His black eyes narrowed on me as he, too, knelt between my legs. “You were comparing me to him, weren’t you?”
“Of course I wasn’t! What gave you that idea?”
“I saw you looking at my rod. You looked at it, and then looked at his. You were making comparisons!”
“He is you,” I said, pointing at the other Baltic.
“The fact remains that you were judging my rod against his.”
“I was not!” He stared at me. I stared back at him. After about five seconds, I added, “Besides, it doesn’t matter. You’re bigger now.”
“Aha! I knew it!”
“Look, you’re making a big fuss over nothing,” I said, gesturing toward the other couple. I glanced at them as I spoke, but the words dried up on my lips, and my eyes bugged out when Ysolde, lying next to me, groaned and clutched the sheets, her head thrashing from side to side as Baltic pleasured her with his mouth and hands. My mouth hung open as I blinked at the sight. It was so wrong to watch such an intimate moment between two people—but those two people were us. That was me having an orgasm that caused me to arch up off the bed, calling Baltic’s name. “By the rood,” I managed to get out as I watched.
Baltic smiled smugly. “You always were fast to please.”
“By the rood!” I repeated as the other version of him crawled up her body, licking her with both his tongue and dragon fire. She growled, twining her legs around him as he eased himself into her warmth, her hands clutching his butt and pulling him tighter.
“Ysolde,” Baltic said.
“By the rood!” I yelled as Ysolde arched again, her hips jerking upward. Her Baltic murmured something in her ear, pulling out just long enough to move his arms under her legs so that they rested on his shoulders, angling her pelvis for maximum penetration. “Can you do that to me, please? Like right now?”
He sat on his heels, frowning. “I do not like the fact that the sight of others making love excites you so much, chérie. You should be focused on me only.”
“I am focused on you. Holy—is he doing what I think he’s doing?”
“You wished to have a child,” Baltic said, not paying the least bit of attention as his other self crammed a couple of pillows beneath Ysolde’s behind, on his knees as he thrust into her with hard, fast movements. “I was simply trying to help you conceive.”
I blinked, unable to look away until Baltic bit my ankle. “Mate, I am the one you should be staring at with that look of lust and desire and besotted fascination!”
“Jealous?” I asked him, trying to look at both Baltics at once. It wasn’t easy.
“That would be foolish—” Even he stopped to look as the other version of us, with cries that were unmistakable for anything but those of completion, fell off the side of the bed.
“I knocked myself out for a few minutes by hitting my head on the floor,” Baltic commented as I peered over at them.
Sure enough, Ysolde was on the floor, making soft little happy noises, stroking the sweaty back of the man who was still evidently embedded in her, her legs rubbing up and down on his. He didn’t move.
“I hope you weren’t hurt seriously.”
“I wasn’t. Now if your voyeuristic desires have been satisfied, will you please attend to me?”
“Sorry,” I said, scooting back to my spot. Baltic looked peeved now. “But if you could do just what the other Baltic did, minus the falling on the floor and cracking your head, that would be really, really fine with me.”
“It is right that you wish to give me a child since you gave one to the usurper,” he said, approval softening his frown. “But first, I must claim you properly as my mate. Afterward, we will make a child.”
I opened my mouth to tell him that one son was enough for me, but I remembered the pain in his face when he had spoken to my past self of the child we’d lost. “We’ll talk later about adding to the family, all right? At this moment, I really would like you to do something other than frown at me.”
He dipped his head and bathed me in fire.
I screamed and almost came off the bed, my breath caught in my throat as he started pulling off my clothing. As it did before, the fire seemed to dance on my skin, pulsating as it moved up my legs to my stomach.
Baltic pulled off my jeans, sandals, and underwear with a sweep of his hands. I writhed on the bed as the fire swept upward. The corset top seemed to melt off me as Baltic snapped the laces one by one until all that stood between me and his fire was my bra.
“You, too, are bigger,” he said just as his head bent over the valley of my breasts, the bra coming off easily. His breath steamed my flesh, making me yearn for the inferno I knew he could build within me.
“I am not!” I looked down at my breasts. “You really think so?”
“I know it. You were plentiful before. Now you are”—he cupped one breast in his hand, his thumb gently rubbing across my nipple—“very abundant.”
“Fire,” I begged, squirming against him as his tongue flicked out over my now-aching breast.
“You must learn to use your own fire,” he chastised, taking my breast into his mouth. I moaned and grabbed great handfuls of the sheets just as the past Ysolde had done, my breasts thrusting upward.
“Fire!” I ordered, and writhed happily when he chuckled and said, “So demanding. That, too, has not changed,” before allowing his dragon fire to pour out of him and wrap itself around me. It burned, but it did not harm me. It warmed, but it was nothing compared to the inferno blazing within. It teased my flesh, but only Baltic’s touches, soft caresses with his mouth and fingers, made me feel like I was one continuous erogenous zone.
“Embrace the fire, chérie,” he mumbled into my breastbone as he slid lower, kissing and burning a path down to my stomach. “Claim it as your own. Use it. Shape it. Make it be what you want it to be.”
I wanted to. Oh, how I wanted to, but I couldn’t focus my thoughts on anything but the magic of him as he slid even lower, nipping at my hips with sharp teeth, soothed by long, slow strokes of his tongue.
“Accept the fire, my love.”
“I . . . I can’t,” I said as he nudged my knees apart.
“You can. You are my mate. You are a light dragon. Accept it.” Heat poured over me as he sent his dragon fire up my body again, the flames licking along my skin before sinking deep into me. His hands swept up my thighs, pushing them wider, his mouth hot on the sensitive inner flesh as he kissed a fiery path to my very core.
“I don’t think it’s possible,” I said, a fever of need and want and desire all mingled together, causing a pressure within me to push higher and higher.
“It is. You must try, Ysolde. Give the fire back to me.” I moaned again at the feeling of his mouth as he breathed fire on the most sensitive of flesh, gasping when he sank a finger into me. “Use it, mate. Use the fire.”
A long, low cry tore from my throat as the pressure continued to build, fueled by both his fire and the passion he was triggering with every flick of his tongue.
“Now!” he demanded, and my body trembled on the brink of something so profound, I couldn’t begin to understand it. The pressure inside me gave with a rush as the fire that I had absorbed roared to life, pouring out of me to consume him.
He made a noise deep in his chest, part growl, part mating sound that my heart recognized and answered. My body wasn’t just alight—I was the flame. Baltic suddenly reached underneath me, flipping me over onto my stomach, the arm beneath my belly pulling me upward as he covered my back.
“Mate,” he growled, his body hard and aggressive on mine. I arched again, unable to keep from moaning with sheer, utter ecstasy as he thrust into my body, his penis a brand that only drove the pressure inside me to the point where I knew I was going to explode.
The feeling of him within me, of my muscles trembling around him, was enough to push me over the edge. I spiraled into an orgasm unlike anything I thought possible, my soul merging with his as he joined me in a moment of abs
olute rapture.
My legs gave out and I collapsed onto the bed as he roared one word, his hands beside my hips as he continued to pound into me with short, fast thrusts until at last he, too, collapsed.
I tried to make sense of what had happened, but my brain gave a little whimper and told me I was on my own. I lay shaking with the sense of power that our joining had brought, Baltic’s heavy body pressing me into the soft mattress.
“Did we die again?” I asked when I recovered enough ability to move my mouth.
A soft, rusty chuckle sounded in my ear. “No, but it was a close thing.”
“Dear god,” I said as, pulling me with him, he rolled onto his back. “Was it always like that? Because I’m serious, Baltic—I don’t know if my heart can stand that every night. I’ll have to take up an aerobics class, and I hate that sort of thing.”
“It has always been and will always be thus between us,” he said, moving my limp body so I lay draped over his chest, one of my legs caught between his. “You will learn to adjust to the more strenuous dragon matings, just as you learned to harness your fire.”
“That wasn’t my fire. It was yours. I just used it,” I said, too drained to do more than smooth my hand over his still-heaving chest.
“It was both.”
Next to us, a body hit the bed.
I glanced over, smiling as the past Ysolde dabbed tenderly at a spot of blood on her Baltic’s forehead. He tolerated that for a moment, then pulled her over him, catching one of her breasts in his mouth. “Goodness. You appear to have had a lot of stamina then.”
He didn’t even look, just smiled, his eyelashes thick sable crescents as he lay with his eyes closed. “Give me five minutes, and I will show you that I have improved in that way, as well.”
“You might have improved, but I think another round would be the end of me,” I commented, unable to keep from watching when Ysolde impaled herself on the past Baltic. “You know, it’s really too bad we can’t interact with them.”
He cracked open one eye and looked at me. “Why?”
I gestured to where his previous self bucked, Ysolde riding him as if he were an unbroken stallion, and pursed my lips a little. “Well, if we could, you and the other Baltic could . . . you know . . .”
The look he shot me was so outraged I giggled. He slapped my behind, then rubbed away the sting before closing his eyes. “Many people have told me to go fuck myself, but I never expected my mate to actually suggest that I do it.”
I giggled even more, kissing the pulse in his neck, my body and heart and soul happier than they had ever been.
Chapter Fifteen
My suggestion was, I thought, extremely acceptable. “How about Strand Palace Hotel? It has conference capabilities, and their big business suite is available tomorrow.”
“Are you kidding? After what happened the last time Baltic came to a sárkány in a hotel?” Aisling’s voice was filled with scorn. “I don’t think so!”
“Why, what happened?”
“He tried to shoot everyone present!”
“Oh, that. One moment, please.” I covered the mouthpiece of the phone and turned to where Baltic stood glaring at me. “Did you really go to a sárkány recently and shoot the participants?”
“Yes.” The answer was given in a grumpy tone, which, given the look on his face, was no surprise.
I took a deep breath. “You do realize how difficult it is to get the wyverns to agree to meet you on neutral ground so we can talk about things, don’t you?”
“What the weyr does or thinks is none of our concern. We are outside of them. They do not matter to us.”
“They matter to me,” I said.
He continued to glare. “Not as much as I matter to you.”
“Of course not, and stop being so insecure. I’ve loved you for over four hundred years. I think you can relax.”
“The other you loved me. This you . . .” He raked me up and down with a wary gaze. “This you is different. You have unnatural desires. My old Ysolde would never have left me to try to position herself between two lovers.”
“I didn’t try anything of the sort! I just moved off you and happened to roll exactly where the old version of us was going at it. Again. For a third time in the space of an hour.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “You only managed once.”
His eyes blazed black fire at me. “I told you to give me five minutes and I would recover enough to pleasure you again! You are the one who stopped me. You did not wish for me to start again!”
“Regardless, I did not deliberately roll under the other you and get my jollies from him pounding away. Although I really liked the looks of that little swirl thing he was doing. Do you think we could—” A faint voice in my ear reminded me that I was on the phone. Evidently, my hand had slipped off the mouthpiece.
“—arguing with him. No, not about meeting us, about sex, I think. Evidently he only did things once and she wanted three times. And it sounds like there may have been another couple involved.”
“Um,” I said, giving Baltic a glare of my own. “I’m sorry you had to overhear that, Aisling. Baltic drives me a little batty sometimes.”
“Only sometimes?” she asked; at the same time he snorted and said, “It is your bizarre fantasies that make me insane.”
“My fantasies are not the least bit bizarre!” I said loudly.
“No, of course not,” Aisling said, laughter in her voice. “Although I have to say, you’re the last person I had pegged for a swinger.”
I took another deep, deep breath, and managed to hold on to my temper. “All right, a hotel is out.”
“Yes. Our house is big enough if we open up the downstairs to make one big room.”
I glanced at where Baltic was now pacing beside me, his hands behind his back. He glared at the floor as if it personally offended him.
“I think we’re going to have some objections to the neutrality of that location. How about Hyde Park? That’s large.”
“Too public,” Aisling said. “And too many portals there. If the dragons start fighting, things can happen, and I’m not back to full Guardian duties yet. What we need is something private, yet roomy.”
“How about Baltic’s house, the one with the garden?” I asked, my spirits lifting just thinking about it.
He raised his eyebrows at the suggestion, looking strangely thoughtful.
“Let me check.” Muffled voices followed that, too muffled for me to make out. “An objection has been raised for that location, as well. It’s been pointed out that you could escape to the beyond there.”
I sighed. “Tell May hello.”
“She says hello,” Aisling duly repeated. “May wants to know if they should bring Brom’s and your things, or if you’ll be picking them up?”
“If it’s not too much trouble, that would be lovely. I guess that leaves us with only one solution.”
“What’s that?”
I kept my eyes on Baltic as I spoke. “You’ll just have to come here. Baltic’s house isn’t huge, but there are ample grounds, and I think everyone would feel better if we held the sárkány out in the open.”
“No!” Baltic bellowed, whirling around to face me. “You would bring my enemies here?”
“They wouldn’t be your enemies if you stopped shooting at them!” I pointed out.
“And blowing up their houses,” Aisling said. “And trying to steal their mates.”
“Yes, and blowing up their houses, and . . . what was that?”
“Stealing their mates. Didn’t May tell you? May, didn’t you tell her that Baltic was trying to steal you with the shard?”
“Gargh!” I yelled, and for the first time, I felt Baltic’s fire raging within me of its own accord.
“Oops. I take that as a no,” Aisling said softly. “Oh dear. I think I set Ysolde off—”
“You tried to take May?” I yelled, clutching the phone so tightly, my knuckles were white. The pressure built within me, and I spat out a fir
eball the size of a grapefruit that slammed against his chest, rocking him backwards. “You tried to claim another mate?”
Baltic looked stunned for a moment, then worried. He absorbed the fire, his hands spread in placation. “Chérie, it wasn’t like that at all—”
“Don’t you chérie me, you scaly-skinned monster! You wanted May! You never really wanted me, did you? I was dead, so you looked around for the first piece of dragon ass you could find, and you tried to take her!”
“I wanted the shard, yes. I wanted it so that the dragon heart could be re-formed. I never really wanted the silver mate—”
“Then why did you try to take her?” I spat out another fireball, this one a little larger. He caught it before it could slam into him, extinguishing it as he slowly came forward, hesitantly, as if I were a dangerous animal.
I narrowed my eyes and wished I could switch into dragon form.
“My intention was to remove her from the silver wyvern, not to claim her for my own mate. He should never have had a mate in the first place.”
“Oh, really? Why not?”
He looked disconcerted and waved away the question. “That is a matter for another discussion.”
“I don’t think so!” I held the phone back up to my ear. “Aisling, are you still there?”
“Er . . . yes. Ysolde, I’m sorry, I had no idea that you didn’t know about—”
“Why shouldn’t Gabriel have a mate?” I asked, ruthlessly interrupting her.
“Ysolde, you will not question others when I am here to answer anything you wish to know,” Baltic said arrogantly, but I shot a bigger fireball at him, one that knocked him back a couple of feet, onto the couch. He dropped the arrogance and went straight for seduction. “My love, you distress yourself unduly over a minor incident.”
“He cursed them to never have a mate born to them,” Aisling said succinctly.
“Please hold. A curse, Baltic?” I asked, wrapping my fingers across the mouthpiece again.
“You were dead! Constantine killed you! That damned Kostya was trying to hack off my head! I had to curse someone, and Constantine ripped my life from me by killing you. Of course I cursed them!”