mouth.
Vladimir touched her in no other way, their bodies remaining inches apart as his lips held hers captive and his tongue slowly explored the sensitive dips and hollows inside her mouth and along her tongue.
Even so, he was aware of Tanya’s increased trembling seconds before her hands moved up to grasp his shoulders. Not to push him away, but to draw him closer.
It was all the encouragement Vladimir needed to deepen the kiss. His tongue thrust deeply, again and again, as he laid claim to the sensual heat of her mouth. His arms moved about the slenderness of her waist as he pulled and molded her soft curves against the hardness of his more muscular body.
Mine, his dragon cried out in triumph.
Ours, Vladimir echoed possessively.
Chapter Eight
Tanya felt dizzy with the unfamiliar feelings of arousal and lust as the hot spray of water continued to cascade down on them. Her whole body was awake with a hunger she had no measure of control over, but instead could only follow blindly.
She clung to the hardness of Vladimir’s wide shoulders as his lips and tongue continued to plunder the depths of her mouth, igniting nerve endings and pleasure wherever they touched.
His body against hers was all rippling muscle, his cock hot and throbbing as he thrust it slowly and rhythmically against her mound, causing her clit to swell and pulse.
Tanya broke the kiss. “More,” she gasped, arching her neck back. “Harder.”
Vladimir changed the thrust of his cock to a slow grind, pressing his hardness against her sensitive nubbin as his head lowered and his lips traveled the length of her throat to the hollows at its base. His tongue was a sensual rasp against that sensitive flesh.
His dragon tongue, Tanya reminded herself.
Not only was it longer than a human one, but it was also slightly rougher, giving pleasure wherever it stroked. Tanya’s whole body was now hot and aching, a sensation that grew and kept on growing, demanding a release she had never even come close to feeling in the past.
Vladimir raised his head, his fierce gaze dark and glittering, his long hair now very wet and slicked back from his aristocratic face. “You will think only of me,” he instructed harshly. “You will feel only me. Do you understand me? Tanya!” he rasped when she remained silent.
She forced herself to awaken from the sensual spell she’d been rapidly falling under. “Is it the mating aphrodisiac you told me about that’s making me want you—this—so much?”
Vladimir shook his head. “The Romanov dragons do not release an aphrodisiac in their saliva in the same way the Pendragon dragons do.”
Tanya swallowed. “Do you have that barb on your cock you told me the Pendragon brothers have that only appears and latches on during sex with their mate?”
He shook his head. “We have a knot.”
“A knot that swells inside a mate and keeps the two of you linked together until the knot subsides, like wolves have?”
“Yes.”
“But no aphrodisiac?”
“No.”
“Sure?”
“Very.”
She winced. “So the way I’m feeling right now is all in response to you?”
His gaze warmed. “How do you feel?”
“Hot. Aroused. Needy.” So damned needy! And that buzzing sensation beneath her skin just wouldn’t go away.
He bared his teeth in a smile of satisfaction. “Then yes, if you are aroused, it is in response to me alone.”
“As proof that I really am your mate?”
His expression sobered to that familiar intensity. “Yes.”
Dear God, Tanya had nothing, absolutely no resistance, emotionally or physically, to Vladimir or the hunger he’d awakened inside her.
Because she possessed the necessary trace of dragon DNA that made it possible for her to be a dragon shifter’s mate?
Not just any dragon shifter, but Vladimir Romanov, the eldest and most powerful Russian dragon of them all.
One had only to look at Vladimir and his brothers to know how proud and arrogantly aristocratic they all were. So how was it possible that Tanya, a woman who had once sold her body to survive, could possibly be the mate of one of them? Not just one of them but the one, she reminded herself again.
Vladimir had to be mistaken.
“I do not make mistakes.” His reply told Tanya she must have said those words out loud. “More importantly, fate does not make mistakes,” he stated firmly. “Whether you choose to take me as such, you are my mate, now and forever more.”
“But—” She broke off her protest with a gasp when Vladimir dropped to his knees in front of her, leaving one of his hands on her hip as he