Chapter 10

Murtagh

I watched Zazie sit awkwardly, bewildered and pink with embarrassment, trying to adjust herself and her panties as she tried to get comfortable in the back of Caspian’s limo. She had all the grace of a shaved cat as she moved her body around and pulled her panties back up over her hips.

She was looking around the car, seeming as unimpressed and displeased with it as I was. I had no idea why Caspian had to have cars like this, or mansions, or those kinds of comforts. I’d like to say that it made him soft, but between us, he was the harder man. He had spent too much time around billionaires, and I’m afraid it had started to infiltrate his brain.

I was so busy looking at him askance—the overdone hair, the expensive suit—that I didn’t realize that Zazie was giving me a look that could have smelt iron.

“I didn’t realize you were a psychopath,” she hissed, looking directly in my direction. In the next look, she eyed Caspian. “I knew he was, but you? YOU? This was… This was…”

“A hard, well-deserved spanking?” I prompted, blinking languidly at her. I didn’t have to worry so much about her being upset—I knew I hadn’t stolen millions of dollars worth of product lately, and I certainly wasn’t the one that had fallen off the face of the earth four years ago. A hundred years ago, they would have hung someone who’d have stolen that large of a payload. We were demanding much, much less.

“There’s no such thing, asshole!” she snapped. “There’re no deserved spankings. There’s just dickholes and women who can’t fight back. End of story. Let me out of the car.”

“Very tough words for a girl who orgasmed that hard in the duration,” Caspian mentioned slyly, seeming far from giving any orders to Miles, who was probably eavesdropping from the driver’s seat, to stop the car.

She jerked up her hand to reveal her middle finger. Then she looked over at me. “Stop the car, Murtagh.”

“I’m not stopping the car, little thief. Getting away is not on the menu for you,” I told her firmly, annoyed at her gall. A spanking with an orgasm did not make a thorough punishment for her list of offenses. “Get used to it.”

“What do you mean I can’t get away? Where the fuck are you taking me? Some basement somewhere? You gonna put me in a leather suit or something? Is this like the scene in Pulp Fiction where you’ve got a guy who lives in a box and you’re gonna?—”

Caspian stopped her there, raising his hand. “No.”

I crossed one leg over another as she resettled her gaze on me. “Well? What’s your plan?”

“I think you’re far more worried than you need to be. Where we should be bringing you is the police office for stealing immeasurably significant artifacts,” Caspian answered from her other side smoothly. “But we plan to be much more lenient, little mouse, because we plan to keep you. In the best sense! Because as ours, you will be coddled and given everything you want, everything you need, and every pleasure you can imagine.”

She seemed to settle down at his words, her eyes glancing askew at the driver. “Can you drive us to the mental hospital, guy?” she asked Miles.

“That wouldn’t help,” Miles replied immediately. “Trust me.”

I smirked and looked her over.

God, had I missed her. How had I not asked for help finding her? It had been so easy for Miles and Caspian, I feel like I had missed the last four years. If I’d just done that right away, she’d probably have had several babies by now. We’d be together, and this realm wouldn’t feel like a poorly fitted suit. Just having her near me again was making me feel better.

Besides, now that the witch gave me a to-do list to get back to my own Realm, I could approach life so differently.

Now, I had to woo Zazie again. It had been easy the first time, but now she seemed to have a wall around her. I began to pull her over to me until she was settled on my lap. It wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped; it was like trying to soothe a wild animal. Eventually, she seemed to realize that I was much stronger than her, she was not going to overpower me in this dimension, and she settled unhappily.

I rubbed her arms back and forth soothingly as if trying to give her heat. “Get to know us, Zazie. I promise that you won’t regret it. We’re the only people on the planet that understand you.”

She raised an eyebrow at this. “Oh, you are, are you?” Her tongue was dripping with disdain, but her nearness, her heat, was just making me harder.

I rubbed the back of her small neck with my large hand. “We know how it feels to see a jewel and want it in your very bones. How incomplete life is once you see something that you feel should be in your bloodstream. You don’t want to have to give those things up. You want them close to you. You want them to cleanse you.”

Her eyes rolled very slowly in my direction when I said this, and I could tell (with no small measure of relief) that I had finally struck a chord.

“You know what I like to do?” Caspian added, coming closer to us and speaking in softer tones like I was, piggybacking immediately onto my words, seeing how they fell. “I like to bathe in diamonds. Small ones. I just slide right into them and let them surround me.” He took a deep breath. “There’s nothing like it.”

She looked at Caspian then, stunned.

“He’s not lying,” Miles offered from the front seat. I had almost entirely forgotten that he was there because I was so heady with Zazie’s smell and the way she was sitting on my hard cock with only a pair of panties on. “It’s …interesting.”

“We would put gems on every finger, my pet. Every toe. Your ears, your neck, your clothes, everything everywhere,” I promised soothingly in her ear. “If you come with us, if you let us keep you—you will finally be yourself.” I pressed my lips to her shoulder and found that she didn’t jerk away from me this time.

She was busy thinking, apparently. And I could tell that she was unsettled about something.

“There’s something wrong with me, though…” she finally said after several minutes of thought. She looked at me and decided, “So there’s something wrong with you.” She narrowed her eyes as she looked at Caspian. “It doesn’t make any sense—that we all feel the same way? How would that even be possible? I can assure you, after years of therapy, that my condition is not in the books.”

“No, there’s nothing wrong with us,” Caspian sounded almost offended by that. “If we don’t act human, it might be because we aren’t human.” He said this like it wasn’t liable to lead to an existential breakdown for a twenty-two-year-old girl.

She suddenly looked like she had swallowed broken glass. It took a long moment for that look to clear and for her to try to paste a semblance of confidence on her face. “And what do you think we are?”

“I don’t know what you are,” Caspian replied, then tapped all of his fingers against his knees and muttered, “We’re going to try to figure that out. And quickly.”

She looked annoyed with this response. “Okay!” she said, now openly frustrated and throwing up her hands, as if she couldn’t believe this turn in the conversation. “Then what are you? Aliens?”

I laughed, but Caspian sneered and rolled his eyes. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” he told her firmly.

I didn’t expect him to tell her. I didn’t expect to inform her until perhaps we’d already gotten her pregnant. We’d never told anyone we had not been assured was either also not human or we were going to adopt as our familiar, like we had done with Miles and maybe about ten others in our past.

So, imagine my surprise when he smiled at her, showing his toothy grin. “We’re dragons, little mouse.”

I facepalmed, and it was easy because she just sat there. She didn’t scream, wriggle, or try to dive out of the car out into the traffic. She just pursed her lips as if disappointed. “Oh. Okay. Dragons,” she echoed to Caspian, nodding like he was a crazy person screaming on the street.

He seemed to have wanted her to be either scared or impressed, and now he didn’t seem to know how to react at all. He eyed me and then he straightened, ironing the lapels of his suit jacket with his hands. “Yes, dragons.”

“Okay,” she chirped, still nodding, still obviously disbelieving. I imagined she was thinking that if we’re forcing her into a car and spanking her and kidnapping her, then we’re probably crazy anyway. “You’ve got very nice scales,” she added as if perfectly happy to lean into Caspian’s delusions.

“This is my human fa?ade,” Caspian assured with no small measure of pouty disappointment.

“Oh, sure, sure,” she nodded understandingly, and then she looked at me. “So, you’re a dragon as well?” she asked. “And is that your human dick under my ass or your dragon dick?”

I blushed for a moment since I’d really been hoping that Zazie hadn’t noticed how hard I was. I had been enjoying myself much more without the confirmation. But there was a situation at hand, and I looked up and towards the ceiling, trying to figure out how I was going to put this. “Let’s talk about it when we get to Caspian’s ungodly estate.” After all, how was I going to tell her? This sort of thing couldn’t be told, it had to be shown. Or in Miles’ case, walked in on.

“There’s nothing wrong with my estate,” Caspian growled at me.

“Having an estate is a little much,” I replied simply, shaking my head. “Let alone owning more than one.”

“Oh, should I be living in a one-bedroom apartment like you, you morally superior ass?” Caspian prompted with spite.

“Please don’t,” Miles again piped from the front seat as if Caspian would ever mute his lavish lifestyle.

“You know, you don’t have to buy in every city,” I reminded.

He threw up his arms at me. “Oh, here we go again!”

“Are you guys… related?” Zazie asked suddenly. She was seated between us now and looking back and forth with a sort of side-glance. “Or… married?”

“No.” Our answer came out simultaneously and firmly.

Honestly, we had been in the middle of trying to maim each other when a portal opened up near us and sucked us into earth’s realm. We’d stopped fighting that day, but it had always felt incomplete. Neither of us had ever assumed an alpha role over the other. We were cursed to forever butt heads.

“Are you sure? Because yeah, you look different, but standing side-by-side, you have similar mannerisms and exactly the same eyes. In fact, it’d be weird if you’re not related,” she said skeptically. She never had much of a filter; would talk and think at the same time. It had driven my assistant insane four years ago, but I’d completely forgotten that was a habit of hers.

“We are nothing to each other,” Caspian assured peevishly.

She was unconvinced and straightened herself in her seat. “Except you both think you’re dragons and think it’s great fun to spank girls in limousines. Seriously, if you’re going to cut me into tiny slices when we get to whatever horror-scape you’re bringing me into, please don’t let my brother or Ryan find out I was brutally murdered, because my brother will get triggered by it, for sure.”

“We don’t plan to murder you,” I groaned, putting my hand wearily over my eyes.

“Sure, sure,” she waved dismissively.

I shook my head, but when I looked over at Caspian, his eyes were twinkling. What on earth they could be twinkling about, I wasn’t sure, until he leaned comfortably back in his seat and crossed his legs. “So, you have a brother, do you?”

And that’s when I knew that Caspian knew her greatest weakness. It certainly hadn’t been gems—if it had, he would have noticed that right away and she wouldn’t have been able to steal from him in the first place. Sometimes it took him awhile, but once he caught it, he had it.

She looked very uncomfortable with that question and did not answer him. I wouldn’t have either, since Caspian looked too happy about it. “How wonderful. Nice to have family, isn’t it?” he asked, still trying to draw from her.

“Caspian…” I warned.

He shrugged and after what seemed like a valiant effort, schooled his grin and then finally turned to Zazie. He began to boldly spiral his finger around her knee and thigh, “Your family doesn’t understand you, you know. They don’t know what makes you happy, do they? They don’t know what you need. How you feel. They’re just trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. And I know exactly how to fill your holes.”

She was rolling her eyes at this, and so was I, because it was so very crude, but then he pulled a gem out of his pocket. This one was a very sizable green emerald, and her eye latched onto it immediately.

“Would you like this?” he asked, showing it to her. “It’s just one of the many gifts I plan to give you, my pet. That ring on your finger? It’s yours as well—under one condition,” he added, watching her eyes widen.

“What?” she asked. Her desire for those stones was palpable.

“Be ours, hm? I could fight you until you submit to us. At the end of the day, I can make sure you know who owns you, but I’d really prefer not to be worn out so that I can enjoy you all the more. Besides, if you’re not fighting us tooth and claw, you might even enjoy it, too. We don’t plan to treat you with any cruelty. Just abide with us, live with us, and lay with us.” He splayed his hand across her thigh.

“What about me cries ‘Will sleep with multiple partners for money?’” she asked him peevishly, but she never took her eyes off the emerald.

He narrowed his eyes at this. “Multiple as in two, darling. We’re demanding exclusivity. And as for the gifts—those are just perks. I could easily take away all those privileges, if you force me, and bring you back to one single choice.”

She fought her glance away from the emerald to take in his face and mirror his expression. “Which is?”

“You go to prison or you come with us,” he said succinctly. He held up the emerald again. “So do you want this?”

“You can shove it up your ass,” she said, but then looked down at her hand and seemed very surprised to see it there, as if she didn’t know that she’d pulled it out of his palm before she even thought of her response. She seemed confused for a moment, and then mostly embarrassed.

Caspian grinned again. “Give it a chance, darling. You might be pleasantly surprised.”

She glared down at the emerald in her hand. “I find that unlikely,” she muttered.

It wasn’t long before Miles had taken us to our destination, which was an old mansion in the city limits of New Orleans. I had gone by it several times when my shop was located in New Orleans, as he had sent me the address of it when he’d purchased it (as was our agreement to share all of our addresses), but I had never seen inside.

I imagined that it was probably opulent, and when we helped our mate out of the car, I found quickly that I was right. There was never a statue that Caspian found too ostentatious, and the chandelier in the entry foyer was ridiculous.

She looked up at it, and then at me, and then at Caspian. “Why me? Couldn’t you keep paying for hookers? Like you are obviously used to?” she asked us, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Because I get what I want, darling,” Caspian educated with a widening smile. “And I want you.” He gave a shrug and added, “And you’ll want me back eventually. Come, I have something I must show you,” he said, grabbing her hand and beginning to lead her to the second floor.

“It’s not your dick, is it?” she groaned, then passed by Miles and said, “Aiding and abetting. Accomplice,” very succinctly.

“Big words for an undereducated thief who makes a living scavenging through people’s trash for secrets,” Miles replied without care, and she pressed her lips together as if quite stung, then let Caspian lead her upstairs.

“Be nice, Miles,” I warned him under my breath as I passed by.

Miles was the only human I currently had any closeness to. Even after I moved away from Caspian in the 1960s, I kept in touch with him. He was competent. Helpful. Had good instincts. I did forget that he was a little edgy, however.

“I give what I get,” Miles assured me, then smirked and lead himself towards the back of the mansion.

I followed Caspian, completely confused as to what he could possibly want to impress her with. When I saw them disappearing into a bedroom, I began to worry that maybe he did want to just show her his dick, but then he pulled her to the bathroom.

There, filling a large, clawfoot bathtub, was a bath full of rounded gems.

Arousal filled the air instantly and Zazie’s body stood rigid as she took this in.

Her hand moved to her lips for a moment, and she stared. “Oh, God.” She continued looking at it, like it was a unicorn.

“Do you like it, darling?” Caspian asked her, his eyes sparkling with delight at seeing her so obviously impressed. Hell, so was I! I had never taken my collection this far. I tended to gravitate towards high-quality gemstones and gold pieces, but Caspian had always thought that quantity had a quality of its own.

“Can I… touch it?” she asked, her breath suddenly affected.

“Oh, my darling,” he dipped his head down to put his mouth against the curve of her shoulder. “You can do more than touch it. As soon as we’re through with you, this could all be yours.”

“Mine?” she breathed, her voice a bit raspy with the temptation.

“Yours,” Caspian answered, lightly kissing her shoulder. My gaze dropped to that perfect round bubble butt of hers, still pink from the work of Caspian’s hand.

She had the most perfect ass in the entire world. I was going to spend the rest of my life worshipping it.

She was lost in the sea of sparkling gems; her mind didn’t even seem present. When she pulled focus, we could tell. She straightened, her eyes lighting up with a familiar fire. “I don’t need your gems.”

Caspian and I exchanged a look, a silent communication passing between us. We both recognized the spirit in her, the unyielding independence, and it was making my dick hard.

She was going to get what was coming to her soon enough.