Page 25 of Dragon Fight

“I don’t want to just survive,” I told him, pressing a kiss to his sharp cheekbone. “I want to thrive.”

He let out an animalistic growl, that was echoed by Glacier’s roar beyond the walls of the great house. Then Flynn dragged me closer.

16

Igiggled as I was pulled to the edge of the bed where Flynn fell on me like a wolf. Earlier, he’d seemed content to wait his turn, but it was obvious his patience had run out. He pressed his mouth hard against mine to force my lips open and thrust his tongue in. His kisses were hard and bruising, as if he couldn’t get enough of me. I’d felt thoroughly sated moments before. But now my hands grabbed at his head and I met his lips and tongue, stroke for stroke, just as desperate as he was. When I gripped his hair tight, caught up in my hunger for him, he let out a groan, which reverberated throughout my body. Before I was ready, he pulled away, his eyes glittering with a dangerous light as he kissed his way down my body.

“I’ve never really envied another man before. Some have things, traits I’d like to have, but I have enough awareness to know I was born into a better position than most. While my brother will be duke after my father, I never wanted that—the responsibility, the weight of so many lives depending on your decisions. My other brother is a swordsman of some repute, making him legendary within our social circles, but I can defend myself adequately. Justin made sure of that. Money, wealth, position, beautiful women, other men have had more of them than me, but…”

He pulled away from my stomach, the skin still sensitive from where he had been punctuating each sentence with kisses and then looked up the line of my body at Brom.

“…I am fucking green with envy that you get to touch, kiss, hold our girl in front of the world.”

“Now, lad—” Soren started to say.

“No, don’t.” He shook his head sharply. “It’s not going to cause a rift and I won’t be the one to damage morale, but… it has to be said. You’re a lucky fucking bastard—”

“I know,” Brom replied.

“No, you don’t,” Flynn insisted, rubbing his hand possessively back and forth across my stomach, his every touch making me shiver. “You don’t know what it’s like to hold all of this back every fucking day and—”

“Flynn.” I turned his head towards me, forcing him to stare into my eyes, not Brom’s, to bring him back to me. “You need more?”

“Gods, yes, Pippin. I want to shout to the rooftops everything we have. I want to walk the streets with your hand in mine, meeting the eyes of every man that walks past, smug that I have you on my arm and they don’t.”

I laughed self-deprecatingly at that. “I’m not sure the rest of the men of Nevermere are as desperate to be seen with a disreputable minor noblewoman with hair shorter than a boy’s.”

He shook his head as he looked down at me.

“I know that your step-mother would’ve gloated, if she’d had the chance, that you had to cut off all your hair.” He reached over and smoothed his hand through my short hair, then smiled at me. Whenever he smiled it always felt like the room lit up. “She worked so fucking hard to break you down, to try to make you ugly…” He moved closer, so his body hung over mine and I couldn’t do anything but stare up at him. “And that’s why she was so damn vicious, because she was never going to be successful. No one can take that away from you, Pippin. Everything you are is beautiful to me.”

My gaze flicked back and forth between his eyes, trying to make sense of his words. I couldn’t formulate a response because somehow the desperate heat of mutual desire had been replaced by a moment of perfect crystalline quietude. And I realised that I truly saw Flynn and Flynn truly saw me. I wasn’t sure if I agreed with him, but the intensity with which he asserted his opinion humbled me. I reached up and stroked his face before declaring myself to him.

“Don’t you think I feel the same?”

The others clustered closer as my voice cracked. I rubbed my thumb against Flynn’s cheekbone, then looked around me at my other men. “When I see any of you, I want to touch you and when I touch you, I want so much more. It’s like the way I felt the night of Zafira’s heat, but so much worse. Then, it was just a sexual need that burned into me, but now…”

My throat hurt with the effort I was putting in to get through what I needed to. My voice was broken and raspy, but I forced myself on.

“I feel the need to have sex with you, all of you, near constantly, but that’s not the beginning nor the end of it.”

I reached out a hand blindly and someone took it, a pulse of warm reassurance washing through me at their touch. My other hand went to Flynn’s chest, my palm resting on his heart and his covered mine.

“If we weren’t Royal Riders, we could hole up on my estate. The local nobles would be quietly horrified at our living arrangements, but we’d be able to live quietly, peacefully, away from society and its harsh eye. I could reach for any and all of you and you could reach for me with impunity. We could spend the sun-drenched days of summer together, and cuddle up in front of the fire in the winter, and there would be no one to say no to us.”

I sucked in a breath but it hurt to take it; my chest was too stiff, too tight.

“Know that I hate this too, that it goes against the very fibre of my being to deny what we have to the world. Because inside…”

I dropped my hand, clawing at the skin above my own heart, squeezing my eyes shut tight as I found myself unable to say exactly what I meant. Flynn grabbed my hand and pressed a kiss to my knuckles. My eyelids fluttered open and I looked deep into his eyes.

“I think I just needed to hear that,” he told me, his smile softening. “I needed to know it was killing you as much as it was killing me.”

“Killing all of us,” Ged corrected, with a shake of his head. “You upper class nobs are used to all this stiff upper lip bullshit, but not me. Where I grew up, if you liked someone, you told them. And if they liked you back? Well, your dad went to arrange something with her dad, and then that was it. It didn’t happen often, but sometimes people built relationships with more than one woman or more than one man.” He shrugged. “It’d keep tongues wagging for a week or so until someone else did something of note, but that was it. Trying to keep a handle on all these rules and regulations that we simplymustfollow makes my head hurt.” He drew closer and looked down at me. “As well as my heart.”

I reached over and stroked his face with my hand, and he closed his eyes and leant into my touch.

“We’ll have to work hard at this.” Soren’s voice was gruff, his brows pulled down. “It’ll take near surgical precision to carry off.” He stared down each man, daring them to argue. “None of us can make anyone in the keep cast doubt on the nature of Brom’s marriage. We’ll need to be vigilant in ways we’ve never had to before.”

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