Scorch: M/M Gay Shifter Mpreg Romance (Dragon's Destiny: Fated Mates Book 2) (2 page)

I
could feel
Sarah’s eyes on me, and I adjusted Holly on my hip, shifting her so that her little body blocked my wife from view.
My wife
. Two words that I’d never thought I’d be saying together.

Sarah knew me better than anyone, and I had no doubt that she’d caught onto my tension, even if she didn’t understand it. She would definitely grill me about it later, but right now I didn’t want to talk about it—not even to the extent of exchanging glances. I couldn’t. It was all I could do to try to keep my attention on the conversation with the slim man she’d just introduced me to. Warren? Wallace? I couldn’t remember his name, even though Sarah had just told me.

At the moment, I was having a hard time remembering my
own
name… much less anything else.

Every nerve in my body felt hyper-aware of That Man, and no matter how much I tried to pay attention to what was going on in front of me, everything in the room that wasn’t
him
seemed to fade into the background.

“…should get Holly and Elise together for a playdate this week,” William was saying.

“We’d love that, Wes,” Sarah answered.
Wes,
not William. Wesley. Right. “Holly has a well-child check up tomorrow afternoon, but maybe we could get together the day after? If it’s not raining, we could bundle them up and take them to Priest Point Park.”

Sarah and Wes continued to make plans, and Holly started squirming to be let down. Holding her was the only thing distracting me from my reaction to the devastating blond man across the room, and I squeezed her a little too tightly, hoping in vain that she would settle down and decide to stay in my arms.

“Down
, Dev,” she insisted, bracing her arms against my shoulder and pushing her upper body away from me with all her might. “Holly go
down
!”

Giving in with a little sigh, I set her on her feet and rubbed my sweating palms against the sides of my pants. I wasn’t going to turn and look. I was Not Going To.

Sarah was my
wife
—I’d known her for half my life and been married to her for two months—but that didn’t seem to matter. Within moments of stepping through the door a few minutes ago, I’d been blindsided by a hot, raging, carnal lust… for
him.

A man I’d never seen before, but somehow felt like I’d instantly recognized.

I’d never felt anything like it. It’s not that I hadn’t been turned on before—I’d known I was gay, well, forever, and even if I’d never had the opportunity to do anything about it, I’d certainly felt attracted to other men—but this was different. My whole body felt flushed, hot and electric and instantly attuned to the blond man behind me in a way that felt almost mystical, as if I could literally
feel
him. It was a sort of hyper-awareness that told me exactly where he was in the room without having to turn to look.

And, oh God, I wanted him.

I was thankful I’d worn a loose shirt today. It was untucked, and hopefully that was enough to hide the rock-hard evidence of just how much this stranger was affecting me. I swallowed, trying to focus on slowing my breathing instead of on my reaction to him. Jesus, I was practically panting, and I knew I needed to calm myself down. I desperately needed to distract myself and think about something,
any
thing, other than crossing the room and begging a man I’d never seen before to fuck the living daylights out of me.

What was
wrong
with me?

And then I felt it—the man was on the move.

Other than that first, breathless moment when I’d walked in and seen him, I hadn’t allowed myself to look again. But as crazy as it sounded, I didn’t need to look to know. I could
feel
it. He was walking across the room now, coming closer. Coming for
me
. Exactly what I wanted… and what I couldn’t let happen.

“Sarah, I— I’ve got to go,” I blurted, interrupting her conversation with Wendall. No
, Wesley
.

I didn’t wait for her response or offer any excuse. If I didn’t leave Right Now I was going to break every vow I’d made to my wife by throwing myself on this stranger who I suddenly wanted with such a desperate, unreasonable urgency.

And I couldn’t do that.

I loved Sarah. I loved Holly. I even loved Luke’s baby, growing in Sarah’s belly. I’d promised to take care of all of them, and I never broke my word. Ever.

So I ignored what my body and mind and heart and soul were telling me to do, and instead, I did the only thing that would make it possible to keep all my promises.

I ran.

E
verything was different now
, and yet no one seemed to notice but me.

Dane was practically licking his lips, still looking across the room at Wes as if his mate were one of the cupcakes piled on the table next to him. Ty had walked up and joined us, and he and Dane were talking about something while Dane undressed Wes with his eyes. About his daughter, Elise, maybe. Or the undersea exhibit on the first floor. Or maybe gas prices, or football, or knitting, or
The Walking Dead
, for all I knew.

I wasn’t listening.

I didn’t care.

It was all background noise.

A moment ago, I’d started walking toward my mate without thinking, pulled toward him as inevitably as if by gravity. When he’d left so abruptly I’d stopped mid-stride. Frozen. I didn’t even notice that Ty had followed and put his hand on my shoulder until he gave me a little tug. I ignored him.

I’d just found my fated mate and then realized that I couldn’t have him, all within the span of a few heartbeats. And he had
left
. My mate—
Devin—
had left. Without even looking at me.

How could he not have felt it?

My dragon was thrashing inside me, burning with a fierce urgency that was totally out of character for my normally relaxed otherself. It was pushing me to go after the beautiful man and claim him—
immediately
—but the human part of me couldn’t stop staring at my mate’s pregnant wife. With a sinking feeling of despair, I realized that it wasn’t going to be that easy. I squeezed my eyes closed, trying to calm my dragon.

“Maks,” Ty said, giving me another sharp tug. “Dude, you’re steaming. I mean, literally. I think you should get out of here.”

I let Ty lead me out of the room, which as a bonus served to quiet my otherself, since we were moving in the direction that my mate had gone. Once we were outside the building, Ty pulled me around the corner and stopped.

“Okay, spill,” he said. “What’s going on, Maks?”

I couldn’t answer. I was in shock. I’d wanted this, wanted to find
him
… but now that I had, it was the most painful thing that had ever happened to me. And I didn’t like pain.

“‘Smoke coming out of your ears’ is just a figure of speech for us mere humans,” Ty went on when I’d been quiet for too long, wafting his hand through the air around my head.

The movement disturbed hot clouds of vapor that I hadn’t even noticed. I
was
steaming.

“I’m going to take a stab in the dark and guess that something dragon-ish is going south,” Ty continued. “Is there anything I can do to help you calm down before you explode into some sort of fiery, winged shit that will be hard to avoid questions about?”

He was right. I had to get myself under control. I couldn’t even remember the last time my dragon had tried to assert its will over my human self. My relationship with my otherself was easy. Relaxed. I
never
felt out of control, and now that I did, I wasn’t at all sure how to go about getting it back… especially when I wasn’t sure I even wanted to. What I
wanted
to do was the same thing that my otherself did: find my mate and claim him.

But that was impossible, because Devin was already taken, and the fact was killing me.

I remembered something Dane had said when he’d found his own mate.
“It’s as if, out of all the humans that ever were or will be, Wesley is the other half of my soul. I just hope it never happens to you, my friend, because I’ve barely touched him, and I already don’t know how I’m going to go on without him.”

At the time, it had sounded a bit overly dramatic, but now I knew exactly what my friend had meant. I hadn’t touched Devin at all—hadn’t even spoken to him—and yet I’d suddenly realized that I’d lived for the last two hundred years
incomplete
… and I hadn’t even known it until a few minutes ago.

I only realized that I was shaking when Ty gripped my shoulders. He got right up in my face and forced me to make eye contact.

“Dude, seriously—chillax. Whatever is going through your head right now, it doesn’t really seem to be working with the ‘calm down’ strategy. What’s going on?”

I made myself relax, letting out a slow breath and willing my dragon to back down. I gave Ty a short nod once I felt the heat inside me start to dissipate, and he dropped his hands, stepping back a couple of paces to give me some space.

“My mate,” I told him.

Ty frowned. He’d obviously heard the tension that was still in my voice. I tried another slow breath. Hopefully this time I could sound less like I was about to implode.

“The man who just left the party. He was my fated mate,” I said.

Ty’s eyes widened. “Are you talking about the breathing-fire-into-him shit? The ‘I-woud-die-for-him’ thing? Like my brother has?”

I nodded. Ty was one of the few humans who knew what it meant, but he still didn’t understand, and the excitement in his voice stung like salt in a wound.

“Fuck, that’s awesome!” Ty went on, grinning. “What are you still doing here, then? Go get ‘im, tiger. I remember when my brother met Dane, they were practically shoving me out the door so they could rip each other’s clothes off.” Ty reddened, pausing. “Uh, actually that’s not a visual I needed to throw out there… ” He cleared his throat, then his irrepressible smile overrode his embarrassment. “But seriously, no wonder you’re steaming.”

“He’s married, Ty.”

Ty blinked. “What?”

I had to make him understand, even though I wanted to choke on the words. “My mate, he’s
married
. His
wife
is in there, with their child. And she’s pregnant. He’s… not available.”

Ty cocked his head to the side, his brow furrowing. “That can’t be right, Maks. Shouldn’t he be gay? He can’t have a pregnant wife. I can’t fucking believe I’m saying this, but isn’t
he
the one who’s supposed to get magically dragon-impregnated or some shit? I mean, not ‘magically,’ I’m sure you guys actually fuck— nope.” Ty paused, holding his hands up to stop himself. “I take that back. I’m not going there. But, seriously, isn’t it, like,
fated?
”

My dragon agreed, but Ty didn’t seem to notice the little puff of steam. He was still talking.

“Dude, you can’t fuck with fate. There must be some mistake. Stop looking like your hamster just died. Go after him.”

There was no room for doubt in his voice, and his words eased some of the tension inside me. Ty was right. Again. I didn’t know how it could possibly work out, but I couldn’t just let my mate walk away. But…

“I don’t know where he went.”

“So go find out. The fated mate thing? What my brother has? That’s not something you just let go, Maks,” Ty said, suddenly serious. “I mean, sure the whole ‘my brother-in-law turns into a fucking dragon’ thing is a little weird, and the way Wes gets all swoon-y and shit around his man is a little ridiculous, but… it’s also kind of precious.”

The word Ty had chosen surprised a laugh out of me. “‘
Precious
?’” I quoted, making it a question. The man clearly spent a lot of time with his one-year-old niece.

He rolled his eyes. “Dude, I mean ‘precious’ like ‘rare.’
Special
. The way Dane treasures Wes… the way the two of them
get
each other… that’s once-in-a-lifetime. Or for some of us, never-in-a-lifetime,” he said, sounding almost wistful when he added the last line under his breath.

It was the same feeling that had made me feel so dissatisfied with the idea of dating men who didn’t matter lately. The same thing that had made me a little jealous of what my oldest friend had found, even though I was also genuinely happy for him. But now I
had
found it, and Ty was right…
again.
There must be some mistake. Devin was
mine.

It was fated.

“
W
hat happened to you yesterday
, Dev?” Sarah asked the next morning when she stumbled sleepily into the kitchen. “You scared me, running off like that without a word.”

I handed her a cup of sweetened tea as a peace offering. I could tell she was concerned, but she also sounded slightly grumpy, and I couldn’t blame her. When she’d asked me to get off work early and meet her at the Hands-On Children’s Museum the day before, I knew that it was partly because she’d wanted me to meet her new friends, but it had also been because she’d needed help with Holly. Despite the doctor’s reassurance that Sarah was healthy, this pregnancy seemed to be taking a lot out of her—and I had deserted her when she’d needed me. My reaction to the man at the party had just been too overwhelming, and I’d run from the museum as if the bats of hell where on my tail.

I’d driven out of town, up the coast, ignoring Sarah’s voice messages and texts before finally turning my phone off completely. I hadn’t had any destination in mind, I’d only known that I needed to put distance between me and the crazy pull I’d felt for the stranger who had felt like he was everything I’d never known I needed.

Which was impossible, of course.

I’d only seen him for a split-second, and despite my physical reaction to him, things like love-at-first sight didn’t happen in the real world. Certainly not to someone like me.

It had been long past dark by the time I’d calmed down enough to return home. By then, Sarah had already put Holly to bed and fallen asleep herself. I’d made my way to my own bed, wrung out and confused and still wracked by a burning lust that it was all I could do to ignore. I’d gratefully let sleep take me away from the wild spin of my thoughts and the urgent demands of my body, but sleep could only be an escape for so long. Now that I was up, I knew that Sarah wasn’t going to just let my weird behavior go. We’d been friends for too long.

“I’m sorry, Sare,” I told her now, pushing my long bangs out of my face. I opened and closed my mouth a few times, trying to find something to say. “I— I can’t explain it,” was all I came up with.

Lame.

She leveled A Look at me over the rim of her cup.

“Try.”

I thought back to what had happened—to
him
—and my body instantly reacted. Oh, God. Heat blazed through me, and I sucked in a sharp breath. I’d never felt so out of control. Sarah’s eyes were still on me, and I shifted in my chair, hoping that she didn’t notice when I had to adjust my sudden raging hard-on under the table. I’d probably thought more about sex in the last twenty-four hours than in all of my twenty-two years.

“There was a man there,” I finally said, my cheeks heating. I was suddenly sure that Sarah would be able to tell exactly what I was thinking about. I cleared my throat, hoping it would also clear away the visions that suddenly swamped me. “And, well, I…”

I’d only caught a glimpse of him, but I could still picture him clearly in my mind’s eye. He’d been gorgeous. Tall and blond, almost slavic looking. His eyes had been an icy blue, but somehow not cold.
Hot,
like that part of the flame at the bottom. He’d had huge hands, lightly dusted with golden hair on the backs, and his body was… so…

I didn’t realize my voice had trailed off until Sarah put her coffee cup down with a loud thump. I jerked my eyes off of the scratch on the tabletop that I’d been blindly staring at while I pictured him, and caught a wicked grin on her face.

“Dev-in,” she said in a teasing, sing-song voice. “Did you finally meet someone you
liked?”

“‘Liked?’ Uh, Sarah, I’m talking about a complete stranger,” I mumbled, feeling my blush deepen.

My cock throbbed, silently insisting that I had, in fact, “liked” that stranger quite a bit. That, if I ever saw him again, I’d like him to do things to me that… made me really glad I was sitting down right now.

“Squee!” she squeed.

Did people actually
say
“squee?” Only Sarah.

“Tell me everything! Who was it? Dev! This could be your first boyfriend!”

“Sarah, you’re my
wife.
We’re
married
. Jesus. I can’t just… go… hook up with some guy because he… he—” Makes me almost come in my pants just by breathing the same air. “—catches my eye.”

“Oh, stop. Dev, you know I appreciate what you’re doing for Holly and me, but please don’t use it as an excuse not to have a life of your own.”

“Sarah, I
can’t.”

If Sarah and her children were going to be covered by my health insurance, there shouldn’t be any hint that we weren’t a real family. I wasn’t going to put them at risk just because some guy turned me on, not when my best friend had no one else to turn to. And not when—no matter what the doctor said—she looked so worn out from this pregnancy.

Sarah insisted she was fine, just tired, but I could clearly remember my own mother’s difficult pregnancy. She had been tired, too, looking worn and exhausted—just like Sarah—all through the last months of her life. The doctors had insisted that she and the baby would both be fine, despite all the signs that should have given ample warning that that wasn’t the case. Signs they might have paid attention to, if she’d been able to pay for proper healthcare instead of queuing up at the free clinics that were constantly understaffed and overfilled. Or if it had been just a few months later, when I could have supported her the way I could now support Sarah.

I would never let my friend go through that.

I swallowed, pushing the memory away. Not letting myself miss my mother, or mourn again for the baby brother I’d never had the chance to know.

“I won’t mess this up, Sarah,” I said, gesturing between us. “I
will
take care of you and Holly and the baby. Even if it’s not ‘that’ kind of love, we
are
a family now. All three and a half of us.”

She smiled and squeezed my hand, her eyes growing suspiciously bright. “Thanks, honey. I know. And believe me, I’m grateful. I don’t know what I would have done without you. I just hate the thought of you giving up any sort of love life of your own when you don’t have to, just because you’ve saddled yourself with us.”

I mock-glared at her. We’d had this conversation before, but I was happy to go through it again.

“First, I did not ‘saddle’ myself with you. You and Luke have been my best friends for as long as I can remember. You were both always there for me, and now that he’s gone, I get to be here for
you
. And—” Just the thought of Sarah’s daughter brought a smile to my face. “—you know I love Holly, too.”

It didn’t matter what some stranger had made me feel.
Still
made me feel, every time I thought of him. I would never let Sarah down.

She nodded, wiping at her eyes.

“Second,” I continued. “You know I’ve never even had a boyfriend, so it’s not like I’m missing out. You guys are the ones who need me, not some hot guy whose name I don’t even know. If I’ve waited this long to date or, um, ‘be’ with a guy—” Oh, God. My cheeks were on fire again. “—it’s not going to hurt me to wait a little longer.”

The truth was, I had zero experience with men. I’d always been too shy, too smart, too young compared to everyone around me. I’d taken accelerated classes all through school, graduating college before my peers even had their high school diplomas. I’d been hired by one of the biggest software companies in the world before I’d turned eighteen. A prodigy, they called me. Or if you wanted to get a little more accurate: an awkward, geeky, gay, virgin, computer-whiz who had never even kissed a guy, much less done the things that I’d suddenly been desperate for yesterday, when I’d seen
him.

The idea of not dating, not touching, not
wanting
or,
God
, getting fucked by anyone—for as long as Sarah needed this marriage-in-name-only—it truly hadn’t seemed like a big deal when I’d proposed it to her. I hadn’t known what I was missing, so it hadn’t felt like I’d be missing out on anything at all.

I
still
didn’t know what I was missing, I reminded myself sternly.

So why did it suddenly feel like I could close my eyes and feel the blond man’s hands on me, those strong hands I’d only seen for a moment, but could picture clearly even now, running up my body, his touch licking me like fire, heating me from the inside out, making me—

“Dev? You okay, honey?”

My eyes snapped open, and I stifled a groan. I felt like I was going crazy. I had to find a way to forget that I’d ever seen that guy, and go back to being happy with the choices that I’d made. I knew what was important, and what was real.

These visions that were suddenly plaguing me… they were never going to happen.