Page 44 of Drawn by Dragonblood (Blood Born #1)

Dakota

J on’s eyes had been closed almost the entire time Elijah had fucked him, and with how he whimpered and moaned as if in pain, I wondered if he’d only agreed because it was what I wanted. His brow remained dented with a frown long after we cleaned up.

While we’d snuggled on the couch and enjoyed some wine, Jon making his jokes about his no-longer virgin ass and acting all carefree, I swore an unsettled energy emanated from him, causing me to believe he wasn’t as comfortable as he made out to be.

Climbing into bed between the two men a little while later seemed so right, felt so perfect.

Having Elijah at my back, Jon against my front, nothing sexual but gentle caresses and languid kisses…

I couldn’t have asked for more, physically.

I felt cherished, but the emotion couldn’t override my sense that something was off.

Jon and I stared at each other in the dim light filtering in through the drapes attempting to shut out the city.

I’d been satisfied in so many ways that night, but same as always when near Elijah, my mind refused to rest. He spooned my backside, his breath hot on my neck, hand rubbing my thigh and revving me back up as his cock swelled and dug into my leg.

Sure Jon hurt somehow, I opened my mouth to stop what was bound to happen again, but my husband pressed his fingertips to my lips and scooted away, taking his body heat with him. “I want to watch,” he whispered what I had earlier, and my pussy pulsed in response.

“May I love you, mon coeur ?” Elijah murmured against my ear and reached between my thighs.

Wetness seeped from my needy pussy, and I nodded even though my mind considered saying no.

Elijah teased my opening, rimming and pressing in slightly, but didn’t give me what my body craved.

My lips parted as my breaths heightened, and I continued to stare at Jon while Elijah’s hand drove me near to destruction. The hardness of Elijah’s cock promised what I needed, and I pressed against him, whimpering.

Elijah rolled me to my back, breaking my gaze from my husband.

Pale eyes glinted in the darkness, piercing me with so much emotion my breath caught. Elijah cradled my head in his hands and dipped low, sweeping his soft lips across mine. I made another small noise, and he slid his tongue between my lips.

Heat flushed through me, and all thought fled except for the need to be filled by him. I clutched at his back with my hands, my heels digging into his ass. “Please.”

He flexed beneath my hold, notching his cock inside me with a groan. “ Mon coeur , so perfect.” A groan rose from his chest as he slowly sank into my pussy, his mouth capturing my lips once more.

“Goddamn.” Jon’s low, breathless voice flitted through my mind, and I reached for him.

He grasped my hand with a tight squeeze, keeping us together.

Elijah withdrew to the crown and sank back in, drawing a groan from all three of us. I yanked with my heels, desperate for him to lose control and fuck me like he’d done with Jon. Bridled lust, passionate fury, trembled the muscles beneath my hold.

“Let go, Elijah,” I whispered against his lips as he backed out again, leaving me so damn empty tears welled in my eyes. “I want it all.”

A growl rumbled the chest pressed against mine, and he thrust in deep, pulling a gasp from my lips. “Again.”

He gave what I asked for, bruising my cervix and capturing my mouth, devouring as though I belonged to him, body and soul.

I dug the fingernails of my right hand into his back and held on, lifting my hips to meet his driving hips while grasping Jon with the other. Pleasure, hot and bright, slid along my spine, breaking across my skin, and I moaned my hunger for him to fuck me harder. Deeper.

Need .

As though hearing the thought echoing through my head, Elijah plowed into me over and over, the wet sound of Jon jerking himself beside us adding fuel to the fire smoldering inside me. Flames burst to life, and I arched beneath Elijah, my climax shrieking through me with hurricane force.

“God! Oh… God !”

Elijah buried against my womb and growled, his cock swelling impossibly large before releasing. Hot spurts coated inside me as he continued to fuck into me with abandon, and a second climax rushed over me, stealing my breath, same as the first time he’d filled me so perfectly.

Jon’s loud groan, one I well-recognized, barely registered through the ringing in my ears as Elijah stilled, and I fought to keep my footing in reality. His forehead resting on my mine, Elijah breathed heavily, his sweet exhales caressing my mouth.

“So lovely,” he whispered, cradling my head again. “So beautiful.” A few French sayings flitted past his lips, but he pressed his mouth against mine, stealing my thought to ask what he’d said.

Jon released my hand and rolled from the bed.

Elijah lifted his head, trailing a thumb over my bruised lips. “Was it too much?”

“No.” I squeezed my inner walls around his softening length, drawing another groan from him.

“You need to rest, mon coeur .”

Releasing a heavy sigh, I loosened my hold on his body, biting my lip as he pulled away. Coolness from the air-conditioning slid over my damp skin, and I shivered at the loss of both men.

“Okay, baby?” Jon asked, wiping between my thighs with a warm towel as Elijah strode toward the bathroom.

“Yeah.” I smiled and turned my attention on him, guilt over not realizing he’d returned to my side twisting my stomach. “You?”

“Mmm.” He tossed the damp towel aside and pressed his lips to mine. “Fucking exhausted.”

I hummed my agreement even though I felt the need to push for an answer to my question. He stretched out on his back beside me, lacing his fingers through mine again.

Elijah returned and spooned my backside, and although both men soon breathed heavy with sleep, my mind refused to rest. My worry over Jon’s growing distance had started earlier in the day, soured my stomach, and haunted my mind.

Sure I had unintentionally hurt my love, I lay in bed long after both men slept, thickness clogging my throat, nausea roiling in my stomach.

Jon rolled away in his sleep, curling in on himself like a child. A mere two feet away, but it seemed a mile.

I chewed the inside of my lip to death, and tears slid down my cheeks, but I didn’t stir from Elijah’s gentle hold.

Couldn’t. Didn’t want to. I needed Jon to return to me, to us .

Come back to what we’d agreed to, because I wasn’t nearly ready to let go of the growing emotions that had burst to life in my chest as Elijah had made love to me.

I woke, bleary-eyed and groggy. Groaning, I rolled toward Jon, but cold sheets met my hand. Jerking upright, I blinked, bringing into focus the empty bed on either side of me.

“Hey, baby.”

I whipped my head toward the other side of the bedroom to find Jon lounging on the chair in nothing but shorts, a cup of coffee in his hand.

“Hey,” I whispered back, swinging my legs to the edge of the bed.

No Elijah, I noted after a quick scan. “Where is he?”

“Gone to his meeting.”

“Already?” I sighed and padded across the large room, naked as a jay and relieved, loving how Jon’s gaze roamed down over my body, lingering on the apex of my thighs as I moved closer to him.

He sipped his coffee, glued gaze sending a tingle of warmth through me. Sitting his mug aside, he reached out a hand toward me.

My heart settled, mind rested as I curled against his hard chest and breathed in the scent of fallen leaves and earth that seemed to cling to his skin. His unbound hair tickled my cheek as I burrowed my face in his neck.

“You were sexy as fuck last night,” Jon murmured against my hair, wrapping his arms around me, and every last trace of anxiety fled my mind. “And Elijah...” He shifted beneath me.

“Are you okay, Jon?”

He expelled a heavy breath and fully relaxed into the couch with a sigh. “Yeah.”

“Did he hurt you?”

Quietness lingered between us long enough my heartbeat sped back up, and I pressed my hand against his chest, eyes clenched shut and searching as though I could read the energy beneath my palm.

“Not physically, no,” Jon finally answered.

The unsettled energy I noticed the evening before from him tingled along my skin, and I worried my lip between my teeth. I could feel his pain. His confusion. His need to keep himself safe.

We had always been close, but never had I ever experienced in my own heart and mind what he did. It was like being one with Elijah had opened up some deeper connection between Jon and I, and I refused to call it fantasy. I could feel my husband’s pain far beyond what I often empathized with.

Brow furrowing, I wished to send him some of my peace about Elijah. Share my trust of the man’s heart and intentions toward us, for I didn’t doubt him with a single cell in my body.

Elijah loved us both. Deeply and unconditionally.

I’d held his gaze while every flex of his ass pushed his cock into my husband.

I’d sucked Jon and saw wave after wave of Elijah’s devotion pouring from his eyes as we stared at each other while pleasuring our lover.

I’d felt his caress deep inside my body hours later, his passion and love as though his hand reached inside me and placed his heart in my care.

But how did I speak such thoughts without sounding like a crazed lunatic? How did I tell Jon that I understood his pain, that I literally experienced it with every breath he exhaled?

“Talk to me,” I whispered instead, imagining my inner peace flooding from my chest, through my arm and hand, into his spirit.

“I’m fucking scared.”

“We can go home, right now.” I told him the same thing he’d offered me, even though my heart broke. “We can leave this all behind and start over.”

“No—”

“We can move to another city, Jon. Head south where it’s warmer like you’ve always wanted to do. I’ll?—”

“No, baby.” He pulled me tight against him, muffling my mouth against his neck.

“This job—it’s too important. Think of everything we can gain from this.

The experience, the contacts I’ll make. Hell.

” He snorted a laugh that didn’t sound the least bit like happiness.

“The fucking salary for gaming is ten times what I could find doing design work. We’re staying. ”

I pulled back and peered into his troubled eyes, the vulnerability he shared with me squeezing my heart. “Don’t do this for me, Jon. Please. You heard what Elijah has said. We need to choose for ourselves what we want.”

His dimpled smile, however swoon-worthy, didn’t ease or melt me like it usually did. “I’m doing this for us .”

“I’d rather if you did it for you because it’s what you desire. I know you do. I can feel it as deeply as my own need.” Jon didn’t reply, and I rubbed my thumb along the patches of his scruffy jawline, choosing to let the matter lie quiet for now. “Did you speak with him this morning?”

“No.” His gaze flitted around the apartment. “Being the chickenshit I am, I pretended I was asleep until he left.”

“You’re not a chickenshit.” I hoped he read the truth of my thoughts in my eyes when he finally looked me full in the face. “You just need to figure out how you feel. What you want.”

“I want to submit so fucking bad,” he whispered and swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

“To give him every goddamn inch of me, inside and out, and to lay my entire fucking life at his feet and tell him to do with me what he will.” A frown furrowed his brow as he peered down at me.

“What kind of spineless man does that make me, Dakota?”

The words had come straight from that fuckface of a foster father who’d raised him.

I cupped Jon’s cheek in my hand as my eyesight grew hazy from the sudden tears clogging my throat. “It makes you a man who loves deeply. The kind every single person on this planet is searching to find. Faithful. Devoted and honest.”

His gaze lightened although he didn’t smile. “You just say that because you don’t know anything different than me.”

“I have no wish to either. You’re it for me, Jon. You have been since we were kids.”

Along with Elijah , both of us I felt sure wished to tack on.

Neither of us spoke the truth aloud though.

We stared at each other in silence for a few moments, and I needed to bury the hatchet once and for all.

“I’m sorry for hurting you all those years ago,” I whispered, my throat tightening.

He huffed a snort. “You’ve said it a million times already, baby, and I’ll tell you again—I forgave you the second you walked away because of how I reacted over that blond douche.

There’s nothing you could do to change how I feel about you, Dakota Taylor Ebel, okay?

I’ll be yours forever and always, no matter what. ”

A half-sob, half-laugh escaped me, and he pressed his lips against mine, soothing the guilt I couldn’t rid myself of.

A heavy sigh shuddered his chest, and he tipped his head back against the couch, eyes closing as he pulled my head against his neck once more. “Love you, baby,” he murmured.

“Love you more,” I whispered, closing my own eyes and praying to whatever god existed above that Jon would find the strength to give in to what both he and Elijah longed for.

Because living without one or the other and hoping to find containment or happiness was no longer an option.