Page 24 of Gemini Kings
When our queens are weak, when they’re celibate, when they’re infertile, the witching world suffers. Which is a lot of responsibility riding on one vagina—currently the vagina of Messalina Aquarius, Cybelle’s mom, the ruling queen—but it’s one explanation for that whole extinction scenario.
Anyway, long story short, I haven’t officially married anyone. Or made any sort of formal betrothal announcement.
And I won’t, not for a good long while.
Because I’d kinda like to graduate first, you know? And I started late, so I’m only a freshman at the Icarus Academy.
Not that this guy needs to hear any of that right now.
“Give me that medallion, Maxim,” I say flatly. “Then we’ll talk.”
His head lifts and his eyes fire. Somehow, I know it’s because he likes hearing me say his name. Which gives me another little pulse of heat down below.
I tamp that shit right down, because me getting all sexed up for this dragon is a distraction I definitely don’t need.
Then I watch with mounting anger while he loopsmyfucking medallion around his own fucking neck.
“I will gift it to you,” he says, in his careful way, “after our mating flight. When your belly grows round and full with our clutch.”
My mouth falls open with honest indignation. “What are you, brain dead? I already have a whole harem, big guy. My bed’s pretty damn full. There’s not, like, a vacancy.”
His hard face turns sharp and cruel and stubborn. “Those puny men cannot break a dragon queen’s heat. Only I, a male dragon, the last of my kind, can satisfy your need.” He stalks closer. “This need I can smell even now, yes? You are perfuming this desert wind.”
Well, shit,that’sawkward.
My face heats up to scorching.
But I’m not about to get sidetracked. “Not looking for another mate right now. And I’m definitely not looking for a baby daddy.”
He plants his hands on his hips and sneers.
This bastard fuckingsneers.
“These lesser men you have taken to your bed will give way to me, their superior,” he states, with a degree of certainty that’s infuriating. “They will defer to me as the dominant male in your harem. In exchange for their deference, I will permit them to serve you… even to… service you… as is your sovereign right. But it is I who will rule at your side and fill your womb with my dragonets.”
Is this guy for real? I honestly wonder if he’s been smoking something.
“One,” I announce, unfolding a finger that glitters with the opal polish I’ve been wearing all week in blatant defiance of the Academy’s bullshit dress code. “I’m not looking for another mate, and neither are they. Two.” I unfold another finger. “Even if we were? You and your my-way-or-the-highway ultimatums aren’t exactly our type. Three.” I add a third finger. “There’s no one fuckingservicingme, because we’re all fucking equals. We’re not really a harem in that traditional way. And four, I’m not about to start popping out babies—ofanykind, much less freakingdragonets—while I’m still in school and simultaneously queening it and trying to figure out my shit. I’m literally twenty years old.”
His brows rush together in a scowl.
Still, I can see he’s fighting to sound reasonable (for him) and not lose his temper and go apeshit on the asphalt.
“You are young, yes,” he says softly. “As I am young. Yet you have taken these others. These men who are lesser, who can never take wing beside you and mate with you among the clouds. Once you have experienced what only I can give you… the sublime pleasure of dragon mating dragon, the world cowering beneath you as you own the skies… I will be first among your mates. Then these others will know their place.”
“Know their place, huh?” I snort out a grim chuckle. “You haven’t met Vasili yet, have you?”
Vasili’s more than the dominant alpha among my guys, he’s even gotten our headmaster Lucius to accept his mating bite. (And, yeah, the two of them together are hot. As. Fuck.)
Actually, I’m kinda expecting Vasili and Ronin, who’s clairsentient and so can sense my whereabouts with his Valyrian gifts (it’s kind of a geolocation thing), to turn up right about now.
Even though I’m still feeling nothing in our bond.
Which is deeply disturbing.
Maxim’s nostrils flare with disdain. “I know well of Vasili Romanov and his untraditional ways and his sinful passions. What witch or warlock does not? The queer son, exiled in disgrace, who is the scandal and the shame of his noble clan.”
My mouth drops open in total fucking outrage.
