edge of an explosive climax from nipple stimulation alone.
Which, considering none of her previous three lovers had brought her to climax at all, even during full-on sex, was pretty damn amazing.
Bryn was amazing.
Dark, handsome, and sexy as hell.
And her mate.
Overwhelming emotion swelled inside Tegan’s chest. Not love, exactly, but certainly more than desire alone. It was as if unseen tendrils were curling about her heart, filling her in a way she’d never been filled before, completing her in a way she hadn’t known she needed to be—
Oh God!
Bryn had transferred his mouth to her other nipple, Tegan’s hands tightly gripping his shoulders as one of his hands caressed a steady path downward. His fingers parted her curls before stroking along the wetness from the opening of her channel to the pulsing nubbin above. A single touch of those moist fingers on her sensitive clit was enough to send Tegan hurtling over the edge of her release.
The pleasure consumed her. Claimed her. Owned her.
Wave after wave of intense and never-ending heat caused Tegan’s back to arch off the bed, each and every nerve in her body feeling as if it were being hit by electric charges as the pleasure continued beyond anything she might ever have imagined, even when she stroked herself to release.
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