Flick found herself standing in the cottage’s cozy living room, mere inches away from the man who would soon be hers, body and soul.

For a moment she looked around, marvelling at the feeling of familiarity in the room surrounding them.

“I’ve been here,” she murmured, “with you, Dex. We lay on that couch, your arms were around me. We’d…”

They’d made love. On the couch. On the rug. Upstairs, in the bedroom. No doubt if she’d dreamed long and hard enough, she’d have seen them outside, lying in the grass together, on the beach, naked under the stars.

“I know,” he said. “I know all of it, because I’ve seen it just as you have. But dreams are never as good as real life, Flicka. Let me show you.” Dex kissed her with all the possessiveness of a man claiming what was rightfully his.

He was right. No dream could ever match this.

“I won’t let anything happen to us,” he promised softly, pressing his lips to her neck. He stroked the back of his hand over her breast, tightening her nipple under his touch. “Not tonight, not ever. I won’t let Eldrich ruin things. Do you hear me? I am yours, and you are mine. Nothing will come between us. This I can promise you.”

“Say it again,” she replied, her hands finding his chest. She could feel the pulse of his heart beating against her palms, reassuring and powerful. “Say it again and again. About how you’re mine.”

He kissed her cheek, her chin, the tip of her nose. She closed her eyes to savour the sensation. “I’m yours, Flicka,” he said. “I’m all yours.” Then his lips were on hers again, kissing her with the deep erotic need that surged like molten lava through them both. So good.

Opening her eyes, Flick reached down and unbuttoned his shirt just enough to pull it upwards, tearing it over his head and mussing his pile of jet-black hair. He pulled it back into a half-ponytail, securing it with a rubber band that he’d been wearing around his wrist. Flick inhaled deep as she got her first glance at his incredible torso, tight with ripples of hard-edged muscle. He was even more amazing than she’d imagined, his body a work of art that she would explore for years—no, decades—to come.

On his left pectoral muscle, a strange marking caught her eye. A sort of dark scar shaped like a wave, or perhaps it was a gust of wind. She traced her fingers over its lines, marvelling at the perfection of his flesh.

“The mark of Air,” he said. “It’s the symbol of my lineage.”

“The mark of Air.” Flick’s lips met it gently before brushing a series of kisses up to his neck. She could taste the salt on his skin, delicious masculinity meeting her tongue with each touch of her lips. “I want to do this for days,” she breathed. “I want to kiss every inch of your body. You’re so damned beautiful, Dex.”

It would have shocked some men to have a woman take possession of him as she was doing, but the Dragon shifter sighed with pleasure at her touch. Perhaps he understood her desire better than any human man ever could.

“I’m not the only one who’s beautiful, and you’re not the only one with a hungry mouth,” he replied, a sexy smile bringing his eyes and lips to life. He reached for her, pulling the jacket off her shoulders and tossing it aside before yanking her blouse upwards as she’d done to his. He threw it to the floor when he’d stolen it away from her body, turning his gaze to her bare skin.

Flick looked down at herself, her form on display before him in little more than a bra and a dark grey skirt. She was his for the taking, but perhaps she should tease him a little. She stepped back and unclasped the bra, slipping its straps off her shoulders slowly. Playing with his eyes as well as his mind, she pulled the delicate silk cups away from her breasts with her fingertips, revealing just a little of the dark pink of her pebbled nipples before fully unveiling her body for his eyes to behold.

Dex let out a delicious moan as the garment flitted to the ground, his eyes taking in the milky whiteness of her torso. He moved forward and reached for her, palms slipping over her hard nipples as he kissed her again hungrily, as greedy for her as she was for him. Then he moved in a flurry, undoing the buttons on her skirt, pulling the garment down over her hips, his hand sneaking its way deep into the front her knickers. Another sigh emerged from between his lips as he found her slick sex waiting for his touch. He slipped his finger over her and pushed inside her channel, forcing out a hard moan from deep in her chest.

“Too many clothes still,” he growled, easing down onto his knees to tear her knickers down over her shoes to toss it aside. Pressing his face to her thighs, he inhaled her scent deep into his lungs.

“God, you’re fucking perfect,” he said.

“So are you.” She let herself drop backwards onto the couch, splitting her legs apart and running her hands up her thighs, her leather pumps still on her feet, their heels enhancing shapely calves. “I’m yours, Dex,” she said. “I’ve always been yours. So take me.”

Dex’s eyes narrowed, focused on her sex, but he too wanted to tease. He kissed each of her knees, the touch of his lips tender, worshipful. He tormented her with slow motion movements as he made his way gradually up the inside of one thigh and down the other, skipping her most sensitive place deliberately, making her writhe in anticipation of his tongue.

Finally he looked up at her again, his bright blue eyes inquiring, searching her expression for approval. She nodded, her lips slightly parted as she mouthed, “Yes. I want you to taste me.”

When his tongue met her flesh, Flick thought she might die from the perfection of it. The Dragon shifter’s mouth on her sex were heaven. Dex seemed to read her every reaction, knowing just what would make her body writhe under his touch, would make her go insane with pleasure. He knew how fast to lick, how gently. Psychic or not, he could read her body just as he seemed to read her mind. He knew just when she needed his fingers inside her, when she needed him to pull away. When to look up at her with that gorgeous face of his, to stroke her bud with his thumb and take a nipple between his lips.

Her orgasm could have assaulted her so quickly. She could have surrendered her body to a series of instant tremors under his exquisite touch. But she wanted him inside her when it happened. Their first time should belong to them both, in every possible way.

“Take off your trousers,” she commanded. “I want you in my mouth.”

“My goodness,” he replied, pulling back. “You are the most delightful sort of modern woman, aren’t you?”

“I believe in equality of the sexes,” she said. “Now let me show you what that entails.”

He did as she ordered, slipping his trousers down his muscular legs slowly, taking his boxer shorts with them, and for the first time her eyes were greeted with the sight of his exquisite arousal. His cock was as massive as the rest of him; long, hard and thick, marbled with beautiful veins. Flick slid down to the floor and sucked on the swollen tip, licking away the drop of perfection that had gathered there in anticipation of her mouth.

Dex let out a moan as she took more of him between her lips, stroking her way up and down his shaft slowly with her fingertips before wrapping both hands around him. God, he was huge. The thought that he would be inside her soon, splitting her in two made her ache with pleasure.

From somewhere deep inside him a moan crescendoed, neither human nor animal. His cock twitched in micro-pulses with each tightening of her lips around him. Somehow he was still growing under her touch, even harder, even longer. He was an impossibly perfect entity, and he was hers.

Greedily she pumped his shaft, her tongue playing with him, teasing and stroking as her lips worked his engorged head.

“Flicka,” he moaned. “Too good, goddess. Too good. You’ll make me explode if you keep that up.”

Flick pulled herself upright before laying herself down on the couch, lifting her right leg and wrapping her foot around his waist, pulling him towards her.

“Now,” she told him. “Please.”

He slipped over her, one powerful arm pressing into the couch next to her face, and eased the swollen tip of his sex into her opening. His eyes watched hers, reading her protectively, making sure he was welcome. She nodded silently, and he made his move.

Her mouth flew open when he pushed himself deep inside her, a cry erupting from somewhere in her chest.

“Did I hurt you?” Dex asked.

“No,” she laughed. “On the contrary, I think I’ve died and gone to heaven.”

He pulled out again, smiling, and flicked the tip of his engorged cock over her clit. Then another thrust and he was far inside her again. With one thumb he massaged her bud as he moved in and out, filling her again and again with his impossible girth. Nothing could have been more blissful than the sensation of their two bodies intertwining as one.

“Will you come for me, Beauty?” Dex asked, arching down to take a nipple captive between his lips.

“Keep doing that and I will,” she moaned, staring at his form, his abdominal muscles clenching with each hard thrust as he teased her with gentle bites.

His lips curved up in a crooked smile and he increased his thumb’s speed as he stroked her clit, pulling back to watch her eyes in challenge. In the end, that was what sent her over the edge; those otherworldly, beautiful eyes of his. Ethereal, human and animal all at once, peering into her soul, lingering on her face as the incredible being focused all his strength on her body’s pleasure.

Heat melted Flick’s core as the first wave shuddered her body into ecstasy, her channel squeezing tight around him. She cried out, her hips bucking under Dex as her body laid claim to his with each hard pulse.

With a hoarse, ecstatic growl from his chest, he exploded hot seed inside her, taking possession of his lover even as her body drew more and more delicious pleasure from him.

“Oh, my lost girl,” he moaned as he thrust one last time, sending a final surge of scorching heat through Flick’s centre.

In that moment, she knew she’d changed forever.

She was no longer Flicka Jones, dull human in a dull world.

She was Flicka Jones, Dragon’s mate. As she would be from this day forth.

* * *

Flick lay in bed next to her lover several hours later. They were still awake, unwilling to drift off and risk waking up to a world where none of this had come to pass. She was on her stomach, and he was tracing a finger along her back, drawing an unseen design on her skin.

She finally had the courage to ask the question that had instilled fear in her earlier. “Days ago, you told me you had the same dreams that I had,” she told him. “Have you seen all of it? Everything I’ve seen?”

“Do you really want to know?” he asked, an eyebrow raised in curiosity. “Do you really want to see our future?”

“Yes. I really do.”

Gently, Dex slipped a large hand onto the back of her head. “Close your eyes,” he said, and she obeyed. A moment later, a vision was making its way into her mind, as vivid as her dreams.

Two young boys were playing in a field of long, swaying grass. The same boys who’d shown up in her mind’s eye. They were identical, with black hair and light blue eyes. They turned her way, huge smiles spreading over their faces as she ran towards them.

She wore a summer dress covered in small flowers. She could feel the wide smile stretching her lips as she stopped and called them into the cottage for dinner. They raced towards her, throwing their arms around her waist in an embrace that breathed love through her very pores.

And then they were gone.

Flick pulled away, opening her eyes, and stared up at Dex. “Are they…can they possibly be…?” she asked, too afraid to finish the question.

“Our children,” he replied, nodding. “Those are our twin boys.”

Our children, Flick repeated to herself over and over again. She should have been frightened by the idea. Should at least have found such a thought daunting. But she didn’t. She’d known Dex for such a short time, but she already loved everything about him. His face, his voice, his kindness, his protective nature.

The thought of having children with him filled her with a bliss she’d only ever felt in her dreams.

Her destiny was clear now. A perfect life awaited her.

As long as the next day went well.