“Let me carry you again, hm?” Gus murmured.
He sat down beside her on the bench and took her hand, pulling her over. She went where he wanted her, far past thinking of how she must look as she straddled him. His hands founds her hips as he pressed his face into the sway of her heavy breasts, licking and nuzzling again where they were oh-so-sensitive now.
He left it up to her to wrap her hand around his cock, steadying him as she slid down onto it. He groaned as she took him in, matching the sound she made as he filled her, deep and hot and hard.
His hands guided her down, silently encouraging her to take every inch of his cock. Gus filled her so thoroughly that she could hardly breathe without crying out, but she needed every bit of him. She needed to feel him deep inside her.
Cara tilted just so under his hands, until he was pressing exactly where she needed him. She felt already on the verge of coming again when she rose up only to slide back down onto him. His hands told her what he wanted, but she set the pace, riding him faster and faster.
She came on his cock with his mouth on her breasts, once and then again and again or maybe just once that went on and on. It seemed to last forever before he finally tightened his grip and arched up under her. He came with her name on his lips, and Cara kissed him through it.
***
Mine, Gus thought, when he found himself thinking in words at all, full of dragon-warm contentment and satisfied possession.
All mine. She said. All mine, and happy to be.
Dinner and sex might not be properly dragonish gifts, but he’d given them to her, and she’d accepted them. They could work up to gold.
Cara’s weight rested on him, surrendered in the aftermath of her last orgasm, her breath still quick against his shoulder. His hands roved lazily over the softness of her skin, the ample, unstinting curves of her body, generously curved and altogether beautiful.
She was his mate. His.
Soon she would understand, and then he would drape her in gold, jewels, everything she could want. Everything except clothes, which would only get in the way. Silk sheets, though…
Then his softening cock slipped free of her and he became aware of the condom he was wearing. It wasn’t just a sticky and unpleasant bit of business to deal with, but a reminder that she wasn’t his yet. Not entirely. Neither of them had promised anything. Not just yet.
The empty room down below—a vault with no treasure to hold, an unfilled chest—tugged at him. Still he stayed where he was, enjoying as much as he did have and could hold just now. Cara was warm in his arms, and her weight was trusted to his body.
When she stirred, he helped her sit up and accepted her soft, contented kiss.
“We should go in,” he murmured. “You don’t want to sleep out here.”
She nodded and stood. It was sooner than he would have liked to let her go, but he knew better than to hold her in place by strength.
When she was on her feet he stood himself, stepping aside to tie off the condom and toss it into the nearest sand bucket of the four posted at the corners of the roof. She was watching him, her weight shifted uncertainly onto one foot, her clothes in her hands.
He smiled gently and said, “I’ll go first down the stairs, so you can fall on me if you stumble.”
She smiled back and let him lead the way, but they both made it down without incident. He could still smell her sex. He liked that she hadn’t put her clothes back on, didn’t like that she was holding them, but it was up to her.
“If you want to clean up,” he said, and gestured to the bathroom.
Cara nodded, issued another shy smile, and disappeared inside, shutting the door softly behind her.
Gus went to the opposite door, his closet, and extracted a pair of silk pajama pants, pulling them on with nothing beneath. After a moment’s consideration he took the matching pajama top. It was cut generously enough to make a very short nightgown for Cara, if she wanted it. He laid it on the foot of the bed and then went to stand by the window, looking for a darker shape in the dark sky.
Mouse found her phone, Ilie informed him.
Gus narrowed his eyes to catch the curve of a wing, black on the black.
I’ll bring it over, Ilie said. If now…isn’t a bad time.
Gus snorted at Ilie’s politeness and glanced at the bathroom door just as he heard the shower turn on. All right. Come now.
On my way, Ilie agreed.
Gus jogged back up the spiral staircase to the roof. Ilie was gliding in over the lawn as Gus stepped out onto the roof, and Gus was shocked by the sudden burst of fury he felt, flame-hot.
Gus? Ilie inquired, veering away from Gus’s rage.
Gus pressed both hands—hands, not claws, not rending, not fighting to defend his mate—to his face. His human face. He must be human for Cara, and equally he must not shift with Ilie so close. He must not fight Ilie over Cara, or over anything else.
Sorry, Gus replied. She is my mate, but—she has not accepted any proper gifts. I must protect her against any who comes near.
Ilie said nothing to that, only flew further away in a few great sweeps of his black wings. When he was halfway across the mountain, Gus heard his voice again. I’ll send Mouse.
Thanks, Gus told him, feeling suddenly desperately lonely. He didn’t have Cara yet, not really, and until he did he couldn’t be near his brother, either. Just as well the rest of the boys were safely out of town now, though they usually were these days.
Don’t let anyone bother her car, will you? Gus remembered to ask.
No one will, Ilie assured him, and then he was entirely lost in the dark.
***
When Cara stepped out of the bathroom, Gus was nowhere to be seen. She was wrapped in a towel that didn’t cover much, her hair roughly dried and finger-combed, and she’d managed to tape a new bandage in place on her arm, though the cut seemed to have stopped bleeding.
She smiled at the sight of the pajama top left on his bed, exchanging the towel for it. It was sinfully soft against her skin, so smooth it felt almost liquid everywhere it touched. She did up a handful of the buttons, letting it just barely cover her breasts. The hem just skimmed the top of her thighs, but it still felt less precarious than the towel.
She took the towel back to the bathroom to hang up, and when she came out to the bedroom again, Gus had reappeared. He was standing in front of the family portrait she’d noticed earlier, wearing only a pair of silky pajama pants that matched the top she was wearing.
Cara walked over to him, and he smiled for her, reaching out to tuck her against his side. His smile was dim, almost the way he’d looked before he so suddenly turned away from her downstairs. He wasn’t going away this time, though.
She looked at the portrait and thought at first that it must be the loss of his parents that he was thinking of, but then she noticed something else.
There was no gap in the crowd of boys, and there were more boys than in the portrait downstairs. The baby—Teddy—was held on his mother’s hip, just a toddler, and the rest of them stood in age order. Gus was the tallest, maybe twelve years old, and there were two younger boys between him and the twins. The gap in the portrait downstairs was the space that had belonged to Gus’s next-younger brother.
Cara reached out and touched the image of that boy; his smile looked stiff and uncertain, but Gus and Laurence each had an arm around him.
“That’s Ilie,” Gus said quietly. “Eli is his English name, but he—he’s more a Dragomir than any of us.”
“He’s not in the portrait downstairs,” Cara realized. He wasn’t one of the ones whose names he had told her when he was pointing them all out. But Mouse was his, so he had to be here somewhere.