Page 12 of Ashborne: Defiance

I froze, still smiling, but opened my eyes to stare at the sky above, turning gold and pink as the sun sank behind the mountains.

He, too, must be overcome by the discovery of this… this… whatever it was.

The dragons called again, and my chest swelled. I curled my fingers more tightly into his hair as a trembling wave washed through my body, and seemed to course through him as well. We both groaned. It was a relief to hear the need in him as tangible as my own.

Vane came to life again, his breath and lips brushing the side of my neck, raising more goosebumps. Then he lifted his head and, panting, stared into my eyes. I returned the adoring gaze, overwhelmed with hope and awe.

My body hummed with need. Parts of me I hadn’t known existed, suddenly alive with a hunger so intense, it wanted to overwhelm thought.

But the tiny little voice that had so plagued me for years, spoke up again as he stared down at me, his shoulders heaving, and his brows began to pinch.

His black hair was straight, but messy because I’d clawed hands through it. It flipped out around his ears and nape as if it needed a cut, though the disorder of it suited him. Made his angular features less severe. Long strands fell over his eyes and he stared at me, as if through the ebony bars of a prison.

The thought sent a thin thread of chill through my heart, and I instinctively tightened my grip on him.

Vane held me against his chest, yet his eyes never left mine. The color of his were difficult to decipher, his pupils were so large, and his eyes deeply set behind high cheekbones, shadowed by dark brows, and that hair. His lips full and wide, though I was certain I’d never seen him smile. Instead, before, they’d always been pursed to nothing, tight with disdain, or irritation.

Not now, I reminded myself breathlessly as my body sang with another call from the dragons. I lifted my head intending to pull myself up and kiss him.

But as I leaned up, something flashed in Vane’s eyes and he jerked away.

5. Clarity

~ VOSKI ~

Her skin was salt and sweet. Her little gasps and whimpers threw fuel on the fire of my need. Deep in the back of my mind, a tiny voice cried that this was wrong, that it was dangerous. That I was in the hands of an enemy. But everything within me hungered for her. Needed her. A desert-dry thirst swelled in my chest, and she was cool, clear water.

‘Kham—’ In moments of uncertainty, it was always instinct to reach for my dragon. But the moment I opened to him in the link, I was reminded why I’d held him off.

My dragon groaned. My mind’s eye filled with images of writhing bodies. My body alive with the sensation of twining souls.

With the last shred of control available to me, I inhaled sharply and slammed that door between our minds closed before I devoured Grace like an animal. A fucking dragon.

Literally.

I shuddered at the battle between my flesh and my soul. As I explored the sweet, slick depths of her, her head fell back to offer her throat, and I reveled in the tangible evidence that she wanted me as deeply as I hungered for her.

But that thought threatened to snap the last leash I held on my need, and I shook again.

Then her precious, ragged voice broke through the pounding of my blood in my ears.

“You are… mine.”

I froze. And that little voice in my head shrieked.

Though it felt like pulling teeth, I made myself raise my head and look at her, to find my sanity.

Grace smiled.

The dragons called again, and she reached up, clawing perfectly manicured fingernails across my scalp and sending a wave of shivering pleasure down my spine, pulling a groan from my throat.

Shit.

Oh, shit.

She was arched over my arm, throat bare, eyes wide, lips pulled into a smiling O, her blonde hair, which had been swept into a tidy coil, now loose and tendrilled from the invasion of my hands.

Her shirt fell open because I’d bared her, pulled her clothing loose, so now I could see one breast, the nipple pink and tight, puckered, wanting me.