A weight dropped over me, pressure at my neck. It took me a moment to realize it was not death sinking into me, not fangs tearing into my throat.
I poked and prodded within me, ascertaining there was no pain. None beyond what I already felt after our furious combat.
I opened my eyes. Looked down. Choked and gasped.
There was no death at my throat … no sinking of fangs, no dragon.
No. Dragon.
His hulking, silvery-hued body was gone. Human Fell sprawled over me, and his hands shook as he clutched me, long fingers flexing against my dragon hide, as though he didn’t know whether to bring me closer or push me away.
I exhaled and let go, my body coming undone, relaxing, unwinding, returning to—
Me.
I lifted my hand, observing the familiar fingers. My palm once again ached and throbbed, the X sparking with life.
Our bond was back in full, pulsing force.
“Fell,” I choked, sliding my hand into the locks of his silvery hair. The color might be different, no longer dark as a raven’s wing, but it felt the same. Thick, silken strands spilled over my skin. My nails scraped his scalp, relishing his guttural sigh.
He pulled back, looked at me with the face I knew. In it, I saw all the beloved differences, the nuances that set him apart from his brother: the inked designs creeping down his throat, the slashing blade of a nose, and the lips unfairly lush, wide with a full bottom lip that I recalled intimately, that stunning wintry gaze of his like the fire that burned chronically, unremittingly in me. Except the fire in his eyes burnedforme.
“It’s you,” I said unnecessarily, my gaze gobbling him up.
He stared back at me, awareness of himself—ofme—blazing in his eyes, hotter than the heat bubbling through me.
The sudden hope aching in my chest felt dangerous.
Perhaps I was dead. Perhaps he had torn open my throat, after all, and killed me, and this was some manner of afterlife where I was living out a beautiful dream. A fantasy where I was me and he was him and we were together without any of the things hanging over us that had always been there—without ugly deceit and fearful secrets and the terrifying unknown marching toward us with steady precision.
He reached for my hand, taking it from his hair, examining it for a moment, each finger, knuckle, the wrist, like it was a curiously precious thing to him—before he claimed it, lacing his longer fingers with mine. He pressed our palms flush, our hearts beating in rhythm, not as one but as two in concert, pushing against skin, popping and jumping, longing to fuse together.
The moment was brief but stretched endlessly. The barriers were gone, all the things that had kept us apart before, in Penterra, were forgotten. Such small, insignificant things no longer existed here.
My other hand moved quickly, reaching for his face, pressing against the plane of his cheek.
It had been too long since we touched. Since …
He closed his eyes and turned his face into my hand, gifting a fervent kiss there. His tongue flicked out, licking, followed by the scrape of blunt teeth against the palm of my hand.
My skin turned to gooseflesh, and I shivered, choking on a sob, giving myself to this, even if it was a dream.
“Tamsyn.” He whispered my name like a benediction, and I felt it like a bolt of thunder through me. His voice, finally, after all this time. My name living,aliveon his lips. Not a memory. Not the communion of our bond. Not a dream. But us together, flesh to flesh.
He pushed up toward my mouth, and I met him, our lips crashing together fiercely, mating, merging. But it wasn’t enough. It was merely preamble.
We were already naked. My battered body didn’t even feel any of the injuries from when we’d been trying to kill each other only moments before. If he felt his injuries, he didn’t show it as he crawled up the length of my body.
We kissed and kissed and kissed. Hungry, open-mouthed, tonguetangling, teeth-clanging kisses.
I threaded my fingers through his hair, and tugged hard on the silver strands, arching, writhing beneath him.
He slid along my body, kissing his way down my throat, pausing at the double necklaces I wore—mine and his. His hand shook as it landed on the black opal, stroking it to make certain it was real. As real as I was.
I quickly lifted his necklace from around my neck and looped it over his head. “There now. Back where it belongs.”
He looked down at it, his fingers tracing his black opal almost reverently. Then his gaze shot back to my face, to my lips, and the intensity there stopped my heart.
