Page 94 of Nine-Tenths

"Wait a sec," I smear the word against his teeth. "Back up."

Dav waits a sec and backs up.

"Turn around," I say.

His posture goes stiff. "Colin…"

"Let me see them."

He turns.

The lash marks are closed, at least. That's something. I lean forward and press a kiss to the biggest welt, angry pink and still inflamed, right along his spine.

"Barbaric," I say into his skin.

Dav hangs his head and wraps his fingers around my ankles, holds on like his life depends on it. Maybe it did. Does. I don't know. I don't even know what I don't know about dragons, as Dav keeps reminding me.

"There's little that can be done to hurt a dragon," Dav says quietly. "Take away their hoard, isolate them. But they will go mad of grief and loneliness in short order, and likely destroy their prison and kill many people—including themselves—in the desperate attempt to be reunited with those he calls his own."

"Fuck," I whisper, and shuck my shirt. I press my chest against his back, carefully, watching for any cues that I'm hurting him. When he sinks against me, I wrap my arms around his torso, press my mouth to the little ducktail where his hair touches the vulnerable knobs of his spine.

"Corporal punishment is…" he trails off. He pulls off my socks, curls his hands so his fingertips are pressed to the pulse in the arch of each foot. "It is a lesser horror to inflict."

"You didn't do anything worth punishing."

"That's not for you to say, Colin."

"It's foryouto say, though, and clearly you only feel guilty that you got caught."

He winces. "It doesn't matter what I want."

"It matters to me."

"You're not a dragon."

"No, just a Favorite, whatever that means."

He lifts one of my hands, kisses the palm. Kisses my bare wrist. Then he turns to kiss the inner bend of my elbow, my bicep, my neck. He arches over me as he works my fly.

"It means you are mine," Dav says into my temple. "Mine to undress. Mine to protect. Mine to bed. Mine to love."

"Yours to serve?" I ask, and Dav jerks back, startled, kiss-chapped and flushed. "Babe. I know what a service top is."

"Brat," Dav says fondly, and whips my belt out of its loops with a swish of his wrist.

"I'm not calling you 'Daddy'." I shift so he can yank my pants down. Every accidental brush of skin as Dav undresses me leaves electricity in its wake. "It's weird."

"Agreed," Dav says, mouth latching to my inner thigh, sucking a hickey that I'll feel for days.

Nice.

I lean down and whisper: "How do you want me?"

His answer is to heft me up into his arms with a devilish grin. I whoop as he tosses me onto the obscenely luxurious four-poster bed.

Can dragons actually glow? Is that where the word "afterglow" comes from? Because if they can, Dav is just lousy with smug light. It's probably just the bedside lamps sparkling off his damp skin.

"Prideful," I accuse, wiping the sweat off my forehead. I kick away the covers he's trying to wrap me in, the possessive lump. The room is humid with sex. I don’t want blankets.