Chapter Thirteen
Cato pulled away slowly, leaving his hands on Dez’s hips while they caught their breath. When he stepped to the side of the wide shower and leaned against the wall, Dez turned to look at him.
“Dude, are you crying?” Dez asked, shocked by the redness in his friend’s eyes.
Cato scrubbed at his face with both hands, shaking his head. “I fucked up,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. He sniffled and in a tighter, more desperate voice repeated, “I really fucked up this time. I was so wrong. It just made so much sense.”
“It still makes sense,” Dez said, frowning at Cato, who seemed to have lost the will to move and just leaned against the shower wall with his arms hanging at his sides.
“How?” Cato asked, finally focusing on Dez again. “We’re losing him.”
“We don’t know that,” Dez said. He took control of their bathing and angled the showerhead at his friend’s torso, then proceeded to lather up a cloth and begin rubbing down Cato’s body, starting at his shoulders. “He definitely didn’t sound like he was a hundred percent sure she was the one. She could be a dud just like ours were.”
Dez had been disappointed in his date the day before, but not because the woman herself was an issue. She’d been beautiful, funny, and on the surface, his ideal as the owner of a popular restaurant and brewery in the human town near the resort. His dragon had just adamantly refused to show any interest in anything but the food they’d shared and the beer she’d ordered for them. Cato’s dragon had reacted the same way to his own date.
“What if you’re wrong?”
Dez took a deep breath and looked directly into Cato’s sapphire eyes. “Then we prove Veryl right. You and I … this …” He waved a hand around the spacious shower. “This isn’t nothing. I felt it. My dragon felt it. We’re not losing each other.”
“No. You know why it can’t work,” Cato said, snatching the cloth away from Dez and throwing it to the ground. He pushed his way past Dez and out of the shower, grabbing a towel to wrap around his waist as he went. “I’ll call Wilder. She’s good at her job—she’ll find us mates who will stick.”
Gritting his teeth, Dez turned off the water and followed Cato back out to the bedroom. “You’re missing the point, asshole. We can work out the kid thing another way. Don’t fucking dismiss what just happened. What we just shared. My dragon was fucking on fire while you were inside me. It made sense. Didn’t you feel it?”
Cato collapsed onto the bed, shoulders sagging. “Yeah, but I had it all worked out. We’d each find perfect mates, have perfect kids, and a perfect career. We’d make the Hall of Fame and retire as legends, and we wouldn’t even have to die to do it like the Ebon Claw. That was the plan.”
“So it didn’t pan out. I know you’re a perfectionist, but you’ve never regretted other mistakes. You always chalked it up to a learning experience and preached adaptation. We adapt. We learn. No regrets.”
Cato stared at him, his blue eyes intense, and Dez could almost hear the gears starting to turn. Fucking finally. His friend’s wheels had been spinning all night over his perceived mistake; it was time he got moving forward again.
“You and me, huh?” Cato said. “That could work. Ideally, it’d be the three of us … fuck me for not listening to Veryl, but he’s not the most logically driven person.”
“Neither am I.”
“Yeah, but you want to win. You thrive on instant gratification. Getting after a thing once you decide you want it. Not that Veryl doesn’t love winning, but his feelings get in the way sometimes.”
Dez chuckled. That was Veryl, all right. “That’s not always a bad thing. This idea of yours was about feelings. You can’t discount them when it comes to finding a mate. And you know me … I’m all about following my instincts, and right now they’re telling me this is it. Get out of your own way, man. Get out of your head for five minutes and listen to your dragon. Listen to your heart.”
Cato frowned and closed his eyes as though concentrating. It was almost comical, because Dez knew for a fact that Cato and his dragon were tight. He wasn’t a champion and the leader of their team for no reason. Whenever he let the dragon out wholesale in the arena, they demolished the competition. Outside the arena, he kept a tight leash on his animal, but that didn’t mean he didn’t pay attention to it. Cato was good at keeping a line drawn between logic and instinct. Too good, probably.
When he opened his eyes, there was a decisive glint in them, but he shook his head. “I want to give it a shot, but it still doesn’t feel right.”
“Does it feel wrong, though?” Dez asked. “I mean … I get it. Something’s missing. Something was missing when it was still the three of us, but I don’t know what that is. Maybe it was just a matter of following through. Can we at least follow through and see what happens?”
Sighing, Cato shook his head. “No, it doesn’t feel wrong. Not by a longshot. Making love to you … was like the first piece of a puzzle I’d been struggling for ages to piece together. But it doesn’t feel complete.”
“Then let’s work on that. Maybe we’re like Hot Wings—maybe you and I need to share a mate. Maybe we call Wilder back with that in mind.”
“Maybe, but what if we’re wrong about that too? We both want more out of life than competing.”
“So we live vicariously through Veryl and all the rugrats he’ll wind up with if this woman turns out to be the one. You know he’d be down with that. You and I would make kickass uncles.”
Cato took a deep breath and nodded, a slight smile finally breaking through his grim façade. “I could live with that if I had to,” he said.
“Good,” Dez said, feeling like a huge weight had lifted.
“You feel like getting some lunch?” Cato asked, but Dez barely heard over the noise in his head from the roaring triumph of his dragon. All he could think about now was having more of what he and Cato had shared so far. Now that the door was open for the two of them to take things further, he didn’t want to stop.
He swallowed at the sight of the glistening man in front of him. He’d never really looked at Cato this way—not until after he’d caught Veryl’s longing looks and covert erections a few times over the past couple months. Then last night when Veryl had told them to go fuck each other, it was like a switch had been flipped. He hadn’t been able to get the idea out of his head. It must have been the same for Cato, considering he was the one who had started things down that path. Who was Dez to turn down a desperate friend begging to be fucked?
“Did you hear me, dude?” Cato asked.
Dez cleared his throat and looked up, tearing his eyes away from his friend’s body that, for some reason, had a strange new significance to him now. “What was that?”
“You hungry?”
“Ah … yeah. I am.” He took a step closer and leaned down, his instincts taking over and driving him now. He cupped the back of Cato’s head and said, “Just not for food.”
Fevered blue eyes gazed back at him, those lips he’d tasted before parted, and Cato darted his tongue out to lick them. That was more than Dez could stand. Need overtook him and he let go, fastening his mouth to Cato’s in a brutal, hungry kiss that had the other man groaning and grabbing at him for purchase.
Dez climbed onto the bed, pushing Cato down and tearing at the damp towel around his waist. His own fell to the floor—pushed off or succumbing to gravity, he couldn’t be sure—but none of that mattered once their hot, hard cocks came into contact with each other. This desire that overwhelmed him was exactly like hunger. He craved this body beneath him the way he craved sustenance. Food when he was hungry, water when he was thirsty, the wind when he needed to stretch his wings.
Despite the ever-present understanding that this thing between them was not enough, it was something he knew he couldn’t live without any more than he could live without any of those three basic elements of survival for a dragon. Cato was the cool water to quench this burning fire in him, and when he slipped down and sank to his knees between Cato’s legs, he was shaking for a taste of what the other man could offer.
Cato groaned when Dez took his thick shaft in one hand and bent to suck the smooth head into his mouth. Dez’s own cock ached for release, but the only thing that mattered now was bringing Cato to his peak and having that taste of pleasure for himself.
It didn’t take long before Cato’s cock pulsed and semen hit the back of Dez’s throat. He swallowed every drop, savoring it, but Cato wasn’t ready to stop there.
Before he knew it, he’d been pulled up onto the bed. Cato pushed him down and straddled his torso facing his groin, his hot, hungry mouth descending on Dez’s cock. Dez lost track of reality for several glorious moments until he came around to a rear view of Cato’s cock and balls and tight ass just waiting for his attention.
They wound up tangled for what seemed like an eternity, or only moments—Dez couldn’t be sure. All he knew was that sex had never been this good in the past, and that it could only get better if they could just figure out the missing pieces.
The light had shifted down the walls and late afternoon sunlight was streaming through the big windows, turning everything pink with sunset when they finally came up for air. Dez felt weak from a lack of food, but didn’t think he’d have done anything different if he’d been offered a choice.
“We need to eat,” Cato said, ever the voice of reason. “I’ll call room service.”
“Order one of everything,” Dez said, lying back on the blanket-strewn floor where they’d wound up after their third go around. Or was it the fourth? His grasp of time was a little fuzzy and his stomach was growling.
The rest of the night was spent eating, sleeping, and filled with more indulgent sex than Dez ever imagined he’d have, especially with the man he’d always depended on to keep him in check. Cato seemed to have entirely let go of his usual restraint.
“I have to admit, you’ve surprised me,” Dez said around two in the morning. They’d just gotten back from an hour-long flight to work out some of the kinks of acrobatic sex neither of them were accustomed to.
“Why, because I actually have a libido? My mind isn’t always occupied with plans to maximize our training. We’re on vacation, and I figured we owed it to each other to test this connection … See if it holds up, I guess.”
“Do you doubt it?”
Cato flopped down on the pile of strewn blankets and pillows that now made up a makeshift bed in front of the fireplace in Dez’s cabin. “Not anymore.”
Dez grabbed a handful of cheese slices and some bread from their second order of room service and joined Cato on the floor, lounging back against the cushions facing his naked friend. The novelty of his desire had worn off, but there was still a very present warmth in his chest that let him know the fire could easily be stoked again if either of them made the right move. He was far too sated and comfortable now to go at it again right away. Maybe in the morning.
“We going to tell him about this?” Dez asked. “I didn’t want to, at first, when I thought it might just be about us drowning our sorrows. But now, this is serious. I mean … I’m serious about trying. Aren’t you?”
He braced himself for Cato’s response. The other dragon was the one who generally called the shots for them, and he trusted Cato to make the right decision. Despite Cato’s self-doubts about this entire endeavor, Dez still had to admit there’d been some merit to the idea, especially after all they’d learned just being with each other.
Cato shook his head and Dez’s heart sank. “Not right away. I want to wait and see how it goes with this female he’s been set up with. We’ll tell him after we know how that’s going to work out. For now, I don’t want him feeling guilty about finding a mate. He’d beat himself up over it.”
“Good call. So … we pretend we’ve had other dates tonight. I can work with that.”
“Just for a day or two. I don’t like lying to him.”
Fatigue suddenly kicked in and Dez scooted down, burying his face in the pillows. “Sounds good to me,” he murmured, barely conscious as the day’s nonstop marathon of sex caught up to him.
He was only half-aware of Cato moving around the room until he felt a soft blanket drape over him and a warm body wrap around him from behind. He drifted off to sleep, wondering why the hell they hadn’t figured this all out sooner.
* * *
Dez woke to the early morning sun warming his bare feet and the sleep-roughened sound of Cato’s voice nearby. His cock stirred at the rough cadence. Training might be tricky going forward if he got turned on every time his friend spoke.
But the one-sided nature of the conversation and the tension present in Cato’s voice woke him fully and forced him to pay attention. Was Cato on the phone? He must be. Dez closed his eyes again and listened.
“No, man, I’m awake,” Cato said. “Yeah, sure. The date I had last night was unexpectedly amazing.”
He paused, and Dez strained, but was unable to piece together the low murmurs from the other side of the call, who he guessed was Veryl checking in. The fact that he hadn’t shown up at Dez’s door meant he’d probably stayed out all night.
“Ha, no. I don’t kiss and tell, you know that. Let’s just say I want to see where it goes.” His tone softened, and Dez rolled over to see his friend seated at the table staring back at him with a gentle, affectionate look. He smiled.
Cato glanced away, his gaze shifting to the distance as he listened. His brow furrowed, and Dez itched to hear the other side of the conversation. Finally, Cato nodded.
“Yeah, that sounds great. I’ll hook up with Dez and let him know. I’d bet my left nut he got lucky last night too. He’s probably still with his date. No worries. See you at dinner. Can’t wait to meet her.”
He set his phone down and didn’t say anything. Dez watched in silence, his heart aching.
“Let me guess: He wants to have dinner with us so we can meet his new mate,” Dez finally said when Cato wasn’t forthcoming.
“Yeah. They haven’t gone that far yet, but sounds to me like it’s a foregone conclusion. He probably just wants our blessing.”
“Well, shit.” Dez’s heart turned to lead. In that moment, he realized he’d been holding out hope that Veryl’s date would somehow not work out and they’d get him back and could be a happy mated threesome, in the arena and out of it.
Cato’s haunted look made him get up and go to his friend. “We can do this. We need to be happy for him, for the sake of the team. It’ll work out.”
“I know,” Cato said. “I want to believe we’ll be better off for it. That it’ll help us take our training to the next level. But right now, I just feel lost.”
“Come on, man. We need to get out of this cabin for a while. You and I have a tighter connection now. Let’s spend the day doing drills to test that out. Then maybe by tonight we’ll be ready to ask Veryl for his blessing too.”
Cato nodded and followed him to the rooftop deck. Just before they shifted, Dez saw the look in his friend’s eyes and knew Cato had the same sinking feeling as he did—that it was far more likely tonight would be when everything fell apart.