Light Dragons 01 - Love in the Time of Dragons

good burn, a heat that set my entire body alight.
    He pulled back for a moment, his lips curling at the edges. “You knew what you were doing by the time we reached France.”
    I shared the smile until I felt his hands on the waistband of my jeans. I covered them with mine. “Baltic . . . I’m sorry. I can’t. It’s . . . there’s too much up in the air. I’m not comfortable doing this with you until I talk to—”
    He covered my mouth with his, stopping the words. “I won’t do anything you do not desire, chérie . But you have spoken the words of fealty, and you are now my mate. You must bear the mark of my sept.”
    I held on to his shoulders as he unzipped my jeans, sliding his hands over to my hips, pushing the material down. “Just where exactly do you intend to put this mark?”
    He grinned as he cupped me intimately, his thumb rubbing on my pubic bone. “I thought here.”
    “Well, you can bloody well think again!” I said, squirming against him nonetheless.
    “Here?” He touched the crease of my thigh.
    “That would hurt like hell. No.”
    “How about here?” He pulled me to him, his hands on my butt, giving my cheeks a little squeeze.
    “I’m thinking that’s fairly disrespectful, don’t you?”
    He gave a mock sigh, then whipped off my sweatshirt before I could protest, nuzzling my breasts. “Then it will have to be here.”
    “Over my heart?” I thought about that for a moment. It pleased me. “All right. Wait—don’t you have one?”
    “I was the only member of the sept until you accepted me. You will have to give me the mark.”
    I was about to tell him I hadn’t the slightest clue how to go about doing that when he opened his mouth and breathed fire on me. It hurt like the dickens for about two seconds; then the heat soaked into me, swirling around until it settled in my groin, pooling in places that hadn’t been pooled in for centuries. I looked down to see my bra gone, and Baltic licking my left breast, a strange swirly symbol burned into the flesh. As I watched, the redness of it faded until it was the same color as the mark on my hip—a sort of dark tan.
    “Now you have been marked as my mate, although I would appreciate it if you didn’t show people,” he said, kissing my breast. “Your form, although apparently human, pleases me, and I do not wish for others to ogle you.”
    I thought seriously of throwing everything to the wind—Gareth, my moral values, decency—and just letting Baltic make love to me until the sun rose high above us. “I wish I could make love to you,” I said, gasping when he took my nipple in his mouth. My fingers dug into his shoulders.
    “I will if you desire it,” he murmured, rubbing his cheek against my breast.
    “I can’t,” I said, pulling his face up to mine. “I shouldn’t even be kissing you. That’s wrong, too.”
    “Nothing is wrong between us. But if you do not wish for me to do that, then I will not,” he said, sucking my bottom lip.
    “I think that would be best,” I said, my fingers caressing the long sweeps of muscles in his shoulders. “Until things are worked out.”
    “Then I will not pay homage to your magnificent breasts, either,” he mumbled, his mouth kissing a wet, steamy trail down to my chest.
    “That would definitely be over the line,” I said, my back arching of its own accord as he swirled his tongue around my nipple, the latter so tight and hard it positively ached with the need for his touch. I groaned again, gripping his shoulders as he tormented first one breast, then the other with long, hot strokes of his tongue.
    “Were you to give yourself to me, I would bathe your sublime belly with fire,” he said, pulling me down to the ground.
    “But I haven’t, so you won’t,” I said, threading my fingers through the cool silk of his hair.
    “Of course not.” Baltic lifted his head from where he was kissing the curve of my hip, and breathed fire on my stomach. It shimmered along my skin until it was absorbed back into his mouth as he laved a path to the other hip.
    “The memory of your scent and taste has driven me almost mad with desire,” he murmured into my pelvic bone, his hands gently pushing my underwear down over my hips. “The idea of experiencing it again fills my thoughts.”
    “That would be far too wrong to do now,” I said, my eyes almost rolling back into my head when his tongue flicked across secret, intimate parts of me, parts that tingled with awareness and a