Chapter Five

Good thing he’d decided to drive separately. One taste wasn’t nearly enough.

It took the entire thirty minutes driving the long way to Lyndi’s home, rather than flying directly there, to ease his hard-on into something not excruciating or tent-pole obvious. Concentrating on the twisting roads that led from the highway to the house helped a small amount. Lyndi’s massive home came into view around the last bend. Nothing ostentatious. In fact, it always appeared to be slightly run-down, but large, nonetheless. It had to be. She currently housed almost twenty boys, ranging in ages from young to fully grown, like Attor beside him.

Each one the sad result of the dangerous life dragon shifters led—often thanks to their own natures and infighting, but also due to fighting other paranormal creatures.

“The roof needs repairing,” he said.

“The whole place needs repairing,” Attor stated simply.

Levi frowned, casting his gaze over the structure with a more critical eye. Had they allowed Lyndi’s place to crumble while they’d sunk the money they received from the Alliance, distributed by the clans, into their mountain stronghold? Of course, that’s what the money was designated for. He doubted the Alliance would take kindly to it being used for other things. Especially not orphans.

He turned off the truck but sat still, taking a beat.

“Levi?” Attor said beside him, hand on the door handle.

“This is an important place, isn’t it?” He turned to find Attor watching him closely and raised his eyebrows, making sure the younger man knew he was seriously asking the question.

“I can’t speak for the others,” Attor said slowly. “But this place saved my life.”

Levi nodded, the unalterable sincerity in the younger dragon’s voice impossible to misinterpret. Attor wasn’t given to exaggeration, either. But he didn’t need the boy to share his life story. He already knew it. He’d helped Lyndi bring many of these boys here.

Fear directed decisions more than just about any other emotion, Levi had found over the years. So, sadly, young dragons who were left to fend for themselves had only one option. Turn rogue and try to go it alone. Usually that ended in death.

Lyndi gave these kids hope and risked her life without pausing to consider the consequences to herself, only to the boys.

His gaze followed her as she got out of her car. A shorter, more petite, and much prettier version of Drake, with her sandy complexion, smooth and tawny with a rose gold undertone, reflecting the Chandali ancestry—an ancient Asian lineage going back millennia. Her ass was encased in her preferred jeans and paired with a top that had a low V-neck in the back, which made him want to touch. She let herself into the house, Mike and Coahoma on her heels.

His complicated lover with a heart as generous as any he’d encountered, bigger than an ocean, and just as turbulent. Just as treacherous for any man who dared to love her. Damned if he wasn’t going to learn to negotiate her currents. The ebbs and flows. Even the tidal waves.

Even if he had to do it from the clans. Dragons lived a long time. Maybe they could make the distance work until he could return?

“We would never let anything happen to her.”

He turned to regard Attor again, finding the younger dragon dead serious and suddenly not the eager pup who followed him around, but a man in his own right. “I believe you.”

Attor’s shoulders eased from the taut way he’d been holding himself. Why did it feel like he’d just won Attor’s trust when he’d thought all along he already had it?

“Come on.” Levi got out. “What’s the worst that needs fixing?” he asked on the way to the door.

“The kitchen sink. It won’t stop dripping. Apparently, it keeps the younger boys up half the night because they can’t shut down their enhanced hearing. Elijah has taken to sleeping in the trees a mile away.”

Of all the boys, Elijah disliked being cooped up in the house most, though they’d hoped he’d grow out of it now that he was in his early teens. Levi nodded. “On it.”

Lyndi was nowhere to be found when he walked inside. Consisting of four levels, the stucco house was built into the side of a mountain, the front door entering on what was technically the second floor. Immediately, he took his shoes off, a hard and fast rule in Lyndi’s home—something to do with dirty boys who tracked in mud if left to their own devices as well as a cultural act in her human lineage—and left them by the door.

“The tools are in the laundry room,” Attor said, then disappeared in the direction of the rowdy voices coming from one floor up.

Her boys were excited to see her home. Levi could tell based on the words bouncing down the wood stairs with their modern wire and pine railings. Those boys adored her. Levi didn’t blame them.

“…and we’re going to clean this place top to bottom…” Her words reached him followed by a collective groan.

“I’ll start on my room.” Marin, the youngest of the group, was still eager to please Lyndi. Not too long before he hit the age where he was too cool to do that anymore.

But he rushed off, the sound of his feet fading deeper into the house.

His dragon tried to push him up those stairs, actually taking control for a quick second, before Levi snatched it back through sheer will. “We have other things to work on,” he told his creature half.

A shake of his head and a snort came back.

Giving Lyndi even a tiny bit of space had gotten a hell of a lot harder in the hours since claiming her body, his dragon turning annoyingly possessive and not wanting to share her, even with the boys. Levi forced himself to go down to the first level where the laundry room was housed. A quick search turned up exactly one set of pliers, one hammer, a few nails, and a bucket.

Unacceptable. He made a mental note to bring a fully loaded toolbox and show the boys how to use the things in it.

Back up in the kitchen, he got to work.

“Hey Lyndi, ask Elijah what he learned in school yesterday,” one of the boys’ voices floated down the stairs and into the kitchen. An older boy. William most likely. He was the tease of the group. The instigator. The underlying laughter practically painted a grin on the kid’s face.

For the most part, dragon shifters taught their own young. But Lyndi had insisted she wasn’t qualified by temperament alone to teach anyone a darn thing. So she sent her younger boys off to the public human schools in the area.

“It was about sex.” Elijah’s comment set the others off, laughter filling the house. No doubt the boy, the “quiet thinker” Levi had dubbed him, was bright red with embarrassment by now.

“Oh?” This from Lyndi. Playing it cool.

Lying on his back, his head stuck in the cabinet as he looked up at the piping for the sink, Levi paused.

“Did you know there’s four kinds of sex?” Elijah’s voice, slightly faster, demanded. “Manual, like by yourself. Regular sex. Anal. And oral.” He paused. “Oral, Lyndi, oral.” Elijah’s voice cracked and then he made a gagging sound. The disgust came through loud and clear.

Levi choked back a laugh.

“Oral is grosser than anal?” Lyndi asked, a quiver to her own voice, though she otherwise seemed to be taking this seriously. “There’s poo involved with anal.”

A collective groan of grossed-out boys toppled down two flights of stairs and Levi barked a laugh. Well, when she put it like that… But anal had other appeals. If she wasn’t initiated, he’d be happy to introduce her.

And, just like that, he was back to hard as dragonsteel. Levi grunted and adjusted his crotch.

“Someone puts their mouth on your penis.” Elijah again, uber-serious and apparently still hung up on the oral.

“That’s what the teacher told you?” Lyndi asked slowly.

William’s snigger was followed by silence that no doubt included glaring from the younger boy.

“Wait, there’s more?” Elijah must’ve caught the hesitation in her voice.

“Well, the reason you’re being taught this in school at your age is because, other than the…errr…manual version, humans can get STIs from all methods. Dragon shifters are safe because of our advanced healing as far as that goes…but we’ve talked about my expectations.”

She paused and he could just picture the set stare she’d be sending not only Elijah, but all the boys in the room. The uncomfortable gap of silence told him he was right.

Levi had always appreciated how Lyndi treated her boys like adults. Their initiation into abandonment and having to fend for themselves before she found them meant they’d grown up a hell of a lot faster than most. She didn’t treat them like babies to be coddled or cushioned, like most humans did these days. Though she did protect them with the ferocity of the dragon she was, determined to give them a better life than they’d been served up until now. She was straight with them, the way she was with everyone else.

Just one of the many reasons her boys loved her.

“You younger dudes shouldn’t have to think about this yet. But…if you’re even thinking of getting physical with someone else…” she told them.

Curiosity had Levi levering up to his elbows and he smacked his head on the lower hanging disposal. Rubbing at the spot, he still listened intently.

“You come to me first. Uneducated and unprepared is what?”

A pregnant pause and a few twitters, likely the older boys. They stopped, no doubt shushed by a look from her.

“A good way to die,” Elijah mumbled, doubt rife in his voice.

Levi recognized Lyndi’s catchphrase with the boys about everything.

“What if you lose control and use your fire?”

Silence filled the room. He could picture Lyndi, surrounded by boys of varying ages, nodding sagely. “When you’re old enough, we’ll have a longer talk about this. Including why sex is not just about you.”

“Can’t wait,” Elijah grumbled. Then, in a helpful tone, “But you should definitely talk to Mike and the older boys now, though. This sounds important.”

His older brothers groaned.

“Awww, Lyndi-Loo-Hoo.” This from Mike. “We don’t need to talk about anything. We know what we’re doing.”

Lyndi snorted. “I seriously doubt that. Most women haven’t figured their bodies out, and most men, in my experience, don’t know their ass from their elbow when it comes to making a woman feel good.”

A low growl shot from Levi before he could yank it back. Loud enough that the conversation upstairs shut off abruptly.

Damn.

But she’d better not be talking about him. He’d felt her pleasure contracting around his cock, squeezing his own orgasm from him like a fucking constrictor, heard it in her voice and the moans he’d pulled from her with every touch, every inch he’d fed her.

“We’re not even…” Mike again, sheepish now, caught out in his bravado. “You don’t have to worry, because we’re not.”

How could she doubt that she’d raised responsible boys? Levi chuckled and got back to work on the sink.

“Fine but we will talk about this later,” Lyndi said. “How’s school going otherwise?”

The question had the boys off down other topics. Most of them damn funny to be a fly under the sink for. Especially Lyndi’s responses. For a woman who talked about how she’d never felt accepted by her people, treated as an oddity or a burden, she’d certainly found her niche here with the other outcasts, as she jokingly called them.

Levi frowned over the word in his head, turning it over like a garden rock to examine the underside where the dirt and pests hid in the dark.

Outcast.

Without her joking lilt, the word turned ugly. Right up there with shunned or even rogue. It meant she’d felt isolated. Alone.

Something Levi had never dealt with. As the son of one of the upper class, though not remotely close to royal lines, he’d been born with expectations. He’d grown into a damn good fighter, particularly skilled with fire, and had been given the honor of being named by his king as an enforcer.

A man who was now dead… Long live the new ruler, even if Brand had called his ass back. His entire life Levi had been not only accepted, but praised, lifted up as a shining example of an honorable and skilled dragon shifter.

Not Lyndi.

The image of her living with the Red Clan in Mt. Everest, and the treatment she’d no doubt received there—ignored, set aside, devalued—set his bones on edge, his dragon pushing at him from inside.

Female-born dragon shifters were rare. Maybe even more so than phoenixes these days given that the firebirds kept crawling out of the woodworks.

“What do you think you’re doing under there?”

Levi jerked up at the sound of Lyndi’s demand and smacked his head into the disposal. Good thing he had a hard head.

He ducked and sat up out of the cabinet to find her standing at his feet, legs apart, arms crossed. “Fixing a leaky sink,” he said.

“Who asked you to?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Does it not need fixing? Don’t be a grump, Lyndi.”

Her cat-like eyes narrowed, and damn if she wasn’t adorable. “I’m not being a grump.”

“You just don’t like other people helping because you want to prove you can do it yourself. Is that it?”

Her lips twitched, just a quiver, but he caught it.

In a swift move, he lifted both hands and tapped the backs of her knees so that they buckled and she fell forward, dropping to straddle him. He caught her by the waist so she wouldn’t get hurt, lowering her the last bit slowly.

Hands on his chest, where she’d caught herself, the touch a firebrand through his shirt, she stared at him with wide eyes, lips parted, and he grinned, waiting for it.

“Let me go,” she whispered, hardly a sound. “The boys.”

He cocked his head. “That’s all you’re worried about?”

“We shouldn’t—”

He didn’t even let her get through the word, using his hands at her waist to press her down into the hard bulge of his erection, grinding up into her and throbbing harder at the shuddering gasp that escaped her.

“I don’t like that word,” he growled.

“There’s a lot of reasons why,” she insisted. She wasn’t wrong. But she also didn’t move away. That alone was a thousand percent progress in the right direction.

“It’s important that you keep me honest.”

Black eyebrows winged up. “Honest?”

He nodded. “By making sure I know my ass from my elbow when it comes to making you co—”

She surged forward and slapped both hands down on his mouth. “Don’t even think of finishing that sentence.”

Levi chuckled then planted a tender kiss on her palm. Her springtime scent was starting to get to him. With one hand he pulled her hands away then drew one of her fingers into his mouth, sucking gently, captivated by the way her breathing synced to his rhythm, her breasts shifting with each inhalation, followed by a tiny rocking motion of her body that might just embarrass them both if she kept it up.

With reluctance, he let her finger go. “Lyndi, if you keep looking at me like you want to lick me in return, I might just let you. Stretch those pretty lips around my thick cock like we did this morning and be damned to whoever walks in here.” He made sure to say it low enough that none of the boys might actually overhear. Just her.

“Holy shit.” Lyndi smacked him in the chest by way of shoving herself off his body and backed up.

Levi just grinned and leaned back, hands linked behind his head. “What? Too soon?” He only had a week. He didn’t have time to wait any longer.

She just shook her head. “Too everything.”

She spun and headed for the door. “After you finish the sink, the one in the third-floor bathroom needs a look,” she called over her shoulder.

Then disappeared. Running as usual. Someday, he wanted to see her run to him, rather than away.

Claim, his dragon rumbled, a questioning inflection at the end.

For two centuries, between Levi shutting down his instincts and Lyndi shutting him out at every turn, the strength of that initial gut instinct had waned through the years.

But it had never gone away fully. No wonder his dragon was confused as fuck.