STORY EXCERPT

The guy had been staring at Blaze for the better half of an hour, all huddled up in his oversized coat. Winter was coming, but Jesus, it wasn’t that cold out.

Either way, Blaze was stunned the man had pulled together the confidence to walk up to him.

He was cute and everything, and he might look even better if he didn’t have that exhausted air about him, but he still walked over to Blaze’s stool.

“Hi.”

Blaze nodded and smiled. “Hi.”

His first thought was that it would only be appropriate if he were polite when he turned the man down.

Except, now that they were sitting so close to each other, the smell of the man got to Blaze in a way he never in his life would have seen coming.

He smelled good. Better than good. He smelled like something familiar, something Blaze needed to get naked and put his cock inside.

Right now.

“Do you…recognize me at all?”

Blaze frowned, yanked out of his thoughts by the question. “I think I’d remember if I’d met someone as cute as you.”

He reached out and touched the man’s arm, just wanting a quick feel to know what it was that was drawing him to this man.

The sudden heat brought on by that small touch made the hairs on Blaze’s arm stand straight.

It’s him! It’s him!

His instincts called to him, called to Blaze to recognize that this was someone he’d been missing for a long time.

Someone important.

Blaze cocked his head to the side a little. “Who are you?”

He had to know. Blaze leaned in a little, inhaling slowly through his nose without making it look as though that was exactly what he was doing.

So familiar. This man smelled so familiar.

Could he have met this person before and just not remembered it? But with a smell like that, and a feeling like the one pulsing through his body right now, how was something like that possible?

The young man nodded. He reached his hand up and threaded his fingers through his hair. It was thick and kind of messy, a dark chestnut hair. The color of deep earth or, dare he even think it, chocolate.

“Um, you’re not going to believe any of this, and I don’t blame you if you don’t. It’s kind of stupid and makes no sense anyway.”

“Try me.”

Blaze went for the seductive mood with that one. He let his hand slide into the young man’s. The touch of their palms brought a flash of something into Blaze’s brain. Of want. Of a scenario he wanted to do to his guy.

Drag him into the restroom, lock the door, and fuck him against the wall.

He wanted to hear the sweet moans that would come from this man’s mouth, wanted to know what that mouth tasted like as he turned his head back and pulled Blaze into him.

Wanted to hear him tell Blaze how much more he wanted.

“My name is Zack.”

Blaze blinked, letting that name settle into his mind as he looked the man over.

“You look like a Zack.

Not even that he looked like a Zack. The name suited him so much that, if Zack hadn’t already introduced himself, Blaze was sure he could have spat the man’s name out on his own without any prompting.

Zack ducked his head again, and Blaze could no longer play around with the idea of being inside him.

Well, he could, but there was something else going on here that needed his immediate attention.

Blaze began to quickly look around the bar, searching for the source of this man’s negative emotions, the reason for him to be timid, so that Blaze could potentially beat the shit out of it.

He saw nothing. Back at the booth where Zack had been sitting, there was still no one. No one else in the bar paid Blaze the time of day now that it appeared as though he had a partner to deal with, and the dancers continued to dance and the drinkers continued to drink.

Something wasn’t right here, and now Blaze was left with the sickening feeling that Zack wasn’t being entirely honest with him. “Who are you? Really?”

Zack sucked back a deep breath, glanced around as though in fear, and looked back at Blaze.

“Can we talk somewhere alone?”

“Not a chance. You tell me right now. Who are you?”

He gripped Zack’s arm tighter this time, not simply to feel the man’s flesh, bones, and warmth beneath the coat, but to keep him from running if it came to that.

“Who are you? I won’t ask again.”

If Blaze had been an animal shifter instead of a dragon, his hackles might have risen in that moment. He didn’t need hackles. It was clear that Zack could tell the new threat he should fear was in front of him by the widening of those amber eyes.

“I…I’m your mate. I’m your mate, and someone’s after me.”

ADULT EXCERPT

Zack reached for Blaze’s cock. His hand was warm as he wrapped his fingers around the shaft.

Blaze gasped.

“I missed this, too.”

Zack smiled innocently at him, as if this was something they did all the time, instead of the first time.

Or even the third time, if his claims were to be believed.

Having a mate was supposed to bring about that sense of familiarity on the double, so Blaze supposed it only made sense for the other man to behave as though he was used to this already.

Blaze composed himself quickly. He reached down, taking the man by the hand and tightening his grip.

“Do it like this.” Blaze forced Zack’s hand to move, to stroke and to twist when his palm reached the base.

Zack’s eyes widened. He was no longer in control, and he nodded.

“Like this?”

He moved with a bit more confidence, as though he was paying special attention to what Blaze wanted him to do.

So he could please Blaze.

Blaze wasn’t going to look too deeply into that. He released Zack’s hand, allowing the man to do what he wished with him.

Blaze leaned over Zack, and though his mouth looked tempting, it wasn’t to kiss him.

Later. He would bite down on that full bottom lip later.

He reached for both of his pillows, yanking them down.

“Lift your hips.”

Zack did as he was told, which, unfortunately, had the nasty side effect of having his hand removed from the beautiful work it had been doing.

Blaze put those pillows beneath Zack’s waist in a damned hurry, propping the man’s ass up. He reached to the side of his bed. He kept a tiny bottle of lubricant beneath the mattress. Travel sized for easy hiding.

Zack watched his hands work, and all the while, Zack’s fingers didn’t seem capable of remaining idle. He stroked Blaze’s chest and pinched at his nipples while Blaze poured the slick into his hand.

“I haven’t been with anyone else since the spell. I want you to know that. It’s only been you.”

Blaze ignored the tightening in his gut.

He wasn’t going to think about that. It shouldn’t matter to him whether or not Zack had other lovers before since Blaze couldn’t even remember when they were last together.

“Do you believe me?”

Blaze cleared his throat. “Yeah. Yeah, I believe you.”

Zack pressed his lips together, as if he wanted to say something, but Blaze beat him to it as he pressed his slippery fingertips against the man’s hole. He didn’t push inside. He just circled the star-shaped pucker and let Zack feel it.

Zack sure as hell felt it if the way his eyes slid shut and his head fell back was anything to go by.

“God,” he sighed, and Blaze was overcome with a sense of pride unlike anything he’d ever felt before in his entire life.

This felt…pretty damned good. His dick throbbed as it pointed up at him, touching his belly, as though with each heartbeat it yelled at him to hurry up and get on with it, but there was also pleasure to be had with just doing this.

Pleasing the man beneath him was bringing Blaze a sense of gratification he wasn’t used to. Normally, with any of his partners, he just fucked them. Maybe he called them again, but he never brought any of them home and he sure as hell never treated any of them as a potential mate.

Not potential. There is nothing potential about it.

He wanted to tell that stupid little voice in the back of his head to shut up again, but talking to himself in front of other people tended to be bad form.

He pushed his fingers inside. The clench was intense, the heat more so.

And Zack’s eyes slide to half-mast, his lips parting in a heavy sigh. He looked up at Blaze with such lust and want in his eyes.

No one had ever looked at Blaze that way before. He’d been looked at with lust, with fear, and with both, but never…whatever this was.

“That feels good,” Zack said, unaware of Blaze’s inner turmoil, but his words were enough to snap him out of his haze.

Blaze pushed his fingers deeper. He scissored, them, stretching Zack’s inner walls, his hole, touching everywhere that he could reach before moving deeper still.

Blaze’s hand moved as though he’d already done this once before, as though muscle memory was taking over and he knew exactly where he was needed the most.

He hooked his fingers, changed the angle, and within the scorching heat of Zack’s body, he finally found what he’d been searching for, and Zack’s spine bowed, his enlarged stomach pushing up high as his cock spurted. Pearly white cum shot onto his belly, some of it catching Blaze on his stomach and chest as well as Zack jerked and undulated beneath him.

The man reached down for his cock, but he could barely get a proper grip of it with his stomach in the way, and he groaned.

Blaze wordlessly pushed his hand out of the way and stroked him, finishing him off while he continued to finger fuck him.

Zack mewled through the pleasure, and when he looked at Blaze with that red face and those lusty eyes, he couldn’t put himself off anymore.

Blaze grabbed the man’s hips and pulled them against his pelvis. He took his cock in hand, sliding the head against Zack’s crease.

“Oh fuck, oh fuck,” Zack said, his hands coming up and gripping into his hair just before Blaze penetrated him.