Drawn by Dragonblood

by Lynn Burke

  “Say you’re mine, Jon,” I said, reaching for his cock once more. “Say you belong to me.”

  He whimpered again and swallowed a gulp of air, and I continued my slow assault even though he refused to answer. “Harder,” he said on a gasp as I bottomed out in his tightness.

  “My kinky pain-whore.” I chuckled and bit his earlobe, fighting back the swelling tingling in my balls. “My way,” I whispered my reminder and slowly withdrew again, backing off enough my cock sprang loose from his ass.

  “P-please … don’t stop.”

  I reached between us and lined my cock back up—for another slow glide deep inside him. Reaching up, I tangled my hand in his hair and squeezed my other hand around the base of his cock.

  His chest rose and fell in rapid succession, his body trembling against mine.

  “How badly do you need to come, Jon?” I murmured, my gaze once more finding Dakota, my entire body still, ready to explode in release.

  “So fucking bad … Christ. Please move.”

  I jerked him slowly, swirled my palm over his slick head and grasped his girth once more, Dakota’s gaze following my every move. “Tell me what I want to hear, and I’ll set you free,” I whispered in his ear, for him alone.

  He gulped, a shudder rippling down over him. “Yes,” he whispered his submission.

  Teeth clenched to keep from biting him, I pulled out and thrust in, my hand moving in time with my hips.

  A guttural groan escaped him as I fucked into his tight ass, my dick straining to go deeper, harder, exactly as he wanted. Every thrust landed my grip at the base of his cock, every retreat around his crown. I slammed into him over and over until both of us gasped for breath, rattling the chains overhead.

  The scent of us flooded my nose, swept away the sweetness of our female who still stood in the doorway, lower lip between her teeth and one hand palming a breast beneath my shirt she’d replaced her hiking outfit with.

  “Fly free for me, Jon.” I thrust deep, and he went limp in my arms, twitching and groaning as his cum shot toward Dakota in long ropes from my jerking grasp.

  Holding still in his ass, I allowed myself release, my cock pulsing deep inside him, filling him. Eyes clenched shut, I gave him all that I was, everything I had until I stilled and wrapped my arms around his sagging body, cradling my beta to my heaving chest.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Jonathan

  I fucking soared through the air, wind whipping at me, flooding my heart, my mind with joy. Black scales rippled beneath my body, flexing and shooting us across the sky. My dragon, I knew—I recognized the balm-like effect he had on me, quieting everything. Making all things right again. We soared together through darkness, our bodies pure light as pinpricks dotted the night sky, waking tingling, a warmth inside my body.

  I recognized the welcomed feeling—could taste Elijah’s cum on my tongue even though he’d come in my ass. He overrode everything, every sense until all I could see was him, swallowing my dragon—or rather, becoming man from the creature I’d imagined.

  “Elijah,” I tried to whisper, but couldn’t hear if I’d managed to speak aloud.

  “Shh.” His hot breath caressed my ear, my neck, as the tingling in my ass spread through my torso … into my limbs … up my neck to my mind. Clarity returned like a breath of fresh air, like that first sip of strong coffee peeling open my eyelids in the morning.

  Darkness coated my vision, and I remembered the blindfold.

  Elijah’s arms remained around me, but he slowly backed off, his cock stroking inside my ass.

  My wrists remained shackled overhead, the chains clanking as I twisted slightly in their hold as he slipped free, leaving me empty and dripping his cum.

  Dakota… Her scent flooded my nose, and I sucked in air deeply, filling my lungs.

  “The chains,” Elijah said, and I listened as she shuffled across the room.

  Chains clanked, and my arms lowered, Elijah catching them to keep from dropping to my sides. He quickly released my wrists, and the chains fell away as he wrapped his arms around me, holding me tight against his chest. “Are you okay, mon coeur?” he whispered in my ear, pulling off my blindfold.

  My heart.

  The meaning of his words flitted through my brain. He’d been calling Dakota that for days, as though to assure her of his love, but he’d spoken to me—I had no doubt. My lips turned upward from the happiness rising inside me.

  “Better than okay,” I managed to croak as he pressed a kiss to my neck.

  I blinked in the dim light, breathing in the scent of our combined cum—and my wife’s arousal.

  She moved in my peripheral vision, drawing my gaze. Eyes luminous and green as spring grass, she stared at me with such love and devotion, my joy doubled. She grasped the cane Elijah had used on my backside in her hands and opened her mouth, but snapped it shut, her head jerking toward the door, brow furrowing.

  “What is it?” Elijah held onto my upper arms and stepped away from me, his voice on edge, filled with strength.

  “I…” Dakota turned back toward me, and I recognized the confusion on her face.

  “Someone is here,” I said.

  “Yes.” She turned back toward the door.

  “A strange one,” I said as stability returned to my legs and adrenaline released into my bloodstream.

  “Yes.”

  “No one can get past my security system.” Elijah released me and grabbed his jeans off the floor.

  “She wouldn’t lie,” I said, retrieving my own jeans and yanking them up my legs, realizing as I did so that there was no residual pain, no lingering ache from the cane.

  A few muttered curses flew past Elijah’s lips, and he started toward the door, only half-dressed. “Stay here.”

  His command didn’t slow my instinctual need to follow him across the room, but he halted in the doorway and turned. Darkness swirled within his eyes, and I blinked as the image of my dragon flickered around his body. “Please.” He pleaded with his eyes, and I felt his unease, his worry for us as he laid his hand on my bare chest and touched his own with his other hand. “I can feel your desire to protect me, but stay. Please.”

  Lips pressed tight, I dipped my head once.

  He turned and sprinted up the hallway.

  “Who do you think it is?” Dakota asked, her voice small and filled with fear.

  I turned to find her arms wrapped around herself and trembling.

  “Dakota,” I said, striding to grab her up in my arms, her feet dangling in the air. Face buried in her neck, I breathed her in as she melted against my chest.

  “You love him, don’t you?” she whispered, and I pulled back to meet her gaze.

  Even if the truth hurt her, I had to speak it. Loving Elijah, the same as my wife, couldn’t be helped, couldn’t be ignored. “Yes.”

  Tears glistened in her eyes. “Is it wrong of us to love two people the same? The same need, the same deep longing to be one with them?”

  “Fuck, no.” I’d never felt so damn sure of anything in my life. “Is it wrong of me to like being chained up and beat half to death—and get off from it?”

  She bit back a smile. “You’re hot as fuck when you submit like that, but next time, I’m going to be on my knees in front of you.”

  I groaned, and she stiffened in my arms. “We need to get upstairs,” she whispered, her head whipping toward the door. “Now.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Elijah

  Only a dragon, only one person, could get through my home’s defenses undetected.

  I sprinted up the stairs, my heart in my throat, hoping like hell Dakota’s senses lied.

  The door leading into the kitchen banged against the wall as I threw it open, and I halted as though I’d hit a brick wall as my gaze landed on the one who had the ability to enter without Sybil making note throughout the cavern’s system. The one who had owned my heart for so many years.

  “Dolyn.” His name left my lips in a
rush, turning the dragonblood male from facing the slider he shut behind him.

  The light in his light brown eyes—his smile—hit me with the force of a sudden gale, stealing my breath, stumbling my heart. “Elijah.”

  I couldn’t move. Couldn’t blink. “Y-you’re…”

  “Alive.” He started toward me his shoulders broader than I remembered, his dirty blond hair cut shorter than I’d ever seen—still beautiful as ever. “Yes.”

  The scent of Jon and Dakota wafted past me from the stairwell, and my heart seized. The energy of them drew near … and I realized that Dolyn and I had never experienced the kind of connection I did with my mates.

  He had never been meant for me, merely a companion to pass the time while fate waited for my Jon and Dakota to come of age. Still, my heart ached at the memory of all the years we’d shared.

  Dolyn’s gaze flitted over my shoulder, and he stumbled to a stop, his hand outstretched toward me falling to his waist as the light dimmed in his eyes. “Who—”

  “Where have you been all this time? No letter, no call—I thought you were dead.” Strength from my mates radiated toward me, helping me to find my voice. Steady my thoughts. “What are you doing here, walking into my home like you didn’t leave without a trace ten years ago?”

  “I—I needed time.”

  “Time for what?”

  “To find her.”

  “There is no her.” The hurt he’d caused fell over me like a crumbling mountain, and I fought to keep from buckling beneath its weight. “We searched together for years. Years, Dolyn, and found no trace.”

  Dolyn glanced behind me again, and a low growl rumbled my chest as I moved to stand in front of them although no trace of aggression lined his face. He raised his nose and sniffed, his nostrils flaring. He blinked, his eyes widening. “You’ve claimed them? They’re … they’re nothing! Completely unworthy of you!”

  I bared my teeth, my body tensing with the need to shift, the need to rip Dolyn limb from limb for saying such things about my mates. “I’ve not yet claimed them,” I growled, “but I will—if they’ll have me.”

  “They aren’t of the same blood!”

  “They are,” I snapped, all trace of hurt from his abandoning me dissipating from my mind and heart.

  Dolyn sniffed again as Dakota grasped my forearm. “Elijah…”

  “They are my mates, Dolyn.” I fought off my dragon with every ounce of strength I possessed—and with that unknowingly given to me by my female’s gentle touch. “Mine. My beta. My female. A trace of the ancient blood flows through their veins—”

  “It’s not possible.”

  “It is truth. Perhaps you can’t recognize it because they don’t belong to you.”

  Dolyn snorted. “Even if they do have the blood, they’ll never shift. We are the only two left of the royal family, Elijah. These two are not good enough. How can you possibly claim them as your own?”

  Overwhelming love swelled in my chest, and I knew in that moment what would ease Jon’s heart toward me. But I no longer cared about gaining his trust, his submission in return—I needed for him to hear the truth of my love, for that was what he longed for. “I belong to them, Dolyn. My heart, my soul, my mind. Every part of me I would lay at their feet—every day until eternity passes—if they’ll have me.”

  Chapter Forty

  Jonathan

  Elijah’s words hit me like a kick to the gut, and warmth spread through me as I clutched at Dakota’s hand, knowing with assuredly he loved us as much as we did him.

  Mate.

  The word whispered in my mind as I studied the stranger in our kitchen. Easily the same size and width of Elijah, Dolyn’s presence filled the cavern, but he didn’t draw me in like my lover—even if most women would find the blondish god-like man attractive. No magnetism reached the distance, no awareness of his body or scent filling me with need.

  “You would give yourself to these … humans?” Dolyn half-spat the word like a curse, his brow furrowed, shoulders tensing.

  The dark shadow of my dragon flickered around Elijah’s shoulders, and suddenly, I knew.

  Yes, the voice inside me breathed, settling the truth—unlocking a door in my brain to the fact my wife’s fanciful mind wasn’t all make-believe and fairy tales. Dragonblood.

  Holy motherfucking mother of God. “Dragonblood,” I whispered, the word ringing in my ears atop the continued curses my brain spewed.

  Elijah’s breath caught, and he stilled.

  I stared at the back of his head, willing him to turn, to tell me the truth he had withheld from us.

  “My God,” Dakota whispered, her small hand squeezing mine.

  “Elijah, is it true?” I asked, staring at the back of his head, at the inky hair, the same color of the scaled armor, the same color of the crop—and my dragon with the pale eyes.

  “Yes,” he finally said, but still didn’t turn.

  Did he see Dolyn as a threat? Did he fear my reaction to the truth of who—what—he was? I sure as fuck couldn’t decide what I felt about his withholding truth from us, but my emotional need for him didn’t lessen.

  “The dragonblood…” He paused, and I bit my tongue to keep from ordering him to tell us the truth, tell us everything before my head blew a fucking gasket. “A mere drop flows through both of you.”

  Yes.

  “I could feel you, see you, on the breeze, and I sought you out.”

  “Our camp,” I said, my mind racing to grasp what he said as reality.

  “The dragonblood in you spoke to the beast inside me, and I knew you were my fated mates. Both of you. The beta and female I have longed for my entire life.” His breath left in a rush, slumping his shoulders. “I am not human, Jon. I am a shifter, a dragon of old, an ancient soul over four hundred years of age.”

  “My God,” Dakota whispered again, and I glanced over at her to find her eyes the size of saucers, staring at the back of Elijah’s head. She clutched at his arm as though needing the connection between them to remain.

  She held tight to the man—the dragon shifter—who wanted us, both of us, even though according to Dolyn, we weren’t “good” enough. And royal blood? We were far from it. Orphans, hicks from the sticks … and Elijah had claimed he belonged to us.

  He may have withheld truth—hell, lied for all I cared—but I couldn’t deny the naked honesty in his voice and the magnetic pull between us from the second our gazes had first collided. I reached forward and grasped his other hand, lacing my fingers through his, creating a circle, creating one as my throat swelled and goddamn tears stung my eyelids.

  He squeezed my hand as though holding on for his life and the energy from his body crept up my arm, across my chest, and down my other arm toward Dakota. Nothing ever felt so right in my life. So fucking good.

  I lifted my head and stared Dolyn in the eye while swallowing away my outward emotion. “Elijah belongs to us. He is our mate.” I inhaled until it hurt. “My love … my alpha.”

  Elijah’s breath caught again, and Dolyn’s gaze narrowed once more as it settled on him. “You would choose the half-breeds over the last full-blood on this earth?” he asked Elijah as though I hadn’t spoken a word.

  “I chose nothing, Dolyn,” Elijah murmured. “Fate has destined what is to be among us three.”

  “You would leave me alone?” His voice rose, his hands fisting at his sides, whiskey-colored eyes widening. “Alone in this world where I have no hope of finding another?”

  Dakota shifted beside me, drawing my attention. Brow furrowed, she peered at him with that look…

  One I knew well.

  Holy shit.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Dakota

  The revelation that the paranormal wasn’t fiction spun my head. The submission of Jon to what Elijah called being fated mates knocked my world off its axis. I wanted to pinch myself, but couldn’t release my hold on Jon’s hand or Elijah’s tense forearm as a wave of emotions far beyond my own rushed over me
. Heartache, love, unbelievable joy, trust…

  I stared at Elijah’s ex-lover, the one who had broken his heart—the pain aching in my chest—to search out their female and ended up alone because he couldn’t wait for what was destined for him.

  Or, believing in fate meant he had to leave so Elijah could find the two who truly belonged to him.

  My emotions tumbled over those from both Jon and Elijah—for I was sure the circle we’d created had somehow swept a veil from my mind. As for Dolyn, although his presence didn’t pull on me like Elijah did, I recognized something I’d seen, felt, in dozens of others in my lifetime. The strange ones, I called those I had captured with my camera over the years.

  “Dolyn,” I said, breaking the stillness among the four of us. His gaze swung my way, and he didn’t bother hiding the disgust he felt for me from his eyes. Darkness swirled in his pupils, same as I’d seen in Elijah while in the basement. The beast within, I realized, half-giddy and wanting to pinch myself. “There are more … dragonbloods than you believe.”

  “And you know this how?” His frown revealed how much he didn’t believe me.

  “I—” I blew a breath from my lips. “I’m drawn to some people, like I’ve known them in a past life. It’s like if I look long enough, focus harder, that I might see them—what and who they are inside.”

  He sneered. “Elijah claims a ‘mere drop’ of dragonblood flows in your veins, and you believe that’s enough to give you one of the gifts of our kind?”

  “Gifts?”

  “Mythical abilities long before my parents’ time,” Elijah said, but his voice didn’t hold the disbelief Dolyn’s did. “Let her touch you, Dolyn. Let fate decide truth.”

  His light brown eyes narrowed as they settled on me.

  “Please,” Elijah encouraged. “What can it hurt?”

  Still, Dolyn kept silent.

  “Touch him, mon coeur,” Elijah whispered, even though the uninvited guest hadn’t given permission.