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Chapter 14

Being trapped against the wall, Amalia felt apprehension with someone being so close to her – not just him, but anyone.

He’d been asking her distressing questions. Questions she didn’t know how to answer while he tried to convince her to change something she didn’t know if she wanted to change.

In order to protect herself with a blade, she would have to hurt another. She would have to make someone bleed or take their life. Amalia felt no aspiration to see or do that.

Amalia would prefer to use magic to protect herself, but she knew if she told him this it would anger him. So, before he could say anything more, she touched one of his scars to distract him from the conversation he’d been trying to have with her.

That had borne curiosity in her.

Curiosity about his scars, how he had obtained them, and what kind of battles this person must have endured to be marred so heavily.He must be so strong.

They appeared deep and were scattered all over his body. Some even appeared as though they should have been fatal, like the one across his stomach and the other near his heart.

She’d noted, at the time, that his chest was broad. That the brawny muscles of his abdomen were easy to see and twitched when she brushed over them. That his defined pectoral muscle bunched when she touched near his heart.

When she hovered near his neck, seeing many gashes, she’d considered touching the marks over his biceps, but didn’t.

She was too interested on the one across his face.

She’d been surprised that he had let her touch his face like this, but it was like she hadn’t been able to help it. She had wanted to touch it while he was in his Dragon form, but he often didn’t let her touch his snout. He wouldn’t let her stroke him there.

She brushed her fingers across it to feel the raised skin. Even from the distance when he’d been swinging his sword around earlier, she’d been able to notice it.

It made him appear rough, almost like a thug, with the fierceness his silver eyes above it always seemed to hold. His eyes bore cunning intellect when he was a Dragon, a hunter’s observational glare.

She hadn’t expected it to appear the same when he was human.

She pulled her hands away when she thought she was possibly making him uncomfortable. Then he’d humoured her, and it took away the apprehension she’d felt from him questioning her.

Her curiosity had still been there, and she’d once again looked over the marks on his body.

As her eyes drifted down his torso, she wondered what other scars he had and where they might be. She couldn’t see his back, and even though the bottom half of him had been clothed, her eyes had fallen to his breeches in wonder of what scarring marred his legs.

It was when her eyes came to the centre of his hips, where his groin was, that her eyes darted up to his.

She had just been touching a half-naked man! And she had touched him awfully low on his body.

Instead of seeing the scars, her mind started to register other parts of him. The sharp clip of his jaw and chin, his wide cheekbones. The curve of his nose to his dark eyebrows. He had strange hair that appeared black, but she could see a purple tinge to it. His hair was only a little longer than an inch in length all around his head, but it was unruly, tossed, and spiking around without a care.

He is exceptionally handsome.She’d only vaguely remembered what he’d looked like since she’d been dazed the only other time she saw him, since she never saw him when she cried. Even then she’d found him striking, and that had only been a peek.

This was a full examination of him up close, and her body subtly reacted to the pleasing man before her. Immediately, she realised she found him attractive, and his scars did nothing to diminish it.

Actually, she found that she liked them, like that there were places where her fingers could always trail.

The subtle feeling of desire had almost been fleeting because his face had started to crinkle, his nose bunching and making that scar seem more prominent.

But then he’d smiled.

A large, teeth exposing grin – one that seemed of triumph.

She noticed, although his teeth were white and mostly straight, the human canines he had were twisted. They tilted forward towards his middle teeth, making them appear as though they were jagged.

She hadn’t known why seeing them or seeing him smile made her body blossom more, but she immediately wanted to flush in embarrassment at her body’s reaction.

Although she knew the Dragon well enough, she felt as though she barely knew the man standing in front of her.