I’m not ready to lose him!
I looked at him. He looked at me. We stopped breathing.
“Is this the part where you growl something threatening and try not to kiss me?” I asked, low and throaty.
“No. This is the part where we kiss each other.” He lunged for me, and I met him in the middle.
Chapter
Fourteen
They love to kiss and it’s not terrible.
-Humaning for Beginners: A Dragon's Tale of Human Management
Our mouths met in a heated tangle, hungry and unrelenting. Taron kissed me like a man starved for something only I could give. His breath, his blood and his salvation, all rolled into one. As if he’d waited his entire life for this moment—for me—and nothing. Not injury, nor war, or even death, could stop him from claiming what belonged to him.
Possession laced every sensual stroke of his tongue, every desperate drag of his mouth across mine. Not gentle or polite, but raw and consuming, calling forth a hotter fire than I’d ever produced. And yet, he was as much water as ember, drowning me in all that was Taron Locke. He branded me with this kiss. Carved his name into my bones.
Maybe I carved mine into his, too. Responding wasn’t an option, but a necessity. I kissed him back as though I’d been falling down an endless void my entire life, and hewas now the only tether holding me to the world. Passion surged through me, wild and molten, scorching fear, doubt and reason. Everything in its path, until they were nothing but ash beneath the flood of this heat.
“You taste so good,” he growled into my mouth. “Feel so good.”
“More,” I demanded, other words currently beyond my ability. His heady scent blended with mine, creating a drugging perfume I never wished to be without. “More.”
Taron groaned low in his throat and clasped my hips, shifting me with sudden, practiced ease. One moment I was kneeling beside him, the next we were both on our knees, pressed together. My heart thundered against his chest. Our mouths never parted, but with my face over his, and his tipped up to me, the kiss deepened. And his hands. Mmm, his hands. They roamed with reckless purpose, kneading and caressing, learning what left me breathless.
Lightning licked down my spine in the wake of his touches, each pass of his fingers both reverent and ravenous, as though he couldn't decide whether to adore or consume me. Thought evaporated, scattered to ash in the heat of his hands. Only sensation lingered.
He panted a little as he cupped my cheeks with surprising tenderness and drew back. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
Though the kiss had paused, my ache remained constant, pulsing. He stared at me, his lids heavy, irises shimmering like golden honey melted into molten amber, bubbling with barely restrained need. We breathed in tandem, lips parted, the air between us thick and laced with a need deeper than desire. Dangerous. Perhaps even…fated.
I braced my palms on his shoulders, grounding myselfin the breadth of him, toying with the ends of his tousled hair. “Don’t tell me that was nothing but a victory kiss,” I beseeched softly. “Or that it won’t happen again.”
His lips curved, but the amusement didn’t reach his irises. “It wasn’t just a victory kiss,” he murmured, voice ragged. “I…you need to know there’s no happy ending for us. Only a beautiful ruin. Whatever happens, Iwillleave this realm.”
His words seared my mind, my chest. I flinched, but not from pain. Longing tore through me, sudden and sharp. I didn’t want to be a ruin.
I didn’t want us to end.
He awakened things inside me I’d thought long buried. Hope. Connection. The kind of desire that changed the very core of your being. And I felt them more fiercely with him than I ever had with another. Even Leopold. He had won a girl’s heart, but I was a woman now, and what I felt for Taron cut deeper, sharper. As if Taron had found the most vulnerable parts of me and called them to life with his summons.
“Do you still want more from me, Lyssa?” he asked, the question a low rasp, reminding me of a falling feather being split by a blade. The sound of my nickname on his tongue was its own seduction. An invocation that curled through me like the most intoxicating smoke. “Not sex. But more?”
“Ja,” I whispered. “I do.”
Satisfaction flickered across his face, softening the harsh lines carved by battles fought both within and on the battlefield.
“I want…” My throat tightened, “a chance. Not forever,” I clarified quickly. “Just honesty while we’re still here.”
He frowned. “Honesty. That’s all?”
“Ja,” I repeated. Honesty was all I could afford. Even ifhe wished to stay, we couldn’t have forever. Not unless he survived my fire.
But risking Taron meant risking the last piece of myself. Watching him burn would destroy me. I knew it. I’d be fit only to fade into Mourfall, tending the dead like all the others who’d lost their mates. A new berserker royal would rise in Ashmorra, and if that royal wasn’t my sisters…
Taron swallowed hard, a cornucopia of emotions flickering in his gaze. “I crave you.”
