Chapter 28 Esme #4
I gasp, fingers tightening in his hair as he trails kisses up the sensitive skin, slow and reverent, like he’s mapping territory he intends to claim.
His breath fans across me, and I feel myself tremble, not from cold but from the sheer intimacy of it—no one has ever touched me like this, like I’m something to be savored instead of survived.
His mouth finds the hollow where thigh meets hip, teeth grazing just hard enough to make my back bow, and I feel the low growl that vibrates through his chest like a warning.
“Dayn—” I start, but his name comes out broken, a plea I didn’t mean to voice.
He lifts his head, eyes blazing, and I see the dragon looking back at me—ancient, hungry, utterly focused.
His hands settle on my knees, thumbs tracing circles on the soft skin behind them, and he lowers his head again.
This time his kisses drift higher, tongue tasting the salt on my skin, and I feel the last of my control unraveling thread by thread.
I’m naked under his mouth, stripped down to nothing but sensation, and he treats me like I’m a shrine he’s been waiting centuries to pray at.
I can’t breathe when his teeth graze my skin.
I feel the bond between us flare, gold and shadow twining together until I can’t tell where his hunger ends and mine begins.
When he reaches the apex of my thighs, he pauses—not asking permission, just giving me a moment to brace for the fall.
I don’t stop him. I want this obliteration, want to feel something that isn’t pain or duty or the weight of a war I never asked to fight.
I want him to remind me I’m alive, even if it’s only for this stolen hour.
His tongue finds me, and the world narrows to heat and pressure and the sound of my own breathing, ragged and loud in the cave.
My hands clutch at his shoulders, nails digging crescents into his skin as he works me with devastating patience, learning what makes me shudder, what makes me gasp his name like a prayer.
The water laps at my hips, the stone cold beneath me, but I’m burning up from the inside out, every nerve alight with dragon fire.
I come apart with a cry that echoes off the vaulted ceiling, back arching, legs trembling around him. He doesn’t stop, just gentles, drawing every last pulse of pleasure from me until I’m boneless and shaking, until I’m nothing but steam and skin and the taste of his name on my tongue.
When I finally drift back to myself, he’s already moving, rising over me like a tide.
His mouth finds mine, and I taste salt and want and something darker, something that tastes like belonging.
I kiss him like I’m drowning, fingers sliding down the hard planes of his chest, feeling the way his heart hammers against my palm.
My hands go desperately to the waistband of his fatigues, fingers fumbling with the buckle, but he catches my wrist, stilling me for a moment. I see the question in his eyes again—are you sure?
A flicker of fear, of nervousness hits me then. I pause, breathing hard, wetting my lower lip as I stare up at him. I’m twenty-three. I’ve bled clearblood men across academy grounds. I’ve bled monsters. But I’ve never—nobody has ever—
My hands hover over the clasp of his belt, fingers trembling subtly. His hands close around them, holding, steady and still. For the first time since we fell into this stolen moment, his voice sounds uncertain.
“Esme.”
The way he says my name—soft, careful, like I'm something fragile—makes my chest crack open.
I can't meet his eyes when they search mine, can't bear the weight of what he's seeing.
Virgin witch. Though he probably already figured that out during our “seduction lesson” at Heathborne.
Daughter of centuries of selective breeding designed precisely to avoid this exact scenario. This moment, this man, this fire.
But, of course, this is just a construct. A fantasy. No matter how real it feels, I remind myself.
I have no reason to be nervous… and yet the feeling doesn’t go anywhere.
“Guess I, uh... never thought it would be like...” I gesture vaguely at him, at the impossible heat of his body, at the dragon glimmering behind amber eyes.
“Any of this. My grandmother swore I'd marry a darkblood heir. My mother at least hoped for a member of our coven. Not a dragon king who probably has centuries of experience at—”
“—at waiting,” he finishes quietly. “At letting someone decide for themselves.”
I swallow, the silence suddenly intimate. Too charged with the way he’s looking at me. Too charged with my own breathing.
I wet my lower lip, try to steady my breaths. “I just pictured my first time involving fewer scales and more protocol,” I whisper.
His mouth quirks, softly, slowly. “And instead you got a dragon with an impeccable bloodline and personality.”
“Debatable,” I murmur, but I can't help the smile that tugs at my lips when his eyes flicker with something like amusement.
His thumb traces softly across my knuckles. “But… we don't have to.”
As his voice trails off, the steam feels thicker suddenly, settling between us like a shield.
He settles back a little, not withdrawing but giving me space to breathe.
To choose. My hands trace the lines of his pectoral muscles, feeling the steady rhythm of his heart—faster now, though he hides it well.
“This place isn't real,” I whisper, desperate to anchor myself to something.
“No,” he agrees. “But how you feel right now is. And if you want to walk away—”
I kiss him to stop the words, just a brush of lips that holds all my trembling. Because I don't want to walk away. I want to burn. Just... slowly. Carefully. With someone who's looking at me like I'm not broken, just new.
“Teach me,” I breathe against his mouth. “Just... don't make me disappear.”
He draws back just enough for our breaths to separate, a thread of mist hanging between us.
“Okay,” he murmurs, voice pitched like a conspirator’s, “Lesson one. Professor Draxion’s special tutorial: how not to disappear when every instinct screams to vanish.” His grin goes all wolf. “Shall I assign homework, or would you rather I demonstrate on the spot?”
A surprised laugh hiccups out of me—half scandalized, half drunk.
“You’re not my professor,” I breathe, but my hands betray me, curling over the carved slabs of his shoulders.
“No?” His brows arch, mock-earnest. “I’ve studied you longer than any academic ever devoted to a thesis.
Your tells, your triggers, the exact motion that makes your pulse sprint.
” He punctuates the claim by slicking his tongue along the hollow beneath my ear.
“If that doesn’t earn me tenure, I’m open to bribery. ”
His stupid title makes my skin blaze hotter than the mineral water. “Bribery with what?”
“With this.” He slips a hand between us, palm gliding down the midline of my stomach until his thumb hooks under the waistband of his own and part-unbuckles his fatigues.
He doesn’t push them off—just lets the fabric lower, offering a glimpse of sharp hipbone and the start of dark hair, a promise rather than a reveal.
“Extra credit, Salem. All you have to do is ask.”
My brain short-circuits at the border between indignation and lust. I have never—never—played the student, not really; I’ve always been the blade hovering over his throat.
But there are exceptions to every rule.
“Fine, Professor,” I manage. “Teach me something I don’t already know.”
His answering growl is pure satisfaction.
“Observation first.” He lifts my wrist, presses an open-mouthed kiss to the blue vein there that drums under his tongue.
“Heart rate one-thirty. You skipped the preamble.” He releases me only to recage my hips, hands sliding around to cup the curve of my backside.
“Lesson two: leverage.” He lifts, effortlessly, and guides my thighs around him, until the hardness of him is positioned against exactly the spot he’s already mapped with his mouth.
Sensation detonates up my spine; I bite back a gasp, nails digging crescents into his skin.
“See?” he says, voice deliciously clinical even as his eyes burn. “Physics. Biology. A little… applied anatomy.”
“Dayn—” I don’t know if I’m begging or scolding, only that his name feels like the only word left in the world.
“Shh. Participation points.” He kisses my neck. “Recite after me: I am not vanishing. I am here.”
I swallow, shake my head, but the denial dissolves under his next maneuver. “Say it, Esme.” A nip at my lower lip. “Or I stop.”
The threat is a velvet knife. I want to snarl, but I want his heat more. “I’m here,” I whisper.
“Louder.”
“I’m here!” It tears free, raw, startling us both.
“Good.” Something in his eyes flickers. “Now the next theorem… How loud can a witch scream before the cave answers back?”
Heat floods my cheeks. “You plan to test acoustics?”
“Extensively. Lab work is mandatory.”
“You’re… impossible.”
“And you’re beautiful when you forget to be lethal.”
The words puncture something tender behind my ribs.
I crush my mouth to his to shut us both up.
I close the last gap between us, lips colliding, and the kiss burns away every rational objection.
The cave walls echo with our breathing like some primordial heartbeat.
I feel him take my weight, his hands sliding beneath my thighs as he carries me deeper into the pool, water rising to my ribs, then my chest, then cascading over my shoulders in slow, warm waves.
The fatigues he still wears rasp against my bare skin as I pull his mouth back to mine, desperation humming in every nerve.
His palm finds the small of my back; the other cups the base of my skull—I’m tilted against him, floating, anchored only by his grip.
My nails drag down his spine, making him shudder, the dragon under the man flickering against my palms.