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My hands went everywhere. His shoulders. His neck. His face. Fingers diving through his hair. In a flash, our embrace became frenzied and wild and fierce. Too quickly. Heat gathered in my chest and spiraled, working its way up through my windpipe.

His hands did their own exploring, traveling from my shoulders, down the slope of my back—which tingled and pulled with a pressure that set off alarm bells in my head—to cup my bottom. His fingers dug into my soft flesh, pulling me higher, tighter against him, until our hips met. Until I felt the hard prod of his cock against my aching, clenching core. And I knew what he wanted, because I wanted it, too.

I gasped into his mouth at the same moment I felt a rush of steam escape my nose.

He felt it, too, lurching back, clearly as shocked and bewildered as anyone whose skin got too close to a hot stove.

His hand flew to his face.

I was off the bed in an instant, hand over my mouth in horror, feeling the telltale heat there, the fading warmth from the steam still moist on my fingers.

He rubbed at his face. “What was that?”

He was looking at me and already thinking, already trying to understand... seeking the most logical explanation. Thankfully. Because me... a dragon? Not logical.

“D-did you... bite me?” In his mind, he was reassigning that flash of pain to something else. Something that made more sense.

“I... I... I am sorry,” I choked out lamely. “I got carried away.”

I shook my head wildly, not about to confess that I had singed him. Thankfully, it had been brief and not very severe... not so severe that I’d left a mark, a burn that could be pointed at for what it was.

It was a nightmare. My fear made real—that I would lose control. That I would somehow manifest into my dragon while in proximity to him. I could have hurt him. Maybe even killed him. The image of Arkin’s corpse filled my mind.

I took several staggering steps back from the bed, babbling between my fingers, “I... I am sorry. So sorry.”

Fell extended a hand to me as though cajoling a frightened animal. “Tamsyn. It’s all right. I don’t mind. Come back to bed.”

I shook my head roughly. “No. I can’t do this... I can’t do this with you.”

He lowered his arm back down, a raw stillness coming over him, a frown marring that beautiful face of his. “You can’t?”

I motioned between us. “This. I can’t be with you this way.”

There. I’d said it. I could not explain why, but I’d said it.

Even in the almost-dark, I could detect the hardening of his features, the icy curtain dropping over his gray eyes. “I see. You’re my wife, but you don’t want to...bea wife to me.”

I stared at him in mute frustration. He was drawing his own conclusions.Inaccurateconclusions.

Of course I couldn’t correct him, but the truth was more than complicated. It was dangerous. I wasn’t fool enough to tell this man, the Beast of the Borderlands, what was happening to me. That he shared his bed with a monster. I could hardly even form the words inmyhead. Saying them out loud to him was an impossibility.

“Yes,” I agreed. “That’s how I feel.”

He nodded tightly. “Understood. I will not offend you with my advances again.”

I wanted to cry, to weep from the unfairness of it all. I could seethe door slamming shut over his expression, the frost of his eyes growing colder. He was gone from me. Any softness, any desire he felt, I had just killed it... doused the warmth in him like a fire burned out.

FOR THE NEXTweek I did little more than sleep. Waking to eat and do the bare necessities, but then returning to my bed—our bed—for leisurely naps was the safest form of existence.

I told myself it was my body recovering from the long journey. I told myself it wasn’t despair. It wasn’t mourning. It wasn’t avoidance. It wasn’t the loss of a marriage before it even had a chance to begin. It wasn’t the death of it, the burying of it—ofusand what we could have been—beneath dirt and rock like any other corpse. It wasn’t evasion of this new world, this new life I found myself inhabiting. This newthingI found myself to be.

I told myself all of this.

And I was a liar.

Fell joined me every night. He had not taken a room of his own, and I assumed it must be for the sake of appearances. He was the Lord of the Borderlands. He was master here, and he had a reputation to protect. He couldn’t look as though he spurned his wife and marital obligations. So we slept together, not looking at each other, not touching, not talking after we put out the light.

And every night I was afflicted with the same torment.