“Hurry up!”
The dragon didn’t listen, and all Tiri could do was tremble beneath him. Zane’s hold on his hips was too strong to allow him to push back. It was both madness and pleasure that swamped him as he was forced to endure this slow prelude to ecstasy. His skin was slick with sweat, and the muscles of his legs shook as he focused on the cock filling him up. When Tiri was sure he couldn’t take it for one more second, Zane was finally fully seated inside him.
“Please.Pleasemove.”
Apparently done teasing him, Zane pulled out, then drove back in. He wasn’t gentle as he fucked Tiri, and it was everything he’d been yearning for since they started. Tiri chanted his name as his ass was well and truly plundered by a dragon hell-bent on pounding him mindless. His balls drew up tight the moment Zane changed his angle. It allowed his dick to hit Tiri’s prostate directly each time he drove inside. Panting, Tiri wasn’t going to be able to stop the inevitable, however much he would’ve liked to have Zane inside him just this way for eternity. He closed his eyes as tingles raced over his skin.
“Oh Zane,” he managed. Seconds later, Tiri let out a scream as his release tore through him. It was as if time stood still as he came. His muscles locked in place and he held his breath as he struggled to deal with the intensity of his orgasm. In the far-off distance he heard a shout and felt the warm splash of Zane’s come inside his channel. However many minutes or hours it took him to recover, he found himself with a heavy dragon lying over him.
“You were right,” Zane gasped close to his ear.
“About what?”
“No way are we giving this up.”
Tiri closed his eyes as Zane worked his arms underneath him to hold him tight with his cock still nestled inside him, making them one. “I love you, Zane.”
“I thank Fate for you. Every day. I love you too.”
Chapter 17
Arch Lich Chander Daray scrubbed his hands over his face. He was exhausted—a feeling he’d once lived with daily, but that was before the Lich Sentinel popped into his life and upended everything. In the week since someone slipped a horrible potion into Ellery’s coffee, Chander had barely seen Alaric. The members of Sorcery D’Vaire had finally decided that they were going to need some sleep. They agreed to do it in shifts so there was always someone working, but the sorcerers and shifters got little more than a glorified nap. None of them wanted to stop until they made some progress.
One or two of those times he’d dozed off, Chander had managed to curl up with Alaric. The leader of the Sentinel Brotherhood had his own piece of this disaster to work on, and the investigation was also not producing many results. Frustration was written in every line of Alaric’s body, and Chander was too busy with his own duties to soothe him. Chander and Alaric were both fully dedicated to their respective causes, but Chander promised himself that when this was over he was taking a damn vacation. All he wanted was to coerce Alaric into taking off to do nothing but romp around naked and catch up on the rest they were missing.
“Meeting,” Dra’Kaedan said as he dropped a hand on Chander’s shoulder.
“Okay.”
Chander stood and the two men who had once been tied to his soul got to their feet as well. Daemon Lords Baxter and Benton Daray were doing what they could to assist, but Chander imagined as sentinels they probably would’ve preferred to be helping chase down the culprits. It was no use trying to convince them he was fine and could manage on his own. Not only did Chander have to leave D’Vaire for Council sessions, but he hadn’t gone anywhere without at least one of them since he was a teenager. Chander followed the two blond men down the hall and up the stairs to a larger room than the first one chosen by the Grand Warlock Familiar when their group had started meeting to tackle magical projects well over a year ago. With so much to do, they needed more space for computers, books, and simple workspace.
Once they arrived, Chander grabbed a seat and waited for the others filing in to do the same. He cleared his mind of his own irritation over the lack of progress they were making to restore Ellery. Getting annoyed wouldn’t help his concentration or creativity in tackling the problem, so he wasn’t going to allow himself the distraction of it.
“How’s his blood looking?” Saura asked.
“Maybe a dozen cells have now been converted from elf to dragon,” Grigori supplied. “I know everyone wants to reverse the potion completely, but I think we need to start thinking of this in stages.”
“You’re scared by the cell conversion?” his mate Delaney asked.
“Yes. Without being able to get Elf out of dragon form, we don’t know what effect this is having beyond the cellular level. Without that knowledge, we have no idea what side effects are already permanent.”
Vadimas leaned back in his chair. “You’re right. We don’t know how he’s doing and as much as we want to cure him in one fell swoop, we need to be pragmatic.”
“So we narrow our focus to stopping the cell conversion?” Idris inquired.
“That would be the end goal, but let’s aim for even slowing it down,” T’Eirick said. “This potion is like a virus. It’s insidious, and we know from the DNA test Vadimas requested, it’s invaded every part of Elf. It may be, at this point, only at a level a scientist can see, but he’s already altered forever.”
“I didn’t think this would be so hard,” Renny griped.
“None of us did. We didn’t expect that a hybrid would react so uniquely to magic. Neither his dragon side nor his elven one responds to anything we do as either race normally does. What we’ve learned is that each hybrid is distinctive. We’re being forced to learn the ins and outs of his genetic makeup as we struggle against a potion we’re unfamiliar with,” Dre’Kariston said.
“That’s because if any of my wizards created a potion like this, I would smash them into little pieces,” Vadimas snarled.
Chander opened his mouth to speak when an envelope smacked him right on the nose. “Why does that always happen to me?” he complained. Every damn time someone sent him something magically, he wound up being pelted by paper.
“What the fuck?” Baxter growled as he snatched the missive before it could hit the table.
“Who the fuck is that from?” Benton barked.
