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“What do you want it to be?” He dipped his face so his lips were brushing mine. “You’re not suggesting we use cookie-baking time for something else?”
“Like what?” My voice was shakier than my knees.
“Like this.” His kiss shouldn’t have caught me off guard, but it did. I flung my arms around his neck and held on while he showed me what true intimacy could be. Oh, not…that. But kissing, lips pressed together, his tongue urging me to allow him entrance. His hands still on my bottom but kneading in a way that made me want to let him continue, to have his way, to make me his.
Until the alarm went off, the cookies were done, and Nico came stumbling in to see what the noise was. His attention focused on the scene at the kitchen island, but he didn’t comment on it as I extricated myself from Jude, only too aware of how my nightgown was giving both of them the same show.
They’d see it all soon enough.
But for tonight, a peek and a cookie, and a little making out in Jude’s case, were all they were getting.
Chapter Nine
My body rose to some kind of peak while Jude was kissing me. The pressure between my thighs pulsed and built until I thought I might explode in some kind of ravenous…I didn’t even know.
Had I been about to have an orgasm? Was that what it was going to feel like?
Just from kissing?
Maybe Soren had a book on sex. I totally needed it.
I went to my room and changed into a black cropped shirt and some comfy gray pants in case anyone else wanted a look at my body. I didn’t think I could take another episode of what happened in the kitchen.
How in the hell was I ever going to make it through the actual mating?
The cool air from outside blew in my face and refreshed me but not nearly enough. I needed more. More of Jude. More of them all. But right then and there? I needed more of that air, mostly to cool off my quivering body.
I slipped from the living areas and into the night after leaving the tunnels of the mountains. The almost full moon hung high in the sky, lighting my way to an area off the side, private and almost made only for me. I sat on the edge, letting my legs dangle while I looked up at the moon. My body had calmed quite a bit even though I could still taste Jude on my tongue, feel my lips used in the best way possible.
Closing my eyes, I inhaled deeply. The smell of the night air filled my nose, along with the scents of the trees in the distance and rain in the clouds. I was so engrossed in the feeling of calm and release that by the time the hairs on the back of my head rose, a shadow was cast over me. Someone was here.
“What are you doing here, Freya? It’s the middle of the night and you smell like chocolate and sugar and vanilla.”
Nico. I would know that velveteen voice anywhere. It wrapped itself around my body and warmed me in places I didn’t even realize had gone cold. Despite his standoffish nature and impenetrable shields, I was glad it was him and not one of the council or someone else.
Truth was, I was glad not to be alone.
“I was baking cookies because I couldn’t sleep. What’s your excuse?”
He sat down next to me, in almost a matching outfit, except his lounge pants were black to my gray. “No excuse, female. I don’t sleep a lot. Some nights, not at all.”
“Why is that?” Our outer thighs were touching and though he tended to keep his distance, he didn’t seem to mind.
“You have a lot of questions, Freya. So curious.” His voice lowered an octave. It did that when I asked for information and situations like before when I’d told him to eat.
“Isn’t that what mates do? Know each other? Share things with each other?”
He blew out a weighted breath. As hard as this mating thing was for me, I knew in that moment, I wasn’t the only one. My royal dragons could put on airs and keep their chins jutted upward as though they were above others, but, at the end of the day, or, in this case, in the middle of the night, they were like the rest of us—unsure. “I have a lot of nightmares, and so sleep isn’t really a part of my life that I welcome. I think most people like sleep, but it’s a place I rarely go.”
That explained the dark circles under his eyes.
Maybe some of the attitude, too. He was hangry and probably beyond exhausted.
Even though telling me he had nightmares was more than he had shared before, I needed more. Not for me but for him.
Did his nightmares have anything to do with those scars that marred his back?
Did his past dictate how he treated himself?
