I was hard. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do about that. Shifting always left me running hot, and having my mate pressed against me while her thighs gripped my neck had not exactly helped the situation.
Liz didn’t look away. She wasn’t shy about it either, her gaze tracking down and then up with an expression that was somewhere between appreciation and amusement.
I pulled the sweatpants up, trying not to smirk, and didn’t bother with shoes or a shirt. The cold didn’t touch me the way it would her.
“Where are we?” She turned to take in the basin again, her arms crossing over her chest.
“Not far from the hoard, actually.” I gestured toward the far wall where the rock folded in on itself. “Through that gap about a quarter mile away is a rockfall we created to cover the entrance.”
Her eyebrows went up. “You created a rockfall?”
“With drones and other air surveillance, we had to make sure it’s as secure as possible. It’s pretty difficult to get to without flying, and even then, someone would have to be looking for the entrance and walk a bit into the mountain to find it.”
She nodded, processing that. “And Zarek thought little old me could navigate that to get to your hoard?”
I shrugged. “Anything is possible.” The more I thought about the possibility of any human getting to that exact location, the less likely it seemed.
I moved toward her again, slower this time. I stopped within arm’s reach and waited. She didn’t step back. The energy between us had changed, and the adrenaline from the flight was fading. I settled my hand at her waist, giving her the space to lean in or pull away.
She didn’t move. Her eyes held mine, and she shifted forward by a fraction of an inch. Not a lot, but enough.
My thumb traced a small circle against her hip, and her breath caught, barely audible, but I heard it.
I leaned down and kissed her.
It was different from last night. Last night had been careful, a question and an answer. This was the conversation that came after. Her hands came up to my chest, fingers spreading over bare skin, and the contact sent heat racing through me. My other hand found the back of her neck, my fingers sliding into her hair the way I’d been thinking about for days.
She made a humming sound against my mouth, and my dragon surged so hard I had to lock my knees to keep from pulling her off her feet.
I kept it slow. Barely. She deepened the kiss, and I followed her lead, letting her set the pace.
She pulled back to look at me. “Okay,” she said quietly, as if she was confirming something to herself.
I grinned. “Okay.”
I took her hand and led her to a massive pine, then sat down with my back against the trunk and pulled her down into my lap.
She went with it, settling sideways against me with her legs across my thighs. The position put her head almost even with mine, and she leaned into my chest, causing something in me that had been coiled tight for weeks to finally loosen.
My dragon settled. Content. Present. Exactly where he wanted to be.
“So, the hoard,” Liz said after a minute. Her fingers traced idle patterns on my skin. “What’s actually in it? Piles of gold coins and jewels?”
I snorted. “Some gold. Some jewels. Old weapons, artifacts, things that have been collected over generations and passed down to us.” I shifted her slightly, adjusting her weight on my thigh. “But it’s not only valuable objects. There are books inthere, maps, pieces of art. Things that matter to us for reasons that aren’t financial. It also fuels our magic and keeps us sane.”
“And if the hoard was gone?”
I searched for the right word. “It would be catastrophic.”
Her fingers resumed their tracing. “What about female dragons?”
“Fewer than there used to be. A lot fewer. Dragon pairings always produce a dragon. But there aren’t enough female dragons for that to sustain the population anymore. Dragon and human pairings don’t always result in a dragon child. Sometimes they’re fully human but have dragon blood.”
She was quiet for a long time before she shifted in my lap. Then her leg slid over my thigh, and she straddled me.
My hands tightened on her waist before I forced myself to hold still.
Her hands braced on my shoulders, and she looked at me, the uncertainty that had been in her expression earlier gone. The space between us closed again, and she kissed me, the sureness of it hitting me somewhere deep. She wasn’t pulling away. She was staying right where she was.
