Page 42 of Exquisite Monster (Dragons of Viria #2)

CHAPTER FORTY

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KATALENA

Z ovai flew us back to Syrsi, but not to the tower. He swooped low into the forested portion of the island. Moonlight fell through the trees, pale spears lighting up little facets for us to fly through. We landed in a small clearing. Not the same one I’d explored with Endre.

This clearing was open to the sky. The branches of the trees leaned away as if they wanted to form a perfect circle above. Z’s scales were silver-gilded rubies before he shifted, not bothering with the clothes I held for him.

Instead, he swept the cloak from my shoulders and spread it on the grass, in the middle of the wide puddle of moonlight. I couldn’t quite interpret the frantic rushing of his thoughts and feelings. Only that he was wholly focused.

And that focus was suddenly on me.

“When I told you I wanted to take you to the market, I promise this wasn’t the plan.”

I raised a single eyebrow. “So you weren’t planning on taking me to bed after?”

“Well…” His mouth slid into a smirk. “This wasn’t exactly the plan. I did plan to take you. To an actual bed.”

He loomed over me, my breath going short as he spun me around and began to undo the ties at the back of my dress. “Then why are we here? When there are beds nearby?”

Instead of answering, he opened his bond fully.

There was no way to explain how I knew he’d expanded our connection, I just did , sinking into his mind like submerging myself in water.

The drive to keep me safe from every threat.

The need to spread out his mate beneath the sky and be one with all of it.

But in a place where it was safe to do so and neither of us had to worry about being discovered by those who meant us harm.

My clothes fell to the grass as he removed them, mouth dragging over the warm whorls of his mark on my shoulder. His hands roamed, smoothing over my skin and leaving nothing but heat behind.

“Is it all right?” I asked. “Without the others.”

I’d only ever been with them together, including the last couple of days. Being alone with Zovai felt important. Significant. Overdue.

“You’re mine,” he whispered into my skin. “And you’re theirs. They’ll be just as jealous as I will be when you’re with them. But they’ll also love it just as much as I will.”

As if he was listening, a flood of love came from Sirrus. Love and jealousy and joy. I never thought jealousy could be a good thing, but the sensation felt… almost playful. Not sinister.

“See?” Zovai asked.

He swept my feet out from under me and laid me on my cloak.

Nothing above me but my mate and the open, deep blue sky.

Moonlight fell on Zovai, frosting the copper strands of his hair with silver as he leaned over me with glowing, dragon eyes, before they shifted back to his normal color.

Brown and gold and orange. A mixture of autumn colors which swept me away.

“What did you think of me?” I asked.

His palm dragged over my skin between my breasts. Down over my ribs, gently gripping my hip. “When?”

“The first time. At the wedding.”

He hummed, bending to follow the path of his mouth with lips and tongue. “The first time I saw you was actually before that. The three of us had flown in the night before, using the storm as cover. We were hiding behind the ridge of the mountains, and I saw you enter the courtyard.”

Surprise rolled through me. “That far away?”

He smirked. “We have very good vision, Princess. And the first thing I saw was that you glittered . My beast wanted to steal you away and hoard the thing that sparkled. And even when I pushed that instinct aside, I felt pulled toward you.

“Then,” his mouth brushed over my hip in a gentle kiss, “when I saw you up close, I hesitated. The moment you touched me, your death became unthinkable to me. But you already knew that.”

I felt his smirk, but when he lifted himself over me once more, there was no trace of it. “I’m sorry for frightening you.”

“There was something,” I told him. “If I hadn’t sensed it, I wouldn’t have begged for my life.

I hoped that maybe… maybe it was because I hadn’t been taught to hate you.

Maybe you’d sense Varí clinging to me under my dress.

But when you took me?” I grasped his shoulders and pulled him down to me.

“I smiled as we flew. At least until it got too cold.”

“I’ll never let you be cold again.”

“Especially since I’m fireproof. You can warm me up any time.”

“Tell me what you want,” he murmured.

“You.”

His grin warmed me beneath my skin, and he kissed me gently, teasing my lips with his until I was arching beneath him wordlessly, begging. “More than that.”

“What do you mean? ”

“You’re not shy, mate. It’s a shield. Remember? We told you we saw through it.”

I did remember. During the few days in Skalisméra when everything felt blissful and beautiful and like nothing in the world could go wrong.

“And you’ve needed your shields. I can feel them. You’ll still need them, I’m sure. But not here. Not now.”

“I don’t?—”

“Pleasure,” he said softly. “Tell me what you want. What you’d like.” His lips brushed over mine. “Tell me how I can serve you, Princess.”

The toe-curling fire they ignited in me rose, aided by the feral desire fed directly to me by my mate. I had plenty of my own, but I didn’t think I’d ever tire of feeling them. And he wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t shy, but I still felt my inexperience.

“I do not know what to ask for. I want you,” I spoke the words pressed to his lips, “and I am not shy, no. I simply don’t know enough.”

“There is no right or wrong with pleasure. No matter what it is, you can always ask.”

“I want…” How did I express this? Zovai tilted his head, like he was listening to my thoughts through the mating bond. “Ever since the first time. The first real time,” I said, “it’s been fast. Desperate. And I do love that.”

The past nights were the same. When he consumed me on the edge of the hot springs. When I tumbled with them into bed, falling asleep quickly after our climaxes. All four of us were still exhausted.

“But?” he asked.

“But I’d like to try slowly.” Something flared in my gut at the same time as Zovai’s eyes. Something rich and warm and deep.

Zovai grinned. “I have no problem devouring you slowly. One more question.” The words were accompanied by a kiss directly between my breasts, which made focusing on words that much harder.

“Just one?”

“Just one,” he murmured. “Would you like to lead?”

I felt that he didn’t have a preference. He would spread himself out for me to explore like an unfamiliar map or do the same to me. It made no difference. He just wanted me .

Though I did want to explore them, something held me back.

Maybe it was the awareness of the risk we’d taken and how delicate everything was.

Maybe it was that I was still tired and angry and frightened.

Maybe I didn’t want to think about anything, but I just wanted to watch the stars and let him love me.

I said nothing. Zovai simply felt me decide and smiled. Rising up above me, he was nothing but a dark silhouette in the moonlight. Nothing but the glowing golden eyes of his beast. “You might not be painted gold anymore, but you’re still my treasure, mate.”

Delightful chills rose on my skin, and I breathed out the nerves and the worry, trying to forget everything outside of us and this moment. I sensed him smile, though I couldn’t see it.

Zovai lifted my wrist to his mouth. Then my palm. There was something intimate about being kissed there. So little attention was paid to your hands, and yet they were everything.

You touched me first with this hand , he spoke into my mind. Soft kisses down the inside of my arm. So slowly I nearly squirmed, eagerness and desperation flooding me in equal measure. Maybe slow wasn’t what I needed. Because what if something happened? What if?—

I can feel your fear , Zovai said. His mouth moved to my shoulder, brushing along my collarbone until he reached the crook of my neck where he’d bitten. “We have time. I swear it.”

A small gasp left me. He’d pinpointed the fear when I couldn’t. Going slow terrified me because we’d been torn apart, and I didn’t want it to happen again. I needed everything now because the deepest parts of me didn’t believe we’d have a later .

Drifting his hands down my ribs to my hips, Zovai wrapped his hands around my thighs and pulled them around his body.

He settled his weight on me once more before kissing my lips.

But he didn’t move further. Didn’t enter me or take me.

Just stroked his hand over every piece of me he could reach. Slowly .

My hands found their way into his hair. I pulled him down to me, craving him closer even now while skin-on-skin.

Impossible.

That I was on an island on the edge of the world, bared to the stars, surrendering to my dragon mate.

If Helena had told me not even six moons ago that this would be my life, I would not have believed her. I still didn’t quite believe it. And if we didn’t?—

Zovai pushed into me with the same aching slowness, scattering my spiraling thoughts. Sliding his arms beneath me, I felt entirely surrounded by him. “I could go even more slowly,” he whispered. “Kiss every inch of your skin and make you fall apart on my tongue. And another time I will.”

“Why not now?”

One unhurried thrust of his hips, rocking deeper.

Like a veil dropping away, the truth poured into me.

As it did in the moments where they opened their whole souls to me.

The same fear and grief I felt, they did too.

And Zovai wanted slowness. Not purely for the sake of pleasure, but to be in the presence of his mate.

To merge with me. To be inside me. To heal. To exist .

Another rocking of his hips had me shaking my head. “You can’t make me cry at the same time you’re fucking me.”

He laughed softly, and suddenly his cheek was pressed to mine, a steady, gentle rhythm connecting our bodies. I do not mean to make you cry. It is never my goal to cause you pain, mate .

Pleasure seeped its way outward, my body heating in reaction to his. Inevitable, no matter the speed.

All I want is for you to know we are the same. We feel the same. We yearn for the same. It will take longer than a few days for us to heal from this.

He faltered, slowing to almost nothing and using his real voice.

“I am so grateful for our bond because it told you we were alive, and the reverse.

But I keep imagining what it must have been like for you.

We claimed you, and then you were left entirely alone.

A mating bond is the most precious thing in this world, and you were shattered because of it. Because of us .

“I asked your forgiveness, but I did not say that I am sorry. I understand why you need this because I need it too. Every night I see you ripped from my arms again. My mind imagines you falling into nothing. And I do not know if I will ever forget— can ever forget—your fear. I am sorry.”

A tear spilled over. No words were needed. I kissed him once more, lifting my hips to meet his and ask for more. My mate gave it to me.

The low-burning coals of our fire grew with us until we could not cling to the illusion of slowness.

I clung to Zovai, wrapping myself as far around him as I could manage and held on like he wished he could have held on to me.

The rising heat burst into true flames, our voices mingling and echoing through the quiet of the trees together.

“I would go back to those cells for an eternity if it meant you were whole,” he said against my hair.

“No.” I gripped him harder. “Because I cannot be whole without you. I just?—”

I opened my bond to him as he’d done to me.

So he could feel how much I wished it hadn’t happened.

How much it still hurt and what made me fear.

These days felt like counting down to something that could be even worse.

That we were running out of time. How much I loved them and wanted them and was still so fucking angry at everything that wanted to choose our paths for us.

How unfair it was that we were at the center of everything when all we wanted was each other.

And there was so much I couldn’t even speak of it without exploding like I’d done with Endre .

Zovai pressed his forehead to mine. We breathed together, with him still buried to the hilt inside me. I never wanted to move. In the space filled with our breath, nothing could harm us.

“Thank you,” I finally said. “For taking me to see it. It was beautiful.”

“I hope someday you can see it without having to hide. Look at it closer and let me buy you every little thing you want.”

“I wish that too.”

A cool breeze off the sea made its way through the trees, raising more chills on my skin.

“You are cold. Let me take you inside.”

He went to move, and I didn’t let him. “Not yet,” I begged. This was too perfect. A tiny bubble where nothing could reach it, and no matter the cold, I wasn’t ready to leave it yet. “Not yet, please.”

Zovai kissed me long enough to bring heat back, but he didn’t move again. Simply held me close.

As long as you need, Princess .