Page 48 of Kidnapped By The Messy Dragon

He comes instantly, deep inside me, a shout tearing out of him. He doesn’t push me away. He pulls me closer, holds me tight against his body, and keeps me moving on him in a slow roll, moaning into me.

His blood spills warm over my tongue, and it’s nothing like blood. It’s sweet. It tastes like his scent, smoke and honey, and every swallow spreads through my whole body like the first sip of something I’ve been thirsty for my entire life.

“Yes, baby,” he breathes. “Yes. I’m yours. Take what you need from me.”

I do. I come on his dick again with my teeth still in him, and he collapses back onto the bed and lets out the softest sound, and I ride him and drink until I finally feel full.

I lick the bite clean with long passes, and the wound is already closing under my tongue.

I sit up on him. He looks up at me, weak, wrecked, and shining, and runs one hand up between my breasts.

“Zuri.” It’s the most peaceful I’ve ever seen his face.

Then my eyes roll back. The room tips sideways and goes small, and the last thing I hear is my name in his mouth again.

Everything goes dark.

19

JALEN

Morning sun is in the room, and I run a fast inventory before I move one muscle. For the first time in a week, my nose doesn’t itch. There’s no burn at the root of it and no smoke waiting behind my eyes. Shelly’s tea gets some of the credit. I have a theory about the rest.

Zuri is knocked out cold on my chest, and she’s snoring. It’s not a cute sound. She snores like she means it, deep and steady against me, and I lie still so it keeps going. I’d burn the world down to hear this sound every morning for the rest of my life.

She scared me last night. She went out like a blown lamp with my name still half-finished in her mouth, and I spent the first stretch of the dark listening to her heartbeat and rehearsing what I’d say to Dr. Ayanna if it stuttered. It never did. She slid from passed-out into plain sleep somewhere in the small hours, and only then did I let my own eyes close.

The bite on my neck sits warm where she left it. I can’t quit touching it. Out of everything in my hoard, it’s the finest thing I own.

And her scent has changed. The burnt caramel is still all hers, but there’s smoke braided through it now, and the smoke is mine. She smells like the two of us. I keep pulling it in.

She stirs against me, and I smile at my ceiling. She has no idea what she gave me last night. Dragons wait whole lifetimes for what she did on night one, and half of us never get it. I plan to spend the rest of her life making sure I never take it for granted.

I put a gentle hand on her back and rub slow circles into it.

My dragon is beside himself with joy. He has also already moved on to the next order of business. He wants us planning for hatchlings.

I roll my eyes at that, because of course he does. My dragon can’t just lie here and enjoy the woman. He wants her pregnant by lunch.

What I’m not ready for is the size of my own joy, and it’s not even breakfast.

Her snores taper off. She shifts against me, and her eyes finally come open. She lifts her head off my chest to look at me, and I watch last night arrive in her face by degrees.

My blood has dried on her, a dark stain across her lips and down her chin. Her hair has gone every direction there is, and it’s a beautiful wild. She has never looked better to me, and I’m counting the day I met her.

“Hi, baby,” I say.

She gives me a sleepy smile. Then the rest of last night catches up to her, and her eyes go wide.

I knew this was coming. She’s human, and no one ever taught her what the mate bond is. I just hoped for a little more of the snoring first.

She sits up in a rush, rubbing at her face, and her hand comes away with flakes of dried blood on it. Then she sees the smear of it across my sheets, and her scent goes sharp with panic.

I sit up with her. “It’s okay, baby. Calm down.”

She looks at my neck, right where her bite healed over in the night, raised and catching the morning light. “I bit you.”

“It’s perfect,” I tell her, and I mean every letter of it. “I’m thinking about getting my collars cut lower.”