Light Dragons 01 - Love in the Time of Dragons

need that I couldn’t allow.
    “I will not taste you, then,” he said just before his mouth possessed me in a way that had me clutching the grass, my hips thrusting up against him.
    “Thank you for not doing that,” I gasped, almost coming off the ground when he sank a finger into me.
    “You are so hot, chérie . Tell me you burn only for me.”
    “Only for you,” I repeated, mindless with passion and desire now, wanting him like I’d never wanted anything, tears leaking from the corners of my eyes as I struggled with my conscience.
    He moved over me, his clothing gone, the hard lines of his body pressing me down, into the earth. I felt him rub against my inner thigh, a hot brand that my body wept for. He framed my face in his hands, kissing me with a long, slow stroke of his tongue against mine.
    “Let me love you, Ysolde. Let this happen. Since I was reborn, I have lived every moment in despair because I lost you. Let me worship you now as I’ve longed to do all those years.”
    I held on to him, sobbing now. “It’s wrong, Baltic. I’m married to another man.”
    “You don’t even remember marrying him. Perhaps you were forced. Will you remain faithful to a man who would so abuse your trust?”
    “I don’t know,” I sobbed, wanting to shift my hips and allow him entrance into my body. I wanted him with a fever that threatened to consume me. “I don’t know.”
    He rolled off me, and I curled up into a ball on the grass, crying for my lost memory, crying for the years that Baltic spent alone. Warmth covered me as he curled himself around me, keeping the cool night air from my naked flesh, comforting me despite his own pain.
    “Thank you,” I said when I had managed to bring my emotions back under control. I turned to face him and gently pushed the hair from his cheek. “Thank you for protecting my honor, even when I was willing to forgo it.”
    “You are my mate. I could never force you to do anything you did not want.”
    I stroked my hand on his chest, the sensation of the soft black hairs making my fingertips tingle. “When I give myself to you, Baltic, I want it to be all of me. I don’t want my ties to another man to be there between us, tainting it, tainting the beauty of what we will have.”
    He looked down at me, the light of an almost full moon bathing the planes of his face in harsh shadows, but his eyes glowed with an obsidian inner light. Slowly he nodded, and touched my lower lip with his thumb. “You were always thus. You never did anything halfway—it was with your whole heart, or not at all.”
    “I sound like I was very annoying,” I said with a little self-conscious grimace as I sat up to retrieve my clothing.
    “Not annoying—honorable.” He watched me dress, arrogantly naked, still aroused. “It irritated me at the time, but I learned to live with it.”
    I couldn’t help but laugh at that as I finished dressing. I eyed him, guilt pricking away at my scruples. “I feel guilty about that,” I said, waving at his penis, which was in no way returning to a more quiescent state.
    He pursed his lips as he looked at it. “Why?”
    “I more or less led you on. There’s a term for that, and I’m appalled that it is applicable to me. Would you . . . I feel ridiculous even saying this after the big scene I just made, but would you like me to take care of it?”
    “Yes,” he said so fast I laughed again. I sank to my knees next to him, laying a hand on his thigh. “You would do this for me? It would not violate your sense of duty and honor?”
    “It does, but not as much as the guilt of what I allowed to happen.”
    He shook his head, rising up on one elbow and catching my hand as I reached for him. “You did not allow me to touch you, Ysolde; I wished to seduce you. I did everything I could to sway you to that goal.”
    “And I enjoyed every minute of it,” I said, slipping my hand from his. “Deep down, I knew if I told you to stop and really meant it, you would. And you did. So we are both to blame for how far things got carried, and although I would never do this for another man, although I feel I am still bound to my husband until I can tell him otherwise, you are the man I would choose to be with. For that reason, I wish to repay your kindness to me with a little kindness of my own.”
    “It is not kindness,” he said as I bent over him, swirling my tongue around the very tip of him. He fell back, his eyes crossing as his hips thrust upward. “It