Chapter 26 #2
“Ever,” he gasps before tipping my head back and shoving his face closer.
My instincts tell me he’s about to kiss me, but his mouth never connects. “Weird way to try and seduce me, but okay?” I croak as he angles my head the other way and partially blocks my airway with his massive hands.
“Your scars are gone,” he rumbles, shocked, and I jerk my head back out of his hold and stare up at him like he’s lost the last threads of his sanity. “Look,” he insists, and then I’m lifted off the table and suddenly dropped in front of the mirror that’s really a secret vitric port.
“Look,” he grunts again, lifting my chin for me like I’m incapable of the feat.
With a sidelong glance and a severe amount of skepticism, I lean closer to the reflective glass and try to see what he’s seeing.
“What the fuck?” I yelp, lifting my hands to the smooth skin on my neck.
I press my fingers harder against my throat, like the collar of scars might suddenly appear, but Aeson’s right, they’re gone.
Without a second thought, I pull my shirt off and examine my chest. There used to be a starburst pattern of tallies carved there, but now there’s only the varying lines of my dragon mark.
Frantically I spin, and I take in my back.
My mark covers my neck, the tops of my shoulders, my upper back, and then tapers down my spine.
And just like the front, everywhere my dragon mark now touches is smooth, ink-black skin.
“What in the stars-blessed fuck is going on?” I demand, my hands and voice quivering with emotion. “Have you ever heard of this happening?” I ask Aeson, whirling around to see why he’s suddenly so quiet.
I stop in my tracks when I almost bump into him.
His eyes look as though they’re fighting the press of his dragon.
The blue of his irises starts to bleed into the whites of his eyes, and then the pupils slit.
In the next blink, everything shrinks back to the rounded eyes of a drake, and the cycle repeats.
Shit. Is he about to go into a frenzy?
I look down and immediately catalog what’s setting him off.
I no longer have a shirt on, and not only are the scars I still have very visible, but I wasn’t wearing anything underneath my pajama top.
I find the neck of the shirt in my hands and quickly start to pull it back on.
Lightning fast, Aeson’s hand shoots out to stop me.
I flinch and barely swallow a shocked squeal as he takes my shirt from me and crumples it in his fist.
My breathing suddenly feels shallow and too fast. My heart thunders in my chest, and bolts of awareness skitter across my skin like lightning.
Slowly, measuredly, Aeson lifts a hand and runs the tip of his finger down one of the long marks that lines my sternum and dips between my breasts.
I watch his stroke slip lower and lower, and there’s no fighting the tremble that moves through me.
It’s the most intimate sensation I think I’ve ever felt. I don’t know if it’s the worship I sense in the caress or the need burning in Aeson’s eyes. Whatever it is, it strips a layer from both of our defenses and exposes a vulnerability neither of us is keen to admit is there.
“Are you going to give me everything , Ever?” Aeson rasps, and I notice his eyes have stopped flickering between forms.
I look up at him, and he drops his hand from my body, like he can scent my answer in the crisp air already. “Not today,” I tell him honestly, and he nods solemnly.
“Go get cleaned up. We leave in thirty,” he orders, and for once I don’t argue.
I turn to move past him, and his arm shoots out again to stop me.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
Yeah, my fucking scruples, my self-control; I’m pretty sure my underwear combusted sometime between the second and third time he flashed his dragon eyes at me?.?.?. Aeson holds up my shirt and my rambling thoughts skid to a stop.
“Right, that,” I chirp.
I try to take the clothing from him, but he lifts it out of reach. I debate trying to jump for it, but adding a pair of bouncing tits to the thin line we’re dancing on is probably a bad idea.
“Arms up,” he orders.
I glare at him, but comply. Like he suddenly finds himself in no rush to be anywhere else, he slips the top on, pulls it down my arms and over my head, and then drags it purposely over the sensitive peaks of my nipples.
I glower up at him. We both know what he’s doing.
We both know it’s not going to lead anywhere, and yet neither one of us says a word or does anything to stop it.
The fabric drops down my torso, and I’m off like a shot for the bathroom, ready to yell at my vagina about how to behave while taking the coldest shower in history.
“Thirty minutes, Ever,” Aeson calls to my back, and I swear he’s fighting off a villainous chuckle.
“I’ll be ready in forty,” I quip, adding a little more sway to my hips than necessary as I rush to get away.
I bite back a frustrated growl and shove my hands in my hair and tug at the roots, needing the pressure to help ground my chaotic thoughts and frantic feelings. This bond is going to be the end of me, and they better not put edged to death on my bloody tombstone.