Chapter 15
Fifteen
Anna
Keeping my distance from Caz was growing harder the longer I spent around him. My dragon was restless, eager to close the gap between us. I had assumed riding herd on her would grow easier, the longer she was awake and the more I learned what it was truly like to have an active dragon half.
Boy, was I wrong. Every time he entered the room, he brought that mix of woodsmoke and citrus with him. And every time, she went wild for it. More than once, I had stopped just shy of plastering myself to him like a wet towel. I wanted to drink it up, to dive in and never surface.
More than that, I wanted everyone I came in contact with to smell it on me. To smell him on me.
Denying the increasing tension between us was impossible.
We were connected. I still found it hard to believe we were mates, but my denial faded slightly every time I relived that moment in the dungeon corridor, our faces inches away from each other, the thundering in my chest as my heart raced to match his. It was too much.
He was wearing me down.
“I’m sorry,” he said as he came through the doors, frustration lines etched around the corners of his eyes.
I stirred from my spot on the couch, sitting upright as he plopped himself into the recliner across from me. My dragon pouted. She wanted him here, beside me, where I could crawl into his lap and be held by his arms. Those long, muscle-packed arms were so gentle with me yet rough with anyone else.
There was no denying that I felt protected with him. At least, that’s what I assumed that feeling was. I’d never experienced it before. No clippy could allow themselves to be that careless.
“It’s okay,” I said, my hand aching to reach out, touch his leg, and give it a squeeze.
“No, it’s not,” he growled. “I said I would find your friends, and every lead we come up with turns out to be a dead end. It’s been three days.”
“You’ve been trying,” I said, craning my head back as he stood up to pace angrily. “You’ve got people looking for them everywhere. I haven’t seen Florian at all.”
“He and Dirk are running some operations using our contacts among the hunters,” Caz admitted. “You probably won’t see them for a couple of days unless things go south.”
He looked at me, and the pain in his eyes struck me like a cave-in. There was no stopping my dragon this time as she took us to him.
He needed comforting, and in her eyes, that was what a mate should do. Support their other half. So, regardless of everything else, I wrapped my arms around him and hoped like hell I wouldn’t regret it.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his arms coming up slowly.
“Hugging you. You need it.”
“You haven’t touched me the entire time you’ve been here,” he said.
“Would you like me to stop?”
“No,” he said, squeezing me tightly.
He pulled me hard against his chest. His arms were strong, but when I pressed against him, a tiny tremor rippled his hard muscle against my face. Was he nervous? The big bad ice tyrant, nervous?
I thought back to his cousin’s words.
“Caz?” I asked softly.
“Yes?”
“What did your cousin mean?”
Caz rumbled angrily in the back of his throat, unhappy at the topic. “About what?”
“He was going to say that you had finally found a palace whore good enough for you. Right?”
I took his silence as agreement.
“And your uncle was very surprised to see me with you. At first I assumed it was because I was a clip—grounded—but now I think it’s because I was a woman at all. Isn’t it?”
His dragon growled.
“Are you gay?”
“No,” he said, with the firm confidence of someone who wasn’t offended.
“Then why would they be so surprised?”
“Multiple reasons. But I suspect mostly because they’ve never seen me with a woman.”
“Why not?”
Caz pulled back, his hands on my shoulders so he could look me in the eyes. “Because I’ve never been with one.”
“No girlfriends?”
“Anyone,” he grunted and looked away.
But not before I caught the way his eyes tightened ever so perceptibly. But not with anger, like I might have expected at suggesting he’d had previous romances. Discomfort. Embarrassment? Why would he be embarrassed about … Oh. Oh.
“Yes. I’ve never been with a woman. Ever.”
The ice tyrant, most powerful dragon in the Ice Kingdom, surrounded by a bevy of single, eligible female dragon elites who would throw themselves at his feet for a chance to fuck him … was a virgin?
“You can laugh now,” he growled, trying to pull away.
“No, wait,” I said, snatching his hands and holding them tightly. “I’m not laughing. Shocked, yes. Even trapped in your private wing, I’ve seen some truly stunning women through the windows.”
His eyelids lowered.
I shook my head. “Nuh-uh. Don’t think I haven’t noticed that despite the size of your private wing, I haven’t actually been allowed out.
Don’t deny it. We’ll get to that topic. But we’re on you for the moment.
And your … how, Caz? Just how? Even I think some of them are too stunning not to hop in the bed with. ”
Frost curled from my dragon’s nose at the idea of Caz even noticing other women in the citadel. We didn’t like the idea. Didn’t want it. We might be refusing him, but apparently he wasn’t allowed to refuse us. Confusing didn’t even begin to cover my emotions in the moment.
“It’s not that. I’m not blind, but I never wanted to.”
“Every man wants to, Caz. I’ve seen the way you look at me.”
He hulked up, standing straight up, his eyes ablaze with green and silver fire. “You are not like them.”
The sheer fury and animalistic possession in his voice had me wanting to climb him and hold on like a damn spider monkey and show him how much I liked the way he wanted me.
Warmth curled its hot fingers between my legs, my center begging to be touched, to be stroked by one of his big, masculine hands.
“Because I’m a—”
His snarl shook the room violently. “Do not say it. I don’t care if it’s what others call you, but you will not use that word in my presence about yourself. I won’t stand for it. You are so much better than you think you are, Anna. And I mean to make you see that, one way or another.”
I licked my lips, unsure what to do. Half of me wanted to fall to my knees and take out the hard cock I could see straining against his pants and run my tongue all along it, tasting him for the first time. The other half wanted to get angry for being talked to so firmly.
“You’re different,” he said in a calmer, gentler tone, the glow of his eyes fading as he reined his dragon back in. “In all the best ways. Better.”
“What do you mean, better? How? They’re all elites. Their power surpasses mine. You could have any of them.”
“I don’t want any of them!” he shouted, frustration boiling over. “Why can’t you see that? I want you.”
The desire, the bone-deep need in his voice smacked me hard, seizing my chest and holding it hostage until it almost robbed me of breath.
“Why?” I squeaked out with what little air I had left. “Why me?”
“Besides my insane, almost magnetic pull to be around you or the wants of my dragon?” he asked, looking down at his raging boner.
“Besides both of those,” I said dryly. Actually dry. Because all the wetness was between my legs, sending my pussy into overdrive at the need to be taken by him, by that cock until I screamed for him to fill me, to give me his seed and—
Whoa. Easy, girl. We are not doing that. We’ve just barely begun to get to know him.
The response from my dragon wasn’t worth translating. Safe to say, she disagreed with me. Vehemently.
“Because you want me for me. That’s why.”
“Huh? I never said I wanted you.”
“I can smell your arousal as easily as you can see my dick outline,” he said, inhaling deeply to make his point. One of his lips ticked upward at the same time his eyebrows lowered, giving him a glazed look, like an addict.
“And they don’t want you?” I asked, forging ahead, somehow ignoring the insane screeches of my dragon to let him show me what he would do if I did want him.
“They want this,” he said, gesturing around at him. “The power. The everything.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
The blissful happiness faded into stiffness. “Never mind. You don’t get it.”
“Don’t get it? You’re the ice tyrant, you …” I stopped, surprised by the sour look on his face. “What?”
“I don’t like it when you do that.”
“Do what?”
“Say it like that,” he grunted, shifting uncomfortably. “That’s my title. Not my name. I don’t ever want to be that person. Not to you. Never to you. With you, I only ever want to be Caz.”
My eyebrows went up. Perhaps I had misjudged him. He didn’t like being called the ice tyrant. Not by me, at least.
“That could be hard,” I said slowly, trying to process this new development. “You are the Ice Tyrant. Supreme leader of all ice dragons. You went toe to toe with the Red King. You might very well be the strongest true dragon across Hollow Earth. You’re a legend, Caz. I can’t just forget all that.”
He pulled away from my grasp. “I’m more than that,” he said and then headed for the door. “I should go see if any new leads on your friends have, uh, come up.”
It was a crap excuse and we both knew it.