Especially now. The beast had lain dormant for most of my younger years. When I first fell in love with Johanna over a hundred years ago, we hadn’t known what I do now. Back then, we didn’t know the effect of the dragonblood given to me as a newborn would equate to my immortality. And something worse.
A dark beast living within me.
It goes against the laws of nature—human blood and dragonblood melded into one new body. I was young, foolish, and hopelessly in love. The day of our wedding, when I slipped the Blood Ring onto her finger, she wasn’t prepared for what she would see. Wasn’t prepared for the amount of power within it. We thought we had a plan that could take down King Aaric by using the Blood Ring to unlock the tombs underneath the castle and free the sun dragon.
But instead, that first day she saw something she shouldn’t have. She saw the afterlife—the White. Even after she took the ring off, she couldn’t shake the psychosis. Nor the white hot pain that ebbed and flowed within her.
She was in agony.
I woke in the middle of the night to find her out on our balcony. Balancing on the railing. Led by delusion, she jumped before I could stop her.
Consumed by grief, I almost jumped with her. Feeling that life itself had ended the same night she took her own.
But that’s the funny thing about magic. Magic calls to magic, yes. But pain also calls to magic.
The beast awoke within me, creeping out of the shadows before I could end myself. And since then it’s been a constant battle to keep him at bay. He’s drawn to other magic, so we’ve kept the Blood Ring locked away. Just as we’ve kept our Seers in separate rooms away from me, over the last hundred years. For fear of their magic calling upon mine, and tempting the creature within me to feast on it.
And that I wouldn’t be able to stop the creature from breaking free.
So began the search for those most educated scholars in dragonary. A Lady Bethany from Silkwood was the ideal pick. I met her at the Dragon Academy as a professor thirty years ago. She was the top of her class for dragon breeders. The council and I all agreed that once the time came, shewould be recruited to my Close Circle. That she would eventually be needed. Because as soon as the beast within me finds its prey, it’ll be over for me. That hunger would overpower mine, and I’d have no choice.
Yet standing here with Marcella…I can’t bear it. I can’t fathom a reality where I would choose anyone but her. Is it really that selfish of me to want her? To be in love with someone from afar?
But as she blinks those lovely brown eyes up at me, staring deep enough I’m sure she’ll see the beast beneath, her fingertips gently graze my chest. “What? What is it?”
I’m thinking a thousand things, but at the forefront is my wish that she’d not be so subtle about her touch on my chest. That she’d lean completely into it. Would drag those beautiful hands anywhere on my body she’d want them to be.
She drops her hands to her side.
Disappointed, I follow the line from her empty hand, up her arm, to her mouth. Stuck there, reminiscing about my dreams of how soft they’d be. Fantasizing about all the ways I could kiss her, and all the scenarios I might be brave enough to ask her if she’d let me.
“I-I’m sorry. That was a mistake, wasn’t it?” she asks. “I shouldn’t have touched you without permission?—”
“It wasn’t a mistake,” I respond gently.
A sharp pull of a breath into her lips sounds as her eyes widen. Her voice is painted with nervousness. “Then…what is it? What are you thinking of?”
“Truthfully?” I chuckle nervously, flicking my gaze to her eyes again. But she isn’t looking at my eyes.
No.
She’s looking right at my mouth.
You’re overthinking this…you’re too wishful. She’s only intent on what you’re going to answer.
But as she slowly drags her focus from my mouth to my eyes, her lips are parted as she tilts her chin up subtly. I can see it in her eyes. There’s no mistaking it. No masking it.
I take my chance.
I allow myself to lean my forehead down onto hers as I fight to contain everything I want to say to her. In a string of helpless, raspy words, I whisper, “I’m thinking of all the ways I’ve wanted to kiss you. All the things I’velost in time to say. How mad I am at myself for how ridiculously, pathetically, I long for you. For your touch…” I lift my head off hers to look at her expression, “that even the slightest brush of your fingertips has me aching for the next time I might feel you again.”
She gently cups my cheek, those brown eyes serious. We stay locked for a moment, waiting for the next move. I grab her wrist as I dip my chin out of her grasp, and press a soft kiss to her palm.
“Cyrus,” she breathes, thick lashes fluttering at my touch.
Unable to stop myself, I press slow kiss after kiss down her palm, to the inside of her wrist. When I open my eyes and take my lips off her, she slips out of my hold and presses her body into mine. She pushes up onto her toes, grabbing me by the back of the neck, drawing me down to her. Tilting her chin up until our lips tease one another. We share a single, staggered breath.
Our proximity is too much for me to resist. I break the last barrier between us and press my lips to hers. Gentle at first, yet the shock of it has me almost buckling under the sweetness of it. Of her. My shoulders sag, my hands finding the sides of her jaw. To hold her for this moment.
