Page 23 of Dragon Fight

“Do you know anything about the love that can occur between men?” Brom asked me, in a very careful tone of voice.

“A little,” I replied. “There were two men in our village who were a couple. Most people thought they were two bachelors who’d decided to live together, but they had confessed the nature of their relationship to my father, as their landlord, and he gave them his blessing.”

“Then my father and Jonathon have a very similar relationship to that couple,” he replied, with a small sigh. “One that preceded my mother. Arranged marriages are as common a thing in Harlston as I imagine they are in Skane.” I nodded slowly. “My grandfather married my father off to my mother because of her dowry and because he thought her beautiful enough to turn my father’s head away from Jonathon, who was just a footman then.” His lips thinned. “She wasn’t. Father did his duty and impregnated her with me.”

I winced at the word, for it sounded as clinical as when the stable men discussed about which stallion to put with which mare.

“But once he had provided the estate with an heir, he was done with that. Father cares for my mother on some level, but…” he shrugged.

“That must’ve put the cat among the pigeons when you bonded with Obsidian, then,” Flynn remarked.

“My cousin Charles is quite insufferable now,” Brom said, turning to Flynn and shaking his head. “You’ll see him in action when he comes to visit with his family, acting like he’s already Lord Emberly.” He returned his attention to me, moving closer, though he didn’t pull me away from Ged. Instead, he reached out to trace his fingers along my jaw as his wing mate held me, hands still on my breasts. “But my father’s relationship has little to do with what goes on in here. You could’ve died today or been permanently injured. You endured more pain than I can ever be comfortable with.”

His hand moved more slowly, heading towards my lips, fingertips just brushing against my skin and bringing my nerve endings alive.

“It’s a primitive human instinct, to want to take, to want to stake your claim on that which you love when you’ve survived a great catastrophe unharmed, but while your body might be whole…” His fingers outlined the shape of my lips, following them even as I parted them to take a panted breath. “You may need more rest, more time—”

I pulled my hands from Ged’s grasp and gripped Brom’s wrist as though the action would stop him from saying anything more in that vein. The desire to reach out and take was building a fire in me, and it burned hotter as I bent forward and sucked the tip of his finger into my mouth, flicking my tongue around it in the way Soren had taught me back on the beach that day.

“I just need more of my men,” I told him, hearing an echo of my dragon’s imperious tone in my voice. “Give me that.”

15

Part of me idly wondered if this was akin to how Soren felt, this sort of gratification at issuing commands and having them responded to. As I issued my order, each man stepped to, removing clothing with startling speed. Despite being granted such a feast for the eyes, I kept my attention on one man in particular. I felt the caresses of each man as their hands passed over me, my skin tingling each time I was touched, but I reached out for only one man: Brom.

He was mine, and my hand landed on his bare chest in an act of claiming. His eyes followed my every move as I trailed my fingers across the warm, muscled expanse, his own hands stilling as he stopped midway through the process of undoing his leather pants. I brushed his hands aside, taking over the task myself, pushing them down his lean hips until I was confronted by his desire for me. I left his pants bunched around his ankles as I took his cock in my hand.

“Pippin…” Part moan, part protest as my fingers spanned his broad shaft, swirling up to feel him achingly hard for me. “Pippin…!” My thumb brushed across the head, sliding easily through the slippery spill of his precum, and I knew exactly what I wanted. I dropped my hand and looked him in the eye.

“Get on the bed.”

“Pippin, wait. We need—” Brom started to say, but the others drew closer.

“Our girl gave you an order, Wing Commander,” Ged said with a mocking smile. “Wouldn’t want Soren to have to assign you laps around the training room in punishment for insubordination.”

Brom raised an eyebrow, but shrugged and got on the bed, tugging his boots and his pants off. I yanked free the rest of my clothes, then, once he was lying down in all his naked glory, I followed him onto the bed.

This felt right, with the five of us stripped of all that symbolised rank, station or pretensions. None of us were pretending to be anything other than what we were. A wing of riders. A pack of lovers.

“Pippin, perhaps we should… Ohfuck!”

I straddled him with all the ease that I now had when I sat astride a dragon, and when I lowered myself, I found I didn’t need any preliminaries. I was hot and wet already; I was alive and I needed to celebrate that. The curse he made as I guided his cock inside me, the way the cords in his neck stood out and his hands clawed the sheets as I worked him deeper and deeper, I liked all of that very much. The process was harder than it had been on any of my previous times, because this time I hadn’t been tended to beforehand, but for some reason I wanted this fight. To push back against my body’s constraints, to reclaim it for me, for our pleasure. It made me aware of his cock in a way I hadn’t before, because I had absolutely nothing to distract myself from it. So I knew exactly when he reached bottom. And so did Brom. Rolling up from his waist to meet me, he enfolded me in his arms and held me flush against him, very still, while he gazed into my eyes.

“Stay there,” he begged. “Just like that, just for a moment.”

I couldn’t deny him anything, so I did as he asked, reaching up to smooth my hand across his cheek as the others drew closer. I felt a pang of pain, then, for Kay, that she would never have this. And even for Bernard, forced into a marriage when the only person he felt this kind of passion for was of the ‘wrong’ gender and station. One of them would never be stared at like she was the other person’s whole world, and the other snatched moments like this with his lover in secret. But I wouldn’t be relegated to living out either of those existences. I knew I was the centre of Brom’s entire focus, and that his whole heart lay in my hand as we stared at each other.

“She feels too good,” Ged observed, coming closer and stealing a kiss from me before turning to Brom. “I’m well known for my stamina, but it was all destroyed the moment I was with Pippin. Too hot, too tight, too wet.”

“Gods, yes,” Brom groaned.

He pressed his forehead to mine, then slipped his hands down to squeeze my hips. After a moment, he adjusted his grip so that he could shift them, encouraging me to move. As he did, my other lovers drew closer. Ged slid behind me, against my back, his mouth burning a trail down my neck as his big hands covered my breasts.

“You’ve rushed things,” Soren scolded me. “You’ve no hope of reaching your peak without this.”

His hand slid between Brom and I, working my pearl back and forth, but I knew I didn’t need it. I kissed him, kissed Flynn, then kissed Brom as we began to move faster, my hips rising and falling as they had in the saddle. Every time I dropped down, Brom worked his way deeper and deeper into me, but I craved the intrusion and the intensity.

“Brom…”

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