Page 144 of Gemini Kings
And the way I do that with Maxim is by laying my hand really gently against his face, so I don’t scare this big tough skittish dragon who’s potentially bi-curious but also potentially a little bit homophobic (which has to be so confusing for him). I stroke my thumb over the sharp slant of his cheekbone and rub my palm against his blond stubble and, when he doesn’t freak out or stiffen up, I lean in nice and slow to fit my mouth against his.
Most of the time, his mouth looks cruel and ruthless. But when I kiss him, his mouth is warm and soft, yet firm at the same time, like Ronin when he kisses me. Max tastes like brimstone and he smells like sun-warmed leather.
He takes control of the kiss the same way Ronin does, spearing his hand through my hair and cradling my head and angling his mouth against mine until I open for him. And then he just kind of plunders and lays siege to me until I’m giving him my tongue and squirming closer to him under the blankets and trying not to moan and wake everyone up.
When he finally lets me up for air, he doesn’t really let me go. He just eases off with slow sucking kisses that make my lips tingle and make me want him not to stop.
But I do find his hand under the blankets and press his palm against my dick, which is already throbbing and hard for him under my briefs, so he can feel how much I’m into the whole idea of him. He wraps his hand around my shaft nice and tight to knead me and gives this sexy dragonish growl—
“Hush,” I whisper, breathless. “You’ll wake them up.”
“Someday very soon,” he whispers just as softly against my mouth, “when you ask me to touch you, I will not be quiet. And I will not stop.”
“There.” I give a happy sigh and smile against his lips. “Now I’ve claimed you too.”
A sudden tingle of awareness races through me that definitely feels like Zara.
I break the kiss with Max so I can get ready to kiss her too. She pushes up to sit behind him.
“Pretty fast moves on my fated mate there, Max.” Her tone’s a lot more flinty than I expect my cherished one to sound, since she’s in the middle of falling in love with him herself. But I guess maybe she doesn’t totally accept that yet. “You gonna ignore what I want you to do with him the same way you ignored my direct fucking command as your queen when you tried to fry my whole fucking class to a crisp last night?”
Vasili rears up beside her, fully awake and terrifying, and trains his glare on the poor dragon.
“Yes,dogo ahead and tell us, Mr. Rasputin,” he hisses, stony-eyed as a gorgon with snakes coiling in his hair, “exactly how prepared you are to sublimate those brutish dragon instincts of yours to the greater good and help the rest of us save the witching world. Because if we aren’t all singing fromthatparticular sheet of music in perfect fucking pitch, I’ll send you straight back to Siberia on the next supply plane. And, superheat or no, our queen will gladly help me do it.”
Ronin rolls over on his back with a heartfelt groan.
Beside him, Lucius rises up on one elbow and looks concerned.
“Um, wow.” All eyes swing to me and I blush hotly at all the attention, but I sit up too and face down the stares. Because clearly somebody in this bed needs to be on the dragon’s side. “That’s, uh, a lot to deal with before anyone’s even had their coffee. How about we all get up and see about those pancakes?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Zara
“Not quite so fast letting him off that hook, baby,” I tell my fated mate, who looks so rumpled and flushed and happy that I really hate to rain on his parade. “I wanna see that dragon squirm a whole lot longer.”
Max rolls over to face me and mutters, gruff and sexy, “You did not see enough of my… squirming… last night?”
He’s all sexed up from kissing Neo and (obviously) feeling him up under the blankets, his blond hair’s loose around his shoulders, his angular cheeks glitter with tawny stubble. And all it takes is the sound of that dragon’s voice and the memory of his so-calledsquirmingunder Ronin and me to set off my fucking heat.
Again.
God damn it, I can’t spend this entire weekend fucking.
I literally can’t.
I’ve got midterms on Monday that I need to pass and a succession ritual on Wednesday that I need to plan.
“What I remember more than your squirming,” I narrow my eyes at the cause of all my problems and cock my head, “is your fuckingflaming,Maxim. And your not stopping when I told you, which meant I had to physically stop you myself. And your not listening, and how we both almostdiedas a result. All that’s kinda overshadowing our horizontal gymnastics.”
Max scowls and pushes up on his elbows, which sends the blankets cascading down his sexy chest and exposes his sexy nipples. Now he just looks stubborn (and sexy). “For protecting you, my sovereign, and for protecting our mate, I will make no apology.”
Vasili hums a little behind me. He actually sounds like he appreciates the sentiment, even if my snake is coiled as far from that dragon as he can possibly get and still be in the same bed.
All the same, the two of themarein the same bed (even if I have no idea how we all got here, since I was in La-La Land at the time). Somehow, this development feels like major progress.
If I was in a claiming mood, I mean.
