I leaned over her until my face be only inches from hers. “Are you saying you don’t want my life energy? Or be it me you don’t want?”
Her bicolored eyes scanned my face, and a hand reached up to trace my jaw with trembling fingers.
Her lightest touch took me somewhere I had no intention of going. My entire body lit up beneath those fingers. As her fingertips danced along my jaw, I, the hardened warrior, trembled at her touch.
“Do you want me, Anna?” I whispered.
Her eyes met mine, and I sensed her struggle to focus. For just an instant, they sharpened, and I caught a pulse of something raw with longing.
“Always,” she said. A surge from her, powerful, carrying the truth of what lay in her heart. But only for an instant before her hand fell to her side, her essence fading as she slipped away.
No.
I clutched her against my chest. I felt the merest tingle—not from her to me. But fromme to her,as something reached for my life essence.
My heart raced. I may be not a healer. But if I be right, I be something much more powerful—and Fate had decreed us to be together.
All my objections to it, to being part of something I wished not to be part of, be eclipsed with the knowledge that I could save her.
I laid her flat on the ground, and stretched out alongside, pressing my body along hers and reducing my hair covering to nearly nothing. I raised her hand and laid it along my face.
Anna, take what you need from me. Take my life, take my heart. They belong to you.
Those words should have shocked me. I’d fought them from the first moment I’d seen her. But now, with her life fading beneath me, they rang from me.
As the truth.
Her fingers trembled. She’d fallen so deeply, I could now almost not feel her at all, but something inside her answered me. Something ravenous for what I so freely offered.
I leaned down and laid my face along hers. Her hand slid along the back of my neck, and she turned her head. Her eyes opened, but they were glazed.
“Anna?”
No response. This be not Anna. This be the thing that lived inside. But if it could save her, then I would do everything in my power to make it happen.
My inner beast be already there, pushing at me, eager to follow the path Fate had decreed for us. It be so easy to give it free rein, especially with Anna’s upper half all but nude in her torn and soaked bra, with her sword harness lifting and outlining every perfect contour.
But the raw lines drawn by the Dragon’s talons marred her perfect skin, and I suppressed a surge of anger. It wouldn’t help her, not now.
Anna’s hand tightened on the back of my neck, and I let her pull my face down to her own. She sought my lips, and the shock of contact jolted clear through me. They be soft and warm, but they plundered my own with a ferocity that spoke to the wild spirit that dwelled within.
And I felt the tendrils reach out to me. Wanting. Needing. Her scent swirled around me, beguiling me with a citrusy aroma that ignited every nerve ending. In seconds, I was rigid and aching, my body yearning to do one thing—join with her.
It be so powerful, I almost couldn’t breathe. One hand held my head in place as her lips plundered mine, the other slid down between us, her fingers closing around me.
Until that moment, I didn’t realize I’d pulled away all my hair clothing—I be naked, stretched full length alongside her. She uttered a small moan as she stroked, and I’d never experienced such intense ecstasy—I couldn’t help it. I thrust into her hand like an adolescent, totally out of control. She stroked down my length to cup first one, and then the other, of my testicles, and they quivered beneath her touch, aching and eager.
Her scent, and her energy, wound around me. I be hers, completely and irrevocably. No doubts, no regrets.
Her strokes grew more urgent, her teeth nibbling at my lips and then down along my throat. She released me and ground her pelvis into mine, but the leggings she wore be a frustrating barrier between us.
I hooked fingers in the waistband, but she slipped her own past me, pushing them down over her hips and then rolling them, along with the panties, down her legs and over her feet.
It left her lower half bare, and my mind filled with white noise as I gazed upon her. When I raised my eyes to hers, I be startled to see them glowing. Her beast looked out at me, and my heart accelerated.
She expertly hooked a leg in mine and rolled me, pushing me back onto the grass bank and mounting me in a single, smooth motion. I gasped as she slid me home into her liquid heat, my hips arching upward, helplessly seeking her depths.
Anna smiled, then. She’d never looked less human, or more desirable. As she squeezed me with those secret inner muscles, any semblance of rational thought fled.
