Page 23 of Gemini Kings
I mean, not my shifter.Theshifter.
He’s not streamlined like Vasili or tattooed like Ronin or gym rat buffed like Neo. This guy looks like he fought for his meals growing up and maybe still does. He’s really young, not any older than I am for sure, which would make him twenty, tops. He’s all suntanned skin stretched over wiry strength, the parallel slash of old claw marks raking his ribs (I can count every bone) and scoring the taut column of his abs.
And, whoa, his cock is… unique. In humananddragon form. Kinda barbed at the tip, I mean. It’s forked like a devil’s tail.
And he’s definitely, um, endowed. His whole junk’s thick and curving and jutting straight out.
Looks like he’s really glad to see me.
The sight of that barbed cock lights up a pulse of heat between my legs that makes my pussy slick. It’s the heavy throb of my mating heat, just days away, but there’s a hot tight clutch of need in my uterus that’s new.
And extra intense.
Like an ache that’s dying to be filled.
Which is fucked up. The only passenger that hitches a ride in this uterus is my IUD, believe me. Because, sure, I’ll eventually need to pop out a few witchlets to propagate the royal line. Maybe even more than a few, because all four arcane races are endangered.
For the shifters in particular—the Protean race—there are only a few of them… I meanus… left in existence.
But propagating the royal line’swayin the future for me.
My gaze skates up the new guy’s chest in a hurry, trips on the silver barbells piercing both nipples (did I mention I’m a sucker for pierced nipples?), and lands on his sexy smirk (because he totally caught me looking).
I’m in trouble with this guy.
I really am.
Or I would be, if I wasn’t about to electrocute his dragon ass for taking what’s mine and taunting me with it.
I swipe my tongue over my lips and watch his eyes ignite. My voice comes out low and husky. “What do I call you, big guy?”
“I am Maxim.” He says it the Russian way,Maxeem,leaning hard into the second syllable, every guttural vowel rolling over his tongue. His shoulders straighten and his head lifts with pride. “Maxim Grigorievich Rasputin. I am the Sagittarius prince.”
“Prince, huh?” The rest of the witching world calls it a scion, the heir to each of the original twelve witching families. The scion can be any gender (I’m the Gemini one), but they’re typically the strongest witch with the purest genetics in each of the twelve clans. Anyway, I know from Vasili that these old Russian houses, with their Old World imperial blood, they do their own thing.
So I guess that makes this dude a prince.
Whatever.
“Well.” I clear my throat. “Sounds like you know who I am.”
I wanna hear him say it. And he doesn’t disappoint.
He lowers that princely head so his hair spills forward around his face. “You are Zarina Mikhailovna Selene Gemini. You are the last of your kind, as I am the last of mine. You are my queen, as I am meant to be your king.”
“Whoa.” Despite wanting that medallion with a need that makes my palms itch, I take a big step back and fold my arms across my chest. Which also has the advantage of covering up my tits and the way my nipples are suddenly tight and tingling with heat.
It’s unsettling, the way I’m reacting to him.
Definitely not something I want to advertise.
“Well, you’re half right,” I mutter, sounding sulky even to myself. “I’m your queen all right, at least I’m the queen-in-waiting, but I don’t have a king right now. And no offense, but if I did? You’d have to stand in line.”
Because I might be mated the old witching world way, the common law way, to all four of the warlocks who share my bed—we’re all mated to each other, actually, we’re a polycule, even though some of my guys are still navigating their way through that whole enemies-to-lovers dynamic and they haven’t all fucked each other (yet).
But there’s a whole lot more to this thing than me shacking up with four hot bi warlocks.
According to witching world law, I can legally marry all of them, because our queens are polyamorous. That’s a special law they made just for us. The ruling royals. The more we all fuck, and the more we all like it, the better it’s supposed to be for the whole witching world.
