Page 7 of Omega Haunting (Starscale Mates #8)

Astral

Morgi was as surprised to see me as I was to be walking into his orchard alone on the same day I met my true-mate. His eyebrows rose high on his tall forehead in question.

“I don’t even know honestly,” I sighed and launched into an explanation of how I came to stand in his orchard while I really wanted to be with Marsin. I explained the story top to bottom and side to side as I made my rounds with the warding spray. The spray on its own could be used by anyone and worked fairly well but it was at its best when used by the person who brewed it up.

A six-point buck eyed us from the other side of the fence. The shitheads could jump most fences and did to get to where they wanted to be. Unlike home security wards this spell wouldn’t shock or bite the deer but literally formed a forcefield that they and their behooved brethren couldn’t pass through.

“And he thinks Dern is up to something?” Morgi asked, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“I think he’s just on edge. He’s on a strange world without any of his flight and here comes Dern with big magic and talk of all his selfishness. Dern wants everyone to think he’s dangerous but he’s not. Well, no more dangerous than my family. Probably makes him feel better as an old omega living alone. You know what they say – if you can’t kick their asses, you better make sure they believe you can.”

“Probably. So, what are you going to do? Is he going to stay here and be an alien or are you going to go be an alien?” Morgi asked.

Good ole Morgi only knew how to cut straight to the heart of the matter. Of course, he’d skip the talking of the matingmoon and even miss the chance to make a dragon dick joke to find out how this would affect him. If I was off being an alien on a Starscale world someone else would have to do his wards.

“Believe it or not we haven’t gotten that far into the conversations yet. You’re lucky he needed clothes, or I’d have sent out Mom to do your wards.”

“You’re not that evil. That woman would be here all day talkin’ my head off.”

“Serve you right,” I chuckled as we finished making our rounds of the wards.

I smelled Marsin before I saw him. His smell was warm, toasty, and made me crave marshmallows. The suitcase he carried looked like a child’s toy in his big hand. He waved when he spotted us watching him.

“He’s even bigger than before,” Morgi said and swore under his breath. “You’re going to have to climb that man like a damn tree.”

“And I plan to. Many, many times,” I nodded and waved back to my mate.

“This is Morgi. He owns the orchard here,” I introduced them. “It was one of his apples I used to haunt you.”

“How big are the houses where you come from? Can you fit through the doors here?” Morgi asked.

“Ignore him. He’s taken one too many apples to the head,” I said and elbowed Morgi. “He means well, though. I’m gonna sick Mom and Dern on him before I lock you up in my bedroom.”

“Might serve him right,” Marsin grinned politely.

His scent was off. Dern must’ve said something to annoy him. Were all dragons easily annoyed? Did they mistrust everyone they didn’t know?

“You’ll have to forgive me,” Marsin said and before I could open my mouth to ask what he needed forgiveness for, he hefted me over his shoulder. “Morgi, I’m sure you have very good apples but I’m afraid I won’t be sampling them today. I’ve waited a long time for this day to come. I’ve played my part in society over and over and now it’s time for me to be a cave-dragon. I would appreciate it if you spread the word around that my mate won’t be available to work for some time and we’ll let everyone know when he is back on the job. Enjoy your apples.”

When Marsin spun around to leave, Morgi’s mouth was hanging open in shock. In school, we all had to take one form or another of Omega Studies and we were taught that everyone should ask for consent over and over. It was good in theory and between folks who weren’t true-mates it was good in practice. So most alphas around here wouldn’t dare to pull such a move so early in a relationship but Marsin wasn’t from around here. He might not have asked my consent to manhandle me but I wasn’t complaining.

Inside his inner sanctum, my wolf let out a yip and then a little howl as Marsin’s big hand found my ass and held on as he made his way back to the farm. I opened my mouth to explain how the housing situation worked but he headed straight for my side entrance. Of course he did. I was on his flight link now. Sooner or later, I needed to figure out how to use that.

“It’ll be easier after he fills us up,” my wolf said. “You’ll be glad I made you keep up with yoga in a few minutes. He’s huge. Huge and all ours.”

I blushed at my wolf’s rambles, but Marsin didn’t comment on it as he fished around my pockets for my keys. I let him pat me down a couple of times before I reached around to touch the smooth stone that protruded from the wall.

“No keys here. All by touch. I’ll have to add you on to the entrance ward soon,” I explained.

“How did that not come across the flight link?” Marsin asked, still holding onto my ass.

“Some things are protected until you’re told about them. Not even draconic magic can bypass one of our wards.”

“You have brain wards?” Marsin asked as the door swung open and he stepped inside.

“You could call them that. To be fair we toss around the word ‘ward’ like glitter at a nightclub, but other families would call them all something different. Our last name is Warden, so Mom gets a kick out of it, I think. Maybe it was my grandparents or hers. Someone got a kick out of it and our broad use of it stuck around.”

The door shut behind us and Marsin double-checked that it was locked.

“Locks automatically,” I assured him. “The only other way through this part of the house is to come from the main house. No one’s coming in here right now. Except to check that the kitchen is stocked. I know they seem nosy but they’ll leave us alone. At least, our parents forbade us to annoy our siblings when they first matingmooned down with their mates.”

“Good to know,” Marsin said and patted me on the ass.

My dick throbbed against his hard, muscular body and slickness gushed from me. Marsin’s scent changed from curious to territorial as if someone might jump out of the shadows and steal me away from him. His feet traced the familiar to me path to my bedroom and I cringed at the memory of the clothes I left on the floor.

“Life isn’t always tidy,” Marsin shrugged the shoulder I wasn’t slung over. “Don’t worry about it. I plan to make a much bigger mess than that.”

He stopped and stepped out of his dress shoes before opening the bedroom door. He pulled off my sneakers one at a time and dropped them down on the hardwood next to his own. Only the bedrooms were carpeted and we all tried to keep from wearing shoes inside them but like most folks we forgot more often than we cared to admit.

Marsin didn’t turn the light on when we entered the room, but he did make sure the door shut tight behind us. He laid me down on the bed and made quick work of shrugging off his jacket and unraveling his tie. He draped both of them over the desk before turning his attention back to me.

I reached to pull my shirt up but Marsin shook his head and I froze. I thought we were headed in the claiming vow direction, but I must’ve been wrong.

“I’m going to undress you,” he said, filling in the gap a second later. “I’m going to strip you down piece by piece and mark every inch of your body as mine, Astral. Mine and mine alone. I’m not sharing and I’m not taking any chances that anyone will ever hurt you. We didn’t go through whatever between life mess to end up with you hurt or separated again.”

His words were deep and throaty as if his dragon lent his vocal cords to his speech. I ran my hands over my chest and stomach marking a path where I wanted him to touch me. Goosebumps rose up on my flesh as Marsin crawled up onto the bed with me. He was still mostly dressed in his crumpled suit, but a sexier man had never walked through my field of vision.

When he was over me, he claimed my lips in a long, slow kiss and his tongue prodded my lips apart to conquer my mouth. I melted into the bed as every inch of me burnt for him. I needed him to taste everything I was and touch me so that all the little fires burning across my body would settle down. Holding himself up on his palms, his tongue swirled around my mouth again and again until I lost track of what he might do next. I touched his face, playing with the five o’clock shadow on his cheeks and chin. He sucked my bottom lip into his mouth and a new zip of longing rolled over me.

My wolf whimpered inside his inner sanctum as another gush of slick pooled around my omegahole. The man hadn’t even taken off my shirt and I was already coming undone. Was it heat? Marsin’s lips froze on mine, and he felt my forehead with a big, gentle hand.

“Not heat. Perfect,” he shook his head. “This is just us. What we waited for. What we are together.”

He kissed me again, but his lips didn’t linger on mine for long this time. They moved down to my chin, and he kissed his way down my throat until he found the collar of my t-shirt. He growled at its brazen attempt to keep his mouth off of me. He rose up on his knees and pushed my shirt up until my stomach, chest, and hard enough to cut through moonshine glass nipples were bared. His fingertips danced over my skin leaving behind a hot trail of desire everywhere he touched. I arched my back offering myself up to him, desperate for him to know I wanted him as much as he wanted me.

I raked my gaze down his broad, muscular body. My eyes caught on his crotch. His thick cock stretched out against the fabric of his suit pants. That couldn’t be comfortable. I reached out to touch him and he caught my hand and then took the other as well. He pinned them above my head with one hand and kissed me again.

“Mine,” he whispered against my lips.

“Yours,” I nodded eager for more of him.

Still holding my hands above my head, Marsin kissed up and down my throat before trailing his tongue over the same path. On my shoulder, my claiming gland was full to the brim, burning with an aching need for his claiming bite but Marsin wasn’t in any hurry to get to the destination. He let go of one of my arms and wiggled my shirt over it before catching the wrist again and giving the other side the same treatment.

“Would tying me up be easier?” I arched a brow at him when he met my gaze again. “It would keep both of your hands free.”

“I’m a hands-on sort of dragon. Maybe later on,” he shrugged and kissed me again.

The longer he held my hands above my head the more my fingers ached to touch him. Now that he had me fuflly bare chested, he kept them pinned down as he licked across my collarbones and back to the center. He licked his plump, kissable lips before turning his attention to one of my nipples. He licked over the hard, pink tip, swirling his tongue and sending little lightning bolts zooming through me. I arched my back again, begging for more of his attention even as his teeth grazed against my flesh.

He turned his attention to my other nipple, giving it the same treatment with his moist, nimble tongue before making good on his promise to kiss me everywhere. Marsin dragged his lips across my chest and down my belly as if each kiss marked me a little more as his. I sank into the covers, melted into the bed, and breathed in time with his mouth moving over me. I lost myself to his warm breath and his affections. My dick throbbed and more slickness pooled outside of my omegahole as Marsin kissed his way down to the hem of my jeans. He glanced up at me long enough to make sure I was still into it before he undid them one-handed, stretching to still hold my arms in place.

He glanced over his shoulder at the tie on the desk and I smirked. Sooner or later, if he wanted to keep me in place so badly, tied up was the only way to go. He slid off the bed and snatched the tie up by the corner before straddling over me. I offered my hands up to him before he asked, and he grinned as he made a short job of tying my hands together. It didn’t keep them in one place, but it kept me on the edge of the desire to run my hands all over him.

He kissed each of my fingers before pushing my arms back down on the bed above my head. He glanced around at all the pillows and tucked one under my head a second later. I laughed as his eyes scanned up and down my half-undressed body. Was he scanning what I felt over the flight link or was he merely checking me out?

The questions fled my brain as he tucked his thumbs into the waistband of my jeans and tugged them down. A second later, he slipped my socks off and then was back up at my hips, freeing my dick from the fabric prison of my boxer briefs. I let out a long, slow breath as the cool air played over my desire-heated flesh. Marsin nudged my knees apart and knelt between my legs. He ran his big, warm hands all over my chest and stomach again giving me goosebumps all over. Then he caressed my thighs as he stretched out on his belly. Once in a comfy position, he kissed them, while spreading them open until there was nowhere left for me to hide how slick I was. We should’ve grabbed a towel but keeping things tidy was the last thing on my mind when Marsin carried me into the room.

“I’ll do the wash,” Marsin grinned. “I’m proud of how messy I mde you even before I took your pants off.”

I blushed hard and moved my hands to cover my face but one stern look from Marsin stopped me in my tracks.

“That’s why those hands are tied up, mate,” he said, caressing my inner thighs. “No hiding from me. Mates have no secrets.”

“What are you going to do if I don’t keep them up there?” I said, bouncing my hands against the pillows. “Spank me?”

“Perhaps,” Marsin said before licking up my thigh. “Only when you don’t expect it, though. I find that anticipation is half the fun of such encounters. I’ve gotten carried away. You’re eager enough but we should have a safeword even with how loudly you think over the flight link.”

“Stoplights?” I offered up.

He cocked his head to the side as if talking to someone inside his head. I knew for sure it wasn’t me this time. Only it turned out it was. I was quickly learning that look. He was probing what he could of my memories and the Moonscales who were also on the flight link to find out what stoplights were.

“Red, yellow, green,” he nodded after he gathered up the information he was looking for.

“Red for stop. Yellow for slow down and green means keep giving it to me,” I smirked.

“Good to know.”

“Condoms are in the nightstand if you want them,” I added on before the tug and pull of the true-mate response fully eradicated my senses.

“Are you against children?” Marsin asked.

“Did you see the kitchen?” I shot the question back at him.

“That’s why I’m asking. Perhaps you think your pack or family has enough young people running around.”

“Never,” I laughed. “I don’t want six or eight at once but at some point, yeah, I’d like to start a family.”

“Six or eight at once?” he cocked his brow. “What are you wolves shooting out to conceive that many?”

“Magic,” I laughed. “Six or eight at once is very uncommon. Litters aren’t that uncommon. Two or three pups. Sometimes four or five. My parents had a set of twins, then triplets, and then me. They’re talking about more too.”

“Dragons have one or two eggs,” Marsin said and kissed my thigh again. “Condoms today?”

“Condoms? In the plural, huh?” I teased him.

“I come from a place where the good parts of life are indulged in. Besides, there are too many positions to just try out one a day with you,” he said and bit me.

I squeaked and a warm, crimson blush spread over my face as I imagined how many ways, he might bend me up into a pretzel. Marsin’s hands slid under my thighs and pushed them up until my knees bent and my feet left the bed. His mouth found the sensitive, textured skin of my scrotum and his warm breath playing against it made my wolf whimper. The sound crawled out of my throat, sounding more needy than I ever had before. In the past sex was always something I could take or leave. It was like using a back scratcher to scratch an itch. It made things easier, but I could do the same thing with my own two hands.

“Not while they’re tied up,” Marsin said against my skin, having picked up my thoughts over the flight link again.

“You’re gonna have to teach me how to use that damn thing,” I said, my words morphing into a whimper as he dragged his tongue over my balls.

“We’ll have our mating link open some time in the next few days.”

“Next few days?” I asked, swallowing hard.

“Things might stretch out that long. Why shouldn’t we take our time and enjoy each other?” he asked, not glancing up at me. His tongue teased over my scrotum again and I let out a long, slow breath as my brain processed the pleasure, trying to parse out each little sensation. They all tangled up together in a ball of ‘feels good’ that left me unable to speak for a second.

Marsin lifted his head and met my gaze as if he knew there was something I wanted to say.

“That’s easy for the man who isn’t tied up to say,” I spat out the words before his naughty tongue stole my ability to speak again.

“We can switch it up later. You’ll find that most Starscales aren’t prudes. I just decided to go first. I mean, I did carry you all the way back here,” he grinned. “My dragon was insistent upon it. Me too. You need to smell like me. You need to smell so much like me that when the world looks at you they know we’re a packaged deal – in love, in war, in everything the stars might toss our way. No one else can have you. I won’t give you up.”

“I guess dragons are as territorial as I’ve heard,” I chuckled.

“You don’t seem to mind,” he pointed out and kissed my inner thigh again and made his way down my ass cheek kissing and licking. “You’re so slick. So very fucking slick.”

I blushed. His mouth moving over me had left me slicker than I’d ever been before. I was a never ending tap of slick. It ran down my flesh onto the bedding but Marsin, true to his word, didn’t seem to mind the mess.

“It’s not a mess,” he shrugged. “It’s the proof of how much you’re enjoying yourself.” he said licking around my needy omegahole. I swallowed a howl and glanced at the door.

“Will someone hear us and take offense?” Marsin froze.

“Not take offense but….” I glanced at the door again.

“Is someone in the corridor?” he asked.

“Can you press the blue stone by the light switch, please? It’ll put up the sound shields. I don’t think I can keep quiet if you keep licking me.”

“And I plan to keep licking you for a long time,” he nodded before sliding off the bed and pressing the blue stone for me. Then he was back between my legs, lapping at the slickness escaping my body. He pressed his nimble tongue flat against my hole, licking it. If his hands weren’t holding my legs up, they’d have wrapped tight around his neck. We’d see about who was never letting go of who.

A second later, Marsin let go of my legs and when I didn’t move them, he did it for me. One then the other wrapped around him as his big hands cradled my ass. His tongue probed into me, teasing my nerve endings and making me grind down against his face. My dick throbbed and my balls grew heavy. I rocked my hips, thighs tightening around him as one of his hands let go of my ass and wrapped around my dick. He held me tight in his big fist as his tongue continued to lap up my slickness, torturing me in the best possible way.

His face pressed against my flesh as his tongue went wild over my hole. My wrists pulled against the tie but whatever material it was made of wasn’t giving up. I couldn’t touch him. I couldn’t run my fingers through his thick hair or push his face harder against my body. Still, I came with his fist squeezing me hard as if he meant to milk out every last drop of pleasure from my body. I came in warm sticky streams covering my chest and belly. As soon as my dick had finished emptying its pleasure his mouth was on my torso cleaning up the mess before he kissed me with the taste of my semen still on his tongue. Raising my arms, I extended them to wrap the loop they created around him. Now, he was captured too as our tongues danced together between our mouths. His suit hadn’t only seen better days. I was pretty sure it was done for unless the dry cleaner a couple blocks over knew some magic spell to take out everything it must’ve soaked up during our foreplay.

“Don’t worry about the suit. I don’t like it. Don’t like them in general but wanted to go to the wedding,” he said in between kisses.

Marsin snaked out of my grasp, escaping the loop my tied together hands created. He stripped out of the suit and the rest of his clothes until he was as naked as I was.

“Hands okay? Still have circulation?” he leaned over and felt along my fingers and palms to ensure they were the proper temperature as I nodded. “Good. Shower time.” He lifted me up over his shoulder again and carried me into the bathroom.

He turned on the water before my feet ever touched the floor. I glanced from my tied-up hands and back to him. I wasn’t going to be any help unless he let me go.

“Not yet,” he shook his head. “What’s your stoplight?”

“A curious green,” I laughed. “I hope this tie is okay to get wet.”

“It’s dragon made. It’ll be fine. I could go swimming in that thing,” he said, sticking a hand under the water to test its temperature.

“So you’re gonna bathe me?” I arched a brow.

“You are mine,” he shrugged.

When the water was warm enough for Marsin’s liking, he held onto me as I stepped into the shower. It wasn’t like I walked around with my hands outreached for balance all the time but having them tied together set off the nagging, intrusive thought of what if I fell in the shower.

“I have you,” he said. “Still, you can sit if you want. Your shower looks like it was built for or by dragons.”

“What can I say? Business booms and I don’t want to clean up in a coffin. Also, it needed room for the bench and the fur scrubbers,” I nodded to the roller brushes along the lower walls. “Fur salons may have caught on in bigger cities but here, not so much. I think there’s one in the next town over, but I wouldn’t be caught dead there. I’d never hear the end of my joining the bougie wolves.”

“It’s bougie to be styled?” Marsin asked, surveying the shower.

“Too styled and you’re bougie,” I shrugged. “It’s Appalachia get used to it.”

Once he located my loofah and peach-scented bodywash Marsin washed me methodically, cleaning me gently. I relaxed into his touch, following his big fingers with my gaze. He drew tiny, soapy circles across my flesh cleaning me up bit by bit. Then I got the show of him washing himself. I couldn’t not follow his hands as they dragged the soap across his body. I wanted to rinse him and follow those once soapy spirals with my tongue.

“Soon,” he teased. “Maybe sooner than later. The shower has trapped your scent in here. I can’t not breathe you in.”

A second later, he grabbed the tie, and I was on my knees in front of him. It all happened so fast, I expected the marble to crash against my joints but it didn’t because Marsin held onto me until I balanced my weight. I was nose to dick with him now and couldn’t stop the smirk pulling at the corners of my mouth.