Page 41 of Valor’s Flight (The New Protectorate #5)
Chapter Twenty-Five
The cold shower hadn’t done her a damn lick of good. The embers of desire roared to life in the pit of her stomach. Alashiya didn’t know how to answer him — yes, but also no, because she could never have imagined the intensity of this — so instead she gasped, “Nie-nah? What does that mean?”
Something curled around her calf. It was his tail, she realized, only to be immediately distracted by the way his fingers glided up and over her hips to find the belt at her waist.
For a long moment, the only sound in the room was that of fabric rustling as he slowly, painstakingly unwound the knot.
“It’s what I’ll call you when you’re being naughty with me,” he coolly informed her.
“My little naine, who wants to test my limits, just to see how far my devotion goes. Tsk. You’ll understand. ”
“I really wasn’t trying to do anything!”
“No?” The sensation of the tasseled belt falling away made her jump. Alashiya’s thighs trembled as she tucked her heels against the lower cabinets.
She braced herself, but Taevas didn’t immediately pull the sides of the robe apart.
He cupped the span of her ribs with both hands.
Ducking to trace the tip of his nose over her cheek, he challenged, “You couldn’t have asked me to bring you something?
Or even told me to look away for a moment while you grabbed your nightgown? ”
“I…” Alashiya hadn’t realized she was still clinging to his bare shoulders until his muscles flexed under her fingertips. “I didn’t think of it.”
And maybe there was a small, needy part of her that had wondered what it would be like to be seen. To let herself be seen.
There’d been more than pent up sexual tension between them the previous night.
There was an awakened craving to be looked at, to be admired without fear or revulsion.
If she were being truly honest with herself, it was that craving that had propelled her out of the bathroom in little more than a sheer drape.
As if he could read her mind, Taevas sucked in a ragged breath and asked, with what sounded like a deep drawing of restraint, “How long has it been since you were admired, naine?”
What a question.
It was one with many answers, and all of them various levels of sad. Alashiya tried to pick apart the best of the bunch. “I… don’t think I’ve ever been admired in the way you’re implying.”
She didn’t want to say more, but with her body urging her in the way it was, and his body doing what it was, Alashiya knew it wasn’t the responsible thing to ignore the elephant in the room — even if she was the only one who could see it.
“And if you’re asking when the last time I had a partner was, then—” She cleared her throat and maintained eye contact with the hard line of his clavicle. “I had two boyfriends and we did— things. But I’ve not— I’ve been waiting to…”
Warm fingers firmly cupped her jaw. They tilted her head back and up, forcing her to look into the dragon’s incredulous gaze. The movement made the sides of her robe slip until they rested on the upper swells of her breasts.
Taevas’s gaze darted across her features when he rasped, “You’re a virgin?”
“Is that a problem?” she demanded, stiffening her spine.
Taevas looked like he was trying to piece together a particularly challenging puzzle in the dark. “It’s not a problem,” he answered after an amount of time that suggested it was, in fact, a problem. He looked pensive. Uneasy, even. “I’m more concerned with the why of it.”
Feeling altogether exposed, she huffed, “I don’t see why that’s any of your business.”
She thought the mood had been pretty thoroughly slaughtered there on the kitchen counter, but Taevas didn’t seem to agree. Despite the almighty frown that pulled at his mouth, his hands began to travel again. They slipped into the folds of her robe to slowly expose her chest an inch at a time.
“I heartily disagree, naine,” he rumbled in that deep, stirring bass. “As the man who intends to have, at minimum, his fingers inside you by the end of this night, I believe it is very much my business.”
Mood’s definitely not dead, she thought, painfully aware of the whisper-soft drag of his fingertips against the curve of her breasts. The image of Taevas’s night-dark fingers sliding between her thighs made her cunt clench with the echo of the previous night’s orgasm.
Compared to her flushed skin, the summer air felt cool on her suddenly bare chest. Taevas’s gaze dropped. He hissed something low as he skimmed the very tips of his fingers over her puckering nipples.
A string of muttered words, unknown to her, were finished with a growled demand.
“Tell me. If it’s dislike that made you avoid it, I need to know.
If it’s past experiences, I need to know.
If it’s because you were saving it for—” He sucked in a deep breath, the muscles of his powerful jaw flexing hard. “I really fucking need to know.”
Was it the fact that it’d been nearly a century since another person had touched her with desire that made even the simple action of his thumb brushing the peak of her nipple painfully erotic or was it just him?
Not knowing what to do with her hands, she dropped them to the edge of the counter, which she clutched so hard her blunt nails sank into the gritty particle board on the underside.
“I wasn’t exactly saving it. It just didn’t happen when there were other people my age still around, and then there were only rangers, and I thought, well, if I’ve waited this long, I might as well try to make it mean something and— Oh! ”
Taevas cupped her breasts. They nearly overflowed even his large hands.
“There is no good or bad reason to do or not do something with your body,” he said, thumbs stroking her sensitive skin with exquisite slowness.
“But I need to know your boundaries, my Shiya. I need to know what you will and won’t allow, because if it was my choice, I’d give you everything. ”
He hovered his lips over hers, stroking back and forth in the suggestion of a kiss.
For someone who was so hard-looking, the dragon was shockingly tender with her.
His hands were firm but gentle as he slowly rolled her nipples between his fingers and thumbs, and when he kissed her, it was the most delicate, sipping kind.
It was easy to get swept under the spell.
It might not have been if he was terribly demanding, if he grabbed and pinched and thrust his tongue into her mouth.
There was passion in that and a certain thrill when she considered it, but this…
Alashiya couldn’t escape the feeling that she was being molded in expert hands. She didn’t want to.
She couldn’t say what else she wanted from him, but she knew without a doubt in that moment that she needed to know what it was to be admired.
Alashiya forced one hand away from the edge of the counter. Placing it on the thick cords of his neck, she traced the throbbing pulse she discovered. His hitched breath stuttered against her lips.
He’s leaving at the first opportunity. I’ll never see him again. I may never even get another commission. Shouldn’t I take the chance while I have it?
All things wither. This moment was fleeting; the lushness of sensation was ephemeral. Perhaps she wasn’t quite ready to take the final step, but what harm would it be to explore him, them, in the moments she’d been granted?
“I want you to touch me,” she whispered.
One of Taevas’s hands slid into her damp hair. “Thank you, gods.”
To be kissed by a dragon, really kissed, was to be devoured. Alashiya discovered this when Taevas tilted her head back and set upon her like a starving man, his lips and teeth and tongue meeting her own in a luscious dance. All thoughts of the future were swept away as sensations took their place.
Her attention bounced back and forth between their mouths, the scent and taste and feel of him, and the way sparks of electricity sizzled beneath her skin whenever he slowly pinched and rolled her nipple. Pressure built low in her stomach with each firm turn.
Just when the feeling bordered on true discomfort, he switched to the other side, starting the process all over again until her breasts felt heavy and hot and too sensitive. She made a small sound in her throat when his fingers finally slid away to tickle the deep valley between her breasts.
Separating their mouths with a lingering, restrained nip of his fangs, Taevas grated, “I’ve seen the divine in these breasts. Gods help me, I’ll never be the same again. I want to lay my head here and die a happy death.”
She’d always viewed her heavy chest as more of a nuisance than anything, but when he looked at her like that, she suddenly didn’t care about back pain or sewing in extra support in her clothing.
Taevas grabbed her hand from his neck and gave it a lingering kiss. Giving her a molten look over the ridge of her knuckles, he ordered, “Lean back for me.”
Under that violet gaze, self-consciousness didn’t exist for her. She didn’t hesitate to do as he asked. Alashiya placed her trembling hands behind her, heedless of the dozens of jars and containers arrayed against the wall, and arched her back.
“Fuck. Fuck.” Taevas wiped at his mouth.
His gaze roamed her exposed skin and over the layers of her frothy robe, which spilled out around her waist and across her thighs.
His eyes weren’t the sultry half-mast she’d read about in books, but almost too wide, like he was trying to take everything in at once and afraid that a single blink would dispel the image.
It was with the utmost delicacy that he finished unwrapping her. Taevas picked at the edges of her robe, touching as little as possible as he pulled it completely apart. She stopped breathing when he took a measured step back.
This, she realized, was what it was to be admired.