Page 158 of I Dream of Dragons

She was always a bright star. The star by which I navigated when I got lost, and I was lost often in those first days when I met her. I’ll always follow her. That hasn’t changed.

I bow my head over hers, closing my eyes. I’m dying to ask her what she’s thinking. What she has remembered. If she feels the bond between us, throbbing like a wound.

If she wants it.

If she can forgive what I am, what I’ve done. If a man like me can ever be worthy of a woman like her. I never thought it possible, and now less than ever, but the fucking wonder of finding her again, of having her back, has shaken the foundations of my life, shaken my thoughts loose. I can’t fucking think beyond being with her, having time with her.

Holding her, convincing myself she’s real and not a ghost.

The Gods know this palace is full of ghosts. On most days, I feel like a ghost myself.

But she is real. Solid. Warm.

Beautiful.

Mine…

Then she scrambles off my lap, leaving me to blink confused. I reach for her instinctively, but she steps away from me, a frown on her face.

“Don’t go,” I whisper, shaken, hauling myself to my feet, ignoring the agony in my torn back. My mind is roaring at me that she changed her mind, Phaethon growling incomprehensible words at the back of my head. Of course she should run away, from me, from this accursed palace. “Fuck…”

“You shouldn’t have gotten up,” she says sternly.

… What?

“Let me check those bandages on your back,” she says. “You’ve hurt yourself worse.”

I frown back at her. “I had to find you,” I whisper.

“I would have come to you. Don’t you trust me?”

I study her small, pretty face. She sounds angry but underneath that sharp tone, there is a softer, bitter undercurrent. She may be furious, but mostly she sounds worried.

“What’s wrong, my love?”

“You’re bleeding,” she says quietly, holding her hands, palms up, before her face, and it takes me a while to realize they’re painted red.

With my blood.

“It’s nothing I haven’t survived before,” I grunt. Her scent is still wound around my senses, tightening as she moves. The scent wafts off her long hair, her skin…

It gets me harder. I didn’t think it was fucking possible to get harder than I have been since she pressed herself to my side to help me out of the king’s rooms.

Catching those small, bloodied hands, I tug her toward me, bow my head to hers. Her lips part, soft and inviting.

I’m hers. Does she know how completely she owns me?

I kiss her and it’s the first drop of clarity I’ve had in an age. Fresh. Sweet. Hot. A hint of salt and a part of divine, a spark of excitement and arousal racing through me. Mine? Hers?

The bond turns it into one.

One body.

One desire.

Sliding my hands down to her waist, I lift her and carry her to one of the sofas, ignoring the agony in my back. Lay her down.

Rae, lying before me, cheeks flushed and eyes wide. It’s a dream I hadn’t dared dream in so long. I kneel on the mattress, settle over her.