by Selena Scott
Shit. She wanted him to push her down on his cock. Up to this point, he’d resisted touching while she was going down on him. Assuming that she’d be sensitive to anything having to do with her throat. Considering she’d been strangled less than a month ago. But he could see the light in her eyes. How much it turned her on. And fuck it. He was done comparing himself to that shitbag Ivan. Nothing he and Isla did was like anything the two of them had ever done.
Because Idris loved her. Respected her. And he really wanted to shove his dick down her throat. So he gripped her hair tightly, and forced her down on his straining cock. Isla screamed around it, and he watched as her free hand creeped down between her legs. Her hips worked against her hand. He let her up and she gasped for air and then she was swallowing him down again.
He pushed her down again and he watched her hand work her perfect little pussy even faster. The sight was almost too much for him. Before he knew what he was doing he was standing. On his feet before her. And now instead of forcing her onto him, he was just fucking her mouth. Over and over. Isla’s body trembled, tightened, and released as she came on her own hand. The sight was too much. All of it was too much.
And Idris came like a tidal wave. One that went on and on. They’d had sex that morning already, but Idris released as if he’d been saving it for a month. And she swallowed it all, lovingly licking him clean at the end.
He scooped her up and cradled her close, drawing his hands through her hair, rubbing her back. Kissing her neck.
“You’re the most beautiful. Most brilliant. Most perfect. God. You’re the best thing in my life. Isla, stay with me. Stay with me.”
She laughed a little, through her panting breaths, at his disheveled words. “Apparently that did it for you as much as it did for me, huh?”
He laughed a breathless laugh. “Shit, yes. That was the hottest thing that has ever happened to me.”
She was quiet for a second, stroking her hands through his hair. “You know what you looked like? When you were standing over me?”
“Hm?” He was almost beyond words.
“You looked like a king.”
He looked up and grinned at her. “Finally. After a day of looking like an utter fool getting the shit kicked out of him in the schoolyard, I’m glad I could finally look a little regal.”
She smiled and kissed his brow, thinking about the words he had stuttered to her a minute ago. She spoke carefully. “Idris, what did you mean a second ago, when you asked me to stay with you?”
He froze. He wasn’t sure she was quite ready to hear what he had to say about that. No matter how ready he was to say it. “I meant that when all of this was over, if we make it to the other side, I hope you’ll stay in the dragon realm.”
It wasn’t the complete truth. But it was true enough.
He couldn’t see her expression in the dark and he desperately wished that he could.
“Of course I’ll stay, Idris,” she spoke carefully enough that it kept his heart from leaping. “You know I have nothing to go back to in the human realm. Just some dudes who want to kill me. There’s no way I’d go back to that.”
He nodded. Of course he knew that. He tried hard to ignore the gnawing at his chest that her words had given him. He couldn’t escape the fact that being scared of going back was decidedly not the same thing as wanting to stay.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The next night, after dinner, Isla was on her hands and knees, scrubbing the kitchen floor, with her hair tied back when the other women found her.
Mel, Zara, and Lucy all filed into the kitchen.
“Jesus, do you ever stop helping, woman?” Mel exclaimed.
“I can’t help it,” Isla said, wiping sweat from her forehead and tossing the rag into the sudsy bucket beside her. “This whole ‘waiting for Dalyer to show up’ thing has got me on edge. I need something to take the tension away.”
“I hear you,” Zara said, glancing nervously at Lucy and Mel.
Isla cocked her head to one side. She was suddenly catching some very strange vibes from the group.
“That’s actually why we wanted to find you,” Lucy said. “We had an idea for how to cut the tension, at least in our own personal relationships. But we need you to show us how.”
Understanding bloomed over Isla’s face as she grinned a brilliant smile at her friends. “You guys want me to show you how to strip!”
Mel grinned and flashed a thumbs-up while Zara’s face went bright pink and she covered her eyes for a second.
“I think I’ll just be an observer,” she said, rubbing a hand over her very pregnant belly. “I’ll take notes for when I’m not carting a watermelon around.”
“No way,” Isla said, washing her hands off in the sink. “I’ve seen you up there, Zara. If you can shift into a dragon and fight 400 feet above ground while you’re pregnant, then you can strip pregnant.”
“Nobody is gonna want to see that!” Zara insisted.
“Girl, please,” Mel said, waving one hand through the air. “We’ve all seen the way Solar looks at you.”
“Yeah,” Lucy chimed in. “Like every second he isn’t spending face-planted in your lady parts is a moment wasted.”
Zara went even pinker while Isla threw her head back and laughed. “They’re right, Zar. Let’s go find an empty room. Is there any way to play music?”
“I brought my iPod,” Mel said. “It’s up in my room. But it’s not very loud.”
“Better than nothing,” Isla said. “Trust me. You want music.”
Mel ran off to get it while the other three chatted as they moved through the house.
“What are you girls doing?” Felice asked as she passed them in the hall.
Isla ignored the fact that Zara looked like she wanted to roll over and die at that question. “I’m teaching them how to strip for their dudes. Wanna come?”
Felice let out a musical little laugh. “That’s an art I mastered a long time ago. Trust me.”
Isla laughed too, held up her hand. “Get it, Felice.”
The two women high-fived and went on their way. As far as potential mother-in-laws went, Felice was pretty much tip-top.
Mel came puffing up to them right as Isla chose the right room for them. Enough space, no furniture, and a big old mirror on one side.
"Okay," she said. "The first thing you have to know is that men are idiots."
The women let loose with a round of surprised laughter.
"No, I'm serious," Isla said. "It's rule number one because it doesn't matter what you do in front of him. Pick your teeth, burp, whatever, he's gonna think it's hot if you're stripping your clothes off at the same time for him."
Isla kicked off her tennis shoes and walked a line away from them and back. Obviously getting her game face on. "So, the goal is to turn yourself on here, cuz your man is already gonna be turned on."
"I wish we had a pole," Zara said, surprising all of them.
"Me, too," Isla said. “It’s really hard to get good at the pole, but just a little sexy slide down is like boner 101. But trust me. There's plenty to do without it."
When the men found them, the women were all on their knees, imitating Isla who was facing them.
O opened his mouth to say something, but Solar silently clapped his hand over O's mouth, not wanting his friend to break whatever spell was over his woman. Zara was stripping? Jesus Christ, just fucking slit his throat right now. Since she'd gotten pregnant, Solar had tried to be a little more careful with her, not fuck her every which way. But as he watched her sink down and then slink back up, twisting her hips, he realized that this was really gonna test his resolve.
The women followed Isla's very specific directions.
"Okay, so you sink down. And then like one more inch. Here's where you lean forward. Flash a little shot of cleave." She exhibited, the space between her breasts a dark, exciting valley.
“And then when you push back up, that's when you rip your shirt off. And then it's straigh
t into the crawl that we talked about."
"You're gonna have to show us," Lucy said. "It's too complicated otherwise."
"Alright," Isla shrugged. Completely comfortable. When she rose, she saw the men all crowded in the doorway, Idris included. And it added a little spice to her smile. She had no problem stripping for men. Especially Idris. The men could thank her later for what she'd just taught their girls.
Idris's eyes heated when he realized that she was going through with this.
She backed up. Marching forward, her hips spun like a pendulum. She slid forward, hitting her knees and dropping down, like she was riding a bull. Or a man. She dropped down even further, like she was really taking it deep, her hands up in her hair tossing it around. And then she was springing back up, her shirt whipping off in one hand. Her bra was baby blue and silky and barely containing her. She fell forward onto her hands, crawling forward with nothing but Idris in her eyes.
And then he was striding forward, swooping her off the ground and striding out of the room.
Amos did the same. He and Lucy were gone in a flash.
O simply took Mel by her face, kissing her and twisting her to the ground with him. "We call dibs on this room!" he called.
Solar gently scooped Zara up off the floor, his mind filled with the images of what he'd just seen her doing.
"Shut the door on your way out!" O hollered behind him.
Solar strode out into the hallway, thinking desperately of how far away their tent was. Too far. Just then, the door to a very handy coat closet seemed to jump right out at him. "I'm not making it to our tent, Zar."
"Neither am I,” she gasped against his neck where she'd just been kissing him.
He dragged her, completely delighted with the two of them, to the closet and slammed the door behind them.
Whatever tension they'd all been feeling was cut like cake.
***
Idris fell with Isla to the bed. He’d just fucked her against the door like a madman. And maybe he was. At the very least, Idris knew that he was a broken man. Absolutely smashed in pieces. Seeing her strip again was like an absolute punch to the jugular. It hit him, all at once, how much he loved her. How long he’d loved her. How much he needed her. By his side. Forever.
But also how much he needed it to be her choice, too. He remembered how she’d looked that night, lying on the floor, half dead after Ivan had had his way with her. He needed her to know that she didn’t have to make decisions from a place of fear anymore. She needed to make them from a place of love.
First things first. He needed her to know how much he loved her. Without a doubt. So he went about it the clearest way he knew how.
Crawling over top of her, he penned her in, as had become something of a habit of his. Taking her chin in one hand, he made sure she was looking right at him.
“Isla,” he said. “I’m so ass-backwards, jump-off-a-cliff, crazy-fucked in love with you.”
Despite the hand on her chin, Isla’s mouth fell open. She started to say something but he quickly used his hand to clamp her mouth shut.
“No, listen to me,” he continued. “I don’t want you to say anything. I just want you to know. And if you still have shit to say in the morning, you can tell me then. But right now, tonight, I just want to tell you.”
He took a deep breath, because his heart was jumping. “I love you so much and I think I have for a really long time. Longer than was even sane. I loved you before I even talked to you. I loved you when you were Lala Royal. I think, even then, I knew you were Isla in here.” He laid a palm over her chest and could feel her galloping heart. Whether from the sex they just had or his words, he’d never know.
“I want to be with you,” he plunged on. “The way that Amos and Lucy are. And O and Mel, and Solar and Zara. I want you to be the other part of me. The part of my heart that walks around outside my body. I want you to be my partner in everything. For as long as I live.”
Isla’s eyes filled with tears. As they spilled over his hand, still firmly over her mouth, he hoped to god they were happy tears. But he couldn’t take that risk right now. If she told him she loved him back, said that she wanted the same thing, then he’d always wonder if it was because she was too afraid to go back to the human realm. That she was just making the best of her new life here. His heart couldn’t take it.
He slid his hand away from her mouth and she took in a breath like she was about to talk.
“Please,” he said, falling beside her and bringing her into his side. “Don’t say anything tonight. Let’s just sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”
He could tell she didn’t like it. That she wanted badly to talk. But she respected his wishes. And after twenty or so minutes, her breathing became even. She would never know that he watched her sleep for hours that night. That she looked so peaceful. And that it brought up a fury within him. A need to protect her that was so potent, he could taste it.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The next morning, Isla woke up with Idris’s words from last night echoing through her head. She felt them descend over her like a warm blanket. He loved her. It blossomed in her chest like a garden of roses. She’d been biting back those words herself for what felt like forever.
How could she not love him? He was so kind, so serious, so compassionate. He’d seen her for who she really was when all he could have seen was some stripper. That thought had Isla’s worries surfacing again. If they all survived this battle, would that make Idris the real king? And if so, would they be married? Who the hell would want her as their queen? A stripper queen? God, the idea was ridiculous.
But nevertheless, those were problems for tomorrow. Today, the only problem she had on her plate was getting him to listen when she told him how much she loved him. For whatever reason, he hadn’t wanted to hear it last night. Well, he was gonna have to tape her mouth shut if he didn’t want to hear it this morning.
Or, he’d have to not be in bed, Isla realized as she rolled over, completely befuddled. Where the hell was he? He was always there when she woke up. It was one of their favorite parts of the day, before he’d have to go get his ass kicked in training and she’d start in on a list of chores seven miles long to keep the Surgere camp going.
Wow, she realized. He must really have a hang-up about hearing those three little words. That was really something they were gonna have to examine together. Why would it bother him so much?
Isla dressed quickly and hurried downstairs to grab a quick breakfast and see if she could track him down. It would be just her luck if he’d already taken to the sky, 400 feet up, where they couldn’t have this conversation.
When she got to the kitchen, Solar and Amos looked up from the map they were studying.
“Idris isn’t with you?” Solar asked. “It’s getting late. I wanna start on some quick training maneuvers if we can.”
Something icy lanced through Isla’s blood. “I thought he was with you. He wasn’t there when I woke up this morning.”
Solar and Amos exchanged glances.
“Alright,” Amos said. “I’ll go check around the grounds for him.”
Isla grabbed some fruit and headed for the back of the house. She wanted to be away from Solar’s searching glare.
She came up short when she peeked in a room to see Mel leaning over, her hands on Ike’s shoulders. “It’s okay, hotshot. He’s coming back. He swore it.”
“I just don’t like it,” Ike said. “We haven’t been separated since this whole thing began. And I just… I like it better when he’s around.”
“I know,” Mel said, her eyes obviously worried, but her voice even. “I do, too. But Idris is his brother. And he had to go after him. It’s hard for us to understand because neither of us have siblings. But brotherhood is a strong bond. He had to be there for him.”
“What?” Isla asked, her blood now positively frozen. There was nothing in her veins but ice water.
Mel and Ike looked up, both of their faces going white as
sheets as they saw her standing there. “Isla. Ike, go on and see if Felice needs any help in the kitchen, okay?”
Ike listened, walking almost all the way out of the room before he stopped, put a hand on Isla’s arm. “O will bring him back, Isla. Don’t worry.”
And then the little boy was gone. And it was just the two women staring at one another. A complete lack of words for the situation.
Mel rubbed her hands up her own arms and decided that if it were her, she’d just want the facts. So she dove in.
“O woke up this morning, early, about 5 am. And he knew something was off. That Idris was gone. He couldn’t tell more than that, because he still doesn’t have a good read on Idris, he thinks it was the pain of losing him when they were young. But he could see where he was going. And he followed him.”
Isla felt lightheaded. He’d left? Deserted? Her? The cause?
“I don’t know,” Mel replied.
Isla hadn’t realized that she’d spoken out loud just then. Mel’s arms came around her. And the two women clutched one another. “Isla, he loves you. So fiercely. I can’t believe he’d just up and leave without a good reason.”
Isla stepped back, her eyes hollow, one hand over her mouth. “He wouldn’t let me say ‘I love you’ back to him. He doesn’t know how I feel.”
Mel nodded, even more worry creeping into her eyes.
The next hours were a blur for Isla. She’d let Mel explain the situation to all the people who needed to know. And they’d tried to keep it under wraps. But word got around fairly quickly that both Idris and O were gone. Because Idris had abandoned them all.
Isla found herself, late afternoon, sitting on the porch step, staring out at the busy Surgere camp. She knew they were all preparing even more now that Idris was gone. There were teams of people sharpening tools and talking strategy over the campfires. There were grim faces all around. None of the boisterous cheer from the earlier weeks.