Dragon Blood Read online

  “You think no mate appeals to us more?” Joshua growled.

  “You don’t have anything on your mind but fucking and there’s plenty of human women out there that would let you!” Eli snarled. “You know she’s bred. You can’t fucking call it mating when she’s already bred!”

  “Then I’ll call it fucking till she’s ready to breed again!” Joshua snarled back at him.

  “You can call yourself fucking some other woman!” Gabriel growled. “If she was a dragoness she wouldn’t let you touch her now that we’ve bred her. She wouldn’t risk the babies! Marlee doesn’t know any better!”

  “Just how the fuck is it going to hurt the babies for us to couple with her,” Aaron demanded, “if it doesn’t hurt for her to couple with the three of you?”

  “Well, gods damn it, Aaron! Try to get your mind off of your dick five minutes and think about that! There are six of us—and we’re dragons. We aren’t men!” Gabriel said impatiently.

  “I know the scent is driving you up the wall. You think it isn’t driving us crazy, too? Go find you a damned woman if you need one—all of you. We found Marlee and she’s compatible with us. There are bound to be others.”

  “What the hell gives you that idea?” Joshua demanded. “Were you asleep the last fucking three or four hundred years? She isn’t like the others. I don’t understand it any more than you do, but you’ve bred her. You’ve bonded with her. I don’t give a fuck if she is human! There are no dragonesses left! None! We are all that’s left of our kind! I don’t need a woman to fuck. I need a mate. I’m not willing to keep looking another three or four hundred years!”

  “She won’t live half that,” Eli said flatly. “Have you considered that? Because I’ve sure as fuck been considering it!”

  Joshua looked taken aback for a moment. He glanced at Luke and Aaron.

  “Then you’re looking at it the wrong way and you don’t fucking deserve her!” Luke said angrily. “You will have her for her lifetime. She will bear your young. I’ll gladly give up a few hundred empty years for that!”

  “It seems to have escaped you that we don’t have her,” Gabriel said angrily. “She has us. She’s human. She won’t form a blood bond as we have.”

  “How do you know that? Maybe it never happened before because Marlee is different? And if she’s different enough to breed with us, then you can’t say that she hasn’t bonded or won’t bond. She feels something or she wouldn’t respond to us as she does.”

  “Our pheromones are stronger than those the human male produces,” Gabriel said dryly.

  “What kind of logic is that? If no human woman had ever responded, it might make sense to make that kind of assumption, but you know better.”

  “This is getting us nowhere,” Eli said tightly.

  “If you can’t be trusted to keep your hands off of her, then you can’t stay. It’s as simple as that,” Gabriel said grimly. “I’m not saying that you don’t have valid points. The bottom line, though, is that Marlee is carrying the only hope of any kind of future any of us have and if you’re just so damned stupid you’re willing to risk harming them—and her—then we’ll have to exercise our right to protect our mate and our off-spring.”

  “What kind of future are they looking at, though?” Aaron said pointedly.

  “Probably one as miserable as ours—but we found Marlee. Maybe they’ll find their own.” Gabriel studied his brothers. “I don’t mind saying I’d far rather we figure out a way to make this work. I don’t like us splitting up when there’s so few of us and so many humans who would kill us on sight if they knew what we were. Beyond that, Marlee’s people must have discovered something about the babies and they obviously want to get their hands on her. She’d be safer with the six of us watching out for trouble.”

  Joshua glanced at Luke and Aaron.

  “If we stay and help to protect her then we should also have the right to take her as a mate when she’s borne yours,” Joshua said after a long moment.

  Gabriel, Eli, and John all tensed angrily, but after a few moments they relaxed fractionally.

  “That’ll be up to her,” John said. “Don’t expect the three of us to simply bow out, however. It won’t happen. We’re blood bonded and we’ll do our damnedest to mate with her again.”

  “We wouldn’t expect anything else,” Luke said tightly. “You can be just as certain you’ll have a fight on your hands.”

  Gabriel nodded and got up. “Swords or fists? Let’s see if we can work off a little steam without shifting. It’s going to be a serious problem if can’t control it now that we’ve made the shift once.”

  ———

  Marlee was woken from a sound sleep the moment the bed dipped. Startled, she lifted her head and looked at the man climbing into bed with her, trying to decide if it was John or Gabriel. She could see the glint of the gold hair and knew it wasn’t any of the others.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  Sighing, Marlee settled again, trying to figure out what was wrong with the picture. “Am I in the wrong bed?”

  “No, you’re in my bed.” Amusement threaded Gabriel’s voice. “Go back to sleep.”

  “You got tired of the couch?” she guessed.

  He rolled onto his side and dragged her closer. “Something like that.”

  “I’m too sleepy to feel like sex,” she muttered when he nuzzled his face against her neck.

  She could feel him smile against her neck.

  “In that case, you should sleep.”

  Relieved, Marlee snuggled closer and went back to sleep. She was awakened some time later by the hand on her breast and the log trying to wedge itself in the crack of her ass. She drove her elbow into his belly. “Cut it out!”

  “You’re hell to sleep with,” Gabriel growled groggily, turning over. “I suppose you know that?”

  Marlee considered ignoring the comment and going back to sleep, but she’d always been a firm believer in paybacks. Waiting until she heard deep even breaths that told her he was sound asleep again, she rolled over and scooted up close behind him. Sliding a hand over his hip, she felt around until she found his cock and began stroking it. It responded beautifully.

  “I’ll give you twenty dollars and twenty minutes to stop that,” Gabriel muttered huskily.

  She bit his shoulder playfully. Luckily for him she was awake enough by that time and aroused enough the offer had some appeal. “Twenty for twenty?” she murmured thoughtfully, abandoning his cock and reaching down to cup his balls and lightly massage them. “How much for this?”

  She sat up as he shifted onto his back and looked at her, leaning down to take his cock into her mouth. “Mmmm?” she hummed the question with his cock still in her mouth.

  Gabriel uttered a choked laugh. “My wallet’s on the dresser. Take the whole thing,” he said a little breathlessly.

  Marlee’s warm interest rose to definite arousal as his voice, laden with his own rising desire, jangled along her never endings. It was more than that, though. She’d been inspired to tease him by kissing his cock and yet her focus shifted as soon as she had and felt pleasure waft through her. She liked the way he tasted. She enjoyed feeling his thick shaft gliding along her tongue and she enjoyed the effect it had on him even more.

  He held perfectly still at first, almost as if he was holding his breath, afraid she’d stop.

  Within moments, however, he began to shift restlessly. Her own excitement grew apace with his. She toyed with the idea of bringing him off with her mouth, enjoying the thrill of excitement only thinking about it produced. Instead, when she realized he was close to exploding, she released his cock with one final, hard suck and began to weave her way up his taut belly, nipping lightly at him with her teeth and sucking love bites at random.

  He caught her upper arms before she reached his chest, hauling her upward and then spearing his fingers in her hair as he cupped the back of her head to trap her for a kiss. His mouth was hot, his kiss hard with need,
ravenous.

  A wave of dizziness washed over her as he rolled, taking her onto her back and arranging her with eager hands for his possession. He broke the kiss and surged upward the moment he’d settled his hips between hers, penetrating the mouth of her sex and gliding inward along her channel to seat himself firmly with his first hard thrust. She arched to meet him as he thrust again, sucking in a sharp breath as the head of his cock nudged the nerve bundle inside of her and set off waves of pleasure.

  Lifting her legs once he’d penetrated her fully and set a hectic pace, she curled them around his hips purely for the pleasure of feeling his flesh sawing back and forth along her channel. The tension inside of her built with his pace, however, and she felt herself nearing crisis. For a few moments more, she struggled against it, wanting the anticipation to last and then she dropped her feet to the bed and tilted her hips so that each successive thrust jolted against her g-spot. Her pleasure multiplied exponentially and then abruptly ruptured. She dug her fingers into his shoulders, her back arching with the first powerful concussion wave that went through her.

  Gabriel uttered a choked grunt as her muscles tightened vice-like around his flesh, plunging deeply and arching his back as if he, too, was caught up in a powerful spasm. He shuddered, withdrew slightly and charged again as his body seized and released, pumping his hot seed deeply inside of her.

  Marlee had already lost all muscle tone in the aftermath by the time he stopped, hanging his head and gasping for breath. Feeling him tense to move away, she curled her arms around him, stroking his damp back as far down as she could reach before she stroked upward again.

  Her senses still held sway and no thought flickered through her mind beyond the pleasure of feeling his weight on her, feeling his flesh inside of her, and the heat of his breath. It occurred to her after a few minutes that the pleasure wasn’t merely appreciation for her lover’s performance and the ecstasy he’d given her. The reluctance to let go had nothing at all to do with physical pleasure and everything to do with a need to feel a part of him, a sense of belonging.

  He rolled off of her when she ceased to caress him. Settling beside her, he arranged her until they were spooning as they had been when he’d first joined her in the bed, found a comfortable spot for his head, and dropped to sleep as if someone had turned his off switch.

  Marlee lay thinking about the way she’d felt, however, for a long time before she dropped from consciousness. It was a dream that woke her—the same erotic dream that had played out in her mind over and over since the day of the bear.

  Except this time something crucial was different.

  Chapter Ten

  Gabriel, Marlee discovered, was gone, the place where he’d lain already cool to the touch. Relieved, she settled back, trying to decide whether the dream was just a dream or if she’d actually remembered something.

  She’d almost managed to completely convince herself that the bear hadn’t really attacked her. There was every reason to believe that and absolutely nothing to support her conviction, to begin with, that the bear had savaged her.

  In her dream, though, she’d been fighting for her life. She’d known that she was dying.

  In her dream she remembered hearing John and Eli and opening her eyes. She remembered seeing them. She remembered that they were arguing—about her. John had said she was dying and they couldn’t help her and Eli had said they couldn’t if they didn’t try.

  And then the conversation had turned really bizarre. She couldn’t remember much beyond a snatch here and there, but she remembered thinking at the time that it was so weird that they were talking about humans … as if they weren’t. She remembered something else, too.

  They’d said something about dragons.

  She must have dreamed that! Maybe there was something to the rest of it, but that?

  If she dismissed that, though, where did that leave her? With memories of having been savaged and feeling as if she would die and not so much as a scratch on her when she was found.

  She focused on the mention of dragons, trying to think what might have put something that bizarre in her mind even to spawn a dream and abruptly remembered the book she’d bought about the legend of the golden dragon.

  They had golden eyes—all of them—the strangest colored eyes she’d ever seen.

  And she’d met Gabriel of the golden hair and skin when she’d found the book.

  Was that it? She’d gotten so caught up in that old tale that she’d somehow mixed that with reality in her dream?

  It seemed plausible—even likely.

  Why was she convinced she’d been mortally mauled by the bear, though? For that matter, how had she escaped it? She remembered that the bear had run straight toward her. Eli and John hadn’t arrived until after that. How could they have prevented her being hurt when the bear had already attacked?

  She lay thinking about it, running the dream over and over in her mind and trying to compare it to what she remembered until her head began to throb with the effort. Realizing that she wasn’t getting any closer to any kind of certainty, she finally got up.

  Eli was parked on the couch, frowning at the blank TV screen when she headed downstairs. It didn’t look as if his thoughts were particularly pleasant and after glancing at him, Marlee headed into the kitchen to search for something to eat.

  “The coffee’s still hot—maybe a tad strong by now.”

  Marlee glanced at the kitchen clock and grimaced. She supposed she deserved the reference to laying in bed half the morning, but it wasn’t as if she had any where to be or anything to do. “I overslept,” she said a little uncomfortably.

  “Gabe, too,” he said neutrally.

  Marlee flicked a sharp look at him. She didn’t really feel up arguing when she’d just gotten up—with anyone—and she certainly didn’t want to argue with Eli, but it looked like it was going to be unavoidable unless she simply ignored the veiled reference to the fact that Gabriel had spent the night in her bed or rather in his bed with her.

  It wouldn’t have been so bad if not for the fact that she cared about Eli—a lot.

  Unfortunately, she also cared, a lot, about Gabriel, and she was hardly immune to John. If she was honest with herself, she was more than half in love with all three. She’d tried to tell herself that it was just lust—and that was weird enough! She sure as hell had never considered herself a nympho! And yet all any of them had to do was … actually talk, walk by her, look at her. They didn’t even have to do anything remotely akin to foreplay and she was revved. And once they got to the kissing it was all downhill from there. Between times, she felt guilty and slutty because she couldn’t seem to behave any better than she had since she’d met them. But in the moment, she was putty and brainless.

  She didn’t understand why she reacted to them the way she did, but she hadn’t made any real attempt to try to curb her enthusiasm—even though it went against both her nature and her nurture to sleep with three men basically all at the same time.

  On the other hand, none of the three had pretended they weren’t aware or even behaved as if it bothered them a hell of a lot.

  “I wasn’t under the impression that I meant enough to any of you for that to matter. You shared me with John that first day—and you knew about Gabriel.” She frowned as a memory abruptly popped into her mind. “You were all there that day—arguing.” She looked at him.

  “About me. Everybody wanted a turn as long as I was there anyway, completely out of it, and naked. What in the hell did you give me? You must have given me something. I’ve never felt like that in my life! I’ve certainly never acted like that! And I still can’t remember much of anything.”

  His face hardened. “We didn’t give you anything.”

  “Not even whatever it was you and John had taken to dream walk?”

  “I never said we’d taken anything.”

  Marlee blinked at him, casting her mind back. “You suggested it.”

  His lips tightened. “You wanted a
nswers.”

  “Answers! Not lies!”

  “I didn’t lie. I suggested a possibility and you accepted it without questioning it.”

  It was true and yet he knew damned well that it was as good as lie. “Then what is the truth?”

  “You know what the truth is. You just don’t want to accept it. What’s the point in me telling you? You feel it every time I touch you.”

  “Desire?” She shook her head. “I don’t have a problem accepting that. There wouldn’t be much point in trying to lie about it anyway. You know. But that still doesn’t explain what happened to me that day. That wasn’t … natural.”

  “What about the last time we were together? Did that seem natural to you? Or do you think I slipped you something then?”

  Marlee was about to inform him that of course it had been natural when it abruptly occurred to her that she’d already acknowledged that there was something about them—all of the brothers—that made her behave completely contrary to her nature. She hadn’t had sex with all of them, but she was just as drawn to them, or almost so, as she was to Gabriel, Eli, and John. It was like they bathed in pheromones! She could understand if she’d been smitten by one of the brothers—any one of them. They were sinfully attractive men. But to feel the way they made her feel when she’d spent the better part of her adulthood single because she was more interested in her career just wasn’t reasonable. And she didn’t believe for a moment that they’d managed to tap into a nymphomaniac side of herself that she hadn’t known was there.

  “I know you didn’t,” she said finally, still feeling as if he was guilty of something even though she couldn’t figure out what it was.

  “I didn’t the first time either. You would’ve remembered beginning to feel strange, wouldn’t you?”

  Marlee frowned. “You’d think so. The thing is, though, I don’t really remember much of anything between the time I encountered the bear and when I … you know.”

  He studied her for a long moment and finally grasped her arm, pulling her closer. “I’m not sure I do know,” he drawled teasingly, settling his arms lightly around her. “You might want to elaborate on that a little.”