Page 89 of Gemini Kings
Ronin is deeply asleep in our tumbled bed, naked but quiet, reeking with the musk of Vasili’s release and his own. The air is saturated with the heavy caramel and vetiver of Vasili’s mating scent.
That scent makes my wolf burn to rut into Ronin (who clearly needs sleep more than fucking, at least until his next peak hits).
That scent also makes me wild to bend for Vasili myself.
Sexually speaking, Vasili is emphatically my alpha. Tonight he looks every inch the part as he prowls, scowling and intense, before the crackling fire in those sinfully erotic breeches he insists on wearing solely to torment me (or so it often seems) and not a stitch more.
Sensing my quiet but determined entrance, he gives me a shuttered look. He’s uncharacteristically disheveled, cosmetics smudged around his shadowed eyes, hair wildly tousled as though Ronin’s been fisting it while they fuck.
“Stay away from Ronin,” he says briefly. “You can have your turn later. He’s sleeping until the next spike. With any luck, he’ll sleep till dawn, if that flying donkey of a dragon ever stops braying.”
“I’ll happily share in his tending.” This is a rather circumspect turn of phrase to describe the way I’m burning to despoil my mate in that bed. But I pitch my voice carefully low to avoid disturbing him now. “I can return later to let you sleep. For the moment, I have Zara with Neo in my room, and her needs too are pressing.”
“Hmmm.” With a heavy sigh, Vasili drapes himself over Zara’s desk chair, which he’s dragged near the fire, and stretches his elegant bare feet on the hearth. “Thank you for taking care of her, at least. I can comprehend—reluctantly—why you imagined you wanted that dragon at this Academy, given Zara’s newfound ability to shift into one herself. But was it truly necessary to welcome Maxim Rasputin, of all men living, intoourhome?”
Under his anger, a minefield of pain lies buried.
To avoid triggering it, I carefully refrain from noting that Maxim Rasputin will also very likely soon be sharing our bed. That’s assuming Zara, who’s always been unpredictable and wildly impulsive, will accept him. Since she’s refused him tonight, even in the crisis of her rising heat, I am no longer certain what she’ll do.
Since I dare not risk one of Vasili’s more malignant reactions to the prospect of Maxim sharing our bed, I retreat to my less controversial motives for the dragon’s admittance.
“I appreciate your troubled history with him, Vasili. Truly, I do. But you were both children when you knew him. That jealous boy who hurt you has matured into the last fully manifested male dragon shifter the witching world possesses. We need him as much as he needs us. AndIneed to know you understand this imperative. I need to know you’re able to see beyond your own personal grievances.”
I can’t say the rest aloud. That Vasili owns my body and has ever since the night he buried his vicious fangs in my flesh. That he holds my heart in his cruel careless hands. That he’s my love and my alpha and I don’t know how I’ll ever survive without him and I’m desperately afraid to try.
But I whisper what I can of all this through our mating bond.
I need you to be careful and mature and responsible with Maxim. I need you to put aside your hatred and your resentment and your bitterness.
I need to know I can trust you, Vasili. Please show me I can trust you.
And it’s a measure of my desperate uncertainty over this critical outcome that I don’t dare wait for his reply.
With a last agonized look at the sleeping Ronin, that other mate I ache to comfort, I retreat from the field of combat with what composure I can muster and supply my stalwart assurances and apologies regarding the dragon’s conduct and welfare over the staticky landline to the Dean (who is indeed awake, considerably irritated over the entire unseemly disturbance, and threatening to send Maxim back to his irate parent). Apparently, the dragon’s mother virulently opposes his admission and has been phoning the school nonstop to demand his immediate expulsion. This fate is one I manage to deflect—at least temporarily. Certainly Maxim deserves the chance to prove he is more than the savage beast currently bellowing overhead and terrorizing the entire student body in their beds.
Fortunately, the Dean accepts my argument. Having preserved the dragon’s place in this Academy for the time being, I return in haste to my queen, who needs me.
Chapter Seventeen
Zara
Wrapped tight in Neo’s arms, I’ve finally stopped shivering.
The two of us are cuddled up together in Lucius’ narrow monastic bed (since he lived chaste as a priest for years before Ronin and I came along to tempt him from the path of virtue). I’m still bundled in my robe with the fire crackling, the little nightlight in the half-bath glowing, and the dragon’s haunting screams gradually dwindling.
That’s when Lucius returns.
By now, I’ve praised and admired Neo’s sexy pierced ear, salivated over the yummy details he provided about that pornfest between him and the Goblin King that went down before I went off with my dragon… I mean,thedragon… and whispered to Neo by firelight the whole story of everything he’s missed with Maxim.
My sweet bookworm is intrigued by the unique peen aspect in particular and has asked many questions.
He’s never judged me, not ever, and my fated mate seems to think it’s perfectly understandable that I refuse to risk losing control of my own body for the sake of some wild bout of dragon sex. He especially appreciates that I refuse to do it without all the guys involved (or at least consulted) first.
Possibly not even then.
Because Maxim is… a lot.
He’s a lot to wrap my head around.
