10. Seren

Chapter 10

Seren

G ramps had been planning this party for weeks and we'd all been roped into helping at some point. Morgan and I had spent hours telling him about the Somervilles and Dane and Lew had sat with us and listened.

It had been a huge relief, if I were honest. To finally tell my mate and my new family all about my birth clan.

I hadn't been able to share it before. I'd been keeping just one thing secret, but it had been a big secret, weighing me down with the weight of the lie and the danger it posed to my family.

Alexander had been a golden dragon.

That was it, really. That was the sum total of the secret, but it was enough .

If people had found out about that, they would have worked the rest out for themselves.

They'd have realised that the old Lord Somerville had expected his next son, Morgan, to be a golden dragon, too. And he'd been bitterly disappointed when he was plain silver like the rest of us.

And, naturally, because he'd been a massive dickhead, he'd taken out that disappointment on Morgan by sending him away, claiming he needed to earn his keep.

If anyone had known about Alexander, they could have worked out the next most obvious thing, too, which was that there was another son who could inherit that power.

Telling anyone about it – even my own mate – was too dangerous.

That kind of power was feared and where there was fear, there was violence. I'd kept my secret locked inside me, waiting for Alfie to shift so we'd know one way or the other. Whether he was silver or gold.

Now he'd shifted, the secret was out.

For the first time, I told Gramps everything he wanted to know about the Somervilles without withholding anything. It was helped by the fact that I could feel the relief pouring off Dane, too. He'd been keeping a secret, in his own way, too.

Dane and Glimmer were surprisingly close. I got the impression that Glimmer held him responsible for giving him access to the power he had, the power he used to protect his family. That ability to protect his clan was the most important thing for Glimmer, and it was why he allowed Dane to slip into the territory or draw him out of it when he would never have allowed it for anyone else. He owed Dane.

Dane admitted he'd been in contact with Glimmer, and somehow Nana didn't burn him alive, which is what he'd said she'd do. I didn't believe it for a second, but Dane had sounded convincing when he'd been worrying about it.

He seemed to think Nana was strict, which I kind of got, since she was a dragon elder and all and I wouldn't cross her, given the chance. However, I'd grown up with the old Lord Somerville as my elder and I knew what it was really like to fear my elder. To know that I had no intrinsic value, other than what I could bring to his clan .

I never felt that way with Nana. Even if I never did anything at all to make her clan stronger, she'd let me stay. She'd value me as a person.

I hadn't worried for a second that she'd hurt my mate, but found it adorable that he worried about it.

Nana stood by the door of the large western lounge now, watching us all run around under her mate's orders.

Gramps held up a bottle of port.

"Is this the right one?"

I peered at it. "Yes."

"Are you sure? I don't want to give him the wrong thing."

"No, I'm sure that's the one he likes."

Gramps nodded and stashed the bottle away in a small cupboard. He'd been asking me about my aunts and uncles for weeks and I'd been able to tell him all about them, except for Uncle George. He was the quietest of the lot and I hadn't known him ever to draw the ire of the old Lord Somerville. That was because he stayed quiet, did nothing that wasn't permitted, and I couldn't say anything about what he liked to do at all. He was a blank slate as far as I was concerned. The only thing I'd been able to remember about him was that he liked a very particular kind of port.

Hence Gramps had found a bottle.

"Bring those chairs over here," he said as Lew, Milton and Jill came in, carrying a stack each.

He directed them to put the chairs out where he wanted them, and then changed his mind.

"Do you think they'll be better over here?"

He was starting to fuss now, and I realised that he really did care about this party.

I said, "Gramps, the room looks great."

"Do you think your family will like it?"

"I think they'll love it. Aunt Silvia will be thrilled to see her painting above the fireplace. It was really kind of you to put it there."

She'd brought along one of her own paintings as a gift for the Hoskins clan, among other things.

"Not at all," said Gramps. "I want it there. I'll enjoy looking at it every day."

Taking a last look round, I tried to see if there was anything we'd missed. If there was, I couldn't think what it would be. Gramps had a well-established routine for Mating Parties by that point, and he'd only had to adapt it a bit to make it an Alliance Party .

"Is that everything? Because I need to go and change."

I tugged at my clothes, which were old and worn. I'd known I'd get covered in dust and sweat, and I had.

"Yes, I think so."

I took that as permission to leave and grabbed Dane's hand as I went. He needed time to wash and change, too.

We rushed upstairs to our bedroom and I was flinging my clothes away the second we closed the door behind us.

"Hurry up, I want to get to the party."

Dane followed me into the shower at a slower pace, which meant I was already mostly done by the time he stepped under the spray beside me. We'd got a big waterfall shower installed since I'd moved into the castle and it was worth every penny.

At first, I ignored him and finished washing, and then as soon as I was done, I grabbed the soap again and began to wash my mate.

"Are you trying to hurry me up?" he asked. The amusement in his voice made me want to smile .

"Maybe," I said.

Not really, though. Actually, I'd just wanted to touch his skin. He had such dark, tanned skin and his body was hard with bulging muscle. There wasn't an inch of it that I didn't want to worship.

I ran my hands over his back, soaping him up and enjoying the feel of his body beneath my palms. He was washing his hair already, which meant my attention was needed lower down…

His ass was firm and round and strong. Seriously, my mate had a strong ass. It was absolute heaven.

My hands rubbed circles over the hard globes and then I slid a finger down Dane's crack. His muscles tightened and I pushed my finger down, over his tight hole and rubbed against it, circling his pucker and teasing.

Dane's voice was deep and rough when he spoke.

"That's not going to speed this up, Seren."

He widened his stance as he said it, so his words and his actions were telling me different things. I decided to listen to his body instead of his mouth.

With my other hand, I reached down to play with his balls. They were full and round. I leaned closer and pressed my chest against his back, sucking a spot on his neck as I did it .

"Seren," he moaned. My heart rate picked up. There was a particular way that Dane said my name, and it never failed to make me feel special. To feel loved. And hard.

I pressed my finger harder against Dane's hole, wondering as I did so where we'd left the lube.

I didn't have time to actually find it.

Dane spun round so suddenly that I found myself pressed against the cool tiles with my mate at my front and my dick in his hand, all before I realised what was happening.

If I'd wanted to fight him about it, I could have but, seriously, why would I want to do that? My mate was touching my dick and, yes, kissing my mouth.

Dane kissed like a dream. His tongue was demanding and I opened to him, letting him kiss me deeply. Our bodies slid against each other under the spray of the shower and his larger body pressed me back, a firm, muscular weight.

The click of a cap sounded loud in the small bathroom, and I wondered if it was the lube but the burst of scent told me that it was conditioner. Looked like Dane couldn't remember where we'd left the lube, either .

I was about to push him away and suggest we look for it so I could actually fuck him, but all thoughts of that fled from my mind when he brought his hand back to my dick and wrapped it around me. His hand was strong and calloused but it had slick, smooth conditioner in it and his strokes glided along my length with ease.

Dane worked me quickly, kissing me as he tugged at my cock and it wasn't that I couldn't last, honest, it was just that he knew exactly what to do to me to make me come.

He adjusted his stance again and pressed his own dick against mine. The hard heat of it against mine pushed me higher as he wrapped his big hand around both of us and jerked hard. Dane wasn't messing about. He wanted us both to come.

His tongue drove me wild and his hand pulled my orgasm out of me with an inevitability that started deep in the pit of my stomach and rose, higher and higher, until it erupted out of me, pumping my come out over Dane's hand and his large dick.

The fresh scent of it hit the back of my nose and it must have hit Dane's, too, because he groaned loudly into my mouth. His grip tightened, his jerking became erratic for a few strokes and then his come spilled out of his dick alongside mine.

We stayed like that for a long, intimate moment, pressed together, breathing hard, smelling our combined scent.

Slowly, the water washed away all trace of our sex and Dane pressed a firm kiss to my lips before pulling back.

"I hope we're not going to be late," he said.

"We won't be," I assured him. "I made sure I had plenty of time to change and to see you come."

"You planned this?"

"Not exactly. I just knew I needed to put my suit on, and also have sex with you."

My mate kissed me again. "And are you satisfied now?"

"Yes, I am. You always satisfy me, Dane. My life is perfect."

For such a giant man, my mate was a complete teddy bear. I could see the moisture in his eyes and it had nothing to do with the shower.

I made sure he'd rinsed all the soap out of his hair and that we'd washed the last traces of come off us, and then I shut off the shower and grabbed a towel. I dried him as he stood there, admiring his strong legs and broad shoulders as I did so. I might have mentioned them to him, and he gave me that smile that was half indulgent and half secretly pleased.

Of course I admired my mate! The man was a walking sex god, what was I meant to do?

Luckily for both of us, I was familiar with putting on a suit and I managed to get us both dressed, our ties perfectly-tied and straight, and us both downstairs in time for the party. Gramps might have a particular soft spot for me but I wasn't sure he'd forgive even me for being late to our Alliance Party.