by Lynn Burke
“Why?”
Elijah finally turned toward me, his face full of love and hope. “You have dreamed of my dragon, yes?”
I nodded, my face heating.
“Then perhaps you are one of the gifted of old—one drawn by dragonblood.”
Giddiness tickled my mind, my stomach, and I bit back sudden giggles. I released my hold on his arm, and Jon squeezed my hand before letting go to let me find out how far off its axis my world had spun.
My legs shook as I approached the man who had set something in motion so profound, so otherworldly that my brain still hadn’t caught up with truth being my new reality. Amusement faded, and heartbeat thumping in my neck, I stepped close and lifted my hand.
Warmth radiated from his chest before I laid my hand there, heat and a snaking of energy between the slight distance separating us, but not in a sexual way. The strangeness I’d felt so often before intensified, and his frown dissipated, eyes widening a second before my touch landed as though he felt the connection between us.
The recognition of hard muscle beneath my palm escaped me as a flash of true recognition swept through my mind. I saw his golden dragon with its light brown eyes. I saw the spines of his back down to the tip of his tail—felt his pain, his anger, his disbelief at what flowed between us.
“Not possible,” I heard him whisper through the rush of wind in my ears.
I closed my eyes against the onslaught of images, the feelings my touch invoked in him. Another black dragon, but smaller, lither than my Elijah—with eyes as green as dew-kissed grass. A smaller, grayish one with purple-blue eyes…
“Ashley,” I breathed, my eyelids popping open. “She is who you’re searching for.”
Dolyn blinked down at me, and I realized he had clasped his warm hand over mine, holding my palm tight against his chest. “I saw her… How is that possible?” he asked, wonder and yet disbelief in his voice.
“She’s mostly human,” I whispered, peering up into his troubled gaze as he fought what I had seen, what our connection had shared with him. His heart beat heavy under my hand, and I held his gaze as his tumbling emotions somewhat righted, settled.
“My female.”
He hadn’t asked a question, but I found myself nodding. “She is who you’re searching for. The other, I didn’t recognize.”
“Nor did I.” His breath left in a rush.
“Ashley is one of Elijah’s secretaries.”
“What?” Elijah’s gasped word broke the connection between me and the other shifter, and I turned. Elijah’s eyes, wide and disbelieving, stared at me. “That’s impossible! How could I not have known Ashley is blood born?”
My tremors returned, and I tried for a smile, which wobbled at best.
“Mon coeur,” he whispered and held out his arms.
Two quick steps, and he pulled me against his chest, the scent of fire and the warmth of his skin against my cheek settling the riot of everything inside me. Jon’s arms wrapped around me from behind, trapping my arms between the men, and I breathed a heavy sigh, so overwhelmed with love that my eyes stung.
“Ashley O’Connor,” Elijah said, his low voice rumbling beneath my ear. “She’s a forgetful, timid little thing—much more fragile than those you used to prefer, Dolyn. Don’t hurt her.”
The command from my alpha rang out with a finality that promised retribution if ignored.
Dolyn didn’t speak, but the sounds of his moving met my ears. “I—I’m sorry, Elijah,” he finally said, his own heartache once more reaching to caress my mind, but a sliver of hope eased his pain. “Sorry for leaving without a word. I—I’d wanted to surprise you, give you the gift you longed for more than life.”
Sorry I wasn’t enough, I felt sure he wanted to say, but he glanced at both Jon and me again, and his guilt shifted toward peace.
“Go to her,” I whispered, smiling through the tears hazing my vision, “and find your dark-haired mate together.”
Lips pursed, Dolyn nodded at the three of us and turned. I buried my face once more in Elijah’s chest. He didn’t speak, but the slider opened and closed, and his chest heaved a heavy exhale. “Are you all right?” he murmured against my hair.
I nodded, eyes clenched shut.
“The fuck is he doing?” Jon asked, releasing his hold on us. He stepped up beside Elijah, and I turned, following his gaze toward the massive windows overlooking the veranda.
Dolyn had pulled off his shirt—pure muscles and tattoos. The man was a Greek god most women would drool over. He shoved his jeans down, stepping from the loafers he’d worn. Bending, he shoved it all into a small black bag on the ground beside him and stood. He glanced over his shoulder and dipped his head again.
He leaped off the veranda, and I gasped as Jon cursed.
A golden, scaled body shot upward, disappearing within a heartbeat as though becoming one with the blue of the sky.
“Holy fuck!”
“My God,” I said with the beginnings of a giggle while turning back toward Elijah. “Somebody pinch me.”
“I would rather love you,” he murmured, the vulnerability in his stare begging me to believe him.
I swallowed the sudden rush of saliva in my mouth as tingles woke between my thighs, reigniting the need that had begun in the room below. The very interesting room.
“You have a dungeon.” I giggled fully, half-hysterical over everything I’d heard, seen, and experienced in the previous ten minutes. “An honest to God dungeon to torture people.”
A smirk quirked one corner of his luscious lips. “I created that room for my mates.”
One of my eyebrows popped up, and I glanced over at Jon. “He wants to string us both up, baby.” Another giggle flitted past my lips. “What do you say to that?”
He grinned. “I don’t know what the fuck to think. Dragons. Fated mates.” His hair caressed his cheeks as he shook his head on a snort. “Think you better fucking pinch me.”
“I owe you both an apology—and an explanation.” His pale eyes revealed the guilt and hope for forgiveness I felt trickling through our hands as he clasped mine. “I withheld the truth from you.”
“For good reason,” Jon said with a laugh. “If you told us the truth the first day we met you, I’d have dragged Dakota away before your scent and the damn magic of this place grabbed hold of us.”
“There’s no magic in this place,” Elijah said with a smile, “but the connection between our souls that fate intended—that can’t be put aside as anything but magical.”
The two men stared at each other, and I sighed at the lack of anger, the lack of hurt emanating from either of them. Instead, the love they felt for each other swelled, filling my heart and heating me through.
Elijah squeezed my fingers and held his other hand out toward Jon. “Will you…” He swallowed as though still unsure of my husband’s submission.
Jon didn’t hesitate to move close and grasped Elijah’s hand, sending a shuddering sigh through our mate. “I didn’t lie to Dolyn, Elijah.” My husband peered into our alpha’s eyes, the truth of his words shimmering through the energy connecting the three of us. “I love you—have for a while, just didn’t have the fucking balls to admit it.”
Elijah’s throat bobbed at the same time a sweet ache swept over me.
“Same,” I managed to whisper past the thickness in my throat. “So much.”
Without a word, we stepped in toward one another, once more closing the circle between us. As though of the same mind, we leaned forward, the men leaning down enough for all of our foreheads to touch. “You are mine,” Elijah whispered, his voice ragged, “and I am yours.”
“Yes,” both Jon and I said at the same time—a decision that didn’t need thought but came straight from our hearts.
Whispered words poured from Elijah, words I couldn’t comprehend but ones that resonated deep inside my soul. I gasped as flames licked up along our legs—flames without heat, blue and beautiful, flickering, reaching upward as Elijah continue
d to speak, surrounding us with his love.
Chapter Forty-Two
Elijah
My dragon spoke. I’d only opened my mouth to let the words escape. The ancient language I hadn’t heard spoken for years, but I felt the power in every syllable, began the bonding between us.
Blue flames swirled around us, and I lifted my head, my heart overflowing with joy—and love.
Dakota’s eyes glowed green, swirling with a fire of her own. Jon’s a blue so vivid, so rich I wanted to weep. Shimmering images rippled over both of their skin almost as if they did possess scales that wanted to burst forth from within.
“You are worthy,” I murmured as the flames receded and their eyes returned to normal. “My mates.”
Smiling, Dakota gazed up at me, her face radiant with the love she’d declared.
“The fuck was that?” Jon asked, and I found myself smiling. One eyebrow cocked, he peered at our bare feet, lifting his toes to wiggle them as though checking for burns.
“I set our bonding in motion.”
He jerked his head up, a smile slowly curving his lips. “A bonding like in those novels she reads?” he asked, tipping his head toward Dakota. “The kind where we can feel each other from a different room? Smell the sweetness between her thighs and the pre-cum dripping from our dicks?”
Dakota’s audible gulp sped all the blood in my body to my groin.
Jon glanced down at the growing bulge in my jeans as I fought for words to answer his question. “Pretty sure that part of the bond started a few days ago,” he said, shaking his head, his grin widening. “Pretty fucking sure I like that part of this bond thing, too.”
“So now what?” Dakota asked, her voice small, tearing my attention from my beta.
“Now we complete our bond—if it is indeed what you both desire.”
“Yes.” Again, they spoke in unison, their answer like a gentle caress filling my heart with happiness.
“Come.” I released Jon’s hand, but held Dakota’s while heading toward the stairs and my bedroom. We had mated countless times while standing, but we would need a bed for the requirement of our bonding.
My pulse quickened as my cock swelled to the point of pain. Fulfillment for what I had longed for my entire life lay within my reach—but only because of mutual desire and love, not because I’d coerced either of my mates into agreeing to become one with me.
The lights in my room rose as we entered, and I turned to face them. “The beta is the bridge between an alpha and their female,” I said, my gaze flitting from one to the other. “The mating bond reflects that, and when we’re connected and spill our seed, the bond will settle into place. There is no breaking of the ancient bond of my people—our people.”
I found myself smiling, knowing so many more with dragonblood walked the earth than I had ever dreamed possible, but the trust in Dakota’s eyes—the lust in Jon’s—wiped the thought clear from my head.
“You fuck me while I fuck her,” Jon said, grasping the physicality of the mating bond without my needing to explain.
“Yes.”
“How the fuck does that work?” he asked, a line furrowing his brow even though mischievous interest lit his eyes.
“I’ve never attempted it,” I said, my attention roaming down over his smooth chest to the hard ridge trapped along his left thigh, “but I’m sure we can figure it out.”
Dakota whimpered, her tangy sweetness teasing my nose. She nibbled on her lower lip and glanced at the bed, her nipples pebbling beneath my button-down shirt, the pulse in her neck thrumming in time with my own heartbeat.
I released her hand and undid the buttons hiding her milky-white breasts from us. Large nipples, a dusky red hue, tightened beneath my gaze as I slid the shirt off her shoulders and it fell to the floor. “Let us love you,” I murmured, rubbing my thumbs over her pert nipples.
She moaned and licked her lip, her eyelids fluttering shut. “Yes. Please, yes.”
“On the bed, mon coeur.”
Her obedience swelled my chest, rousing my dragon’s glee—and our combined desires to fuck. With him backing my body’s natural reaction to Dakota’s submission, I feared keeping hold long enough to complete the bonding.
As though reading my mind, Jon shoved his jeans down and crawled across my bed toward her, his ass in the air, drawing a groan from my chest.
My hands shook while pushing down my own jeans, and Jon settled between Dakota’s thighs, capturing her mouth, both of them emitting the kind of whimpered moan that twitched my already leaking cock.
“Hurry the fuck up, alpha,” Jon growled, “or I’m going to blow my fucking load without you shoved up my ass.”
The darkness in me chuckled at his impertinence—his very intentional impertinence. “Speak to me that way again…” I warned, the unspoken threat lingering.
“Can’t fucking wait.” Jon’s declaration—over keeping from sliding into our female’s wet heat or having my cane lick his backside—sent another droplet of pre-cum oozing down over my crown.
Palming myself, I moved to stand beside the bed, readying my cock for his ass with the slickness my body provided. “Wrap your legs around his back, mon coeur. Let him in.”
Her ankles wrapped around his waist, and one flex of Jon’s ass pulled another moan from them both, shivering my skin.
“Slow and easy,” I murmured more to myself than them, climbing onto the bed behind my mates.
Already on his knees, Jon slowly fucked in and out of Dakota, the scent of their combined arousal, the sounds of their feasting on the other’s mouth enough to make my eyes want to roll back into my head. Nostrils flaring, I breathed them in deeply and crowded in close, using my knees to press Jon’s legs wider.
He stilled as I rubbed my slickened crown over his puckered hole. Pre-cum continued to slip from my dick, and I pressed forward gently.
Jon cursed, his face burying in Dakota’s neck.
Her eyelashes fluttered, and she peered up at me with eyes hazed by passion, sucking my soul into hers, moving me forward without thought, Jon’s tight heat clamping down on my cock as I slid in without resistance.
“Oh, fuck,” Jon groaned, pinned between the two of us.
Gaze locked on my female, I pulled out, keeping my crown notched in Jon’s body, and slid back in, the friction of his clasp clenching my jaw.
“Christ.” He swore a few more times and pushed up onto his hands, planking over Dakota, the muscles along his spine rippling. “I gotta move … not going to fucking last.” He moved with me as I pulled out again, both of us pressing forward with a grunt.
My dragon clawed at my insides, roaring to be set free—I allowed enough of the wall containing him down so he might share in the taking—the bonding between us.
Chapter Forty-Three
Jonathan
My ass fucking burned, my cock throbbed, and balls ached like a motherfucker. Tight against my body, they brushed against the wetness leaking from Dakota’s body with every combined thrust of Elijah’s and my hips.
Like a bridge, he’d said—he used my body to fuck Dakota—and I’d never felt such perfection, such sheer fucking bliss-like torture in my life. His cock alone stroking deep inside my ass was exquisite, but combined with Dakota’s soaked pussy clenching around my dick…
I groaned and lowered onto her body again, my arms useless. Face buried in her neck as Elijah and I moved in steady, perfected rhythm. I needed more, needed to fucking blow the load brewing in my balls.
“Harder,” I said, remembering the strength of his thrusts, the pain/pleasure of him shoving deep inside me less than an hour earlier.
We moved together, picking up the pace in retreating, but it was all Elijah’s thrusting that buried me deep in Dakota’s pussy.
She dug her nails into my shoulder blades, her gasps and moans pushing me closer to the damn edge of something in the horizon of my mind. My body longed to reach for it, to be swept up into whatever it was that simmered the energy between us.
Elijah grunted, plowing into my ass, banging the headboard of his bed against the wall.
Dakota gasped beneath me, and I grazed my teeth along the tender skin of her neck, the desire to bite her swelling, flooding my mouth with drool.
“Please, Elijah,” she whimpered, wiggling and scratching the fuck out of my shoulder blades.
He lay over me, the heat of his chest searing my back, and Dakota released her hold on me to clutch at him if his hiss was any indication of her nails digging in. Another thrust thumped the bed, and she lifted her head, their mouths coming together in a rush inches from my face.
“Aw, fuck.” I groaned and tried to move between them, but he held me pinned. Impaled and so fucking ready to explode, I couldn’t breathe.
“Come, mon coeur,” he whispered against her lips, and she cried out, her pussy clamping down on my dick without a single flick to her clit.
Elijah pulled out and thrust so damn hard, stars lit up behind my eyelids, and I found my teeth once more on Dakota’s neck as cum rushed up through my dick, spurting against her womb, Elijah’s roar and hot-as-fuck seed shooting into my ass.
Motherfucking… I bit down, lost in the rush of coming, in the pulsing of Dakota’s pussy, the throb of Elijah’s cock in my ass—the sting of his teeth at the base of my neck.
Heat swept through me, the slight coppery tang of blood hitting my taste buds, and like a wave, awareness of their feelings, the overwhelming euphoric release from both of them flooded through me as though I’d become a conductor between their emotions.
Zero doubt rested in my mind that the bond Elijah had told us about cemented our lives together. I could feel them beyond the physical. I could taste my blood on Elijah’s tongue. I could feel the tingling in Dakota’s limbs as her climax ebbed away leaving only elation.
But how did I feel?
Breathless, licking at the tiny wound I’d made in my wife’s neck, my dick spent, and Elijah’s still buried in my ass as he panted against my shoulder…
I’d found heaven, beyond any Elysium every fucking religion promised in the arms of my two lovers, my mates.