Page 67 of Betrayed By Dragons

"I wouldn't say we need a fire right now." Rafe's conviction wavers, and it breaks my heart all over again.

I shake my head, digging deep. Quietly, I tell him, "You do."

I lift my hand higher. His throat bobs, and his uncertainty bowls me over, but I'm not going to let him walk away from this. I step into him, putting my other hand to his cheek. I tug him down until his breath washes across my face. Rising onto my toes, I press my mouth to his.

The kiss is soft and tentative. We brush our lips together a few times, and little sparks dance down my spine. Our fingertips nearly touch, and I swear I can feel the crackle of kindling in our closeness.

He swallows roughly, fluttering open his eyes. Intensity radiates in those golden orbs, making them glow.

"Burn with me," he rasps.

Then he's placing his palm to mine.

Warmth flows through me, and I put all my will into summoning the heat we need to keep our flame alive. For a long, excruciating moment, nothing happens. I concentrate harder, and my bracer tingles.

Then, deep beneath our feet, hot magma surges, the currents of it somehow echoing in my blood. It blazes through my veins, rising higher and higher, swirling into my core and into the ether of our bond.

"Ember," Rafe breathes.

The inferno leaps out of the ground in plumes of fire. We're ablaze, our brightness probably visible from space. The flames surge outward and up, and the heat of them sears me through.

And yet I'm...fine.

I'm better than fine. A wild flutter of laughter bursts from my lungs, and Rafe is right there with me. His relief melts me with more warmth than our fire.

"Can you imagine if we'd done this on the balcony?" Rafe whispers.

"Would have been quite the show."

I press upward again, seizing his mouth. As we kiss, our flames dance higher still, our passion fueling them. My own heart feels like it's on fire, and I want to scream it to the world. I want everyone to see the beauty of our connection.

I want to burn the whole world down and begin it anew.

And I really, really, really want my mate to take me in arms. I want to let the connection between us flare as brightly and wildly as our flames.

I want him.

I gasp into his mouth as a second conflagration flares to life. My nipples tighten with a different kind of heat, and between my legs, need burns me through.

"Rafe," I gasp.

"Fuck, yes."

He deepens the kiss, taking command of it. My head spins with the lack of oxygen and with the pure heat of the magic flowing between us. I open to him, and he presses forward with his tongue. I welcome him in, lighting up inside at the rasp of his teeth and the taste of him.

The relief.

All the distance of the past few days evaporates in an instant, burned away by our fire. The overwhelming rightness of being with my mate like this is almost too much to bear, but I can't stop.

He pulls his hand from mine to grasp me by my hips. The moment our palms slip away from each other, the shared flame of our magic drops away.

"We're going to have to work on that," Rafe says, even as he's walking me backward toward the cairn.

"Practice makes perfect," I agree. It's hard to imagine anything more perfect than the moment we just shared, but I'll practice it over and over and over again--just to be sure.

The rush of incandescence is gone, but our heat still lingers as he presses me into the towering pile of stone. I glance backward. "Is this--"

"Stable enough," he promises, and then he's kissing me again, slipping his hands beneath the hem of my shirt and pushing it up.

---