Deven and the Dragon - Eliot Grayson Page 0,57

turned back to the bed, Fiora’s mouth dropped open, and he licked his lips.

“Lots of oil,” Fiora said, sounding a little choked. “Lots.”

Deven grinned and obeyed. First one finger, kissing Fiora all the while, and then a second, while Fiora’s cock hardened again against his hip. Fiora was hot inside, much hotter than a human, and he whispered his observations to Fiora as he nibbled his neck and curled his fingers, finding just the right spot to have Fiora arching up off the bed.

“I won’t burn you,” Fiora whispered back.

“At this point, I don’t think I care.” Deven withdrew his fingers and settled himself between Fiora’s legs.

The first push was shallow, just the head of Deven’s cock lodged inside that glorious fiery heat. Fiora wrapped his legs around Deven’s back and squeezed.

“So impatient,” Deven murmured, licking along the seam of Fiora’s lips.

“So help me, Deven, if you don’t — oh God,” he moaned, as Deven did, all at once, sheathing himself in one stroke.

It didn’t take long for either of them. Later, later Deven would take his time and drive them both mad, but he was there already, long since. Hot, silky pressure surrounded him, and he sat back on his heels and thrust up, over and over, until Fiora’s fingers gripped bruises into his forearms and he cried out.

Deven shook and spilled, deep inside Fiora’s pliant body, and collapsed, shuddering. Slim, strong arms wrapped around his back and held him there. He breathed against Fiora’s hair. It still smelled of lemons and sunshine. Devon closed his eyes and let himself drift.

He could have this, for now. And he’d make it last as long as he could before the world came rushing back in.

Deven snored. Perhaps Fiora ought to have minded. With other lovers, he’d found himself nudging their sleeping bodies with his toes, or sometimes his elbows, until they snorted and rolled over and stopped.

Perhaps Fiora would mind Deven’s snoring too, once he got used to it.

Since he might not have long to get used to it, it didn’t matter much.

Fiora turned his head to stare at the ceiling, unable to bear watching Deven any longer. He’d look again in a moment. He wouldn’t be able to resist the sight of Deven in his bed, in his bedchamber, his. But for now he couldn’t look. It only made Fiora’s chest clench tighter, his lungs laboring.

Fiora knew what he was doing. He didn’t regret it. Andrei would — Fiora squeezed his eyes shut, a tear leaking out anyway. Andrei would be livid, incandescent, utterly inconsolable. And Fiora’s parents…more tears slipped past his eyelids and ran down over his temples. Their horror and grief and rage would know no bounds. The people of Ridley would be lucky if Fiora’s mother didn’t lay waste to the whole town when the news of Fiora’s death reached her.

He turned his head again, enough to see the rose leaning up in a glass of water on the nightstand. Deven had stayed awake long enough to rub them both down with a cloth he’d fetched from the bath, and had filled a glass of water for the rose at the same time. His smile as he set the stem carefully into the glass and then bent to give Fiora a kiss would be preserved in Fiora’s memories forever. Which wouldn’t be that long.

Was the curse already taking effect? Fiora felt fine. Tired, and sore in some truly delicious places, but fine — more than fine.

The rose glowed in the lamplight. Was that really how Fiora’s skin looked to Deven, all pale-blue tinted and velvety? Fiora had made the comparison himself, of course, but only as a fantasy. He hadn’t really thought anyone else would see a resemblance.

Fiora had already been teetering on the brink. Deven, all stumbling words, standing before him with that little rose clutched in his huge hand, had pushed him over.

He was in love. Against his will, against his common sense, against all his instincts for self-preservation, he was hopelessly, thoroughly in love.

Perhaps he felt fine because Deven, too, was in love. Years of going over and over the curse, sometimes dissecting it on paper and sometimes in his mind, had left every word branded into his brain. If Fiora didn’t love, his lover would die. If Fiora did love, he would die. The only options were to avoid physical love altogether, which had been Fiora’s solution thus far — or to consummate his feelings only when he was certain they were both