Steffan turned back to his preparation and took the chopping board out of its holder. He hoped to the gods he looked calmer than the seething mass of emotions he’d got going on inside. He’d meant to shut Aiden up. To let the other dragon taste his power and to scare him into backing off with his crazy idea about them getting down to some fun and games with Mia. He needed the option off the table because his honor depended on him keeping a promise to his good friend. And fucking said friend’s mate’s sister? Not honorable.
So, he’d kissed Aiden in the hope of scaring the other male off, and he’d put every bit of power he possessed into it. It seemed to have worked because Aiden sat at the table and stared broodingly into his wineglass. There’d been one little flaw in Steffan’s plan, though. Despite knowing he found Aiden deeply attractive, he’d believed his strength and his age gave him immunity to the kiss. Instead, he shook inside. He fucking shook. With need and want and centuries of pent-up desire.
As he grabbed two stalks of celery and chopped them methodically, he tried to wrestle back control of his faculties. This wasn’t him. He’d spent human lifetimes on lockdown, having only one aim in life. To find Rhyndor and end him. This out of control lunacy needed to end, and he ought to be the one to end it. He simply needed to find the cool, calculating core of himself. Dragons were both hot and cold. Fire and ice. He needed to find the ice. He almost laughed at his unintentional play on Nathan’s mate’s name. Of course, her real name was Claire, but she’d become known as Ice to all. A legend. A stunningly beautiful latent female who’d captured the heart of one of their most powerful warriors. She’d changed things in the Scottish clan for sure. Now females were learning to fight. They were allowed more varied roles in the clan, which meant males weren’t kept trapped in their roles either.
He liked how she’d smashed some of the more Draconian rules to bits in the Scottish clan. It needed change as far as he was concerned. Their own clan was, in some ways, even more rigid than the Scots had been before Claire’s arrival, and their petty rules were one of many reasons he preferred to keep his distance.
But some things would never change. Nathan might let all these things happen, but when it came down to it, he put Claire’s and Dominic’s safety above everything else. Males like Steffan and Nathan wouldn’t…couldn’t change the basic part of their DNA. They needed to protect what was theirs with a fearsome, burning drive.
For this reason, he needed to keep his distance from Aiden and Mia. The kiss had been a mistake. Letting Mia stay the night had been a mistake, and if he were brutally honest, he’d admit it came from wanting her near and not only his promise to Nathan to keep her safe. He’d call his friend in a moment, once he’d gotten the sauce for the pasta he intended to make simmering away. He’d call Nathan and tell him to come bright and early for the female.
It had been good, though, to feel something other than inertia. To focus on something blindingly beautiful enough to take away the damned ache in his bad leg for once. The kiss had been brighter and more vital than any other moment in his last one hundred years. Gods, it terrified him. He liked being numb. He drifted through life, reading, occasionally traveling to see friends, listening to music, really doing nothing much at all. He’d sort of given up on life in one way. But in another, he hadn’t. He supposed if he were human, he might have been diagnosed as mildly depressed. Or perhaps, damn depressed. Dragons didn’t admit to such weaknesses, though, and certainly not powerful warriors.
Grabbing a carrot, he sliced into it with a sigh.
“Don’t take it out on the carrot.” Aiden walked over to him and said the words right into his ear.
He’d been studiously avoiding looking at the guy. Now the damned male stood close to him, right in his space. Steffan sensed the exact moment their heart rates clicked into sync. Christ, they were an exceptional match on the physical level. Personality-wise, not so much. He had no doubt Aiden would drive him insane with his attitude.
Bare feet padded along the corridor toward the kitchen, and he braced himself for Mia’s appearance. She entered the room, and he studiously focused on the carrot in front of him because with Aiden’s breath caressing his neck, he couldn’t deal with another inch of temptation. He hoped she’d put on some huge, loose sweater or something.
Aiden tensed beside him, his breath coming in sharper puffs of air, and Steffan turned around slowly to see what had the other male reacting so.
Oh, holy crap. She stood there in a short towel, wrapped around the middle part of her body, stopping on her upper thigh, and tight around her full breasts. For a moment, he only stared. Her long, dark hair hung in wet tendrils over her shoulders, and she picked at a strand with the fingers of her left hand, twirling it as she looked from him to Aiden and back again.
“My bags are outside. Out of the doors I mean, in the…outside bit, and I don’t know how to open them.”
He didn’t buy it for one moment. Yeah, her bags were out there, but she’d had the choice of tons of towels, most of them bigger than the bit of cloth she’d covered herself in. She’d also had the option of drying off fully and putting her old clothes back on, rather than standing there with droplets of water still clinging to her gorgeous skin.
She licked her full lips, those perfect, wicked lips and smiled, slow with a touch of uncertainty. Her gaze flicked from him to Aiden and back again. Her breasts rose and fell. The very air in the room began to move as heat filled the space between them.
He glanced at Aiden and back to Mia, and still, he couldn’t do anything to break the spell. He ought to. Right the fuck now, he should turn his back on her or walk past her to the outside doors, but his legs refused to move.
Gods, he wanted them so much. It became a living, breathing entity, taking him over and stealing any last semblance of sense or self-control.
Air rushed in and out of his nostrils, and he wouldn’t have been surprised to see smoke drifting in front of him as his dragon roared within. Fired up for the first time in centuries, his beast clamored for Steffan to take what Mia offered. His blood burned with the primal desire to mate.
Mia stopped the hair twirling and the pouting, and her eyes widened as she stared at his chest rising and falling. The air in the room grew heavy as sin with dark promise.
The three of them stood stock-still. A frozen tableau of anticipation, here amongst his things, in his kitchen with the stupid celery and carrots still on the chopping board and the knife still in his hand.
All three of them perched on the edge of the precipice. Did they jump, or would they still manage to step back? He battled for control, but the lust in him raged strong and loud now. Steffan knew with a sick certainty the decision wasn’t his anymore. He could no more turn away from this than he could stop breathing. But Mia looked apprehensive now. As if she’d realized what she’d provoked and might want to back out.
Next to him, Aiden’s rapid-fire breathing matched his own, and they both looked to the female in front of them. Mia’s next move would seal their fates.
He saw the moment she decided. The millisecond where her eyes lost their uncertainty and a new boldness crept in. She licked her lips, not in any self-conscious come-on, but an unscripted moment of lust as she flicked her heavy-lidded gaze between the two of them.
Aiden groaned, soft and low in his throat, and Steffan turned to him, only to see his eyes almost black as his pupils swallowed up the usual green. Those dark pools of desire fixed themselves on him for the longest beat and only added to his building need to move, to act. To make them his. The intensity of Aiden’s desire blinded him.
Fuck, he was losing it. Part of him hated them for making him feel so damn much. He’d been happy in his own way, stuck in his cocoon of nothingness. Existing but not living suited him fine, thanks. So what, if on some occasions in the dead of night he let himself wonder about simply ending it all? It didn’t mean he’d do it. And hope was a killer, the worst kind of liar. It whispered things could be good. Showed happiness and then whisked it away at the exact moment he relaxed into it.
So yeah, he’d been okay, doing his thing before these two turned up and flipped his world upside down in forty-eight hours. They’d given him renewed fucking life he’d never asked for.
Hormones and pheromones and other more magical things filled the air, creating a maelstrom of sensation and emotion. Any moment now he’d lose it. Adrenaline pumped in his body. Fight or flight…except he never ran from a fight…and there was always a third option…to fuck.
He half wanted to tear their throats out for tempting him and half needed to take them, now, and damn it all.
He had fucking adored his mates. Loved them beyond belief, but he’d never experienced this level of desire, which made him feel like shit. Like a traitor. He tried to remind himself this bit was merely simple biology, and many centuries of love and companionship had gone into his previous mating. But it shook him to the core to realize this match might eclipse his previous one. In pure biological terms, at least.
He saw their faces: Elwin, his bonded male, and Dawn, their female mate. Would they hate him for this? He liked to think not. After all, he’d spent centuries alone, trying to atone for their deaths. Surely they wouldn’t begrudge him a momentary connection. Because that was all it would be; he’d make sure of it. No actual fucking, just playing around so they could all slake their thirst but not push the mating bond further.
Broken out of his inertia, he took one step forward…and Mia gave an odd squeak of surprise. A tiny stream of air pushed through her full lips, making the comical sound, and her eyes widened. And then…she ran. She turned tail and ran out of the room, but not before she threw a half-exhilarated, half-terrified, come get me look his way and let the towel fall.
The last vestige of his control snapped, torn away. She’d ignited the ancient predator within, and the knife clattered to the floor as he stalked his prey out of the room.
He followed the sound of Mia’s bare feet slapping against the tiles as she ran toward his room, and Aiden followed right behind him.
Rounding the corner, chest moving as if he’d run a marathon, he saw her standing by the bed. She trembled where she stood, and for a moment, he wasn’t sure if she wanted this. Then she palmed her full breasts and smiled… Okay, she wanted this.
His eyes didn’t know what to take in first. Her gorgeous breasts. The flush creeping up her neck and onto her cheeks. Her feverish eyes. Or the dark, secret place between her curvaceous thighs.
“Oh, fuck, we’re so done for.” Aiden sounded happy about it.
“I want you…both of you.” She looked at them one by one, and turned her back, giving them a view of her insanely lush behind.
She clambered onto the bed and lay on her side facing them, confident in her own skin. Her uncertainty remained, though. And no wonder. She was poking the hornets’ nest and had to worry about what she may have stirred up. The hesitation she displayed didn’t relate to her body, clearly. He loved her healthy self-esteem and her ease with herself.
Not even thinking, he stalked toward the bed, toeing his boots off as he advanced and climbed on beside her. He crawled up her body and took her face in his hands. He stared at her for a long moment and lowered his mouth to hers. Oh, yes. Gods, she tasted of heaven. As good as Aiden, but in a different way. Whereas Aiden made him want to conquer and dominate because of his brash attitude, Mia gave him her submission straightaway and made him want to protect and cherish.
He groaned into her mouth, and she answered with a whimper of her own. Her hands tangled in his hair, and she pulled him in even closer, pushing her bare body against him, pressing her breasts into his chest.
“God, you two look amazing.” Aiden sounded strangled.
They broke off the kiss and turned to see him standing on the threshold, desire, but also something else, on his face. Something Steffan hadn’t seen there before. Hesitation. An air of being unsure, ill at ease with the situation. He wanted them, the bulge in his pants said as much, but he clearly struggled with it. Perhaps he didn’t know if he truly wanted to join in and lose himself in this, or maybe he thought they didn’t want him.
Steffan solved the second problem by beckoning Aiden over, putting the ball firmly in Aiden’s court.
Aiden paused, and with an imperceptible shrug, walked over to them, a smile replacing his unsure expression of moments ago. He looked at them and knelt on the floor by the bed and lowered his mouth to Mia’s. Steffan watched them kiss with a hunger he’d honestly never experienced before.
The other two stopped kissing and pulled him toward them, and then two soft pairs of lips were butterflying all over his mouth and jaw, cloud-soft bursts of contact alighting all over his face. He closed his eyes and relished the feeling.