Page 18 of Heart of Fire (Royal Ice Dragons #3)

HANNA

Dare hovered over me as we covered the treacherous, ice-slicked ground until we reached the cottage. His concern was a novel sensation.

When I slipped on the ice, his hands cupped my hips, drawing me against his tall, sturdy body. His lips dipped near my ear. “Are you all right?”

“Aren’t you worried you’re going to hurt yourself?” I asked, tilting my face up to meet his gaze.

He frowned. His green eyes looked black in the deepness of the night. “How?”

“Showing that you care,” I said lightly. “I thought you were afraid of it for a reason. It must be dangerous for you.”

He scoffed. “I’ve always cared if you lived or died. You’re a pain in my ass, but you’re Kaelan’s obsession.”

No matter what he said, he didn’t move away. He was still steadying me against his body, and I could feel the swell of his cock pressing against me even through all our layers of clothes. His breathing had changed, ever so slightly. If I weren’t so well-trained in spycraft, I wouldn’t have caught the flare of his emotion under all his sarcasm.

“So, I’m Kaelan’s obsession. And I’m your pain in the ass,” I mused.

He rolled his eyes. “Not mine .”

“What am I of Thorne’s?”

Something flickered in his gaze. “I think you know. Thorne’s happiness.”

He backed away from me, but his hand still hovered near the small of my back as if I might stumble.

“What do you care if I fall?” I asked. “It won’t kill me. I’ll just heal myself.”

“You won’t. You’re exhausted. I’ll heal you.” Somehow, he managed to hover while moving toward the cottage, his gaze fixed on it as if I didn’t matter—even though I could feel all his attention radiating toward me.

“No, thank you. I can heal myself. You didn’t want me to heal you before.”

“I didn’t need it.”

“I barely need healing. I can just sleep on it. I have a few scrapes, a banged-up knee…”

“Is that so?” He opened the door of the cottage for me. But as I passed him, he swept me off my feet.

“Dare.” The world was a blur of the cottage walls and the handsome, angular lines of Dare’s face: then I found myself perched on top of the dresser. As I teetered on the edge, I reached out and caught his shoulders just to make sure I didn’t fall off.

He was already bending before me though to draw down my pants, rolling them over my hips before I was quite collected enough to protest.

I hissed as he drew the fabric over my knee, and his gaze shot up to mine. “No need of healing, hm? That’s why you’ve been limping.”

My knee was badly swollen, red, and oozing blood from a scratch down the side where a sharp edge of rock had ripped through the fabric. When he touched my knee gently, I bit my lip; his touch felt like that strange combination of painful and pleasant it can be when someone touches our wounds.

But Dare shouldn’t be touching me so carefully. Not if he didn’t intend to be careful with me in the ways that mattered.

“You’re an asshole,” I reminded us both. I planted my good foot in his chest and pushed him back a step. “I don’t need you.”

He scoffed. “Are we playing two truths and a lie?”

“They’re both truths.”

He crossed his arms over his powerful chest. “You’re exhausted. You’ll wear yourself out more using magic, and I need all your wits—as much as you can summon—tomorrow as we deal with Lord Kustav.”

I shook my head.

“Are you really so irritated at me because I insulted you?” His tone was disbelieving. “That you would prefer to be ill-prepared to deal with Kustav?”

“I’ll be prepared.” I met his gaze evenly. “And I’m not irritated by how you see me. I’m angry that you’re trying to make me as insecure as you are.”

His brows rose. “I’m not insecure at all.”

“You’re always hiding who you are.”

“Not here.” He didn’t seem surprised by the accusation, which seemed odd. “I’m home.”

“ Especially here,” I said.

He drew back, frowning. But I was sure that it was true. He wanted these people to like him, to see him as one of them. But he had grown up as friend and servant and hostage in that hell-hole of a palace; he soared as a dragon; he had been hardened on the front lines fighting beside the prince. He wasn’t like them.

He wasn’t like anyone else.

“There’s nothing wrong with hiding parts of who you are.” His fingers skated over my calf as if he couldn’t resist touching me, even though the two of us were arguing. “Most people don’t deserve to know who we really are.”

But he always looked at me as if he saw right through me.

I scoffed. “You can’t hide from me, Dare. I see you.”

Emotion flashed across his face so quickly that I couldn’t make sense of what it was. Longing? Satisfaction? No—stronger than satisfaction. Desire? It was a powerful emotion, but it was there and gone, replaced with his usual insolent smirk.

“I am amazed that I hurt your feelings.” He gave me a skeptical look. “I’ve seen you run toward wild animals, fight off all kinds of evil, charge into the darkness of a collapsing mine, and even fuck Kaelan when you thought he might murder you. But you can’t handle a nasty joke?”

“Not from you, no.”

The words hung between us. I wasn’t sure what he was going to do with them.

For long seconds, he didn’t respond. His thumb was absently stroking the skin just below my swollen knee, his fingers wrapped around my calf. It was distracting.

“I was trying to make you angry,” he said it as if it were difficult for him.

“Aren’t you always?”

“I could tell you were afraid, and I thought it would be easier for you if you concentrated on hating me instead of how dangerous the tunnel was. I wanted to shock you out of your fear. Anger is an easier emotion to manage.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’ve said a hundred mean things to me already. Don’t tell me they were all for my own good?”

“Do you need me to say I’m sorry?” His voice was mocking. “That I didn’t mean it?”

“Yes.”

He stared down at me, looking confused.

“You hurt my feelings,” I prodded him. “Now you apologize. Like a normal person.”

“I don’t need lessons on how to be normal from a spoiled princess.”

“Maybe you’re right. I guess it is normal to be shit at apologies. But you definitely need lessons on how to be good .”

“You are so conceited.” He pulled away from me, turned his back and walked a few steps away. I grabbed the edge of the dresser, afraid that I would fall.

He turned back. “Conceited, but also, you look…fuck, Hanna, there’s no other woman that has ever had my attention so fully, so completely, as if no one else has ever mattered. You’re perfect.”

I felt myself start to smile as he went on. Gods, he was good at being nice when he let himself. Who knew? “Anything else?”

“I’m sorry,” he gritted.

Well, it was progress. We could work on tone.

I smiled at him sweetly. “Was that so difficult?”

“Yes.” He set his hands on either side of the dresser, caging me in. His hard jaw and his soft pink lips were right in my line of vision; this close, there was a faint poutiness to his lower lip. “Now, will you let me heal you?”

I shook my head.

“Then we’ll do this the hard way,” he said cheerfully.

I started to slip off the dresser, sure that I was not going to like whatever he was planning next. But since he was leaning so close to me, I couldn’t escape him. His arms closed around me as soon as my toes touched the floor.

My knee buckled painfully, and I let out a groan, but the next second he had lifted me up, cradled against his chest.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

“Healing you,” he said, setting me down on the bed.

I put my hand on his chest to push him away, and he caught my wrist and pulled it toward the bedpost. He was ridiculously strong.

The next thing I knew, a bond of magic had unfurled from the bedpost and slid around my wrist, anchoring it tightly.

“Oh no, you don’t,” I said.

He already had my other wrist and magic was closing around it, drawing my wrist toward the other bedpost as much as he guided it. But my legs were still free, so I caught him in the chest with my good foot and pushed him away hard.

He fell back, shoved hard, but he grabbed my pants and dragged them away with him as he stumbled. There was a distinct ripping sound.

“I love when you try to kick me,” he said mildly. “It’s so adorably ineffective.”

“When I get free,” I began.

He grinned, looking satisfied with himself as the bonds of magic wrapped my ankles and drew them apart, holding them still for him. I stared up at him, feeling vulnerable and exposed as he ran his palm up my calf. His magic was igniting across his fingers, warm and comforting, carrying that mix of pleasure and pain, and I couldn’t hide the way my core squeezed or the tremor that ran through my body.

“What are you going to do to me when you get free, Princess?” he mocked me, his hand sliding further up my thigh.

I twisted under his touch, involuntarily, at the intimate touch. His lips curled up as he slid his hand back down to my knee, trailing glittering, golden warmth everywhere he touched.

He cupped his hands over my aching knee. The feeling that radiated up my thigh from my knee wasn’t pain, exactly; it was an unbearable, aching restlessness. It felt like the tension just before the release of orgasm, and I bit my lower lip despite myself.

“Are you all right?” He glanced at me, a flicker of concern in his eyes.

“Perfect.”

He scoffed, just as I’d known he would. “Only Thorne would think so.”

“That’s why Thorne is my favorite,” I said languidly, and a frown dimpled the space between his unearthly, beautiful green eyes. His magic flared, just a little hotter, sending a pulse of warmth radiating up my thigh and down my calf that made me bite my lip against a rising moan.

“But can Thorne do this for you?” he asked.

“He can’t heal me. Physically.”

His lower lip was always rounded, full and kissable, and right now, I could’ve sworn it had grown slightly pouty.

“What, exactly, would you need any other kind of healing from? Your life has seemed perfect.”

“Has it?”

“You grew up in a castle?—”

“So did you.” I knew it wasn’t fair, but I said it anyway.

His hands caressed my knee, my thigh, as the last of the wounds healed. The sense of stiffness in my knee faded into nothing but warmth.

“It’s better,” I said softly. “Thank you.”

He nodded, and sat on the side of the bed, reaching to take my hand. His fingers wrapped mine, his thumb tracing lightly over the scrapes and gouges I’d won crawling over rough rock.

“You could let me loose,” I said.

“Not a chance.”

His thumb traced my inner wrist, sending a shiver of that same tension through my arm, and then he leaned over my body to reach the other hand. The hard muscle of his narrow waist, the warmth of his body, pressed against my stomach lightly.

As he stroked his fingers over mine, the golden light of his magic reflected off his face, making him even more beautiful. He was so handsome when he was concentrating, when he was both powerful and undisguised. For once, there was nothing scheming and smirking about his expression. His lips parted faintly, his brow furrowed as he drew his magic to the surface.

He turned toward me, and I breathed in as his hand cupped the scrape on my cheek. He leaned over me, his gaze intent on the wound, all his concentration there. Tied up, I could do nothing but study the planes of his face.

We were so close together that if he leaned in just slightly more, his lips would brush mine.

His gaze moved from the wound, now healed, to my eyes. “Where else does it hurt?”

“Nowhere,” I whispered.

“Do you promise?” He hadn’t moved further away from me.

I wanted to cup my hand over his cheek the way he had touched mine, to feel the hard angle of his jaw against my palm, to feel the tick jump in his cheek the way it just had, as if he were barely holding himself back from me.

“Would I lie to you?” My voice came out a whisper.

“Yes.” His tone was dry. “You’re too proud. You don’t like to be vulnerable.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

His brows arched.

“I suppose I’m Kaelan’s obsession, Thorne’s happiness, and your mirror,” I teased him.

Surprise flashed across his face before he frowned. “No. You and I are nothing alike. That’s why it would be stupid for me…”

He trailed off.

“Stupid to do what, Dare? To kiss me?” I bit my lower lip, knowing I should stop these words from spilling out but unable to resist them. Unable to resist him . “You’re already being stupid. You might as well keep going.”

“Am I? How am I so stupid, Princess?”

“You and I both know what you want.”

His gaze searched my face. “You are so damned arrogant.”

I was laughing in his face when he leaned in and kissed me. So his lips met my teeth, first, and then my mouth softened against his. His lips were warm and soft, unlike his personality.

He pulled away after the barest brush of a kiss. “Is this all right?”

“It’s all right,” I whispered back. “But I want to be free. To touch you too.”

He shook his head. “I like you better this way.”

Another time, I would’ve mocked his need to control me, to keep me from touching him even while he couldn’t resist me. But not now. Instead, I raised my head from the pillow so I could kiss him again.

His hands skimmed down my body, running down my thigh, then back up. My back arched, and his smile was knowing, confident, as if he had won. He continued to stroke my thigh, his fingers moving slowly closer. My hips bucked once to hurry him along, and he grinned.

But it felt as if I were the victor.

I gasped as his fingers traced the delicate edges of lace against my thighs, sending shivers down my spine. His touch was both gentle and firm. I found myself involuntarily pulling at the ropes with each caress, each kiss, as I began unraveling.

His fingers danced tantalizingly along my inner thighs, teasing and tempting me with each feather-light caress. I arched my back involuntarily, a soft moan escaping my lips as he inched closer to where I ached for him the most.

His warm breath ghosted over my skin, sending a wave of goosebumps in its wake. Heat radiated between us, and he took his time playing with me before he finally, finally nudged my panties aside and began to tease my heated core. A jolt of pleasure shot through me, and he watched my face intently as he stroked his fingers through my arousal.

His fingers traced the outline of my folds, delicately dipping inside, as I let out another soft moan. My hips rocked to the rhythm of his touch, wanting more, craving the fullness he promised.

With a soft, sly grin, he circled his thumb over my aching clit and then worked his fingers inside. The sensation of his fingers inside me was both exquisite and overwhelming, making me gasp for breath.

As he began to thrust inside me, his movements were slow and measured, building a rhythm that matched the pounding of my heart. My body arched with each thrust.

His lips met mine in a searing kiss, his tongue sweeping into my mouth.

As I neared the edge, he increased his pace, his fingers finding a perfect rhythm that sent me soaring. My body convulsed under his touch.

“Dare,” I moaned, and he let out a groan of his own as if the sound of his name on my lips was the sexiest thing he had ever heard.

He lunged to claim my mouth, his thumb still frantically working my clit, and his fingers thrusting against my inner spot. I moaned into his mouth as I shattered.

Afterward, as I came down to earth, so did he. He didn’t quite seem to know what to do with himself, now that he had me tied up. It was amusing, but I took pity on him.

“Enough playing around, Dare,” I told him. “We never finished our conversation with Greia.”

He nodded. His pupils were still wide, and he turned away from me as he rose to his feet, muttering a spell as he adjusted himself…so that he was not quite so rock-hard when he turned back to me.

“Let me go, Dare,” I reminded him.

But I hoped Dare would never really let me go.