“Thank you. I’m sure she will.”
“Once your mother decides I have no intention of eating you?”
This time I can’t restrain my laughter. “Yes, Your—”
He lifts a brow at me.
“Yes, Soren.”
A flame sparks in his eyes, there and gone again.
The music quickens, and we glide in skipping steps around the perimeter of the dance floor. Afterward, when my cheeks are flushed and my heart is racing, I experience another wild impulse.
“Why didn’t you escort me here this evening?” I blurt out.
The words are barely out of my mouth before I regret them. Have I lost my head? He only just offered me his name, and I’m chiding him?
The music has slowed again to give those dancing a chance to catch their breath, and though the king—Soren—hardly seems winded, he waits a long time before responding.
“I went to see the wyverns,” he says.
“Oh, of course.” I smile, eager to put my foolishness behind us. “Forgive me, I didn’t realize—”
“I went to see the wyverns in my first form. And I was not fit to see you for some time.”
Hisfirstform. Even as he says it, his body tenses. I lift my eyes in search of his, but his gaze has turned distant. Steely.
Does he think I fear his other self?
Perhaps I should. Perhaps it’s rational to fear a dragon, but I’m struggling to find any rationality just now.
“I’m not afraid to see you as you are,” I say.
His foot tangles in my gown, nearly tripping us both. He rights us, but his eyes are round and unbelieving at his clumsiness.
I believe it may be the first time in his life he’s stumbled.
“I apologize, Princess.”
“It’s quite all right.”
His silence continues through another circuit around the room. We’re halfway through the next when he says, “I don’t fear you seeing me as I am.” He unfurls me in a long, measured rotation before drawing our bodies back together and holding us there. “I am king. I must walk the line between man and beast, and my first form is not so easily controlled.”
The world falls away as he catches my chin between thumb and forefinger.
“Especially when it comes to my mate.”
I catch a glimpse then of that other self. His gaze is a storm of emotion, a tempest drawing me in.
“You barely know me,” I hear myself say.
The storm’s call only intensifies.
The reasonable lady I’m meant to be would plant her heels and resist that draw, but if dragons are fools, I suppose I am, too.
Because I lean in.
I let him pull me near. I relish his grasp on me as desire rages in his eyes. When he bends lower, I tilt my face to him, my own eyes fluttering shut to welcome the torrent.
