by Ruby Ryan
I rubbed myself faster, practically screaming with pleasure at having both of my holes filled, paired with the lust in Sam's voice and the way I could feel it in our bond. His breathing sped up with mine as our bodies rolled together on the bed, two waves in sync, skin and flesh dancing in perfect harmony. He groaned, and didn't stop, voice slowly rising with mine, his cock pushing deeper into my asshole than before, so deep I could feel it pressing against his fingers in my pussy, and my eyes clenched shut as it threw me over the edge.
"Oh fuck!" I screamed. "Yes! YES!"
He wrapped his other arm underneath my head and pulled me close as he roared into my hair, shoving his cock as deep into my ass as he could. Every muscle of mine tightened as I came, my pussy on his fingers and my ass on his cock, and then I felt him shuddering and spasming with me, and he pressed his broad chest against my back as we trembled together on the sheets.
*
It probably took me ten minutes to catch my breath. Based on Sam's hot breath on my neck, he was just as worn out.
"I think I need another bath," he said, which made me giggle.
"Yeah you do, dirty boy."
His chest rumbled with silent laughter. I twisted to face him, and ran a finger along his ribs.
"I'm surprised the bandages didn't break open."
He looked down at himself and said, "Huh."
"Guess you'll have to be rougher with me next time."
He grinned an evil grin. "That sounds like fun."
I smiled at him, and he furrowed his brow.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing."
"It doesn't look like nothing."
"Oh," he said, "I'm just thinking about how glad I am that I found you."
I felt myself blush a dozen shades of crimson.
"Me too." My smile changed. "Now how about you make a girl some dinner?"
He rolled sideways out of bed and stretched, giving me a fantastic view of his flexing ass and thighs.
"Aren't you supposed to take care of me?" he teased. "I'm the wounded one."
"Fine," I sighed. "Chinese takeout it is. Go get the phone and I'll order it."
I listened to him paw into the other room, then pause. "You coming back, or what?" I called.
I heard him say, "Hello?" to someone else.
Rising from the bed, I peeked around the corner of the bedroom. He stood nude in the middle of the living room, his phone to his ear.
"But how?" he said, turning to face me, and I could see the shock in his eyes.
26
SAM
The highway stretched endlessly ahead of us, as it had for the past ten hours. We were somewhere south of Oklahoma City, nearing our destination.
Nearing the place that had been agreed upon.
"I still think we should have flown," Ezra said.
I glanced at her in the passenger seat. She had both legs up on the dashboard, and the open window was making her hair blow around crazily. But she didn't care, because she was enjoying the fresh air and the view of the countryside.
That's what I loved about her: she didn't give a damn what other people thought. Not even me.
"Well," I said judicially, "the last time I got off a plane my entire world got flipped on its head. I'd prefer that didn't happen again."
"Oh?" she drawled. "I think it turned out pretty good for you." She gestured at her body like she was Vanna White showing off a gameshow prize.
"That remains to be seen."
She punched me in the shoulder, and I grinned from ear to ear.
We began seeing mile signs for the Red River, and before we reached it our destination rose up from the prairie on the left. The WinStar Casino was like the Vegas strip in miniature: one long structure that was a facade of Roman architecture, New York skyscrapers, and Greek ruins. It looked ridiculously out of place on the border of Oklahoma and Texas, but I guess that was the point. The sign by the highway broadcasting the casino was as large as the Coliseum itself.
"Largest casino in the world," Ezra mumbled, reading the words on the sign. "Huh."
We drove around the outside of the casino in silence, both of us nervous about this rendezvous. And probably because of the feeling in the totem, the power we were nearing. I knew Ezra could feel it too.
All the casino parking was outdoors, except for the employee parking garage on the opposite end from the highway, close to the resort golf courses. I ignored the "EMPLOYEE PARKING ONLY" sign and drove inside, then circled around in the semi-darkness.
I considered making a joke about how Ezra and I had seen a lot of parking garages in our week together, but my anxiousness held me back.
I slowed down when we reached the fourth floor. It was abandoned except for a single car at the opposite end, which was parked backwards in its spot so it could look out over the garage. I neared, but then realized it wasn't the car we were told to look for: it was white instead of black.
But then it flashed its lights at us twice. I parked three spots away from it, turned off the engine, and took a deep breath.
We exited our car at the same time as they exited theirs.
Ethan looked exactly the same as he had in Belize, but entirely different at the same time. There was an intensity to his eyes that hadn't been there before. Determination that I felt inside my chest too.
We shook hands awkwardly, then embraced like the old friends we were.
"Shit, it's good to see you," he said to me, even though we'd spent our vacation together last week. He waved someone over. "This is Jessica."
I nodded to Jessica, then introduced them to Ezra, who stepped forward with her arms crossed, suspicion on her face.
We stood like that for a few moments, and then the two women moved their hands simultaneously: Ezra into her pocket, and Jessica into a purse. They came out with the two totems, each of them glowing gently with light, green and blue. The pulsing seemed stronger now that they were together.
Now that we were together.
"And here I thought I'd nabbed the only feathered man in the country," Ezra muttered. "Sam doesn't seem so exotic anymore."
She nudged me in the ribs to let me know she was joking.
"I'm so sorry Ethan." The words poured out of me. "I don't know why I kept it a secret in Belize. I thought you guys would make fun of me, or insist the totem was some tourist trinket..."
Ethan waved it all off. "I'm just as sorry. Besides, it's not our faults. I don't think we were supposed to tell anyone about them, at least not at first. I don't think they would have let us."
They. The totems. That sounded right.
"Yours was in that weird tunnel you disappeared to?" I asked. When Ethan nodded, I said, "Mine was in the wall. In that big room."
"You threw up after taking it, right?"
"No," I said, "I actually vomited before I took it. Once I had it everything felt better."
"Weird," Ethan said, as if that was the weirdest part of our totems-that-turn-us-into-gryphons situation. "So she's your mate?"
"Fuckin' right I am," Ezra said.
"Hey, calm down now. Just making sure it's the same for all of us." He looked back at Jessica. "The bond we all share. It affects our powers."
"We've learned that too," I agreed. "So... is it just us? You and I?"
Ethan took a deep breath. "That's the thing."
He led us around to the back of the car, each of us squeezing into the narrow space between the bumper and the garage wall. Ethan popped the trunk to reveal an ancient wooden chest reinforced with iron bands. This was the source of the immense power I felt, not Ethan. Whatever was in this chest.
Even if Ethan gave me a hundred guesses as to what was inside, I never would have gotten it right.
He lifted the sword reverently, one hand on the pommel and another cupped underneath the blade. Aside from the sword's beauty, which was ancient, what immediately drew my eye were the four glowing gems in the grip: a rectangular emerald, a round sapphire--that's me! I thought--a te
ardrop ruby, and an oval onyx stone. All of them glowed like Christmas lights, even the dark onyx.
They were so beautiful that I almost didn't notice the other two gems, a triangular amethyst and a square diamond. They didn't glow at all. The dim sight of them made me strangely sad.
"Do you feel it?" Ethan asked softly.
I focused on the glowing gems again. Ethan was the emerald; I could feel his presence strongly, with him and the totem so close. And obviously I was the sapphire. But the ruby and onyx were fainter, and mixed together, making it difficult for me to sense.
"Oh!" I said when I realized.
Ethan nodded.
"So... is it all of us?" I asked. "There were only five of us in Belize, and there are six gems..."
"I talked to Orlando," Ethan said, gently putting the sword back in the chest. The garage felt too dark when he closed the lid, then the trunk. "He's gunna take the Texas Eagle train here from Chicago. He'll text me when he has a ticket, so we know when to pick him up from the station. We didn't say too much on the phone, but it's the same for him. All of it."
I knew what all of it meant. "Good," I said. I waited for Ethan to say more, but he stared down at the trunk of his car, like he was looking through it at the sword.
Ezra reached for my hand, and squeezed it tight.
"What about Roland?" I finally asked, thinking of the ruby on the sword.
The silence stretched.
"Ethan," I said slowly. "What about Roland?"
Ethan took a long, deep breath, then held Jessica's hand too. He looked around the garage, at the floor and the ceiling, then finally at me.
"He's not answering his phone or email," Ethan explained, words heavy with meaning. "Sam, I think he's in trouble."
RUBY GRYPHON, the third book in the Gryphons vs Dragons series, is coming soon! Click here to buy it when it's available, or keep reading for a special preview!
1
HARRIET
I wasn't the kind of girl to have one-night stands.
Then again, I wasn't the kind of girl to ever find myself in a bar like this.
I followed Jason and Jon past the bouncer--who took one look at me and nodded--and into the loud bar. It seemed like any other club, with a long bar at one end playing a variety of sports games on a row of flat-screens above, with dim light and the loud din of a thousand conversations. But there was another sound, deeper and more frenzied, that I couldn't quite place.
"This way!" Jason yelled above the noise, leading me through the crowd toward the bar.
While they ordered drinks, I tried to crane my neck to see what the noise was coming from. It rose and fell in waves, ohhs and ahhs like patrons watching a football game. There were bright lights in the far corner, far brighter than the rest of the bar, and I caught a glimpse of someone bare-chested stalking around.
What the heck was this place?
"Here!" Jon said, handing me a glass of red wine. "Let's go check out the show!"
"What show?" I asked, my curiosity rising. "I can barely see anything!"
"Oh honey, you're going to love this," Jason said. He gave his boyfriend a knowing look. "And if you don't, well, then we can go somewhere else."
I followed them away from the bar, into a thicker crowd of patrons all trying to watch what was going on in the corner. Across the room there was a raised area with seats, and Jason climbed the three steps and found a standing table where we could get a better look.
I blinked at what I saw.
In the corner of the room was a fighting ring, with thin brown rope walling off the square. Two shirtless men circled one-another under the blinding lights, fists held up protectively.
A boxing ring? In the middle of a Boston bar?
"What do you think?" Jason asked. "If you don't like it, it's alright. You won't offend us."
"Shirtless dudes getting all sweaty? What's not to like?" I said. But then one of the fighters lunged forward with his fist, catching the other man in the ribs and doubling him over for a moment. He backed up, dancing away from the other fighter as he came on, and then they were back to circling each other with fists raised.
I wasn't a violent person. I was an animal conservationist; if everything in the animal kingdom could coexist without bloodshed, I'd be a happy person. Heck, I'd spent last summer in Mozambique and had cringed to see leopards stringing up their prey in trees. Violence just wasn't my thing, whether necessary or recreational.
One boxer caught the other on the side of the cheek, which drew a roar from the crowd and a wince from me. But I didn't want to be that girl, especially not to two of my friends who had finally invited me out with them, so I sipped my wine and admired the show.
"Wait," I said. "Where are their gloves?" All they had was white protective tape on their hands, which was already stained red with blood.
"Oh honey," Jon said with a patronizing tilt of the head. "This is bare-knuckle boxing."
I didn't know why that was a thing, so all I did was nod.
"Wanna get closer to the action?" Jason asked.
"I'm good here, where it's a little quieter," I said with a smile. "I prefer to admire from afar. Don't let me stop you though!"
Holding hands, Jon and Jason made their way toward the ring.
And then I was alone.
I wasn't a social person. Give me a quiet library nook or a safari vehicle on the African plain and I'd sit there for hours, but in loud places--parties, bars, or even a crowded cafeteria--I withdrew into myself. Like a protective shell falling over my body and mind, I didn't feel comfortable. Even if I did have fun, by the time I got home I'd be exhausted from trying to appear like I was having fun rather than anxious. It drained my batteries.
And so now I was standing here, alone at a standing table, wishing I'd politely declined Jason's invitation and stayed in my apartment watching Planet Earth again.
It's not like I didn't have work to do. My thesis on elephant conservation and the utilization of bee hives to establish territorial boundaries was due in only three months. The work itself was exciting, more than anything else I'd ever done. One of the biggest problems with African elephants today was their migratory patterns, which often took them into human-populated areas and caused havoc as a result. But it turned out elephants shied away from bee hives, so my thesis involved a plan to set up bee hive boundaries (rather than normal, wooden fences) to keep elephants from invading other areas. In addition to solving the elephant problem, maintaining the hives would provide a source of food and work for the locals. It was win-win!
But then I'd have to get up and defend my thesis to a panel of professors. And that's the part that terrified me.
The crowd roared, and I turned my attention back to the ring in time to see one of the fighters stumble, and then fall to the floor. The referee--who looked like nothing more than a frat-boy who had been pulled from the audience--bent over him and then waved his hands to indicate the fight was over.
The winner jabbed both arms toward the ceiling and strutted around to cheers, and then the crowd began to disperse back to the bar to get fresh drinks.
My companions returned with smiles on their faces. "A shame to ruin such a pretty face," Jon said.
Jason snorted. "It was an improvement, you ask me."
"Don't be jealous. I have a soft spot for blonds." Jon tugged one of Jason's curls then looked at me. "What'd you think?"
"Oh, it was really cool." I tried to pour as much enthusiasm into my voice without it sounding fake, and I think I succeeded. "I've never seen a boxing match before!"
"I'll grab some refills," Jason said, disappearing back to the bar.
When he was gone, Jon arched an eyebrow at me. "This isn't your scene."
I slumped my shoulders. "Is it that obvious?"
"Oh honey, you're doing your best... but yeah, it's a little obvious."
"No, it's fine!" I swept my hand around the bar. "It's good to have new experiences. I needed to get out of my apartment."
&
nbsp; My apartment was what I was daydreaming about being in right then, but thankfully Jon didn't call my bluff.
"We don't have to stay," Jon said, giving me a sympathetic look. "There're a dozen other bars on this street that might be more your style."
"We don't have to do that!" I yelled over the speakerphones announcing the next two fighters. "I've got a glass of wine, so I'm happy."
Jason returned with three more drinks and an excited grin. "Ready to watch this next one? I'll bet you a bag of skittles that red head wins."
"I'm not sure I want to stay," Jon said, glancing sideways at me. "All this noise is giving me a headache."
I felt a pang of regret that he was taking the hit for my sake, but it really did sound good to leave.
"You okay baby?" Jason put a hand on his cheek. "You did say you felt off this morning."
"Yeah, I just think I need some fresh air. We can finish these drinks before we go."
He gave me a look, and I said thank you with my eyes.
"We can go out to the smoker's deck," Jason offered. "That's fresher air, at least. And less noisy."
I was about to say that was a great idea when I saw him.
He had a mop of dark red hair which cascaded over his eyes as he ducked underneath the rope to enter the boxing ring. He brushed it back from his face with a white-taped fist, and then pulled off his T-shirt with two hands. The motion revealed an armada of muscles from his navel to his neck, all of them lean and accentuated, like there wasn't an ounce of fat on him. He tossed the shirt to the side and sneered at the crowd through bloodshot eyes.
His opponent was the opposite build: a big bald guy with as much fat as muscle, but muscle he did have, like a football player. He hulked over the redhead like some giant as they touched fists in the middle of the ring.
"Let's stay here," I found myself saying. "I want to watch another fight, if that's alright."
Jon blinded in surprise but quickly said, "Yeah, sure. I can do that if you're okay."
"I think she's in love," Jason grinned.