I make a low, throaty sound.
“I couldn’t very well leave you to marinate in your own piss, Zoe.” His mouth twitches again.
“Just to be clear, one of the people in this room has seen the other person in this room naked, and that person is you.” I scratch my jaw, my cheeks still feeling hot.
“Yeah,” he says dismissively. “Does that bother you?”
I snort. “Why should it bother me that a near perfect stranger saw me naked?”
“I mean, I didn’t see anything that concerned me,” he says through a constrained smile. I glare at him. “No oddly shaped moles or suspicious rashes. Your tattoos are tasteful.”
Fuck. My throat feels tight, and my voice comes out higher than usual as I say, “You saw my tattoos?”
He presses his lips together as if he’s trying his hardest not to be smug. “Yup. The tree of life on your calf. The flock of birds on the back of your shoulder.” He lowers his voice. “The dragon you have at the base of your spine. Interesting choice, by the way.” The words drip off his tongue like hot honey.
Okay, if I blush any brighter, my face is going to melt off my skull. Pull it together, Zoe! You are a grown-ass woman! I mentally slap myself, take a deep breath, and will myself not to be embarrassed. “To be fair, I got that tattoo before I’d ever met a dragon in person.”
He laughs. “Don’t worry. It doesn’t look like anyone I know.”
I laugh too. “I hope not. It’s based on a character in a book I read. Your dragon is beautiful, though.” The thought of his dragon’s rich brown scales, edged in gold, sends me leaping from the bed, everything I experienced in my gold dust trance rushing back to me. “I need pencil and paper, stat. I have to write down what I learned about the ring before I forget.”
I race from the room toward the main part of the house. I think I saw an office off the hallway to the dining room.
“How do you know what my dragon looks like?” he asks, hot on my heels.
“He was there, in the Gold Room with me.” I glance back at him. “Where can I find something to draw with?”
“Take a left. Office is at the end of the hall.”
I take off at a fast clip.
“How do you know you were seeing my dragon and not a mental construct of a dragon?” he presses.
I laugh. “Oh, it was definitely you. His scales were a rich, glossy chestnut edged in gold, and he smelled like you. Plus, he was standing right next to you.”
No sound comes out of his open mouth.
I raise my brow. “Wow, Sebastian York speechless. Never thought I’d see the day. So, I take it you’re shy about who gets to see your dragon? Still doesn’t make up for you seeing me naked, but it’s something.” I duck into the office and sit down in the high-backed leather chair. I reach for a drawer, but Seb beats me to it, pulling out the bottom one and handing me what I need.
As I start to sketch, he drifts back toward the doorway and leans against the wall. “It’s not that I’m shy about it. I just didn’t think it was possible. He usually remains inside me unless I let him out.”
I stop, my pencil poised over the paper. “You can let him out? Like, in the real world?”
He nods. “I’ll show you sometime. Not here, of course. Outside. He’s…big.”
“That’s what they all say,” I mutter, shading the side of the ring to try to represent the dark aura.
“Wait, you said he was standing next to me, but he wouldn’t have fit in that room.”
“The Gold Room is open. Things are there but not there. The walls of the room didn’t really exist.” My eyes flick up. “I wasn’t really focused on his size, Seb, because I was trying to understand the threatening evil pulsing at me from the ring, but if it makes you feel better, he was plenty big. Impressively big.” I turn back to my drawing.
Seb mumbles, “I know how big he is. I just wondered how it worked.”
I start in on what I remember of the first layer, depicting the ribbons weaving into the metal.
“It’s not something we usually show people,” he grits out. I glance up, and he’s picking at an imperfection in the paint on the doorframe.
“Either is my tramp stamp.” I arch a brow.
