“By whom?”
“Delos. Repeatedly. In increasingly creative terms.”
Her smile softened. She stepped out onto the porch, the sea glass chimes singing above her, and stopped barely a foot away. The proximity sent his dragon into a frenzy.
“Let me see if I understand.” She drew out the words. “Your dragon has decided I’m your mate. You’ve never experienced this before. You’ve spent three weeks trying to convince yourself it’s some kind of surge-induced hallucination. And now you’ve shown up at my door at dawn to explain all of this using scientific terminology because you don’t have a framework for actual feelings.”
“That is… an accurate summary.”
“And you don’t justlikeme.”
“No.” The word cracked on its way out. “I don’t just like you. That’s the problem. I don’t have a framework for this. I don’t have?—”
Cassia’s eyes held his. Gray-green and steady. Storm clouds building toward something inevitable.
“What if I don’t want you to make it stop?”
His heart slammed against his ribs. “I don’t—I’m not sure what you’re?—”
“You’re not the only one who’s been struggling.” She stepped closer, and the electricity between them crackled—actual electricity, visible sparks arcing through the morning air. “You think I haven’t noticed the way my magic responds to you? The way I can’t think straight when you’re in the same room? The way I’ve been dreaming about you every night since the cliff?”
“You’ve been?—”
“Every. Night.” Her voice dropped. Intimate. “So here’s the thing about frameworks, Aero. Sometimes they’re useful. And sometimes they keep you from feeling what’s right in front of you.”
“I don’t know how to feel this.” The admission ripped out of him, raw and exposed. “I don’t know how to?—”
“Then stop trying to framework it.” Her hand came up, fingers brushing his jaw. The contact sent fire racing down his spine. “Just feel it.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Maybe I can show you.”
She kissed him.
TWENTY-SIX
AERO
Cassia kissed him.
Soft at first. Questioning. Her lips brushing his with a gentleness that undid him more completely than anything demanding could have.
Aero froze.
Every instinct screamed at him to retreat. Lifetimes of self-protection, of keeping everyone at arm’s length, of building walls that had never once been tested until now?—
His dragon roared.
Not a demand this time. A force of nature that swept aside every wall he’d ever built and left nothing but the blazing, undeniable truth.
FINALLY.
Aero stopped thinking.
He hauled her against him, one hand fisting in her tangled curls, the other wrapping around her waist to press her body flush to his. He kissed her back with all the hunger he’d been denying himself—kissed her like she was the only real thing in a world gone blurred, like she was the answer to a question he’d forgotten how to ask.
She tasted like mint and magic. Her body was warm against his, soft where he was hard, yielding where he was rigid. Her hands slid up his chest to grip his shoulders, pulling him closer, demanding more.
