Page 39 of Echoes of Fire

Her shirt followed mine to the ground. Moonlight through the steam painted her human curves in silver—soft where I was ridged, vulnerable where I was armored, perfect in all the ways that infuriated and entranced. I traced the line of Cygnus’s path along her forearm with a single claw, watching goosebumps flare in its wake. The stars etched into her skin called to me, a language I couldn’t parse but desperately wished to claim.

My tongue followed where my talon had traveled.

She shuddered.

Her skin tasted of salt and wild energy, humming with the same charge that gathered before a lightning storm. My lips closed around the faded ink of Ursa Major, suckling the scar tissue beneath with just enough pressure to make her fingers knot in my hair. The groan that tore from me vibrated against her pulse point—a sound I hadn’t meant to release, raw and stripped of dignity.

Weakness. Sacred weakness.

Her hands found hair, not gripping but cradling. The contact speared through me—a Drakarn’s head in human hands, our most guarded vulnerability. I froze, torn between wrenching away and leaning into the blasphemous intimacy.

Air hissed through my teeth.

“Look at me,” she urged.

Reluctance burned like swallowed embers as I lifted my gaze. Her irises held flecks of gold now, mirrored fragments of my own eyes caught in the territory of hers. The world narrowed to that impossible symmetry.

My claws flexed against her hips.

“If I hurt you?—”

“You won’t.”

Her certainty destroyed me.

My tongue mapped her—every constellation, every scar—laving slow, wet stripes across the faded ink of Ursa Minor. Her flesh quivered beneath the broad, flat strokes, each deliberate swipe calculated to draw gasps. When I reached Lyra’s curve, I let the tip flick outward, rasping over the sensitive dip between rib and hip. Her hips jerked.

“Fuck—!”

The human curse shattered against the hut’s walls as I pressed deeper, the full length of my tongue undulating now—a hot, living blade writing devotion across her abdomen. Drakarn anatomy allowed for precision no human mouth could match—broad enough to span her entire navel, pointed enough to circle a single tightening nipple.

Dragging the tip up her sternum, I paused at the scar above her heart—the one she’d inked over with dots of Andromeda. Here, my tongue softened. Broad, flat laps interspersed with the delicate pierce of its pointed end, tracing every link in the tattooed shackles until her moans turned fractured.

Her hands fisted against my ribs when I reached her throat. “Rath?—!”

A warning. A plea.

I consumed both.

My tongue delved into the hollow beneath her jaw, twin points massaging the frantic pulse there. Her back arched violently, breasts brushing my scales as I worked higher—flicking her earlobe, then retreating to swirl around the shell. The vibration of her gasp traveled straight to my throbbing cock.

“You taste …,” my growl hitched as her nails found the gaps between my back plates, “like lightning.”

Her thighs framed my face as I knelt—an offering and a conquest. Heat curled around us as my tongue extended to itsfull length to trace a path up her inner thigh. She gasped, heels digging into the notched scars between my shoulder blades. The musk of her arousal cut through the mineral air, igniting glands beneath my tongue I hadn’t known couldburn.

“Fates’ breath?—”

Her curse dissolved into a moan as the primary ridge of my tongue pressed against her cleft. I stilled, savoring the shiver that racked her body—the way her human softness yielded to my heat.

There.

Her hips jerked, but my tail coiled tighter around her waist—an unyielding anchor. The tip found her lower back, vibrating faintly with the rhythm of my pulse. Every gasp, every twitch of her abdominal muscles mapped directly to the swollen ridges along my cock. Pre-cum slicked the scaled base where it strained against my stomach, the tongue-like foreskin writhing against empty air.

“Look down,” I growled against her thigh. “Watch what you do to me.”

Her fingers tightened in my hair as she obeyed. The breath left her in a rush.

My cock arched upward—thick, veined, and glistening—the barbell piercing catching the light. The fleshy lip at its crown undulated hungrily, dripping translucent fluid that steamed where it struck the rocks.

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