Page 26 of Beautiful Beast

“Yes.”

A tick in his jaw. “I wish I’d been there to see it.”

“You can.” I moved, and my knife was at his throat, pressing against the delicate skin there. “This is the same blade.”

He smiled then. A real one. Full and broad, it transformed his face from the dark handsomeness he bore into someone entirely different. Lighter. I got the feeling not many people saw this part of him. And perhaps the ones that had were already dead.

“You play the game well, Princess. I’ll give you that.”

“You’re incredibly calm with a blade at your throat.”

He didn’t flinch in the slightest. “You’re too curious to kill me. And though you have a blade at my throat, it wouldn’t matter.”

“So a dragon can survive bleeding out?” I glared at him.

“No. But you’d have to actually cut me first.”

I didn’t see his hand move, but it curled around my wrist, firmly moving my hand away from his throat with strength I couldn’t resist. “Don’t count me out because you’re faster,” I whispered.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

His eyes went dark, dilating, and again I saw that gold color shining through—the truth. This man was a dragon, and I was at his mercy. My bravado was one thing, but confidence was not a shield. One movement and he could kill me.

Endre leaned closer, and I caught a breath of scent—something dark and wild I couldn’t quite name. The way my body shook wasn’t from fear, though it should have been. I wanted to stay here, this close, figuring out why standing so close to him made it hard to breathe. Even as he turned my own blade against me, holding my hand to my own throat.

I shuddered as he moved even closer, his breath brushing my ear. It should have been impossible to feel a rush of heat at the same time as cold chills on my skin.

The words were the whisper of a whisper. “Wishing the Craisos Prince was here now?”

I rose to the bait, knowing he wanted the fight. “He’ll never stop looking for me.”

“We’re hard to find.”

But Endre’s words didn’t land. I was too preoccupied with my own. Andaros would never stop looking. He’d survived the hit by the dragon’s tail. Immune to dragonfire and magic but not physical attacks. And as soon as he’d recovered, he would come looking. It didn’t matter if they let me live and allowed me to go somewhere other than Rensara. He would look for me and find me anyway.

They could trace me.

Drag me back.

Act like he was saving me and take me back to the cage I never wanted to be in again.

I looked up at Endre. “Kill me.”

“What?”

“He’ll never stop looking. Kill me.”

The golden eyes of the dragon appeared, and with it, the humanness in him dropped away. I sensed the beast within, so much more volatile than the man who spoke to me. He pulled the blade away from my throat and held it away from my body, pinning my wrist against the wall like he thought I might drive it into my own heart.

“I came here with every intention of killing you, Princess.”

Suddenly, his other hand touched me, sinking into the mess of my hair and pulling my head to the side. He drew his nose up the column of my neck, inhaling deep. Nothing had ever felt like that single breath, and the last thing in my head was the fact that he admitted he was here to kill me. “If I hadn’t woken?”

“You’d already be dead.”

Again, he grazed my neck with his nose, like tracing the line of my life was the single thing keeping him at bay. “What stopped you?”

His low, animal growl reached everywhere. No sound should feel like that. “At first, curiosity. But if you keep begging my dragon to end your life, I can’t promise I’ll resist.” The words were velvet soft and deadly.

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