It surprises me as his scaled dragon lips nuzzle my neck. As I snort,everything inside me clenches to his heat. Mikkel feels me respond to him; he seizes the moment and flips me tomyback on the sand now.Towering over me, he heaves hard breaths, staring down at me with his hot, dark eyes as our blistering resonance to mate devours us. No more poison fills him as I see a wave of bright copper sear through his scales now, along the lines of his chartreuse Bone Magic.
Mikkel’s eyes blaze a sparkling copper-green suddenly, rather than black, so vibrant they stun me with their incredible beauty. As shock fills me to see what heshouldlook like, with all that inner brightness flooding his scales, I feel him suddenly struggle with it.
Because it’s not brightness he’s used much in his life, being a pirate bastard as he has been with his empire of clubs over the years. As Mikkel pauses above me now, however, heaving hard breaths, I feel something beyond desire in him.
Aesa’s silver Truthstone blazes like wildfire on my chest, searing with crimson and gold runes, as I feel my dragon-instincts suddenly understand the deepest ache of Mikkel’s life.
Because some banished, ridiculously suppressed part of him wants to be a part of something bright, like my budding band of heroes. He wants to shine with goodness, nobility, and honor, like I can do with my other drakes. He wants to be that, and take all that brightness in his talons and into his bed at night.
But we’re a long way from that, as his beautiful eyes darken back to black. Even though he’s got me tangled up in his scales and talons, our hearts beating in a frenzy and our togetherness sparking something bright inside him, I understand Mikkel will not let himself go there just yet.
He will not allow himself to hope that things could be better for him, being with me and my little band of heroes. As Mikkel stares down at me with his black mamba eyes back in full, I feel him banish his brightness.
Our dark passion sears through me again as I feel our bond push my darkest magic to the forefront once more. It wants to do disastrous things, despite how I felt something deeper and brighter inside Mikkel just now.
Lowering his head, Mikkel submits to me now—even as he keeps me trapped flat on my back. Running his scaled lips sexily over mine, he leans down more, truly making contact and opening his fanged jaws.
Kissing me.
I feel his dark magic rush into me as we kiss, making me want disastrous things as his long tongue snakes into my mouth, coiling mine up. As he kisses me harder, a thundering, dark pulse of desire from him wallops me.
A black heat devours me then—for the fuck now, rather than the fight. As a towering dark wildfire takes me, I feel Mikkel get swept up by it. His own inner desire to be bad is roaring now, crushing me down to the white sand as his strong body pins me.
And I’m opening to it, wanting him, too, as I push my head up hard, kissing him back with ruthless abandon in the way only dragons can manage. As he positions himself at my opening now, ready to thrust in and seal this deal between us, a crackling storm-blitz of lightning suddenly rips through my cyclone of Bloodwind.
A new presence entering the fight-ring, interrupting our near-coitus.
My cousin Rhennic Erdhelm, King of the Storm Dragons, strides through that crackling break he’s made in my winds. I see him shift up into his beautiful brute of a dragon; lithe, strong, with wings five times bigger than any Blood Dragon, he’s storm-blue and bruised purple, with sparkling lines of gold running through his scales from his Royal Dragon Bind-mate, Layla Price.
Rhennic’s a Dragon King; you don’t get that way by being weak. With one blast of storm-lightning channeled right down from the bruised summer skies, he shocks both Mikkel and me back to our senses.
A powerful—and painful—reminder of who rules this place we are in.
Rhennic’s lightning thrusts Mikkel and me apart. Pain blitzes through my veins as I’m interrupted with my Third Bloodmate; I snarl at my cousin before his look pierces me to the quick.
With rivers of lightning coursing through his storm-purple and golddragon-eyes, not to mention his entire body, he flaps his wings, jutting his elegant head at the grandstands all around.
I’m suddenly, horridly, reminded of our audience, as I see the Storm Dragons still around us. There are even more now, dragons and people filling the grandstands to take in whatever massive magics were happening here.
As I realize I was just about to have dragon-sex in front ofhundredsof witnesses, I coil up barbs-out in a tight, hissing ball of confusion and rage. Dragons are far more public in their attentions than people, but I’m still a very private soul. Rhennic knows that, as I realize he just stopped me from an embarrassing event that I would never live down.
I’m grateful and relieved, as I finally get my wits back and nod to him. Mikkel is growling at ourcoitus interruptus—but one look from Rhennic silences him.
Rhennic is a King, and Storm Dragon King; though Mikkel and I have power, my cousin could kill us with a single channeling of lightning right down from the high summer skies, and we both know it.
Blood Dragons can protect themselves from Storm Dragons, but not from power like Rhennic’s. There’s a reason my cousin has won every one of the fifty-plus dominance battles that have been lobbed at him ever since he ascended to his Kingship.
Rhen knows it, too, as he casually shifts down now, gesturing for Mikkel and me to do the same.
We’re guests in his house; we both shift down, putting our dragons away, though we’re heaving hard breaths from our brutal fight and near dragon-sex.
It leaves Mikkel and me naked before each other now, however, as Rhennic receives a royal storm-blue robe from an attendant, embroidered with gold thread in a fanciful fleur-de-lis.
Lightning flickers along the path of those threads. I don’t know if it’s my cousin’s power making the garments shine or their own imbued magic,but I know those are the raiments of the Storm Dragon King, as he fixes a few toggles so he’s no longer bare before us.
Rhennic’s gaze is alert as he glances between Mikkel and me; he can see dragon-auras, and he’s attuned to the sparks still flying between us. At a wave of his hand, another attendant moves forward to give me a dark purple robe, embroidered with gold like Rhennic’s.
I know it’s a robe intended for royalty, as I let the attendant slide it on me. Mikkel gets nothing, though he steps over to his own pants shed to the sand and hauls them on.
