Dawn of the Dragons (Exiled Dragons Book 10) Read online

  “Dawn?”

  “Yes! Oh, my God! Yes!”

  Dawn flung herself at him again, hugging him so tightly that she thought she might break him, despite how powerful he was. She never wanted to let him go, but she did after feeling him slowly peeling her hands off of him. He leaned in to kiss her, and she allowed her body to cave toward his, no longer resisting the urges that she had pushed away for so long.

  CHAPTER 13

  Their first time had been urgent, clumsy as they learned how to touch one another, how to pleasure one another. Now, they lay in the silence after their lovemaking, just enjoying the glow until they fell asleep. Even as she slept, Dawn was aware of just how much she could still read Liam’s thoughts.

  He was curled around her as she lay sleeping beside him. The night light that shined across them from a nearby wall plug cast enough light to silhouette her small frame against his larger one as they lay blissfully unaware of anything around them except one another. He awoke her with a kiss on her exposed neck, letting his lips travel downward across her bare shoulders as she moaned beside him.

  Her soft coos only aroused him further, his firm erection pressed into her curved backside as he continued to leave tiny, lingering kisses on her skin. She moaned a little louder now and twisted a bit in the bed, allowing him further access, and he didn’t hesitate, caressing her full breasts with his hands for a moment before allowing one hand to slide quietly down her stomach and onto her swollen nub. She was wet as he gingerly explored her tiny button, loving the way she squirmed beneath him as he increased the friction between his rough fingers and her center of pleasure.

  She turned toward him, pulling free of his touch and facing him. Bringing her lips to his, she kissed him deeply, passionately. It felt like explosions were detonating all along every nerve ending from head to toe. Their tongues rolled lazily against the other as his hand once again found its way to her aching clit, teasing her as they enjoyed one another’s mouths with their fevered kissing, and then he was pushing her back on the bed, climbing on top of her as they came face to face with one another, exploring their desires fully.

  Then, he was inside of her, making love to her. They were each other’s first, last, and forever. He was consumed by her in a way that melted her inside. She could feel just how much as their bodies rocked gently back and forth against the sheets. Her moans filled the air around him while their bodies moved against one another in the near darkness of the room. Only the faint light from the night light shined across their bodies, both sweaty with the heat of their passion. She felt incredible as he moved inside of her. He closed his eyes as he breathed her name.

  “Dawn. Dawn.”

  “You are mine forever,” she whispered against his ear.

  “And you are mine,” he replied.

  His stamina was incredible, even on their second time. Dawn loved the way he felt as he made love to her for hours until she was sore and tired, but she still wanted more. His hands tangled in her hair as his hips rocked back and forth into her. It was the most amazing thing she had ever felt with him inside of her.

  For years, she had been able to hear his thoughts, feel his heartbeat. Now, she could feel him in side of her in a new way that excited her more than she had ever imagined. There was no doubt that she loved him more than she knew it ever possible to love someone. Even with him, she had always known she loved him, but she could have never imagined just how deep that love truly was until now.

  Their bodies were like two halves of a whole, designed to fit together perfect. It was beautiful in a way that most people are never fortunate enough to experience. She couldn’t imagine ever having this with anyone but him. Her thoughts fell away as she allowed herself to give in to the way he felt inside of her, the pulsations that expanded and contracted inside her pussy sending out shards of pleasure that rendered her helpless to resist anything he wanted from her.

  She was well and truly his, tonight, tomorrow, forever. Liam’s lips fell on hers once again, kissing her, drinking her in as his tongue swirled about in a lazy dance with her own. The combination of his kiss with his lovemaking lit a fire inside of her that was undeniable. She felt like a furnace, her body heated and sticky as he continued to make love to her, spreading her open, taking possession of the woman that had always been his but that he was not ready to claim. It was so beautiful that she felt like crying, but she held back, not wanting to spoil the moment by creating some emotional misunderstanding between them.

  “I love you so much,” he told her between kisses.

  “I love you, too,” she replied breathlessly, her hands gripping his back tightly as he sank deep inside her one last time and filled her with everything he had left to give.

  They collapsed beside one another on the bed and drifted off to sleep once again. When they awoke, it was morning and time to get going back toward home. They packed the last of Liam’s things and put them into the car before walking down the street to turn in his keys to the realtor, then stopping off for breakfast nearby.

  “I’m starving!” he said as they waited on their food to be delivered.

  “You are always starving,” she reminded him.

  “Even more so this morning. We worked up quite an appetite last night,” he said with a smile.

  “That we did. Now that you mention it, I could use a good breakfast myself, especially if you plan on doing that again tonight.”

  “Oh, I plan on doing it again tonight and every night for the rest of our lives.”

  “Even when we’re eight hundred and have false hips?”

  “Whoever heard of a dragon with a false hip?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, but surely there has been one in the long period of time during which dragons have existed.”

  “Right. Of course there has been,” she replied with a little laugh.

  “Even if there hasn’t been, it doesn’t change that I will always want you. No matter what.”

  “I will always want you, too,” she replied.

  “Just promise me this, Dawn. If you are ever unhappy, you will tell me. You won’t let it come between us.”

  “What are you talking about, Liam? Do you think we are going to become some old, bickering couple that hates one another but stays together out of spite?”

  “No. I mean, I hope not, but it happens. I’ve seen people like that, and it is horrible. I just don’t want it to ever happen to us. That’s all.”

  “It won’t. I promise. You are my everything, Liam. I’ve never been without you, not from the day I first laid eyes on you. Even when I didn’t truly know what love was, I knew that I loved you with my entire being. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you. Absolutely, nothing at all. You mean everything to me. Absolutely everything.”

  “I know I do today, but I just want it to stay that way.”

  “I swear, Liam. We just got engaged and you are already plotting our demise. What is up with that?”

  He looked stunned for a moment as he sat there considering her statement. She could see that he was mulling it over for a bit before speaking, as if she wasn’t aware of his every thought.

  “You’re right. I guess it is just a big step, and I’m scared. I can be a little scared, can’t I?”

  “Absolutely, you can. People get scared about a lot of things, but you have no reason to be scared about us. You and I are magic. We will never have a reason to be apart, not for one single day.”

  “You’re right. I’m just being a huge pussy right now. We should be celebrating, not worrying about what might happen years down the road. It’s just that, when dragons marry, it is a lot more of forever than mere humans get. If they are lucky, they meet when they are young and spend a good fifty or sixty years together. Us, we are set for hundreds, possibly thousands of years. It’s a long commitment.”

  “Would you like the ring back, Liam? I mean, we can spend together forever without it.”

  Liam looked up from his plate, realizing that he had been babbl
ing again and blushing a bit. He chuckled and took a bite of his sausages, smiling at her with his cheeks full like a chipmunk. After he swallowed his bite of food, he looked over at her again and spoke softly, quietly.

  “I never want that ring back. I want you to keep it forever.”

  “Only if you promise we aren’t going to have this same conversation together forever,” she laughed.

  “We won’t,” he told her.

  “Very good then. In that case, I’m looking forward to spending the rest of my life with you, Liam.”

  “That’s grand,” he replied, stuffing his face with more food before he had an urge to babble on some more.

  Dawn marveled at how funny he could be at times. He was mostly quiet, very reserved. When he did speak, it was mostly to interject a single thought and then return to his peaceful little inner domain. He was usually content to let Dawn speak about whatever she liked for as long as she liked. It was his nature.

  Then, just every once in a blue moon, he would get all wound up, and he was almost impossible to get off the broken record loop he could become stuck on. It was amazing just how many words he could muster up and stumble over in an effort to elicit a single thought that he had stuck in his brain. It could be frustrating, but it was also endearing in that it made him a little less perfect.

  From the time they had become teens and Dawn had finally learned a little more about what it was to love someone, she had been able to see the way other girls looked at him, the thoughts they had about him. She had always feared that, one day, he would realize that she wasn’t the only girl on the planet and that perhaps he had other options, but he never had. In fact, she had never known him to notice or even have an errant thought about another girl.

  Of course, he was also a late bloomer, and for a very long time, he had not seemed to have any of those kinds of thoughts about her, either. She had considered that perhaps he just had no sexual interest in anyone, though she had never thought for once he was gay as he also hadn’t had thoughts about boys. Liam was simply one of those guys who didn’t spend his time sitting about thinking of how to get laid.

  The thought had also crossed her mind that perhaps he showed such little interest in sex that he merely had no appetite, and though she didn’t know anything about sex other than how it was supposedly done, she had a feeling that she’d really like it with him. It had been on more than one occasion that she had considered that she simply might not enjoy it if he didn’t and wondered if her love for him was enough to accept such a shortcoming about him.

  She couldn’t begin to express how grateful she was to find out that not only did he have an appetite for it, but he was quite well equipped for it and naturally talented at it. Even now, sitting across the table from him, watching him stuff his face with a full English breakfast platter, she could feel the tingle between her legs, a reminder of how he had felt inside of her last night and just how much she already wanted him inside of her again.

  “Dawn?”

  It took her a moment to realize he was talking to her. She had closed off her thoughts to him and had gotten lost on a tangent of her own. She realized that if she had spoken aloud all the thoughts that had just gone through her mind, she would be rambling just as much as he had been some moments ago.

  “I’m sorry, what?” she asked.

  “Where did you go?” he asked.

  She blushed a little before answering. “I was just remembering last night.”

  “It was a great night,” he agreed. “Are you ready to get on the road? We have to get my stuff to the new place and then go to get your stuff, too.”

  “Yes, I’m ready. Do you want me to drive?”

  “I most certainly do not want you to drive,” he replied as he dropped some money down for the check.

  “Why not? I know how to drive.”

  “Knowing how to drive and being able to do it are two different things,” he countered.

  Slipping out from the booth in which they had been sitting, the made their way back out onto the sidewalk and toward his old apartment to retrieve his car, still discussing her driving ability.

  “I am able to drive,” she corrected.

  “Yes, badly. You scare the shit out of me behind the wheel. Plus, you have road rage. You yell at everyone on the roads for the silliest reasons. Some of the reasons are even your fault, not theirs!”

  “There is nothing wrong with that. Lots of perfectly good drivers yell at other drivers as they make their way places. It’s healthy to get it all out of their system.”

  “You are demented. You are definitely not driving. I’ll go mad before we arrive, if we arrive at all.”

  “How can I spend thousands of years with a man that won’t let me drive?” she teased.

  “Oh, you can drive all you want to…when I’m not in the car!”

  “Oh, that’s real nice. I can see it’s going to be a long lifetime!”

  “God, I hope so,” he laughed, pulling her close and kissing her again before opening her door to let her in the passenger seat of his car with a broad smile. She rolled her eyes at him and got in, sitting there with her own smile as she glanced down at her engagement ring. Life was pretty damned perfect.

  CHAPTER 14

  Dawn felt like she must be glowing as she and Liam pulled into the village and went to his parents’ house to pick up the keys to his new place there. The council grounds included several guest cottages, and his father had told him that they could stay in one of the empty ones until they were married and found a place of their own. It would be a huge help to them in getting on their feet and getting their business going.

  “There’s the happy new couple,” his mother said as they stepped inside the front door.

  There was no surprise. Of course, there wouldn’t be. Liam would have had to have asked for the ring and told his parents of his intentions to propose to her after the ceremony.

  “Thank you so much for letting Liam have this ring, Mrs. Donnelly. It’s so beautiful.”

  “Don’t be silly. We have all known that ring was destined for your finger since the two of you were just little things. Lord knows you told us often enough.”

  Dawn blushed a little, though she knew his mother meant nothing by it. An ordinary girl might wonder if perhaps she had somehow pushed Liam into this, but she wasn’t an ordinary girl. She had an advantage that most women did not. She knew mostly every thought Liam had. She knew his heart. Though he sometimes clouded things from her, she knew it was never to be deceitful in any harmful way.

  “You two are going to be busy the next few months. You’ve a house to move into, a wedding to plan, a business to build,” his father observed.

  “Yeah, it won’t be easy, but we will get it all done,” Liam told him.

  “I’ve no doubt that you will, son.”

  “All right, well, we’ve got the keys and my car is loaded to the gills. We’re going to get this stuff unloaded and then head over to Dawn’s to see about getting her stuff packed up.”

  “You’re going to be overwhelmed with trying to get everything done today. Why not just wait until tomorrow?” his mother asked.

  “We aren’t getting everything, just her essentials. We’ll finish up over the next couple of days.”

  “Ah, good then.”

  They said their goodbyes and left, hurrying across town to get started on unloading everything from the car before making their way to Dawn’s house. Unlike his parents, this was going to be a surprise for them, and she wasn’t exactly sure how well it was going to go over with her father. Her mother would probably be cool, but Owen McCord wasn’t going to be thrilled about handing over his little girl.

  “You ready for this?” she asked him, probably sensing his angst and already reading his own thoughts.

  “As ready as I will ever be,” he replied.

  Dawn laughed as he leaned over and kissed her forehead before putting the vehicle into drive and making his way to her house to tell her parents t
he news and prepare for their objections, of which she predicted there would be many. Liam gave her a weak smile and began driving.

  “Lock and load,” Liam teased as they stepped out of the car and headed toward the front door.

  “Listen, Liam. We don’t have to do this tonight if you don’t want. We can just tell them we are engaged and save the news that I’m moving in with you before the wedding until tomorrow, or I can tell them alone tonight.”

  “And spend the night apart? No. I’ll take my chances of your father ripping me to shreds.”

  Dawn laughed and opened the front door to her house.

  “Mom? Dad? I’m home. I have Liam with me,” she said.

  Dawn had learned a long time ago to announce herself and others if her parents weren’t expecting her. Even after all these years, they were very much in love. It wasn’t uncommon for them to take full advantage of an empty house to its fullest extent. It was sweet, but potentially embarrassing.

  “We’re here, honey.” Her Mom replied from the den.

  She and Liam walked in to find them cuddled together on the sofa, watching a movie. Rather than wasting any time, she decided to get right down to brass tacks before she lost her nerve. Extending her hand toward them, she flattened it out so they had a good view of her ring.

  “Liam and I are engaged,” she said.

  They both smiled up at her, not seeming very surprised by the news. She looked at them, puzzled for a moment, and then their thoughts began to seep in. They already knew. She turned and looked at Liam, who was already laughing.

  “Well, you didn’t think I was just going to waltz up in this house and drop something like this on your father, did you?”

  “But you were all worried in the car!”

  “I was worried about you killing me, not him!”

  Dawn punched him playfully on the arm, making him laugh that much harder. Her parents were up off the sofa and hugging her tightly, tears rolling down her mother’s face, despite her broad smile. Dawn knew they were tears of happiness for her, mixed with a bit of melancholy at losing her only child.