Like this? He rammed two fingers into her warm sheath, and she let out a cry.

Yes.

Her hips undulated against his hand as he lapped at her button. Her soft flesh pulsed around him, and he could feel her coiling, her pleasure tightening in a web around them both.

He let his lips travel up her flat stomach to her breasts, but only when he reached her lips did he slide a third finger into her.

Her sex tightened around him, and she gasped into his mouth. He pounded her and didn't have to wonder if she enjoyed it. He didn't just feel it on his fingers; he felt it. Felt it through her. The enjoyment, the excitement.

And when she came, it was so beautiful, so fucking erotic, it slammed into him, and as she climaxed around his fingers, so did he climax on the sheets, his cock unable to resist the excitement after so long.

An excitement he might have enjoyed more if someone hadn't said, "About time you were done," just before they shot him in the ass!

Chapter Eight.

"Adi!" Aimi yelled her sister's name as she struggled out from the sudden dead weight of her almost mate. Almost mate because, once again her family-demon-spawned evil-pussy blocked her. It made her want to punch someone in the boob-and she really didn't give a damn if it was ladylike or not. It was her Aunt Waida who had taught her.

"People make the mistake of thinking a kick to the crotch will drop a chick as if it were the same as a blow to the balls on a man. Wrong. You give her a good shot right to the tit"-demonstrated in the bar with a rapid jab that sent a patron screeching to the floor-"and you will own that fight."

"Isn't that dirty?" she'd asked. Aunt Waida had smiled, and the scary part of the smile was that there was nothing cold or calculating about it. Aunt Waida looked genuinely happy as she'd said, "Yes. Yes, it is."

"If you're done playing hide the wiener, then get dressed. Mom wants to see you."

"Then she could have called or texted. While you could have tried something, like say, knocking. You didn't have to drug him." Which was better than having killed him.

Aimi wouldn't put it past her mother, especially now that her matriarch realized he hadn't emerged from exactly pristine stock. The irony of it was that their family hadn't always been so hoity-toity and above reproach. More than one great-great-great-something had skirted the laws. Calling it the facilitation of dispensing goods was just a fancy name for smuggling.

Having heaved Brand's body to the side, Aimi noted he slumbered, and deeply at that, his mind a dark hole of nothing, whereas only moments before, it had been full of wonder and delight-wonder and delight for me.

This bond thing between them was proving kind of cool, at least during sex. The rest of the time...that remained to be seen. The idea of being that closely connected to anyone didn't exactly leave her feeling overjoyed. Her idea of marriage was meeting for the occasional bump and grind, sharing a bed when that happened, but otherwise, leading her own life. It was what her parents did, and it worked well for them.

But they mated because of a family merger. From the first moment I met Brandon, I felt something for him. And it defied all reason.

"Would you stop your whining? At least I let him finish you off before I zapped that sweet ass of his."

"Don't look at his ass." With a frown, Aimi drew a blanket over him. Her sister showed a little too much interest in his naked flesh. My flesh. And while the family shared many things, men weren't one of them-and BOBs were off-limits, too. When it came to the last piece of cake in the fridge, though? Game on.

"Kind of hard to miss seeing his ass, given he was humping your hip like crazy. And is it me, or did someone shoot early? You poor thing." Adi shook her head.

Aimi, however, saw things differently. "He did come just from giving me pleasure. Talk about super sexy and hot, not to mention flattering, knowing he finds me that desirable. Maybe you'll find someone someday who thinks you're the bomb." Aimi flicked her sister with her pastel punk look a glance. "Or not."

The jab worked. Adi crossed her arms. "I don't need a man to make me happy."

"Then I guess you don't want to know that he made me come harder with his fingers and tongue than anyone has ever managed. And that includes BOB. I can't wait to take a spin on his dick." Crude, but between her and her sister, there were no holds barred and no boundaries.

"Look at you, all pussy whipped already."

Aimi smirked. "Yes, I am. Jealous?"

"No," said in a vehement sulk. "While you were busy fucking around, some of us were working."

"Having a relationship is work, too. All that kissing and groping and...you know. Oh, wait, you don't know on account I found a man and you didn't." Yes, she did crown that taunt with a tongue poke. Some things a girl never grew out of, like harassing her twin-and watching Bugs Bunny. Except she kept hoping one day that unlucky coyote would catch the bird and eat it.

"You might have found a man, but that doesn't mean you'll get to keep him. Did you know he's from a family of swamp gators?"

She would keep him because he was hers. "I already know about his roots. He told me." And oddly enough, despite being raised to be a snob, she really didn't care. He's the one I want.

"You're not bothered by it?" Adi asked, an odd question coming from her, given she always seemed determined to do the opposite of what the family wanted. If their mother said behave, Adi played the hoyden. If a boy appeared to belong to the wrong side of the tracks, Adi jumped his bones. That rebellious streak drove their mother nuts-and meant Aimi often came across as the good daughter.

Until now. The question her sister posed was a good one. Did his roots bother her? Her mother had raised her to value her bloodline. From a young age, Aimi knew that she had a responsibility to pass on that bloodline by any means necessary. She hoped to do that with Brandon, but he wasn't a true-born dragon. He came from shifter stock, and not just shifter but of a caste considered low on the totem of power. But lineage isn't everything. Character and integrity and true inner strength were sometimes more important.

Fingers stroked over his forehead, brushing the strands of hair layered across it, and her soft reply was, "I don't care one bit." And that was the truth.

What bothered her more than Brand's genes was the fact that her mother, and probably a few other family members-because they did so love to meddle-wanted to discuss his existence, and probably his future. Discussions-said in mental quotes-meant arguing, in this case, arguing her case to keep Brand.

So be it. Aimi girded herself to defend him and her plans for him. On the subject of their mating, she would not budge. Since she didn't think her mother would take her seriously if she marched in there naked, she took a moment to pull on sweatpants and a shirt-designer brand, of course.

The several minutes it took to thread the maze of the house to her mother's office gave her time to formulate some arguments. She ignored the salutations of others, lost in her imagined rebuttals with her mother. She had no doubt they would argue. They always did. As the last of her mother's brood, and born years after her other sisters besides Ari and one brother, it meant her mom had way too much time to poke her nose in her affairs.

That would change once Aimi mated and moved out.

Entering the office-a place that even now brought her shoulders back and her hands smoothing the fabric of her shirt-she noted the meeting was a small one, consisting only of Aimi, her mother, and her Aunt Xylia.

"Where's everyone else?"

"We thought it best to keep some of the information about our guest to ourselves for the moment until we had a firm plan."

"Exactly how do you plan to keep it under wraps? It isn't as if he arrived in secret, and it's kind of hard to ignore the fact that I've got a big dude in my bed."

"Which is totally inappropriate, by the way." Disapproval pulled her mother's lips down. "You should have left him in Xylia's lab."

"Let's get one thing clear right now. He belongs to me." Her eyes narrowed as she stated it. "Until we are properly mated, I will not be leaving him anywhere someone can get their grubby claws on him." Which she'd stupidly delayed with her promise to him.

Lips pursed, her mother cast a disapproving glare. Not the first time Aimi had gotten the look, so she let it roll off her back. "And this is why we are conducting this meeting quietly. Your strange obsession with this man isn't something I want broadcasted. For the moment, we've provided only the barest of cover stories to the family. The less they and the staff can blab about the thing you found, the better. We don't need any unwanted visitors."

In other words, they needed to guard against another Sept stealing Brand because of what he might be. Paranoia was their prime motivator after avarice. A dragon's motto, woven into more than one tapestry was, See it, take it.

Aimi's mother was right to be paranoid. Chances were their enemies spied, and if they suspected what the Silvergraces might have-a gold!-then the family's defense system could get a good workout.

Adi would be pleased. She'd spent months fine-tuning the safeguards to the mansion and grounds, and kept complaining she needed someone to give it a good run to test it. Brand proved that it still needed tweaking, given how close he'd made it to the main house before the drones deployed.

Her mother, dressed in an ivory pantsuit, paced behind her desk. Even at the ripe age of eighty-she'd had Aimi and Adi late in life-she didn't look a day over fifty, and a good fifty at that. "What are we going to do about the thing? Did you leave him secured?"

"Do you mean Brand?" Aimi wasn't about to let her mother start things off discussing Brand as an object instead of a person. Even better than him being a person, he was a dragon-more or less. "I already told you, I left him sleeping in my bed."

"Is that really appropriate? You aren't yet mated, and we don't know enough about him. You trust much too easily."

Not usually, she didn't, but in his case, something told her she had nothing to fear. Then again, she'd never let something so paltry as fear get in her way. She was dragon. She feared nothing-but her Aunt Waida's cure for a hangover. Vile stuff. "Brand won't harm me."

"It's not you I'm worried about but your younger cousins. What if he was sent here to infiltrate and attack from within?"

"I think you need to put on some aluminum foil panties."

"You joke, but I am very serious. You don't know this man, and yet you have him in your room instead of secured in a cell."

"Don't you even think of putting him in the dungeon." Because all dragon castles had one, a throwback to the old days. "Brand is not our enemy, and he's perfectly safe in my room." She'd locked her door with a handprint. Only she, and her annoying sister with the same imprint, could open it-unless someone used a bazooka, and if that happened, she'd have bigger problems.

"At least you don't have him wandering the halls. Probably the first smart thing you've done since leading him to our home."

"I didn't lead him here. He came looking for me."

"I think you need to explain things from the beginning."

Aimi did, detailing their meeting for her mother. Never mind she'd already told Adi and Xylia. Her mother wasn't one to rely on second-hand information.

"He was sitting on a rooftop, and you didn't think to question why?"

"Um, no?" She shrugged.

"What if he was a spy for another Sept? Or an assassin? We have enemies you know."

"I know, but I think you're missing the bigger picture here. I found a male dragon, and not just any dragon. One with the potential to tip the balance of power." Nothing like dangling a carrot of prestige in front of her mother to have her start viewing him in a different light. He'll make a nice addition to our hoard. My hoard. But still, any advantage one Silvergrace acquired affected them all.

"Ah, yes, his potential," her mother said. "An impossibility more like. How can this be? A gold, after all this time? Could this be our enemies trying to fool us? Is this part of some grander plot?" She resumed pacing behind her desk. An impressive desk Aimi should add, carved from redwood, the beautiful natural swirls of worlds gleaming as the artist used the unique whorls and patterns to create a piece of art.

"Somehow, I doubt our enemies want us to have him. I think it's more likely he's exactly as he seems to be. Someone who escaped captivity." And was, even now, being hunted.

While Brand slept, Adi had kept her apprised of her investigation via text messages, and one of them said she had located more than one offer to bring Brandon in-alive. She also discovered he wasn't married, had no kids, and until his disappearance, had lived at home with his mother. But Aimi didn't let that bother her, given she also lived at home. For now...

Xylia lifted a stack of documents. "While tests indicate he is a possible gold, we have to remember that by his claims, he wasn't born that way."

"He came from the Bittech lab," her mother stated, more musingly than to inform.

No hiding that from her mother, even if Adi hadn't snitched. Her mother had her own information network.

According to the data gathered, Brandon's claims were true. While Bittech never truly divulged the nature of their projects, they never denied Brandon was a result; a result who went missing after the Great Reveal, according to reports.

"I don't know how they did it, but somehow, the scientists in that lab managed to turn him into a dragon."

"A possible dragon," Xylia corrected. "It could be that, due to the method of his becoming dragon, he will never ascend. Or have you so soon forgotten his issues with his hybrid shape?"

"Based on that alone, we should be worried. What did that imbecile Parker do? Exactly what was the purpose of his experiments? It seems we should have paid closer attention. Then again, what he did should have been impossible. Dragons can't be made." Anger creased her mother's features. "It's unnatural."

"It might be unnatural, and yet, according to all tests so far, he is dragon." Aimi stressed that point.

The tests proved it over and over, even the ones conducted while his body fought whatever battle it needed to return to a more natural state. The muscles in his body rippled, his skin undulated, grimaces tugged at his features. The struggle was real and intense.

The wait to see what Brand truly looked like did not go unnoticed by her aunt. She had teased: "He's probably ugly. But at least he's well endowed."

That was something they couldn't miss seeing. Stripping him to ease the transition of his body meant getting an eyeful. Better her than someone else. Bad enough her aunt got a peek.

Turned out, Brand was mighty fine. Better than fine, with thick, dark hair, and sharp features with a square and stubborn chin.

He'd lost no bulk in transition. A big hybrid turned into a big man. Big all over with pale skin and almost no hair on his body, even around his...

Not usually a shy girl, Aimi had looked away before her aunt could catch her and tease her even more.

Given his all-over girth, she could only wonder what kind of dragon Brand would make when he ascended.

The arguing of her mother and aunt brought her back to the present in the office, which had angry voices and not a yummy, naked Brand.

"I've run the test numerous times, and even tested it against the blood of other dragons we keep in the freezers. It's always the same. It says he's gold."

"Impossible. Gold is extinct." Aimi's mother faced away from them, staring out her window over the lush gardens lit by a waning afternoon sun.

"How can you be sure they died out? I mean, look at us; we didn't. The silvers recovered from the purge, as did Septs scattered around the world." Aimi knew her history.

"Yes, many Septs and families did survive, but we had one thing in common: we knew of each other's existence. Knew and aided each other in surviving. No one has heard of the gold since those dark times."

"That's not entirely true," Xylia said, interrupting. "You know there were rumors."

"Are we peasants now to put stock in gossip?" her mother snapped.

But Aimi saw it for what it was, a denial. "What were the rumors?" She wondered if they were the same ones whispered at her finishing school.

Her mother rolled her eyes. "Isn't it kind of obvious? The rumors say that at least one gold survived, and because of some two-bit religious group, it keeps being circulated, even though there is no proof. None at all."

Xylia nodded. "Faith requires no proof. Sometimes, word of mouth is enough, and after the Septs had begun to find each other again after the purge, everyone seemed to have heard it-that the last gold queen had produced an egg with the king before she died."

"An egg?" Aimi's nose wrinkled. It caused no end of discomfort to be reminded that, in the past, they'd chosen to hatch their young rather than carry them in their tummies.

"Do not disparage your roots. Back then, the human guise was the one rarely used. We were dragon, and we were proud. So proud." The nostalgic tone brought to mind stories told to Aimi when a youngling, stories of dragons owning the skies and flying in sunshine. Daylight flying was considered such a no-no now. Even nighttime flying was to be done only under guarded circumstances. There was a reason the property they owned resided so far out of town and encompassed so much land. It gave them a little spot to at least be themselves. A spot where there used to be no eyes watching, but now, with the advent of technology-curse you, satellites in the sky-even that was being taken from them.

If we cannot be dragon, then why are we holding on to the past? The glory days are over. We are bound by humanity and fear. A fear they'll come for us again.

Look at the Cryptozoids. They'd announced their presence, they'd told the world, "Here I am." The price of silver had gone through the roof, and the economy was booming-in the weapons sector. As smart business people, the dragons held more than a few stakes in those companies but also found a boom happened in home protection.

The Bite Back System will protect against unwanted hairy pests. Even the big ones. And it could be yours for only six installments of ninety-nine dollars.

What a waste of money. Everyone knew the Cryptos preferred hunting to breaking and entering. Dragons used to rule at the chase. Now, they flew on a roster so everyone got their fair share of airtime. It sucked. Big time.