Page 22 of Destined By Dragonblood (Blood Born #2)

Vanni

D olyn caught Ashley before I reached her fainting form.

“Goddamn you,” I growled, kneeling in front of them and ripping one of his hands off her before jerking my touch from his skin.

Same as when he’d grabbed my shoulder down in the lounge, currents of some weird-as-fuck shit rippled throughout my body.

Almost electrical but without the hair-raising charge.

A deep longing and unrest exactly as Ashley had whispered to him seconds earlier continued to radiate throughout me as though time had somehow bound our fates together.

I’d never been into destiny and that sort of shit, but this affinity…there were no words to describe what I felt.

Skin contact with Dolyn had opened me up in ways I’d only heard about in the supposed supernatural world. Colors had become more crisp, my sense of smell heightened. I could literally taste Dolyn’s radiating anger and lust on my tongue, and my slit had leaked in response.

The mess smeared inside my leathers as our gazes clashed. “What the hell is going on here, Dolyn?”

“I won’t hurt her,” he said, gathering her tight against his chest. At least they were both fully clothed so she might not freak out when she woke up to find him holding her like that.

“She is my female.” His eyes glowed golden with swirling darkness in his pupils for a split second, and I blinked to clear my focus.

Blood Born, he’d said. Dragonblood.

“The fuck is wrong with you?” I glared, unintimidated, intrigued, and horny as hell wrapped up in one gigantic ball of tensed nerves.

“You’re a sick fuck, and she should have told the goddamn cops the truth of how you’ve been stalking her.

” My focus jerked from each of his hands atop Ashley’s coat, to his eyes, and back down again, unsure of his intent.

I wanted to be ready to flatten him if he made a wrong move.

“I’ll explain soon enough.” He kissed her forehead, his eyelids closing briefly as he lingered, inhaling her scent.

My hands should have been fisted over how he held her without her consent.

My blood should have boiled with rage over his mouth touching her skin.

But the way he cradled her with tenderness, how the two of them fit seamlessly together, held me in check.

I’d been thinking about both of them, getting myself off to fantasies that had included their images flipping back and forth.

A few times, I imagined them both in my bed, the three of us gasping for air as we came down from powerful orgasms, our bodies covered in sweat, sticky with cum.

Where nausea from my past should have had me hugging a toilet and heaving, yearning to crowd close and join in their sharing of comfort had me reaching out.

Ashley stirred and whimpered.

“Ash?” My fingertips came into contact with hers, and as though she was a conduit of the otherworldliness emanating off Dolyn, I could sense his concern for her. His adoration for the woman he called his female was a damned love bomb of emotion crowding my chest.

But something darker, completely foreign, yet not alarming, lay deeper beneath whatever it was connecting the three of us. Almost as if…Dolyn was split in two. Bipolar didn’t fit the sense I got. There were definitely opposing sides to him that I’d experienced while sceneing with him.

Was he both the hot and cold eyes Ashley had told me about?

Did something inside him wish her harm?

My hackles should have raised at the thought, but assurance he would give his life before he allowed someone to hurt his female settled over my mind, putting my questions of her safety to rest. I believed his protective nature extended to every part of her, same as mine did.

I lifted my gaze off Ashley’s peaceful face to find Dolyn staring at me, those golden flames in his eyes again. As though his focus on me changed my vision, I saw clearer. Brightness lit in my periphery. I expected I could peer through the wall beyond Dolyn if I focused hard enough.

His gaze dipped to my mouth, and a trickle of heat slid through my fingertips from Ashley’s skin, a reaching out of sorts that wound its way through me, settling in my groin.

Lust, a desperate need, flooded my dick with blood, mutual desire waxing and waning in the air between us.

My abs tensed, balls tightening.

Ashley shifted, breaking the moment.

Dolyn and I both gave her our undivided attention, and I threaded my fingers thoroughly with hers to hopefully help ground her emotions when she came fully to. He shifted her in his arms, sighing as she blinked her eyes open.

“Dolyn,” she murmured, her pupils dilating and pulse beginning to thrum in her neck. She went lax against him when not so long ago, she would have been scrambling away from the near-stranger holding her.

She wanted him, and that truth made my chest ache in memory of the hard lesson I’d learned a decade earlier.

Before I could untangle my fingers from hers, Dolyn cupped her cheek, palm resting fully against her skin, linking all three of us through direct contact.

A zap shot through me, burning like fire, jagged as shards of glass.

The breath ripped from my lungs. That sense of connection I’d felt seconds earlier intensified. I could fucking feel Dolyn in my head as though Ashley acted as a conduit between us.

His heart beat in time with mine…a whispering echo deeper in his core humming its approval.

A sense of Ashley’s peace trickled in, soothing and sweet, when she should have been freaking the fuck out like I should have been doing. Her desire for both Dolyn and me followed on its heels, assuring me I would never have to fear her abandoning my heart for his.

While my eyes welled with tears, a prickling of my skin caused my stomach to tighten.

Who was this man that he affected her and me in this way?

“Otherworldly” flitted through my brain again as his words about dragonblood echoed through my mind.

Yessss .

I ripped my hand off Ashley’s, but the hissing assurance Dolyn spoke truth had come from within me not through our connection.

We were no longer touching, but whatever funky voodoo Dolyn had done while the three of us had been in physical contact with each other lingered. While less in potency, I could sense them both as if some sort of residual energy of theirs had attached itself to my cells.

“What. The. Actual. Fuck?” I spat through clenched teeth.

Dolyn peered at me, brow furrowing as though he hadn’t felt the same goddamned thing.

I had to get us from this creep who fit my sadistic side like a glove and turned my cock to granite. “Ash.” I grabbed hold of her hand again.

The strength of our connection snapped back into place, and Dolyn’s thoughts hazily flooded my brain, taking mine along for the ride.

A vision of him settled between her thighs made my cock buck in its tight prison. I saw my cane marks on his ass as he flexed, burying himself deep inside her pussy I’d been the only one to touch in over a dozen years.

A similar darkness to Dolyn’s center roused inside me when I remembered the satiny folds of her tender skin sucking in my thumb while I’d played with her clit. But I wanted to sink into her slick sheath alongside his cock, filling her at the same time, flooding her with our seed.

Another vision flooded my brain of thrusting into Dolyn’s ass while he fucked her, green fire flaring around us like a vortex of passion that would bind us forever.

“No,” he hissed over our shared fantasy, but I was too far gone in understanding how the three of us would fit together.

Dolyn would be the bridge between Ashley and I, the channel of our emotions, our pleasure. He would flood her womb while I emptied my balls deep in his guts, marking him as mine.

Yessss.

The echo caused my balls to draw up tight, pulling me out of the fantasy.

I squeezed my junk to keep from blowing my load, groaning through my clenched teeth at the ache in my groin.

Dolyn stared at me, pupils blown, showing his teeth and growling.

He hated how we fit perfectly together and longed to exert his dominance, but I didn’t doubt what I’d seen.

The darker part of him lusted for what had played in my mind.

Dolyn fought an inner battle, and I wanted to devour his lips.

Hold him down and fuck his ass until he submitted and begged for relief.

I eyed where he clutched her lower back, the fingers of my free hand itching to complete the circle among the three of us. This strangeness would become more empowered, I didn’t doubt.

A sharing of mind, body, and spirit.

More .

Blinking hard at the strange inner voice, I tore my fingers from Ashley’s, backed away, and scrambled to my feet. Where had the raspy voice as though newly awakened come from? Was I losing my goddamned mind?

“What are you feeling, Vanni?” Dolyn asked, his voice wary.

“ You ,” I spat. “Up here.” I tapped at my temple.

He blinked, muttering under his breath about that not being possible.

“Trust me, it is,” I hissed. “I saw that same fantasy you did, Dolyn.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “We’re destined to be together. I will claim what has been gifted to me, and you will learn your place regardless of what our inner beasts believe.”

I opened my mouth to curse him out, but snapped it shut when Ashley sighed, burrowing in closer to his chest. She trusted this madman wholeheartedly. That truth had burrowed deep in my soul when we’d been connected. Strangely, I knew I didn’t have to fear her safety as long as he was around.

Dolyn might be crazy in the head, but I’d never met a more loyal soul. He reminded me of those dogs Ashley had told me he cared for.

Beta .

Dolyn’s safeword echoed in my brain.

“I—I have to go,” I sputtered, my chest constricting and blood rushing through my ears.

Ours .

“Vanni.” Ashley held out her hand to me, violet eyes shining and vulnerable as though she could empathize with the tumbling emotions crowding my chest.

“I… My goddamned brain won’t shut the fuck up.” I shook my head, backing away even though the draw to be one with them felt like chains wrapping tight around my free will. “I’m sorry, Ash—I don’t understand. Can’t…”

I grabbed my cell off my desk.

Ripped my office door open.

My boots thundered down the stairs as I attempted to escape them—my desires, the racing thoughts.

“Sir?” Jenna called to me as I strode past her desk, intent on the private elevator that would take me to my suite. “Is everything all right?” she asked as I closed my eyes, cursing at the slow ding of numbers while shoving my phone into my back pocket. “The cops left, and I wasn’t sure…”

“Everything will be fine.” I lied through my teeth and swallowed hard. The doors slid open, and I stepped in, jamming the up button. “Come on,” I muttered under my breath, body trembling, hands squeezed into tight fists.

Want.

Need.

Similar words continued to ring in my ears, ones that couldn’t possibly be true, but I felt them resonate deep inside my soul where that shared darkness with Dolyn lingered.

There was no fucking way that man was fully human—if at all—and he owned Ashley’s heart, her body, as did I.

He also threatened my self-control in a way no one ever had before. I wanted to dominate the fuck out of him. Crush his stubborn spirit and put him back together again as he was meant to be.

Mine .

Ashley’s.

Ours.

Goddamned fucking voice in my head sounded as far from human as possible. But was it residual shit from Dolyn…or had he somehow implanted a beast inside me?

I needed a drink.