The Pleasure of Dragons

Everything Katie thinks she knows about her life is a lie, starting with the belief that she is wholly human.

It all begins when she goes on a date with Ezra, the college heartthrob, who wastes no time taking her apart despite being surrounded by people in the middle of a crowded movie theater. That should be the most exciting thing to have ever happened to her, except their exhibitionist behavior draws the attention of a red-eyed man who claims to know her— who claims that she does not belong in the human realm.

Suddenly, she is thrown into a world of magic and mystique— into a life that is completely different from the one that she grew up knowing. According to Percival, they are meant to be together and her body readily agrees. She all but throws herself at him, the need to feel his skin against her a burning, aching thing that can't be ignored. It doesn't matter that the man is a dragon and he is definitely so much more than she can take. She just knows she wants him— all of him. The frightening thing isn't that he does not want her in return— it is that he wants her even more.

~~~~~ PG Excerpt ~~~~~

“Did I say you could let go of the popcorn?” he whispered, breath hot against the side of her face.

It wasn't safe for her to loosen her jaw, even if he didn't have a hand over her mouth, so she shook her head and put her shaking fingers back to the cardboard. The contents shook along with her trembling fingers, a sound that was thankfully masked by the ongoing explosions in the movie.

For a terrifying moment, she wondered if this was all a prank. Any moment now, the other people in the theater was going to turn towards them and start snapping pictures of her with her legs spread, her skirt folded over her lap and her— her everything exposed.

“Should we keep going?” he asked, no judgement in his voice, and that fear faded to nothingness.

No. Ezra was known to bang everything on legs, but he wasn't the kind to kiss and tell. In fact, none of the women he had went out with had anything bad to say about him, which was a feat because he had gone out with so many of them. Some even twice. If all his dates went this way, she understood why.

She shook her head. Maybe she should tell him that she had never had sex before so he would show mercy on her, but he was toeing the line of exhibitionism and she thought sex would probably never be this exciting again, so she kept her mouth shut and nodded.

“Good girl,” he whispered, making her shiver. She should probably put some thought into why those two words had such an effect on her, but that was for later, when her brain wasn't melting out of her ears.

His palm slowly pulled away from her mouth. It left her lips and cheeks feeling cold and slightly damp, and she had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from making a sound when he cupped her between her legs.

“Stay still, stay quiet,” he reiterated against the side of her head and then went back to stroking her.

The movie passed in blurs of colors and bursts of sound. The popcorn in the bucket slowly disappeared as he stuffed his mouth with his free hand while she edged closer and closer to losing her mind as he edged her again and again. At some point, she had begun to shake, every inch of her body trembling in the small theater seat along with the bucket in her lap, making the popcorn inside shift in a constant, soft sound. She couldn't remember the last time she had been denied for so long, been driven to the edge only to be gentled back again and again until it felt like she could be touched on any part of her skin and she could come apart.