Page 29 of Fallen Nocturne

I pull it from my dress with shaking hands. The little dragon, warm from my body heat, amber eyes blinking up at the candlelight. I hold it out to him. A sob wrecks my chest because it’s so cute and I wanted to keep it.

“It was too pretty,” I manage through the tears.

My hand is shaking so badly that the warm stone nearly slips from my grip.

“Here.” My voice is wrecked as I surrender the seal. “Take it.”

Giving it up feels like losing something important, but my body has nothing left to fight with.

His fingers close around the seal. Without looking at it, he sets it on the edge of the altar beside my hip. Carelessly, as though the imperial treasure he chased me through an entire palace for means absolutely nothing to him.

I stare at the discarded seal. Then at him.

He doesn’t care about the seal. He never cared about the seal.

“There is still the matter of the other thing you stole,” he says.

Confusion cuts through the haze. “What other thing?”

He braces one hand against the altar and leans over me. His mouth hovers above mine, close enough that I feel the warmth of each breath but not the touch.

“The kiss,” he whispers. “The one you took from me.”

Oh.

A weak smile pulls at my lips despite everything. Something about this moment feels familiar. I have been here before. I am certain of it, though the memory refuses to surface.

I look up at the mouth beneath the mask, the jaw I want to trace with my fingertips, and the dark eyes watching me.

Something quiet settles inside my chest.

I want him.

This is fine. This is more than fine.

It's my mate.

The certainty washes through me like warm water. Our bond is pulling us together across dreams. Nothing to feel guilty about. This is the bond doing what bonds are meant to do, bringing us together, showing us what we are to each other.

Fate chose him for me. Why have I been fighting this?

I reach up and pull him down to me.

Our mouths meet and the kiss is nothing like the stolen one in the throne room. That one was brief and uncertain, a question asked without knowing the answer. This one is an answer. His lips move against mine slowly, thoroughly, as though committing the shape of my mouth to memory. I open for him and his tongue slides against mine. A sound vibrates in his chest, low and aching. It passes through me like a second heartbeat.

My hands find him in the dark. Fingers trailing down the front of his coat, feeling the hard lines of him beneath the fabric, the heat of his skin bleeding through the layers. I tug at his shirt, pulling it loose. He shudders when my palms press flat against the warm muscles of his stomach.

I drag my fingers lower and find the laces of his breeches. I pull them loose with trembling hands. His sharp inhale against my mouth when I finally free them is worth every fumbled attempt.

He pulls away. The loss of his warmth leaves me cold, and before I can reach for him, he straightens to his full height at the edge of the altar. Candlelight catches the hard, scarred and beautiful planes of his chest and abdomen. My gaze follows the line of muscle downward and my breath stalls in my throat.

“Come home to me,” he demands.

His hands wrap around my thighs. The grip is firm and sure. In one smooth motion he drags me to the very edge of the altar until my hips meet his. I gasp at the sudden closeness, at the heat and the hard length of him pressing against my center.

He reaches down between us. I hear the soft tug of laces, the shift of fabric, and then the full, heavy warmth of him rests against me. My eyes travel downward and stay there. He is built the same way as the rest of him. The sheer size of him steals every rational thought from my head.

He lets me feel the weight of him against my belly, the length. I feel the heat radiating off his skin into mine. My stomach tightens with something caught between want and alarm. This is far more than I was prepared for. I swallow hard and wonder if this is even possible.