Page 46 of Dragon Kissed

“I cannot control the shift.” She reached for him, and he caught both her wrists before she touched his chest, her pulse hammering beneath his fingers. Fear. Desire. Determination. All of it hers. None of it altered by anything he’d done — he had made sure of that, whatever else he’d failed at. “Go,” he said.

“No.”

“I killed three men.”

“They came here to kill us.”

“I am not human.” Her breathing stopped. The words had escaped him — not species, but enough, more than he’d given her in three days. Nica looked at the scales on his chest, at the ruby still fading from his eyes. “I know.”

“You do not.”

“Then tell me.”

“I cannot.” Anger flashed through the fear. Good. Anger was safer; anger did not leave. “You’re impossible.”

“Yes.”

“And bleeding on your carpet.”

“Yes.”

“And I am still here.” The truth struck him harder than the elven blade had. She pulled one wrist free, and Demetri allowed it, because he could deny her nothing, and her palm touched his chest above the wound. The dragon quieted immediately, the way a storm drops when the wind turns. The shift receded.Scales vanished beneath her hand, and Nica felt it happen, her eyes widening. “You do that,” Demetri said, low and undone.

“Do what?”

“Bring me back.” Her face softened. That was more dangerous than fear — fear he knew how to survive; this he did not.

She ledhim to the bed. Demetri should have refused. He sat. Nica found clean cloths and water in the bath, and by the time she returned the wound had begun closing. She knelt between his knees — the position sent heat through him despite the blood, despite death still cooling on the floor of the next room — and pressed the cloth to his side. Demetri hissed. “Sorry.”

“Do not apologize. You are the one touching the wound.”

“That’s generally how cleaning works.” Her voice trembled on it, the steadiness she’d held through the whole fight finally cracking now that the danger was past. Demetri lifted her chin. “You were brave.”

“I hit a man with photography equipment.”

“You saved my life.”

Nica swallowed. “You saved mine first.”

“That is different.”

“Why?”Because hers mattered more. Because the universe had narrowed, without his permission, to one human heartbeat, and everything outside it had become weather.He said none of it. Nica finished cleaning the blood from his skin, and the wound sealed beneath her fingers, and she watched every second of it, no longer flinching from the impossibility. “Does this happen every time?”

“Yes.”

“Are you immortal?”

“Almost.”

“What can kill you?” Demetri looked at the broken blade on the floor. “That.” Her face went pale, and he regretted the truth immediately. Her fingers spread over his ribs, as if she could shield him after the danger had passed, as if her small human hand could stand between him and an elven edge, and Demetri covered her hand with his. “I am alive.”

“This time.” The words carried her entire wound — every ambulance, every wrong apartment number, every person she’d loved and buried — and he understood. She looked at him as though loving him had begun a countdown she’d already lived through too many times. Demetri drew her to her feet, and she came between his knees. “I told you,” he said. “Loving me will not kill me.”

“You were stabbed ten minutes ago.”

“And I am healed.”

“Because I touched you?”