Chapter Eighteen

Elio

Fred crossed the little bedroom in a blur of speed and dropped to his knees between my parted legs. His hungry eyes settled on mine as I pushed myself up on my elbows. Even on his knees he was tall. I leaned forward and caught his lips in a hungry kiss. I traced his jaw line, touching as much of him as I could with one hand, as our tongues danced between our mouths. He tasted sweet like the coffee he murdered with all that sugar. His hands came to rest on my thighs and a happy sigh escaped me. My dragon purred again. He seemed to always purr around Fred. It wasn't a very common noise for dragons to make except for the very young and those who purred to comfort those around them. Except, maybe there was one other time dragons purred a lot. Maybe no one told me, and I hadn't bothered to take a survey of sounds my peers made in the bedroom.

Fred's big, warm hands slid up my thighs to my hips. He tucked his thumbs in my waistband and slipped my pants off. I stroked myself as his gaze followed my fist. Naked again, I stretched out on the bed, feet on the floor, one arm behind my head. He kissed up and down my inner highs, leaving behind a hot tingling trail of his scent. We'd already marked each other with the claiming vows. Our scents were forever altered to smell a bit more like each other – like a true-mated pair.

I ran the fingers of my free hand through Fred's thick hair. I tried to imagine it sprinkled with glitter as it had been in the memories the vows had shown me. He smiled against my thigh.

"One day I'll take you there," he said, pulling back to speak after picking up my thoughts over our newly opened mating link. "Glitter Bomb is still up and running. I'm just not the guy running it anymore."

"I'd like that," I murmured, squeezing my dick and making a spiral of pleasure wrap around my spine.

"Do you have clubs here?" Fred asked.

"Some. Nothing quite like what I saw in your memories," I grinned.

Dropping the conversation Fred placed one more soft kiss on my inner thigh before turning his attention to warmer places. I stroked myself as he pressed his tongue flat over the sensitive skin of my scrotum. I sighed, sinking deeper into the bed as his tongue ran over it again. I lost myself to his warm mouth kissing, licking, and sucking on my balls. My hips rolled with his motions as I tried to follow his mouth. His tongue sank lower, seeking out my slick omegahole. Arousal pooled there, leaking onto my thighs, leaving them a glistening mess. He licked them clean again, teasing me in zigzag patterns. My fist moved in time with his licks, drawing out the moment before the pressure became too much.

Fred licked slow, lazy circles around my omegahole, teasing me until I brought a heel to rest on his shoulder for leverage. Taking advantage of the new position, Fred gripped my thigh, pushing my knee back to my chest. A hot blush scorched across my face. It wasn't like he hadn't seen it all when we exchanged our vows, but the position left me open, vulnerable.

"Safe," Fred said, his breath playing against my flesh.

He waited for me to relax against the mattress before he licked me again. I let go of my dick and focused on his warm, moist tongue licking over my sweet spot and lapping up the arousal that he endlessly summoned from me. My breaths came in heavy pants as my balls drew up close to my body. I was going to cum again and soon. I opened my mouth to tell him but stopped short. I didn't need to anymore. Just as his pleasure washed over me, mine did the same to him over our mating link.

Fred's big, strong hand was soft against my thigh as he turned his attention to my throbbing cock. His fingers wrapped around me and I purred. The sound vibrated me and the mattress until he purred back and my dragon let out a satisfied chirp. My fingers dug into the blankets and the sheets, I willed my claws to stay put. They didn't need to come out and play, but with each lick, kiss, and stroke Fred showered me with it was harder to maintain my control. I opened my mouth about to beg for release when Fred slipped his lips over the head of my cock. I squeezed my fingers into fists to keep control of the giant fiery beast threatening to explode out of me.

"Breathe, babe," Fred whispered, amused, over our mating link.

I was trying and I kept trying. Except everywhere he touched me felt too good – too much. Everything inside me pulled up tight and tense as his mouth slid down my shaft. His tongue pressed against its underside and was my undoing. My dragon didn't explode but a stream of steam and smoke wafted from my mouth as I called out my pleasure. I came hard, my whole body shaking, as the proof of how fucking good I felt poured onto my mate's tongue. He swallowed down my pleasure and kept going until there wasn't a single drop of it left inside my body.

The smoke detector on the ceiling beeped and a weak laugh escaped me. Cursing under his breath, Fred stood up and waved my discarded underwear at it.

"We're fine! Nothing on fire!" Fred called toward the door as footfalls raced down the hallway. "I didn't even do this."

"Yes, he did!" I managed to croak out laughing despite how hard my heart hammered against my ribs. "He made me do it!"

"Are you two okay in there?" Izora, the ship's doctor asked.

"We are. A dragon got a bit too happy!" Fred called back, a blush dotting his cheeks.

"Good work, Fred! Just don't burn down the bloody ship, okay? Some of us want to see Earthside again."

"I think all of us do," Fred sighed when the smoke alarm fell silent accepting that it was a false alarm.

When Izora stopped listening through the door, Fred sank onto the bed with me. I rolled onto my side, still grinning like a fool. Not only had I left a puddle of arousal on the sheets and blankets, I set off the fire alarm. No one ever warned me that mating would rattle everything inside me.

Fred pushed my hair away from my face and kissed my forehead. He glanced around the room, looking for a scrunchy. I laughed, surprised he'd know what one was.

"I don't think Castor is a scrunchy guy," I shrugged and stole a kiss.

His gaze fell on mine, and he grinned.

"I forgot how simple everything was when someone could read my thoughts," he settled his head against the pillow, the tip of his nose, brushing against mine.

The light left his eyes for a second before he recovered from whatever he hid from me.

"I miss her too," I took a lucky guess.

"It's strange to feel this without her here."

"She'll be back. I don't know who or where she'll be, but she'll be back. Maybe I should say they since no one knows if/when/how gender is decided by a soul. Maybe souls don't have them at all or maybe some just switch it up all the time. We have proof of that happening in the Star Room. So many dragons come and speak out from beyond the doors. She's okay. I know that much. She was okay when I left her, and I have no reason to think she's not now." I rambled on trying to find the right combination of reassurances to make him feel better.

"I know," Fred nodded. "We talked a lot about death and what we knew before she died. I know she's okay. She's Lotus. Somehow, she always managed to be okay. She's tough. I kept telling Teddy and them that it was normal to be sad forever. We're all sort of sad all the time when you think about it. It doesn't matter how long we live, we know that most of us will probably die someday. Dragons live a long time. Even longer now that human governments are gone from Earthside, but we still know that even if we don't think about it in the front of our minds. It's there in the back of them. Losing her changed everything. I want to tell you that I'll protect you from everything under any sun, but we both know that's not possible. I can protect you from people and the wilderness. Hell, I can protect you from bad drivers even, but some things are what they are. I couldn't punch or work around Vulpine Degenerative disease."

I let out a long, slow breath and traced his jawline.

"And knowing that changes everything. Changes how this moment feels. It's so fucking fleeting, Elio. I know you're young and it seems like forever is held in every breath, but it's the biggest illusion we sell ourselves. We have to sell it to ourselves, or we'd never get out of bed."

"I'll protect you from all that," I whispered back, ignoring how young he made me sound. "I'll be the hopeful voice inside your head. I don't think it's death that's getting to you, but the fact everything will forever change. I know we can't hold onto anything or anyone. I'm young, but I'm not that naive. Everything and everyone leaves in the end, whether they want to or not. We just have to stay in the moment – we have to be with each other now. Five minutes from now might not be promised, but this second is because it's already unfolding."

"That's a sweet sentiment," Fred said and kissed me before I could say anything else about life, death, or how everyone left us in the end.

I kissed him hard and lost myself to his body losing itself to me. That's how we spent the next three days. Each day the scale over Fred's heart looked a bit more like a scale and a bit less like scarred human flesh. Three mornings later, my heart leapt into my chest when a big red star marked him. It was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes. I swallowed hard and said a tiny prayer to the ancestors that what I had to show him helped him move on and didn't leave him stuck in the past even more.