by daisy harris
It may have been minutes or hours later when David wiped his eyes and placed his fingers on the key to the ignition. He paused, picked up his phone, and dialed.
His mother picked up right away. “Hi, Mom. Yeah, I’ve been doing well…The job is fine, better than fine…”
He pinched his forehead between his thumb and forefinger as she chatted.
“Hey Mom, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you…I’m gay.”
He barely heard her next words, his heart thumped so hard in his ears. Then he smiled, tears welling up anew.
“Someone special? Well, not right now, Mom. But I did.”
* * * * The outboard rumbled, vibration strumming through Raider’s body as he motored through the harbor. He slid the windows open and breathed in the sultry ocean air, growling in satisfaction.
“You look…happy.” He turned to see Sophia smiling at him. Her adorable white teeth shone against the burgundy of her lips. She was right, he was.
A question hung in his throat. As much as he looked forward to finding a nice cove to settle in and screw her non-stop for several days, he needed to know something.
“Sophia…” He didn’t know how to start. She’d chosen to leave with him rather than stay for the dragons, but perhaps that was all part of her plot, and she was still hoping to get “saved” and leave him.
“Listen, Raider…” Her face went grave. He braced for what she might tell him, but the sound of an approaching boat pulled his attention. He held up a hand and cocked his head to the side.
They were moving fast, whoever they were, their ship clocking far more horses than his. Over the waves he heard the faint sound of a loudspeaker.
“We’ve come to rescue Lady Sophia Aleahar. Surrender, shark!” Sophia’s face lit up as she too heard the sound. The sight of it drove a hot spike of pain right through his heart. Part of him wanted to floor it, run with her, even against her will. But even if he wanted to keep her prisoner forever, he couldn’t.
Sophia might not always realize it, but she was the stronger of them, likely the smarter one too. In fact she might be better off back with her own kind.
* * * * Sophia watched Raider’s face harden into the mask of disinterest she knew so well. She’d meant to have a good laugh with him that Aydes Reeves, of all dragons, had come to her rescue, but clearly that wasn’t going to happen. It was perfectly obvious that the shark shifter didn’t want her to leave, but as usual he acted like he didn’t care.
And she was sick of it. Sophia had spent way too long being unwanted to stand for playing games like this with the one male who did want her.
Raider turned back to the steering wheel. In a sarcastic growl, he said, “I guess it’s time for you to meet your savior.”
She scowled at his back, tempted to hit him. Then she furtively smelled herself. The scent of her heat still lingered. It had dampened some since her time in the cell, but it should be enough to draw in Aydes. Since Raider didn’t seem to care enough to fight for her.
Aydes’s voice boomed over the loudspeaker, self-assured, confident. Clearly, he didn’t have a doubt in the world that Sophia would run to him.
She peeked at Raider, stealing her emotions to lay a fraction of them on the line. “Um, I’m going to miss you.”
His jaw hardened, and he nodded once. “Yeah, good times. I guess you got what you wanted out of all this, huh?”
Sophia didn’t have the strength to tell him that she no longer knew what she wanted. Before, all she’d really hoped for was someone to love her. Now the dragon of her dreams stood before her, and a sharkshifter out of her nightmares slouched at her side. She couldn’t even tell if she was making a choice. “Did you? Um, I mean…get what you wanted out of this?”
“Fuck if I know.” His curtness thickened the wall between them.
She found herself rising in anger. “Well, thank you then. It’s been…” Tears blurred her vision. They’d gotten within a quarter mile of the dragon’s ship, and not wanting him to know how much his indifference upset her, Sophia started for the door. “I can just swim from here. You may as well have a head start.”
“Fine,” he bit out.
When she stepped out onto the deck, her body shook with fear. What if Aydes decided he didn’t really want her? What if her heat wasn’t enough to draw him in? Before she’d had nothing to lose, but now…She peered in the windows to where Raider stood at the wheel. He didn’t meet her eyes, but when he noticed her stare, he shooed her with his hand. “Get the fuck off, I need to leave.”
His words stung like a whip. Sophia ripped her dress off over her head and dove off the bow.
Her body shifted to dragon, dulling the sharpness of human emotions. She batted her tail hard and tried to outrun her anger and hurt. The huge gray hull divided the green-blue of the water. As she approached, she heard Aydes’s servants call to her. A broad metal walkway splashed onto the surface. The sound of it echoed like a death toll. Her claws scraped on the ridged steel, pulling her dragon body out of the water. Here in the tropics she could hold her reptile form all she wanted. The humid warmth was perfectly suited for her cold blood.
The platform cranked upward, and water poured off its sides as it rose to the deck. When she reached the top, a human-form male she’d never seen before ran toward her.
“Sophia. Darling, I’m so glad you’re alive!” Long, shiny black hair hung in glamorous waves. The male stood nearly seven feet tall, and was clearly aware of every inch of advantage he held over the shorter mere deck-hands scurrying around him. Green eyes shone out from his dark-bronze dragon skin.
Aydes Reeves in human form was a sight to behold.
“Alert the Council immediately!” he shouted to someone nearby. “And make sure we keep after that shark.”
Sophia let off a soft yelp. “That’s unnecessary, Aydes, he didn’t hurt me. He was just, um…love-struck.” She felt odd speaking to him still in dragon form, but Aydes didn’t offer her any clothes and her naked human body was not something she felt ready to share with anyone but the male she’d just left.
“Well?” Aydes cocked a jaunty eyebrow. “Are you going to stand there all scaly or are you shift to your human form?”
“I don’t have anything to wear.” She realized how silly that sounded. Sophia just expected to deal with all this in dragon form.
His lip curled into a smile that she only now realized bypassed confident and crossed into conceited. “Hmmm…You smell out-ofthis-world, Sophia.” His eyebrow recommenced their wagging. “You don’t need clothes for what we’ll be doing.” He must not have registered her wide-eyed look of disbelief or her gasp of outrage, because he kept talking. “I’m unbelievably skilled at human-form intercourse techniques. You’ll be very impressed.”
Sophia didn’t know whether to run away screaming or laugh out loud. This was the male she’d spent years dreaming of? She’d never noticed before that behind his size, his money, and his shiny scales he was a complete dolt. When her thoughts came spilling out her mouth, she made no effort to stop them. “I seriously doubt that.”
His eyes narrowed, giving his face a cruel and petulant cast. “No wonder no one can stomach you.”
Once his insult would have crushed her, but now…meh.
Shouts sounded as mere ran across the deck to their dragon master. “We’ve caught him!” Sophia swung her large dragon head to see a shark-form Raider being hauled up in a wire net. “He came swimming right back this way. Stupid shark!”
Chapter 16
Raider’s body morphed. The wires bit into his thinner human skin, but he didn’t peel his eyes from Sophia.
The dragon standing by her was in human form, but he still looked formidable. He had a foot of height on Raider, and was probably trained in all manners of fighting.
Good thing Raider fought dirty. Because so way in hell was that asshole going to lay a hand on his female—no matter what form she was in.
Sophia pushed past the male and ran toward
him, her slinky dragon body wiggling as she scurried. Just because he couldn’t do her in that form didn’t mean the sight didn’t get him hard. He stood up, shoving off the net.
A half dozen mere grabbed his arms, one held a gun to his head. “My sister was raped by a shark-shifter you cock-sucker,” the man snarled in his ear.
“So was my mother,” Raider replied
The mere pulled back a hair but kept the gun cocked and trained.
The monstrously tall dragon behind Sophia laughed. “So this is who fell in love with you? This is my competition? A mutant shark? Your parents are going to love hearing about this.”
Raider could give a fuck about what the dragon thought of him, but he lunged forward anyway. No one talked to Sophia like that. But when the mere dragged him back, he saw Sophia thumping toward the tall, dark male, her dragon tail waving enticingly. Raider almost thought she’d smack the human-form dragon with her taloned claw, but she stopped inches from his face. To his credit, the male dragon didn’t shift forms.
“He’s not a mutant.” Sophia started. “He’s um…well, he’s a…high ranking employee of Dendric Research. Have you heard of them? Hmmm, I thought not. They’re a human company, Fortune 500.”
Raider bit back a laugh as Sophia the Honest lied her ass off.
“And we’re together, so…we’re going to leave now. I just came by to let you know that…and he followed…in case I needed him to sign something.”
She really needed to learn that the key to bullshit is brevity.
“Sophia, you know your parents won’t accept this,” the male drawled at her.
She raised her eyebrows. “Well, they’ll have to. Because I went into heat and he…Claimed me.”
Raider’s mouth fell open at the same moment the dragon’s did.
“Sharks don’t Claim females.” The male dragon sounded not completely sure.
“Sure they do!”
“Then where’s your mark?” The large male’s eyebrow rose in challenge.
“It’s somewhere you can’t see.” Her comment was so offhand that if Raider didn’t know better, he’d think it was the truth. “They do, and he did, and that’s all there is to it.” She stood up on her back legs so her reptile form towered over the male’s human one. “And he fucks like a monster.”
Raider tugged his arms away from the mere surrounding him. “Excuse me!” He imitated the male dragon’s haughty expression. “My mate and I will be leaving now.”
Sophia bounded toward him, and he readied to dive in the water. Raider took in the deck full of rag-wearing mere and the Armani-clad dragon who all but owned them. He leaned to the mere closest to his left. “If you’re looking to make some easy money, drop me a line. It’s mereshark, all one word, at Dendric Research dot com. Tell your friends.”
* * * * Sophia’s shifted to human and climbed up the small ladder at the back of their boat. Raider shook out his hair like a dog and water streamed over his rangy shoulders and arms. The breath rushed out of her. Perhaps she hadn’t completely noticed before, but he was beautiful—tough and hard, and hers.
When he lifted his head, he pinned her with a wicked glare. “What are you looking at?”
As if he didn’t know. She allowed her eyes to travel the line of white down his body to where his member expanded before her eyes. Her lower lip pinched between her teeth.
When she didn’t answer he returned her stare with a hot one of his own. “Those were some tall tales you told back there.”
His body called to hers, and she obeyed, walking slowly toward him. “I learned from the best.” She notice his eyes riveted on her lips. She licked them slowly, delighting when he groaned low in his throat. Sophia reached out, walking her fingers down his chest and watching his lance bob as she neared it. “But not all of them were lies.”
She felt his smile like sunshine raining down, though her eyes trained on his hips.
“Hell, sweetheart, you know I have to motor us into a cove before we can have any real fun.”
Sophia’s grin grew wide. She liked this power she had to make him crazy. Her lip twisted into a mock-innocent smile. When his mouth dropped open with desire, she added a bat of her eyelashes and a little sigh. His whole body convulsed.
She pulled her finger away right before it dipped into the crinkly hair at the juncture of his thighs. “I guess you should start driving.”
He plunged in and nipped hard at her lower lip. His hands didn’t touch her, but she felt the bite to her toes. Then he ripped open the door and went inside, leaving her to place cool fingers on the swollen lip he’d bitten. With adoring eyes, she watched through the window as he started the engine and adjusted himself so his erection didn’t poke the console.
He turned around and called to her, “Come here and suck me off while I drive.”
She snorted but did as he said.
The motor started up under her feet, rumbling up her body. Sophia fell to her knees while keeping her eyes trained on his.
He looked to the water, then back to her, then back to the water. Raider’s Adam’s apple bobbed when he swallowed.
Sophia traced her eyes up his long shaft, up to the folds of skin framing his slick, reddened cap. Wetness seeped between her legs, mirroring his arousal. His hand combed into her hair, urging her forward.
She snaked a hand between her legs as she closed her mouth over his salty head. His growls urged her on, sent waves of excitement through her body.
Sophia opened her mouth wider, tried to shove more of him into her mouth.
“Easy, baby, you don’t need to take it all.” His hand petted her face, and his panting breaths came closer together. She backed off, just drawing on the tip while her hand worked into the cleft between her legs.
“Give me your hand.”
She lifted her head from his sex and lifted her right hand to him. He bowed his head and took her fingers into his mouth, groaning when his tongue wound around them. Then he released them and smirked at her. “Not that hand.”
She reached up her other hand, burying the one he licked back between her legs. He took her fingers and wrapped them around the base of his sex, urging her to grip. “Put the tip in your mouth.”
Sophia did as he said, and Raider worked her hand up his shaft in a long hard squeeze. He moaned aloud and rocked his hips forward. The movement sent her core burning and she sped up her hand as well as the fingers inside her. The motor screamed, and the boat buzzed under her as he hit the gas.
“Hell, I need to get you on your back.”
Sophia sped up her movements, bold now that she understood better what he liked. She tugged him hard and then curled her lips down his length until bitter fluid touched the back of her throat. He gripped at the back of her head, thick fingers twisted in her hair. She wondered what he’d taste like if he released in her mouth as she’d done on his.
Sliding back up his length, she stroked him again, this time doubling him over as he tried to pull away. “Sweetheart, I…”
She followed his retreat, teasing at a penis head turned purple, but he set the motor to neutral. “Hold that thought.”
She waited on her knees while he threw the anchor. By the time he returned, her probing fingers had worked her to a moment from climax. He strode back to her, gripping her hair with his fist. “Open!” Her mouth spread wide and he thrust into it, almost causing her to gag. Sophia moaned. The bite of pain in her scalp, his tangy taste, her orgasm held barely at bay, all of it created an erotic haze her awareness could hardly pierce. “Your throat too, open.”
Sophia experimented with her muscles, adjusting her spread jaw to accommodate him further. Her eyes flew open as his wide cap settled snuggly into the back of her throat. She keened around him and his answering curses of praise set her off. She screamed around his cock as her spasming core bent her at her waist. She was still crying in rhythmic waves when Raider’s arm wrapped around her waist from underneath and tossed her in the V-berth.
She flipp
ed to her back, spreading her legs open for him. She wanted to watch his face when he spent inside her. Raider gripped her knees in his hands and balled her under him then sank into her slick center in one hard thrust. She closed around him gripping him tight. When he had her pinned and impaled, his mismatched eyes bore into hers.
“Mercy.” Her breath rushed out.
He showed her none.
* * * * Mindlessly, Raider bucked into her. Somewhere in the distance he heard Sophia gasp and scream. Then she was shouting his name and he murmured hers in return but gritted his teeth against the need to come. She was his, not leaving, and he was going to fuck her senseless on his boat.
“Raider?” She panted, her hands pressing on either side of his face. He looked down at her to find her flushed, damp with sweat, but concern shone in her eyes. “I’m not going anywhere.”
His chest clenched against an onslaught of feeling, and he collapsed onto her, his body pressed along every inch of her soft, fragrant skin. Her hands stroked down his back, and he thrust into her again, this time slow and deep. “I thought you were leaving.” He growled as she gasped again, her center pulling him in, her limbs tensing around him.
“I’m yours.” His balls pulled in tight, sending spasms up his body. He took her mouth in a romantic-as-fuck kiss as he poured into her. He felt her answering climax all around him. She cried into his mouth, and he sucked it all in.
Raider held her close, not wanting to separate yet. “I…” She whispered in his ear. “I know you do.” He smiled against her neck, and then lifted his head to kiss her pouty bottom lip. It felt plump and bruised and tasted like salt and female. “So are you gonna want to get married or something?”
She reached down and slapped his ass. “Like a human? Gross!” Raider tickled her side as he wetly slid out of her depths. “Mere do it, too!”
Sophia cocked her eyebrows at him and adopted her most haughty expression. “Well dragons don’t!” She stated it as if that had ended the discussion and wiggled out from under him to get to the tissues, but Raider wasn’t going to let it drop.