Page 10 of Dragon Kissed

Margaret: ...say yes, Veronica

Demetri

He followed her up the metal stairs to the mezzanine, two paces behind, and every inch of his body was at war.

Mine.

The word was a single tone ringing in his blood. It had begun in the storage bay the second her body hit his arms and hadn’t stopped since — would not stop — and he’d spent the last few minutes of his life trying to function around an awareness he’d never known before. Lust. Desire. Obsession. The need to protect, to claim, to secure, to seduce. Every urge roared throughhim at once while the dragon inside him repeated the one damned word like a mantra.Mine.

He’d heard the stories about finding one’s mate. He’d heard older dragons describe the loss of control, the urgency, the shift in every cell. He’d even presided once, in his stewardship, over the formal claiming of a mated pair, and listened to the bonded male describe the moment he first scented his female — the way the world dropped out from under him. Demetri had nodded politely. Wished the couple well. Not believed, for one moment, it would ever happen to him.

He’d been wrong.

Mine.

The woman climbing the stairs ahead of him was fine-boned and average in height, in simple clothes that had seen better days, and every instinct he had, dragon and man, was screaming at him to carry her out of this building and never let her touch the human world again.

MINE.

He had come here to acquire the manuscript. To determine the level of threat the woman presented to the Secret Kingdoms and, if it came to that, to execute her. To do his job — to shield his people and every creature the Draquonir protected. Twenty minutes ago, eliminating the threat had been a duty. The idea of it, now that he knew it was his mate, was an obscenity. He could no more harm the woman on this staircase than tear his own heart out with his bare hands, and the dragon would not have permitted it regardless. The beast was so violently opposed that the dragon’s claws strained to push through the pads of his human fingers. He flexed his hands at his sides, kept his face composed, and climbed.

She was talking. She’d been talking the whole ascent — quick and a little nervous, the way intelligent women sometimes talk when they don’t yet know how to fill a silence — tellinghim about the Crowe materials and the workstation and the lighting, and he hadn’t absorbed a word. He’d been cataloging her instead. Her pulse ticked at the side of her throat where her knotted-up hair left her neck bare. A small quick flutter. A hundred and ten beats a minute. He wanted to set his mouth to it and feel it race.

He pulled his eyes from her throat and made himself study the back of her head — the pencil, the wisps of hair slipping free of the knot, the way her right hand kept drifting to the missing button and away again, an unconscious sign of nervousness. That small tell undid him. He wanted to still that hand with his own. He wanted to be the reason it stopped.

She isn’t aware she’s doing that.The dragon’s voice came quiet and focused.A trained operative would use the motion to distract. A hunter would give nothing away. She knows none of it. She is innocent. Mine.

She reached the mezzanine, paused as if she’d forgotten which way her workstation lay, then turned right. She led him past a half-glass office where a white-haired man glanced up, registered Demetri, and returned to his screen, carefully incurious, knowing better than to look too closely at wealthy clients. Past a second office, then to a long table at the south end, set against high windows where the same fog-gray light from the bay came through, thinner here, colder, laying a pale wash over everything.

The small table held the book — and for the first time since he’d laid eyes on Nica, something other than the woman managed to claim a portion of his attention.

Behave, dragon. We need that book.

The dragon scoffed.We need her.

True enough. Without the elven metal wrapped around his finger — the chain— reformed into his signet ring—that helped him master his beast, he wouldn’t be standing here at all,speaking to his mate as a man. He’d be wings and claws by now, carrying her through the air to his home on the cliffs.

Mine, the dragon agreed, thoroughly in favor of the plan.

Not yet.

The manuscript rested open on an acid-free cradle, a pair of white gloves folded beside it. The space around it was quaint and scholarly — a jeweler’s loupe, a macro lens on a tripod, a half-drunk cup of tea gone cold and skinned over, and a mug printed with a unicorn and the words I’M JUST HERE FOR THE FOLKLORE that made his lips twitch. The room smelled of her and of the work both: cold tea, pencil shavings, the dust of old vellum, and under it all that warm, living scent of her skin the dragon had already locked into memory. She’d been working in here for weeks. Alone. With the most dangerous book on the western seaboard — a book every hunter, elf, dragon and magical creature on earth would kill to possess.

No one who knew what was contained in this book would ever be alone with it. Not without guards. Not if they wanted to live long.

The dragon snarled.How long has our mate been in danger?Get her out of this room. Get her far from this building. The text is open. Anyone passing could see it.

Demetri drew breath slowly through his nose.She is human. We cannot just grab her and run.

We can.

But we won’t. She would be afraid of us. Run from us. Is that what you want?

The dragon didn’t answer, but Demetri had to choke down the smoke rising in is throat.

“Please sit.”

Two chairs were at the table: Nica sat at the one with her notebook, cold tea and loupe in front of it; he took the other, set perpendicular as though a colleague had pulled it in and neverput it back. He pulled the chair closer to his mate so he could sit beside her — close enough that his right shoulder brushed her left, his knee near enough that the wool of her skirt brushed his trousers when she shifted, the book open and breathing under its skylight between them, as if it belonged to the two of them together. That last thought pleased him far more than it should have, and the dragon purred at it.