My gaze drifted lower, taking in the half-empty crystal decanter and the tumbler filled with an amber liquid on the small side table beside him. Clearly, I wasn't the only one who had been grappling with loneliness and inner turmoil during our self-imposed separation.
Squaring my shoulders, I lifted my chin in a show of defiant determination - though I couldn't quite mask the tremor of vulnerability that crept into my tone. "You're wrong, Keldor. Whatever concerns you, it concerns me as well. We may have been strangers when you found me, but that's no longer the case, is it?"
I took a hesitant step forward, then another, closing the distance between us as I struggled to put my swirling emotions into words. "You can't shut me out like this, not after everything we've...after how close we became." Heat flooded my cheeks, but I pressed onward. "I thought there was something more happening here, something deeper than just a rescuer and his charge. Wasn't there?"
Keldor's jaw flexed, his throat bobbing with a convulsive swallow as he warred with some internal conflict. At last, he exhaled a gust of heated breath laced with the smoky, woodsy scent of whatever liquor filled his glass. "You are a perceptive female, I'll grant you that. Dangerously so, for both our sakes."
My brow furrowed at the cryptic words, that nagging sense of confusion rising anew. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Instead of answering, Keldor shook his head and turned away, bracing his palms on the desk as he slumped forward ina posture of utter defeat. "I should have known better than to bring you here, to disrupt the solitary existence I had carved out for myself on this wretched planet. You've turned my entire world askew, female, and I find myself at a loss as to how I'm meant to proceed from here."
My heart clenched at the weariness, the despondency saturating his words. Whatever had been weighing so heavily on him, it was clearly taking its toll in more ways than one. Carefully, I crossed the remaining distance between us and rested my hand atop his, relishing the scorching heat that radiated from his very being.
"Then we'll figure it out together," I murmured, giving his talons a gentle squeeze. "Whatever paths lie ahead, we can walk them side by side from now on. You don't have to shoulder these burdens alone anymore, Keldor. Not if you'll let me in."
My words seemed to pierce through the shroud of melancholy Keldor wore, his shoulders squaring as if bracing himself. When at last he turned to face me once more, his gaze burned with an intensity that stole my very breath. There was a simmering hunger in those molten depths, a banked inferno threatening to consume us both in its ravenous blaze.
Before I could so much as draw another breath, Keldor surged forward and captured my mouth in a scorching, all-consuming kiss. His claw cradled the back of my head, talons threading through my hair as he angled me for deeper exploration. I gasped at the sheer ferocity of his onslaught, my fingers clutching at the ridges of his shoulders for purchase as I was swept up in the maelstrom of pure, primal need.
Any lingering thoughts or questions I might have harbored scattered like leaves on the wind as Keldor's questing tongue delved past my lips in a sensual duel of slick, velvet heat. A low, desperate keen vibrated in my throat as I surrendered to the dizzying onslaught of sensations bombarding me from everyangle. The taste of him, the scent of smoldering embers and exotic spice, the searing caress of his calloused palms as they roamed with hungry possession - it was all so intoxicatingly overwhelming.
"Keldor," I whimpered against the ravenous onslaught of his kiss, my nails scoring delicious trails along the flexing contours of his back. The hard planes of his body molded against me with exquisite precision, as if we had been crafted by the universe itself to fit together in perfect, divine union.
A low, rumbling growl reverberated through his broad chest as he wrenched his mouth from mine, both of us panting harshly. "You test me, sweetling," he rasped in a gravelly timbre laced with naked hunger. "To temptation itself with that sinful mouth and those scorching caresses."
With a powerful flex of his muscles, Keldor swept me up into his arms as if I weighed no more than a fallen feather. I clutched at him, my pulse thundering in my ears as he carried me toward the plush, oversized rug positioned before the immense hearth. The roaring flames cast a warm, flickering glow over the sumptuous furs and silken cushions strewn across the soft pelt, beckoning with the promise of sensual delights.
Keldor lowered us to the decadent mound of cushions in one sinuous motion, blanketing my body with his own as he settled between my parted thighs. The thick ridge of his arousal ground against my aching center through the thin barrier of our clothes, the delicious friction stoking the raging inferno coursing through my veins.
"Are you sure this is what you want, sweetling?" Keldor's words were a scorching rasp against the throbbing pulse at my throat as he nuzzled along the sensitive column. "There will be no turning back from the path we're about to walk together. I need to hear the words, need to know you surrender yourself to me."
I cupped his chiseled jaw, holding his searing gaze as I offered him the only truth that mattered in that endless moment. "I'm yours, Keldor," I whispered with a breathless conviction that resonated to my very core. "Now and forever, through whatever destiny awaits us among the stars themselves. All I ask is that you never turn me away again, my dragon warrior. My heart and soul are yours to command."
A muscle ticked rapidly in Keldor's taut jaw as he absorbed the weight of my vow. Then, with a low, rumbling growl of pure masculine possession, he sealed his mouth over mine in a searing brand of dominance and need. There would be no more words, no more hesitation or doubts to hinder us. Only the joining of two souls destined to intertwine until the universe itself burned to cinders around us.
As Keldor's sinuous length began a slow, torturous grind against my weeping core, I surrendered to the maelstrom with a shameless cry of rapture. If there were consequences to face for daring to love this magnificent creature, this fierce dragon warrior who had claimed my heart and set my very being ablaze, then I would face them without regret.
Chapter 7
Keldor
As our bodiesjoined in a frenzied dance of scorching need and primal hunger, I could scarcely draw breath - could scarcely think beyond the blissful maelstrom of sensations crashing over me in relentless waves. The female's softness, her intoxicating scent and taste, the breathy whimpers of rapture torn from her lips with each rock of my hips...it was utter perfection unlike anything I had ever dared to dream.
How was it possible that this delicate creature from a world so distant could fit against me with such sublime precision? As if the universe itself had crafted her lush curves to be cradled by my own hard planes and angles? Each velvet caress of her fingers along my scales raised frissons of searing ecstasy, every brush of her lips like a scorching brand etched into my very essence.
I drank in every nuance as if parched for the sweetest ambrosia - the fluttering of her lashes, the becoming flush staining her cheeks, the sensual arch of her back as she strained against me. My talons traced reverent paths along the feminine swell of her hips, the gentle flare of her waist, committing every inch of her exquisite form to memory with fervent devotion.
This was my destiny, I realized in a breathtaking rush of cosmic certainty. This female, this passionate, infuriatingly enigmatic creature, was the key to unlocking my full potential as a Dragorian warrior. She was my anislah, my fated other half, the missing piece that would make me whole in a way I had never even conceived possible until her presence awoke the primal yearnings lying dormant within me.
A low, rumbling purr vibrated deep in my chest as I nuzzled the graceful column of her throat, inhaling the sweet floral fragrance of her hair. Mine. She was mine to cherish, to worship, to guard with every ounce of my formidable strength until the cosmos themselves burned to ash. The thought of ever being parted from this female, of her radiant light being extinguished from my world, lanced through me with a physical ache so profound, it stole the breath from my lungs.
Could I truly be so selfish as to keep her for myself?
The sudden, jarring thought sliced through the heated haze of desire, fogging my mind like a blast of arctic air. I went rigid, every muscle in my body locked in a vice of rigid tension as the implications of what I was so close to surrendering to came crashing down in a suffocating deluge.
The female was not Dragonian. She was an alien, a being composed of entirely different cosmic matter and energies than my own. To initiate the sacred anislah bonding with her could have catastrophic, irreversible consequences that I wasn't even sure I fully comprehended. What if the ritual proved too much for her fragile, mortal form? What if the scorching tempest of my dragonfire consumed her, reducing her to smoldering ashes before the transformation could complete?
I would never forgive myself for such a grievous error. I would lose everything - my reason for existing, my other half, my entire universe all in one fell swipe of reckless self-indulgence.
