Page 112 of The Dragon Queen Complete Series Collection

Chapter 111

I should have felt guilty the moment we got back to the room, because it wasn’t Lance or Jenkins I thought about as soon as the door closed. My wing was similarly focussed, the world feeling like it narrowed down to just these four walls. Glimmer slipped past us with just a nod, retreating back to my room, because she knew. A skin hunger rose inside me, inside them, the need to reach out, to touch…

“Gods above, I’ve been itching to fucking touch you all day,” Ged growled, breaking the holding pattern we were all in, shoving me back against the door as his mouth crashed down on mine.

Gods, Ged…

My hands moved of their own accord, raking across his stubbled scalp, smoothing down his shoulders, secretly thrilling over their broad sweep. But when I went to slide them around his chest, other hands took mine. I pulled away from Ged just enough to see Flynn had linked his fingers with mine and then used them to tug me free.

“You’ll need to learn to share,” Flynn growled, plastering my back against his chest, then his hand slid up my neck, tilting my head back and to the side so he could bestow a slow kiss upon my lips.

I felt like a woman dying of thirst and they were all the water in the world, my mouth claiming Flynn’s just as thoroughly as he did mine, my skin heating. One kiss led to another, so addictive I couldn’t pull away for a second, not until Flynn did and offered me back to Ged. But as the other man stormed forward, Soren spoke.

“We need to talk about this.” I heard the strain in his voice, saw the tension in his body, but he was every inch the drill sergeant right now. “This isn’t like the night of Zafira’s mating, can’t be blamed by a dragon heat.” His eyes softened when he met mine, that gruff exterior seeming to melt before my eyes and that had me pulling against Flynn’s grip, wanting to get closer. “It’s just us, just Pippin this time and she’s… She’s our lady.”

While I never felt like I was anything other than a woman, one of the few things I’d enjoyed about being a pig herder was being free of the constraints of being a lady. Ladylike behaviour was like trying on an old dress, one that no longer fitted. For someone else it would suit well, but not me.

“Do you care for me like I do you?” I asked Soren, trying for strong and cursing the waver in my voice. Some small part of me feared his answer.

“Of course, lass, that’s why?—”

Flynn let me go and I placed my fingers against Soren’s lips, rubbing my thumb against the full bottom one for just a moment and then looking into his eyes.

“Then I don’t much want to be treated like I’m made of spun glass. If I was truly a lady, I wouldn’t put myself in this kind of situation.” I glanced over his shoulder to Brom. “Married to one man legally.” But they flicked back to Soren as I smoothed my hand down his chest. “Bound to the four of you in reality.”

“In truth, lass?”

That note of vulnerability in his voice was like a balm on my soul, allowing me to fully exhale. I nodded and then pressed my head against him. My eyes closed for just a second as I breathed him in.

“No one would blame me for going to my husband’s bed tonight,” I replied in a small voice. “To crave to do so would even be lauded so… To me it makes no difference that there will be the five of us in it, not just Brom and I. I wear his ring, but each of you have left your mark on my heart.”

“Can you accept it now, old man?” There was amusement in Flynn’s voice, but it was far outstripped by something raw and real. “We don’t throw ourselves upon Pippin like wolves from lust.” I felt his hand on my shoulder now, resisting the urge to arch my back up into his touch. “It’s because every moment we don’t touch her that it hurts like hell, because the only pleasures in life are to be found when we’re close to her.”

“You’ll cherish her,” Soren grumbled. “You’ll treat her with respect and…”

“Love?” Flynn found the word to fill the gap that Soren couldn’t, then turned me around and stared down into my eyes, with his mask slipping, just like Draven’s had. What I saw beneath it made me wonder if it could ever be hidden again. He reached out and touched me like it hurt not to, rubbing his thumb across my cheek, and it was only then I noticed a stray tear had fallen free. “I was forced to read many a sonnet in my education, odes to women’s beauty, free verse that described the agony of being separated from the object of your affection but…”

He shook his head slowly.

“They never said anything about how fucking savage it is, this need to get closer to you.” I stayed pressed against Soren as Flynn moved in, my hands going around his neck, which drew a low groan from him. He nudged at my lips, seemingly not content to kiss me until I was open and ready for him, which took only seconds to achieve, but right when I thought he’d strike, Flynn spoke. “I burn for you, Pippin, every moment of every day.” He grabbed my hand and placed it over his heart so I could feel the rapid, heavy beat of it. “You’re in me so deep I can’t see you ever working your way free, so be aware of that before you agree to anything. I can try for pretty words to describe it?—”

“I don’t need words,” I replied. “I just need you.”

“Always so fucking perfect for us,” he rasped, right before he kissed me.

I would never forget a feeling like this. We’d been torn from one place to the other from the moment we landed, but it was only now I felt it. Home. This was where I was supposed to be and who I needed with every breath. We strained our bodies, trying to get more, more of the other. His lips, his tongue, his teeth, I wanted it all, right up until he finally pulled away and then offered my mouth to Soren. Challenge glittered in Flynn’s eyes, as if daring the drill sergeant to act.

“Gods, I’ll go to hell for this,” Soren hissed. “But I can’t bring myself to regret it.”

Soren was slow to rouse, used to keeping himself under control at all times, but when he didn’t? He seemed all the more intense for it. His kisses were harsh, savage, as if he wanted to bite off chunks of me and devour me, just like a dragon. But I wasn’t hurt or repelled by it. I gloried in the feel of him in his most elemental form, giving as good as I got. But when we finally pulled away, I saw the others had done a little remodelling, pushing everything in the centre of the room to the sides and then laying down the mattresses from each bed until they formed one massive one on the floor.

“We don’t have to do anything,” Brom assured me. “All of us would be content to just lie with you.”

“Speak for yourself,” Ged muttered but softened that with a wink for me, though he needn’t have worried. When he jerked his shirt up and over his head, I found I couldn’t look away as his bare chest was revealed.

I’d seen it often enough to know the shape of it, where scars formed silvery stripes across his skin, but I still didn’t stop looking. I wasn’t sure I ever would, even when we were old and grey. He noted my attention with a smirk, but that faded as I toed off my boots, then pulled my own shirt off. Brom, Flynn and Soren went to help, all at the same time, but I shook my head, feeling my cheeks flush even as I stripped down and then stepped onto the mattresses. They followed me down moments later, naked, hard for me. They were mine, that beat hard and true inside my heart, and while people outside these four walls might not understand what we shared, it was everything to me.

My eyes closed at the feel of them pressing their bodies into mine. I didn’t see who tipped my head back and kissed me, whose hands slid over my skin. I felt like the intensity of their touch was too much to add any visual input to it. They all moved so carefully to map the swells and curves of my body, as though it was something new, something theirs. I couldn’t just lie there passively. My hands reached out, nails raking across muscular flesh, fingers clasping possessively at biceps, at chests. Then I slid my hands down.

“Gods above…” one of them cursed as I found first one then another cock to fill my hands.

“Slowly.” That was Ged, his hand slapping down over mine, lengthening my strokes and reducing the pace until it felt like I was familiarising myself with every ridge, every vein along his shaft. “Or maybe fast. I feel like my nuts have been boiling all day, all for you. Maybe you should make me come real quick, take the edge off.”

I opened my eyes to see Ged gazing down at me, a vein throbbing in his forehead as his hand worked with mine.

“I want to fucking erupt all over you, cover you with my cum. I don’t usually feel like this except when Zafira rises to mate.” Ged used his other hand to force my thighs open, his brow creasing as his fingers slid through the slick he found there. “Gods, you want it too.”

“That doesn’t mean—” Soren growled.

“Tell me you don’t feel the same, Drill Sergeant,” Flynn snapped. “Tell me you don’t need it too.”

“Of course, but?—”

“Pippin.” Brom’s voice was even, deep as he tipped my head backwards, so that I was able to look into his eyes. “My love, my wife, your men burn for you. We need to show you how much if we’re to attend to your needs at all tonight. There’s something primal inside all of us.” He slid his hand down his taut stomach to his cock, and my eyes followed every movement of his hand as he stroked it. “Let us pay you this base homage and then we’ll be able to please you all night long if you wish.”

A bead of pre-cum formed on the head of his cock and he gathered it on his thumb to transfer it from the tip to the curve of my breast. The thin liquid felt like some sort of anointment, marking me as it spread.

“We ride the dragons, but sometimes they ride us, filling us with primal urges: to mate, to mark you as ours. Tell me that we can.”

I wasn’t entirely conscious of what they meant, but a low hum in my mind had me nodding, then watching as all four of them took up position around me. Their hands went to their cocks, and I shifted my hands from one to the other, caressing shafts or the tight bulge of their balls. Each man stared down at me, entirely focussed on my body, my expression, as their hands shifted faster and their cocks swelled, growing angry and red from the attention. It didn’t take long before I heard helpless little catches of breath. My eyes fell closed as I felt the first splatter across my stomach, hot like summer rain.

I didn’t think anyone in the whole of Nevermere would understand what this was. I wasn’t entirely sure I did either, but there was significance and power in it. Each splatter of their seed was like a hot brand, marking me as theirs: all over my breasts, my nipples pulling tighter, then on my stomach and across my thighs and between them, my pearl throbbing in time. Just as when I’d felt Zafira’s heat, my body was lit on fire, burning from within. When they began rubbing in every drop of their seed into my skin, my own desire for a release rose higher till I was burning hot. When they were done, my eyes opened a crack, and my mouth fell open to ask, to beg for what I needed. Before I said a word, Ged leaned over me to hover his face over mine, smiling lazily before pressing kisses to my lips and then working his seed up and between my legs.

His smile widened at my first gasp, as my whole body went rigid at the feel of his cunning fingers working my pearl, then sliding inside me.

“You need it too, don’t you, lass? You need us just as badly as we need you.”

All I could do was nod sharply, just the once, as the others drew in closer, claiming every inch of my body with their fingers, their lips, adding fuel to the fire that burned. And flame out I did, too fast, too hard to be entirely comfortable, feeling like I had denied my body for too long and now it rebelled. But as Ged forced his fingers inside me, dragging them across a tender spot within, it reminded me of the last person who had done just that, and part of me mourned his absence.