1
~ Maksim ~
“Where’s whatsisname?” Ty asked, handing me a beer. “Jared. Did you leave him back in Wisconsin?”
“Jason,” I corrected him, slouching down on the couch. “And that’s been over for a few months. Thanks,” I added, tipping the beer up in a mock salute before taking a drink.
“Fuck, Maks,” Ty laughed, shaking his head. “You go through men faster than my niece goes through diapers. I thought you dragons were all ‘there can be only one’ and shit.”
I laughed along with him, ignoring the little twinge I felt at the jibe. Not every dragon shifter could be as lucky as my friend, Dane, who had found his fated mate in Ty’s twin, Wes. The first time Dane had seen Wes, his otherself had instantly recognized the pretty man as his destiny.
I’d met Dane over two hundred years ago, when I still thought I was human. He’d been there when my dragon had awoken, and when my otherself had first burst forth he’d saved me from causing harm to the people that mattered to me.
Before that day, I hadn’t known such things existed, and it had been both shocking and terrifying… but not as much as the thought of what I would have become if my friend hadn’t been there to take me under his wing. Dane was already centuries old by the time I came along, and in that time he had seen our kind do unspeakable things. He’d shielded me from most of it, guiding and mentoring me in what it meant to be what we were and becoming my closest friend along the way—a relationship closer than family for both of us.
Our nature meant that we lived lives always subtly apart from the humans around us, but that had changed for Dane when he found his fated mate. He had a family of his own now, and I’d never seen my friend as happy as he was now that he had Wes and had become a father.
He was a good man, and he deserved it.
Seeing what he had, though, had made me increasingly discontent with the endless parade of boyfriends who flowed in and out of my own life. I enjoyed human men, but from the moment I’d discovered what I really was, I’d understood that I would always need to keep them at arm’s length. I’d learned that from Dane, but where he had been wracked with guilt over the way dragonkind treated the humans who didn’t know that we lived among them, I’d always been more laid back.
Dane had been driven to protect humans. I was much more interested in simply enjoying them.
Our dragon powers made it easy for our kind to get what we wanted in life, but I’d never had to resort to that to fill my bed. I knew that men were attracted to my dragon-built human body as much as to my admittedly-hedonistic attitude, and I couldn’t ever remember meeting a man I wanted that I couldn’t have.
Of course, I always knew that I couldn’t have them for long, but I was used to that.
Humans were too short-lived to get attached to, and there was so much I couldn’t reveal to them that getting truly close was not an option. Which had never been a problem. Keeping things fun and casual had always worked just fine for me. I liked things easy, and if there was a level of intimacy lost, I accepted that as the price of being a dragon.
Lately, though, I’d started to feel… restless.
Watching Dane with his fated mate had shown me something I hadn’t believed was possible for us, and it stirred something inside me that I wasn’t at all sure I liked. It made me less and less content with being alone, but at the same time, I wasn’t satisfied with the company of the kind of men who had been perfectly acceptable before.
It was maddening.
Dragons were territorial creatures, and even among friends we tended to live apart. Still, I’d grown restless in my own territory back east and lately found myself heading north frequently to spend time with my friend Ben, another dragon shifter I’d met when Dane and I first came to this continent after getting chased out of Europe by my sire, or more often, pulled here, drawn to the west to be around Dane and his family.
Dane had only found his mate a year and a half ago, and they were still sickeningly in love with each other. Even though I knew Dane considered me family, too, I didn’t want to intrude… but I couldn’t seem to stay away. Being around them didn’t quite cure my loneliness, but at least it was better than being on my own.
Especially since I hadn’t been with a man since I’d ended things with my last boyfriend, Jason, months ago.
I blinked, a little shocked as I realized how long it had actually been.
“I need to get laid,” I said. Maybe that was the problem. Sex might help with the annoying dissatisfaction I’d felt lately with… well, with everything.