by Marcy Jacks
“Because I told you that.”
Again and again and again.
“When you eat, you eat your vegetables last, so I know you don’t like them.”
Warren tensed.
“You also eat fast, your elbows down over your food, not because you think I’m going to take your plate from you, but it’s like habit, like you’re trying to keep other people from taking your food from you. Like an inmate or something.”
Warren narrowed his eyes at the man.
“I know you’re more gorgeous than normal when you’re mad.”
Warren immediately smoothed his brow out, trying not to look so angry.
“And I know, now, that you have honor. You’d be willing to walk away from a child you carried to give it a chance, and I’m telling you right now that you don’t need to do that.”
Lasius took Warren by his hands, clutching them tightly. “I don’t know anything else about you, you’re right. Other than you’re good in the sack.”
Heat climbed Warren’s face, and he couldn’t help himself that he went back to glaring and growling.
“But I want to get to know you. I’m sorry for the way I treated you, and the things I’ve said.”
“It’s to be expected. I’m a prisoner in your house. Why would you believe anything I would have said?”
“And now I know you’re a logical thinker, too. To the point where you put your feelings, and probably everyone else’s, on the back burner. You’d rather think logically than with emotion.”
“Now I’m starting to get tired of this.”
Lasius grinned at him, the happiest look Warren had ever seen on the man, but even that look quickly melted away.
“I’ll do better for you. I’ll be better. I’ll take care of you, and we can start over from scratch. You and me, and the baby, if you’ll let me?”
He seemed so hopeful. The expression in his eyes was unlike anything Warren had ever seen on a man like him before.
It was almost innocent. Warren wanted to say yes. He wanted to allow this man to wrap him up into his arms and take him away, to let nothing from the outside world touch either of them.
Warren sighed. “I need to stay anyway. For now. I have shifter blood, but I can’t change into a wolf. I’ll need someone to cut the child out of me when it comes time.”
He hadn’t meant for it to sound as though he was making a commitment. He’d wanted to give Lasius some wiggle room in case the man changed his mind after he’d stopped looking at Warren as though he was a poor, orphaned puppy.
But Lasius smiled at him as though Warren had given him a gift, as though Warren had presented him with all of the heads of his enemies neatly wrapped up with Christmas paper.
And then he pulled Warren in for another heart-wrenching kiss.
Chapter Eight
Lasius seemed determined to kiss Warren into submission, and the more he did it, the less Warren wanted to resist him.
The less he could resist him.
At some point, and to Warren’s shame, he wasn’t sure when, Seth gave Lasius permission to take Warren back to his room.
Warren should have been upset with going back there, back to the place where he’d been held hostage for so long, but he couldn’t bring himself to care about the time he’d spent in there, angry, frustrated, and trapped.
He wanted to go. He wanted to be alone with Lasius, and he wanted the man inside him like he’d never wanted anything else in his entire life.
Lasius didn’t seem to want to stop kissing Warren, and he couldn’t keep walking in a straight line as they struggled to keep their balance and their mouths connected.
Lasius picked Warren up. No one had ever picked him up before, and it was exciting and wonderful as Warren tightened his thighs around Lasius’s waist, feeling that his mate had better mobility to rush up the stairs now that he didn’t have to worry about tripping over Warren’s feet.
They made it back to Lasius’s bedroom in good time. Lasius kicked the door shut, and for the first time, Warren was aware the man didn’t lock the door behind him.
He brought Warren straight to bed, falling on top of the sheets that still smelled of the sex they’d had less than an hour ago.
It felt like a lifetime. It felt as though that hadn’t happened at all and that this would be the first real time Lasius would put his hands on Warren’s body.
Warren curled his leg around Lasius’s thigh, thrusting his clothed cock up and against the man, wanting that friction, needing it more than he’d ever needed anything in his entire life.
“Fuck me. Fuck me,” Warren sighed, begging for it already again.
Part of him was ashamed for not being able to keep control over himself. Another part of his brain, the part that didn’t give a damn about anyone or anything other than himself and his own pleasure, decided to clock out and not give a shit.
“I will,” Lasius growled, his back arching as he thrust long and sweetly against Warren’s body.
Warren’s head fell back. The friction was hard and sweet. It was enough to make his entire body tremble, and he couldn’t believe…it was so good that he…
“I’m not going to last.”
“Then I should hurry,” Lasius said, backing off him, pulling at his pants, dragging them down, and revealing Warren’s erection.
It bobbed up, dark and throbbing, pointing up at Lasius as though it was the needle of a compass.
This way to getting off. This way to sweet, exquisite freedom.
Warren trusted his old compass. He didn’t have it with him, but he figured this was as good as anything.
“I’ll do better,” Lasius said, sinking to his knees on the floor.
For a moment, Warren didn’t know what he was talking about, and then he realized the man was still apologizing. Warren wished he wouldn’t.
It got in the way of the pleasure he felt when the alpha let his tongue slide around the head of Warren’s cock. “I’ll make it up to you.”
“Don’t make it up to me,” Warren said, a small part of him terrified that this wasn’t going to last. That, mating or no mating, Lasius still didn’t like him and he was only acting this way out of a sense of guilt.
“I want to.”
“Just get me off. You can start there.”
Lasius looked up at him, and there was something to be said about the attention a man could command when he had such a look in his eyes and Warren’s cock in hand.
“You don’t believe me yet, but you will.”
Warren pressed his lips together. He was trying desperately to not have such a miserably small amount of hope in this, but he couldn’t help himself.
He was naturally a pessimistic person.
Lasius seemed to take this as a form of challenge, and his smile returned as he let his wet, warm lips linger around the head of Warren’s dick, as though he was open-mouthed kissing the tip.
Warren tensed, a trembling sigh escaping him.
Lasius didn’t stop stroking the length of his cock even after he pulled his mouth away. “I mean it. I’ll make it up to you. You might have some things of your own that you need to make up for, at least to yourself, but I’m done with this. I don’t want to fight with you. I want to be mated to you. I want to love you.”
“People who love each other are stupid.”
That finally seemed to shock the other man. “What?”
Warren looked down at him. “It’s just setting yourself up. You’re giving yourself a weakness, something that can be used against you. You shouldn’t do it, and neither should I.”
Lasius seemed to think about that, and Warren realized that he might finally have gotten the man on something he couldn’t refute.
Then Lasius leaned up, taking Warren’s chin in hand, pulling his lips closer until they barely touched, and he whispered, “Then I’ll be the stupidest motherfucker on this side of the Earth because I’m not giving you up. No matter how much you piss me off, no matter how much you lash out at me
, we’re going to make this work.”
Warren’s eyes burned. They burned, and he hurt. All over his body. It was bad, so bad he couldn’t stand it.
He clenched his eyes shut when Lasius kissed him, waiting for the man to pull away. “You are stupid,” he said, almost sobbing the words. “The dumbest, craziest, most idiot—”
He couldn’t finish. He couldn’t think of anything else to say to get this across to the man.
And he could tell, without looking, that Lasius was still smiling at him. “At least this means you’re worried for me. I think that’s as close to I love you as I’m going to get from you.”
He was right, it was.
Then Lasius soothed away his pain, making him forget about everything else as he went make to kissing and suckling on all of the pleasure points on Warren’s body, making him forget about his past and present pains.
Warren eventually got fully naked, though it took a while compared to the other times. In fact, he might have been only once around this man, and that was when Lasius had been in the middle of trying to tease him to completion.
Torturing him with the desire for an orgasm by denying him one for hours on end.
The first time they’d fucked, neither of them had been naked, and as much as Warren had been connected to this man, even back then, he couldn’t deny the fact that it had felt a little closer to hate fucking.
This seemed a little slower. Lasius seemed to be gentle with him this time around.
Not that he needed it. Warren was strong and capable, and he didn’t need to be coddled by anyone.
But he wasn’t going to thumb his nose at the gesture either. He’d accept it. It felt nice. It made him feel…
Safe.
He didn’t want to let it go to his head. Warren didn’t want to be controlled like that, and the last thing he wanted was for someone to be used against him.
Let alone two someones.
Actually, there were now three.
Christ. As Lasius kissed him, their tongues meeting as the taller man pulled Warren into his lap, Warren came to the shocking realization that he’d woken up this morning to a full-fledged family.
He had a mate, a stubborn, idiot dragon who wasn’t going to let him go. A child was officially growing inside him, and now Sorin knew of their connection, as well. Sorin had called him brother.
It was too much. Warren didn’t know what his problem was or why he couldn’t halt the burning in his eyes.
He was going to blame it on the child. It was the hormones. That seemed to be an excuse he’d heard the omegas making whenever they were carrying their young.
“Does it hurt?”
Warren looked at Lasius, really looked at him. He’d barely stopped to notice the man’s slick fingers were inside him. Two of them pushed deeply, stretching him open.
Right, and the fact that Warren was getting misty eyed for no damned reason probably didn’t look so good to him.
He shook his head. “No.”
Lasius cocked his head to the side just a little, and in that moment, he reminded Warren a little more of a dog than of a man.
“You sure? We don’t have to do anything right now.”
Warren growled at the man. “It’s a little late for you to be worried about my virtue or anything.”
Lasius grinned. “Did you seriously just say virtue?”
“Shut up.”
There had been enough revelations for now. Warren wasn’t going to tell Lasius that he’d been the first. There was no point as far as Warren was concerned, and he didn’t want Lasius to feel any more guilt over the harsh way things had started.
He was going to be the last one anyway. That was the only part of all of this that mattered.
“Just hurry up and impale me before I change my mind.”
“Bet you don’t say that too often,” Lasius said, removing his fingers, still grinning as he gripped Lasius by the hips and arranged his body dead center of his heavy cock.
Warren shivered when he felt the blunt head press against his sensitive pucker. It was insanity how good it felt to just be touched there, never mind to be entered, to be filled.
“No, I don’t,” Warren said, shaking his head.
To be impaled in any other sense, in any other way that Warren knew of it, wasn’t exactly a good thing. No one wanted to be impaled while under Varrick’s control. That was for damned sure.
And then it happened, and Warren threw his head back and sighed as the full length of Lasius’s cock slid up and into him. The man grunted, his face twisting as he tried to contain his pleasure, and he looked so good as he did that.
Warren’s body clenched at the intrusion. That seemed to be normal for him, as well. He had to wait for his pucker to adjust, but even then, even as he calmed down from the sting of pain and sighed, his body melting around Lasius’s, his arms curling around his neck and shoulders, he still felt some of that wonderful burning sensation.
“That’s good,” Warren sighed against the man’s chest.
He wasn’t sure why, but in that moment, he really noticed Lasius’s nipples. Struck with the sudden urge to play around with them, Warren leaned down, trying to kiss them, but he couldn’t reach. He settled for kissing and sucking on the man’s chest and neck, letting his hands come down to pinch and tweak.
“That feels real good,” Lasius growled, his voice a low burr that made Warren groan.
He was such…such an alpha. Warren never thought he would be getting off on the idea of being dominated like this, but here he was, practically begging for more as this man began to thrust into him, finally taking him, and Warren felt a little embarrassed for the way he bounced on the man’s lap, but then it was too good for him to care about, and he let himself get lost in the sensation of being fucked so well.
Again, it was different. In a faraway sort of way, through the haze of pleasure, Warren was very aware of how gentle Lasius was with him. Even as the bed shook under the weight and strength of their bodies moving together, Warren tried to keep up with the pace. He thrust his ass back down to meet Lasius’s pelvis, but he couldn’t seem to get to where he wanted to be.
He was stuck. He was stuck not being able to keep up, and it was all right. Warren realized that it was all right to allow himself to be submissive to Lasius’s natural dominance.
This was where Warren liked it. This was where he belonged.
Lasius proved to be just as good in the sheets when he was slowing things down, looking Warren in the eyes and kissing his lips with love and apology instead of reluctantly fucking him because the mating heat compelled them to want each other. Warren was shocked by that, and still afraid. So afraid that this would bite him in the ass later on, but that fear was soothed away again and again as Lasius fucked into him.
Warren’s orgasm built quickly. Not that it was much of a surprise, considering his dick was trapped between his and Lasius’s hard bellies, being stroked in another sort of way with every motion of their bodies.
“I’m not…I’m not…”
“Don’t fight it,” Lasius growled then pressed his face into Warren’s neck. “God, yeah.”
It was that last rumbled word against Warren’s skin that threw him over the edge.
He desperately tried to reach down, to palm himself so he could come harder, but his hand had barely touched the base of his dick before his orgasm ripped through him.
Warren threw his head back, his entire body aching, clenching. Lasius let out a hard, guttural sound, the force of his hips increasing as he fucked harder and faster into Warren, as though he was secretly a robot in disguise, milking Warren’s orgasm for what was left of it, and then finally, beautifully, Warren felt it. The tension in Lasius’s shoulders hit him first and then the warm, wet spill into his channel.
It was the most satisfying thing Warren had ever experienced in his entire life, and he sighed when it was over, sad for it to be over, and he waited for this wonderful dream to end.
He waited
for Lasius to become cold again, for them to slip back into this twisted game they’d been playing over the last two weeks, but the longer Warren waited, the more he became terrified that it would actually come.
He swallowed hard, and when Lasius’s mouth kissed his collarbone and then his neck, Warren barely held back the whimper that threatened to escape him.
He was so weak. Why was he so weak around this man? If he’d ever behaved like this for two seconds back when he’d been working for Varrick, he would have been quickly killed. If not taken out by someone looking to climb the ranks, then he might have been put out of his misery by Varrick himself.
“Are you okay?” Lasius asked.
Warren nodded, though he wasn’t entirely sure if he was. Which was strange. He didn’t like not knowing exactly where he was on an emotional level.
He didn’t like being emotional, period.
“Warren, I want you to do something.”
Ah, here it was. Here was where Warren heard the fine print for this evening. The price he would have to pay if he wanted this charade to go on.
He tried to sound casual as he braced himself for the strike. “Shoot.”
Lasius pulled back. The man looked down at him, and though the only light in the room was from the lamp, his blond hair shone brightly, as though it was the sun itself that lit him up.
“I want you to bite me.”
Warren blinked, jerking back a little. He might have stepped away entirely, except that Lasius was still inside him and their arms and legs were still tangled up.
“Bite you?”
Lasius nodded, tapping the side of his throat. “Right here.”
As if Warren needed a map to get there.
Warren frowned. “Why?”
Lasius looked away, as though he was ashamed of himself for something. “I don’t like that we haven’t been feeding you enough. I don’t like that I’ve had to give you bags of blood from volunteers in the house. If you’re going to drink from anyone, you can do it from me. Directly from me. I’ve talked to Lucian about it. He told me a little of how it works. I don’t know if you need as much as Sorin would. You’re not a full vampire, but you’re still clearly a vampire, but you do more physical work than he does, so I’m not sure if metabolism has anything to do with it.”