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“Yes. The elders wait in the living room, ready to care for his body when you all are finished here.” The male voice alerted Kai that someone else had entered the hoard room.

“Give us a few more moments, Keahl.”

“Take your time, Mckenna.”

Kai smothered her crying against the fabric of Aodh’s vest but continued to absorb the comfort in her mate’s arms.

“Notify Liekki and Edjer to prepare for Drago’s final flight tonight. Have Hugo send out communications throughout the Thunder.”

“As you command, Mckenna, it shall be done.” The soft snick of the door sounded as Keahl left and closed it behind him.

Aodh placed tender kisses along her temple. “Since you are Drago’s last living relative, little flame, it is customary for you to provide his last words and bless his journey back to the Great Spirit this night. If you want.”

She sniffed and thought about the kind Wise One who used his last breath to give her peace and a connection to this foreign group of people. She would never forget what he did. She sat up and met the compassion in Aodh’s gaze. “I’d be honored to do it.”

~YH~

Eat her? Shit . With the memory of the taste of her sweet ginger-honey caramel skin still seared deep into his fucking brain, the last thing he needed to be thinking about was eating her. Cannibalistically or otherwise.

While he’d walked to the hall to get a bowl of soup, his mind was busy formulating all kinds of things he could do with this delectable, curvy female.

The images had preoccupied his thoughts so much he hadn’t even flirted with Chumana, the lovely kitchen Drahkelle who assisted him with getting the food tray together.

Liekki knew all it would have taken was for him to give the dragon-shifter female the right look or words, and he could have had her in the pantry, storage room, or out back against the kitchen wall. No one would have been surprised.

He blamed his damn beast for filling his mind with images of this bee-stung treat he was not planning to have.

“I...ought oolish,” she mumbled as she settled onto the side of the bed and quickly tried to shift away from him.

“Oh, you’re ghoulish. Have you seen yourself in the mirror yet?”

She shot a stern, one-eyed glare at him.

It was a low blow, but he enjoyed the red flush of embarrassment in her cheeks to the violent, rashy redness of her allergic reaction to the bee venom.

Shaking her head, she grunted.

When he realized what she was trying to do, Liekki smirked.

His patient struggled to move because the end of her toga-like garb remained trapped beneath one of his big boots. A strange, frustrated sound came out of her mouth when she tried to get a grip on it and pull while she leaned in the opposite direction he stood.

The wrapped layers around her breasts started to slip. But Liekki had to hand it to her; the woman, injured and all, was fast. She released the ends of the sheet and clutched at the top.

He didn’t even attempt to disguise his lustful gaze at the lush swells of her breasts.

They hadn’t popped out, but he vividly remembered just what they looked like when she lay splayed out on those same sheets, bare and mouth-watering.

He couldn’t help wondering if her nipples were sensitive; if she liked them played with or sucked hard.

A laugh rumbled from him when he saw her hold up one hand and, with her index finger, pointed up to her face.

He got the message, ‘Eyes up here, buddy.’ So, he gave her what she wanted, with a slow crawl of his hot gaze up her chest, to the delectable dip of her collarbone, along the side of her lick-able neck over the delicate curve of her bee-swollen lips to her non-swollen eye to ensure she met the indigo-blue flame in his eyes.

Her gasp was a broken moan.

Oh, yes. Liekki knew what effect he had on her.

Since he was a youth with his first hard-on, he understood what influence he could have on female Drahkelles and humans alike.

He knew human women were more susceptible because they had no damn clue about the impact or how to guard themselves from it.

Drahkelles, being just as sexual as their male counterparts, had desires always simmering just under the surface.

Admittedly, before the catastrophes, when he wasn’t working at the Drahk corporate offices at night, he was out seducing one or two human women.

However, none of them turned his blood into a blaze like this one. Reasons one, two, and three were that he would stay away. He banked his visual flames with a single blink as his fist tightened around the chunk of larimar he still held in his fist.

Damn, dragon . His beast wouldn’t give him an ounce of peace once he’d finished caring for her until he went into the hoard room, snagged the woman one of their hearthstones, and left it beside her resting form as a gift.

A fucking gift. The damn dragon was courting her.

Myhnn. The beast growled in their Drahk language.

Internally, he shook his head. Look here, you giant lizard, you can’t have her.

His dragon breathed out a pointed stream of fire that toasted Liekki’s gut. Liekki tightened his jaw but refused to budge on his position.

“Oove!” she yelled, pointing at his foot.

“What’s wrong with your mouth, feisty one?” With a mischievous glint, Liekki frowned as he stepped back, allowing her to pull the tail of the sheet closer.

Lifting an enflamed, ballooned hand to her mouth, she muttered behind it, “bah-eees...mah-I yips.”

“I can see your lips, love.” He set the rock on the small table and leaned close to her face. There had to be more going on than her swollen lips. Liekki didn’t miss her slight flinch back, trying to maintain space, but he ignored it. “Open your mouth.”

“Ifff...wine...” She kept her hand over her mouth and squinted her single hazel eye with its dark, long, thick lashes at him.

For a brief moment, he thought about what it would be like to have both those eyes un-swollen gazing up at him while he—

His sharp inhale cut the thought short.

When she still refused to open her mouth, he flexed the muscles in his jaw. Damn, this woman is stubborn .

“Open,” he growled, allowing a hint of his beast to rumble into the texture of his voice. If the damn dragon wanted to care for her, the beast would assist in making her obey.

Her mouth popped open, but her flaring nostrils made it apparent she was unhappy with her response to him.

Peering into the shadowy recesses of her mouth, he spotted something but wanted a clearer view. He instructed, “Stick out your tongue.”

With only slight hesitation, she slid her thick tongue forward.

That’s when he saw the black honeybee stinger nestled right in the center of her tongue. It had to be doing more than muddling her speech; it had to irritate her mouth, too. If he had stopped momentarily and thought about what he would do, he would have told himself no andwarned himself off.

But he didn’t, and that was the only reason later when he evaluated his actions, he could come up with how he’d ended up with his mouth on hers.

He closed the distance until he was able to glide his tongue along her swollen, raspberry-red appendage.

Liekki felt a short puff of air from her mouth, the lightest sensual caress across his tongue. The wispy breeze of gasp sent a hot shiver along his spine. Gently, he stroked up from the tip of her tongue to almost the center until he brushed the rough end of the stinger.

He lifted a hand into the soft nestle of tangles of her hair at the back of her neck, telling himself he did it to hold her in place as he tended to her injury.

To get the right angle, he moved in closer, pressing his lips to hers, firm but with caution toward her tender skin as he circled and circled the foreign object inserted in her tongue.

The tiny stick sat embedded deep, and he had to push down on her flesh to help force the stinger higher so he could grasp it.

Air brushed his cheek in a rapid rhythm with each breath she released from her nose.

He knew if he placed his hand—that rested on the bed beside her hip—over the woman’s heart, he would feel a matching pound to his.

Regaining his focus on his task, he shifted his tongue to the forked extension of his dragon’s, just like he had done to remove the other stingers. The dexterous split allowed him to not only pinch the needle but carefully work it up, up, up until the worst piece slid free from her tongue.

His dragon had a nice fire roaring in Liekki’s belly, aiding him in destroying the stinger when he swallowed it.

Once he removed the offensive spear, there wasn’t any reason for his mouth to still be on hers. There was no reason that his tongue—human tongue—was stroking the length of hers toward the back of her mouth or over the roof of her mouth.

He told himself he only checked to ensure all of the stingers were out, and he was helping to heal her tongue faster.

His beast backed up his claim by sending the right amount of healing smog to fill her mouth and soothe her irritation. But drawing her tongue into his mouth and suckling it didn’t seem to fall under the guise of providing first-aid.

And when he saw her single eye lower and heard her moan, his fingers were fisting her silken strands that flowed over the back of his hand and kept her mouth just at the right angle. He was definitely fucking kissing her.

She tasted so good. Liekki had to blame the alluring sweetness of her kisses on the honeybee. Because she was kissing him back, taking the deft strokes of his tongue and sucking hard on it. Shit, he could plunder her mouth for hours and want more.

He was an unruly, horny bastard. Liekki was a few strokes away from fucking her mouth and lowering her back to the bed when he felt the unexpected, sizzling heat as a ball of fire rolled up from his core past the rapid beat of his heart and into the back of his throat. Dragon’s kiss.

Fuck . He snatched his mouth away.