Page 122 of Love Bites Extra Hard

I slipped into our apartment, expecting him to be there. He’d asked me to meet him, so I was a little curious about what he was up to. Usually, we met at the office.

I found Talon leaning against the wall near the door, with a glass of fae wine in each of his hands.

My lips curved upward, and I accepted the one he handed over as he kissed me lightly.

“How is Deanna?” he asked.

“As chatty as ever.” I kissed him again, and he pulled my body against his lightly, deepening the kiss until I ended it. “What’s the occasion?”

“I have a present for you.”

“What kind of present?”

“You’ll see.” He put a hand on my lower back and led me into our bedroom. I stopped in the doorway, my eyebrows lifting at what was obviously the gift.

The blanket that usually occupied our bed was gone, traded out for one with scales somehow sewn into the fabric. They ran over the entire surface of it, making the quilt look like living flames.

I smiled. “It’s beautiful. I thought you were doing something with them, but I never would’ve imagined this.”

The majority of the scales had vanished after he cleaned them in the bathtub, and he’d been dodging my questions about where they’d gone.

“A dragon’s mate always wants to sleep with their scales.” He lowered his lips to my throat, kissing the mark he’d left there before moving his lips to the bite he’d given me that first night.

“I thought I was crazy.”

He chuckled. “Crazy about me, maybe.”

I pushed him away playfully, and he stepped around me to kiss me again. “I love you, Avery.”

“I love you too, Tal.”

He tilted my head back with the hand that wasn’t holding his glass of wine, and kissed me again.

Deeper.

Talon was nothing like I’d expected when I sat on the roof that day.

Lovewas nothing like I’d expected, either.

But I wouldn’t have traded either for the world.

epilogue

TALON—12 YEARS LATER

The other kingsand I ran around the field with a crowd of kids following us. All of them were yelling. Most were shouting threats, and giving battle cries.

Our mates were all lounging in the lake nearby. Blair had their first baby, a two-month-old little siren girl, in a carrier on her chest.

Avery had Lila, our one-year-old daughter, in her arms. She was our second, a siren, and possibly our last.

Izzy was holding her fifth son, and he was splashing wildly. They were calling it quits at five, finally giving up on trying for a girl. All five of the little guys were werewolves, and were equally crazy.

Zora’s twin daughters were ten, and mixed into the crowd with everyone else. They were technically the oldest kids, but Kai and Clementine’s son had spent enough time in the fae realm that he was really older by a year or two. Bane and Zora had another set of twins a handful of years after the first, both boys, one a sirenand one a gargoyle. Kai and Clem had a daughter a few years after they had their son, too.

Pregnancy hadn’t come quickly or easily for any of the sirens, much to everyone’s frustration. But eventually, it had come, and the kids were worth the shitty wait.

The crowd of angry children chasing us finally caught up when we slowed to let them, and all of us men made a show of being taken down.

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