Page 20 of Flameborne: Fury (Emberquell Academy #2)

~ brEN ~

The storm began to ease as the day drew on. By high sun, the rain had stopped, though the winds roared on.

We lay together on my bedroll in the cave.

Donavyn sprawled naked, one hand under his head, the other resting on his chest. I lay next to him, propped up on my elbow. The dim light carved shadows on him that I found fascinating. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him.

My mind couldn’t stop conjuring comparisons to Ruin—young, taut, and strong. But Donavyn… while his body bore the marks of age, it also carried an unmistakable warning.

Donavyn was a weapon. The wisdom and experience he carried had left its mark—and refined him to honed steel.

His thick arms bulged when he moved, his shoulders rippled with muscle.

Yet his broad chest tapered to a trim waist, those lines that started above his hips, diving down, like arrows pointing the way.

I traced a finger down that line and he shivered. His cock twitched.

“You best be careful,” he rumbled with a lazy smile. “You’ll start the dragons up again.”

We were both exhausted, yet my body hummed. If he hadn’t been next to me, I would have fallen asleep in a heartbeat. But with him there, I couldn’t bear the thought of resting.

Even now, in this gentle quiet while the dragons napped, the coiling need in my belly was a sleeping lion. Deceptively idle. The moment he touched me the right way—hell, the moment he looked at me, my desire would roar into fury.

Donavyn’s smile pressed lines into his cheeks and crinkled the skin at the corners of his eyes. I let my fingers trail up his body again, following that ladder of muscles on his side to the little knot of a scar under his ribs. I touched it gently, wincing as I imagined what weapon had done it.

“A blade in the side, though thankfully not deep.”

“Who did it?” I asked, my heart hammering at the idea that he might have been taken away before now, before me.

“A footpad in Fyrehold. I was sent there when I was a Wing Lieutenant. A little nothing of a mission to gather intelligence. But I was complacent. The man who did that wasn’t even aware I was a Furyknight. He was nothing but drunk and angry.”

“Why angry?”

Donavyn had been looking down at where I touched him, but his eyes jumped up then to meet mine. “Because a woman he wanted had flirted with me,” he said carefully.

That tiny churn of nerves started again in my belly.

He shook his head. “Never again, Bren. You have nothing to worry about.”

I nodded, but went back to examining his body because I didn’t want to argue with him about how I knew women of all ages would pursue him into the grave. And I had no confidence I could compete with any of them.

I trailed a hand over his chest, circling his nipple with a fingertip, ignoring his eyes on me.

Though I could feel the heat building in him.

It made my belly tingle with anticipation.

But I kept that finger on his skin, enjoyed dragging my nails through the smattering of hair at the center of his chest, then across.

There was another scar on the other side. A thin line across his ribs. I traced it once, then again. “This one?”

“A battle scar,” he admitted. “We were caught on the ground during a clash at the border. Ambushed in camp. Kgosi pulled me out. It bled like a motherfucker, but healed quickly.”

I continued over his body.

The crosshatch scar where he’d fallen off Kgosi as a Flameborne and been dragged against a tree on landing, scraping the skin off his hip because his jacket rode up and his leathers caught on a branch.

The line above his collarbones where he’d been held at knifepoint by an assassin while on a mission when he was a Wing Captain.

The nick in his ear where he first claimed Kgosi bit him, but finally admitted he’d gotten an ill-advised earring when he was young, and it was torn out while wrestling with one of his squad brothers.

There was thick knot where he’d taken a spear-head to his thigh when he was a Captain, and the twisted toe that was almost torn off the one time he rode Kgosi without shoes, and they landed among trees.

“Do you have any on your back?” I asked, letting my fingers trail up his thigh and over that spear-scar. I felt the muscle bunch under the skin and smiled when his cock leaped again, but after a reluctant grunt, he rolled onto his belly, laid his chin on his arms and sighed.

I stopped.

I’d been about to trace fingers up the back of his thigh and over his ass, see if I could make his skin goosebump the way mine did when he touched me. But there was a vivid scar, a wicked, scythe-shaped, angry-red blight on his beautiful, rugged shoulder and upper-back that froze me.

“What is that?” I laid fingers on it gently. “Does it hurt?”

“I can’t feel your touch there,” Donavyn muttered. “Only pressure, or touch on the unblemished skin next to it.”

I followed the edge of the strange scar, biting my lip. It looked awful. And so painful. “How did you get it?”

His back expanded as he took a deep breath, then turned his head, laid his temple on his crossed arms and looked at me. His eyes appeared light—almost gray in this light. “What are the rules about flying leathers on missions, or during wartime?” he asked in a quiet rumble.

I frowned. “Always full leathers, including boots and a head covering. Why?”

His eyes never left mine. “That’s what happens if you catch a lick of dragonfire where you aren’t wearing dragonhide.”

There was something about the tension in his jaw that made the pit of my stomach roil.

He didn’t break the gaze. “I was cocky. Thought I was above the rules. It was a hot day and I was flying home. But we met combat while I wore nothing but a vest and linen shirt. It was the tiniest lick of flame—they were almost out of range. But the dragonfire melted the linen into my skin. The curved shape is where the vest protected my skin.”

I traced that half-moon shape again, frowning. “It must have been very painful.”

“It was. And my Wing Captain forced me to strap and fly three days later to teach me a lesson.”

“What?!”

He nodded. “I’d been told to wear my jacket, and like a child, I thought I knew better. I removed it once we were in flight. If I’d listened, I would have had some singed hair, maybe a blister on my neck, and nothing more.”

I grimaced knowing how tight the flying leathers were and shuddering at the thought of strapping a burn like that, then wearing leathers over it.

“Your compassion is touching,” he said a moment later.

I glanced at him, then went back to trailing fingers down the curve of his spine to the hollow of his back and another scrape-scar there.

“I hate the thought of the pain you must have been in.”

“And that’s what’s touching. That you even try to imagine it.”

I shrugged. “All these scars—you’ve lived a very dangerous life, Donavyn.”

He grunted. “Every Furyknight’s life is dangerous. I’ve just been one for a long time.”

A very long time.

He’d been a Furyknight a little longer than I’d been alive.

I swallowed hard. But Donavyn frowned.

“Why do you suddenly feel uneasy?” he asked abruptly, pushing up on his elbows.

Oh shit. This bond would be very inconvenient. “I thought about how long you’ve been a Furyknight and all the experience you have that I don’t.”

I continued stroking his back, admiring the muscles that had been carved by decades of hard work, but he propped on his elbow and rolled his body away, facing me, his gaze stern.

“I can feel you, Bren. It’s more than that. Tell me.”

My cheeks heated. Not because I was naked and he was staring, but because he wanted my thoughts. That was far more horrifying. I scrambled, trying to conjure a reason to feel a little low, or—

“Don’t,” he said sharply.

I froze and looked at him, wary. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t be afraid of me. You have no need. If there’s a problem, we’ll discuss it. That’s not to say I’ll never be angry, as I’m sure you will be with me. But I’d never touch you in anger, Bren. I’d never hurt you. Not like that.”

I blinked. The words were such a sweet gift.

So baldly spoken. Simple truth. I was certain he meant them.

I frowned, measuring myself at that thought.

I’d learned very early to be wary of Ruin’s anger.

His disapproval, though never violent, could be intimidating.

And my father used open palms to emphasize a point.

“You mean that. I can feel it,” I said, incredulous. How was it possible to be naked next to this man and feel no fear at the idea of his anger?

But Donavyn frowned, and sat up, leaning forward, examining my eyes.

“And I can feel you—and it makes me rage that you say that with surprise and relief,” he muttered.

I shrugged, but he shook his head. “Hear me, Bren: Any man who would lay hands on you—or even make you fear he might do so, will deal with me. Let him show me how strong he is,” he said ominously.

My heart thrilled and dropped in the same moment. He was so earnest. Serious. Fearless.

I scanned his body again, all those scars. He knew pain. Understood what it meant to bleed for his convictions. And yet, I felt the assurance in him. The bone-deep belief that he would stand between me and danger. And gladly.

I shook my head. No wonder Ruin had admired him.

By comparison, Ruin had played at heroism, telling me stories about the things he did in training and should be admired for.

Some of them things I’d now done and achieved myself!

Yet, I’d gobbled up his tales and been left staring at him with awe, and no little fear.

Because, why would such a man care about me?

I wrinkled my nose, but still the feeling wouldn’t leave me. I’d known I was nothing next to him.

Then I blinked.

I was nothing next to Ruin. And Donavyn was so much more—

It was a measure of how gently he held my heart that when Donavyn moved quickly, rolling me to my back, bracing over me, staring me down, I didn’t flinch.

My heart beat faster though.