The monster raked its claws across the backs of my eyes. It stopped trying to move my legs, focusing instead on another part of my anatomy. The rock-hard erection in my pants strained against the fabric like a damn weather vane, directing me to go back to her. It ached to do nothing more than rip the bars off her cage and plunge deep into her.
We could use the swinging of the cage to move her back and forth against us until she screamed our name. Until we claimed her. Bred her. Made her belly swell with our seed.
Thatwas what we should be doing instead of arguing in a darkened hallway.
It was a tempting image. The woman was beautiful. She was dirty and dressed in rags, but that did little to hide the beautiful chestnut hair just begging for my fingers to slide through it and take hold as I thrust into her from behind. She had the most perfect round face that I knew had to be hiding a killer set of dimples, and lips that—fuck, I could not wait to see them drop open into that sexy O when I made her cream.
But despite all that, her eyes really drew mein. Eyes of the most unusual color. My fingers scraped against the wall, seeking something to hold on to as I pictured those uniquely violet circles. I’d never seen anything like them, and even now I longed to dive back in, to swim in the picturesque abyss of her gaze for all of eternity.
Given all that, lusting after her wasn’t surprising in the least. This level of want—no, ofneed—was insanity.
She didn’t have a dragon to shift into. Her fangs could never drop, meaning we could never be claimed, never be marked. Which is why clippys never had mates! It was a known fact, not something I was making up. So why was my dragon so confused, why did it have the wrong impression?
The frosty snarl of defiance was so powerful the corridor walls rumbled slightly. My dragon did not want to be contained. It wanted her. To take her, touch her, caress her body with my lips, taste her with my tongue.
Her sweet, sweet honey, dripping from my mouth as her thighs squeezed tightly over my head. Her fingers threaded deep in my hair, pulling me close while she cried out in pleasure. Pleasure onlywecould give her.
Frost coated the walls as the temperature dropped with each ragged breath I sucked in. A shifter coming up the hallway hesitated, his already tight face wincing slightly.
My power was leaking through. I fought supremely to bring it back under control, to mask just how strong my dragon truly was.
Damn her.
“Women, eh?” the shifter said, trying to smile through the pressure, thinking he understood.
Apparently, I had spoken that last out loud. I grunted, hoping he would move past me.
“Amen to that.” He didn’t move on, instead pausing to clap me on the shoulder. His eyes were wide, I saw now, pupils dilated and filled with little sparks.
The dragon shifter was as high as the orb on electro-crystals.
“Whoever she is, pal, she ain’t worth it. She’s below you.”
Wrong words.
I lunged forward, my forearm coming up as I pinned the shorter, smaller man against the far side of the corridor with it. My eyes flared with icy promise, the growl tearing from my throat promising much, much more violence.
Another flare of my true power snuck through. I didn’t hold it back. Not this time.
How dare he say that about our mate? The arrogance to suggest she wasn’t good enough for me? That my mate would ever be anything buttoogood for me. I should rip his throat out for that.
My mate would be the only one for me. Ever. She was the one who would have to suffer away the centuries with a monster like me until our human essence faded and we became pure dragons. Then we would spend eternity together, eventually flying west over the Great Abyss and into the beyond.
That was what every dragon shifter yearned for. Longed for. It was what my mate would grace me with, if she could put up with my monster for long enough.
So to say that she was below me was the biggest insult, a near unforgivable one.
The lower-level dragon’s eyes were rolling back into his head amid the fear and desire to obey that my alpha power wrought from him. Combined with the scale-covered arm across his neck, he was rapidly losing consciousness. A dead or passed-out dragon was not something I needed right then either.
Forcing logic through the red haze of fury his insult had provoked, I let up the pressure on his neck. The instant his eyes refocused, I slammed a fist into his stomach and let him fall to the ground.
“Watch. Your. Tongue,” I ground out, gathering up my alpha power and forcing it within me once more.
I had been working hard on this cover. It had taken me over a year to gain the trust of thehunters so I could move freely through their markets. I didnotwant to waste that by killing a useless, brain-fried pleasure seeker. I doubted the man could reach his dragon anymore.
Ruining such hard work, suchimportantwork, when it came to my realm was not who I was. I took a calming breath, the scent of the piss the dragon had stained his pants with burning any remaining vanilla or cinnamon from my nose. Not that I would ever forget her smell now. But at least it was no longer fresh.
Stepping over the still-retching dragon, I moved deeper into the illegal market’s dizzying array of corridors and rooms. The more distance I put between myself and the woman, the easier it was to control my dragon. I couldn’t calm it. The beast was furious with me. It didn’t shut up. But I could force myself past it, using the disgust at my people.
