Page 53

My release hit with an intensity that left me shaking. I buried myself deep, my whole body shuddering, and for a long moment there was nothing in the world except Leila and the way her hands were still holding onto me and the sound of both our breathing filling the quiet room.

My fangs had descended during the climax, sharp and full of the venom that came with claiming. The urge to bite was overwhelming. A need that ran down to the bone, demanding I mark her, seal what every instinct in my body was already declaring complete. I'd never felt this with Marion. I'd never felt this with anyone but Leila.

I could find the exact spot without looking. The pulse point at the side of her neck, where her blood moved closest to the surface. One bite, and the question of what we were to each other would be answered permanently. She'd carry my venom in her veins, and I'd feel her across whatever distance separated us for the rest of our very long lives.

My dragon pushed forward, absolutely certain.

I held back.

She was still trembling in my arms, still coming down, her eyes soft and half-closed in the candlelight. She'd given me herself tonight, willingly and completely. The bite was something else. Something that would change every dimension of her life, her lifespan, her world, her future. And she deserved to make that choice with full understanding and a clear head.

Not tonight.

I pressed my lips to that spot instead, soft and deliberate, and felt her pulse against my mouth. Soon, I told myself, and my dragon, grudgingly, accepted this.

I withdrew carefully and rolled to the side, pulling her with me so she was tucked against my chest. Outside, the city had gone quiet. Through the open balcony doors, a breeze carried in the smell of night-blooming flowers from the garden below, the ones Artis had planted along the south wall because they opened only after dark.

"That was..." she started.

"Yes," I agreed, because I didn't have better words. Only that it'd been true.

I pulled one of the furs over us and held her, listening to her breathing gradually slow. Her scent was everywhere now. On my skin, soaked into the bedding, present in every breath I took. My dragon had gone entirely quiet for the first time in weeks, not the tense watchful silence of suppressed instinct, but genuine contentment. The kind I'd forgotten was possible.

I lay awake long after she drifted off, her weight warm and steady against my side, her hand resting open on my chest in the relaxed way of someone who'd decided to trust a person completely.

I'd spent seven hundred and fifty years carrying the weight of what I'd destroyed and what I'd lost. I'd told myself, in the long dark of hibernation and in the harder dark of waking, that some things couldn't be recovered. That a dragon king who'd burned villages over a female he'd known for a single night had used up whatever portion of grace the universe had allotted him.

But Leila Hunter had walked off a shuttle from another world, and she'd looked at me like there was a person in there worth knowing. Furious, suspicious, difficult me.

The political complications were real. My council would have opinions. The anti-human faction would use this as ammunition, and Rhucard would undoubtedly say something insufferable.

I'd handle all of it. Whatever it took.

I pressed a kiss to the top of her head and breathed in the wildflowers-and-sunshine scent of her hair, and the certainty that'd been building in me for weeks settled into something permanent and quiet and completely unmistakable.

Her blood sang to me in the dark, complex and layered and entirely hers. Not a melody I'd heard once and carried like a wound. A symphony I was only just beginning to learn the full shape of.

I was looking forward to the rest of it.

Chapter 15

Leila

Four days had passed since that first night in Kavan's quarters, and two days since he'd pulled me into his office and made love to me against his desk with a desperation that still made my pulse quicken when I thought about it. Two days of stolen moments and heated glances across crowded rooms, of his hand finding the small of my back when no one was looking, of the way his golden eyes tracked me like I was the only thing worth seeing in the entire castle. And I still couldn't focus on anything that didn't involve replaying every moment in my head. The way his hands had trembled when he first touched me, the intensity in his gaze, the feeling of being completely and utterly claimed.

I was useless. Absolutely useless.

"Leila? Did you hear me?" Chloe's voice crackled through the video comm, and I realized I'd been staring at the same document for the past five minutes without actually reading it.

"Sorry," I said, forcing myself to focus on the screen. "What were you saying?"

"I asked if you wanted to loop in Emmy on the user interface design. She's got some ideas about making it more intuitive for species with different sensory capabilities."

Emmy was brilliant. A former lawyer on Earth, now an Alliance conciliator who'd stepped back from her judicial work after giving birth to her son a few weeks ago. She was on maternity leave but had apparently decided that designing a dating app was the perfect way to spend her time while her mate, Ambassador Khaion, handled most of the childcare duties. I couldn't blame her. The app was fascinating from a technical standpoint, even if my brain kept wandering to places it absolutely shouldn't.

"That sounds great," I said, making a note. "What about Helene? Has she had a chance to review the species compatibility matrix?"

Chloe nodded, her dark hair catching the light as she moved closer to her own screen. "She sent over some notes this morning. My mother-in-law pointed out some cultural considerations we hadn't accounted for. Apparently some species have completely different approaches to courtship that don't translate well to a swipe-based interface."