He definitely smirked at me there. And I definitely didn’t tilt my head to the side slightly.
“And I promise you I will useeveryresource available to me to find your friends.”
I swallowed back a flutter of something that wasn’t related to his physical proximity. Hope was a mostly foreign feeling to me. It wasn’t a helpful emotion as a clippy, so we quickly learned to bury it before it betrayed us.
Could I afford to allow myself to believe that this time it might actually be different?
Fourteen
Casimir
My dragonwent berserk when she tilted her head. Whether she realized it or not, she was presenting more than just her mouth to me for a potential first kiss.
She was giving me her neck. Exposing the soft, unmarked flesh to me in a gesture not just of submission but of permission. I could just—
Both our stomachs gurgled. In the utter silence between us, it was impossible to miss the sound.
We glanced down in shock and then laughed. She laughed—the sound golden, light, and utterly perfect.
“I guess we don’t need to be fully mate bonded to read one another’s stomach signals.” I smiled to let her know I was being lighthearted about it.
I wasn’t. The fight was on to stop my fangs from descending and biting her, leaving our mark for every other dragon to see. My dragon was roaring and bellowing to be set free, to come forth and sink our fangs into that perfect, smooth skin of Anna’s.
Maybe it wasn’t her neck she would want. Perhaps her thigh, or her breast. Somewhere.Anywhere. I had to have her. To make her mine and claim her. Mate with her. Ride out her first heat together until her flat belly swelled with child.
Withmychild.
A vision of Anna pregnant and rounded came to me. She was smiling, beaming ear to ear, glowing with that metaphysical energy of being with child. One hand stroked her belly, her full breasts visible over the rounding, the curves of them exposed to my vision.
Her eyes popped open and she snatched my hand, putting it to her stomach. “Daddy’s here. Say hello,” she whispered, looking at me with happy, lazy contentment.
And then my hand moved as the baby kicked.
Our baby.
I pulled away from the real Anna with a gasp.
“Caz? Are you okay?”
“Fine,” I said, sucking in a huge lungful of stale dungeon air.
What the fuck was that? I wasn’t a seer, so I wasn’t prone to visions. In the back of my mind, my dragon was also momentarily stunned.
I looked at Anna and smiled at her. “Sorry. I’m good. Let’s go get some food. Shall we?”
“Yes, please,” she said, her facelighting up with a matching smile.
For a split second, I compared it to the one in my vision, but it wasn’t the same. This smile didn’t glow, and it died before it reached her eyes.
She was putting on an act. Pretending to be okay with everything, with me.
The vision was a lie. The real Anna still didn’t like me.
I tried to shove that thought aside as I led us up from the deep dungeons. It was new. Strange. Unprecedented even, with her being a grounded, and me being an alpha-level dragon.
That bore more contemplation. After all, it should be impossible for us to be mated. I knew that we were, regardless of what was possible or not, but that still begged the question ofhow. How had it happened? And also,whyhad it not happened more often? Clippys weren’t new. So why now? Why me and her?
These thoughts accompanied me along with the constant push from my dragon to take her to my room and fuck her until her brains melted. I needed food, energy, to think about it and to keep resisting that increasingly desirable option. To come up with a solution to everything.
