Page 29

Teddy

The plan was to share a quick shower and go out for dinner. Though, the latter part never happened because the shower was too much fun. There was something about cleaning up the mess we left on each other that led us back into the room. I doubled-checked that the door was locked and that Mori hadn’t sent us any texts that were important. I shut down my mind to any of the group links I was on because despite our grand thoughts of a long, slow burn courtship our desires were leading us to the same place.

Othoni pulled candles out of his trunk as I lounged on the window seat. We were both still naked, having jointly and silently decided that clothes would only get in the way of what we wanted. He set them up and lit them around the room creating some atmospheric light and making the whole place smell like a temple garden.

“I can still smell you,”

I teased him. “You smell really fucking nice too.”

“Glad to please,”

he smirked at me.

We’d briefly discussed the jaguar traditions surrounding claiming vows and I thought we settled it but Othoni smelled nervous. Almost as anxious as he’d smelled during the storm. I arched a brow in his direction but didn’t say anything. I wasn’t inside his head yet. My dragon couldn’t feel out his cat and let me know what was going on. Neither of those things would happen until after we finished the claiming vows and opened up our mating link.

“I’m about to shout tangerine,”

I said, lounging against the wall.

“Huh?”

Othoni blinked at me. “We haven’t even done anything yet.”

“You smell like I’m going to eat you in a way that doesn’t involved your ankles up by your ears, mate,” I said.

“Oh. Well. Yeah. I’m nervous. This is forever and we never really reached a conclusion on how we do this. While I’m not superstitious enough to think my ancestors care how we exchange the vows, I always thought I’d do them---”

“I thought we talked about this. I mean I recall saying I was down for it.”

“No, you said it was simple and wouldn’t scare you off. That could mean a lot of things,”

Othoni said, his face flushing.

“Come here,”

I waved him over and patted the spot on the window seat in front of me. He practically sprinted across the room to sit down. “Do you think I’m a prude?”

“No. I just--- I don’t know. I’m going to sound like my carrier if I say alphas out here are different.”

“Out here?”

“Outside the pard,” he said.

“I bet. Not many jaguar,”

I nodded. “A lot of cave alphas around running. The thing is that all sounds so traditional, doesn’t it? The way they do things? Well, not for you. I think I’m using all the wrong words. Did I catch your anxiety?”

I laughed.

“Maybe!”

Othoni said and took my hand in his. “See, it’s not so easy to talk about, is it?”

“Sex is easy to talk about, usually.”

“Not for me.”

“For me it is. I’ll say it like this – I’m not interested in modeling my sex life after vanilla, straight, non-magical humans. Keeping up whatever propriety they tried to holds no appeal to me. I’m also a dragon. I don’t follow the rules but if there’s a rule that I’m only supposed to do what alphas need to do to reproduce I’m doing all the stuff because I’m pretty sure, blow jobs, hand jobs, and eating your ass are off the table if we go that route.”

“Put a towel down if we do any of those on the table, okay?”

Othoni laughed, his face turning a brighter shade of red with each word he said.

“Noted,” I nodded.

“But you also said it was only when the mood struck you and the guy looked like he knew what he was doing and how am I supposed to know what sort of guy I look like? It’s not like I’ve done that before and…”

“Oh,”

I grinned. “That explains a lot.”

“What? I’ve had sex before. Careful birth control filled sex,”

Othoni said. “Just never been in charge.”

“Being the top in sex, doesn’t mean you’re in charge,”

I laughed. “Not all sex is BDSM. Hell, not all of it is about power exchanging. Bottoming doesn’t make you submissive. That would mean every person with a pussy who likes it fucked is submissive and that’s a dangerous mindset.”

“I haven’t taken a survey of people with that particular body part,”

Othoni blushed.

“Look, I like domming because it lets me drive my partner wild. Sure, it can be a little aggressive. It can be a rush to have someone all tied up and know you could do anything but you’re going to choose to do the good thing. The thing that’s going to drive them crazy and then what’s even wilder – hotter – is that they trust you to do just that.”

“But being the one getting fucked takes trust too,”

Othoni said.

“Yeah,” I nodded.

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

I leaned forward and gave him a long, slow kiss. My tongue darted into his mouth savoring the taste of him. When I pulled away, I dropped off the edge of the window seat and told him where I kept the lube.