Page 34 of Feeding Beauty (The Lost Girls #5)

When the Dream Ends

TALON

“ T hey didn’t go after me. They went after you , Talon.”

Aurora’s legs hook through mine, a lazy knot that holds me close. Her head sinks against my chest, heavy and warm. Her fingers skim over my cold black scales.

One hand props my head, while the other traces along the curve of her back.

My fingertips map each ridge of her spine in slow, repeated strokes until they’re etched into memory.

Our scent lingers around us, and a deep satisfaction has stretched out from the inside of my chest. I know it won’t be long before one or both of us goes back in for more. We have a lot of time to make up for.

“They were trying to subdue me before grabbing you,” I say.

She shakes her head. “I don’t know. They...they seemed focused on you. And then they...” The hand resting on my chest slides down to the edge of my bandage.

I shut my eyes, but I’m assaulted by the memory of them slicing that scale right off my body. A hot anger boils at my core. No one has ever gotten close enough to do damage like that before, but there had been so many of them. I couldn’t fight them off.

Their strike had been meant to cut through to get to my heart, to kill me. Then Aurora would have been defenseless.

The thought stokes the heat of my anger even higher, but I let it smolder inside, careful not to tense underneath her.

“I’m fine,” I reassure her, dropping a kiss in her hair. “Better than fine,” I add before rolling her over onto her back, covering her body with mine.

Her full breasts crush to my chest, but I’m careful to keep my full weight off her. My hips slowly rock, my half-hard cock sliding along the inside of her thigh.

She lets out a giggle as her fingernails scrape along my scalp, sending ripples of pleasure into my brain before spreading through the rest of my body. “You’re insatiable.”

“Well, if you weren’t so delicious, I wouldn’t be,” I say before dipping down to catch her nipple in my mouth. I suck until her gasp catches, spilling into a throaty moan. Her back arches, pressing her breast harder into my mouth, her fingers tangling in my hair as her body twists beneath me.

“I’m trying to be serious here.” She pushes my shoulders, but I don’t give her an inch.

“Mal is only going to keep coming for us,” she says so seriously this time I release her delectable flesh from my mouth. I raise myself to meet her eye.

“You’re right.” I can’t lie to her. “Which is why I’m going to have to find her and kill her.”

Aurora’s lashes flutter wide with surprise. She shouldn’t be.

“You created a new life for yourself here,” I say, propping my elbows so I can hold her face, forcing her to meet my gaze. “You want this life. I see it. And I want you to be happy. So I will do what it takes to give you what you need, Aura. Like always.”

She squirms under me, and I know she’s thinking of the sex club, of Merry, of all the many people I’ve brought to her before.

Brows furrowing, she frantically searches my face, her discomfort rising. “It’s?—”

“ Exactly the same as it’s always been,” I interrupt before she can say the word murder or anything like it.

“I’m as culpable as you for all the deaths over the years, if not more so.

I bring them to you knowing the cost. Mal is not innocent.

She lashed out at you as a baby, she carries hate in her heart, and she intends to act that out on you.

I’ll kill her first. And then you— we ,” I correct, “get to live happily ever after.”

Aurora gives me a watery smile. She’s still not sure about this, but she trusts me.

“Okay,” she says quietly.

“Okay,” I echo back.

A thump and a pointed yowl interrupt us.

Lucifer slinks into the bedroom, tail flicking with maximum offense. He doesn’t stop at the jacket this time. He hops up on the bed, marches across Aurora’s thighs with all the grace of a petty god, and plants himself square on my chest.

His nose goes straight to my collarbone. Sniffs. Sniffs again. Then, with slow, deliberate rudeness, he sneezes. Right on me.

Aurora snorts. “Wow. Rude.”

Lucifer’s ears flick, unimpressed. He stands, turns in a circle atop my ribs, and kneads me once, claws slightly unsheathed, as if testing for warmth. Finding none, he gives a final insulted flick of his tail directly in my face before leaping off with a huff .

He circles my discarded coat next, sniffs, and lets out a disgusted mrrrow . This time he bats at it like it personally offends him before strutting from the room, tail high, dignity intact.

Aurora watches him go, her brow arching. “He usually tries to crawl inside your coat. Or, you know, aggressively seduce you for body heat.”

I glance at the leather draped across the chair, realization creeping in slow. “Because it’s warm.” Or it used to be. My heat is gone now, or at least dulled enough the damn cat noticed.

“Wow.” Aurora shakes her head with mock solemnity. “So he didn’t love you. He just loved the heated seat.”

“Figures,” I mutter. “Everyone wants something.”

“Not me,” she says, dragging her nails down my chest. “I just want you.”

I roll us so abruptly she lets out a yelp. With a quick readjustment of her hips, I have Aura spread above me. “Now, how about we focus on the present moment where you sit on my face?”

The shock that flashes in her features is quickly chased away by what I can only describe as a devious feline-like sensuality. “Fae lords, yes. But when I’m done drenching your face, you better flip me over and fuck my ass so slow I forget how to walk.”

It’s like the wind has been knocked out of me. Instead of answering, I immediately start delivering on the plan.

A scream rips me from the dead of sleep. I’m sitting bolt upright in bed before I realize I’ve moved, unable to comprehend why Aurora is standing by the bed, crying.

Her arms cinch across her chest, chin tucked, eyes wide and wet, her whole frame shrunken in on itself.

“Aura, sweetheart, tell me what’s wrong.” My brain is a hot buzz of panic trying to catch up. I only remember we passed out after another round of Olympic-level sex.

Aurora shakes her head, tears streaming faster down her cheeks.

Then I feel it.

My stomach drops and twists into a sickening ball.

Aura extends a trembling hand. Along her palm is an angry red burn.

“No.” The words slip from my mouth, distant and foreign. The room tilts, narrowing into a darkness that leads straight to hell.

“I got up to use the bathroom.” She fights to get the words out. “When I came back, your scales were...”

I follow her gaze.

My scales glow faint orange, like embers reigniting after a long smolder. They’d been cool last night. Cold, even. But now…now they pulse with heat again, creeping up my ribs and over my shoulder.

The fire’s back.

I stumble forward without thinking, arms outstretched to touch her, to comfort her, but she flinches.

She flinches.

And that does more damage than any wound ever has.

“It’s going to be okay.” I rush to say. “We can figure this out. I can...I can try to burn off the energy again.”

Even as I say the words, a part of me whispers, “ How? ” The situation that caused it had been extreme, dire even. I was under full attack and injured, and only when I saw Aurora get pushed to the ground did it tip me over the edge into the change.

“You said that Dragons can burn out their fire,” Aurora points out.

Guilt and frustration clogs my every vein and artery.

“It was a story I heard once. Most of what I know about my kind is via stories from other people and books from those who tried to study Dragons, not my actual people.” And I’ve never been more angry that I’ve been left on my own to figure it out.

That I have no choice but to rely on anyone but Dragons to get information.

I should have known not to take the bit of information seriously.

In the same conversation it was dropped that Dragons have two dicks.

I didn’t bother to correct them, but it should have given me an idea that they had no idea what they were talking about.

But hope is hope, even if it’s born of nonsense.

“I thought we had time. I stupidly believed we had all the time in the world. I thought we could be together .” She breaks on those last words, and something inside me snaps clean in two.

“I can burn it off,” I say again, too quickly. Too desperately. “I’ll go now—I’ll push it out—I’ll find something, anything?—”

“Talon.” Her gentleness stops me. “No.”

My body turns numb. My fire hums low and traitorous under my skin. I’m alone again. I always knew I had to stay solitary but now truly knowing what the other side tastes like...

I will die if I can’t touch her again. I can’t go back to how it was. Watching her. Wanting her.

I can't.

I won’t.

“I can’t do it,” Aurora whispers. Then louder, more panicked. “I can’t fucking do it! ”

I turn back just in time to see her pacing the room like a trapped thing, one hand pulling at her hair, the other clenching and unclenching at her side.

“I can’t go back to feeding on strangers like an animal. I won’t!” she yells. “It was just going to be us. You and me. No more kills. No more damage. Just... you. ”

Her eyes meet mine, and they’re wild, burning, devastated.

“Now what am I supposed to do?” she demands. “Go fuck some more randos and pray I don’t suck the life out of them? Is that how it has to be? Without you, I go back to being a monster.”

She’s spiraling so fast she doesn’t even realize her knees have hit the floor. Her hands cover her face, her whole body heaving with the force of her sobs. “I felt you, Talon. I felt your love and...and I was full. And now it’s gone, and I don’t know how to survive without it.”

I can’t hold her, I can’t reassure her, I can’t do anything.

Except the thing I’ve always done.

Protect her.

Even if that means we have to go back to being what we’ve always been.

I kneel in front of her slowly. Not touching.

Then I speak. Cold. Steady. Razor-edged truth.

“Pull yourself together, princess.”

She freezes.

“You’ll do what you have to do to survive. Just like you always have.” My voice is low, deliberate, slicing through the noise in her head. “You’re a Lost Girl now. You’re tough as hell. You fight. You get back up. You adapt. That’s who the fuck you are.”

Her watery gaze meets mine, but underneath, I watch the steel in her begin to reform.

“I don’t want anyone else,” she whispers.

“I know.” My composed response is a stark contrast to the molten sorrow churning inside me. “Neither do I. But we swallow what the world throws at us. Doesn’t mean we wanted the taste. Just means we know how to live with it in our gut.”

Something flickers in her eyes. Is it the spark of resilience, or a flash of resentment? Resentment at the world, or at me, for not allowing her the solace of despair?

Some part of me wonders if I should let her wallow. Let her drown in grief. But I won’t. Maybe it’s not about her. Maybe it’s because if I let myself succumb to the unfairness of the situation, I’ll crack so wide open I’ll never put myself back together.

To finally be gifted everything I’ve always wanted, only to have it so cruelly taken away...it’s a hell I don’t wish on anyone.