Page 82 of Gemini Kings
Claim our king, and we will rise,my dragon queen hisses.
Yeah, no. We’re not doing that. We’re not fuckingrising.I might not have much freedom or much control these days, but one of the few things I do control is my body. It’s one of the last freedoms I have—the freedom to control my own actions and choose my own mates.
I’m not losing that. Not ever.
And this guy’s not giving me a choice.
I bite my lip hard enough to sting (when did my incisors get so damn sharp?) I have to force myself—literally force myself—to lift my hands from this dragon’s smokin’ hot body and step carefully back.
“No one here’s gonna hurt you,” I repeat firmly, just for good measure. Then I hesitate. “Uh, as long as you’re careful with Vasili.”
“I am always careful with Vasili,” he growls. “It is Vasili himself who is not careful with me.”
He twists around to face me. And now I’m backed against the pool wall with a fully aroused male dragon shifter looming over me, roughly 1.8 feet away.
Which is a dangerous place to be.
I like it and I don’t.
Spread your wings,my dragon whispers.We will rise, and he will follow.
A ripple of hunger clenches my cunt.
“Yeah, about you and Vasili,” I say roughly. “Why’d youdothat to him? Why’d you run and tattle to his asshole dad? That was shitty as fuck.”
He doesn’t answer. Not right away.
His lids drop over his secretive eyes and his face turns all shifty.
“This is, how do you say, ancient history? And it is between Vasili and me,” he says at last.
He’s still not lying, but he is evading. Vasili thinks Maxim was jealous. Who knows, maybe that gigolo yacht captain was fucking both those boys.
How old was this dragon anyway when all that went down?
“I was fifteen,” he mutters. “Just barely. My dragon had not risen. But that Italian never touched me. If he tried, I would have killed him. And… and… Nikolai Romanov—Vasili’s sire—he was the closest I ever came to a father.”
That last sentence spills out in a jumbled rush, like something he never planned to share.
Which sends this hot mess spinning in a whole new direction.
My soles lower to the pool bottom and I shoot to my feet. “So, what, you wanted to get rid of Vasili and have his homophobic fuck of a father all to yourself? Jesus, Maxim. Don’t you have any idea what that did to Vasili? Did you even stop to think before you ratted him out?”
That’s why my Goblin King believes no one can ever love him. Because his father abandoned him over what Maxim told him.
God, this dragon pisses me right off.
But there’s more to it than that. Under all my rage on Vasili’s behalf, I’m smarting under the sharp sting of disappointment.
I was starting to think maybe the planet’s last male dragon shifter was better than that.
Well, guess what?
I was dead wrong.
Scowling, the dragon too rises to his full height. Which means he looms over me, with the water barely covering that barbed peen I’m trying like fuck not to think about.
“There was—more to this matter than you know.” Now he sounds downright sullen. “These are issues you would not understand.”
