by Wolf Specter
“Yes.” He’d told me this before, but now it took on a new meaning. The dragon was the most primal part of him, but it was also something other. I’d seen it, talked to it, touched it. It was Dane, but also… separate.
The dragon had claimed me, and what Dane had said to me back in my apartment — that he couldn’t resist me — suddenly took on a deeper meaning. The part of him that was the dragon could take over, if it wanted something badly enough. And it had wanted me. Claimed me.
But I wanted to believe that Dane wanted me, too.
“I’m yours,” I told him hesitantly. “Yours, Dane, not just your dragon’s.”
He groaned, leaning down to rest his forehead against mine as his hands played over my back, sliding down to cup my ass before slipping under my shirt. His touch burned with a delicious heat, and I knew if he kept touching me it would end with me riding his cock until he made me explode.
As much as I would enjoy that, at the moment there was something I wanted more.
For once, he was naked while I was still fully clothed. That had never happened before, and I planned on taking full advantage of the situation. I let my hands roam over his hard chest, scraping my nails lightly over his tight nipples.
“Wesley,” he growled, grinding against me. “I need you.”
His excitement ramped up my own, and I let my mouth follow my hands down his hard body, licking and nipping at his hot flesh until I was on my knees with Dane’s enormous cock swaying in front of my face.
I licked my lips, quivering in anticipation. The sheer size would have been intimidating if I hadn’t already known how perfectly it fit inside me. It was gorgeous, straight and hard and already shining at the tip as pre-cum pooled on the thick head.
“Treasure…” The endearment ended in a drawn out hiss when I leaned forward and pulled it into my mouth. He fisted his hands in my hair as a shiver went through his strong thighs, and the evidence of what I did to him made my own cock jerk in excitement. I breathed in his musk, licking up and down his hard shaft before grasping the base in one hand and swallowing as much of his length as I could.
It was my first taste of Dane’s cock.
In the time we’d been together he’d been utterly focused on pleasing me. I had no complaints, but right now, this pleased me. Pulling him deeper and deeper, tasting him, pushing myself to please him… his pleasure was my pleasure.
I looked up, my lips stretched wide around his shaft, then moaned myself when I saw his head thrown back. His mouth had fallen open and his breathing was coming hard and fast, and his fingers started to dig into my scalp as his hips thrust forward into my mouth.
Oh God, he was gorgeous.
I reached down to stroke myself as I watched him. My lips tightened around his cock, and I gave him as much suction as I could. Despite his size, I was determined to pull him as deep as possible. I wanted all of him. I swallowed around his length, massaging his cock with my throat as I worked to milk out his essence.
He panted my name in the sexiest voice I’d ever heard and I felt his shaft start to thicken, swelling inside me. This powerful man was about to come… for me.
He tried to pull out, but I grabbed at his ass with the hand that wasn’t frantically pumping my own cock and locked him in place. He slammed against my face with a hoarse shout and finally let himself go, pumping streams of hot cum down my throat in delicious reward. I swallowed all of it, finally gasping around his cock as my own spasmed and shot onto his shaking legs.
“Wesley.” The word was a tiny explosion of breath.
Dane lifted me up as if I weighed nothing, cradling me against his chest as he walked us the rest of the way to the bed. “Stay with me, treasure,” he said with a desperate intensity.
His words gave me a moment of deja vu, but I couldn’t hold onto whatever memory they teased. Dane was already undressing me, cherishing me with his hands and mouth and body. I arched up under him, my senses overwhelmed with his scent and presence and adoration.
Oh, God. I loved him.
14
~ Dane ~
I carried the steaming mug of chai tea in to my mate, setting it on the nightstand next to the bed where he slept. He opened his eyes sleepily, breathing in the sweet cinnamon smell of his favorite drink. I loved watching his face during little moments of pleasure.
“How do you always know what I want before I do?” he asked, sitting up with a smile.
“You’re my mate. Of course I do.” I pushed his floppy bangs out of his face, using it as an excuse to touch him. I sat down on the bed next to him and he leaned into my hand like a cat, his closeness stirring me as it did every time.
Wesley reached for his chai, contentedly letting one hand rest on his curved belly. The swelling from the child within him increased daily. Dragons grew quickly, but in the two months I’d had him here I’d mastered the art of ignoring it.
It was harder to ignore what it was doing to him, though.
Human bodies weren’t designed to carry our young, and my heart clenched as I took in the dark circles under his eyes and the hollows in his cheeks. I squeezed my eyes closed for a moment, trying to avoid the memory of what had been left of the emaciated human who had carried Maksim’s brother.
As it grew, the babe would take and take and take, until there wasn’t enough left to sustain my mate’s life.
“Really, Dane,” he said now, oblivious to where my thoughts had gone. “How do you do it? I swear half the time you’re handing me something before I even realize I need it.”
“You’re my mate,” I repeated. “When my dragon claimed you, he bonded us together.”
“Bonded?” my treasure asked, his eyes brightening.
I tapped my temple. “I can sense you. All the time.”
Wesley’s eyes widened, and then he closed them and puckered his lips into a kissable little pout. His concentration face. I felt a subtle pressure, like a gentle caress against my mind.
“I think… I can sense you, too. How did I not notice before?” he asked, leaning towards me eagerly.
I shrugged. Dragons could mate without bonding, and most did. I hadn’t been sure how the mating bond would affect a human. I didn’t even know much about how it affected me.
Forming the bond had been an instinct driven by my other self, and at first, when I’d left Wesley, I’d done my best to ignore it. Now it had become a familiar undertone that I welcomed, but didn’t really think about. I’d never met another bonded dragon, and as much as I’d distanced myself from my own kind over the years, there had never been an opportunity — or need — to find out more about this part of my dragon nature.
“The day you came back… is this how you knew that Brent — my ex — had come by?” my treasure asked.
I nodded, snarling under my breath at the memory of another man trying to claim my mate.
“So, we were bonded then? Even though we’d only been together the one time?”
“Yes. My dragon claimed you the first time I saw you, Wesley. Your mind was receptive, and accepted the mating bond.” I loved the way his breath hitched, and even if I hadn’t sensed it through the bond, his face would have given away the fact that he was reliving the memory of the first time we’d been together. His expression made my cock twitch, but I could tell he really wanted to know more about it so I made myself stay focused.
“You always talk about your dragon as if it were separate,” he said after a minute. “I’ve met him — you — the dragon. It is you, Dane, I can tell, but also… different.”
I scowled, feeling the old anger flare to life inside me. I didn’t want to be my dragon, this thing that selfishly used humans for its own purposes. I wanted to deny any connection to the legacy of my kind, a species that believed themselves superior to humans, who had shaped the history of mankind for thousands of years, solely for the convenience or pleasure of the dragons that saw them as disposable.
And the truth was, my dragon did feel separate. He was powerful, and even
though I’d learned to use some of that power the beast could still overwhelm me.
I didn’t always understand him, and I didn’t want to.
My treasure had been watching me, and now he set his cup down and wrapped his arms around me. “You don’t like that, do you?” he asked, frowning a little as he rested his forehead against mine. “I can feel that you don’t. Knowing how you feel, it’s a little like my connection to Ty, but different. More.”
“Maybe having your mind already tuned to another is why the bond is so strong with you.”
Wesley smiled shyly. “Is it… permanent? This bond? I mean, I know we’re having a child together—” his hand dropped to his stomach again, cupping it tenderly. I had to look away. “—but after, I mean, do we stay together? Will the baby be a dragon, too?”
His questions were killing me. I stood up, my dragon growing restless as my guilt kindled the fire within me.
“I hope he looks like you,” Wesley went on, his enthusiasm making him blind to my distress. “And, if he is a dragon, are there things he’ll be able to do? I mean, besides the whole breathing fire thing. Which, God, is pretty awesome, you have to admit.”
“Yes.”
Wesley cocked his head, obviously waiting for me to say more. He didn’t know that I avoided thinking about the baby at all costs. And I certainly didn’t want to talk about it.
“Like what?” he asked, and it took me a minute to realize he was still asking about what dragons could do.
“It’s hard to kill us,” I bit out, desperately wishing I could say the same for my mate. I stood up and started pacing, restless with the heat that started to rise within me. “If we’re hurt, we heal quickly — but not that many things can hurt us, even in human form. We’re long lived. We can compel humans to do our will. There are other things. Terrible things. We are a curse upon humanity.”
Wesley looked a little shocked at my outburst, his soft lips in a perfect, round “O” as he stared up at me. “You’re not a curse, or terrible, Dane,” he finally said. “You’re none of those things. I lo—”
I couldn’t take it. He didn’t know what was in store for him, and even though I’d admitted, once, to using him, he didn’t believe me. He thought he loved me.
I could feel it, and I didn’t deserve it.
It had been centuries since I’d lost control of my form, but suddenly the fire within me flared with such intensity that I knew my dragon was about to take over. The cave was too small, Wesley was too close. I raced for the ledge and leapt off it as my wings burst forth and my body rippled into its other form.
For the second time since I’d found my mate, I left him.
15
~ Wesley ~
I stared after Dane in shock. What had just happened?
When I reached for that sense of him that I’d just discovered, I felt the vast, echoing mind of the dragon I’d met once before. It was still Dane, but my lover — my mate, I thought, smiling as I thought how permanent the word he’d used sounded — was different when he wore the shape of a dragon. He acted as if the dragon were completely separate, but like I’d tried to tell him, it didn’t feel that way to me. The dragon was Dane, but a version of him with different priorities.
The anger and pain I’d inexplicably sensed in him before he’d rushed out of the cave were muted now that he’d shifted. When I focused my attention on the connection between us, I got the sense that he was flying over the forests and mountains that surrounded the cave. Not really going anywhere, just letting the freedom of the open air soothe him.
If he needed space, then I was glad he had found it. There would be plenty of time later to find out what had upset him so much. Mate, I thought again, grinning. That certainly sounded like he planned on sticking with me for the long haul.
I heaved myself out of bed, feeling awkward and clumsy with the roundness of my stomach jutting out in front of me. I didn’t know much about pregnancy, but this one certainly seemed to be happening quickly. I’d have to ask Dane about that.
Despite the obvious changes in my body, the idea of having his child still felt a little abstract. On the one hand, I was thrilled at the idea of making a baby with the man I loved. An entire human being — or, well, something, anyway… he hadn’t actually answered me about that — that was a piece of him and me combined. It shouldn’t be possible, but like so many magical things since Dane came into my life, it was true.
The thought that I would actually be responsible for a baby, though? That was a little overwhelming. I hadn’t ever been around children much. Okay, at all. I wasn’t sure what kind of father I’d be, or whether I’d know what to do with a living, breathing infant.
I wanted to talk to Dane about these things, but he always seemed to avoid any mention of the baby. At first, I’d worried that he didn’t like the changes in my body. That he wasn’t attracted to me anymore. But that wasn’t it.
I blushed, even though I was alone. Nope, that definitely wasn’t it.
Maybe he was nervous, too. Whatever the reason, I was determined to talk to him about it soon. Figuring out our thoughts on parenthood definitely seemed like a conversation to have long before the baby came.
Which was another thing I wanted to ask him about.
If this had happened the first time he’d fucked me, then I was about four months pregnant — but as I looked down at the huge mound of my belly, I knew that there was no way this dragon pregnancy could last a full nine months. I already felt like I was going to pop, and it had started to get harder to breathe.
I couldn’t imagine going to a doctor in my condition, but I’d made Dane bring me some books on one of his supply runs so I could try to figure out more about what was happening to me. I felt increasingly tired and lethargic, which was something that sounded like it should have ended with the first trimester according to the books. As near as I could tell, most of the changes in my body were closer to what a woman would feel at six or seven months, though. And some of what I was feeling wasn’t mentioned in the books at all.
But that made sense, I supposed. I mean… I was a man. My heart started to race as my mind focused on the big question I kept avoiding: how the heck was I supposed to actually give birth to this child?
Whatever the dragon’s heat had done to make the pregnancy possible, it hadn’t changed any of my essential parts. I couldn’t think of a single way for something the size of a baby to, er, come out of my body.
I reached for my cold cup of chai tea, my hand shaking a little as I tried not to imagine it happening any of the ways that came to mind. God. That part might really suck. I didn’t know how women handled it, and they were made for it.
I shuddered, accidentally knocking the cup to the ground.
“Shit!” I said, jumping away from the splashing liquid and landing right on top of a jagged shard from the broken cup.
With my bare foot.
God, that hurt.
I hobbled into the bathroom, leaving a smudged trail of blood on the floor behind me. The pain was fading quickly as I dug through the well-stocked medicine cabinet. Dane certainly likes to be prepared, I thought with a smile, pushing aside antacids, pre-natal vitamins, an excessive amount of lube, and a huge variety of first aid creams. He’d stocked everything in this place.
I finally found the disinfectant and a Band-Aid, and perched on the edge of the jetted tub to try to deal with my cut. I wasn’t actually all that flexible to start with, and it was extra awkward trying to do it with my huge belly in the way. Once I finally got my foot where I could see it, I stared in shock. My foot was smeared with blood, but the cut had already started to close. I poked at it in disbelief. It was tender, but if I hadn’t felt the sharp pain a few minutes before I would never have believed it was a fresh injury.
I wiped away the blood, and then watched in wonder as my skin subtly changed before my eyes. I couldn’t look away. I don’t know how long it took, but by the time I left the bathroom my ass had fallen asleep from sitti
ng still for so long… and my cut had healed completely.
We heal quickly, Dane had said.
But he’d been talking about dragons, and I wasn’t a dragon.
I’d gotten hurt before. I was twenty-two years old, and I’d had my fair share of cuts and bruises over the years. They’d definitely never healed this quickly, though. This was new, and it had to be a dragon thing.
Maybe the bond connected us in more ways than he’d told me.
I headed to the kitchen, too impatient to wait for Dane to return to find out if what had just happened had been real. I grabbed a knife with the intention of cutting myself again, but then dropped it. I was far too squeamish for that… and, ewww, what if I was wrong? Feeling slightly foolish, I grabbed one of the pregnancy books Dane had brought me instead.
Okay, dragon powers, I thought, let’s see how you fare against a dreaded paper cut.
I’d never actually tried to give myself a paper cut, and doing it on purpose was harder than I expected. I was determined, though, and eventually managed it. I felt the familiar, annoying sting, and a few drops of blood welled up on my fingertip. I automatically stuck it in my mouth and sucked on it before I remembered that I was experimenting.
The pain was already fading, and after about ten minutes, my finger was whole again.
“This is so cool!” I said, cupping my hands around my stomach and directing the comment to the baby, since there was no one else around to share it with.
I ran my hands over my new roundness, amazed again at how huge it was, and how hard. My belly button poked out, even though I’d always had an innie before.
“I hope you are a dragon,” I whispered to the little guy. “Your other daddy may have said terrible things about them, but from what I’ve seen, it’s pretty wonderful.”