by Marcy Jacks
“It’s a good point though,” Josh said. “How do we know you’re not planning on killing this person when we tell you everything we know about him?”
“You just told me you know nothing about him,” Seth said, raising a red brown.
The grip on his thigh tightened even more.
Josh ignored the warning. If these people were really the good guys, the people Josh had been hoping they were when he convinced Zane to run away with him, then they weren’t going to pass around casual threats like that.
“I don’t, but the point is the same. If you’re really the good guys and you’re willing to give me and Zane a chance because Dimitri claims I’m his mate, then why won’t you do the same when one of the omegas claims to have found a mate with someone else who used to be in the same line of work as us?”
Josh noted, and ignored, the wince he saw Zane let out when Josh said the word mate again. He didn’t have time for it, and he wasn’t going to deal with it. This was more important right now. Someone’s life was more important than whatever it was going through Zane’s head.
“The difference,” Seth started, and he sounded as if he was barely holding his patience together, “is that this guy snuck onto the property with a number of other assassins. The omegas in the house were lucky no one was killed. He took Taylor in the middle of the night thinking Taylor was my mate, which means he was going to hand him over to Varrick so he could go back to his old life being raped whenever that pig decided he was in the mood for it. I don’t give a shit about how much you want to defend your brother, and I don’t give a shit about the fact that you’re Dimitri’s mate. Don’t you ever get that tone with me when talking about the dickhead who wanted to sell my mate back into slavery, or I swear to Christ I’ll—”
“Okay!” Dimitri laughed, a clear fake noise as he pushed his chair back and rose quickly to his feet. He grabbed Josh by the arm, pulling him up with enough force that it knocked back his chair.
“W-wait, what are you—” Dimitri kissed him before he could say another word. His mouth was hot, smoldering even, and it was, unfortunately, more than enough to keep Josh’s mind occupied and buzzing when he pulled their mouths apart.
“Oh, for crying out loud! Really?” Zane demanded. The disgusted look on his face was enough to let Josh know what his brother thought of the display.
But Josh couldn’t bring himself to care about it. He still wasn’t entirely putting the possibility of being under a spell out of his head. Not with the way his mind and body seemed to be constantly reacting to every little touch that came from the other man.
It was intense. And intense was too soft a word to describe this, weirdly enough.
“I’ll get him out of your hair so you can deal with this,” Dimitri said, pulling on Josh’s arm with that same intensity as before. “Let me know how it all works out!”
Josh wanted to stop the man from taking him anywhere, but he didn’t seem to have the strength for it. Either mentally or physically.
“We’ll talk about this later,” Seth promised, a low growl in his voice that sounded somewhat threatening but also not really.
He sounded just irritated about the whole thing.
“Will do,” Dimitri promised, pulling Josh to the door.
Josh looked back at his brother, not worried for him, but he wanted to say something so Zane wouldn’t spend any time panicking over what was happening to Josh. Especially with how wide his eyes were.
“I’ll be fine,” he promised, barely getting the words out before Dimitri, his mate, got him out the door.
“Can you wait?”
“Nope,” Dimitri said.
Josh watched the interested expressions of the omegas as he passed them by in the hallways. Their wolf ears perked with confusion and interest. Josh had already seen them when Dimitri brought him down to the dining room.
It was strange seeing them again, in this house, but without their heads bowed down, desperate to avoid any attention. Now they looked up and around themselves with interest, as though searching for what could be the problem with their new dragon masters.
No, not masters. Seth had made that clear the first moment Josh sat down and the man explained his test to him.
“Why do we have to get away from Seth like this? I thought you said he’s reasonable.”
“He is,” Dimitri insisted, but he didn’t stop pulling on Josh’s wrist. “He just has no patience for people who try to hurt Miles.”
The mate of the dragon. Josh thought about how he would take it if one of those dragons threatened Dimitri. He’d already reacted when they talked down to Zane. He supposed he could understand where the man was coming from.
“Are you taking me back to bed?”
Despite the frightening reminder of the differences in his and Dimitri’s strength, he couldn’t stop thinking about how much he wanted more than that one little kiss. He wanted to know more about the man held prisoner in the basement, another runaway from Varrick’s employment, but fuck, even the hand gripping his wrist wasn’t doing much to stop him from wanting Dimitri again.
Somehow, the reminder of his strength was just as much of a turn-on as when Dimitri had been teasing him under the table.
Josh hadn’t realized he was the sort to get excited by someone else dominating him like that, by a show of power, but apparently he was because his entire body thrummed as if he had a car battery going off somewhere within him.
He was going to implode, and when Dimitri rounded another corner and made it to the stairs, something inside Josh’s body went ballistic.
He attacked Dimitri. There was no other word for it.
“Gah! What the hell? Josh!”
Josh pushed the man down. He got lucky. Dimitri’s footing got caught on the staircase, and he went down hard on his back.
It probably wasn’t a good landing for him, all things considered, but Josh had no control. He was like an animal in heat, and Dimitri’s angry protests quickly turned into moaning purrs as Josh climbed on top of him, kissing him, biting his lips, and panting for breath because he couldn’t breathe until they were properly skin to skin.
Dimitri’s hands felt like they were absolutely everywhere, but at the same time, they weren’t touching enough of him. Josh pulled at Dimitri’s clothes. It was clumsy, but he didn’t care. Dimitri laughed at him through the kiss, which bothered the hell out of Josh and made him all the more determined to get the man naked.
“Jesus,” Dimitri gasped. “You think we can get somewhere private?”
In the back of Josh’s head, he knew that was the best option, but at the same time, he couldn’t bring himself to care. The thought of doing this out where anyone could walk in and see him, humping against the dragon beneath him, didn’t bother him the way he knew it should.
He was still pulling at Dimitri’s shirt. He felt as if he had more strength in his body than normal because he managed to rip the shirt down the neck.
The noise of the fabric tearing, the sight of skin and muscle being revealed, it made Josh all the more determined to have the man inside him.
“All right, that’s it,” Dimitri said. He gripped Josh around the middle and suddenly, without warning, hoisted Josh into the air.
Josh barely noticed his feet leaving the stairs or Dimitri holding on to him like this.
The only thing he felt was the way his own body was being pressed against Dimitri’s, how he could feel the perfection of his chest and abs and the hard buds of his nipples.
Josh’s lips attacked the man’s throat. He kissed and sucked, licking and sucking some more. The taste of Dimitri’s skin was apparently something else Josh needed to keep breathing.
“Time to get you upstairs before you sexually assault me in front of the entire house.”
Josh was definitely able to make out that comment, and he snorted.
He seriously doubted Dimitri had a problem with what Josh had been doing just then. He sure as hell didn’t seem to care that Josh was s
till sucking on his neck, desperate to give him some sort of small bruise, or even a little mark, anything that Josh could look back on and smile at because he knew he’d been the one to put it there.
Meanwhile, Dimitri was still chuckling at him. “Horny bastard. I didn’t think the mating heat would affect a human so much.” They were off the stairs and walking back toward the wing of the house where Dimitri had taken him so many times already. “Maybe it just depends on the person.”
“Uh-huh.” That was the most intelligent thing Josh could get out of his mouth. And then it got to the point where sucking on Dimitri’s heated, delicious throat wasn’t enough.
Josh moaned as he slid his hand down, palming his hard cock through his pants. Anything to get relief for what was happening to him now.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’ll take care of that for you.”
He’d better. That was all Josh cared about.
They made it to the door, the door that led to Dimitri’s room and his bed and his shower and his floor and all the wonderful places where they could fuck so Josh could get his head clear.
Dimitri’s hand touched the doorknob, but he didn’t get the chance to turn the handle because a piercing scream reverberated through the house.
Chapter Seven
That was nothing. That had to be nothing. Definitely nothing for Dimitri to have to worry about when his mate was kissing him so sweetly, mewling hotly in his ear, and his hands sliding through the rip in Dimitri’s shirt that he’d just made in a desperate attempt to get at whatever skin he possibly could.
Dimitri was holding on to the God of lust. That was what Josh was because, just holding him, especially outside the safety and privacy of their bedroom, was enough to make his cock and balls feel as if they were about to burst.
But that scream…he couldn’t just ignore that. Could he?
“Take me to bed,” Josh begged, his eyes half-lidded, as if he hadn’t heard a damned thing.
Dimitri looked down at him, his mate’s lips dark and puffy from the kissing and sucking he’d been doing.
Dimitri would rather the man kissed and sucked on something other than his neck, and he groaned, giving in and opening the door.
Except then there were more screams and a few angry shouts.
The screaming sounded angrier now, and so did the shouts that came from his friends, the other dragons in the house.
Fuck. Oh fuck, why the hell did he have to be presented with a choice like this right now? When he was so close to having Josh’s hole squeezing tight and warm around his cock, where it was meant to be.
“I think I have to go downstairs.”
He wasn’t a high-ranking alpha, and not even in the top five strongest in the house, but at the same time, he had a responsibility to this place. He had to make sure that everything suspicious was all right, for his own safety and the safety of the omegas who still lived here.
“No, don’t go,” Josh moaned.
God, Dimitri really couldn’t blame the man for the way he’d asked, if he’d been slipped something the first time they’d done this.
The sound of his voice alone was enough to give the impression he was drunk on lust.
He wasn’t thinking straight.
“Okay, I know we’re still getting to know each other, but I’m pretty sure you’re the type that would want me to check out what’s happening downstairs when there’s a horrified scream.”
Dimitri walked into his bedroom with his mate. He’d thought he’d cleaned the place up fairly well before taking Josh downstairs to recharge with some lunch, but after being away from this room for a decent amount of time and then coming back, it still smelled heavily of their mating heat and the sex they’d been having before leaving.
Which wasn’t helping Dimitri’s willpower. Not in the slightest.
“But you can still stay here.”
Right. Josh couldn’t understand what Dimitri was saying. Okay, so the mating heat was definitely having a strong impact on him. Dimitri needed to remember that.
He kissed his mate hard on the mouth, undid his pants, and yanked them down.
Dimitri didn’t exactly have clean boxers lying around in Josh’s size, so he was going commando under there.
The sight of the man’s cock springing free from the harsh confines of his clothes made Dimitri’s breath quicken and his heart palpitate. Holy shit, this might have been a mistake.
Dimitri pressed a soft kiss to the head, sliding his tongue over the drop of precum that had appeared there, tasting the man, loving him.
Then he pulled back before he could let himself fall under the same spell that was taking hold of Josh.
He took Josh by the hand, brought it down to his cock, and then backed away.
“I promise you that I’ll never tease you in public again for this, but I need to go.”
Josh looked down at his hand over his own cock and then up at Dimitri, as if struggling to understand. “Go?”
Dimitri made it to the door. God, he could still taste the musk of Josh’s precum on his tongue, and he wanted more. “I swear I’ll be back in a few minutes. Believe me, I don’t want to leave either, but you keep yourself, uh, occupied, and I’ll come back and finish you off making you moan my name.”
Josh collapsed onto the bed, puffing for breath, staring up at the ceiling as though he was trying to find God.
“I’m gonna kill you for this.”
Considering Josh’s former occupation, had he not been in the throes of a mating heat, Dimitri might have believed him.
In fact, maybe he should take that at face value right now, but then there was a hard crash, and he definitely had to go.
“You can make my punishment as fun as you like. I’ll be back.”
He flew out the door, slamming it shut behind him before Josh could say anything else that would tempt him into coming back to bed with the man.
Thank Christ he was wearing jeans. It wouldn’t stop the rest of the guys from being able to smell the lust he struggled with, but at the same time, it would help if they couldn’t see what they could already smell.
Running down the hall, down the stairs, and toward the door to the basement where Sorin had once been a prisoner was a nightmare for his cock.
Maybe he wasn’t so grateful to be wearing jeans because, right now, this sucked an awful lot. The friction against his dick was uncomfortable as all hell, and oh God, he wanted to go back to bed with his mate.
He took the stairs two at a time to get down to the basement, growling when he finally got down there.
This had better be good.
“You’re not going near him! I don’t care!”
The voices and screams that he couldn’t entirely make out, well, now there were words to them. The closer he got, the clearer they became.
Taylor’s voice. He sounded as if he was on the verge of having a small panic attack of some sort.
Not good. That wasn’t good.
“We need to do this. It’s just for questioning him.”
Another heavy crash sounded, as if someone had thrown something. “Get out!”
Right, it was Taylor doing the throwing.
Dimitri turned the corner to the room with all the cells, and the sudden spike of pain against his nose, the heavy clang of metal at his feet, was an unwelcome surprise.
“Fuck!”
He clutched his nose, forgetting all about how damned horny he was, his erection almost immediately melting away into nothing from the pain.
He looked down, glaring, and spotted the heavy silver chains that had been used on the vampires. They had clearly been thrown, and the thick shackle got him right in the nose.
He growled, looking up, noting his friends standing around him. Lucian’s eyes popped. “You all right?”
“No!” Dimitri groaned, bending over real quick before righting himself again. “That fucking hurt!”
Stefan chuckled. “Got you right in the face, did he?”
D
imitri couldn’t stop snarling or growling. He snapped his teeth at the second-in-command and noted that, aside from those two, it was all lower level dragons in the basement.
As if Seth couldn’t have been bothered to come down.
And Taylor stared at Dimitri with his fox ears pressed to the back of his head and his mouth dropped slightly open. “I’m…I’m sorry. You just appeared there.”
“What the fuck are you doing throwing things?” Now Dimitri understood the need for all the yelling. He looked around himself. The one window in this room, the one that had been painted black for when Sorin had stayed down here with his cousins, had shattered. The bars were still in place, but that definitely explained the sound Dimitri had heard not too long ago.
He growled at Taylor. “If you hadn’t just come back from being kidnapped—”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence.”
The new voice shocked him. Dimitri almost hadn’t seen the prisoner shackled behind Taylor.
The only difference was that his shackles were safely bolted to the ground. The man could stand, but with the chains and shackles around his wrists, he wouldn’t be able to lift his hands over his head unless he was sitting down.
He was standing, his chest puffed out, as though still ready to get into a fight, to defend.
Dimitri glared at the man.
“This is what I left my mate for?”
“Took you long enough to get down here,” Stefan said. “Seth was here a couple of minutes ago. Even Marxus and the new guy, Zane. They left us to calm Taylor down.” Stefan really looked at him. “Did you bang your mate before deciding to see what was up?”
Dimitri growled at the man. “I’m in a mating heat, and so is he, dickhead. He’s having a harder time adjusting to it than I thought.”
“Dimitri, you just found your mate, right?” Taylor’s voice was desperate. And hopeful.
Something it probably shouldn’t have been, considering Dimitri was pretty sure his nose was bleeding a little.
“Yeah?”
“Well, your mate that you just found used to work for Varrick. So did James. Tell them to let James go. Your mate gets to walk around.”