STORY EXCERPT

A strange swish kept him from curling around the pillow and humping it like a dog marking territory.

Heat crept along his cheeks. He peeled back his eyelids and stared at the dark wall directly in front of him. His flesh tingled along his naked back.

“You’re awake.”

Tallis swallowed down a whimper. He’d heard that same deep, velvety voice so many times since the fight in the forest. It belonged to a man that left him yearning for more than talk. The fierce onslaught of need was almost as crippling as the serum he’d suffered through again.

Slowly, trying to keep his wits about him, Tallis rolled over. His gaze landed on a tall, solid man with the most beautiful amber eyes. His hair was as jet as the leathers that covered him from throat to toe. The strands shone under the dim lighting. He had a cruel ruggedness about him, an air of “don’t fuck with me if you want to keep your balls” that thickened the air in the room. The gentle slant of his eyes, the enhancing arch of his dark brows, and the hint of whiskers that lined his strong jaw left Tallis breathless.

His heart beat in his throat. The burn along his shaft intensified the moment the man’s nostrils flared and a hunger that matched his own swallowed up his eyes.

The man who came around this bad boy rolled his eyes to the ceiling and motioned leather-man to a chair.

“Good afternoon,” this acquaintance greeted. Tallis spared him a glance before his attention returned to leather-man. He licked his lips and earned a low-resonating growl from his target. “My name is Doryan. I’m the physician on the Dalistine. Zhett brought you on board after you were injected with a neuromuscular control agent. How are you feeling?”

“Good,” Tallis whispered. God, he’d feel so much better if that lovely piece of manliness would help out with his growing—he wiggled against the mattress—problem.

“Wonderful. Do you recall your name?”

“Tallis Hynes.”

Leather-man scowled. “Tallis Castalline. Castalline is your birth name.”

Castalline.  Where had he heard that before?

Tallis finally managed to tear his gaze away from leather-man and look at the doctor as he pulled a penlight from his lab coat pocket. When he turned it on, an ice-blue light spread down the side of the pen and drew a hot path along his body.

“What is that?” Tallis demanded, shoving himself out from under the strange light, smacking his head against the wall. “Why is it hot?”

“I’m scanning your body for potential remnants of the agent.” Doryan patted the bed. “Lie down, son. It’ll take a minute.”

Tallis shook his head, scurrying away from the physician. “I’ve never seen something like that before and I don’t know you.”

“I understand, but I must check your systems to ensure the antidote worked. Your reaction to the injection was”—the man cast leather-man—Zhett—a shaded glance—“worrisome.”

A strangled sound rushed past his lips as his feet hit the floor at the foot of the bed. The doctor blocked his escape.

Zhett crossed the small space to the doctor and forced him aside, only to take his place. Tallis sank back until he stepped into the wall.

“Come to me,” Zhett said. Tallis stared at him, allowing the sound of his low, husky voice to unfurl throughout his body and calm the sparks of anxiety his doctor friend elicited. His feet moved without his consent, but he didn’t care, because they brought him to Zhett, a man who made his mind mush and his flesh tingle. A man who poured fire into his cool blood and who intoxicated his senses.

Tallis didn’t recoil at the man’s airy touch across the bone of his cheek. The faintest sensation of sparks followed the path he drew. His eyelids grew heavy, weighted down with both arousal and comfort. An alien breath coiled up his throat, a combination of hot and cold. It slid along his tongue and a faint plume of foggy vapor filled the immediate space beyond his lips as he exhaled.

“He will not harm you,” Zhett assured, his calming touch slipping down the side of his neck. Tallis fought to hold onto a clear image of the man as he swayed. “Doryan created an antidote when the Bhrykis attacked me a few months ago.”

Zhett pulled his hand away, severing their connection, and unfastened an intricate line of gold clasps along his neck. He tipped his head to the side and tugged the leather down, exposing a scar just above the juncture of his shoulder.

“I didn’t suffer the convulsions like you did, but it was a painful experience nonetheless.” Zhett smoothed up the collar of his suit and fastened the clasps. “The men you encountered in the woods launched an attack on your grandfather. Only by happenstance was I there discussing the final details of this mission with him.”

The mention of a grandfather whipped him right into reality. He stepped back, eyes narrowed, and shook his head. “I don’t have a grandfather. Living, at least.”

Confusion cut across Zhett’s devastatingly handsome face. Those gleaming amber eyes flecked with obsidian shot to Doryan and left Tallis to stare at his sharp profile.

God, he wanted to lick him. Maybe devour him if Zhett didn’t do the devouring first.

ADULT EXCERPT

Zhett’s eyes pulsed with an unseen backlight, but the shape of his pupils stunned him. A vertical slit replaced the circular blackness. Several small, black scales lined his eyes. The man looked downright fierce and starved and passionate all in one. In that instant, Tallis saw the creature in his mind, a magnificent black image of fantasy come reality.

“My dragon,” he whispered, his knees falling open. The scales stretched over Zhett’s temples and Tallis craved to see his mate in his dragon form. When only a short time ago he balked at the idea of dragons, Zhett had made him a believer in his simple and tender deliverance of proof. “I want to see you.”

Zhett tipped his chin up and flicked open each fastening along his neck. “Let yours out, little mate. He’s prowling your mind, waiting for you to open yourself. Let me see him.”

Tallis’s eyes widened as the leather suit fell open behind Zhett’s fast-working fingers. The man was a powerhouse of hard, formed muscle, from the deep cuts of his pecs to the rippling terrain of his abs. Cords of honed muscle created the beautiful geography of his shoulders, his biceps, all the way down to his forearms. Zhett peeled the suit off his wrist.

Tallis gasped and fell flat on his back when Zhett came over him, laying his hips flush to Tallis’s. Those reptilian eyes held him in awe. He reached up and traced a finger along the path of the finer scales around his eyes.

“Let him play, precious,” Zhett coaxed in his riveting husk that honey-coated Tallis’s senses. Tallis moaned, biting his swollen lower lip and arching off the mattress. Zhett teased him with a slow, tight thrust of his hips, sliding their dicks together. Cream had already drenched the inside of Tallis’s pants. Zhett’s lips brushed along his throat. “Accept him.” Another airy brush of heat. “Don’t force him back.”

Zhett was inside his mind. Tallis crooned, absorbing the powerful presence that filled the voids inside him. He did not speak like Cyon and Tae had, but the very essence of his being connecting on this intimate level was beyond words. He guided the entity within him forward, bringing the unseen creature closer and closer to the surface of Tallis’s mind.

“Wear your scales, Tallis. Wear them for me.”

The sensation of hot and cold merged with his skin. The creature Zhett guided broke through the surface, releasing a rush of pure excitement and heightened pleasure.

“Ah, ah. Oh god.” Tallis’s eyes shot open. The clarity with which he stared at Zhett made him momentarily dizzy. He knew about his strange night vision gift, but this was different. It was him, but it wasn’t him, staring up at Zhett, whose black scales had climbed between his brows, split across his forehead, and disappeared into his hair.

A dark, hungry smile settled over his mouth. “Beautiful.”

The warrior didn’t give him a chance to speak before consuming him once more in a soul-penetrating kiss. Tallis writhed beneath the tender touch of his mate, his flesh on fire from each light pathway the man’s hand drew over his chest, his stomach, his side. His pants were inched lower, the tip of his cock finally released from its wet confines.

Zhett reared up with a low, rumbling growl. His gaze fell to Tallis’s waist. He licked his lips and took a deep breath.

“Gods, you smell like summer heat after a long winter’s eve.” Zhett tugged the pants down his legs until he freed Tallis completely. The room’s warm air kissed his cream, igniting a rippling of pleasure down his shaft. He fisted the base of his cock and stroked his erection, enamored by Zhett’s agility as he peeled off the rest of his leather. His eyes dropped to the jutting dick, glistening with moisture over a swollen, purple head.

But it was the potent aroma of earthy musk and the hint of sweetness that robbed him of thought.

Tallis sat up and grabbed Zhett’s hips, ignoring the pain in his own dick to wrap his lips around that bulbous head and suckle every drop of juice dribbling out of Zhett’s slit. He moaned over and over, urging more of the man’s flavor to slide over his tongue. Closing his eyes, he savored the texture of Zhett’s cock, every silky ridge and firm inch.

Zhett fucked his mouth. One of his strong hands laced in his hair and held him close. Tallis didn’t need the silent cue. He wanted more and more, and he swallowed Zhett back as far as he could. The man was large, like the rest of him. Tallis cupped the firm globes of his mate’s ass, kneading the muscled mounds, rocking the man into his mouth.

“Take me, little mate.” Zhett braced a knee on the edge of the bed beside Tallis. “Yes, precious. Gods bless, I’m going to bust.”

Tallis sucked hard, running his mouth up and down Zhett’s length. The man’s dick swelled over his tongue.

When the first wave of Zhett’s orgasm broke free, Tallis cried out, swallowing down the fierce jets of cum as his own body shuddered in delight. Zhett’s ferocious roar filled his ears, his chest, his heart, and he took every last drop of his salty-sweet cream with pleasure.

Zhett pulled him off his cock and stepped back, raking his carnal gaze over Tallis. The man was still hard, that sexy organ erect and wet from Tallis’s mouth.

“I’ll be right back,” Zhett said.

“Better be.” Tallis flashed him a smile when he cast another glowing look over his shoulder before disappearing through a door. He situated himself at the center of the bed, and waited for his mate to return and give him a little more than his stolen taste of sin.