Chapter 6
“I don’t see what the problem is, as the two of you don’t seem in any hurry to let me leave anytime soon, with my wanting my own bedroom while I’m here.” Cristina restlessly paced the sitting room as she glanced from Rhys to Aeran. “This is a big castle. I’m sure there must be a spare bedroom somewhere I can use. Even the attic will do.”
“As long as you aren’t sharing a bedroom with us,” Aeran drawled knowingly.
“Exactly!” Her chin was raised in challenge as she glared at both of them.
“Except for the obvious,” Rhys drawled from where he was still seated on the couch. “Our mate sleeps where we do,” he stated evenly at her frowning glance.
Cristina had stayed in the bathroom for as long as she thought it was safe to do so without one of these men actually breaking the door down to get to her. She now knew them both well enough to know either was capable of doing exactly that.
She had been totally mortified earlier, once she regained her scattered wits after the most incredible climax of her life, at the realization she had actually begged for these two men to give her release. So mortified, in fact, she had just wanted to hide herself away from their knowing eyes, but always in the full knowledge she wouldn’t be able to hide from them forever.
As she had suspected, both men were sitting waiting for her when she finally emerged from the bathroom ten minutes later. As she had also expected, the bathroom window was locked and the key was missing. It didn’t take two guesses to know that Rhys was probably responsible for that. He was by far the more rigid of the two men.
Although perhaps she shouldn’t be thinking about how rigid Rhys was when she was still totally aware of the long, hard press of his cock against her thigh earlier when he spanked her. The very long and hard press of Rhys’s cock. The thick length of Aeran’s cock had been equally impressive when she got back to her feet.
“The castle doesn’t have an attic,” Aeran dismissed with a grin.
“But it does have a dungeon,” Rhys added in warning.
Cristina breathed out her frustration. “Are you trying to frighten me?”
“Am I succeeding?”
Her chin rose. “No. And I’m not sleeping in the same bed as either of you.”
“You’re right, you aren’t.” Rhys was also grinning now, and if anything, it made him look more predatory than usual. “You’ll be sleeping in the same bed as both of us.”
Cristina gave a shake of her head. “All this talk about dragons and dragon mates is just a front, isn’t it? You’re really just a load of perverts.”
“Did our dragons look real to you earlier?” Aeran reasoned gently.
“Well…yes. But drugs would bring about that same— What are you doing?” Cristina gasped as Rhys stood and crossed the room so quickly, she was barely aware of him having done so until she felt the firm pressure of his fingers about one of her wrists.
“Do you take drugs?” he demanded.
“Of course not,” she snapped. “I was referring to the possibility of one of you having given them to me.”
“Absolutely not.” Aeran joined them, both brothers now standing altogether too close for Cristina’s comfort. “Maybe if we tell her the whole story, it will be a little easier for her to understand?” he prompted Rhys.
“I doubt it, considering how our brothers’ human mates reacted.” Rhys returned to his seat. “But I suppose it’s worth a try.”
A parallel universe would have been preferable to the things Aeran and Rhys told Cristina over the next few minutes.
An invisible island where the Welsh Underworld lived. The ten brothers, Grigor, Nathaniel, Rufus, Gideon, Deryk, Bryn, Dylan, Garrett, Rhys, and Aeran, all born of their father, Uther Pendragon, and their Welsh goddess mothers. They had another brother, apparently, the King Arthur of legend. The centuries since Arthur died had been spent fighting more wars and searching for their one true mate. Two of their brothers had died during those years, Rufus and Gideon, but six of the remaining eight had finally found their mate in the last eighteen months. All of those mates were human but with traces of dragon DNA in their blood. Cristina could only assume she had that same trace in her own blood.
She winced. “The two of you now think I’m that to both of you?” She was many things. Cristina Petran. Cezar Fescaru’s daughter. The proud owner of a university business degree she had hoped might get her into banking.
But the one true mate to two dragon shifters?
No, that simply wasn’t possible.
Was it?
“We don’t think it. We know it,” Aeran assured lightly.
“And we aren’t letting you out of the castle again until the mating has been completed,” Rhys added firmly. “Until we have both claimed you. Together.”
Cristina didn’t even want to think about how that was going to be possible.
“We can give you a little time to become accustomed to the idea.” Aeran, predictably, was the one to reassure her.
“But only a little,” Rhys, also predictably, added in warning.
“Maybe you would like it if we were to join the rest of the family downstairs for dinner this evening?” Aeran prompted kindly. “You haven’t eaten all day, and it would give you a chance to be introduced to and talk to our brothers and the other mates.”
“That way, you can see for yourself our brothers don’t keep their mates chained to the bed so they can have their wicked way with them whenever they feel so inclined,” Rhys taunted.
“Well, there was that one time Grigor—”
“He hasn’t done it since,” Rhys reasoned. “Unless it was for their mutual pleasure.”
“All of your brothers and their mates live here too?” Cristina decided it was time to cut off that line of conversation.
“Nathaniel and Chloe lived on the other side of the mountain for a while, but it wasn’t a good idea once they had Amelia.”
“One of your dragon shifter brothers has a daughter?”
“Two of our brothers are now fathers.”
“And Grigor likes to chain his mate to the bed?” It was all too easy, Cristina realized, to imagine the arrogant and austere Grigor chaining a woman to the bed and then making love to her until she screamed with pleasure.
Unfortunately, after what had happened earlier, she could also imagine Aeran and Rhys doing the same to her too…
An image that caused her nipples to swell and between her thighs to dampen.
“Only if Gayle agrees,” Rhys assured. “We are all completely dedicated to the pleasure and safety of our mate.”
Aeran eyed her knowingly. “I believe our own mate liked the idea of being chained to the bed.”
“I believe she did.” Rhys’s gaze on her was one of pure hunger.
How could they know that unless… “Can you smell arousal too?”
“Yes,” Rhys confirmed.
“That’s just… Does this mating thing also allow you to know what I’m thinking and feeling?”
“Thinking? No? Feeling? Yes,” Aeran acknowledged with satisfaction. “The thoughts will come too once the mating claim—”
“Is complete,” she finished impatiently. “How come I can’t sense any of your feelings?”
“I’m sure you can if you concentrate.” Rhys nodded. “Close your eyes and just allow your mind to go blank. Then tell us what you’re feeling.”
Cristina didn’t want to follow a single dictate either of these two men made, but it was too much of a temptation to resist trying to see if she really could sense what they were feeling.
Her lids flew wide seconds later, and she turned to glare at both men. “That’s— Surely not…?”
Rhys chuckled at her lack of speech. “What did you feel?”
Her cheeks blazed with heat. “You were— Both of you— One in front of me, one behind, and both of you were— Is that even possible?”
Cristina had sensed hands caressing the length of her thighs as she straddled lean and powerful hips. She’d felt a long and aroused cock entering the slickness of her pussy inch by slow and pleasurable inch as those big strong hands continued to caress up her thighs until long fingers stroked her swollen clit. A fresh gush of juices lubricated the walls of her pussy as she instantly became lost in the euphoria of the climax that hit her like a tidal wave.
She’d come back to full awareness as she felt the hot press of another body behind her. A hot, muscled chest, and another thick, lengthy cock, this one gliding against the seam of her bottom as the one inside her pussy continued those slow and leisurely strokes inside her wet and convulsing channel. A large, hot hand rested on her hip, the cock inside her pussy stilling to allow the second cock to slowly breach her—
Cristina’s bottom cheeks now clenched, as did the slick heat of her pussy, at the thought of being taken by both those two enormous cocks at the same time.
She also knew, from the emotions Aeran and Rhys were projecting and the pleasure she could feel emanating from them, that the cock in her pussy belonged to Aeran and the one pressing against her bottom hole, about to breach that tight ring of muscle, was Rhys.
She felt their pleasure almost as deeply as her own. The way that Aeran had to grit his teeth to stop himself from coming as the tight walls of her pussy contracted about and caressed the silky length of his cock. Rhys’s concentration as he watched the bulbous head of his cock entering her tight ring, his hiss as her tightness engulfed and claimed him as he was claiming her.
“Oh, it’s possible,” Rhys drawled with satisfaction. “It’s also, as you probably also now know, going to be incredibly pleasurable for all of us.” He glanced at Aeran. “I guess we were having the same fantasy, brother,” he murmured appreciatively.
“She is so fucking tight,” Aeran groaned.
“Goddess, yes.” Rhys studied her through narrowed lids. “Cristina—” He broke off whatever question he had been about to ask as a knock sounded on the door, a growl rumbling low in his throat. How dare a member of the family interrupt when they were alone with their mate! “I’m not too sure about the wisdom of joining the others downstairs for dinner with our mate still unclaimed.” He scowled. “I don’t think they would appreciate one or both of us wrecking the dining room if one of our brothers gets too close to her.”
“No,” Aeran acknowledged as he stood and crossed the room to open the door. “Nathaniel…?”
Cristina was still reeling from the emotional depth of sharing Aeran and Rhys’s fantasy but even so, she easily recognized Nathaniel as being yet another Pendragon brother. He stood as tall as Aeran and Rhys, his hair as dark as night and his eyes a pure emerald green. Because his dragon was that same deep green shimmer? Considering she had just experienced not only her own emotions but also Aeran’s and Rhys’s, it was becoming easier to accept the other things she had tried to deny, such as the pattern of the brothers’ unusual eye colors in relation to their dragon.
Her cheeks burned as Nathaniel sniffed the air. God, she really hoped he couldn’t smell how aroused she was from feeling her own pleasure mixed with Aeran’s and Rhys’s as they both took her.
“You’re still unmated,” Nathaniel stated with disapproval.
“We’re working on it,” Aeran assured.
“I suggest you work on it faster,” Nathaniel rasped.
Rhys stood to join the two men at the door. “Why, what’s happened?”
“I’m sure we will be introduced formally later.” Nathaniel gave Cristina a brief glance before his full attention returned to his brothers and Rhys gave another growl. “Nikolai has arrived and needs to talk to us all as soon as possible.”
“Volkov is here so often now, I’m starting to think he has designs on taking over our castle,” Rhys drawled.
Nikolai Volkov was a regular visitor at Castle Pendragon?
Cristina had heard of him, of course, as being the right-hand man to the head of the Russian bratva, Gregori Markovic, her father’s biggest rival in the London underworld.
So much of a rival that he was the one responsible for her father’s death and those of his men? She had no proof of that, but it would make sense.
Cristina marched over to join the Pendragon brothers in the doorway. “I’d like to talk to Mr. Volkov.”
Rhys turned to look at her. “Not this time, little warrior.”
“But—”
“Trust us on this one, hm?” Aeran touched her arm lightly.
Every instinct Cristina had protested at doing what Aeran and Rhys were asking of her. But perhaps she should approach the idea of speaking with Nikolai Volkov cautiously until she was more familiar with the Pendragon brothers’ connection to the Russian. Because they obviously had one.
“Some of the mates are downstairs in the dining room.” Nathaniel continued to keep his distance, no doubt in deference to Rhys’s warning growl. “Perhaps you would like to join them there, and we will be with you later?”
Well, at least Nathaniel didn’t expect her to be kept a prisoner in this suite when Aeran and Rhys weren’t with her. It was something, at least.
“You’ll behave yourself while we’re gone,” Rhys told her firmly.
“We’ll be back as soon as we can,” Aeran added in a gentler voice before Cristina had the chance to give Rhys the sharp answer she had intended. Arrogant bloody bastard!
“No trying to leave the castle again.” Rhys didn’t wait for her answer this time either, as he pulled her into his arms and claimed her mouth in a hard kiss before pulling back to place his forehead against hers. “Goddess, you taste like honey.”
It was the first kiss either of her so called mates had given her, Cristina realized, feeling slightly dazed by having responded to Rhys’s forceful passion.
Nor did she have time to recover from that onslaught of emotions before Aeran pulled her in tightly against him and kissed her lingeringly, nipping and tasting her lips before his tongue dipped silkily into the heat of her mouth. Claiming. Possessing.
Cristina was completely robbed of breath, her knees having turned to jelly by the time Aeran broke the kiss, her body soft and completely pliant as she leaned against him. He was so different to Rhys in all ways, giving rather than demanding, and yet between the two of them, they made her head spin and her body come alive with needs and emotions she had never felt before.