“If I think of claiming you as a dragon is meant to claim his mate, this is what happens.”
Huge shadowy wings unfurled from his shoulders, as though the night was tearing through the sunlit day. There was something leathery and webbed about them, like his dragon’s wings, but mostly they were darkness—deep, cold, and endless.
And surrounding the shadows were strange, jagged flashes of vivid green light.
“Duskfire.” He sounded defeated. “I can’t let it touch you, Maya.”
She imagined it. All the times she’d ever been injured. The broken leg from when she was in grade school. Too many grazed knees to count. Bruises and cuts and burns.
The one time she’d jabbed herself with a stapler at work, Corin had turned white and avoided her for the rest of the day.
“Even if I’d never hurt myself badly, it wouldn’t matter,” she said slowly. “Because all the injuries come back at once. Death by a thousand paper-cuts.”
He flinched.
“Metaphorically speaking,” she said quickly.
“Or not.” His shoulders sagged. He furled his wings. They tucked behind his back and disappeared, as though they never existed. “I could never make you mine. So I chose not to have you at all.”
“And for me not to have you.” She waited until he met her eye. “That’s not very fair, Corin.”
“I know.”
“And—you can’t claim me. But does it have to be all or nothing?”
The focus of his attention sharpened.
Her pulse sped up. “You said you want me to be happy. Does it have to be magic? Does it have to be about the mate bond? Can’t it just be us?” She licked her lips. “Would you kiss me again, if it made me happy?”
She couldn’t breathe as she waited for him to reply. Shadows gathered at his shoulders—the dangerous magic he was so afraid would hurt her—and she saw the effort it took him to banish them.
But he did. And a new determination flared in his gaze as his magic vanished.
“Close your eyes,” he told her.
They’d already determined he shouldn’t rely on her jumping to obey him—but just this time, she did.
She closed her eyes. Her eyelashes fluttered on her cheeks, because she wanted to open them again, but she forced them to stay shut.
The first thing she felt was Corin’s breath on her skin. Then he kissed her.
His lips were soft. He was a man of so many uncompromising angles, but his lips were soft, and his hands coming up to hold her were gentle and loving. She opened her mouth and his tongue slipped through her lips, possessive and taking.
How far did he want to take? How much would she let him have?
Everything,her heart told her.
He lay her down on the picnic rug, every touch somehow reverent. His hands were cold, but she held them in hers, warming them with her own touch. Her kisses. Her body.
“Let me explore you,” he whispered, the words rough in his mouth. “Please.”
She let him.
He touched her as though he had catalogued every place on her body he wanted to caress, and was determined to check them all off from A to Z. Her eyelids. Her neck. The ticklish spot behind her ear, and a line down her throat that wouldn’t have felt like anything except her skin was still humming from being tickled.
“How long have you been saving up all the places you want to kiss me?” she asked him, gasping.
“Do you need to ask?”
