a powerful grip, he pulled her hips against his.
His hard erection brushed her belly, and her stomach quivered with an anticipation she didn’t understand. Breeding with a rutting male wasn’t supposed to be pleasurable.
“Now do you feel anything?” he rasped against her lips as he pulled her knees around his waist and rubbed against a shockingly sensitive place between her thighs.
“No,” she said on a sigh.
He leaned forward and drank her in, teeth grazing her lips. His hands were so strong, holding her up against the wall like this, as if she weighed nothing at all.
“Okay, okay,” she murmured, stepping down.
“Okay, you feel something?”
“No, okay you seem ready. Let’s get this over with.”
His eyes narrowed, but she turned her back on him and kicked off her heels. She padded into the bedroom he’d set her suitcase in and took in the thick blue curtains and queen-size bed. It looked clean enough if she ignored Nards, who marched by her bare foot with a cracker in his mouth.
Her hands shook so badly, she clenched and unclenched them before she began unbuttoning her jacket, then her blouse.
“You know,” Bruiser said from behind her. “You’ve used that phrase three times today already—‘let’s get this over with.’”
“You don’t approve?”
“Hell no, I don’t approve. What are you doing?”
She shimmied out of her shirt and then pushed her dress pants and panties to the floor. Bruiser crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe. Closing her eyes tightly in embarrassment, she unhooked her bra in the back and let it fall down her arms. Her knees were knocking so she settled herself onto the bed and spread her legs wide.
Bruiser’s eyebrows arched impossibly high as he raked a hungry gaze over every inch of her bare skin. His eyes had gone bright, and a gold-green color that was nothing shy of unsettling.
“I repeat, what are you doing?”
“I’m ready to breed.” She looked pointedly at the huge bulge fighting against the seam of his jeans. “It looks like you are, too.”
He scrunched his nose up until the laugh lines by his eyes crinkled. “Breed?”
Heat flooded up her neck and burned her cheeks. Fury filled her, and she clapped her knees together, denying him further visual access to her lady bits. “Yes, breed. That’s what you signed up for when you made this deal with my father. It isn’t happily ever after, Bruiser. It’s fuck me, get me with child, and move on with your life.”
“Move on with my life?” His words came out gravelly and low, sending chills up her arms. “You are my life now! I’m not going to breed you, woman. I’m not going to fuck you to have a kid with you. If and when we’re together like this, it won’t be a let’s-get-this-over-with kind of moment. I want you begging to have me inside of you, and not for some technicality fuck so you can have a little baby dragon. I’m not just a dick!”
“Yes you are!” she screamed, tears burning her eyes as she sat up and pulled the comforter against her body. “Didn’t you realize that when you signed the contract for my soul? Didn’t you ask my father why he chose you? The poor bastard lumberjack son of Titus Keller. Your mother was a dragon. My father picked a mate based on the probability of us making viable dragon young.”
Bruiser’s face fell utterly blank with shock. Slowly, he shook his head. “I’m not going to fuck you.”
“Yes you will! You will, and you’ll love it, and then you’ll watch me wither away to nothing to have your child. You’ll feel bad for a few weeks because of what you had to do. Maybe you’ll leave flowers on my grave when you think of me. Then you’ll move on like I never existed at all. It’s what you do.” A sob wrenched from her throat. “Males are all the same.”
Bruiser rushed to her and scooped her into his lap, the mattress creaking under his weight. “I don’t understand,” he whispered against her hair.
“Dragons