Geoffrey should have ignored the omega’s bleatings, but there was something about him that goaded speech from his mouth. “But not you. You don’t believe in the mate bond.”
The omega leaned forward as far as his seatbelt would allow. “Non, c’est des conneries.” He settled back in his seat and closed his eyes. “Avec un peu de chance, je serai stérile.”
No, it’s bullshit. With luck, I’ll be barren.
Geoffrey leaned back and closed his own eyes. He wasn’t sure which he wanted more: to reach their destination so he could never see the omega again, or to sit in the car forever, driving along an endless stretch of coastline, and never have to say goodbye to his love.
* * *
Long ago, Geoffrey had mastered the art of keeping his face still. Dragons, for the most part, were extraordinarily good at sensing deception. In self-defense, Geoffrey had adopted a blank mask he wore everywhere except in bed.
He’d known from a very early age that there was something not quite right about him. Nearly every dragon went after wild omegas at some point in their youth, and then settled upon Attendant betas to ease their baser urges. Geoffrey did not. It wasn’t that he had no baser urges to ease. His problem, rather, was that his urges were entirely too base. Aberrant. Abhorrent. Unnatural. Deviant. Disgusting.
Geoffrey knew every single adjective that could be used to describe himself, and because of them, he’d denied his urges for a long time. Slaking his need with a dragon was unthinkable, so he’d had to find alpha humans to fuck his unworthy and unsatisfactory alpha asshole and knot his degenerate need into submission.
Because of his desires, Geoffrey had lived a largely solitary existence. Studying and practicing draconian law was his only passion and solace. Then, after eight centuries of loneliness, Geoffrey had met Ian, and everything in his life had changed. At the time, Ian had been little more than a juvenile dragon, scarcely more than half a century old. He’d replaced the old Topaz legal counsel after Jelte Brand had been killed in a duel with Geoffrey’s uncle, Trevor.
The first time Geoffrey had seen Ian, he’d been struck by his beauty. Dragons were, by and large, attractive creatures, and Geoffrey’s curse was that he found them all too attractive. Ian had been special, though. Where Geoffrey was tall and quite thin, built rather like a giraffe, Ian was a lion. He was just a bit taller than average, but proportioned perfectly, with wide shoulders, strong arms, a narrow waist, and muscular legs. His hair and eyes were rich and shiny like newly minted coins. Geoffrey couldn’t help but stare, his defensive blank mask momentarily fallen from his face.
Ian, baby that he’d been, had bristled and puffed himself up under Geoffrey’s scrutiny. “What are you looking at, Amethyst?”
Blood rushed to heat Geoffrey’s cheeks, and so he chilled his tone to compensate. “Nothing at all, whelp. Nothing at all.”
That made Ian color in turn, and his bright eyes glinted with a challenging light. It was a good thing that Geoffrey’s lap was safely hidden beneath the long table in the council chamber, because the erection he was sporting would have been all too noticeable otherwise. It didn’t help that every time Geoffrey looked up, all he saw was Ian, who sat across from him in Jelte’s old chair.
Not that it mattered.
Sigric Brand was seated to Ian’s right, and to the left, the haughty Liu Wei, head of the Gold clan. Both dragons were at odds with the Amethyst clan, and there was no doubt in Geoffrey’s mind that Ian, as a Topaz and a Brand, would align himself similarly.
The only dragon Geoffrey might have been able to trust with his secret—Snorre Jormun of the Opal clan—had been exiled from the council many years before.
Geoffrey knew what happened to dragons who didn’t adhere to societal norms, and so, for his sake, and to uphold the reputation of the Drake family, he’d kept his mouth shut and his twisted desires to himself.
After the meeting concluded, Geoffrey retired to the restroom to attempt to get himself in order. To that end, he bent over the sink and splashed cold water over his heated face when there came a noise—the click of the bathroom door as it closed.
Alarmed, Geoffrey stood abruptly and turned his head to find Ian slouched in front of the door. With a leisurely twist of the mechanism, Ian locked it.
“There’s no one else in here,” Ian said. “I can smell only you.” He inhaled theatrically. “All I can smell is you.”
“What in blazes do you want?” Geoffrey demanded, pulling himself up to his full, rather impressive height. It didn’t seem to faze the bronze bastard in the slightest.
“Wrong question, lavender.”
Ian took a deliberate step forward.
Geoffrey, startled by the gesture, fought to not back up, but his body betrayed him—the cold porcelain edge of the sink pressed against his posterior. For possibly the first time in his life, uncertain of what he was supposed to say, Geoffrey raised an eyebrow and said nothing at all.
Ian came closer, step by step, until he and Geoffrey were only a breath apart. As close as they were, notes of the bronze bastard’s scent permeated the air, and Geoffrey wished more than anything that he could fill his lungs with it. The scent was bright, like citrus, sunshine, and the ocean. Ian smelled like summer. Geoffrey wanted to drown in it.
“The correct question,” the whelp said slowly, “is what, exactly, doyouwant?”
Geoffrey swallowed hard. “Nothing from you.”
“Liar.”
The single, sharp word made Geoffrey rear back until his head hit the mirror over the sink.
The bronze bastard reached up, grabbed a handful of Geoffrey’s glossy, dark hair, and pulled him down. “I can smell the desire on you, old man. You reek of it.”
