Tyrez’s tongue flicked along his lips, and he swallowed. “Get away from me, Dani.” His voice had gone hoarse, and now his arm moved, as though to cover himself.
Too late. She’d seen what he strove to hide. “Never was very good at following instructions,” she murmured. She took another step forward. The scale bustier began at her nipples and ended just below her breasts, leaving her belly bare. And she’d only grown the tiniest patch of them over her groin. It revealed one of her newest acquisitions—a tattoo of two Dragons across her lower belly, a gold and a blue-green, coiled together in a mating dance as they fell from the sky.
His gaze froze on it and widened.
“I wanted part of you with me, always.” She lifted her chin and continued. “I never intended to hurt you, Tyrez. I thought I was doing the right thing.” Her hips bumped against the edge of the stone, and now she reached to lay her hand over his, where it rested on his thigh.
He flinched, violently. The energy that surged from him blasted her resolve to smithereens. Rage, but bolstered by raw, aching lust, and deeper, much deeper, something that he struggled to control. Something he was afraid to unleash.
For a moment, she quailed before it, caught up in a past that had left lasting scars.
He sensed it and ripped his hands out from under hers. In a flash he was on his feet, and he turned toward the far end of the pond, where the periphery path curved around it. Before she could stop him, he dived off the stone and into the water
His withdrawal left her gasping, but she needed to stop him before he left the cave and took flight, or she’d never catch him. As he emerged, water streaming over every contour, she called out to him.
“Ash thinks you are trying to kill yourself.”
His entire body went rigid, and with the water lapping around his ribs, he twisted back toward her. Just as she stepped off the ledge and disappeared beneath the surface.
His chaotic energy was like a beacon in the darkness. Dani stayed along the bottom, and didn’t stroke for the surface until she saw his form through the moonlit waves.
She rose right along the front of him, deliberately rubbing her body against his full length. And before he could pull away, she locked her arms and legs around him.
His entire body shuddered as she surfaced, blinking water from her eyes. When he opened his mouth to protest, she kissed him.
It was no chaste kiss. Any hesitation, and he’d take himself out of this. She was as certain of that as she was of the moon hanging over them. Dani plundered his mouth, nipping with teeth grown sharp, twisting her tongue with his own. Her fingers grew small talons that pricked into his skin.
She felt it coming. The roar of raw emotion, ripping through his walls, destroying his ability to cope. He was shaking with it, his big hands coming down hard on her hips, ready to pull her away.
As they tightened, her legs contracted, pulling him closer. She rubbed herself along his rigid, throbbing length, pulling herself just high enough—
With a small sigh of satisfaction, she slid onto him.
For a moment, they both froze. Tyrez pulled his lips free from hers, his gaze a mixture of shock, need, and something much more.
Shards, Dani—it was all there, in those two words, a curse, and her name, whispered into her mind.
And the world shifted. She’d started this to save him. Because she cared about this big Dragon, more than she’d wanted to admit. But now, as her energy reached for him and merged with his, it had somehow become something much, much more.
Her heart cracked open a door she’d once kept firmly closed.Hold onto something, flyboy.
Only inches away, his eyes widened as she rotated her hips and pushed herself down. He was hot, so hot. The contrast between his hard, silken heat and the cool water sheathing him made her gasp. He was big, and long, and it was as though she expanded to take him in deep. Dani’s entire world focused on that one point of joining. She was barely aware of her jaw falling open as her long teeth dropped.
Tyrez’s hands moved now, one staying on her hip, the other behind her head. He dropped his head to hers and claimed her lips, sucking and nipping as she rose and fell on him. A deep, rumbling moan rippled through him, making the wavelets around them dance.
He throbbed within her, and her body tightened in response. Dani rode him, pushing and pulling, her body reaching for something she’d never before experienced. To be part of someone, to meld together and never let go? How could that be possible for her?
Yet there it was. The link between them was alive, and a welcome surge of pure emotion penetrated the aching pit in her soul, flooding it with a healing warmth. It cracked open her heart, and triggered instincts she didn’t know she had. They hammered at her, and she pulled her lips away from his to dance her tongue along his neck.
I am already yours. But now, you are also mine.And she sank her teeth into the juncture of his neck and shoulder.
Like a tsunami upon the beach, it shattered them. Tyrez roared as he pulsed within her, and Dani clung with teeth and claws and heart as the waves crashed over and through her.
They were wrapped in each other like waifs in a storm, locked together as they shuddered, both their heartbeats, and their minds, synced.
Awareness came upon her slowly. Her heart did an odd, double beat as Dani withdrew her teeth. She’dbittenhim. Made him bleed.
She raised fingers to staunch the flow.Sorry, I didn’t mean to—
