“You didn’t answer my question,” he reminded gently.
“It’s yes!Yes, yes, yes, of course I’ll marry you!”As seemed to be becoming her habit, she launched herself into his arms, confident that Ranulf would catch her.
Which he did, his hands cupping her bottom as he lowered his head and claimed her lips in a hungry kiss.
“So when can I see your dragon?”Sophie prompted a long time later as the two of them lay in each other’s arms on the length of one of the huge couches in the sitting room.
Ranulf rolled over so that he was lying on top of her.“So that is it, you only want me for my body, hm?”
“Well, I’m not going to say no…” She grinned before sobering.“But you should know I’ve also fallen very deeply in love with you.”
Ranulf couldn’t seem to stop smiling and teasing Sephie.“Before you knew I was the carver Ranulf, or after?”
“Hm, debatable.”She pretended to give the question some thought but could only maintain that stance for a few minutes before she burst out laughing.
Ranulf was happy to wait for his answer.He was happy just to be with Sephie.He didn’t care what they were doing or saying.
Although… “I love you too, Sephie,” he told her huskily.“I fell in love with you the first time I saw you, and I have been falling more and more in love with you every hour since then.”
Sephie smiled.“And I’ve been in love with you for the same amount of time.I just didn’t think I had any sort of a chance with a man who was older and as out of reach as you always appeared to be.I also think I began to fall in love with you, but in a different way, from the moment I became so obsessed with your carvings.Something about them called to me.I realize now it wasyou.”
Ranulf kissed her again, long and deeply, before asking, “Would you like to come outside and see my dragon now?”
“Is this a dragon shifter’s way of asking if I would like to see your etchings?”
He chuckled.“That could be arranged.”
Sephie spluttered with laughter.“Can my parents come outside and see too?”
“Of course.”Ranulf sat up before standing and then taking hold of Sephie’s hand to help her to her feet.
It took a few minutes for the Malcolms to put their outer clothing back on, but the minute it was, they were all out the door and waiting for him at the front of the castle.
“I just had a thought…” Sephie looked alarmed.“You aren’t going to strip off out here first, are you?Because things are likely to freeze and possibly drop off if you do that.”
“And we do not want that, hm?”
“Definitely not!”
“Watch,” Ranulf invited softly.
He had shifted into his dragon many, many times, and the magic of it never became old.
His clothes simply disappeared the moment his dragon began to make his appearance.Ranulf’s body then lengthened and widened, silver scales covering every inch of his thirty-foot-tall body.Wings appeared from where his shoulder blades had been, the membrane as thin as gossamer but still able to lift and support his weight.His face elongated, the nostrils wide, his jaw sharp, with a double row of teeth top and bottom.
The Malcolm family hadn’t moved a muscle through the process, all of them staring at him in rapt fascination.
Ranulf believed he could detect pride in his mate’s tear-wet gaze.
Her parents looked as if all of their dreams and fantasies had come alive in front of them, their eyes also wet with unshed tears.
“You’re so beautiful,” Sephie breathed in awe.
“So are you,” Ranulf’s alter ego answered, his beast’s voice lower and more gravelly than Ranulf’s normal tone.
“You can talk,” Sephie gasped, clutching her mother’s arm.
“When I need to.But once we are mated, we will share an inner dialogue that only we can hear,” he told her warmly.
