The bond tells me that, and it makes me squirm a little next to him. “I like doing this lying down,” I whisper against his mouth, the breath from my body mixing with his. “But. . .”
“But what?” He pulls back enough that he can see my face. “I like it too.”
I wince a little. “For humans, what we’re doing, in a bed, lying down next to each other. . .” This is worse than explaining it to Coral or Jade would be. “It’s pretty close to—” I choke a little.
“Close to what?”
I shake my head. “Nothing, but we really shouldn’t keep doing this. Not right now, not with everything going on and no idea what this is.” I gesture to him and back to me.
“This is a bond,” he says. “You’re the most important being in the universe to me.”
I groan. “You are so not helping. If you keep talking like that, we’ll, erm, mate, for sure.” I feel the heat rising in my cheeks, but I hope it’s dark enough that he can’t see it.
“This is human mating?” He moves closer, his eyes studying my eyes, my cheeks, and then my lips. Then his mouth follows his eyes and brushes against me. “What exactly does this have to do with your human mating?”
“Dragons don’t kiss, I take it?”
He smiles then, his eyes so cocky and full of swagger, I wonder how a dragon could even get that much confidence in a human form. “This dragon does.”
“Yeah, but what about the others?” I shove him with my free hand. “I saw a pretty handsome dragon today who had the biggest horns.”
Axel’s arms tighten around my waist in a way that’s almost painful. “No.” He scowls. “Bad Liz.”
I bite my lip and slide right up next to him again, our bodies brushing from my face all the way down to his lower leg. “I’m kidding, you beast. I haven’t found anyone else attractive since the day we met.”
“You haven’t?” His smile is downright diabolical. “Since the day we met?” His eyebrows rise. “An event I don’t recall, but that happened long past? You found me attractive even then?”
I press one finger against his mouth. “No, we aren’t talking about this. I want you to remember it.”
He sighs. “I want to remember it, but I don’t know how.”
“Your mother—Freya—she said that you had the memories still.”
“But she told you nothing about how to recapture them.”
“Honestly, I think your mom’s kind of a witch,” I say. “No offense.”
“None taken,” he says. “I never knew her.”
“Well, I want to figure out how you can recover them, but until you can, at least we’re making new ones.” I brush one last kiss against his mouth. “Good ones.”
“I agree,” he says. “And now I think you should show me how kissing and lying together like this is connected to human mating.”
“Ah, ah, ah,” I say with a smile I can’t seem to suppress. “Information is power, and you do not need more power to mess with my raging hormones.”
“Raging. . .what ones?”
“Until you either get your memories back or we discover that humans and dragons can mate without, like, producing some kind of winged monstrosity that will eat the world and have to be put down, no hanky panky.”
He mouths the words ‘hanky panky,’ and I swear, it’s so hard not to laugh.
“Believe me.” I run one hand down the very hard, very defined line of his chest. “If we find out that it’s safe, if we find out that we’re. . .compatible?”
He frowns.
“I’m the first one who’s going to be in.”
“In what exactly?” His eyebrows rise. “Maybe you should just tell me, so once I recover my memories, we can go ahead and mate.”
