Chapter 5

There were no available flights to Evenza that would make it there in time, and the three dragon shifters weren’t keen on the idea of me riding on their backs, especially since they didn’t want to be seen out in the open and vulnerable to attack. Their SUV was our fastest bet.

Fine by me since I’d never ridden a dragon. Not like that anyway. Hi, my name is Yara, and I can’t not make sexual jokes when it’s all I can think about.

I shifted in the middle row of seats in the SUV, grinding my thighs together, as I tried to focus on the changing scenery outside the window. Mission Hill and the sprawling suburbs surrounding it had faded away to quiet and stillness. The sun sat low in the sky, beaming its final rays on the small farmhouses nestled underneath canopies of trees. I would’ve declared it a beautiful evening if it weren’t for the ritual in less than five hours. That soured everything, including the small amount of fast food I’d forced myself to eat about an hour ago, shifters’ treat.

Calhoun sat next to me, quietly staring out the window with his elbow propped on the armrest. Tavis sat in the passenger seat while Vance drove, and the two of them argued off and on about which radio station to listen to, the temperature in the car, and whether life existed on other planets. You know, the usual for dragon shifter brothers, I supposed.

It surprised me how…normal the three of them were. Not barbaric at all in the sense that they didn’t kidnap children off the street. A good sign, obviously. Calhoun always looked like he was up to something in that crafty, dark way of his, especially in his all-black attire. Tavis was the super chill one, equally comfortable with silence and cracking jokes. Vance seemed to be the leader, the older brother, who made sure everyone had what they needed at any given time, including a wealth of knowledge. They piqued my curiosity meter, that was for sure, and not just because they were hot.

Throughout the ride, their gazes ticked over to me, not constantly, but every once in a while. Feeling their eyes track over my body in a sensual caress hardened my bones into a stiff, trembling column of need. Was I supposed to climb on top of one of them whenever I wanted, or was there a protocol with a warning and an escape hatch in case they realized they didn’t want anything to do with me? I was just a human thief and probably just average in the sack since I’d had sex only two times before Tavis, both of which had been instantly forgettable.

And I thought I was clueless when it came to males of my own species. Ha!

Vance turned the knob on the radio to a different song, one I’d never heard before. Its bass beat thumped through the floor in a slow, seductive rhythm, vibrating the tension inside of me with an electric touch.

“Is this… What is this?” I asked, my breath coming in short.

He met my gaze in the rearview mirror, his pale eyes blazing with lust. One of his hands slipped from the wheel and disappeared between his legs. The muscles in his broad shoulders bunched and flexed, and I could just imagine him stroking himself through his jeans.

“It’s a mating song,” he said, his voice rough.

Of course it was. How had I not noticed how fucking sexy everything to do with dragon shifters was before now?

Curling my fingers into the seat cushion, I turned to Calhoun. When our gazes connected, the air shocked between us, a flurry of energy, sparking a fresh wave of need low into my belly.

In one quick move, he slid across the seat and pulled me into his lap so I straddled him. Our mouths melded together with frenzied need. We dry humped each other, totally out of control, his cock hard and ready where I rubbed against him the most. I sank my hands into his dark, silky hair and angled his face for prime kissing, but his tongue maintained power over mine, just as strong as his arms around my body. He held to my ass and ground up into me while his other hand slipped down the front of my jeans.

Desperate sounds pushed from between my lips with each thrust, and they grew in intensity when he tore my thong out of the way and sank two fingers into my wet folds. I threw back my head as I rode his palm, his fingers sliding in deeper and harder and so, so right.

He groaned as he gazed up at me, his eyes half shuttered. “Fuck, I need to taste you right now. All of you. Pants around your ankles. On your hands and knees on the seat. Right fucking now before you make me come.”

Trembling with desire, my body so heated that I feared I’d melt right through the seat, I climbed off of him and shoved down my jeans. As I assumed the position, I met Vance’s gaze in the rearview mirror. The look on his face—eyes scorching, tongue wetting his lower lip—powered a renewed ache between my legs. He was going to watch us. No, not just watch. He was white-knuckling the wheel while the other worked his cock. I couldn’t see it from my angle, but the muscles in his shoulders bunched and flexed vigorously.

Tavis in the passenger seat was also masturbating, his fist pumping up and down his shaft. He reached up over the headrest with his other hand, his fingers seeking, and I grabbed them and squeezed. Gripping him and the cushion, I stuck my ass up in the air, panting, my hips thrusting at what only these three shifters could give me.

This was really happening. I was about to get fucked, and all of us would get off on it. It was perfect. It was so fucking sexy that my orgasm was already starting to build, leaving me quaking in anticipation.

At Calhoun’s first glide of his tongue along my wet slit, I cried out for more. Then he was devouring me, his hands on my ass spreading me wide. His expert tongue sank in and out, kissing and sucking and driving me crazy. I gripped Tavis’s hand tighter over the headrest and met Vance’s gaze in the rearview mirror once again. He smiled around a groan, working himself furiously and somehow still keeping the SUV on the road. The wet sounds of Calhoun between my legs, paired with those of masturbation and my heartbeat knocking against my ribs filled the cab of the SUV.

“Oh. Yes,” I whimpered.

I drove my hips backward into Calhoun, fucking his face. He growled inside of me, the vibrations rolling up all the way to my tight nipples. He pulled away for only a second and then slammed into me with his cock. I cried out, echoed by loud moans from the front seat. My body jerked forward from the force, but he caught me with one arm looped around my waist. He thrust hard and deep, filling every part of me up. His smooth, defined chest rippled along my back as he curled himself protectively around me.

“I love fucking you, Yara. With my tongue, with my cock. Every which way.” With his hips still slapping against my ass, he slid the edges of his teeth along the shell of my ear and then bit down.

My orgasm hit me hard, storming pulse after pulse down my tight nerves. Its explosive power shocked the air from my lungs, juddered the base of my spine, and then rattled down to my toes. It wouldn’t stop, so I rode the sensations while Tavis squeezed my hand, while Vance began to writhe in his seat, and while Calhoun continued to pound into me from behind.

Then, with a loud roar that echoed in the car, he came inside me.

Tavis and Vance followed, one after the other, the veins in their necks and arms straining as they threw their heads back in ecstasy.

The car smelled like new leather and sex and come, and I breathed it in deep to help me recall every single detail about what had just happened in case it never happened again. Because that would be a real shame.

My limbs felt like liquid as I poured myself into a sitting position once again, trying to catch my breath while I pulled up my jeans. “You played that song on purpose.”

“You looked like you were about to explode.” Vance winked in the rearview mirror, turned off the radio, and then tucked himself back into his jeans. “You can thank me later.”

Even now, just minutes after the most powerful orgasm I’d ever had, my blood hummed with the possibilities of what my thank-you could entail. My vial of dragon fire had turned me into a sex-starved maniac, and if it weren’t for the severe time crunch I was in, I would be completely okay with it. Seriously, how did dragon shifters get anything done if they were constantly screwing?

“How long is your mating season?” I asked.

“Fifty-seven years,” Calhoun said, still breathless as he slowly zipped his jeans back up again.

“What?” My jaw dropped into my lap. “There’s no way. How do you stand it?”

Tavis grinned over his shoulder, already having tucked and secured everything back into place. “We form a harem around our queen and dedicate mating season to pleasuring her.”

“But…before? What did you do with this intense need to…fuck when you couldn’t even leave your house?”

Vance shrugged, his gaze on the road ahead. “We expect the feeling during mating season. We don’t try to hide it or feel ashamed of it. It’s a large part of who we are and why we as a species are here in the first place.”

Calhoun slid his hand over my knee and raked back the hair that hung in his face so he could look at me. “Which means you don’t need to feel ashamed, either. You have dragon fire coursing through your veins, taken at the peak of mating season from the smell of it. The only way for you to quench that desire you feel is to mate with shifters. So when you feel it, don’t be afraid to do something about it.”

“I’m not afraid.” And I wasn’t. Not of them anyway. They made me feel important, like I was worth sticking around for, like I was something more than a big sister who lived in poverty, and they didn’t try to get in my way, either.

It was the sun dipping into twilight that terrified me.

Tavis slipped his hand over the headrest again, his fingers searching. After a brief hesitation, I took it again and squeezed. I wasn’t used to someone wanting to touch me, not after a month without Asa and his hugs.

“What Calhoun’s saying is there’s no need to feel shame in what you’re feeling,” Tavis said. “Pounce on us. Do anything you want with us. Heck, bring your vacuum, and we’ll call it a party.”

I frowned. “My vacuum is dead.”

“Well, shit,” Tavis said, but I could hear the smile in his voice. “I really liked that vacuum.”

“Me t—” A hard bump knocked my teeth together.

“What was that?” Calhoun asked.

The car braked hard, throwing me forward because I’d forgotten to put my seatbelt back on. Tavis lost my grip as he surged forward in the front. Calhoun flashed his arm over my waist and braced me back in the seat. We skidded to a stop on the side of the road, stirring up a whirlwind of dirt that cocooned the car, darkening the evening to almost night.

“We hit something,” Vance said.

“What was it?” I asked.

He shook his head, his wide eyes flitting to mine in the rearview, and something about the set of his jaw, the hardness to his pale eyes hinted that he knew exactly what it’d been and would never say. He pulled the door handle to climb out.

Dread soured the back of my tongue as I followed his silhouette moving outside the SUV. This didn’t sit right inside me, and not just because we still had about two hours to get to Evenza. My instincts had helped get me here, so close to finding Asa, and right then, they scraped every nerve to keep me on alert.

“Should we go with him?” I asked.

“Yes,” Tavis said.

“No,” Calhoun said at the same time.

“Could it be the same shifters that found you earlier?” I asked.

Tavis and Calhoun shared a look, confirming that possibility had scaled all the rest. Tavis unbuckled his seatbelt and started outside.

I gripped Calhoun’s thick arm, still wrapped protectively around my front, and pushed. “Well, let’s g—”

The car tipped sideways, toward Tavis’s passenger side. He scrambled the rest of the way out and away. But the car kept tipping, almost as if in slow motion so I could catch snapshots of my climbing terror in crystal clear detail.

Calhoun wrenched open his door. The flap of large wings sounded from outside, and then the snap of a metal chain. Glowing silver wrapped around Calhoun’s neck and yanked him out of the car. Leaving me here, alone, in a tilting death machine.

Time had violently caught up to itself inside the car. Holding tightly to Tavis’s empty seat, I squeezed my eyes shut at the rapid spin and the bangs of metal on rock. My stomach surged up into my throat and hung there as the car plummeted.

We must’ve been parked next to a ravine. Or a cliff.

I gritted my teeth, sure that a wail was ripping from my throat, but I couldn’t hear it. I fumbled for the seatbelt behind me, seeking any way I might survive this, but my fingers met emptiness.

This nightmare would stop soon. It had to somehow, even if I was rolling toward Hell itself.

Finally, the metal tongue of a seatbelt snapping through the air smacked my hand. I snatched it, and still holding to the seat in front of me, scooted my ass back enough to wrap the belt around my waist. I stab, stab, stabbed the tongue until it sank home into the buckle, securing me.

That would do little good if the car exploded on impact.

With one last crash of metal on rock, the car groaned to a stop and sighed. Rock and dust hailed down on top, and it wasn’t until I dared open my eyes that I realized the top of the car was actually the bottom. I was upside down. Alive, but everything was all wrong. The sight of my feet above my head disoriented me even more, and my stomach pitched as if the car were still rolling. I cried out, desperate to keep my wits about me, to keep from throwing up, to keep panic from clinging my lungs together.

I was alive. As of right then, at least. Time to do everything I could to keep that fact a fact.

I unbuckled the seatbelt and crashed to the roof of the car in a pile of limbs. My hands shook as I picked up my backpack and forced open the door, and then I stumbled out into the evening. The rocky ground tugged and pulled under my feet because the world wouldn’t stop moving so quickly, and I went down. A sob built inside my chest, and I released it with a flood of helpless tears.

What had just happened?

“Calhoun? Vance? Tavis?” I tried to shout their names, but my voice was too choked with tears.

Only a night bird called back.

The dragon shifter harem was gone, taken by other dragon shifters, if I had to guess. Were they to be killed? My heart clenched. I’d only known them for a few hours, but they seemed good and kind, much more than I was. Much more than I ever expected a dragon shifter to be.

Meanwhile, seconds ticked by toward midnight and the full-moon ritual, and I was still miles away from Evenza and rescuing Asa. I glanced toward the SUV even though I knew it was totaled, and then up as the last of the sun dipped into twilight. Soon, I would see the moon, sitting high and full on a ribbon of clouds, a majestic beacon challenging me in a race against time.

Even if I did make it to Asa, the dragon fire inside me would kill me in less than twenty-four hours. It took three of the royal harem to undo the effects of dragon fire. I should’ve climbed on top of Vance when I had the chance. We’d had time. I should’ve done what they said and not have felt ashamed about what I wanted. Now, all of them were gone, and I was as good as dead.

And I definitely would be if I stayed here. Weeds and pebbles sliced into my hands and knees, emphasizing my bruised and shaken body, a sharp reminder that I was alive, that it was okay to fall as long as I got up again.

So I did.

A warm breeze touched my skin but did nothing to soothe me as I started the long hike back to the road. Each excruciating step assured me that I was still alive. As long as that didn’t change, I would never stop until I had Asa and the three dragon shifters back.

Count your blessings, Dad had said before he took off. Well, right now I only had one, and that was my will to keep surviving.