STORY EXCERPT

“You can’t be the one he sent for me,” Aris said.

“What?” Conner asked.

Aris crossed his enormous arms. “I request one of his sons for a mate, to bring our houses together, and he sends me a runt?”

The two dragon men who’d arrived with Aris both snickered, and for the first time in years, Conner’s face heated up with humiliation at that word. He’d learned to live with people calling him a runt, even though he technically wasn’t. He was a little on the short side, but he was an omega, and the only omega out of his alpha and beta brothers, so that made him look even smaller. It wasn’t his fault that a dragon attack had hurt his leg and his heart.

“Do not call my brother that word,” Garret said through his teeth. “He is an omega werewolf.”

“Whose heartbeat is strange. I can hear it.”

“You didn’t hear it before when you were thinking about fucking my brother,” Conner said, glaring up at the man.

Aris fell back a step, as if Conner had physically shoved him. That made him feel better.

“Send him back if you want,” Stan said. “Personally, I’d rather cut off my own foot than hand him over to you.”

Conner appreciated and loved his brothers so damned much, because he knew that he meant it, but he was going to show this dragon that he wasn’t a pushover, even if he was weak. Alphas didn’t back down, and even betas knew when to push buttons. Conner was an omega, but he’d watched his brothers over the years, saw the way they had looked at each other and fought with each other. Conner stared right at Aris and barely allowed himself to blink. Even a dragon had to recognize that as being a challenge.

He was the one who asked for the peace deal, and clearly he hadn’t known that one of Simon’s son’s was nearly a cripple, otherwise he would have specified not to bring him.

When Aris clenched his fists and bit down on his lips, Conner knew that the man was either going to accept what was happening and take him, or he was going to throw Conner back at his brothers and demand that they get the runt out of his sight.

When Aris reached his hand out and clapped that big fist of his on Conner’s shoulder, his already racing heart sped up even more. Not all the meditation or calming chants in the world could get his heart to go back down to a safer speed.

“Are these your things?” Aris asked, motioning to the bag that was hanging off of Conner’s shoulder.

“Yes,” he said, and his mouth was instantly dry.

Aris didn’t smile at him, he just nodded and looked back over at Garret and Stan. “Go to your father and tell him that I accept his welp.”

Aris then snapped his fingers, and one of the other naked dragons stepped forward, and one of them took the duffel bag from Conner’s shoulder. He was a little reluctant to let it go, despite the urge to throw it aside during his hard climb. He’d stuffed the thing with all of his favorite clothes, a photo album in case he never saw his family again, his electronics, and a solar charger for all of them just in case the new place where he was going didn’t have electricity.

He really hoped it would.

“This way, my new mate,” Aris said, though his mouth was in a crooked line when he said it. He clearly wasn’t happy about this, but it also looked like he wasn’t about to let himself lose face either.

“We’ll be coming back to check on him,” Garret said.

“He’s not longer your business,” Aris said, confirming the fears that Conner had kept himself awake with ever since he’d made the announcement that he wanted to be the first person to mate with one of the dragons.

“The hell he’s not!” Stan yelled. “That’s my brother you’ve got! Let him go, right now!”

Stan must’ve tried to step forward so he could grab onto Conner because that was when the two men who were with Aris also jumped forward, and when they roared, their teeth and claws were a lot bigger than anything Stan and Garret had.

“No!” Conner called out, but he yelled it at his brothers, and not at Aris or his men. In fact, when he rushed to Garret and Stan, Aris let him.

“Don’t start a fight, please, this is for the pack,” Conner said, and he had to reach up just to touch both of his brothers’ shoulders.

They stared down at him, and they glared back up at the dragons. “They were the ones who started this war to begin with.”

The dragons snorted behind him at that. Conner wasn’t sure who made that noise, and he didn’t care either.

“It doesn’t matter who started it. I don’t care if unicorn shifters started it. We’re ending it. That’s the entire point of being here, and I don’t want either of you putting this in danger, okay?”

His brothers looked at him, their eyes were equal parts sad and frustrated. Conner knew that his family loved him, but now he was starting to understand the turmoil that they were going through just to go through with this bargain. He hadn’t really thought much of it at all. He’d only imagined that he himself was the one paying the price for this peace, whether it was death, or mating to a species of shifter that hated his guts, it hadn’t mattered. He hadn’t realized just how much this would affect his brothers and father.

This explained why the goodbye from his father had been so short. At first Conner had been hurt, but now he realized that the alpha of the pack just didn’t want to break down and show emotion in front of the council, or the rest of the pack members who would see it as a sign of weakness.

ADULT EXCERPT

Conner could hardly move, and it was getting to the point where he thought he couldn’t breathe, even though he could hear his own ragged breaths as Aris pulled back and then pushed forward, thrusting his cock inside of him, moving his whole body with each forward surge.

He was...really fucking good at this. That was the only way for Conner to think of it because there was no way in hell it was possible that Aris was anything less than a professional, considering how he yanked each and every single tortured moan out of Conner’s body, and he did moan. Loud.

He was going to be so embarrassed when this was over with, but at the moment he didn’t care. He didn’t have it in him to care when the slippery movements of Aris’s cock inside of him was the sole focus of his existence.

Conner had to have more of it. He needed to get closer even though they were already so close that the flesh of their bodies was slapping together, making lewd noises that Conner also wasn’t feeling too embarrassed about in the moment.

Still, the urge was there, and even though it should have been impossible, there was a stubborn part of his brain that was telling him how very possible it was.

Which was why he lifted one of his knees and hooked it over Aris’s ass.

Conner opened his mouth and eyes wide as he yelled. That actually worked! Aris was deeper inside of him now and Conner couldn’t get enough!

He pulled his other leg, his bad one, over and around Aris’s hip, and then he locked his ankles together and it was done. He didn’t even feel any pain at the awkward angle.

“Y–you’re really good at this. Oh, fuck!” Conner moaned, pushing the back of his head down against the grass that was almost too soft, considering how high up the mountain they were.

Aris shocked him by letting his tongue out and actually licking up the side of Conner’s throat, not stopping until he made it to Conner’s ear, and then he took the fleshy lobe between his teeth.

Conner shivered, and a tiny pulse of electricity shocked him from his neck, all the way down to his cock and balls.

He should have come by now. He definitely should have come by now considering how amazing this felt. Somehow, if he’d been jerking off, he knew he wouldn’t have been able to hold back when the pleasure reached this stage, but Aris was holding him back.

“Is–is this a dragon power?”

Aris stopped moaning, he stopped moving completely, and he laughed. The vibrations of that laugh were felt all over and inside of Conner’s body, and he had to bite down on his lips to keep from overflowing with the pleasure that was buzzing inside of him.

“D–don’t stop,” Conner begged.

Aris grabbed him by the chin. “I won’t,” he said, and he kissed him hard.

Conner made a choked noise when that happened. He didn’t mean to, it just sort of came out and there wasn’t anything he could do about it but cling to the other man.

No fucking wonder everyone lost their virginity when they were still in high school. Conner had been the only one to keep his, thanks to all of his insecurities about himself. He barely ever went on any dates, and the men who would date him certainly had looked nothing like Aris did.

How messed up and shallow was that? That Conner was impressed with Aris just because he was insanely handsome and apparently very good in bed.

But then Aris’s hips were pulling back and pushing forward again, and Conner was completely lost to it.

Getting to know each other could come later. So much later. Like after they’d finished fucking and claiming each other.

His fingernails turned into claws that he raked down the larger man’s back, and it was a struggle to keep his eyes open and just watch what Aris was doing to him.

The man was panting, mouth slightly open to reveal his pink tongue, a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead as his body rocked back and forth, his hair swaying with each movement, and his eyes were in that slit shape again.

Conner reached his hand up to touch Aris’s forehead, pushing the hair out of his eyes to get a better look at them.

“Your eyes are gold,” Aris said breathlessly.

“Your eyes are like a snake’s,” Conner said.

Aris frowned a little at that, or maybe it was just the look on his face that he got when he was getting off. Either way, Aris pulled away from him so that their chests were no longer quite so pressed together. He was on his knees now, still inside of Conner, and when Conner tried to sit up, Aris put his hand on his chest and held him down.

“Stay there,” he said, and then he really started to move.

Conner’s head fell back, and he was suddenly clawing at the grass as Aris completely threw all sense of slow and gentle loving out the window. The man’s hips moved like they were part of a machine, and Conner found himself being fucked across the lawn.

Well, not really, but he was aware of the fact that his body was moving a little when he ripped the blades of grass out and felt himself sliding a little.

Conner couldn’t take it, he couldn’t hold on. “Oh fuck, I’m close, I’m close!” he said again and again, until he was reaching up and gripping his own hair so tight that it hurt.

Aris moaned, and then his hand was on Conner’s tight balls, massaging them and making everything inside of his body wind up into one giant, glorious knot.