Page 8 of Dragon Fight (The Dragon Queen #2)

8

T o be woken with kisses is quite the experience, which I think every woman should have at least once in her life. But being woken with multiple kisses? I was floating along in that strange space between sleep and consciousness when I felt the first. A prickly kiss to my shoulder, so it was any of them but Flynn, then another, before something very hard was pressed against my buttocks.

Ged, then.

Before I could respond, more kisses were pressed to my forehead, my cheeks, then my neck. With no accompanying sensation of a beard, apart from a small rasp of stubble, I knew it had to be Flynn. As I blindly sought his mouth, finding it and claiming it, hands stroked down my flanks, down my arms and along my stomach, awakening my body everywhere I was touched. Then my chin was tipped up to kiss one set of lips, then another. I wasn’t even able to take a breath between kisses before I was passed on again. I felt heavy, limp with pleasure. And then the door was thrust open.

“Gods, Draven!” Flynn growled. “Are you determined to be a third wheel?”

I opened my eyes and blinked at the sight of Draven, perfectly dressed, standing just inside the room, staring down at the five of us. It seemed that sometime in the night, all four of my mates had come to settle in the bed around me, the only nod to decency being the fact they all still had their pants on.

But I didn’t.

And that was something the prince was fully aware of, because the blankets had been entirely pushed to the bottom of the bed. As he stared, there was a strange expression on his face: partially his usual hauteur, partially… longing? Need? Jealousy? It was so difficult to tell and he put his social mask on too quickly for me to analyse it any further.

“The maids will be coming up and they’ll see that all the other beds are just as perfect as they were when they made them last,” he told us.

“Fuck,” Flynn complained, climbing off the bed and sauntering towards the connecting door, the sight of his broad shoulders drawing my eyes distractingly as he walked through it.

“We could say we’ve made them already?” Soren tried to argue, prior to reaching down and tilting my lips his way. But before he could kiss me, Draven interrupted.

Damn this man.

“Military corners are different to the way maids do beds,” he told Soren. “Change them to the way you would in the keep and it might earn you a lie in.”

Soren let out a huff of breath, then pulled himself up and off the bed. He turned and winked at me, snatching a quick kiss before following after Flynn.

“Would it be so bad for people to know what we have?” Ged’s hands hadn’t stopped moving, which had been very distracting. And I struggled to focus on what was being said as his hands slid under my shirt.

“Well, it's a treasonous offence,” Draven said, his tone as sharp and light as a rapier. “You’d see your ‘lady love’ die on the scaffold before you. Your only consolation would be that you’d join her in death only moments later.”

“Fine.” Ged punctuated his terse response with a deep, hungry kiss that had me arching up to meet it. Draven let out a hiss of frustration at the further delay to his plans. When Ged finally pulled away, he was grinning at my dazed expression. “I’ll mess up my bed and then meet you—”

“Downstairs for breakfast,” Draven corrected.

“Of course, Your Highness,” Ged said, sweeping Draven a bow as he padded towards the door. “And while I’m making it look like I slept anywhere other than with my mate, you’ll stand here eating your fucking heart out, wishing it was you on the bed, not us.”

“We’ll be down soon,” Brom told Draven without even looking at him.

He was preoccupied with tracing his fingers over my cheek bones before teasing my lips open. I latched onto one fingertip, licking the broad pad eliciting a groan from deep in his chest, then I sucked on it like a complete slattern, prompting him to replace it with his mouth. His heavy thigh came to rest over the top of mine, pinning me to the bed, to him.

“Brom, we need—” Draven protested.

“Later, Draven.” Not my prince, not Your Highness, just his name. Brom was being terribly familiar, but he didn’t seem to care. He just stroked my face, smiling when I leaned into his caress and then said, “Shut the door on your way out.”

“That was quite rude,” I said.

“So’s coming into a man’s room when he’s in bed with his wife,” Brom replied before bending his head to kiss me. The feeling of him pinning me to the bed under the heavy weight of his body was delicious. I felt small, helpless to do anything but surrender to his ministrations. It was one of the few times I’d been willing to let myself feel this vulnerable. I trusted Brom. We’d both been victims of the queen’s evil intent, I’d realised, and now we were united against her. So I reached up and kissed my husband with everything I had, getting lost in the sensation of him. A heavy thud at the door had us springing apart, Brom responding with a snarl.

“Those damn—”

“Wakey, wakey, hands off snakey.” The amusement in Ged’s muffled voice was plain, but Brom just let out a curse.

“I’ll bar all of them from our room tonight,” he promised, kissing me one more time before getting out of bed.

“I’m not sure I am totally on board with that idea,” I responded as I rifled through my bags to find fresh clothing, which I pulled on swiftly because the air in the room was chilly. “Waking up to the four of you? I liked that a lot.”

“Well, far be it from me to deny my lady wife anything.” Brom smirked as he held out an arm to me. “We’ll just need to find Draven something to occupy him. Perhaps we can fake a desperate summons from the capital.”

“There you are!” Bernard said with a broad smile from where he sat at the head of the table as we entered the room together. “And how is the happy couple this morning?”

Kay smiled in greeting as well, but I felt that she looked the two of us over very closely, and I became a little concerned she’d somehow learned of our sleeping arrangements.

“Hungry,” Brom said, with a pointed look at me that stirred memories of our time together. I sat down abruptly as a frantic pulse started up between my legs in response.

“We slept very well, thank you,” I replied. “The bed was warm and very soft.”

“And the company not so much,” Bernard said with a wink, making me choke on my sip of water as I realised what he was saying.

“Well, eat up. You’ll need your strength,” Kay prompted. “We’ll have a busy day ahead of us.”

“Yes, and I’ll need Brom for some of that,” Draven announced and for a moment, Kay’s face fell. She stared at the prince openly, her brows creasing slightly before she recovered herself.

“Of course. Everyone in the house is at your disposal, Your Highness,” she finally replied.

“Good.” Draven’s smile was smug. “It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to fly together as a wing. Perhaps some training exercises would be appropriate.”

“We’re on leave… Highness.” Ged tacked the prince’s honorific on, belatedly. “I was thinking sipping some tea by the fireside, perhaps playing some dice?” He looked hopefully around the table.

“No one’s touching your dice,” Flynn said with a dark look. “You’ve had them enchanted, I’m sure of it.”

“Well, no matter what we do, I need to get some food for Glimmer. Lady Emberly—” I said.

“Kay, please.” Her smile was warm and genuine.

“Kay then. Would it be possible to get some meat scraps from the kitchen?”

“An old chicken long past its laying days would be more appropriate,” Soren said with a look at me. “Glimmer’s growing awfully fast and she’s pulling away from you, wanting to spend more time with the adult dragons. Past time she learned how to kill her own food, I’m thinking.”

My mouth hung open, wanting—needing—to protest, but then I realised I couldn’t, could I? Glimmer wasn’t a tiny dog to spend her life languishing on my lap. She would soon be just as big, if not bigger, than the other dragons and she needed to develop her prey drive if she was to survive.

“The young dragon’s first hunt?” Kay said with some excitement. “We’d be honoured to provide her with a bird.”