He let out a long breath and the relief on his face made her grin widen.
“Thank the gods! Baby, I’m going to treat you good and fuck you so long and hard you’re never going to want to leave me.” For someone his size, he was remarkably agile and quick. She squealed as he plucked her from the chair into his arms, swinging her around.
“Put me down, you big lug.” She laughed, his joy infectious. “I’m hungry.”
“I’m hungry, too, baby.” His mouth was on her, sucking the air from her lungs and plundering her depths, making her head spin like only her sexy dragon could.
She loved the smoky flavour of his mouth, his tongue entwining with hers. Despite being scared of what dangers her future may hold now, she was with Brimstone, and at the same time, her heart thrummed with excitement for exactly the same reason.
Oxygen flooded back into her lungs when Brim released her mouth and started nipping kisses along the side of her jaw.
“Brimstone,” she said, trying to sound stern, but it was lost in her breathy moan with him finding a sensitive spot under her ear, making her sex flood with juices and her lower belly flutter in heightened arousal.
“Food first…then sex, please.”
He rumbled his disappointment and she giggled. Slowly, he slackened his arms and let her slide down his body.
“I think we need some rules.”
“Rules?” He blinked and his perplexed expression made her giggle more, so she placed her hand over her mouth to stop the laughter from becoming worse. He eyed her and a devious grin spread over his sensual lips, one she didn’t much like the look of.
“Rules, yes, I will take you to my den where I can keep you safe, and you will call me master.”
“Nice try, buster, but no.”
“Which part no, the moving into my den, or the calling me master?”
“Both. I’m not calling you master and I’m not ready to move anywhere, yet. You really have a den, or is it an expression to mean your bachelor pad?”
He snorted. “All dragons have dens, where else would we hide our treasure?”
“Treasure? What kind of treasure?”
The wicked, lustful gleam was back. “Yes, our most precious treasure. Our little mates.”
She rolled her eyes, but it didn’t stop the warm feeling spreading out from her heart through to the rest of her body.
“So, you going to tell me everything I want to know?”
She bit her lip when he looked more like a little boy than a seven foot, warrior, dragon man. “I don’t know where the fuck to start.”
“Start with why you and Slade came to the—what did you say?—Human Realm, and then you can tell me about what a mate is to a dragon.”
He nodded, his large head tilting to the side before retook his seat.
“Eat. I’ll talk.” Her stomach rumbled in hunger, so she let the barked command slide. She picked up her fork and tucked into delicious food.
“For thousands of years, dragons have always thought humans were dangerous, so we used to exile our criminals, the ones we didn’t execute, to the Human Realm.”
Amber’s fork hovered on her second bite, and she forced the food into her mouth, so as to not voice the sudden questions popping into her head.
“But that all changed when we exiled the Captain of the King's Guard for a crime we later found he was innocent of. The King discovered things were not quite as we always assumed them to be. The King’s Commander found his true mate, a human female. He also found dragons are no longer hunted and killed as they were a few hundred years ago.”
Amber swallowed and couldn’t help asking, “How long do dragons live?”
Brim shrugged, lifting another plate to reveal a juicy large steak, still rather rare from the blood oozing out if it. “Seven hundred years or so.”
It was a good thing, she didn’t have food or drink in her mouth, or Brimstone would have been wearing it. She forced herself to breathe. “How old are you?”
“Three hundred and twenty.”
“So, you’re middle aged for a dragon.”
He grinned and grabbed a knife, slicing the steak in half. “Compared to humans, yes. As my mate, you now share what’s left of my lifespan.”
Food lodged in her throat, she stared coughing. Brim was quick to move around and pat her on the back.
“You wanted to hear this,” he rumbled. “No more eating till I’m done talking.”
She nodded fast, but slowly inhaled again as the food slid down properly. Her mind still struggled to come to terms with her life span of a few hundred years.
He withdrew his hand and she keenly felt the loss of his heat.
“So, you found we’re not as dangerous as you thought,” she managed to prompt after a few moments under his close scrutiny.