Page 33 of Dragon Cursed
He gave the way a dam gives in the moment before it floods the valley.Catastrophic.Total.Absolute surrender.
His arms came around her.Not gentle.Not hesitant.Crushing.He pulled her into the long, hard line of his body and she gasped against his mouth at the sheer size of him — at the way her whole body fit against his with so much of him still left over, at the heat that radiated off his bare chest, at the way his hands spanned her ribs as if she had been built to be held by exactly these palms.
He was warm everywhere.A furnace in the cool stone air of his lair.
And underneath the warmth, that strange ancient cold she had felt the first time she touched him moved over her skin again.Like a slow, dark tide.Like a winter river running beneath summer earth.
She understood it now.
The cold was the curse.It was the grief and solitude he had carried alone, every season he had bled into the roots of a dying forest and watched the rot spread anyway.
Her body drank it in.
A thirst, unknown to her before that moment, rose up to meet it.She wanted todevourhis darkness.She wanted to take all of it into her own body, every black inch, every cold drop.Come into me, she told it, toldhim, with every place their bodies touched.Come into me.Let it die in here.Let me be the place where it stops.
"Poppy."Her name in his mouth was wrecked.A ragged sound of disbelief and agonized desire."Poppy, you don’t know what you —"
"I know."
Her voice was a fierce whisper against his jaw.She did know.She knew what she wanted.Him.Insideher.Now.All of him, every cursed and beautiful inch.
"I don’t want to hurt you."His forehead pressed to hers.His breath shook."The more I touch you, the more danger you are in.You don’t understand —"
"I know enough."
She caught his face between her hands.Her fingers dug into the rough stubble on his cheeks.She made him look at her.
"I know, Alsander.I know you are cursed.I know you have been alone too long.I know the bee on my doorstep died because of you.I know the prophecy.I know your sister is dead.I know you think you are killing me."
His eyes squeezed shut.A sound came out of him like he had been struck.
"I am telling you," she continued, undeterred, "I don't care."
"Poppy—"
"I am telling youyes."
He made a sound then.A deep, ragged groan that was half-sob, half-roar — a sound she would remember for the rest of her life.It was the sound of a man whose last defense had just been pulled out from under him.
Then his mouth was on hers in earnest.
The slow, careful kiss was incinerated.
It became a desperate, hungry thing.A clash of tongues and teeth.His tongue swept into her mouth andtook, claimed the taste of her, claimed the heat, claimed what she had just given him.She moaned into him — she couldn’t help it — and the moan was half-swallowed by his next kiss and half-broken into a gasp as his hand slid up her ribcage and closed over her breast through the wool of her sweater.
The sweater was suddenly an enemy.
He must have felt her think it.He yanked the hem up.His hands fumbled with the fabric —his hands fumbled, she thought with wonder,this man who had stood at the heart of a shrine and spoken to gods, his hands were shaking on her sweater— and then he gave up trying and simplytoreit.
The sound of the wool tearing was the most erotic thing she had ever heard.
She laughed.She couldn’t help that either.He growled against her throat — a sound more dragon than man — and dragged the ruined sweater off her shoulders and threw it aside.Her bra went next.Then his hands were on her bare breasts and she stopped laughing.
"A chuisle."His voice was wrecked.His thumb dragged across her nipple and she arched off the floor toward him."A chuisle, look at you.Look at what ismine."
His mouth was on her breast a heartbeat later.
She arched again.Cried out.His tongue was hot and demanding, his teeth caught the edge of her nipple and tugged, and she felt it in the pit of her belly, between her thighs, in the place where her body had already begun to ache for him.
