STORY EXCERPT

Blair Callaghan hated vampires. He hated werewolves. He hated dragons, he hated every single one of those weird shifters, biters, whatever he was expected to call them.

He didn’t like them. He’d learned that from the countless stories on the news about kidnappings of humans by vampires, forced to become cattle for blood. Even the dragons weren’t much better. They liked to treat themselves like royalty, flying around, acting amazing, as though the entire world loved them when they swooped in to save the day from the vampires.

Sometimes days after it was too late, like with his mother.

But that was in the past. Blair was over that. It didn’t matter if the dragons liked to stroke their own dicks about how amazing they were while constantly failing to take care of the vampire problem they supposedly thought was their honor and duty to fight against.

But whatever, that was fine. It just made the world more interesting to have to navigate it, trying not to become a vampire’s meal or wind up on the end of a dragon’s blade if he got turned into a vampire against his will.

And then there were the dragons who liked to come into his restaurant.

God, they were such assholes, and they rarely tipped.

Except for one, he was a good tipper, but Blair still wasn’t so sure about the guy. Vanko acted nice, and he seemed to have interesting things to say, but he was a little too interested in Blair at times.

And Blair wanted to pretend he didn’t know what the other man was after, but that was only because he didn’t want to hurt the guy’s feelings. Or incur his wrath in case the nice guy attitude turned out to be horseshit. Dragons liked to pretend they were nice and good, but that didn’t mean there weren’t the assholes out there who loved throwing their weight around.

Though Vanko did stop those other dragons from demanding half off their meals.

That was nice of him.

But now Blair was stuck waiting for him, waiting for Vanko to get here so he could reveal something Blair never wanted to reveal to anyone in his entire life. To offer him something Blair never wanted to offer.

Blair always considered himself to be straight. Vanko was good looking, and his obvious flirting made Blair’s stomach tighten in a way he didn’t want to admit to, but that didn’t mean he was ever going to give in to the guy. He wasn’t gay, no matter what this dragon nonsense wanted to convince Blair of.

Well, that was then and this was now, so when Vanko knocked on the front glass doors of Blair’s family restaurant, Blair hurried to let him inside.

“I got your message,” he said, his eyes alive in a way Blair had never seen before as he reached for Blair’s face, and Vanko shocked the hell out of him by pulling him into a passionate kiss.

Blair froze. A man had never kissed him before. He didn’t think it would happen so fast, and yet here he was, Vanko’s lips pressed against his own, his tongue playing at the crease of Blair’s lips before slipping inside.

And Blair was helpless to do anything against it. The thing he’d worried about the most, ever since he’d first met Vanko, ever since Vanko first talked to him, was happening. The other man was using his strange dragon power to make Blair helpless against his whims.

It made his knees weak. Blair thought he would lose strength if the guy didn’t loop his arm around Blair’s waist. Vanko pulled him close, chest to chest, and even through the leather jacket Vanko wore, Blair felt the heat of his body, and the rush of pleasure when the man slid one hand down to grip his ass.

That shock of pleasure scared him. Blair yanked himself back, out of those comforting arms. He wiped his mouth and tried to breathe, but his entire body felt hot.

“Sorry,” Vanko said with a laugh. “I had to do that. When I got your message—”

“Christ, what did you read?” Blair tried to think back of what he could have said that would have given the man the impression he was willing to welcome an act like that directly out of the gate.

Vanko blinked, his smile suddenly not so confident. “You said you were willing to be with me.”

“Right.” Blair nodded. “If you were willing to do something for me.”

Vanko jerked back. “What?”

He suddenly didn’t look so happy. In fact, he seemed positively tricked.

This was a mistake. Blair shouldn’t have trusted him to come here. He shouldn’t have reached out to anyone about this, and now Vanko was here, and he could do whatever he wanted, and there wasn’t much Blair could do against the guy. If Vanko wanted to, as a dragon, he could smash everything in this restaurant right now, and there could be video footage of it and everything, and the police wouldn’t do a damned thing about it.

The dragons worked too closely with the police on their vampire cases. They needed each other since a dragon could not be turned into a vampire the way a human police officer could.

It was all so fucked up.

Vanko inhaled a hard breath, but then he let it out again in a long whoosh of air. He still looked pissed as he rubbed his jaw. He looked as though he wondered what Blair had up his sleeve, but he didn’t fly into a violent rage, which was a good start.

“All right, you want to be with me on a condition. Fine. What is it?”

Blair’s heart started to pound. “You have to swear that no matter what I ask you, even if the answer is no and you walk out of here, that you won’t get violent, and you’re not going to get your friends involved.”

Vanko lifted a brow at that. “Do you owe someone money or something?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“All right. Do you want me to hurt anyone for you?” Vanko sounded very much as though he hoped that were not the case.

Blair was insulted the man even asked him that, and being insulted and flustered over a kiss, Blair realized, was not a good place for him to mentally be in if he wanted to keep some control over himself.

“I don’t want you to hurt anyone. Actually, that’s the thing you need to promise to me. Swear that you’re not going to hurt anyone and I will become your love slave if that’s what you want me to be.”

ADULT EXCERPT

Blair didn’t think he had it in him to do this, but fuck it. Why the hell shouldn’t he when he was losing his mind? Why the hell shouldn’t he kiss this guy when Vanko already put the idea in his head and it seemed like such a good one?

And Blair really did need something to take the edge off, to make him forget about what was going on with his father.

He kept expecting the kiss to be gross, to be reminded that this was a dude he was doing this with and not some hot chick. He wasn’t drunk, so there was no excuse. He was stone cold sober, and the instant his mouth touched Vanko’s, his cock throbbed and ached with desperate desire, his stomach and groin clenching tight as his blood seemed to run hotter in his veins.

Vanko moaned against his mouth, his large, powerful arms sliding around Blair’s waist, and that feeling inside him grew even stronger. He had to pull his mouth away, not because he was trying to stop, but because he needed a minute to catch his breath and really think about this.

“Holy fuck,” he gasped.

“Are you sure?” Vanko’s voice was rough, it nearly yanked Blair right out of the lust-filled haze he’d fallen into. “I was going to wait. You can’t tease me like this and expect me to hold back.”

“What?”

Vanko grabbed Blair’s shoulders, shaking him a little. “Focus! Do not let the mating take so much of your control. Is this what you want? I can wait, but not if you do this to me.”

Oh, now Blair got it. He was being given the speech he would have given to some girl who had one too many at the bar before they got to banging.

And fuck, this meant they really were going to bang.

“Is it the mating that makes me want this?”

Vanko’s grip on his shoulders eased just a little. “For the most part, yes. The mating is prompting your lust for me, but it isn’t creating something that wasn’t already there.”

Blair doubted that very much, but there was no point in lying about the effect the kissing was having on him now. He was definitely in lust here. He definitely wanted more, and he wanted to see where this went.

“I don’t want to think about my dad right now.” He was so selfish. “I just want to feel good.” He was such a bad son. “I know the mechanics involved in this. Can you make me feel good?”

He doubted, after all, that he would be the one to fuck Vanko. He was the proud dragon warrior. Basically a prince among men. Why would he let Blair fuck him?

Vanko didn’t snort at that worry Blair revealed to him. He smiled, seeming to sigh a little, relieved as he stroked Blair’s cheek. “I promise you, I can make you feel very good.”

Blair nodded. He wasn’t all that scared, but he still wanted to get this show on the road. “All right then, hurry up with it before I change my mind.”

He thought he was going to take Vanko into his bedroom, but the larger man shocked the hell out of him when he grabbed Blair under his knees and scooped him up bridal style.

“What are you doing?”

No one had carried Blair like this ever. At least not as an adult and he was pretty sure never as a little kid. It was jarring to suddenly have his feet off the floor.

But Vanko was looking at Blair as though he were something to eat as he brought Blair over to his couch. “Remember that you said you wanted this.”

“What? Hey!”

Vanko grabbed Blair by the neck of his shirt, and using both hands, tore it right down the middle, exposing his chest. Blair’s heart really started to drum then. The sheer strength of the guy…and then his mouth attacked the exposed skin of Blair’s chest, and…

The pleasure, the sheer pleasure hit him, going right to his cock and balls, making his toes curl as warm mouth and wet tongue kissed and licked at his chest before teasing his nipples. Vanko made the sensation that much better, that much hotter, when his hand slid down Blair’s stomach and over the bulge of his still-clothed cock.

“H-holy shit.” Blair put his fist to his mouth, biting down on his knuckles because he needed something to bite, otherwise he was going to lose his mind.

Everything seemed to be flying out of control, and as terrifying as that was for him, it was also exciting and erotic in ways he’d never thought about.

Maybe he did have bisexual tendencies he’d never stopped to consider. After all, Vanko did say the mating was playing with something that had already been there, and while Blair wasn’t one hundred percent sure that he trusted Vanko not to overplay his own hand in this, he couldn’t exactly argue with the results.

“You taste so fucking good,” Vanko moaned. “I’ve thought of nothing but this since the first time I saw you.”

The heat flooding up Blair’s neck and cheeks, even into his ears, burned so hot he thought it might give him a nosebleed. Blair cleared his throat. “That’s…uh, real great. Thank you.”

He didn’t know what else to say because he definitely wasn’t going to admit that he’d wanted the same thing.

At first sight.

It was so ridiculous he couldn’t put words to it, so he wasn’t going to.

Then, of course, Vanko had to grin up at him. He actually winked, and now Blair’s ears burned. He reached his hand up to scratch at them, trying to cool them off.

“Wh-what are you looking at me like that for?”

Vanko added more pressure to Blair’s cock. “I can’t help it. You just look too good.” The man casually stroked Blair’s dick as he said that, as though it were no big deal, as if he did this sort of thing all the time.

Blair was going to have to make sure he topped this guy at some point. He didn’t think he could do it now, and he was going to blame the mating for that. He had a strange feeling in his stomach, a sensation that he needed to spend his time letting Vanko please him, that he should lay back, and yes, participate, but make Vanko do just a little bit more of the work.

As if that would prove something. As if that would make this make sense.

“What are you thinking about? I have to know.” Vanko’s hand still stroked Blair’s cock through his jeans, and even as Blair hissed, his fingernails scratching against his couch cushions, he couldn’t make his brain focus any more than absolutely necessary.

“I…I was thinking how much I want you to put my cock in your mouth.”

There. That seemed a little assertive. Just because Blair got the impression he should let Vanko take command here didn’t mean he couldn’t rise to this challenge on his own.