Page 168 of Gemini Kings
Zara marches up to get right in the camera’s face (as it were). Her eyes pulse with psi fire and determination. Her mane lifts and swirls around her shoulders.
“You saw what happened with me and Vasili?” she demands. “Both of us fully manifested shifters, even though neither one of us started out that way. Because we were both bitten by shifters, and those biochemicals switched on our shifter recessives. So that’s the second thing. We gotta do a lot more of that—all of us—across the whole witching world. We gotta do a lot more, uh, group sex.”
This is the part where Zara explains about the singular effect she and Max and Ronin inflicted on the entire student body the night of the orgy (which I’m really rather sorry I missed). Coupled with her rather scandalous theory that it should be the entire witching world, not merely our queen and her harem, who are permitted—even encouraged—to be polyamorous.
Now, darling, don’t laugh. Truly, you should at least try it.
I’ve heard this all before, of course, live and in person.
I dial down the volume and saunter into the neon pink-and-black powder room that’s attached to Max’s suite. There I dab a little of Max’s yummy cologne behind my ears (which makes me smell like a green apple. Hopefully a certain someone will want to take a bite.)
Alas, my pale early morning image in the fluorescent light leaves a great deal to be desired. Under my mop of frosted hair, my lips purse in a discontented pout.
In the mirror, my eyes narrow in displeasure.
My, my. Zara’s simply going to have to cut my hair again. Shifter hair growssoquickly. Since she herself has started shifting, hers nearly grazes the small of her back.
Of course, none of us wants anyone cutting hers.
Well, I have no intention of going to that extreme. A style that grazes my chin is far more flattering to the shape of my pretty face.
I take a littlemetime to preen and fuss over my shoulder-length mane, then saunter out of the powder room. I’m simply craving acaffe americano, and I imagine Zara and the others will soon be up and about. But I sneer at the pedestrian Mr. Coffee unit in Max’s vintage kitchenette.
I’ll just nip out to the great room kitchen to whip up a double shot of espresso—
“Where do you suppose you are going, Romanov?” Safely asleep no longer, Maxim is leaning casually against the closed door that leads from his studio to the great room.
Well, well. He’s wearing a pair of Ronin’s black sweats, slung low on his narrow hips, and literally nothing else. His delicious golden hair frames the tawny a.m. stubble glittering on his angular jaw and spills around his shoulders in a tumbled mess that makes me simultaneously long to tidy him up and dishevel him far worse.
My gaze skates over his sleek chest and pierced nipples to his tight abdomen. He discarded the last of his bandages yesterday, so the healing scars slashed across his skin are very much on display.
My own tummy tightens with an echo of the wrathful rage that consumed me in the sky that night.
I might as well confess they make me rather savage, those scars of his. They’re a constant reminder of how close we all came to losing him. If I hadn’t practically carried him down from the sky to the summit, protecting him the way my queen commanded, he would have fainted from blood loss and fallen to his death.
Not to mention, this dragon of mine carries enough scars.
“Now,malchik, there’s no need to get overly dramatic at this hour,” I say lightly, careful to betray none of what I’m feeling (since that’s the cardinal rule I live by. Iamthe Scorpio scion, after all.) “I’m simply going to the kitchen to brew a properamericano. I’ll even bring you one, if you ask me nicely.”
Truly, I don’t mean to provoke him.
Typically, these days, I only provoke him with Zara or Ronin (or both) tucked safely between us. Because I know perfectly well what he wants from me, which is the same thing I want from him, and he’s not getting it.
To use that horrid American baseball analogy, I’m purely a pitcher. Inevercatch. Well, except for that one little time with Ronin in the shower, which (admittedly) I enjoyed, but which no one else except Zara even knows about.
Still, I can’t seem to resist playing with (dragon) fire.
The dragon in question slits his fiery eyes. His deliciously smoldering gaze roams over me, all tousled and barefooted in my camisole and jammies.
“Do you wear this clothing to provoke me?” he growls.
Secretly, I’m delighted by the question. I do so love to be… provocative.
“Hmmm, I don’t know.” Hips swaying, I swank in close, very close, close enough to inhale a delicious whiff of the leathery scent of aroused dragon, and perch my hands light as butterflies on his barely clad hips. “If I do, is it working?”
His gaze drops to my smirking mouth. His nostrils flare wide. “You smell like me.”
“That’s because I’m wearing your cologne, darling. I smell like forbidden fruit.”
