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AVERY

I lay there in the dark, not sure what the hell was going on. I kept feeling Saint’s mouth on me—on my palms…kissing so gently around my wounded eye…my cheek…my lips…

Well, my bottom lip anyway.

My first kiss. The words rose in my mind but I wasn’t exactly sure they were accurate. Had it been a kiss? Or was Saint just healing me, like he had said? What had just happened between us? Was he as confused as I was right now?

He hadn’t seemed confused. He’d seemed… eager was the word that came to mind. And he had denied that it was his Drake making him want to do it—to heal me, to kiss me…

He hadn’t wanted to stop—he wouldn’t have stopped if I hadn’t stopped him, I thought. But he kept claiming he was straight, that he wasn’t a “lover-of-men” like me.

How was he going to feel about all this in the morning?

That was the question that really worried me.

I mean, the way he’d been touching me and kissing me wasn’t exactly sexual—we both kept our clothes on and nothing had happened below the belt.

But the way he had healed me—basically kissing me better—also wasn’t exactly the straightest thing in the world either.

Was Saint going to wake up hating himself for what we had done tonight?

And was he going to hate me?

I really, really hoped not. I had been miserable those few hours when I thought that the tall, dark Drake disliked me. I didn’t want him to blame me for what we had just done and hate me for real this time.

And yet, it had felt really good. What if I had let him keep going? What if we had kissed more? Done…other things?

The thought made me uneasy and yet filled me with intense desire, emotions that didn’t sit comfortably together at all. I imagined myself getting out of my own bed and getting in with Saint. Imagined kissing him back, taking his mouth the way he had taken mine…

But no, I couldn’t do that. He had been healing me. What if that was all he’d been doing? What if he got mad at me and accused me of misinterpreting his motives and acting gay with him when he was really and truly straight?

My thoughts were such a muddled confusion it took me hours to get to sleep.

And when I did, I had all kinds of weird, confusing dreams where a huge black dragon with scales outlined in burning crimson was chasing me.

When he finally caught me, he swept me up in one huge, clawed forehand and spoke to me in Saint’s voice.

“I just want to love you,” he rumbled, looking at me with those burning, fiery eyes. “Just let me love you, Avery.”

I woke up in a cold sweat, not knowing what to think.