Nine-Tenths

Forty-Nine

 Watching Dav undress is like watching an endangered species of wildflower bloom. I'm sure my face is filled with stupefied wonder, each inch of precious skin setting my heart juddering.

He's stripping less because we're totally about to have amazing reunion sex, and more because his wings tore up his clothes. (But also, yes, reunion sex please.) Dav has asked me to sit in the big wingback chair by the fireplace in his bedroom—the fireplace in his bedroom, I need to stress that—and wait. The fire is banked, in deference to the warm August evening, and the crackling is the only sound as Dav disrobes.

It's not a show. It's methodical, the actions of a man used to wearing much more complicated clothing in a bygone era. The ember-red firelight gilds the edges of him. He's incandescent. I want desperately to kiss him, and then it hits me again that he's right here. He's back. He's real. I can do just that.

"Please." I lean forward, and Dav obligingly drops to his knees close enough for me to drape my arms over his shoulders, and open my mouth to him. I'm perfectly happy to be plundered, held close and treasured.

"I want you," Dav says, with all the heat and honesty of a confession.

"You can have me," I promise.

It's true.

Whatever Dav wants, he can have. We'll work out the details later.

I slide my hands down to cup his shoulder blades and... What the fuck is that?

"Wait a sec," I smear the word against his teeth. "Back up."

Dav waits a sec and backs up.

"Turn around."

His posture goes stiff. "Colin..."

"Let me see."

He turns.

The lash marks are closed, at least. That's something. I lean forward and press a kiss to the biggest welt, angry pink and still inflamed, right along his spine.

"Barbaric," I say into his skin.

Dav hangs his head and wraps his fingers around my ankles, holds on like his life depends on it. Maybe it did. Does. I don't know. I don't even know what I don't know about dragons, as Dav keeps reminding me.

"There's little that can be done to hurt a dragon," Dav says quietly. "Take away their hoard, isolate them. But they will go mad of grief and loneliness in short order, and likely kill many people—including themselves—in the desperate attempt to be reunited."

"Fuck," I whisper, and shuck my shirt. I press my chest against his back, carefully, watching for any cues that I'm hurting him. When he sinks against me, I wrap my arms around his torso, press my mouth to vulnerable knobs of his spine.

"Corporal punishment is..." he trails off. He pulls off my socks, curls his hands so his fingertips are pressed to the pulse in the arch of each foot. "A lesser horror to inflict."

"You didn't do anything worth punishing."

"That's not for you to say, Colin."

"It's for you to say, though, and clearly you only feel guilty that you got caught."

He winces. "It doesn't matter what I want."

"It matters to me."

"You're not a dragon."

"No, just a Favorite, whatever that means."

He lifts one of my hands, kisses the palm. Kisses my bare wrist. Then he turns to kiss the inner bend of my elbow, my bicep, my neck. He arches over me as he works my fly.

"It means you are mine," Dav says into my temple. "Mine to undress. Mine to protect. Mine to bed. Mine to love."

"Yours to serve?" I ask, and Dav jerks back, startled, kiss-chapped and flushed. "Babe. I know what a service top is."

"Brat," Dav says fondly, and whips my belt out of its loops with a swish of his wrist.

"I'm not calling you 'Daddy'." I shift so he can yank my pants down. Every accidental brush of skin as Dav undresses me leaves electricity in its wake. "It's weird."

"Agreed," Dav says, mouth latching to my inner thigh, sucking a hickey that I'll feel for days.

Nice.

I lean down and whisper: "How do you want me?"

His answer is to heft me up into his arms with a devilish grin. I whoop as he tosses me onto the obscenely luxurious four-poster bed.

***

Can dragons actually glow? Is that where the word "afterglow" comes from?

"Prideful," I accuse, wiping the sweat off my forehead. The room is humid with sex.

"Satisfied," he corrects, sliding up to worry a bruise onto my collarbone.

"You mean your dragon-instincts are satisfied," I protest, and it's no less impressive for the fact that I have to stop to yawn in the middle of it. "You're taking care of me. You fed me, you gave me a spectacular orgasm, and now we're going to cuddle and sleep."

"Cuddle," he scoffs playfully.

"Cuddle," I insist, and burrow into his chest. His heartbeat is right under my ear, a slow three-chamber waltz I assume all dragon hearts dance to.

Dav sighs. So quietly. So contentedly. So... earnestly. It strikes like lightning, somewhere behind my eyes, pouring brightly down my throat, pooling warmly behind my heart. Is this what it means to be a Favorite? Is there something in the claiming that changes my own instincts, the way that it satisfies Dav's? His happiness makes me all bubbly.

Dav gets his second wind, and applies himself like it's his mission in life to taste every last bit of my skin. He's making purring squeaky noises, which I assume is what all happy dragons sound like. By the second orgasm, I'm flying high. By the third, I'm ready to pledge my life to Dav, so long as he doesn't make me get out of this bed. I'm too noodle-limbed to even reach for the carafe of water on the side table. Dav catches my longing glance, and pours me a glass, holds it gently and tenderly to my lips.

It's sweet. It's service-kinky. It's perfect.

I am so gone on this guy.

Hydrated and content, I tuck up under his arm, my leg thrown over one of those glorious thighs. There's something intimate and trusting about the way he's letting me rest my soft dick on his bare hip. "Will you tell me now? What 'I did it again' means?"

"Tell you... hmm?" he asks, voice heavy with bliss. 

He's asleep before I can elaborate.

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