“Never,” he promised, stroking her clit softly, in direct opposition to his rough thrusts.
Her legs tensed against him as if trying to push him back, but he knew it was only her body betraying her, that she was close. Her ankles kicked against him in little flutters, like a cat winding up to pounce. She was breathing hard, biting her lip, and one of her hands was pulling at the opposite breast’s nipple and he knew he had her, that he was going to make her fly.
“Oh…please, please.” She arced against him—her whole body tense—and then she shouted his name. “Oh my God, Damian! Yes!” as the first wave slammed her, making her shudder and ripple around him.
Yesssssssssss, his dragon purred. NOW.
His dragon overlapped him, and while he normally would’ve fought the intrusion, for one singeing-hot moment, it felt right. He thrust in time with the waves of her orgasm, feeling it pull at him like her body needed him to feel whole. He was beyond any point in stopping. Not coming the first time she’d enveloped him with pulses had taken superhuman effort, and neither he nor his dragon had that kind of control anymore.
She writhed again below him, shuddering, one hand curled in his hair against his scalp, whispering, “Please…please…” begging him for his load.
Damian closed his eyes and felt everything in him flood down to where they were joined, where his cock was buried inside her hot throbbing pussy, all of him aching, dying for release.
“Take what’s yours,” she breathed, just as he had earlier.
And he didn’t know if she meant his orgasm or her, but he willed it to be both as he shouted and shot himself inside her.
Damian’s hips beat against hers, his body doing what it had to as he came, fucking her hard, grunting, shouting, hissing, as violent pleasures flowed through him, impossibly long, her pussy sucking his hot silver out of him, taking everything he had to give until he was completely dry.
He shifted her legs gently and collapsed on top of her, totally spent, panting into her neck, surrounded by the scent of her skin and hair, his soul still soaring. He felt dizzy, like he was in two places at once—one of him here and the other half of him flying back in the Realms, where his dragon didn’t have to worry about being seen—where it could take the purest pleasure in the wind, feeling it thrill against his wings. And then somehow he landed alone back in his Earthly body again, with her wound around him, his softening cock still inside her.
That. That was what it was like to be mated.
What it was always supposed to be like.
Damian swallowed. He knew he needed to recover himself—to somehow go back to being the man he always was, to put all his armor back on—and to never breathe a word of this night again to anyone. He had too many enemies, both in the Realms and on Earth. Truly falling for a woman was tantamount to drawing a target on her back.
And yet, he’d risk it all to feel like that again with her.
Andi lay under him, wrecked for the second—or fourth! But who was counting?—time that night, breathing heavy, feeling the weight of him on top of her, the heat flowing off of him everywhere that they matched. The temptation to grab hold of him and not let go was so strong.
But she found it in her somewhere and squirmed beneath him instead. He took the hint, making an acquiescing noise before brushing her lips with a kiss, then moving back to his own seat, reaching down to pull his jeans on.
That—they—had been something else. Ever since they’d started fucking. Oh God, she’d known in the restaurant that it was good, but this time with him here, it was deeper somehow—like they were connected, almost.
And it’d been so much less safe.
She knew she couldn’t love him yet, both because that was silly and she was abso-fucking-lutely not letting herself fall for someone so quickly. She was too smart for that, and she was not her mom. And besides, Andi never could just relax. She had plenty of other friends who could—who got to daydream about stupid things without feeling foolish—who could test their boundaries and entertain unsafe things. But Andi was always the watchdog—the natural golden retriever of any group—the girl who knew where all her girlfriends were at the club and how likely they were to puke on the way home and if they needed to be navigated away from any decisions they’d regret come morning.
How the hell had she let all that slide for him? It wasn’t the money, and it wasn’t the dragon. He just fit her. It was the only way she could explain it. It felt like she was supposed to be with him, and she’d been feeling like that ever since the other night—fighting it, even, if she were honest with herself.
Fast forward to tonight—in that final moment when he’d been inside her—when she’d felt everything so much more, and she knew he had too. She’d seen it in his eyes and felt it in his body; it radiated off of him the same as his heat had.
God, she was falling for him!
Andi bit her lips and swallowed. No, no, no. No! Absolutely not. Just because she wanted to let go and lose control, it didn’t mean she wanted to lose her heart.
But she’d never, ever, felt like that with Josh.
She watched him pull his jeans on—breathless and afraid. Andi Ngo did not catch feelings. Not like this. And she’d already opened herself up to him once tonight and been rebuffed. Nothing had changed! Not in their circumstances or in their surroundings! Every magically chiseled inch of his body glowed by the dashboard lights as if he aimed to prove her point. He was still a rich playboy who could become a dragon, and she—what was she? A passing fancy? A fuck buddy? Just some friend? No matter what he’d said earlier or how good the words made her feel, he had all the reasons in the world to leave her again.
And the gold coin his friend had given him swung in her peripheral vision, still rocking from their final round of thrusts. From the way Damian hadn’t wanted to talk about things earlier, she was certain his friend had been killed in action. And she knew in the pit of her stomach, sinking deeper all the time, that after everything she’d seen tonight—even if he didn’t want to leave her—eventually, he would. Death was death, right? For her own good, if nothing else. Just like he’d tried to in the restaurant.
Andi swallowed. She knew herself—her soul—couldn’t handle him flipping another switch, and there was no way she could live happily ever after waiting for a blow to land.
There was only one way to not get hurt. Get out in front of it. Acknowledge things and then close the book. No dog-ears, no bookmarks.
She arranged her coat around herself before she began because this was a conversation better not had naked. “Okay, so,” she said, steeling herself. “Thank you so much for an interesting evening.”
Damian looked over at her from where his hands were redoing his belt buckle, and he blinked. “Excuse me?”
Stay strong. You tell people bad news all the time at work. You’re used to people being disappointed in you.
“I said, thank you for an interesting evening, Mr. Blackwood.”
His whole body tensed across from her, and he spoke next like he wasn’t sure he’d heard her. “You’re joking, right, princess?”
The way he said it twisted a knife into her heart. If it hurt this much now, it was confirmation that it was better to get out now while she could.