Page 73 of The Dragon’s Good Girl

I wait, and eventually he sighs. “Long enough that I don’t particularly want to discuss it while you’re lying naked on top of me.”

Unfortunately, now that I’ve asked, my brain is awake enough to think about it. Even if I get another sixty years, maybe more, they’re barely anything measured against a life that has already lasted six hundred.

He must see the realization on my face, because his arm tightens around me.

“Don’t,” he says softly. “I know where your mind just went.”

“You’ll outlive me, ten times over.”

“Yes, but not as quickly as you think.” His arm tightens around me. “The bond will change how you age. It’s already begun. You’ll have far more years than an ordinary human would, and if we ever have children, carrying dragon blood would extend that further.”

I prop my chin on his chest. “How much further?”

“Enough that we have time.” His thumb moves slowly along my back. “But yes, Angel. Unless something changes, I will outlive you.” His expression softens. “But I’m still going to love you for every day you’re here. I refuse to spend the years we have grieving them before we’ve even lived them.”

That hits hard enough that I tuck my face against his chest.

“Then you’d better not waste any of them.”

He laughs.

Not the quiet amusement I’ve heard from him before, but a real laugh, warm and startled enough that I feel it through his chest. I lift my head just to see it, and the sight of Soren smiling beneath me with absolutely none of his usual restraint makes me want to hear that sound as often as I possibly can.

“I mean it,” he says when the laughter fades, his hand settling against my back again. “Every day.”

I rest my cheek against his chest as the purr begins beneath my ear. “Every day.”

I’m nearly asleep again when the sound gradually fades. At first I think Soren has drifted off too, but when I look up at him, he’s wide awake and watching me with an expression I can’t quite place.

“There’s one more thing I want to show you,” he says after a moment. “Something I should have shown you before now.”

I push up onto one elbow. Considering how much I’ve learned about Soren tonight, I’m not sure what he could possibly still be keeping up his sleeve. “Should I be worried?”

His mouth curves slightly. “No, Angel. But you’ll need to get dressed. And bring something warm.”

That does nothing to answer my question, but Soren is already getting out of bed, so I follow. I pull on my clothes while he dresses beside me, then grab one of the heavy blankets from the foot of the bed and wrap it around me.

By the time we leave his rooms, my curiosity has developed a healthy edge of suspicion.

A few minutes later, I’m following him through the house wrapped in a heavy blanket.

The moment we step outside, I understand why he suggested the blanket. The east lawn is silver with frost, the cold sharp enough to catch in my lungs, and above us the sky is clearer than I ever remember seeing it from the city. Soren leads me away from the house until there’s nothing around us but dark grass and the distant line of trees, then stops and turns.

“This is the part of me you haven’t seen yet,” he says, his voice softer now. “Just don’t be afraid, okay, Angel? I would never hurt you.”

Heat rolls off him strongly enough to reach me through the cold as his glamour begins to fall away. I’ve watched this happen before, I saw the scales surface and his body shift beneath the human shape he wears, but this time he doesn’t stop there. The change keeps going, spreading through him until I realize those glimpses hadn’t prepared me for what Soren actually looks like as a dragon.

He is enormous.

Bronze and old gold scales rise against the night as his body expands across the lawn, every familiar piece of him becoming something larger and wilder until I have to tip my head back to keep looking. Horns sweep from his skull, scales catch what little light there is, and when his wings finally unfurl, their span seems impossible, vast enough to block out whole pieces of the sky.

For one second, my body reacts before my mind can catch up. Every ancient survival instinct I possess looks at the creature in front of me and suggests that perhaps standing here in a blanket is a terrible idea.

Then I see how carefully he’s holding himself, and I remember: he would never hurt me.

Soren doesn’t move. He simply stands there, immense and perfectly still, watching me with those huge gold eyes as though he’s waiting to see what I’ll do.

I walk toward him. The frost crunches beneath my feet as I cross the distance between us, and by the time I reach him, the heat coming off his body has driven away most of the cold. His breath washes over me, carrying smoke and the familiar warm spice, and somehow that’s what makes the massive creature in front of me feel like Soren again.