Page 17

17

Elle

H e swung open the door, then frowned. “Didn’t you get the key I left in your apartment?”

“I haven’t been by yet.”

He pulled me inside. “ Arum , you shouldn’t have to knock on my door.”

His hand closed around my waist. I should have gone by my apartment first, showered and changed before seeing him. Every speck of grime and grease and sweat I’d accumulated throughout the day itched on my skin.

“I’ll go grab it.” But I didn’t move out of his grasp, and he pulled me farther inside.

A flash of red caught my attention, and I tugged back, open-mouthed.

The first time I’d been in here, there’d been an ornate gold chalice sitting pride of place, impossible to miss as soon as I stepped inside. He’d swapped it out for something else.

“Holy shit. You put my gift on display.” The last time I’d seen the little amigurumi, it’d been sitting on his kitchen counter.

His wings twitched. “Of course.”

“You liked it that much? ”

He nuzzled into my neck. “It’s the most valuable thing I own.”

“Why? How ?” His sister had given him a dagger worth thousands yesterday morning.

Az tilted his head. “It holds six hours of your life, and you gave them all to me.”

Emotions crashed into me, too many and too complicated to pull apart. My knees buckled, and my whole body trembled as I snuggled into his solid chest. “Wow,” I breathed. “You really meant it.”

“Meant what?” His voice rumbled through his chest and into me.

“Everything.” When I’d been crocheting, my tension had gotten uneven in a couple places and my embroidery was a little crooked, but he’d stuck that thing in a custom-built case with fancy lighting.

Tears gathered behind my eyes. I tried to swallow them down. “I just…I can see every little mistake, and you don’t even care, do you?”

He probably didn’t care that there were unflattering pictures of me all over social media either, with all kinds of vile comments and bizarre speculation.

Az shook his head at me, confusion written all over his face. “You made it for me. Of course it’s perfect.”

I hauled his mouth down to mine for a searching kiss. He picked me up, and my legs locked around his waist.

“Wait,” I said.

He froze.

“I still smell like a kitchen. I need to shower.”

“If you want.” He grinned as he carried me to his bedroom and into the attached bathroom. Marble covered every square inch. A garden tub occupied one corner, and a massive shower, large enough for three or four dragons, sat next to it. The shower had multiple showerheads.

An honest-to-god chandelier hung from the ceiling. In the bathroom. My stomach clenched with sudden anxiety .

Az set me on a luxurious bath mat and turned on the water. I stripped off my clothes and folded them on the counter, afraid to let the dirty garments touch the clean marble. Az had no such compunctions, shucking his clothes in seconds and leaving them where they lay.

A thick arm wrapped around my waist, Az’s larger body enveloping mine. My skin grew hot and tight in an instant, desire gathering in my center.

He tested the temperature of the shower before hauling me in.

There was no room for embarrassment when he soaped me up. He seemed fascinated with my skin, running the tips of his claws over my most sensitive places again and again—breasts, thighs, inner arms—just to watch me shiver.

“So delicate. I can’t get enough of you,” he rumbled into my hair.

I melted into him, shuddering and gasping and afraid my knees would give way as he continued to touch me. My pussy was soaked with more than just water.

I tried to touch him back, to soap him up in return, eager to feel the rasp of his scales under my fingertips and the play of muscle under skin. He cupped his hands under my ass and lifted me in the air, steadying my upper body against the cool marble and pinning me in place with his soft leather wings.

My legs locked around his head in a desperate bid for balance as his tongue delved deep into my pussy, and he groaned. I gripped the edges of his wings, hoping I wasn’t hurting him, as he feasted on my pussy.

His tongue was warm and strong and questing, its forked end flicking over every sensitive fold.

I ached for more. After all his teasing, my skin was sensitive and feverish, and every lick shuddered through me until I was nothing more than hot water streaming across my chest, cold tile on my back, scorching dragon between my legs .

Pleasure exploded from every nerve ending, hard and deep, my head falling back to rest on cold marble.

When my trembling subsided, his hands and wings worked in tandem to bring me back to earth. If he hadn’t been holding me up, I’d have fallen over when he set me down. While the aftershocks of my orgasm still danced under my skin, he turned me around, placed a large hand on my back, bent me forward, and thrust inside me.

I whimpered at the sudden intrusion of his cock, the tapered tip granting him easy access and allowing him to stretch me to capacity. I arched my back to take him more deeply, and oh god, I didn’t know it could feel like this, my nerve endings sparking and spiraling out of control with each pass of his cock.

He pulled out and thrust inside again. Those ridges drove me out of my mind, dragging against my walls. My hands scrambled for purchase on the smooth marble. A few more thrusts like that, and I’d come again.

He hunched over my back so our bodies were in full contact, his strong chest pressing into my back. One arm looped under my hips, the other around my ribs, under my breasts, and all I could feel was him . Touching me. Surrounding me. Holding me up.

A sharp nip of teeth at my neck, and I tilted my head instinctively, giving him more access. Anything he wanted.

His other cock slid through the crease of my ass in time with his slow, steady thrusts, all slick and hot and thick, parting my cheeks and gliding over rarely touched nerve endings. So naughty and forbidden and delicious.

I wiggled my hips as much as this position allowed. “You can put it in my ass.” I’d been exploring by myself ever since I saw his dicks, and I was looking forward to trying this .

He made a strangled sound, hands digging in tight enough that his claws pricked my skin. “I’ll hurt you.”

“I’ll tell you if it hurts.” Another insistent roll of my hips pushed me closer to orgasm, heat and pleasure gathering at my center.

His arms turned to steel bands around me. “ Arum. ” He palmed my ass, his cock fitting more neatly into the crease, but not where I wanted it to go. I shivered as the increased contact stimulated sensitive flesh.

“Fuck, Arum .” He thrust against me once more, imitating the dirty deed I’d asked for. “I want to see your face when I take you like this.”

“Please.” I reached one hand down to strum my clit.

“Next time,” he bit out.

Before I could protest, he banded one arm around my hips and started a deep, intense rhythm that had me seeing stars. Between one cock pounding into me, the other sliding through my crease across sensitive nerves, and my fingers on my clit, I catapulted into another orgasm.

As I shuddered and moaned, his thrusts became erratic, until I felt a hot gush both inside and out and he bellowed, clutching me to his chest, face buried in my neck. Pinpricks scraped my skin where my shoulder met my neck.

When we caught our breath and I turned to face him, his scales turned dark red. “I was too rough with you.”

“What?” I stretched, feeling delicious and languid.

“Your hip.”

A few dark marks were visible along the side of my hip. I squinted at them, tilting my head. They must have been from where his fingers had dug in.

I poked one of the faint marks. “It’ll heal in a day or two.” He hadn’t broken the skin .

Az reached out a hand, then snatched it back. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“No. I’m fine, really.” I reached for a bottle of shampoo.

Az glanced around, took a deep breath. “Please forgive me.”

I stepped to him. “There’s nothing to forgive. It’s a love mark, nothing more. The dragon equivalent of a hickey. Now help me wash my hair.” No way in hell would I let him get in his head about getting a little rough when I’d loved every second of it.

“What’s a hickey?” He took the bottle of shampoo.

“A little bruise, like the one you just gave me, usually from kissing and sucking on the neck.”

His hands brushed my scalp, growing more confident as I spoke.

“You would allow this? A temporary mark on your neck?” His eyes gleamed.

I shrugged. “Only if I can hide it.”

He frowned. “What’s the point if no one sees? Dragon mating marks are high on the neck so everyone can see.” He touched a spot near where my neck met my jaw.

“What do you mean, dragon mating marks ?”

“I’ll get you an engagement ring, too, if you prefer.” The slits that served as his nose wrinkled. “Though I don’t know why you’d limit yourself to one ring.”

“Back up. You want to bite my neck?”

“It’s the dragon way. It won’t hurt.” He turned off the water. “I’ll do it while I’m deep inside you. I’ve been told it feels good.” His face tightened with lust. “Something to do with lingering dragon magic.”

I pinched my lips together. Lingering dragon magic. In my neck . From his teeth. During sex.

Something else occurred to me, and I almost giggled. “Wait, you want to bite me, but you freak out over a couple of bruises? ”

He handed me a towel. “The pinpricks were an accident. You’re so much smaller than me. How can you trust me to take care of you if you can’t trust me with your body? A mating bite would be on purpose, and with your consent.”

I nibbled my lip. He was too sweet. “So if I let you give me a hickey, would that be like a practice mating bite?” I shouldn’t let him do that, right? It seemed grossly unfair when I was still so mixed up about our relationship.

His scales went a deep red. “A bit. I want people to know you’re mine.”

“The whole internet knows.” Sudden cold dripped down my spine. “You saw that, right?” I’d been so confident earlier that he wouldn’t care about all the gossip, but what if I was wrong?

“Yes.” The tips of his wings twitched and flared. “I wish there were more pictures of us and fewer of my siblings making fools of themselves.”

A relieved breath shot out of me when I realized he wasn’t angry at me, then I processed the rest of his words. “I guess that’s the price of being a public figure.” A price I’d have to get used to if I mated him. “You don’t have a social media team, do you?”

He shook his head.

“Maybe you should get one. It might help when stuff like this happens.”

“ Arum , are you offering?”

I laughed. “Oh, no. I have no experience with that stuff.” Although, it would be kind of fun, right? I’d get to control what was said about us and our relationship—no more blindsiding. “It might give people a way to get to know you a little better.”

“That’s a wonderful idea.” He dropped a quick kiss on my forehead.

A few hours later, Az woke me up with a start. “I forgot! Your gift!”

“What?” I asked, rolling away from him enough to look at his face. His thin lips twisted, his eyes wide in horror.

“Please forgive me. You can choose whatever you want from my hoard.”

I put a hand on his chest. His heart raced under my palm. “Calm down, Az. I don’t need anything. I thought we went over this.”

“But your time.” He scrambled out of bed.

I groaned. “Can’t we say I’m getting your time in exchange and call it even?”

“Absolutely not. I’m asking you to sacrifice your time for me. Since I made the request, you get compensated.”

I sat up, resigned to the fact that I wasn’t going back to sleep. “That is the most bonkers thing I’ve ever heard.” I glanced around the opulent bedroom. Midnight shadows cast everything into sharp relief.

In front of me, Az’zael paced.

“Yesterday I asked for your time, and all I got you was a sandwich,” I muttered. “Can I get a sandwich?”

The look Az shot me suggested he thought I was being ridiculous.

I scrubbed a hand over my eyes. “Okay, if I tell you what I want, you’ll give it to me, right?”

He nodded, all of his attention laser-focused on me.

“How about information? Is that a good enough gift?”

His wings snapped closed. “It’s an excellent gift. Unfortunately, my library— ”

“I don’t want to know about, like, birds or whatever.” I waved a hand. “Tell me about yourself. We can do, say, a question for every hour I’m here?” We’d skipped a lot of the usual getting-to-know-you stuff because I hadn’t known we were dating. This seemed like the perfect way to make up for that.

His eyes darted around, as if he couldn’t figure out what to tell me.

“Like, what’s your best childhood memory?” I started with something basic. Something I knew I could answer, too, without him noticing that this trade was a lot more even than I’d let on.

Az’zael sighed, his features softening. “I was ten when Tika was born. She was so tiny and loud. I mostly ignored her. But one time I went into her room because I could smell new gold.” At my blank look, he said, “It’s part of my dragon senses. I’m very good at it.” He preened.

“Anyway, I knew where all the treasure in my parents’ house was, and there was something new in her room. So I went in, and she had this shiny new gold-plated mobile above her crib. I didn’t want to take it, just touch it a little, so it wouldn’t feel so new.”

I blinked rapidly, filing away question after question for when I was awake enough to deal with the answers.

“I leaned over her crib, and she stared up at me, and I couldn’t look away. When I touched the mobile, it jingled and she giggled and it was the nicest sound I’d ever heard. So I jingled it again, and she giggled even harder. I kept jiggling it and making her giggle until our mom came in to see why Tika was making so much noise.”

“That must have been fun.” I patted the bed next to me. He gingerly sat down.

“Okay. That was…okay.”

“I don’t have any siblings, but when I was little…” Fuck. I licked my lips. This was harder than I thought it’d be. “When I was little, my mom would send me to my cousin Savannah’s house for a week or two in the summer.” Figuring out how to keep me looked after during summer break was always a struggle. Mama’s cousin would pitch in now and then, since her daughter was only a couple of years younger than me and we got on well.

“We’d get to run wild through the woods, making up our own stories and doing whatever we wanted.” I remembered the cool creek water on my feet, giggling and screaming about nothing, running through the trees and making secret caves out of nothing but a rock, two trees, and our imaginations. “It was the best. Way better than any summer camp.” Not that I’d ever been to summer camp.

Savannah had two kids of her own now, eight and ten, and while she always returned my texts, she never reached out to me first. She had her own problems, and we’d been pushed to the peripheries of each other’s lives years ago.

“No wonder you love the parks.”

“Yeah. No wonder,” I murmured. I’d almost forgotten I’d told him that. I’d never made the connection before.

“Next question?” He nudged me with a wingtip. The leathery skin was shockingly soft.

We’d delved into family, and that had gone okay, so I dipped a toe in a little further. “What are your parents like?”

His arm turned to stone under my hand. “Cunning.”

I blinked. “Cunning? That’s it?”

He shifted. “They claimed Sutton a little over a decade ago. I’m sure you’ve heard some things.”

Jesus fuck, would he ever stop throwing me off balance? “They did what?”

“They claimed Sutton. You mentioned them on our second date.” He frowned .

On our second… When I went over to his house? And we hung out on his couch? Oh my god, I’d been so freaked out about initiating sex, and he’d been genuinely trying not to pressure me into anything and… Had I insulted his parents? I cringed into myself.

“I didn’t know that was your parents. I only know a little about them, from what’s in the news, but I don’t know who they are as people. Lots of celebrities are different behind closed doors. Are they?” I babbled. Az probably had a thousand memories of his parents being normal, loving parents. Whatever that looked like for dragons.

Az grimaced. “No, of course not. Why would you trust anyone who showed the world one face and their family another?”

“Um. Okay.” So maybe not warm and loving parents. Time to change the topic. I’d intended to answer all the questions I asked him, so we could learn a little more about each other, but now that seemed foolish. What was I going to say? My mom is a little prickly sometimes, but I’ve always known she loved me? Way to be insensitive.

Az curled an arm around me. “Don’t worry, Arum , they’ll love you.”

How had Az turned out so sweet when the nicest thing he could say about his parents was that they were “cunning”?

“Why do you call me Arum ?” I changed the subject.

“It means gold .”

I blinked. I probably should have expected that.

“How many questions is that, three?” I asked as I snuggled closer.

He nuzzled into me. “Yes. I’ve paid for three hours of your time.”

“Can you claim the others in the morning?” I was so warm and cozy, wrapped in his arms.

“Yeah, Arum . I’ll answer as many questions as you want to ask tomorrow morning.”

Az treated me to a decadent day of lounging in bed, banging my brains out, and taking me shopping for furniture for my new apartment. I fell asleep sated and boneless and not entirely certain I hadn’t dreamed the whole thing.

The next morning, I woke up in Az’s bed, curled up next to him, and quietly snuck out of bed. I stealthily opened a few drawers in his kitchen until I found a stack of Post-it notes and a pen in a drawer that was too organized to be a full-on junk drawer but served the same purpose.

I glanced around to make sure Az was still in bed and hadn’t snuck up on me. Then, in my neatest handwriting, I wrote out a couple of notes about how much I enjoyed spending time with him and stuck them in places I was sure he’d find them.

I flushed as I wrote every single one, feeling like a high schooler all over again, wondering if I was being too open, too honest. These were things I’d struggle to say out loud, but writing them felt a little easier.

What if he saw them and laughed?

He won’t , I reassured myself over and over again, holding tight to everything he’d ever done or said.