Her heart flipped.
But before she could say anything?—
Heat.
Light shimmered around his body, red-gold and electric, a ripple of pure, ancient magic rolling through the air.
His form shifted, changed, collapsed inward?—
And then he was there.
Vector.
Standing before her.
Tall. Powerful. Impeccably dressed, his hands smeared with soot, battle scars, and raw, untamed power. His bright silver hair practically glowed in the moonlight. He looked like a dream come to life. A painting from some fantasy world. Too beautiful to be real.
His breath was ragged.
His eyes—those dragon eyes—locked onto her like she was the only thing in the universe that mattered.
And before she could even breathe?—
She ran.
Straight into his arms.
He caught her with a low, desperate growl, wrapping his arms around her so tight she thought he might never let her go.
She didn’t care.
Didn’t care that he was too strong, that he was heat and power and unrelenting need, that his body was shaking, just barely holding on.
Because so was she.
She fisted her hands in his hair, her breath catching as she felt him everywhere, all at once?—
And then he crushed his mouth to hers.
The kiss was devastation.
It was chaos, fire, relief, madness.
A storm of unstoppable hunger and soul-deep love, pouring through her like a surge of wild magic, unchained, absolute.
She gasped into him, clutching at his shoulders, his arms, his back, pulling him closer, closer, closer.
Vector growled, deep and dark and ruined, his hands roaming over her body like he had to touch every inch of her to prove she was real.
Heat flared between them?—
Dragon magic.
Dragonfire. She heard the word spoken in her mind. That’s what he called his magic, the power flowing between them. The need.
Wild, unfiltered, rushing through their bond, burning through her skin, through her blood, searing through her soul.
It was too much.
