The Mating Game: Dating a Dragon(36)

He gripped her hips again and braced her, taking some of her weight so she could move more easily above him. With each downward motion she rolled her hips, and Orion thrust up to meet her so they came together and parted, came together and parted, lost in the wild electricity they were building between them.

Excitement twisted and coiled in her belly and between her thighs, and when he arched his pelvis and slammed into her, bliss bolted through her, rebounding and echoing and building on itself until she felt like she was flying.

Orion cried out – a wild, wordless shout as he came, trembling with the intensity of their shared climax.

Cadence rolled to the side, gently disengaging from him. She felt sore and sticky and utterly satisfied. She snuggled up next to him, splaying her fingers on his chest and nuzzling his throat.

He was so hot he felt like he was burning up. His skin was still beaded with sweat, even as he caught his breath and his heart rate returned to normal.

She looked up into his eyes and put her cool, soothing hand on his hot brow. He smiled. She felt filled with warmth and sunshine.





Chapter Sixteen




“That was a beautiful ceremony,” Daisy sniffled, holding her son Jasper in her arms. He was human at the moment, rosy cheeked and curly haired, like a little angel. Looking at him made Cadence ache. Two more months. She couldn’t wait to cradle her dragonlings in her arms.

Cadence, rustling in her white dress, leaned in and sniffed at his head. “Ah, that new baby smell,” she said. “He smells like heaven.”

“He is the most precious thing ever,” Daisy agreed. Jasper looked up at her, smiled a toothless smile, and spit up onto his yellow bib.

“Aww, look, even his barf is cute,” Daisy said, dabbing at his mouth with a cloth that she plucked from her diaper bag.

“Good lord. Cute barf?” Cadence took a step back and looked askance at her friend. “Baby is cute. Barf is not. You’ve gone mad. Am I going to be that crazy?”

“With four babies, you will be four times as crazy,” Daisy promised her. “But, so worth it.”

They were standing in front of the stage where Cadence and Orion had just held their wedding – at the Fire and Ice Festival. It had turned out to be an enormous draw; the first such wedding in five hundred years. Friends, family and clan members took up all the seats close to the stage, but reporters and festival attendees were allowed to sit in the back.

“I told you so,” Daisy added to Wynona. “I told you it was a great mating.”

“Yes, you did,” Wynona agreed. “I believe that was the eleventh time?”

“Only the tenth,” Ryker Harrison, Daisy’s husband, said cheerfully. Ryker, a burly wolf shifter, had his arm slung around his wife’s shoulders. They’d all flown from North Carolina for the wedding.

“Ah, she’s being a model of restraint.” Wynona nodded.

Cadence knew that Wynona had been skeptical about the whole mating in the first place, but she could see how happy Orion and Cadence were now. In fact, she and Daisy had served as bridesmaids, along with Maude and Aurelia.

Jasper spit up some more. “That is some highly robust baby barf,” Orion observed with approval.

“Isn’t it, though?” Ryker beamed down at his son. “That’s my little man!”

“Is that normal?” Cadence wondered, raising a skeptical eyebrow at the baby. She was pretty sure he stuck his tongue out at her, on purpose. Spirited little punk. She liked him already.

“Pretty normal,” Daisy said. “I mean, let’s be real here, he’s descended from Ryker and me. He could only ever be so normal.”

“Ah, yes, very true. Well, normal’s over-rated. And boring. Your weirdness is definitely one of my favorite things about you.”

“Hold that thought. I’m going to go change him,” Daisy said, and she and Ryker strolled off to find a changing table.

“So, Humphrey never showed,” Maude observed. “I was afraid he might try to crash the wedding and ruin it for you.”

Humphrey had tried to stop the marriage a week earlier; he had filed a formal protest with the Elders. They had rejected it. Overall, he seemed to be backing off to an extent. Had he realized that Cadence wasn’t the kind of woman who’d allow herself to be forced into a mating? She could only hope.

Orion had sent word to Humphrey that whether the dragonlings were ice or fire, he was their father, and he would kill Humphrey rather than let them be taken from him.

Everyone knew that of the two, Orion was the stronger dragon, and would easily kill Humphrey in a fight. And no dragon Dominus was allowed to turn down a sky challenge. Therefore, if Humphrey tried to claim the dragonlings in order to get Cadence, he’d die. Sure, his clan would legally be able to claim all of Orion’s riches, but Humphrey wouldn’t be alive to enjoy it, which had to make him rethink his plans. Humphrey wasn’t known as the self-sacrificing sort. He’d made his fortune by being monstrously selfish and unmerciful towards his enemies.