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"Don’t look at me like that," I croon. "Youlovedit."

She pants, her emerald eyes still hazy with bliss, but there is something else there too. Somethingdangerous.

She shifts, suddenly,fast, knocking me onto my back, pinning me beneath her. Her lips curving, slow and deadly.

"You should run, siren," she murmurs, her claws dragging down my body.

I smirk, tilting my chin. "And if Ilikethe chase?"

"Then you are truly doomed."

Her emerald eyes darken, molten with hunger, with something raw and consuming that steals the breath from my lungs. A slow, wicked smirk curves her lips, sharp as a blade, a predator reveling in the certainty of her claim.

Then she takes me.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Until I am nothing but a trembling, gasping offering beneath her hands. Until her name is the only thing I remember how to say, and her fire has scorched itself into my bones, leaving no part of me untouched.

Until I belong to her. To the Dragon Queen.

Chapter

Fourteen

NYXARA

Iwake to warmth.

Not my own.

Vaela is draped against me, her silver hair spilling over my bare chest, her breath slow and steady against my skin. One of her tentacles is still curled possessively around my thigh, tightening slightly as she shifts in sleep, as if even unconscious, she refuses to let me go.

For the first time since this twisted game began, there is no tension, no unspoken battle waiting to be fought between us.

Only heat.

Lingering. Dangerous.

I exhale sharply, running a hand through my hair. I should not have let her get this close. I should not have let her take so much of me.

And yet…

I glance down at her, my eyes trailing the marks I left on her throat, the faint scratches from my claws down her ribs, the way her lips part in sleep—soft, swollen, ruined.

Mine.

A possessiveness I don’t recognize coils low in my stomach.

I need distance.

I shift, but the moment I move, her grip tightens, her tentacle winding higher, keeping me trapped beneath her.

“You’re not leaving,” she murmurs against my skin, voice thick with sleep.