Page 27 of Dragon Kissed

Her gaze snapped up. “Legally?”

Damn.He had survived assassination attempts with fewer errors. “What law prevents a billionaire from explaining why he sprouts scales?”

Demetri set the cup down. The damaged Chain pulsed once, pain shooting from his wrist into his shoulder, and he hid the reaction. Nica saw it anyway. “Your bracelet is hurting you.”

“It is stabilizing me.” The truth slipped out. Her face changed.

“How?”

“I cannot explain.”

“Demetri.”

He rose, and the room tilted; for half a second his vision burned red, and the dragon shoved forward, hard, and Demetri caught the back of the chair.Mine.

Not now.

Nica stood. “What’s wrong?”

“Stay back.”

She came closer. Of course she did. Demetri focused on the line of her throat, the pulse there, the small tender flutter of it. He could smell the warmth of her blood, and the dragon could too — not hunger, something worse. Recognition. Anchor. The broken Chain had held his power inside him for sixty years, and now every piece of him reached toward Nica as if her body contained gravity, as if two centuries of drift had finally found the thing they were falling toward.

Her hand touched his forearm.

The red haze cleared instantly. Demetri stopped breathing. Nica’s palm rested against his skin, warm and small and human, and the dragon went utterly silent, and the pain vanished — not diminished, gone. Sixty years of the Chain grinding against his beast, and one bare touch of her hand did what all that silver never had.

Nica frowned. “You’re burning up.” Demetri looked at the place where she touched him: the darkened links of the Chain brightened, one thin line of silver light running through them, then gone.My mate is already affecting the magic. Without a bond. Without blood. Without knowing.

Nica started to pull her hand back. Demetri caught it — not hard; he closed his fingers around hers and held her palm to his arm. Her eyes widened.

“You make it stop,” he said.

“What?”

He should release her. He did not. “The pain.”

Her thumb shifted against his skin, an accidental caress, and heat rolled through him. Not fever. Need. The dragon stirred — no violence now, no demand to shift. Only certainty.Kiss her.

Demetri lifted his gaze. Nica stood close enough that the scent of her filled his lungs: tea, rain, laundered cotton, and the warm, unnamed sweetness that had destroyed the shape of his existence the moment she fell into his arms. Her eyes dropped to his mouth.

Kiss her.

She must choose.

She is choosing.

Nica moved first. One step. Her free hand settled against his chest, and her touch shook, and so did his control.

“Is this a terrible idea?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

She rose onto her toes and kissed him.

For one heartbeat Demetri did not move. He could not. The first touch of her mouth erased two hundred years — every grief, every wall, every cold disciplined decade fell away and left him standing in the single warm instant of her lips on his. Then the dragon roared, and he caught her waist and pulled her against him, and Nica gasped into his mouth, and he took the sound. Her lips were soft, warm, tentative for only an instant before she kissed him harder, her fingers flexing against his chest, her body pressing to his as if she’d been fighting the same hunger all along. He turned them, and her back met the wall beside the balcony doors, and he planted one hand against the glass above her head — trapping himself more than her — his other hand staying at her waist. No lower. Not yet.