Page 80 of Dragon Cursed
"Hush, child."
She squeezed Poppy's hand once more.
"I have been waiting for this my whole life.I would never miss it."
Poppy climbed the stairs slowly.She paused on the landing, one hand against the wall, and breathed through the thing in her chest that wanted to be a sob.She didn’t let it become one — because crying through the door was a thing he would hear, and a thing she couldn’t explain.
She straightened.
She put her hand on the doorknob of the second room at the top of the stairs.
She opened the door.
He was already there.A shadow in the corner that resolved into the solid, powerful form of the man who owned her soul.He didn’t speak.
He just held out a hand.
"Come here."
The door clicked shut behind her.
The sound was unnaturally loud in the hushed silence of her aunt's house.
Poppy went to Alsander as if she were tethered.As if every atom in her body was drawn to his gravitational pull.As if she had been waiting her whole life to walk across this small Dublin bedroom and put her hands on the chest of the man who had owned her soul since the moment she had seen him naked and furious in a forest clearing a week ago.
A week.
It had been aweek.
Tomorrow would be the eighth day.Tomorrow she would die for him.
Tonight was hers.
18
Poppy
He was waitingfor her in the corner.A shadow that resolved into the solid powerful form of him as she crossed the room — the line of his shoulders against the dim wall, the dark fall of his hair, the way his eyes caught what little light there was and held it.He hadn’t undressed.He had been waiting for her.His shirtsleeves were still rolled.The high-vis jacket was draped over the chair by the door.
He was Alsander.
Not the dragon.Not the postman.Not the cursed thing in the lair.
Just Alsander, in a Dublin bedroom, waiting for her to come to him.
She crossed the room.
She put her hands flat on his chest.She felt his heart through the linen of his shirt — slow and steady andenormous; the heartbeat of a creature who had outlived empires and was about to outlive her too, though he didn’t know it yet.
She tipped her face up to his.
"Don't speak yet."
His brow furrowed."A chuisle—"
"Don't.Just — let me have this for one minute.Without words."
He didn’t speak.
