Chapter 13 #2
“Why do you want to know?” There’s a challenging note to his voice. “A great deal of the lore of dragonkind has been lost to the ages and maybe that’s the way I like it.”
“You’re already trusting me with your secret.” I’ve never truly thought about what a rare gift that is—to be the only person in possession of information that might be able to destroy him.
I look at him anew.
He’s never once threatened me to hold my tongue. He may have locked me into a year and a day of service, but it’s almost as if he gave me the key to his demise and then dared me to do something about it.
A chill runs through me.
He’s testing me. He has to be testing me.
Does he want to know if I can be trusted?
Or is it… something else?
“A dragon lives for many thousands of years,” he replies, his fingers stirring over the blankets as if he sees and feels something else.
“We were the goddess’s favored children, torn from the stars themselves and forged into beasts who ruled the skies.
But it is one thing to own the possibility of living for eons, and quite another to live it.
The toll of time comes to a dragon, not so much in the weight of his bones, but in the weight of all he has lived and lost. Mated pairs follow each other swiftly into the grave.
But others who lose children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren sometimes make the choice to slowly turn to stone.
And others still, return to the stars, using their power in one last defiant surge to shoot through the night skies like a comet. We call it ‘chasing the stars.’”
“And how long have you lived for?” I whisper.
Our eyes meet.
“Long enough for me to begin to feel the burden of my loneliness.” He looks away suddenly, scrubbing a hand through his hair.
“Long enough to feel my heart start to slow, and my blood to thicken in my veins. Long enough to drift in dreams for centuries, barely caring of what events transpired around me.”
I have to ask it. “What changed?”
He closes his eyes and tilts his face to the ceiling.
“When I dream, I dream of the skies. Of chasing those very stars. I was very close, perhaps, to igniting. But one night a new star appeared. One that sparkled and winked on the edge of my consciousness. One that called to me.” He releases a harsh breath and looks at me.
“Twenty-four years ago, I think. I’ve been searching for that star ever since. ”
I don’t know what to say.
He sent out a Summons because he said the right constellations were in the sky, but I thought that was only a fae thing.
And when his astrologers consulted their lists, they narrowed down a list of princesses and ladies who fit their timeframe.
Twenty-four years ago.
I am twenty-four.
It’s impossible. My name wasn’t on that list. It was pure chance that saw me take a tilt at the Dragon’s Heart during that precise moment. I don’t even know the time of my birth. Sometime in the winter. Sometime when the snows kissed the ground.
It can’t be—
Keir reaches out with a sudden smile and bops me on the nose. “Stop thinking so hard. You don’t believe in fate, remember?”
“I know.” But I can’t help thinking that he does.
He’ll never let you go. Not if he thinks you’re truly his.
My heart is suddenly racing.
“What do you believe in?” he asks.
“Myself,” I blurt.
He laughs.
Keir crashes onto the mattress beside me, lacing his hands behind his head. It’s an innocuous move—his attention is on the ceiling—but the second I see his shirt cling to the thick muscle in his biceps, a pulse of heat goes through my lower abdomen.
Want. Need.
Maybe the rapture’s not entirely out of my system. Or maybe I’m still panicking.
“I like this,” he says.
“What?” I force myself to lick the gravy from my thumb, even though I can barely taste it anymore. I’m too busy trying to control myself.
Keir tilts his head to look at me. Hot, amber eyes flare like a dragon’s. I can’t breathe. I can’t look away. And I imagine that it felt a little like this to blunder into a dragon’s den all those years ago and come face to face with the great beast itself—knowing that you were prey.
“This,” he repeats, his voice like rough gravel.
“I like it when you relax, when you talk to me. It’s what I liked about you from the beginning.
You never looked at me as if I was an object to be hunted down.
You looked at me as if you saw me. Me.” He looks away abruptly, staring at the ceiling.
“Sometimes I hate that the most…. That it was all pretense for you.”
The breath bursts out of me. Panic sets in. It’s exactly what I needed—an icy bucket of emotions thrown all over my lust.
I can’t tear my gaze away from him as he stubbornly refuses to look at me.
Instead, all I can see is the Court of Dreams.
And his smile.
The way he teased me.
The way I smiled back and felt it, deep in my heart.
But I can’t say it. I can’t say any of it.
Keir pushes upright, slinging his legs over the edge of the bed. “Malechus wants to take another tilt at the white hart. You should stay here. Rest.”
I drag the blankets around my shoulder as he heads for the door.
Say something….
Common sense tells me to let it lie.
This is a good thing. I can’t afford to encourage him. I don’t want to hurt him when it’s all over.
But….
“It wasn’t… all pretend,” I blurt out as his hand hits the doorknob.
Keir pauses with the door half open, throwing a hot-lashed look over his shoulder.
Our eyes meet, and there’s something in that silent duel that makes my heart skip a beat.
I can’t stop my mouth. “It doesn’t change anything.
This…. Between us…. It will never last. There is no future.
And I know it. I know it every time I look at you.
Being with you is like a guilty pleasure I can never give myself over to wholly…
. But I wanted you to know that. It wasn’t all pretend.
” Drawing my knees up to my chest I rest my chin on them and close my eyes for a brief second before summoning the courage to look at him.
“And I wish it was. I wish it hadn’t felt real. ”
Keir’s shoulders still.
Tension fights within him.
My fists curl into the sheets.
I want to take those words back.
Even as some part of me rages to set them free.
Turn around. Turn around. Turn around.
Look at me….
Maybe I’m not the only one who can hear his voice in my head. Because the door clicks shut. He slowly turns around. And looks at me.
“Say something.” Once again, my tongue takes control of my scattered wits.
Heat blazes to life in his eyes. “One chance, Mira. One chance. Say no. Tell me to go on the hunt and I will. I will walk out of here. I will go. I will leave you alone. But if you say yes, Mira…. I won’t stop.
Not tonight. This is your choice. This is always your choice.
” His voice roughens. “But if you give me even one hint….”
The seconds tick out.
I can barely say it.
“Kiss me,” I whisper.
It’s a yes.
It’s always been a yes, hurtling toward me with the slow inevitability of a carriage wreck. From the moment I met him, I’ve wanted him.
A growl echoes in his throat. “Good.”
* * *
Three strides and then he’s upon me.
The kiss takes me by surprise.
One moment I’m sitting there in bed, daring a dragon to kiss me, and the next second his mouth is upon mine, his hand sliding through my hair to cup my nape.
The warmth of his touch explodes through me.
It’s like there’s some kind of furnace burning within that enormous chest and the lash of his tongue goes right through me.
Hunger.
Fierce need.
I’m drowning in it. In his kiss. In his touch.
“Mira.” His hands tremble as he goes to his knees on the mattress and captures my face in both hands. “Mira.”
We stare at each other for a single, shocked second, both too breathless to speak. And then his mouth claims mine.
Tumbling onto my back I drag him down, gasping as the heat of his body slams over me. Every inch of him grinds between my thighs, and my legs part like wantons, capturing his narrow hips between them.
All of that delicious weight, driving me into the mattress…. The firm claim of his mouth…. Whatever restraint he’d been using to shackle himself into a semblance of control, it’s gone now, breaking apart with a single spoken command.
Kiss me.
Kiss me forever. Make me forget. Make me feel. Make me dream.
I moan into his mouth, fingers twining in the thick luxuriousness of his hair. A hand slides down my side in response, fingers digging into the soft flesh of my ass. Hauling my thigh up higher, he thrusts against me, licking into my mouth.
“Mine,” he growls, and then he’s biting at my lower lip, his golden eyes flashing.
I get a hand under his shirt, searching urgently for bare skin. Lust ignites within me. Last night was nothing as compared to this. That was all chemical, all haze, all mindless desperation to rut.
This is fire in my veins. A hollow ache between my thighs, slick and restless. The urgent need to have his mouth on mine, until we’re eating at each other, desperate to merge.
Keir must sense my need.
He rears up on his knees, reaching over his shoulder to haul his shirt over his head.
A scowl emerges, but I’m too astonished by the cut of his body to truly notice it.
I throw my arms around him and kiss him.
The assault is too much for his balance.
He goes down on his back, and then I’m splayed over 280 pounds—give or take—of furious muscle.
“Oh, gods,” I breathe, licking my way up his throat. “Tell me again why I was resisting this for so long?”
“Some apparent need to torture me,” he breathes, his teeth flashing and a wild look in his eyes. “I think you exist to torture me.”
“Don’t tempt me,” I purr, kissing along the line of his jaw and finding his ear. I rock against the steel fist behind his trousers. “Because I might take that as a challenge.”